Years ago I read "The Forty Knot Sailboat". The author described a large sailboat equipped with hydrofoils. These underwater wings would lift the entire boat out of the water, vastly reducing drag and enabling ice boat like speeds. Ice boats can do 100 miles an hour because the friction of the runners is zip, and doesn't rise with speed. Whereas the friction and wave drag on a hull in the water is high, and goes up by the square of the speed. But once a boat is up on hydrofoils, planing, friction drag drops off, form drag goes away and fantastic speeds become possible. The author foresaw sailing yachts fast enough to outrun bad weather. It all seemed like science fiction at the time. In those days sailboats were made of wood, lines were manila fiber, dacron sails were just coming in.
Fast forward to the 21st century, 2013. The America's cup, currently in possession of the Americans (again) is facing a challenge from New Zealand. Larry Ellison of Oracle is defending the cup in San Francisco bay. The cup defender is a huge catamaran, all carbon fiber, 72 feet long and carrying a 131 foot mast (that's better than twelve stories tall). It's got hydrofoils, and with the right wind, it's been clocked at 55 miles per hour (48 knots) . That's freeway speed, and it's done under sail.
Trouble is, hot as the Oracle boat was, the Kiwis kept beating it. This year it takes winning nine races, match races, just two boats. The Kiwis had won eight straight and one more win would give them the cup. Up to this point, the Oracle crew had been sailing in accordance with computer simulations. Oracle being a software house, I dare say every single programmer in the company was working on America's Cup programs. And, all the software had favored a strategy of pointing. This is one strategy for going to windward. You point the boat up into the wind as high as she will go, until the sail begins to luff (flap). This is the closest to a straight line course, and the boat gets to the windward mark by covering the shortest distance on the water.
The other strategy is footing. You bear off a touch and get the sails really full of wind. You go faster thru the water, but you have to cover more distance since you aren't going as directly to the windward mark. For the crucial ninth race, the Oracle team decided upon footing instead of the pointing recommended by all the computers. All, wonder of wonders, the extra speed footing gives was enough to get the boat up on foils, vastly increasing its speed. The Oracle team came from behind, won the next nine races and kept the America's Cup in America.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Kerry tours the Sunday TV news
I saw Kerry on Meet the Press and later this morning on Face The Nation. He might have done some other shows too. The administration is using TV appearances to show concern for the Ukraine situation. Kerry clearly disapproves of Putin invading Ukraine, but other than outrage, he didn't speak of doing anything about it. Probably 'cause Obama doesn't want to do anything, and we haven't been able to talk the Europeans into backing up any economic sanctions against the Russians. The Europeans are afraid to say "boo", lest the Russians turn off their gas and let them all freeze in the dark.
Kiss your Windows XP goodby
That's what Microsoft is saying. Support for XP goes away next month, April 14. This probably isn't the end of the world. In the 14 years XP has been in service you would think that they had patched most, perhaps even all, of the serious security holes. Certainly I haven't been receiving many patches in the last few months.
Microsoft officially recommends upgrade to the latest version, Windows 8. They do admit that Windows 8 is a bigger ramhog and runs slower and to compensate for fatter slower Windows 8, Microsoft suggests you buy a new computer, with incredible amounts of RAM and a 1 gigahertz processor. As far as I know, Windows 8 doesn't offer anything that XP doesn't have, except touch screen support, which is cool if you have a touch screen, but few XP machines do.
I plan to keep running my trusty 9 year old Compaq tower machine. With XP it's faster than my children's laptops running Win 7 and 8. It surfs the web, runs all my CAD programs, supports Microsoft C and Quickbasic. The children sneer at it, 'cause it won't run their games fast enough, but I'm not a gamer so I don't care.
XP is fairly reliable. It's been a long time since I had a blue screen of death. I still have programs lock up, but XP is still alive and can shut the offending program down.
Microsoft officially recommends upgrade to the latest version, Windows 8. They do admit that Windows 8 is a bigger ramhog and runs slower and to compensate for fatter slower Windows 8, Microsoft suggests you buy a new computer, with incredible amounts of RAM and a 1 gigahertz processor. As far as I know, Windows 8 doesn't offer anything that XP doesn't have, except touch screen support, which is cool if you have a touch screen, but few XP machines do.
I plan to keep running my trusty 9 year old Compaq tower machine. With XP it's faster than my children's laptops running Win 7 and 8. It surfs the web, runs all my CAD programs, supports Microsoft C and Quickbasic. The children sneer at it, 'cause it won't run their games fast enough, but I'm not a gamer so I don't care.
XP is fairly reliable. It's been a long time since I had a blue screen of death. I still have programs lock up, but XP is still alive and can shut the offending program down.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Targeting Target
Target Stores took a tremendous hit when hackers broke into company computers and stole the identities and credit card numbers of zillions of customers. Certainly I will think twice before shopping at Target.
Little has been released about how they did it. But it appears the bad guys infected the "point of sale" equipment (jargon for cash register). The malware skimmed off the credit card info right at the scanner, before it was encrypted.
Question: How do you infect a cash register with malware? Needless to say just about everything electronic has a microprocessor inside these days. They work off programs stored in memory. Understand that computer memory, random access memory (RAM) is volatile. When the power goes off, it forgets everything. An infection cannot survive living in RAM. It must work its way into non-volatile storage. In the good old days, devices like cash registers kept their programs in Programmable Read Only Memory, PROMS for short. PROMS were cheap and very dependable and best of all, they could not be written in circuit. Only special test equipment, PROM programmers, could write into PROMS. The only way to change programs burned into PROM was for a tech to open the device casework, remove the old PROM and insert a new PROM. You ain't going to pull off that stunt over the Internet. I suppose the bad guys could have infiltrated Target after closing hours (does Target ever close?) and rework all the cash registers. Does not sound likely to me.
And, technology moves on. They invented the Electrically Eraseable PROM, EEPROM which can be reprogrammed in circuit. Production loved them. They used to buy blank PROMS, keep them in the stockroom, program batches of them, get the programmed ones stuffed into boards as opposed to blank ones. Blank PROMs look just like programmed PROMS after all. And make sure the right version of the program is in the PROM. With EEPROMs all these possibilities of error go away. Just stuff the board and solder it, then program the EEPROM in circuit. And with EEPROMS we now have the possibility of changing the program in the cash register without laying a hand on it. Assuming the cash register make was stupid enough to allow reprogramming of his product in the field. There are plenty of ways to disable the programming capability before you ship the product.
Presumable the bad guys infected Target's central computers, the ones in finance and the stockroom that talk to the cash registers and total up dollar volume of sales and keep track of inventory so they can reorder product as it sells out. And somehow the central computers infected the cash registers, by sending new programming out over the wire to the checkout counters. Had Target been more security minded they would not have allowed the central computers to talk to the cash registers. Just listening is enough to make the system work.
I assume the Target people are hard at work securing things. I haven't heard that they had succeeded yet.
Little has been released about how they did it. But it appears the bad guys infected the "point of sale" equipment (jargon for cash register). The malware skimmed off the credit card info right at the scanner, before it was encrypted.
Question: How do you infect a cash register with malware? Needless to say just about everything electronic has a microprocessor inside these days. They work off programs stored in memory. Understand that computer memory, random access memory (RAM) is volatile. When the power goes off, it forgets everything. An infection cannot survive living in RAM. It must work its way into non-volatile storage. In the good old days, devices like cash registers kept their programs in Programmable Read Only Memory, PROMS for short. PROMS were cheap and very dependable and best of all, they could not be written in circuit. Only special test equipment, PROM programmers, could write into PROMS. The only way to change programs burned into PROM was for a tech to open the device casework, remove the old PROM and insert a new PROM. You ain't going to pull off that stunt over the Internet. I suppose the bad guys could have infiltrated Target after closing hours (does Target ever close?) and rework all the cash registers. Does not sound likely to me.
And, technology moves on. They invented the Electrically Eraseable PROM, EEPROM which can be reprogrammed in circuit. Production loved them. They used to buy blank PROMS, keep them in the stockroom, program batches of them, get the programmed ones stuffed into boards as opposed to blank ones. Blank PROMs look just like programmed PROMS after all. And make sure the right version of the program is in the PROM. With EEPROMs all these possibilities of error go away. Just stuff the board and solder it, then program the EEPROM in circuit. And with EEPROMS we now have the possibility of changing the program in the cash register without laying a hand on it. Assuming the cash register make was stupid enough to allow reprogramming of his product in the field. There are plenty of ways to disable the programming capability before you ship the product.
Presumable the bad guys infected Target's central computers, the ones in finance and the stockroom that talk to the cash registers and total up dollar volume of sales and keep track of inventory so they can reorder product as it sells out. And somehow the central computers infected the cash registers, by sending new programming out over the wire to the checkout counters. Had Target been more security minded they would not have allowed the central computers to talk to the cash registers. Just listening is enough to make the system work.
I assume the Target people are hard at work securing things. I haven't heard that they had succeeded yet.
Friday, February 28, 2014
The Russians are coming
To Ukraine it looks like. Ukraine in undergoing a revolution/civil war. The Russians are mobilizing their army. They call it "exercises" but it's mobilization, the troops are out in the field moving around, and it only takes a telephone call to send them over the border into Ukraine. The Russians look upon Ukraine as historically Russian territory. If it weren't for the strong and lasting reaction to a Ukraine Anschluss in Europe and America, they would have done it by now. Putin surely thinks Ukraine will fall into his lap, without international repercussions if he just plays a waiting game. So the troops stay in Russia for the time being. But that could change anytime. The Ukrainians have gotta be really worried, or perhaps scared to death, with the Russian army mobilized on their border.
Do we really need PreK?
Pre Kindergarten education for four year olds. Obama and DeBlasio have been plumping for it, calling for new taxes to pay for it. Question: Does PreK education to any good? Or are the kids just too young to get anything out of it? Head Start, the federal preK program started by JFK, doesn't seem to do much good. Studies show that any difference between Head Start kids and other kids is pretty much gone by third grade. Parents do find that PreK solves the daycare problem nicely, but that's about it.
Way back when, I have wonderful memories of playing out of doors with the Center St gang when I was 4 and 5. Having to start school when I was 6 was a downer. Playing with the gang beat sitting at a desk any day. Do we have to coop kids up in school so young?
Way back when, I have wonderful memories of playing out of doors with the Center St gang when I was 4 and 5. Having to start school when I was 6 was a downer. Playing with the gang beat sitting at a desk any day. Do we have to coop kids up in school so young?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Climate Change. What can't it do?
Cold and snowy winters, climate change. Drought in the US southwest, more climate change. Rain and flooding in Britain, climate change. Hot and sticky summers , climate change, Arctic ice cap melting out, climate change. Arctic ice cap freezing over, climate change.
Climate change is like bacon, it's good with everything. They used to call it Global Warming, except the Goddard Institute of Space Studies data shows world temps stopped rising about 1990 or 1991. So they changed over to calling it climate change. No matter what happens it's change. No hope, just evil change.
Call every bit of bad weather around the world climate change and of course it's evil and needs to be fought.
Oh yes, and they can tax the heat, tax the electricity, subsidize battery powered cars, raise the price of gasoline, demand real cars get 50 mpg, close down electric power plants, and attempt to force us back to a Hiawatha life style.
Climate change is like bacon, it's good with everything. They used to call it Global Warming, except the Goddard Institute of Space Studies data shows world temps stopped rising about 1990 or 1991. So they changed over to calling it climate change. No matter what happens it's change. No hope, just evil change.
Call every bit of bad weather around the world climate change and of course it's evil and needs to be fought.
Oh yes, and they can tax the heat, tax the electricity, subsidize battery powered cars, raise the price of gasoline, demand real cars get 50 mpg, close down electric power plants, and attempt to force us back to a Hiawatha life style.
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