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History

Tandem Computers used to make Non-Stop fault tolerant hardware and software. Their premier system was a million dollar Mainframe system. It could have up to 16 CPUS and 16 IO cabinets, each with 60 IO cards. Everything was in pairs. Each CPU was actually two cpus, if one disagreed with the other, they shutdown. All processes were doubled. All IO was doubled; two scsi cards, to two different scsi drives (mirrored) in two different cabinets, each with two power supplies.

Jimmy, the CEO and founder used to give demos where he would take the bank manager, or other high-muckety muck and show him one of Tandem’s live data-centers. He’d point at the screens and say, “You see those messages? That’s a bunch of transactions happening on these systems right here. We’re using them for our day-to-day work, right here.”

“Let me show you how reliable these systems are…”, he’d then pull a Colt .45 from his jacket and blow a hole in the side of one of the IO cabinets. The boom would usually cause the unsuspecting bank manager to leap for the nearest exit.

Jimmy would continue, “…and as you can see, while the system noticed that little hole, it isn’t actually stopping. Everything is re-routing around the damage I just did.”

Every mistake should leave a crater

So, how did Tandem make software and hardware that ended up in most of the newpapers and banks in the world? They used a simple secret; if something goes wrong, it should leave a huge smoking crater.

Basically, it works like this. Let’s say Dan the Developer makes a mistake; when the right situation happens then something divides by zero. When the divide by zero happens, if the software tries to recover without understanding why it happened, then it the software can actually make the problems worse. In addition, it may be the case that nobody will notice the problem.

However, let’s say that instead of hiding the problem, the divide by zero causes the whole software package to stop. The user will notice this. They will complain. The developer will be notified. It will get fixed.

This is one of the easiest ways to make sure your software is bullet proof. Make it all go boom! when something unexpected happens.

Setting it up is pretty easy and the versions of ruby installed are all yours, installed into your environment.

Yay!

This is doubly useful for me, since I need to work with multiple versions of ruby (1.8.X and 1.9.X).

At about 1am this morning I half woke-up to a weird “wumph” sound. I didn’t think it was cars crashing (they make a more metallic sound) but something had happened. Then after a few seconds, I heard footsteps and a bang noise like someone slamming open a gate and then another noise, which I think was someone climbing a wooden fence.

About a minute later I heard a police siren and it continued till it was almost at our house at which point it turned off abruptly.

I wasn’t fully awake and sort of dozed half-awake/half-asleep. But my brain was processing these facts very slowly. Then I heard the distinct sound of a police radio and the noise of someone searching the back yard.

That woke me up.

I grabbed my shorts, shirt, baseball bat, and small flashlight and went to the front door. I already had plans for this sort of stuff; I wouldn’t go out the back door since it makes me too vulnerable — there are too many places are out-of-sight from up there.

There were several police cars outside, so I left my bat by the door and stepped out… and there was a motorcycle on the lawn with its lights on. Hmm…. don’t remember that being there earlier.

Apparently a pair of idiots were racing on their crotch-rockets. When an officer started after them they raced off, splitting up. The officer followed this idiot, slowing down (and loosing track of the rider) when he saw he was hitting 80.  Unfortunately for the idiot Hobart St. is too tricky for that racing and the turn took him out.

After “wumph”ing his bike, the idiot managed to get off the motorcycle and run behind my house, throwing down his helmet as he ran, and then hopped a fence.

I’m amazed he survived.  He must have been mostly upright when going between a car and a telephone poll, but obviously fell over as soon as he hit the sidewalk.  The bike’s cowling is a complete mess. I didn’t get a good look at the helmet, but I bet it’s been dinged. If he had gone slightly to the right, he would have smashed in to a telephone pole and everyone would know who he was … you know, besides dead.

So instead of getting a citation for racing and speeding, the police are hunting this guy down to put him in jail.

What an idiot.

The police were nice and double checked my back deck (I didn’t really believe he was there, but better safe than sorry). I talked to my neighbor, who came out to see what the noise was and I double checked the cars (none seemed to have damage) and then thanked the officers and went back in only to appear a few minutes later to take pictures and chat with one of my other neighbors. Very exciting.

This would be crash number four since I moved in about 22 months ago. Hobart St. has a way of catching the careless and the stupid.

Ciao!

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

He who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

- Sun Tsu, The Art of War

The Republican party is not just the party of “no”, it’s the party of “stupid”.

You can trace the “party of stupid” trend back to Ronald Regan, an Altzheimer’s patient who Dave Barry described as “napping towards glory”. But it got bad under the man who put the “duh” in W.

George W. Bush was not a smart man. That was obvious (and widely remarked upon) during the 2000 election. He had a certain animal cunning, but that’s not the same as intelligence. “The Decider” was not a thinker, he did not enjoy solving problems and seldom if ever pondered the ramifications of his actions. The entire Iraq War was condemned by the simple failure to even once consider the question “then what?” They didn’t have a bad plan, they literally had no plan.

When he couldn’t simply lash out at a problem with overwhelming force, his only other option was to hunker down and wait for it to go away, whether reading “My Pet Goat” to school children while the World Trade Center burned, leaving Bin Laden hiding in a cave through the end of his presidency, or refusing to cut short his endless vacations for Hurricane Katrina.

An old military adage is that amateurs study tactics, the experienced study strategy, and professionals study logistics. These people did not study. They waged two wars plagued by constant failures of “intelligence” in more than one sense, and kept threatening to invade more (Syria and Iran near the top of the list).

The self-styled “education president” championed “Intelligent Design” while dismissing climate change. (His legacy in education was the disastrous No Child Left Behind act, perhaps a response to the way education left him behind. Ask any teacher how slowing the entire class down to the speed of the slowest student worked out in practice.)

He was viciously anti-intellectual. He didn’t value the advice of smart people (nor did he want to be surrounded by them, choosing instead “Heck of a Job Brownie”, the “Duct Tape and Plastic Sheeting” guy. He especially distrusted science and scientists, ordering them to change or bury their conclusions when he didn’t like them.

Back in the 1970’s, the long-running BBC science fiction program “Doctor Who” contained the quote “The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. The don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. (Which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.)” Bush was very powerful, and very stupid. He put a man in charge of NASA, Michael Griffin, who not only eliminated weather monitoring programs because he (like Bush) didn’t believe in global warming and didn’t want to collect data that might contradict this belief, but who publicly admitted it.

What he did respect was wealth and power: obvious, measurable, superficial signs of success. Thus his energy policy was written by oil industry lobbyists, even as the price of gasoline neared $4/gallon. His fed chairman came from Goldman Sachs, and due to insufficient regulation and even less enforcement that Fed chariman needed to give an enormous bailout to his former employer (and selected other companies, but not to Goldman’s largest competitor which was allowed to go under) towards the end of the administration. But Bush thought corporations could do no wrong (since they were the ones who understood stuff he couldn’t be bothered to ask about), and thus everything must be deregulated and privatized from the military through the FDA, with disastrous consequences. (Anyone remember the massive pet food recall because nothing had been tested for contamination? We deployed mercenaries in Iraq, from Blackwater to Wackenhut: forget about Abu Ghiraib “naked prisoner human pyramid” stuff for a moment, is it really a good idea to outsource the functions of the US military to organizations that answer to the highest bidder? It’s like the companies that outsource all their employees to India and then are shocked when overseas competitors emerge. The scandals ran together to the point it was hard to even remember them all.)

This man was in charge of the Republican party for eight years. This attitude shaped everything. Being smart and educated held no weight, science was a matter of opinion. And it left its mark. The people in charge now are trying to cash in, just about exclusively, on the Stupid Vote.

Half the “appeal” of Sarah Palin is that she’s similarly convinced that anything she doesn’t understand can’t really be all that important. Does Joe Wilson really believe Obama was lying, or is he simply trying to appeal to the willfully uninformed and easily confused?

Lincoln was the one who pointed out you can fool some of the people all of the time, but he didn’t consider it a good thing. His party’s current leaders (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilley) have made a career out of it.

I really hope these guys go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs, and maybe the Blue Dogs can split off to become the new opposition party. Unfortunately, our system has a whole lot more inertia baked into it than in 1861, and Lincolns are hard to come by. Our winner take all voting system brings out the loonies during the primaries, and trying to fix the electoral college and such seems out of fashion again.

[original]

Anyway, I found some newer resources on the ‘net about speed reading and thought I should put them here:

• A post from Derren Brown’s blog with video
• Tim Ferriss’ blog post with instructive text

I view speed reading as a form of training for what I call the “lizard brain” — the cerebellum. This is the part of the brain that handles programmed reflexes, like video games, driving, touch-typing, etc. It takes repetition to train it, but once you’ve trained it you don’t have to “think” about the actions, the lizard brain does it for you.

The lizard brain is also the part that too many older people let get flabby which makes lots of tasks harder later in life.

Ciao!

I don’t like Pepsi, Coke, etc. They taste like chemicals to me.

The last soda I like was an orange Fanta I got in a McDonalds in Germany. It did not taste like anything I’ve gotten in the US. It was not sickly sweet and actually tasted good.

I’ve come to realize that part of the reason for this is high fructose corn syrup, but that isn’t all of it. I think the sodas in America are just horrible.

And things like this video from pretty much prove that the big US sodas are crap.

Does anyone know of a store in Pittsburgh like Soda Pop Stop? Wandering around the store would be more informative (and fun) than ordering online, I think.

Ciao!

Via Dvorak Uncensored

Me too.

So I threw together a script to grab the latest nightly builds.

This is not the same as the Google Chrome Developer Release.

This is the open source code that will make it’s way into Google Chrome 4, some day.  It’s very beta, you have been warned.

#!/bin/bash

set -eu

curl="/usr/bin/curl"
unzip="/usr/bin/unzip"
rsync="/usr/bin/rsync"
rm="/bin/rm"
mkdir="/bin/mkdir"

app=`basename $0`
tdir="${TMPDIR}/tmp.${app}.$$"

"${mkdir}" -p "${tdir}"
cd "${tdir}"

baseurl=http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac
echo "Fetching latest version..."
latest=`"${curl}" -q -s ${baseurl}/LATEST`

#echo "Fetching changelog..."
#"${curl}" -q "${baseurl}/${latest}/changelog.xml"

echo "Downloading to ${tdir}..."
"${curl}" -q -Ochrome-mac.zip "${baseurl}/${latest}/chrome-mac.zip"

echo "Extracting..."
"${unzip}" -q chrome-mac.zip

echo "Installing..."
"${rsync}" -a --delete-after "${tdir}"/chrome-mac/Chromium.app/ /Applications/Chromium.app/
echo "${latest}" > /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/version

echo "Cleaning up..."
"${rm}" -rf "${tdir}"

# EOF

The special effects, etc. are flawless. So much so that you forget they are even there as you become immersed in the story.

But the story is really the best and main part.

I heartily recommend you go see it. Soon. Before everyone on the internet blabs about it.

Ciao!

A little visitor

I opened the door this morning and found Mr. Cicada hanging out on the screen door. He was very patient and waited for me to get my camera out and let me take several photos.

Getting the flash right was a pain, but I had a white handkerchief in my pocket that I eventually got folded right so that he wasn’t all washed out by the flash.

I used to see these suckers all the time when I grew up in Deleware. But I haven’t seen many here in Pittsburgh. Occasionally I find the shells, though.

More images at flickr.

Ciao!

And it’s some good music.

All at the same time!

There are more videos available from the World Science Festival 2009, as well.

[via Derrin Brown and Boing Boing]

Apparently, Firefox 3.5 will suck in the Safari plugins and try to use them.  This includes the Gears for Safari plugin which breaks sites with gears support. :-/

You can tell if you have a problem by going to http://gears.google.com/ and seeing if there is a big blue box on the right-hand side.  It should say something like: “Download Gears” or “Gears is installed”.

If you don’t see anything on the right-hand side then you need this fix:

1. In the menu bar, click on Tools
2. Select Add-ons
3. Click on the Plugins tab
4. Disable the plugin called “Gears”. It should have a subtitle of “Gears for Safari”.

You should now be able to go to http://gears.google.com/ and see the blue box with an install link.

Ciao!

Emma, 8 years old, apparently wrote this song and performs it wonderfully.

From her guitar teacher, Rob:

Emma announced during a guitar lesson one day that she felt like writing a song. I started playing some chords, and this is what she came up with. Amazing. The Jam’s a chance for Heartwood Guitar Instruction students to showcase their talents. Enjoy!

Lyrics (thanks to Rob for filling in “train”):

Snow Day

Schools Out
It's a snow day today and I want to have some fun
I want to build a snow man and go sledding
And after that we'll have hot chocolate

Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever

Snow Man!

I built two balls and I grab some coal for the eyes
And got a hat with a train on the front
It was hard to make a smile so I made him smoking

Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever

Sledding!

The sled was purple and it fit three people
We went down over two bumps
The first one was pretty sturdy
And the second one we all fell off

Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever

Hot Chocolate!

I grabbed some Nesquick and a Swiss Milk packet, Hershey syrup also
But the most import of all is
ONE CUP OF MILK!

Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever
Snow day
The best day ever

[via Boing Boing]

It was AWESOME!!!

I played hooky from work to travel to New York. My brother scored the tickets and my Dad paid. How could I say no?

The concert was great. He did a bunch of his songs, a couple from wings, a bunch of Beatles songs and one John Lennon song (Give Peace a Chance with lots of audience participation).

His part of the concert was two and a half hours long.

I cannot tell you how awesome it was. I loved it. I’m still on a high from it five days later.

We were on the field it self, not in the A section (alas) but still close enough to make out the band on stage.

I screamed, shouted, clapped and stomped with the rest and the whole thing was great. Sir McCartney gives awesome concerts.

Sorry for over using the word “awesome” but … it was!

I’ll add images on Flickr later, between my Dad, brother and myself we had a lot of photos to go through.

I had to run out and reserve my copies of The Beatles Mono Box Set, The Beatles Stereo Box Set, and  The Beatles Rockband game.

BTW: To skip work, I said I was having my spleen out…. what does the spleen do anyway?

DropBox stores files in the “cloud”, which isn’t all that new.

However, their software that pushes and pulls files automatically behind the scenes is the really cool part.

I’ve been using it in OS X and Linux and both systems are pretty similar: You have a folder called Dropbox. Anything you drop in it automatically is copied to their servers and then to your other systems.

So I can drop something in Dropbox on my laptop and it is quickly becomes available on my desktop.

It comes with 2 gigs free but you can pay to upgrade to 50 gigs or 100 gigs. Not unreasonable, but I only need the internet version of a USB stick.

Ciao!

PS: All the links I provided are referrals.  If you use that then we both get free extra space.

They have some good stuff there: Slayers, Techi Muyo – Ryo Ohki, and Pani Poni Dash.

Ciao!