pemo (Notes from a Small [Academic] Island)

SV Update

peetm — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:39:00 GMT

With minor updates

Things I didn't Patent

peetm — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 05:01:00 GMT

You perhaps know how it is ... I was writing a book called 'Windows - Advanced Programming and Design', and in doing so, I created what I thought were a few neat ideas and bits of code, that others would find interesting.

What I didn't think of was to patent any of those ideas back then [but hey, I'm just a programmer]!

The story continues here.

FlipStart out Today

peetm — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:20:00 GMT

Paul Allen's FlipStart is out today. I'd like one, but a bit too much for me to gamble on, i.e., I'll wait until I hear reports first I think. Here's the Data Sheet [pdf]

Simplifying Jargon

peetm — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:36:00 GMT

Competition.

Think of some managementspeak, and propose a plain-English translation/definition.

For example ...

Mindset - attitude/opinion/stance/view?
Thinking outside of the envelope - thinking creatively?
Customer centric - focused on the customer?

Your turn.

Why didn't I patent this!

peetm — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:47:00 GMT

A while back, um, quite a while back now [2nd Sept 2002], I wrote a piece for Computer Weekly about how AV can't work perfectly.

As part of that, I said a little something about how an operating system should do more to protect the user - by not automatically starting processes that the user hadn't authorized, e.g., say process A [which you trust] suddenly tries to start process B [which you don't trust] - well, the OS should tell you about this and ask for permission!

The bit of this - that made it through the editor's hands went like this:

"For a virus to work, it needs to be executed, either directly, or by some other process already in operation. Now, the operating system is the thing that creates processes. So, if the operating system were a more picky about what processes it'll start automatically - well, these things could be caught very effectively."

If you're interested, the original went like this:

"In order for a virus to work, it needs to be executed: either directly, or by some other already-executing-process. Now, the operating-system is the thing that creates processes. So, if the operating-system were a bit more picky about what processes it’ll start automagically, well ... these things could be caught very effectively.

"Imagine, you double-click what looks like an Excel file-attachment appearing in your email. However, the operating-system sees that the file is actually an executable. Next, it checks to see if this executable has been run on your machine before and, if it hasn’t, it simply asks you – “Are you sure you want to run this PROGRAM?”. You answer ‘no way’. Problem solved.

"Alternatively, this kind of approach – where the operating-system is rather more proactive - could be extended to anything that has write-access to your hard disk. After all, no write-access = no-damage!

I rather liked the 'if you haven't run this before' bit - and I wish Vista's UAC worked like this, e.g., why ask me every time if I trust something when I've already said 'Yes' 30 times before! What if the parameters have changed! Well, ok, how about if they haven't changed from the previous 29 runs, well, please don't ask me *again* - it's ok!

Also - the no write access ... maybe a better version of UAC ought to get into this a bit more? E.g., how does this fly ... the OS says, you can run whatever you like, but, if that *thing* tries to output data, I'll ask you whether to permit it to continue or not?

If you think about it, protecting a user this way could make real sense - and, in doing so, not be SO annoying/intrusive! For example, what harm is there in running - or allowing to run - a process that you didn't know you were about to run - if it's sand-boxed, and cannot output anything ... it can read files 'til its heart's content, but it *cannot output anything* - not down-the-wire, not to the file system, not to the registry etc. Nitto, nothing! No writes of any kind = you're safe.

Anyway - can I sue ;-) Or, should I patent the no-write stuff :-)

Or,

would MS Research please hire me now please!

:-(

Dream Girl?

peetm — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:40:00 GMT

Don't click any of these if you're not 'adult' - by age, mindset or disposition! Disclaimer DONE!

So

Original got moved - perhaps because I was linking to it! So, here's a replacement ... Will a simple image do? hmmmm

However,

maybe a video is what you're after?

Or

Maybe you'd prefer the 'slightly geeky' approach - and a rather more realistic video IMHO!?

Lastly, there's always ASCII!

However, I got bored with this [gratuitous, me!], anyway - I don't know what this last one is about [whatsoever].

Have a nice weekend

Vista - are you going to get a copy?

peetm — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:39:00 GMT

Out of interest, and apologies if its been asked before, but

ARE YOU GOING TO BUY VISTA [soon/now]?

I'm not!

Then again, I don't have to in many ways, i.e., we have a licence that would allow me to have this on as many machines as I want, but, the only machine I currently have it on is a virtual one - via VMWare.

I've actually had it [in various forms] for, um, rather a long time now - but, whilst it was not a 'released product', I haven't really bothered - apart from using it for a grid-computing experiment [where I needed it for some rather devious and 'can't say' purposes].

Anyway, now that it's due, and seeing that some of the good features do actually work - well, I'm not convinced that I'll bother [even though it's free for me to load up a copy on my various machines].

It's 'free' for you, but you don't want it!!! Yes, and yes!

XP Pro works well for me - and my machines are all bolted down etc: and, having witnessed some rather dissapointing bugs in the business-release [which 'smack' of it [still!] being rushed - or - not properly tested], I don't think I'm going to jump on until I'm *forced* to [bought-a-new-machine / paid-for-it-pre-installed / might-as-well-use-it (with XP Pro as a dual-boot!)]

As an MS share-holder [and one-time employee], all of this makes me wonder about Microsoft's future ... how much does an OS [or an Office-Suite] not do before you consider you should/must upgrade? And, if your answer is that Vista is necessary - what about the next version - or the next version of Microsoft Office?? When will *the product* do enough - be reliable enough - that, thank you very much, but I'm quite happy with what I've got ta!

And, no, I don't think 128-bit stuff is going to convince me either, Duh!

So, what's the next cash cow for Microsoft? I mean - *search* is done and dusted, so ... what's next ... what's the next BiG Thing?

Vista - User Account Control Bites?

peetm — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:03:00 GMT

Just wondering whether or not anyone else has had to modify their code to live with UAC?

The problem? Well, here's one - you can't use CreateProcess to shell another application - like a wrappered setup.exe perhaps.

I recently had to do this for some code that wrappered an AV installer here. CreateProcess fails coz the Shell can't prompt/ask the user if the incoming app's ok to be run.

A simple fix is to just do this via the Shell, i.e., through something like ShellExecuteEx – then the user gets asked the 'is it ok' question.

There seem to be other methods – most of which are documented on msdn of course

Archimedes anyone?

peetm — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:45:00 GMT

Don't know if this will work outside of the UK, but, one of my can't miss radio shows is often Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time.

I say 'often' because one week the show is about something like the Speed of Light and the next, it's about Renaissance Poetry - guess which find more personally interesting!

Anyway, until this Thursday, the latest programme about Archimedes is available as an MP3 download.

The science-based programmes are available as a Listen Again thingmy here.

Sayings Viewer

peetm — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:57:00 GMT

Here's a link to a webpage/app that I use as a warm-up-thingmy/attention-getter/space-filler - however you want to use it really.

I call it my Sayings Viewer, and I use it before some lectures, and during lecture breaks etc.

Anyway, if you think you could use it - well, feel free!

Feedback [bugs, suggestions, ...] very welcome - email link in the About Box.

RAZR: Weird Technology Shortfall

peetm — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:30:00 GMT

I've recently changed my mobile phone to a top of the line Motorola RAZR

This phone does way more than I actually care to grasp ... like, ya know, mainly I JUST want a phone - but, for all the cool things it does, what's it missing?

Recently, here in the UK, we entered into British Summer Time (that's prob called Daylight Savings for the rest of the world) and thus, personally, a reduction in my own clinical depression ... yet, this wonderful gadget didn't know that we'd changed our clocks [!!!] - and I have to adjust the time myself [even more !!!!!!!!!!!]

Now, I'm not [that] lazy!, but I kinda expect our modern phone wonders to be able to do this for me automagically. Am I being absurd, am I expecting too much from a gadget that [AT LAST!] syncs with Outlook, charges from a USB slot, and that plays The Philosopher's Song as its ringtone :-) ????

What makes this worse [a double wammy if you will] is that I'm about to go on a jolly to Malta for a couple of weeks [you must understand that this is heady stuff - and that no Blue Lagoon will be involved!] - and, guess what - I'll have to adjust the time - again, both there, and when I get back to the UK of course.

Now, surely [I mean, my 6 year old VCR does this shit!] the various phone companies could [probably do?] broadcast the current [UST] time - and, surely, I should be able to say to my phone "I want GMT" - or, better still, "I want LOCAL time" [no matter what it is]. And, the phone should know what UST is, and then adjust to what I WANT- it's as simple as that Well, you'd think!

You know what else these phones should do? When you drop out [we're all too tolerant of that!], the phone - or the phone company - should know where that happened and do two things.

A) refund you the call charge. B) look into strengthening it's coverage in that area!!!!

pow() - yup 'Pow' is the right term - 'Zap' and 'Bash' too.

peetm — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 19:19:00 GMT

I haven't tried this with the latest/greatest gcc [perhaps someone could please?] but I was disappointed that with gcc 4.0.2 this code ['essence' only supplied] produced a rather dumb result [IMHO] …

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

int main(void)
{
long n = 42;

printf("%lf\t%ld\n", pow(n, 2), (long)pow(n, 2));

return 0;
}

Output with gcc version 4.0.2

1764.000000 1763 // <- hmmmm!

You'd [possibly] have thought that gcc's pow() might do the right thing with integral/discrete values – well – I would.

Interestingly, MS's VC6 does do the right thing …

Output with Visual C++ v6

1764.000000 1764

So, the gcc 'fix' is to do something like:

(long)ceil(pow(n, 2)) - and that's just ugly!

Of course, as this is just n ^ 2, it could here be n * n here, but that's off the point I think I'm trying to make – imagine, say, using a few other values … here's 1 to 5

Compiled gcc code output

1.000000    1
4.000000    4
9.000000    9
16.000000   16
25.000000   24 // <- hmmmm!

Compiled VC6 code output:

1.000000    1
4.000000    4
9.000000    9
16.000000   16
25.000000   25

Ok, so, you might spot something wrong here IF you happened to see/use this value before you used it as part of a further calculation. Or, your inputs might be small enough that you 'spot' something wrong with the result.

But, say these values are somewhat bigger … here's another five outputs from the gcc code [without the comparison – would spot that there's an occasional 'off by one' here]:

3980025.000000     3980024 // <- hmmmm!
3984016.000000     3984016
3988009.000000     3988008 // <- hmmmm!
3992004.000000     3992004
3996001.000000     3996000 // <- hmmmm!

And here they are from VC6:

3980025.000000     3980025
3984016.000000     3984016
3988009.000000     3988009
3992004.000000     3992004
3996001.000000     3996001

Of course, it seems as though gcc's implementation is calculating the result of 42 ^ 2 as something like 1763.9999999999, but you know, I can't really find it in my heart to forgive it doing this with integral values somehow!

A fun alternate to work

peetm — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:15:00 GMT

http://www.isketch.net - if you're good at drawing/guessing!

Binary Watch

peetm — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:43:00 GMT

Had a 'clear out' - lost the feynman prefers the red LEDs, and lost the watch thingmy. So, here it is again: BinaryWatch.zip This one is modded, so that if it's started with a cmd line arg of mode:normal, it runs as a standard 'clock'. Thanks to Matthew Ozvat for the suggestion.

Please don't add comments to this [or my other thread on this], as I rarely come and look at this blog. If you want to ask me something about this, then please email me: teep (do that backwards) .morris@comlab.ox.ac.uk Ta very much P.S. my misses [Jo] bought me a blue LED version for Christmas! W00t - now I have one for best!

Ear Candles!

peetm — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:46:00 GMT

Just been reading this week's Spectator mag: it's not all Thinkgeek and Slashdot stuff with me you know!

Anyway, I Just happened to find myself scanning the 'For MEN' bit in this.

Most of the ads were for 'Professional Massage' - um, got me to thinking, were these coded ads, or legit? Normally, I'd have said 'code' - but, in The Spectator!?

One ad was very interesting - coz if it was but a thin veneer for the phrase call me for a shag I wonder what undiscovered joys 'Hopi Ear Candles' might present!!!

And, even if they're not some sort of device, I can't help wondering what they might be - like, do they protrude 'outwards', or perhaps they're 'vertical' - Hope the wax gives one a kinky kick! I must admit, I'm a *bit tempted* to find out!

Update:
=====

They're candles you put in your ears, and the New Age term for why you might want to do this?

It's Thermal Auricular Therapy! You're shitting me! Nope!

Kind of reminds me of the old Spitting Image theme ...

...

Hold a chicken in the air
~~Stick a deckchair up your nose~~ Stick a candle in your ear
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green
Then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet
And pretend your name is Keith

...

Google London Visit

peetm — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:49:00 GMT

Google [Again]

peetm — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:42:00 GMT

How Google Might be Improved

peetm — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 13:18:00 GMT

Two suggestions – both to do with Google assessing its own performance (and improving upon it) – one long, one short…

1. Google should remember what you search for, as it doesn't learn anything about how humans refine search-expressions (unless it IP-logs or something).

Currently, Googleites enter a search-expression, and Google returns n-pages of links to what, it considers, are suitable pages. However, sometimes, what's returned is, for a variety of reasons, inappropriate - so the user refines their query, and resubmits it. Hopefully, within an iteration or two, the user finds what they're looking for.

However, because websites are naturally stateless, Google doesn't know that a previous attempt at finding information is related to a subsequent attempt – therefore, its ability to learn something about how people use language to pinpoint information is limited.

Now, Google could of course inject a little state into this. For example, they could put/update a cookie on your machine. The cookie contains the details of your last search – stuff like what words you used, the time/date of the query, and a unique ID (identifying you). Now, whenever you search, the contents of the cookie (containing the data detailing your previous search) is sent to Google – along with the new search words (the cookie's then, as part of the reply, updated with the new search data). Now, at the back-end Google could very simply look at the date/time information of the earlier search, and, if it's very close to the subsequent search date/time, well, the probability of this second visit being a refinement of the first visit dramatically increases.

Alternatively, they could store this sort of stuff server-side, instead of on your machine. They could (say) log your IP address, and store that with the query data (as before - words used, time/date submitted (the ID is now your IP address)). The process from this point on is the same as the last of course. However, this latter approach has lots of plus points to it, for example: 1. you wouldn't know they're doing it. 2. you can have cookies turned off, and it doesn't matter. 3. nothing about what you've been searching for is stored on your computer, …

In either cases, when a subsequent but related search is detected, important linguistic information could be learned through studying the relationship between the old and new search-expressions.

It's a shame that they don't do this (?) – because, if they did (and could establish that this is a refinement of that), it'd be well interesting to analyse the data, and to see if one can say something about how humans use natural-language to interact with search-engines, and generally optimise their thoughts - turning mentalese (to pinch a Pinker term) into the most suitable/successful, concrete words.

BTW, there's an indication that Google doesn't do this currently – because, if it did, it should be able to offer you better alternative search-expressions (very different to the 'Did you mean' stuff)! Additionally, and in proportion to the number of search words used (and over time using NLP techniques), these alternatives should also become evermore accurate. However, this doesn't happen – so, I assume they don't capture this sort of data. Shame really.

2. Google should watch what websites you visit.

When you've found a useful looking results-page, do Google know what link on it you chose to navigate to? No – Google doesn't do click-through (yet).

And again, it's a shame really – as this data could help improve their page-rank algorithm, and certainly lead to some interesting machine-learning work - in reparsing the page to better correlate its content with your search-expression.

Google is one of the busiest websites in the world – and its raison detre in life is to interact with humans - using natural language. From an AI, CL, ML, and NLP point of view, it'd be a great place to be a researcher (I reckon)!

Feynman Prefers - The RED LEDS

peetm — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 14:53:00 GMT

Binary Watch Training Program

peetm — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 13:44:00 GMT

I haven't been here for quite some time - and called by today mainly because I got an email from someone asking for the training program I knocked up for my binary watch ... mentioning the post I made about it here some time ago (the original post is below) .

When I looked at the original entry I made (through curiosity really), I found that, via the comments section, quite a few people had also asked for it!! Yikes - sorry!

So anyway, I've now put a zipped .exe of this here www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~peet/BinaryWatch.zip (1.5Mb). There's no setup program - so it might not run. Runs ok at this end of course!

I wonder if anyone will donate (right-click the watch face for options etc)?

Original Post

I've knocked up a training program for my binary watch - here's a snapshot of it running:

The snapshot shows it running in cheat mode, i.e. the top window's displaying the denary-time, and the related binary. Normally, the program runs in a mode where it occasionally pops up and challenges you to a game of 'Interpret the Time' - all user configurable of course!

LED Binary Watch Training Program

peetm — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:15:00 GMT

I've knocked up a training program for my binary watch - here's a snapshot of it running:

Comega & C#

peetm — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:10:00 GMT

"Comega is an experimental language which extends C# with new constructs for relational and semi-structured data access and asynchronous concurrency ..." http://research.microsoft.com/Comega/ Not really had a chance to play with this yet - bit of a busy boy lately!

Great works in Programming Languages

peetm — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:45:00 GMT

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatWorksInPL.html

For the .NETers ... Data Visualization Components

peetm — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:41:00 GMT

Data Visualization Components

.A set of .NET components that display data in a variety of graphical formats. Includes Treemap, a rendering of hierarchical data as a set of nested boxes; Bubble Chart, a set of points displayed as bubbles in an x-y coordinate system; Piano Roll, a spreadsheet-like display of numerical data rendered in one of several graphical formats; Spire Chart, an advanced version of a histogram; Thread Tree, a hierarchy of nodes sorted by some metric value; and Time Series Chart.

http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/download.aspx?FUID=4c4a6564-890f-4c61-a240-2712f2d8e2bb

Google Labs Test

peetm — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:39:00 GMT

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/19/1949255

Scans of the test are there somewhere