Sam Stokes on Research in your life and studies

Using Expression Encoder to convert .WAV files to .WMA files

SoCal Sam — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:27:29 GMT

OMG, this is easy and if you are a student or faculty member that has access to Dreamspark or MSDNAA. If you are creating a game using Expression Blend 3 or Silverlight, you might find that you need to convert a .WAV file to a .WMA file. This is easy to do using Encoder.



Click on Encode to start the encoding. The encode button is found on the bottom of the screen.
The files will be encoded or changed to WMA, quickly even on low end machines. The target is defaulted to the Expression folder in Documents or the My Documents library

That’s it, free to people who can access Dreamspark or MSDNAA!

F#: Starting anew, why F# and not FORTRAN

SoCal Sam — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:55:32 GMT

Why FORTRAN and not F#?

FORTRAN works well, has a strong history and none of that nasty object oriented nonsense.
F# works well, based on OCAML, and supports object oriented nonsense

How about F# and FORTRAN? Can F# use FORTRAN? Alfred Thompson makes a good point about creating a parallel book on computational languages, an interesting idea for teaching, but not useful if you are trying to get work done.

The language battles are going to go on, and that is a great way to keep the computer language guys busy, but for me, I am interested in F#, and what it offers to the computational solutions.

Problems with FORTRAN is that it isn’t being extended, for example the GNU FORTRAN wiki site appears to be viable with bugs being fixed and posted. The price for FORTRAN appears to be right, it’s free. Oh wait, so is F# if you use the integrated visual studio process.

So why should a computational scientist use F# over FORTRAN? Good question, and one that I think needs to be answered. However, that is not my goal, my goal is to prove that F# can be useful and can serve the academic researcher in a manner that increases the researchers efficiencies.

Language dweebs like me forget that engineers and scientists need to get real work done.

More to come.

Feynman speaks from beyond the grave: Messenger Series

SoCal Sam — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:11:40 GMT

Wow! No, no, WOW! The Messenger Series from Cornell brings Feynman back from the dead. Here is Dr. Feynman lecturing on the nature of physical law.

Microsoft has put together a respectful and interesting series of lectures by Richard Feynman called Project Tuva, apparently Dr. Feynman fascinated by the Russian state of Tuva.

Take a look at this great video: Project Tuva

Feynman simplified complex ideas so that all could understand them.

For a great discussion see Alfred Thompson’s blog about using this series in learning: Project Tuva – a new way to teach and learn. And he thinks I don’t read his blogs. Ok, I missed that one, I WAS on vacation. And I disagree with his title: A new way to teach and learn, yo Alfred, these were done in 1964, that’s 45 years ago. I think a better title for your blog would be: “Project Tuva—a leading edge way to teach and learn, in 1964” or something like that. Ok, maybe your title is snappy…

Grab a kid (keep in mind though that there is a law against kidnapping), your Mom, Dad, or roommate and watch these videos!

There will be a quiz. No really, there will be. Maybe. Maybe not. You know the drill if you read this blog, I might do it if I don’t get distracted.

Bill Gate is looking like he is having fun in the sun, with a bit of a tan that he didn’t get in Washington State. :)

Robo-Ethics: Maybe my last post was wrong

SoCal Sam — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:02:00 GMT

I read the 112 page report found at http://ethics.calpoly.edu/ONR_report.pdf, which exhaustively examines the concept of the autonomous device. Including the idea of the autonomous device as a “comfort” robot, see page 80, I am NOT going into detail on that speculation, we are all adults here, you go read it yourself.

On to ethics, outside of the “comfort” robot scenario, this paper is a good read and discusses in depth the different ways to look at war. The use of force and the motivation behind the use of force is clearly outlined.

So maybe I was wrong in that last post, maybe there should be a field of Robotic Ethics. But to me, it just sounds like human ethics. Robots may need to act autonomously, but any machine has to be owned by someone. In that case the rules of chattel are the controlling law, and that makes the owner the one responsible.

All of this is easy for me to say, sitting here in my comfortable chair. In the fog of war, ethics are difficult, and if you are the one being fired on, you want as much force to be available as possible.

Robo-Ethics: Really? No way…

SoCal Sam — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:53:00 GMT

Recently a few of my colleagues were on Twitter, tweeting about robotic ethics. Seemed pretty dumb to me. I think I have some real world encounters with autonomous vehicles with my work on auto-flight systems in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The system at the time was designed to perform auto-flight duties such as capture and hold altitude, which when the aircraft weights 300 metric tons and you don’t want the passengers to throw-up their dinners is a difficult thing to do. The auto-flight system was also designed to perform auto-lands bringing the aircraft to a full stop on the runway, without pilot intervention.

But this autopilot system was owned by someone and it could make decisions such as determining the cross wind during a landing. The result of it’s decision would be Boolean in nature: Continue the auto-land, or disconnect and perform a stick shake informing the pilots that the auto-flights auto-land system was turned off. At this time, the pilots who were required to track the landing by keeping their hands near the controls would take over. The pilots could also take over if they added around 2 kilograms of force on the “stick”, this would disconnect the auto-land software and the pilots would then land the plane.

Does this make the auto-flight system a robot? Yes.

Does it make the auto-flight system an autonomous robot? No.

What kind of ethics would be involved with this type of robot? The ethics that have built up with respect to chattel. At one time many cultures had the legal theory that children and women were chattel of their fathers or husbands. If these humans misbehaved in any manner, the punishment would extend to the father or husband. In the same way, a non-autonomous robot’s action would extend to it’s owners, and then through civil actions to the creators, if the owners didn’t misuse the non-autonomous robot’s software or mechanical systems.

Often, in stories contained in the anthology “I, Robot”, the positronic mind that makes up the robotics “brain” was built by a monopolistic company. By being the only corporation that could build the positronic brains, General Robotics could control the abilities of the robots. Most of the Asimov robotic stories and their derivatives were mostly about how non-autonomous robots would function and interact with society, technicians and even psychologists (Susan Calvin).

In the case of the “I, Robot” style of stories the robots were performing operations under the ultimate control of General Robotics, one of their customers or the government, with a few exceptions. The initial three laws of robotics were an attempt by General Robotics to get humans on Earth to accept the use of robots. The stories were about how the robots would malfunction, within the three laws. A zeroth law, was added to extend the Foundation stories and to make them connect to the “I, Robot” series of stories and fictional universe.

The three laws:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

Robots in the real world are not a point where they can autonomously, although the Pleos and other toys act as if they can. Most of the things we think of as robots are usually under some sort of guidance by humans or have an endpoint goal dictated by humans. As a result the ethics of the current breed of robots are the same motivations behind the three laws of robotics: Protect the owner, do what the owner tells you do and protect the investment in the robot. It is the zeroth law of robotics that functions for the autonomous robot: Protect Humanity. Good luck on getting that one to work.

An excellent work on autonomous robots can be found at: http://ethics.calpoly.edu/ONR_report.pdf

The bottom line for Autonomous Robot-Ethics would follow the same rules as human: The robot like a human would be required to deal with situations in the context of the environment and cultural expectations.

Microsoft and Nanotechnology?

SoCal Sam — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:11:00 GMT

Oh NO! Take a look at this article on using software with nanotechnology:

Designing Structures Made of Nanomaterials
Algorithmic design of self-assembling structures
Stargate and Replicators

Read these articles NOW, before it is too late. Just kidding about it being to late, unless you are running out of battery power. Speaking of battery power, this kind of technology can one way to improve batteries!

(What does the picture of Claudia Black have to do with Microsoft technology?

Nothing, but Claudia Black did battle nanites in one of the later Stargate shows. Or maybe not, but it is an interesting picture.)

Information is currency of the future: Mining Sequential Patterns

SoCal Sam — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Yeah right, have you tried to make money off of the web? Read any of those books on “Secrets of Google”? How is that going for you? In this paper, which uses simple arithmetic presented in a complicated manner, to show how to mine data from poorly designed databases. Not that I have EVER encountered point of sale systems with badly designed databases.

On the other hand, if you have children that are running around saying all of this math at school is useless and I will never use it, point them to this article. Make them do some of the calculations on their graphing calculator that is gathering dust over the summer, the algorithms are in the instruction manuals. Get the grumpy teenagers to build some phony data and test it, or better yet go on line and see if they can find a dataset somewhere that they could use. There are these types of datasets on the web.

Check out the paper: “Mining Sequential Patterns”, get those internet smart kids to use their internet smarts and their graphing calculators. If they don’t have a graphing calculator, have them download the free Math add-in for Word.

If you don’t have the versions of Word that work with the Math add-in, Microsoft has an AWESOME graphing calculator for $20 instant download. This graphing calculator is much better than the regular handhelds with better graphics, etc. Get it at:

On the other hand, if money is really tight, but you can follow instructions, you can build your own graphing calculator, see: Graphing Calculator Demo, I haven’t checked by actually building the project (although I will) as of this post, you may be able to build it using one of the Free Express products.

Make it a family project. :)

Researching your queries and clicks

SoCal Sam — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:36:00 GMT

OMG, people tracking what I search and what I click on. Isn’t that an invasion of my privacy?

I think that I should have the right to protect my privacy, but what is privacy on the Internet? On the other hand, how do others help me to protect my privacy? Doesn’t that require researchers to look at large numbers of queries and clicks to examine the statistics? Questions, questions, questions…

To learn about how researchers are examining our queries and clicks, no matter how exciting or boring they might be, take a look at the e-paper to find out how privacy is defined.

If you want to be able to hold forth on cybersecurity around the swimming pools, golf courses and over those tall cool drinks on the back porch, then you will need to read this article: Releasing Search Queries and Clicks Privately

There is some cranking hard math in the middle sections, but good analysis and reading that I can understand in sections 1-3, 7 and the conclusion. It is worth the read, especially these days when your privacy is so important.

Vacation Time means photos, lots of photos, use AUTOCOLLAGE

SoCal Sam — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:16:00 GMT

Autocollage is pretty cool, after all you just got back from the Imagine Cup in Egypt or hanging out by the pool at your friend’s house down the street, and you got a ton of pictures. Time moves on, how do you share them? Use one of the recent outputs of Microsoft Research: Autocollage. See the article: AutoCollage: Summarize Your Adventures with a Click, and to get ideas on how to use it: Autocollage, download it from: Autocollage Download. Try the trial version, see what you think.

Have fun this summer, and take a lot of pictures!

3DVideo, without the glasses

SoCal Sam — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:02:00 GMT

Check out a good brief article about video and 3D, if can read only one article this summer on 3D Video, this is the one you should read! 3DVideo

Reading and viewing the videos will give you insight into what occlusion is and isn’t.

Being able to utilize 3D Videos in a website would make the end-user experience that much more interesting. Examination of the art of 3D videos brings out the point that projects will cost more, and how will you be able to recover your costs? Hobbyists, etc. will likely enjoy the ability to bring this to their web pages, but will media companies be able to do cost recovery and make a profit off of this interesting technology?

At this time, broadcast television as well as cable networks are struggling with costs and profits. Most internet media, with the possible exception of the "adult" media, are either low profit margins or no profit. 3D could breath a newness into the various media types and inhance profits, or 3D could simply cost more without increase in traffic or profits.

Take a look at this article and see what you think.

ESP: Extra-Sensory Perception or Embodied Social Proxies?

SoCal Sam — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:51:00 GMT

WTF? ESP? Satellite people? Is this a Coast to Coast show with George Noory for long haul truckers and insomniacs?

No, Embodied Social Proxies, this isn’t a problem that my team suffers from, even though we rarely meet in person, none of us work together in person or are collocated.

Embodied Social Proxies are for teams that are mostly collocated, and this article is certainly worth taking a look at if you are thinking about developing a system to support teams that most work together and have one or two people who are working remotely.

Is your secret question really secret?

SoCal Sam — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:36:00 GMT

Take a look at this article: 'Secret' Questions Leave Accounts Vulnerable, now ask yourself: Could someone guess the answer to your secret question. I have always felt that these secret questions were silly and I usually have not utilize them. I structure my passwords in such a way that they are difficult to guess and difficult for me to forget.

The article recommends that use of several trusted friends and describes the process. A simple test of the trusted friend process indicates that 90% of the people who used trusted friends instead of secret questions were successful in resetting their password successfully.

Keeping your email account secure is very important. This article: 'Secret' Questions Leave Accounts Vulnerable is certainly worth the read.

Have a happy 4th of July! Be Safe!

SoCal Sam — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:27:00 GMT

Fireworks were initially invented by the Chinese, and likely the medical protocol for missing hands from explosions followed shortly.

In the United States July the Fourth represents the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, although the real date might have been July 2 depending on your legal point of view. The making of “joyous” noise and so forth slowly became a tradition, with the slow communications and independent nature of the US in the early years slowed the adoption of the fireworks and parades.

If you are going to the beach, make sure that you enter the water in a manner that allows you to check out the new environment, and all waters, except pools, are renewed everyday. I surf quite often, but I always, and I mean always do a quick wade out to check for sandbars, etc. Please do the same.

Fireworks are interesting since they are really the basis for our current civilization. If we didn’t have fireworks, created by the Chinese, then wars would have been forced to be fought with arrows, rocks, and catapults. The idea of combustion would have delayed and Carnot might not have investigated the concepts of Thermodynamics. Exploration of the Solar System would not have happened, and now with Voyager and the Pioneer craft would not have passed the edges of the Solar System.

July 4th is an important date in American History: Completing the signing of the Declaration of Independence

One of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was a “gentleman” scientist, as well as other things best not mentioned. He and one of his friends were into the science of cryptology. The Wall Street Journal carried an article on July 2, 2009 telling about a letter exchange between President Jefferson and his friend, his friend created a cipher so complex that he maintained that it couldn’t be broken by the entire human race. Like most ciphers, it is now broken, take a look at the article:

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code

Using Bing, I quickly found the Professor who managed to crack the code: Lawren Smithline

One more thing about Thomas Jefferson, finished the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776, a sign of a good software developer. :)

Bottom line: Be safe, have fun, celebrate Independence! no matter where you are, write something important.

Microsoft Research asks: “When Is a Browser Not a Browser?”

SoCal Sam — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:45:38 GMT

A retail person might answer: “When they buy something!” Not the case here.

The question could be: Can a browser also be an operating system?

I don’t agree with Janie Chang, the author of this article in general, businesses are being forced to use web only applications by consulting firms that don’t know how to build rich client applications. Of course the consulting firms don’t have the money to retrain the students coming out of the universities that have trained to only think of the online paradigm. Creating rich interactive applications RIA is slightly more difficult and you do have to think of your customers needs. Using Web only applications means you don’t have to really supply what your customers want and need, a consultant can blame others, the hosting site, the web application developers etc.

Further into the article, Janie begins to describe an excellent idea: Gazelle, a browser that is also a browser. Of course, embedded developers who have developed apps for internet appliances have already explored this space, for the rest of the developers this might be new ground.

Take a look at this excellent article, even if I don’t really agree with all of it: When is a Browser Not a Browser?

F#: Using the Interactive Panel in VS 2010 Part 1

SoCal Sam — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:43:04 GMT

Use the Interactive Panel in VS 2010 to learn how to use F#. I have not included the code used in my examples, my guidance to you is to visit:

F# 1.9.6.16 Draft Language Specification,

start off with: “Making Data Simple” use the interactive panel to test the examples. Then work through the rest of the specification, as you do note down ideas that you have about how to use F#.

It’s pretty cool.

For the QuickStart viewers, my apologies for the latest of this video, I use MSN Videos and the system hasn’t been working well lately.

The video is also available for download, and easier viewing at the following link:

Coding Functionally

I should be able to get the rest of the talk posted over the next few days.