Happy New Year!

Now that it’s 2009 (at least in some locales) I can safely say Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone has a safe night and a prosperous year

Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays to you all. I’m doing great and I hope you are too

Be important to your friends

I was reluctant to post about this because it is depressing, but it is also very important. You should strive to be important to your friends, to be remembered favorably.

It was nine years ago today that my mother called to tell me about a bus crash in Colorado. I was 17 and shrugged off the bus crash; “who cares?” I thought. An hour later I heard a knock on the door. I went downstairs, opened the door, and found three of my friends hanging their heads. As they raised their chins to look at me I noticed puffy eyes. One quietly said, “He’s dead. Chris is dead.” I froze in an overwhelming rush or emotions and quickly started bawling. We all comforted one another, and after a minute I calmed down enough to thank them for telling me. We then drove to a mutual friend’s house and suffered together.

Chris Scarberry, one of my best friends, had died in a terrible bus accident that killed three people. All this just days before Christmas after a wonderful ski trip. Needless to say, I did not have a merry Christmas. The young punk in me was humbled. The flippant “who cares?” came back to bite me. I cared. I cared a lot. I was depressed for months. I struggled to find meaning. I still do. It was terrible and unfair.

Mortality hit me and I realized I had to make life count. I also saw what it meant to be important to your friends. Relationships make life worth living. Chris was a great person and a great friend; he’s been very influential in my life. The memory of Chris lives on in me as I follow the path he and I were on together.

Are you the kind of friend that someone would write about nine years later?

My Blog is INTP

Recently I came across a link to Type Analyzer, a website that will analyze the text of a webpage and tell you what Myers-Briggs category it falls into. After analyzing my blog, Type Analyzer concluded that I was INTP. Recently, a personal inventory yielded ENTP, so I guess Type Analyzer works pretty well. If you don’t remember, E stands for extrovert and I for introvert. The constants are N (intuitive), T (thinker), and P (perceiver). Here’s their report verbatim:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Type Analyzer Output

What personality type are you? What about your website?

Bailout Redux

This week I found an old friend, Dave Hoyt, on facebook. Dave was a great inspiration to my young mind; he was smart, well-read, intellectual, and a great debater. It’s been ~8 years since we last hung out and I’m proud to say we’d still get along.

With introductions aside I’d like to direct you to Dave’s premier piece of journalism: Bailout Redux in The Cypress Times. The article is nicely written; it covers a range of topics around the recent economic woes, the disconnect between the citizenry and the rulers, and the duty of voters–all in characteristically catchy prose. I encourage you to check it out. Here’s a taste: “In the current economy, optimism may be the commodity most demanded and least supplied. Peddlers in optimism should do well.”

Things that make you go “hmm…”

The cost of owning a car is made up of insurance plus fuel plus maintenance plus registration and inspection. The fixed costs alone make a car cost over $1 a day!

Hmm…

This is something that I realized after we became a two-car household. Public transportation costs about the same if you buy single fares. However, some organizations work out deals for their constituents to ride free (UT for example). Also, anyone can buy a bus pass that reduces the costs significantly.

Paying over $1 a day for something I don’t use is silly, but I’m not ready to give up the other car.

Tech Star: Seth Goldstein

Technologists affect the world tremendously, but America does not value the contribution nearly as much as they do pop stars and athletes. We must change this! If technologists were more prominent, students would have a wider range of role models and education would be taken more seriously.

In an effort to give worthwhile technologists the spotlight, I’d like to share one of my favorite technology researchers: Seth Goldstein, professor at CMU. Beyond having an awesome first name, Dr. Goldstein is working on world-changing, futuristic research: Claytronics. Claytronics is a form of programmable matter. composed of claytronics atoms, catoms. Catoms are tiny, autonomous sensors that, together, create emergent behavior. The end goal of Claytronics is to allow pario–a new media that recreates three-dimensional data (just as a radio recreates sound and TV recreates video).

Claytronics is the talk of the town, getting featured on the CMU site, Make Magazine, Robots.net, and WorldChanging.com. CNN boldly claimed that Claytronics is the true next-generation of robotics. These articles are fairly shallow, so I encourage you to read scholarly articles about Claytronics.

Still confused? Here’s a video of a meeting that uses Claytronics to view and dynamically alter a 3D model in real-time.

They are not there yet. Recent progress looks more like this:

Three catoms are aligning themselves. Currently, manufacturing technologies do not exist to create nanobots. Goldstein sees three distinct periods from now until Claytronics realization: macro, micro, and nano. The macrobots, as seen in the above video, are large and locomote using magnets. Because of their weight and relatively weak attractive forces (magnetic), the catoms can only move in two dimensions. However, as the catoms shrink they will reduce their weight sharply and be able to use other forces to move. Nanobots may work more like this:

The work is on-going. The vision is clear and we are progressing nicely. Claytronics provides an excellent motivating application example for research into manufacturing, communications, robotics, AI, and more. I look forward to a world where pario is a reality. Thanks to a technology star, Seth Goldstein, we will know that world!

Three interesting, perhaps out-of-date, links

A few interesting links I’ve been hording:

• How to protect yourself if your broker goes belly up
• Who pays for Wall Street’s $700B bailout?
• Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and Elitism

Leave it better than you found it

I enjoy simple tasks that have big rewards–work smarter, not harder. For example, smile more

Another way to be a good person and get noticed (without dramatically altering your way of life) is to leave situations equal to or better than when you found them. Public restrooms would be so much more pleasant if people left them in at least the same state as when they entered. Lift the seat when appropriate; turn off the water–even if you did not turn it on; compact the trash a little with your paper towel; pick up that piece of trash when you’re on the way to the dumpster.

The adage holds for other situations, not just throwing away trash. Looking at someone’s code? Add comments when you figure out the algorithm. If someone asks you for help, take a moment to provide a thorough answer or suggestions on where to find the information. Reply to forums if you stumble upon an unanswered question.

Leaving a situation better than you found it is easy, right, and worthwhile. Take the extra moment and help make the world a better place!

*EDIT* 1) Took “l” out of “waterl” in second paragraph. Thanks Mike! 2) Corrected “wortwhile” in the paragraph above. Thanks Eddie!

Do we need AV software?

Do we need AV software? It is naive to think that safe practices will protect you–there are simply too many ways to get into a system. You need something to protect your computer, and good AV software won’t hurt.

I was reading a lifehacker article asking readers about antivirus (AV) software. The range of knowledge conveyed in the comments is ridiculous. Some users claimed they never had a virus. There are known botnets with over a million machines. I doubt that all million machines are owned by a single individual, which means there are multiple users who are either willingly allowing someone to use their machine, or the multiple users are unaware of the heist. With the sophistication of modern viruses (rootkits, automatic replication, dynamic signature changing, etc), it is silly to claim you would even know if you had a virus.

A couple users claim that there had never been a virus for Linux. I don’t even know where to start on that one. Definitely false. Any script kiddie could gain access to a Linux system that had not been hardened. There are a number of measures a system administrator can take to mitigate threats on Linux, but not every Linux user is a sys admin. Services like ssh being on by default increase the risks greatly. The power of a Linux command line and access to powerful development tools make subsequent attacks easier to launch.

People seem to define virus strangely. Some viruses like vundo trigger a lot of pop-ups, but won’t necessarily crater your system. Other viruses that do not brick your machine are passively collecting information, waiting for further instructions, or launching attacks. You don’t even have to open a file to be at risk. You don’t even have to be online; infected USB keys (and other input devices) can infect a computer that isn’t online.

It’s not just dumb users either. Viruses come from your friends and people you trust. Elaborate social networking hoaxes are being performed everyday, and everyday they get more convincing. Malware distributors have some of the most professional websites online. Their UI and interface design mimic trusted providers so a quick glance will not immediately reveal a problem. You have to realize and appreciate the ingenuity of the nefarious Internet warriors–they’re smart, creative, and talented.

Comparisons have shown that no one piece of antivirus software will catch all viruses, so your best bet is to

1) be safe:

• Don’t open links in emails. Type the URL into the address bar on your own.
• Be mindful of what your friends are sending you. Would Suzy really send you a link to get rich quick?
• Avoid the worst of the web (pornography, gambling, warez)

and 2) run a few different tools:

• AVG (or avast!) – Antivirus
• PeerGuardian 2 – IP Blocker
• Ad-Aware – Antispyware

So do we need AV software? Yes. You can never be totally safe, but you can mitigate your risks. Use common sense, a few tools, and perform frequent backups. Good luck!