Oracle refenrce one of my tests...
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/497230
On-chip Cryptographic Acceleration – New crypto units support over a dozen industry standard ciphers, enabling security conscious organizations in industries including telecommunications, healthcare, financial services and the public sector to keep their data safe with up to 44 percent faster secure queries than the latest generation of x86 systems when encrypted with Oracle's Advanced Security Products(4), 3x faster Oracle Solaris ZFS file system encryption than the latest generation of x86 systems(5), and 4x faster single-thread OpenSSL security than IBM POWER7(6).
Footnotes:
(6)Comparison is based on internal testing of AES-256-CBC encryption at 8K using OpenSSL against published test results for IBM: http://xmlisnotaprotocol.blogspot.com/2010/10/openssl-098-benchmark-on-power7-35ghz.html.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Compromising emissions!
Been reading about various side channel attacks, I think my skills (lateral thinking, electronics, 'puters, physics and math) could lend themselves well to this ...where do I sign up!
basically is eavesdropping information leaked via power,RF/EMI,sound,light or other means to gain information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_analysis
http://youtu.be/4L8rnYhnLt8
(RF/EMI demo)
http://syhw.posterous.com/two-amusing-side-channel-attacks
(USB port power and sound)
http://cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/
(PoC for picking up sound from mobo capacitors to break RSA )
http://digitallounge.gatech.edu/digitallife/index.html?nid=71506
(Keyboard taps)
http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/keyboard/
(keyboard EMI)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/08/researchers-cra/
(car keys...brute forcing the private key from all challenge/responses)
http://www.pop.is/1eyo
(a physical side channel aka safe cracking)
Padding oracle attacks
http://www.usenix.org/event/woot10/tech/full_papers/Rizzo.pdf
(decrypt ciphertext without knowing the key eg to bypass CAPTCHA )
http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/70/47/90/PDF/RR-7944.pdf
( Efficient Padding Oracle Attacks on Cryptographic Hardware )
RSA FOB tokens
http://www.geekosystem.com/broken-tokens/
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/11/encryption-for-transit-cards-h.html
(Crack 3DES smart cards with an RFID reader and an oscilloscope, via power analysis of the chip in the card while de/encrypting)
http://www.techwarelabs.com/rfid-hacking-is-it-a-threat
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ieee02-optical.pdf
(Read displays at a distance)
http://applied-math.org/acm_optical_tempest.pdf
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=545186.545189
(Flashing lights on your network kit may be a spanned port!)
TEMPEST backronyms from wikipedia
Tiny ElectroMagnetic Particles Emitting Secret Things
Transmitted Electro-Magnetic Pulse / Energy Standards & Testing
Telecommunications ElectroMagnetic Protection, Equipment, Standards & Techniques
Transient ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation STandard
Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions
basically is eavesdropping information leaked via power,RF/EMI,sound,light or other means to gain information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_analysis
http://youtu.be/4L8rnYhnLt8
(RF/EMI demo)
http://syhw.posterous.com/two-amusing-side-channel-attacks
(USB port power and sound)
http://cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/
(PoC for picking up sound from mobo capacitors to break RSA )
http://digitallounge.gatech.edu/digitallife/index.html?nid=71506
(Keyboard taps)
http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/keyboard/
(keyboard EMI)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/08/researchers-cra/
(car keys...brute forcing the private key from all challenge/responses)
http://www.pop.is/1eyo
(a physical side channel aka safe cracking)
Padding oracle attacks
http://www.usenix.org/event/woot10/tech/full_papers/Rizzo.pdf
(decrypt ciphertext without knowing the key eg to bypass CAPTCHA )
http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/70/47/90/PDF/RR-7944.pdf
( Efficient Padding Oracle Attacks on Cryptographic Hardware )
RSA FOB tokens
http://www.geekosystem.com/broken-tokens/
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/11/encryption-for-transit-cards-h.html
(Crack 3DES smart cards with an RFID reader and an oscilloscope, via power analysis of the chip in the card while de/encrypting)
http://www.techwarelabs.com/rfid-hacking-is-it-a-threat
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ieee02-optical.pdf
(Read displays at a distance)
http://applied-math.org/acm_optical_tempest.pdf
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=545186.545189
(Flashing lights on your network kit may be a spanned port!)
TEMPEST backronyms from wikipedia
Tiny ElectroMagnetic Particles Emitting Secret Things
Transmitted Electro-Magnetic Pulse / Energy Standards & Testing
Telecommunications ElectroMagnetic Protection, Equipment, Standards & Techniques
Transient ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation STandard
Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Russian roulette
#cat clint-eastwood.sh
while :
do
echo "are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?"
read a ; [[ "$a" = "yes" ]] && kill -9 $(echo $RANDOM)
done
#./clint-eastwood.sh
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
n
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 8051: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 18234: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (y/N)?
yes
kill: 16882: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 13023: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
n
#yes|./clint-eastwood.sh
while :
do
echo "are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?"
read a ; [[ "$a" = "yes" ]] && kill -9 $(echo $RANDOM)
done
#./clint-eastwood.sh
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
n
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 8051: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 18234: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (y/N)?
yes
kill: 16882: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
yes
kill: 13023: 0403-003 The specified process does not exist.
are you feeling lucky punk (yes/N)?
n
#yes|./clint-eastwood.sh
Cisco IOS on Juniper hardware?
This FOSS networking looks interesting e.g. OpenflowSwitch movement http://www.openflow.org/ http://mvdirona.com/jrh/TalksAndPapers/JamesHamilton_CleanSlateCTO2009.pdf
Trying to open the network stack -networking is where mainframe was years ago (proprietary everything
SANs are just fighting the ASIC vs. x86 battle now too e.g. http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/3par-v-class-the-best-just-got-better/#comments
http://opennetsummit.org/ perhaps when its all converged it will be all commodity hardware running FOSS?
Trying to open the network stack -networking is where mainframe was years ago (proprietary everything
SANs are just fighting the ASIC vs. x86 battle now too e.g. http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/3par-v-class-the-best-just-got-better/#comments
http://opennetsummit.org/ perhaps when its all converged it will be all commodity hardware running FOSS?
Saturday, October 22, 2011
p7 vs GPU vs intel for HPC
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/library/CyberDig.nsf/papers/EFE521AB23A0D28B85257784004DC9DD/$File/rc25033.pdf
Just cant beat GPUs 4 bang for buck eh
...ask this guy http://youtu.be/hSVo4ejZ7rc
158000 GFLOPS for $420k
Just cant beat GPUs 4 bang for buck eh
...ask this guy http://youtu.be/hSVo4ejZ7rc
158000 GFLOPS for $420k
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Perl program to work out what the golden screwdriver has done
Here is a perl script Ive written to go out to the IBM POD/MOD DB web site and get back the activations for your iSeries(AS400) or pSeries(RS6000) systems - just feed it the S/n like below
(you can then compare this to what you get in the HMC to see if ones missed)
$ ./activations.pl 9117 10 06ebb
02 processors activated on 05/23/2011
024 GB memory activated on 05/23/2011
02 processors activated on 03/11/2011
016 GB memory activated on 03/11/2011
055 GB memory activated on 03/02/2011
06 processors activated on 02/22/2011
096 GB memory activated on 02/22/2011
01 processors activated on 01/12/2011
016 GB memory activated on 01/12/2011
06 processors activated on 03/17/2010
072 GB memory activated on 03/17/2010
19 processors activated on 03/16/2010
228 GB memory activated on 03/16/2010
================
TOTAL CPU=36 RAM=519168MB (507GB)
$cat activations.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# PoC Script to go out on the net to the IBM POD site and tally up activations for a given i or p Series machine
#rutherfc-gmail.c
# v1.0 9/9/2011
#
# todo - add logic for processor deactivation - who uses that? IBM dont even publish the code on the pod site ;)
#
use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("mozilla 8.0");
# $ua->proxy(['http'], 'http://proxy:8080/');
$ua->timeout(10);
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
if ($#ARGV != 2) {
print "usage: $0 MODEL XX XXXXX e.g $0 9119 83 9f6bf\n";
exit;
}
($model, $serial1, $serial2) = @ARGV;
##### main #####
get('http://www-912.ibm.com/pod/pod',"$serial2.htm");
html2txt("$serial2.htm","$serial2.txt");
total("$serial2.txt");
exit;
sub get # fakes a mozilla browser, fills in the CGI form and snags the returned page to a local html file
{
my $req = (POST $_[0],
["system_type" => $model,
"system_serial_number1" => $serial1,
"system_serial_number2" => $serial2 ]);
$request = $ua->request($req);
$activations = $request->content;
open(POD,">$_[1]");
print POD $activations;
close(POD);
}
sub html2txt # strips out the crap and converts the table to a local txt file to parse
{
open(HTML,"<$_[0]");
open(TXT,">$_[1]");
while () {
if (/<\/table>/) {$f = 0;};
if (/Posted Date \(MM/) {$f = 1;};
if ($f == 1) {
# poor mans HTML::TableExtract - excuse my sed like perl....
s/ /:/g;
s/<[^>][^>]*>//g;
s/ //g;
s/\n//g;
s/:/\n/g;
print TXT $_;
};
};
close(TXT);
close(HTML);
}
sub total # totals up the de/activations to get totals
{
open(TXT,"<$_[0]");
$[ = 1; $\ = "\n";# set array base & output record separator
while () {
($code,$hex,$date) = split(' ', $_, -1);
if (/POD/) {
$p = substr($hex, 27, 2);
print $p . ' processors activated on ' . $date;
$pt = $pt + $p;
};
if (/MOD/) {
$r = substr($hex, 26, 3);
print $r . ' GB memory activated on ' . $date;
$rt = $rt + $r;
};
if (/RMEM/) {
$r = substr($hex, 27, 2);
print $r . ' GB memory activated on ' . $date;
$rt = $rt - $r;
};
};
print '================';
print 'TOTAL CPU=' . $pt . ' RAM=' . $rt*1024 . 'MB (' . $rt . 'GB)';
close(TXT);
}
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/radiation-dosage-chart/
Ultrafast ten to 200 picosecond switching of photonic entanglement
(you can then compare this to what you get in the HMC to see if ones missed)
$ ./activations.pl 9117 10 06ebb
02 processors activated on 05/23/2011
024 GB memory activated on 05/23/2011
02 processors activated on 03/11/2011
016 GB memory activated on 03/11/2011
055 GB memory activated on 03/02/2011
06 processors activated on 02/22/2011
096 GB memory activated on 02/22/2011
01 processors activated on 01/12/2011
016 GB memory activated on 01/12/2011
06 processors activated on 03/17/2010
072 GB memory activated on 03/17/2010
19 processors activated on 03/16/2010
228 GB memory activated on 03/16/2010
================
TOTAL CPU=36 RAM=519168MB (507GB)
$cat activations.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# PoC Script to go out on the net to the IBM POD site and tally up activations for a given i or p Series machine
#rutherfc-gmail.c
# v1.0 9/9/2011
#
# todo - add logic for processor deactivation - who uses that? IBM dont even publish the code on the pod site ;)
#
use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("mozilla 8.0");
# $ua->proxy(['http'], 'http://proxy:8080/');
$ua->timeout(10);
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
if ($#ARGV != 2) {
print "usage: $0 MODEL XX XXXXX e.g $0 9119 83 9f6bf\n";
exit;
}
($model, $serial1, $serial2) = @ARGV;
##### main #####
get('http://www-912.ibm.com/pod/pod',"$serial2.htm");
html2txt("$serial2.htm","$serial2.txt");
total("$serial2.txt");
exit;
sub get # fakes a mozilla browser, fills in the CGI form and snags the returned page to a local html file
{
my $req = (POST $_[0],
["system_type" => $model,
"system_serial_number1" => $serial1,
"system_serial_number2" => $serial2 ]);
$request = $ua->request($req);
$activations = $request->content;
open(POD,">$_[1]");
print POD $activations;
close(POD);
}
sub html2txt # strips out the crap and converts the table to a local txt file to parse
{
open(HTML,"<$_[0]");
open(TXT,">$_[1]");
while () {
if (/<\/table>/) {$f = 0;};
if (/
if ($f == 1) {
# poor mans HTML::TableExtract - excuse my sed like perl....
s/
s/<[^>][^>]*>//g;
s/ //g;
s/\n//g;
s/:/\n/g;
print TXT $_;
};
};
close(TXT);
close(HTML);
}
sub total # totals up the de/activations to get totals
{
open(TXT,"<$_[0]");
$[ = 1; $\ = "\n";# set array base & output record separator
while (
($code,$hex,$date) = split(' ', $_, -1);
if (/POD/) {
$p = substr($hex, 27, 2);
print $p . ' processors activated on ' . $date;
$pt = $pt + $p;
};
if (/MOD/) {
$r = substr($hex, 26, 3);
print $r . ' GB memory activated on ' . $date;
$rt = $rt + $r;
};
if (/RMEM/) {
$r = substr($hex, 27, 2);
print $r . ' GB memory activated on ' . $date;
$rt = $rt - $r;
};
};
print '================';
print 'TOTAL CPU=' . $pt . ' RAM=' . $rt*1024 . 'MB (' . $rt . 'GB)';
close(TXT);
}
SAP on AIX6/AIX7/POWERHA/Oracle
Im just collecting these in one spot so I dont need to trawl SAP OSS/SDN again...
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedpieceAbstracts/sg247564.html (SAP on per redbook)
SAP Notes regarding an AIX based SOE
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1048686 Recommended AIX settings for SAP
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1121904 SAP on AIX: Recommendations for paging space
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1278944 AIX C/C++ runtime requirements
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1131691 CPU Utilisation metrics of IBM System p
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1087498 Support for AIX 6.1
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/973227 AIX Virtual Memory Management: Tuning
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1522360 FAQ for SAP HA installations using PowerHA (HACMP)
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1541935 Using SAP systems with AIX 7.1
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1458918 Support for AIX 7.1
Oracle RDBMS and IBM related
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aix6tuning/index.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101621 IBM System Storage and SAP High Availability Installations on AIX
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/SAP+and+PowerHA
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1578479 SAP Support of Power Hardware with AIX
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/TD101347 PowerHA compatibility Matrix
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101616 IBM Storage and SAP - evaluation of HA and DR concepts
AIO new method (AIX 6.1)
lpar9[/] > ioo -a | grep active
aio_active = 0
posix_aio_active =
there are no more AIO devices in the ODM.
two new parameters have been added to ioo: aio_active and posix_aix_active.
These can only be changed by AIX, and they are set to 1 only when AIO kernel extensors are used and pinned - you won't find any more AIO servers.
there are now aioLpools and aioPpools thesekernel processes manage AIO
and dont forget....
Language Translation to install →ISO8859-1 German [de_DE]
This installs the required bos.loc and bos.iconv file sets
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedpieceAbstracts/sg247564.html (SAP on per redbook)
SAP Notes regarding an AIX based SOE
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1048686 Recommended AIX settings for SAP
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1121904 SAP on AIX: Recommendations for paging space
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1278944 AIX C/C++ runtime requirements
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1131691 CPU Utilisation metrics of IBM System p
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1087498 Support for AIX 6.1
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/973227 AIX Virtual Memory Management: Tuning
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1522360 FAQ for SAP HA installations using PowerHA (HACMP)
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1541935 Using SAP systems with AIX 7.1
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1458918 Support for AIX 7.1
Oracle RDBMS and IBM related
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aix6tuning/index.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101621 IBM System Storage and SAP High Availability Installations on AIX
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/SAP+and+PowerHA
https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap/support/notes/1578479 SAP Support of Power Hardware with AIX
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/TD101347 PowerHA compatibility Matrix
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101616 IBM Storage and SAP - evaluation of HA and DR concepts
AIO new method (AIX 6.1)
lpar9[/] > ioo -a | grep active
aio_active = 0
posix_aio_active =
there are no more AIO devices in the ODM.
two new parameters have been added to ioo: aio_active and posix_aix_active.
These can only be changed by AIX, and they are set to 1 only when AIO kernel extensors are used and pinned - you won't find any more AIO servers.
there are now aioLpools and aioPpools thesekernel processes manage AIO
and dont forget....
Language Translation to install →ISO8859-1 German [de_DE]
This installs the required bos.loc and bos.iconv file sets
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Free documentaries online
FREE DOCOs!
Pretty good selection! bit of a Project Gutenberg for docos Here is some fr3e skool'n http://www.udacity.com http://www.khanacademy.org http://www.coursera.org
Pretty good selection! bit of a Project Gutenberg for docos Here is some fr3e skool'n http://www.udacity.com http://www.khanacademy.org http://www.coursera.org
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Penryn / Ivy Bridge
I never intended this to be a condensed matter physics blog but there have been a few developments in the last few months! Intel look like they have got their 3D transistors sorted for the next gen of x64 processors "Transistor Technology Breakthrough Represents Biggest Change To Computer Chips In 40 Years"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505092252.htm
For the first time since the invention of silicon transistors over 50 years ago, transistors using a three-dimensional structure will be put into high-volume manufacturing. Intel will introduce a revolutionary 3-D transistor design called Tri-Gate, first disclosed by Intel in 2002, into high-volume manufacturing at the 22-nanometer (nm) node in an Intel chip codenamed "Ivy Bridge."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505092252.htm
For the first time since the invention of silicon transistors over 50 years ago, transistors using a three-dimensional structure will be put into high-volume manufacturing. Intel will introduce a revolutionary 3-D transistor design called Tri-Gate, first disclosed by Intel in 2002, into high-volume manufacturing at the 22-nanometer (nm) node in an Intel chip codenamed "Ivy Bridge."
Monday, April 25, 2011
Higgs boson spotted at LHC???
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
Rumored that the LHC spotted the Higgs boson at 115-120GeV where theory predicted...
Lets see if this is true/verified in the coming weeks
Rumored that the LHC spotted the Higgs boson at 115-120GeV where theory predicted...
Lets see if this is true/verified in the coming weeks
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Live Partition Mobility
Here's a demo I've done of a 5 min Live LPAR Mobility (think vmotion for POWER LPARs)
Its a running AIX 6.1 LPAR moved on the fly between 2 POWER7 frames: 5mins, not one lost ping!! (longest delay to any ping I got was ~78ms)
remote HMC LPM
(remote HMC - not both frames under the same HMC this time)
Its a running AIX 6.1 LPAR moved on the fly between 2 POWER7 frames: 5mins, not one lost ping!! (longest delay to any ping I got was ~78ms)
remote HMC LPM
(remote HMC - not both frames under the same HMC this time)
CentOS 5.6 get ext4
Centos 5.6 came out recently (not CentOS 6 - RH drip feed this stuff...)
2 points of interest
- ext4 filesystem
- php 5.3
RH is now a billion dollar company not bad for selling 'free' software
2 points of interest
- ext4 filesystem
- php 5.3
RH is now a billion dollar company not bad for selling 'free' software
Couple of nice radiation dosage charts
Due to the log scale required to show this (or sound) its hard
XKCD have do a bossjob of it!!!
and to a lesser extent....
does not really show the logarithmic nature as well as the little coloured boxes
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
nice azure v ec2 vs google app engine at stackexchange
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Google labs page speed
google labs page speed
Maybe developed as a spin off from rolling site speed into pageranks? ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html )
This tool analyses a website and give suggestions - facebook.com got a 99/100
my work got a 42/100 and it gave suggestions how to fix
Maybe developed as a spin off from rolling site speed into pageranks? ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html )
This tool analyses a website and give suggestions - facebook.com got a 99/100
my work got a 42/100 and it gave suggestions how to fix
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Scripts to web publish HMC managed systems configs
2 Quick scripts (shell & expect) to grab configs off HMCs for managed IBM POWER(aix/linux/vio)systems and format them into a html web page.
Will work where no ssh trust exists (ie Where you cant run mkauthkeys -u lpar2rrd -a 'ssh-dss ....' as hscroot)
If ssh trust exists then the script does not need the hmccli expect script
Script renders HTML to stdout so just redirect eg ./$0 > index.htm
Here is an expect script hmccli
...blogger needs a code tag :(
Will work where no ssh trust exists (ie Where you cant run mkauthkeys -u lpar2rrd -a 'ssh-dss ....' as hscroot)
If ssh trust exists then the script does not need the hmccli expect script
Script renders HTML to stdout so just redirect eg ./$0 > index.htm
Here is an expect script hmccli
...blogger needs a code tag :(
Thursday, March 31, 2011
angrynerds
angrynerds spoof
atlassian (the home of confluence and jira etc) seem to be a really great company, atlassian culture like 37signals, google or netapp
...perhaps they will get it for blackberry??
atlassian (the home of confluence and jira etc) seem to be a really great company, atlassian culture like 37signals, google or netapp
...perhaps they will get it for blackberry??
Super-Heisenberg scaling
Spanish scientists have produced more precise measurements [with interferometers] than those predicted by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.....big woop?
This does not remove deities(s) with dice, it just shows reduction in certian cases(in this case a "beam of photons to measure the small magnetic field produced by a gas made up of a million ultra-cold rubidium atoms".)
link to newscientist
link to paper at nature
...not really related, however, I remember during quantum electro dynamics lectures my professor saying that the Gyromagnetic ratio was the most accurately measured constant and the best confirmation of QED to date, that was 15 years ago...
This does not remove deities(s) with dice, it just shows reduction in certian cases(in this case a "beam of photons to measure the small magnetic field produced by a gas made up of a million ultra-cold rubidium atoms".)
link to newscientist
link to paper at nature
...not really related, however, I remember during quantum electro dynamics lectures my professor saying that the Gyromagnetic ratio was the most accurately measured constant and the best confirmation of QED to date, that was 15 years ago...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Data Science Toolkit
http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/
free tools and a VM you can use in AWS/EC2 or your own hardware to...
Geodict
Text to Places
IP Address to Coordinates
Street Address to Coordinates
Coordinates to Politics
File to Text
Text to Sentences
HTML to Text
Text to Places
IP Address to Coordinates
Street Address to Coordinates
Coordinates to Politics
File to Text
Text to Sentences
HTML to Text
Mostly webby type tools to scrape data from sites or logs - file2text looks OK (OCR text from images)
screenr session recorder
I'm often looking for ways to record desktop sessions, for example
I mostly use Xvidcap or Istanbul(ogg format can be iffy to convert to mpeg/avi for YT upload (need transcoder - I use ffmeg ) Anywho.... this is a great idea >> SCREENR <<
Friday, March 25, 2011
A few things to try and avoid at a prospective employer....
Here is a wordle of traits I think I should try and avoid at a prospective employer
BAD-STUFF
In a nushell its all Capability Immaturity Model CIM stuff
Rules over results type thinking....
CIM -1 : Obstructive
Processes, however inappropriate and ineffective, are implemented with rigor and tend to obstruct work. Adherence to process is the measure of success in a Level -1 organization. Any actual creation of viable product is incidental. The quality of any product is not assessed, presumably on the assumption that if the proper process was followed, high quality is guaranteed.
Paradoxically, Level -1 organizations believe fervently in following defined procedures, but lacking the will to measure the effectiveness of the procedures they rarely succeed at their basic task of creating...
Agile in its many forms seems to be on the money with this culture and values to get stuff done eg http://agilemanifesto.org/
BAD-STUFF
In a nushell its all Capability Immaturity Model CIM stuff
Rules over results type thinking....
CIM -1 : Obstructive
Processes, however inappropriate and ineffective, are implemented with rigor and tend to obstruct work. Adherence to process is the measure of success in a Level -1 organization. Any actual creation of viable product is incidental. The quality of any product is not assessed, presumably on the assumption that if the proper process was followed, high quality is guaranteed.
Paradoxically, Level -1 organizations believe fervently in following defined procedures, but lacking the will to measure the effectiveness of the procedures they rarely succeed at their basic task of creating...
Agile in its many forms seems to be on the money with this culture and values to get stuff done eg http://agilemanifesto.org/
Thursday, March 24, 2011
if you get this you get it...no biggie
\funny a coffee stain for your next (or 1st) scientific paper
http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349
there is also \goofy \homer from simpsons for LaTeX too
http://ctan.unsw.edu.au/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/4_4/
http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349
there is also \goofy \homer from simpsons for LaTeX too
http://ctan.unsw.edu.au/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/4_4/
Monday, March 14, 2011
The building block of a quantum photon switch
Matthew A. Hall, Joseph B. Altepeter, and Prem Kumar from the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University in Illinois have constructed a switch which fulfills these requirements and characterize its performance at the single photon level; it exhibits a 200-ps switching window, a 120:1 contrast ratio, 1.5 dB loss, and induces no measurable degradation in the switched photons entangled-state fidelity -less than 0.002
In other words the basic building block for a quantum photon switch
paper is here
Physical review letter is available to buy here
Diagram of the experimental apparatus and summary is here
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Solution to Erdös' Distinct Distances Problem has been found
Poincaré conjecture was proved [and confirmed in 2006] and now another of mathematics' holy grails falls by the way side.
While not one of the Millennium problems its very significant none the less...
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/17494.html
Actual paper is here
While not one of the Millennium problems its very significant none the less...
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/17494.html
Actual paper is here
Information converted to energy
Physicists in Japan have (kind of) built a Maxwell's daemon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon ) that (kind of) converts information into energy
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44385
This does not violate the second law of thermodynamics as far more energy is used in the supporting apporatus than is gained in the experiment.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44385
This does not violate the second law of thermodynamics as far more energy is used in the supporting apporatus than is gained in the experiment.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
MAd SciEncE zapzap chooCh0o
Sub micrometer tapered hexagonal pillars of indium-gallium arsenide for on silicon lasers!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20096-first-lasers-grown-directly-on-silicon-chips.html
Programable molecular motor seen to travel 100nm wide DNA base pair track using atomic force microscopy at about 0.1 nm/s!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110206132857.htm
Richard Feynman nanoprocessor idea becoming a reality thanks to Harvard University and MITRE Corp
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110209131824.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20096-first-lasers-grown-directly-on-silicon-chips.html
Programable molecular motor seen to travel 100nm wide DNA base pair track using atomic force microscopy at about 0.1 nm/s!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110206132857.htm
Richard Feynman nanoprocessor idea becoming a reality thanks to Harvard University and MITRE Corp
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110209131824.htm
Friday, January 14, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
datasets
Here are a bunch of datasets in one place
http://rs.io/2014/05/29/list-of-data-sets.html
http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
http://infochimps.com
http://www.delicious.com/jbaldwinconnect/DataSets
http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/
http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/
http://www.delicious.com/pskomoroch/dataset+redistributable
http://data.nsw.gov.au
http://data.worldbank.org/
http://rs.io/2014/05/29/list-of-data-sets.html
http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
http://infochimps.com
http://www.delicious.com/jbaldwinconnect/DataSets
http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/
http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/
http://www.delicious.com/pskomoroch/dataset+redistributable
http://data.nsw.gov.au
http://data.worldbank.org/
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