Guardian of the Non Sequitur

AT&T U-verse modems all come pre-installed with default names (2WIRE123) and default passwords (10 digits).  That is boring, and not easy to remember.  Picking your router from all your sheep neighbors can be difficult if your urban density is high, and the 10 digits are not the ones you need.

If you connect your computer to the modem directly with an ethernet cable, you can manipulate these things.  There is a default IP address for ALL routers.  If they’ve politely implemented it, you can access it at http://192.168.1.254/ – though there are other addresses used by different manufacturers.  The U-verse modems have a quite nice interface to manipulate the settings.

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I was listening to the Slate Magazine Political Gabfest: The Never Alone edition as I do every week.  Their third topic (30:00) was the affirmative action case brought by Abigail Fisher against The University of Texas and race-based admissions policies being accepted by the Supreme Court.

At some point in to it (38:00) David Plotz supports the policy of automatic admission to the university by the top 10% of graduating high school students (in the state) as a nice alternative mechanism to obtaining diversity.  The truth of the matter is the 10% isn’t as automatic as it was in the 80s, and the 10% policy has been around for a long time – though I’m not sure if it predates affirmative action laws.

“The 10% idea, taking the top 10% of a class, is a really appealing one. … I presume that at Texas A&M, which is sort of second tier, maybe it’s the top 20% or something. …”

A a child of two UT alumni, and the 4th generation graduate of the UT, I laughed heartily at that one.  It’s been a few decades since I’ve had to deal with college admissions, but I recall their policies being relatively the same (I was accepted by both).  I can’t  wait to hear if John’s inbox filled up with letters from Aggies.

Then Plotz turns around and calls the top 10% of the class “ten percenters” which is generally a term for people who don’t put in more than 10% effort.  And it of course make Frank Black‘s voice stream through my brain singing about a slacker soda jerk: Continue reading

In the years between Apple and Apple, Steve Jobs created a company that created iOS.

That’s a gross summary.

Steve Jobs died last year. Most obituaries mentioned his hiatus company. Yet you still didn’t know what it was in the title of this post.  NeXT, the company, was founded in 1988.  I bought one (#16469) of their initial computers in 1990. I finally got a job that was using it in 1992. I loved it.

The Unix-underneath, Objective-C-on-top operating system with forward technologies and rich development tool sets was a wonder to work on, and a joy in many business custom development environments I found myself in the following years: WilTel (The Woodlands), Pan Canadian Petroleum (Calgary), Fannie Mae (Washington).

NeXTSTEP morphed into OpenStep, and the huge issue of cross-platform porting was mastered by NeXT.  Soon Apple hired Jobs back, and with him the OS.  I was personally injured when they skinned it and put on a Macintosh body suit, but it was the right business decision.

They convinced all the Macintosh “operating system” users (i’m a Unix/real OS bigot) to convert over to the Unix-OS, OpenStep became OS X.  I missed my pegged dock. I was annoyed by the constant main menu.  I wanted to tear off menus. But I could feel the soul of the Old Lady underneath.

Then they basically ported the operating system they run on 15 pound towers, whirring with fans to run on a tiny touch screen you could use as a phone.  It’s still mostly there. Most of it’s been rewritten more than once. (That’s what NeXT/Apple does so well!)

When the iPhone SDK was released I started working with it.  The user interface toolkit was reimplemented from scratch. Many of the issues we’d fed back to NeXT developers in the early 90s were reflected in design and implementation changes. (There were, of course, new issues.  That’s what happens with software.)

I have to touch many parts of technology. Most of them are less elegant than iOS. But you’ve got to do it.

I credit the elegance of design and implementation of NeXTSTEP with the fact that it is basically running on your phone. Welcome to my favorite operating system of the 90s.

I’ll start this post with an aside: some may even consider Robin Hood to be a terrorist.  Have there been any retellings of Robin Hood from that perspective?  Please point me to any such efforts.

Alexis Madrigal (@alexismadrigal) asks in The Atlantic. “Who Do You Trust Less: The NSA or Anonymous?” prompted by the vague accusation by the director of the NSA that Anonymous would soon have the capability “to bring about a limited power outage through a cyberattack.”

He didn’t say that they had the intent, just that they’d soon have the knowledge.  This is to accuse the general public of having the knowledge of how to make a fertilizer bomb, rent a truck, and park it next to a federal building.  If they soon have this ability, it’s a failure on our security systems, not of them for obtaining knowledge.

To not be subtle about it, I am against any part of our government demonizing Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) as a terrorist group.  I personally think what they (mostly) do is somewhere between digital graffiti and non-violent protest, sometimes venturing into whistle-blowing crusader territory.  Their biggest fault I would describe as political or social altruism.

I agree with alexis that labeling them as stateless is an attempt to paint them with the broad brush the NSA and other US governmental bodies use to demonize al Qaeda.

To clarify, i don’t mind the government keeping tabs on them (legally), tracking their activity or membership (if/where possible), or prosecuting them for breaking the law (civil disobedience should expect prosecution – if we need to change the law, that’s another issue).

Farming fear is a good way to steer policy in the direction you want (and how we got into the Iraq War).  I want those officials who are my direct employees, those whose ballot I will touch, to please use several grains of salt when weighing opinions from our “intelligence” community.  Don’t be bullied to their opinion because you’re not computer technology savvy, or “Cyber” is a scary word, or “stateless” slowly taints your view on a group.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Pres. Barack Obama, I’m talking to you.  We have much bigger fish to fry.  Sowing peace and diplomacy takes more effort than demonizing and warmongering.  (As your constituent, and a Computer Scientist, i want you to now my opinion.)

I will end there and briefly echo Alexis conclusion: “One doesn’t have to support Anonymous’ methods, goals, or aesthetics to worry about the US response to them in the intelligence community.”

[Note: sent to each of the elected officials mentioned above - find yours (in Texas) with Who Represents Me?]

Wired Magazine had a very interesting article about the current activity in driving automation.  Written by Tom Vanderbilt, it reviews the large leaps that have been made in the field in the past decade.  It’s amazing that we really are so close, so much that it will be a legislative problem over the coming decade to catch up with the state of the technology.

On a week that my mother bought what she expects to be the last car she owns, not expecting to be allowed to drive (by me) after she’s 80, it looks like she might be able to buy a car that (mostly if not entirely) drives for her by that time.

Reading over the article, which is quite long, thorough, and awesome, I had several thoughts on the future of the technology and implications.

Stop n’ Go Traffic

I was reminded this week of an awesome example of the emergent nature of stop n’ go traffic in a non-bottleneck/accident environment.  A video of a circle of cars that begin equal spaced but because the nature of humans begins to undulate.

One would hope that the automation of driving would put an end to the annoying of such.  Prediction 1: I think it won’t (without legislative force or technical cooperation).  I suspect that the varying granulation of the differing softwares among cars, and also likely setting of comfortable follow distances will cause the same emergent fluctuation of speeds.  The best way to counter this, in my opinion, would be to recognize a stop n’ go situation and limit the allowed acceleration after a slow down.  Just a critical mass of cars taking that approach could cause the behavior to not manifest. Continue reading

I’ve been doing some genealogy work lately and came upon the details of the death of my great grandfather.  I’d heard he’d been “stabbed” or “shot”, and sometimes it was “in a bar fight” and sometimes it was “about a woman” and that my grandfather was a teenager at the time and quit school to support the family.  Well, about half of that is true.  It was a few weeks after (grandfather) Jesse’s 16th birthday – not sure about the quitting school detail.

I was quite interested at the details they included in the articles, many that would not be today.  And the fact that justice seemed swift back then – though I don’t have an article about the trial.

Five word summary to story: Stabbed in Heart with Icepick.  And if that hooked you in enough, here are the articles I found.

Dallas Morning News - 15 Aug 1923

MAN STABBED TO DEATH WITH PICK

E. L. Noble Charged with Murder Following Death of Stanley Label

Stabley C. LeBel, 44 years old, 1616 McCoy street, a salesman, was fatally injured when he was stabbed in the heart with an ice pick during an affray at 9:30 o’clock Tuesday morning at Main and Jefferson streets, near the Dallas County courthouse. Dr. W. R. McAdams of the Emergency Hospital, who was called to the scene, found LeBel dead when he arrived. Continue reading