A Stupid Lawsuit

The company Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation is suing Youtube.com. They say web surfers have mistyped the word "youtube.com" and typed in "utube.com" instead. This caused the utube.com web site to crash. Is this really the fault of youtube.com? These same people could have just have easily typed in ytube.com (the letter "y" is left of the "u" letter on a QWERTY keyboard) and have gotten a music video web site. Is this web site going to sue youtube.com next?

I cannot read the minds of people mistakenly going to the utube web site instead of the youtube web site but I can take an educated guess. The people going to the utube web site are people that talk in Internet chat rooms. The people I am referring to are teenagers who use acronyms when talking to each other like lol (laugh out loud) or imho (in my humble opinion) or in this case u (you). So, when a chat-room teenager hears about the youtube web site from a friend or even from TV for the first time (s)he will by habit type "utube" instead of "youtube" in the address bar. That is what I believe is happening.

OBTW, If you are wondering I have never visited an Internet chat room. I have used an instant messaging program though.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 6

• Courtesy is the glue that holds society together.
• I think the president should have a system analyst, an economist, and a businessman as part as his advisors.
• Bottom-up taxation. Only taxes allowed: Sales, property and city income. The city collects its taxes first, whatever is left goes to the county. Whatever is left from the county's expenses goes to the state. After the state expenses whatever is left goes to the federal government.
• The Law of Run-Time Bugs: The number of bugs a program has is inversely proportional to how awake the programmer is. The more awake the programmer is the less buggy the program will be.
• Celebrities are glorified court jesters.
• Be weary of news organizations that have an agenda.
• I think it is interesting the same groups of people who adore the U.N. don't want President Bush to have multilateral talks with North Korea. Both gets the world community involved, so what's the difference?
• Those Americans who don't want America to win the war in Iraq are unpatriotic. I want the U.S. to win all the wars it fights. Period. Saying you don't want the U.S. to win the war is like rooting for team A when you claim you are a fan of team B during a ball game.
• Any heterosexual man in a romantic relationship who is for gay marriage would have to be for polyandry (a wife having more than one husband), because if you open the door for gay marriage you open the door for other types of marriages like polyandry, polygamy, group marriage, a woman marrying a dolphin, etc. I don't think any heterosexual man would want to share their partner with other men.
• I think it is good business for businesses to stay out of controversial issues. If they support a controversial issue they might lose a lot of current customers and potential customers.

Lie Detector

How can you tell if a person lies? That is an interesting question. Can you tell from a person's behavior? If he avoids eye contact when talking to you or if his timing is off between emotions gestures/expressions and words when speaking to you he could be lying. Also, if the person rubs her eyes or touches her nose she could be lying. Then again her nose may just itch. You would have to look at multiple behaviors to get a more accurate reading. Also, it helps if you observe the person over a long period of time to look for lying patterns. You actually need a more independent way to detect a lie that has a low rate of chance.

How about polygraph tests? Polygraph tests only measure several physiological variables such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and skin conductivity. If you are nervous taking the test you can possibly fail the test. There is even web sites that will tell you how to beat a polygraph test. The unreliability of polygraph tests is why in some criminal trials it is not admissible even though police departments use them. Polygraph tests are better but not by much.

What we need a way to measure the lie where the person cannot beat the measuring device. What about just measuring physical reactions of the brain? It appears that there are physical manifestations in the brain when you lie and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanner can measure it. There is no way a person can control the behavior of your brain--ie the communication among the neurons in your brain. Brain scientists are saying measuring these manifestations are pretty reliable.

Scanning a person's brain to see if she is lying would probably eventually do away with polygraph tests. Businesses, CIA, FBI and NSA could scan potential employee's brains to see if they are trustworthy. The police could scan suspects to see if they are guilty of a crime or not. It would even be possible to scan airline passengers' brains to see if they would harm passengers on the plain. The big obstacle to using the fMRI is the cost. That and the size of the fMRI. It's really big. Both would have to shrink to make it more affordable and convenient to use. Plus there are some criticisms of the fMRI. Still measuring brain patterns would still be more reliable than the polygraph test.

When telling if someone is lying regardless of the measuring device the measurer has to ask the right question. Asking a blind person from birth what color your eyes are is meaningless to the blind person. He cannot answer the question because color is meaningless to him. Also the person has to know he is telling a lie. If the person is psychotic or blacked out during a crime he might not know if he is lying or not. Here is a good question for a passenger boarding an airplane: "Are you intending to physically harm anyone on the plane you are boarding." This is a good question because word anyone also includes the crew and not just the passengers. If you said kill rather than physically harm then this might leave out anyone who is going to just injure the pilots of the plane inorder to hi-jack it.

When asking a yes-no question you have to be specific and avoid opinionated questions. You also have to ask questions that get the answers you want. That is don't ask the passenger if he is a terrorist (an opinionated question to the passenger) if you want to know if he is going to commit a crime (a factual question). He probably would not consider himself a terrorist. He could just be an unstable person. If a person refuses to answer the question or spins then he should definitely not be allowed on the plane.

Online Voting

It's conceivable in the future to be able to vote online. County web sites already have (at least mine has) a web site where you can go and look up your voter information. You have to enter your first name, last name, and date of birth. These are required fields. You can also enter the county where you live. How much more programming would it take to have the actual ballot on that web site? I don't think too much more.

All it would take is a separate login screen for just the ballot. You would enter the above information plus a one-time password. This password would be randomly generated by the county clerk's office. They email the password to you. Once you login with the password, your name, and birth date (actually the password is all you would really need since it is unique) and vote the password is erased so you cannot vote again. Online voting would also speed up vote counting. Once you vote online that vote is instantly counted.

There would be security issues for online voting. You don't want viruses infecting the web site or a virus or worm could prevent a person from accessing the web site. Then there are malicious web sites that use fake logins. Of course you would not want the ballot web site to time out on you. And you would hope the server load of the web site could possible take every voter in the county voting at the same time. It could happen. Another big issue is privacy of your ballot--ie you would not want other people seeing how you voted especially from someone trying to hack into the ballot database. You want to know your votes were being counted and also allowed to re-do your votes if you made a mistake. Here a "confirmation" screen would help. The screen would display who or what you voted for with a "redo votes" or "back" button and the "vote" button at the bottom of the screen.

Republicans vs. Democrats

According to the American Conservative Ratings web site, twelve senators in 2005 got a perfect score 100 for voting for pro-Conservative bills. All those senators that got that perfect score are Republicans. Just so you know the American Conservative Union gave some Republican senators low ratings--two Republicans got a score of 32. Most of the scores for Republicans are 80 or higher. The highest score for a Democrat senator is 60. All the rest of Democrat senators had lower scores. What about the House? In 2005, 38 representatives got a perfect of 100. Again, all those are Republicans. The other Republicans got scores of 80 or more. The highest score for Democrat representatives is 64. I think there were three in all who got that score. In summary, the Republicans are more conservative than Democrats.
Which party is taxpayer friendly? The Republicans. According to the Americans for Tax Reform web site, two Senators got perfect scores--both Republicans. The other Republican senators got scores of 80 or more. One Democratic senator got a rating of 65--all the rest of the Democrat senators had lower scores than him. According to that same web site, eight Representatives got a perfect score again all were Republicans. The highest score a Democrat Representative has is 48. All the rest of the Democrats' scores were lower. The National Taxpayers Union web site says that the Republican average rating for the Senate is 69%. The Democratic senators rating is 12%! Wow, that is low! The Republicans in the House gets an average rating of 60%. The House Democrats average rating is 17%!
Which party promotes Judeo-Christian ideals? Republicans. According to the Family Research Council, the lowest Republican score is 29. Three Republicans had that score. The highest Republican score is 100. Over 30 Republicans had that score. The highest Democratic score is 92. Only one Democrat had that score. The lowest Democrat score is zero. Over 30 Democrats had that score. A lot of Democrats had scores in the single digit range. You would think a lot more Democrats would have scores closer to 60. Apparently not.
Want illegal immigration under control? According to Congress Grades.org, only 21 Democrats want illegal immigration reform. 167 Republicans want illegal immigration reform.

Electronic Voting

My town is using an Election Systems & Software (ES&S) iVotronic touch screen voting system this election. A registered voter signs in, then a poll worker inserts the Personal Electronic Ballot (PEB) into the slot of the machine. Then via the touch screen a voter makes his/her selections. The voter can even review his/her selections and change any of them. Finally, (s)he presses the "Vote" button to cast the vote. This system does not make a paper printout of the selections for the voter. That would have been a nice receipt for the voter and would have possibly relieved any suspicions of any voter (like ones who are weary of computers) who thinks his/her vote is not being counted. All in all, I don't think this is a bad system.

The ES&S web site talks about Anywhere Voting Architecture. What the company wants to do is to allow a voter to vote anywhere in their town. An ambitious proposal, but I like it. I think this is where voting is heading. But any voting system will have to prevent voting fraud as much as possible. Basically, a voting system has to prevent voting fraud by checking three things: 1) It should only allow registered voters to vote. 2) It has to verify the person voting is actually the person voting--not an impersonator. 3) It should only allow a person to cast a ballot only once. The voting system we have in place now is not bad. It is too bad there are some people against photo id for voting. That would help with checking 2). Unless the poll workers know a voter anyone can pose as the voter. A person has to show photo id when writing a check, why not when voting? I just don't get it.

I think a better way to accomplish all three checks is to use fingerprint scanners connected into the electronic voting machines. This is the way my system would work. In a city or town all registered voters would have their fingerprint patterns of their right forefinger in a database. It could also be the left forefinger--it does not really matter. This fingerprint pattern would be linked to their name and address and a voting indicator switch (VIS). The VIS indicates whether the voter has voted or not. A voter goes to the poll and puts his finger on the scanner. The scanner reads his fingerprint and checks it against voter fingerprints in the database. If it finds a match (ie the voter is registered) then the system looks at the VIS. If the VIS is false (ie the voter has not voted yet) then screens like in the iVotronic system are displayed. Once the voter presses the "Vote" button the VIS is set to true--thus disallowing people to vote more than once. If the registered voter tries to vote again she will get a "You have already voted." message displayed on the screen. Then the police comes and arrests the person for voter fraud--just joking, although that could be set up too. If the system cannot find the print in the database the system can ask the person to retry re-entering the fingerprint. After three tries the person gets a "not a registered voter" message. After which the voter can talk to a poll worker about not being allowed to vote. As you can see, my voting system handles all three voting checks really well, especially check three because all fingerprints are unique (even identical twins have unique fingerprints).

This system could be even more advance by allowing a registered voter to vote anywhere in the country. It might require a more complicated system to do this but it would still be doable. I don't think it would be that much more complicated. Of course, you would need a country wide database with all the fingerprints in it. The fingerprint program would check to see where a voter lives and bring up the appropriate ballot screens. The only potential problem is if a voter was in another state and after three tries the system could not read his fingerprint, he would be stuck. The poll workers could not really help him. He would have to go back to his residence to vote.

Is my system foolproof you might ask? No system is 100% foolproof. I suppose a person could chop off a finger (gross!) of a registered voter and sneak it into a polling place and put that on the scanner. Or if the scanner was an optical scanner it could be fooled with picture of a fingerprint. Still, my future system would still be better than what we have now. I suppose you could use an retinal scanner instead of a fingerprint scanner. That would be virtually foolproof, but that technology is more intrusive and more inconvenient (a person has to stand still for 10 to 15 seconds) than a fingerprint scanner. Also, retinal scanners do not work with blind people and people with cataracts.

Happy Halloween!

Believe it or not, the three photographs above are actually photos of ghosts! These are one of the best photos I've seen of ghosts. If you look closely at them you can see the people in the photos are transparent. All three photos are clearly identifiable. You don't need the shapes outlined in pencil or pen to make out what they are. They are clearly people. Some ghost photos you look at and think to yourself is that really a ghost or is it just fog or mist or something else. You really have to use your imagination to figure out what the "ghost" is--like an inkblot test. Not these three. You know what the three above photos are. And they are not definitely NOT orbs which are usually dust or someone's camera strap. As far as I know these are authentic photos.

The photo on the left was taken by Tony O'Rahilly, a local resident of Wem Town Hall in Shropshire, England, was one of those onlookers and took photos of the spectacle with a 200mm telephoto lens from across the street.

The photo in the middle was taken during an investigation of Bachelor's Grove cemetery near Chicago by the Ghost Research Society (GRS).

The photo on the right was taken by a woman named Mrs. Andrews, She was visiting the grave of her daughter in a cemetery in Queensland, Australia in 1946 or 1947.

To see more ghost photos go to the GRS's web site.

Evidently there are three types of ghosts:

1. The sad kind, the whispy kind. They seem to be working out some unfinished earthly business.
2. The malicious and deceptive spirits--and since they are deceptive, they hardly ever appear malicious. They are the ones conjured up.
3. The bright happy spirits of dead friends and family, especially spouses, who appear unbidden, at God's will, not ours, with messages of hope and love.

Muslim Taxi Cab Drivers

It seems that Muslim taxi drivers are not picking up people who have dogs with them even if the dog is a seeing eye dog. What I want to know is where is the ACLU? Especially when the Muslim cab drivers are not picking up blind people. If white cab drivers were not picking up minorities or women for whatever reason not only the ACLU, but the drive-by-cloned-media, and prominent Left leaders would be crying out discrimination.

When food delivery businesses do not want to send their delivery people in certain neighborhoods (like black neighborhoods) because of safety reasons (the delivery people getting robbed and/or beaten up) they have to be careful or else the businesses might be sued. Whatever happened to the right to assemble? I am against racism like any other reasonable person, but it seems to me that the right to assemble is largely ignored. When delivery businesses choose not to deliver to certain places because of safety that is perfectly logical. It is not based on racism. It is a survival instinct--you do not go to places where your safety is jeopardized if you don't have to. Women do not jog in a park where they know rapes occur. If white men are beating up their drivers in a certain neighborhood they would probably not deliver to that neighborhood too.

It is the responsibility of businesses to look out for their employees. City governments that force delivery businesses to deliver to high-crime neighborhoods are not looking out for their citizens.

The reason that the Muslim cab drivers are not picking up people with dogs is that they think dogs are impure and they are not allowed to touch them by Islamic law. Here is the difference between the Muslim cab drivers and the food delivery drivers. The Muslim cab drivers do not pick up people with dogs because of superstition. The food deliver drivers do not drive to certain neighborhoods because of safety reasons. If a Muslim cab driver was not picking up a guy because he was dangerous looking or if a person had a mean growling dog that would be a different story. That I can understand.

Congressional Reform

1. The Congress should be decentralized and do business in their own districts. This will put them back in touch with their constituents. The House and Senate can communicate via video conferencing.
   
2. No back-scratching (you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours) should be allowed in The Congress.
   
3. Line item veto for the president or there should be a law to abolish riders. Lawmakers will not like this because it takes power away from them. The president may not like it because line item vetos put more responsibility on him or her. I say the states have this why not the federal gov't?
   
4. There should be a deficit fund where a percentage of the gov't revenue (say 10%) would go into first before any other expenses are used.
   
5. The lawmakers' salary should be docked every time the national debt exceeds the revenue.
   
6. Voting constituents should be allowed to sue a lawmaker if (s)he breaks his promises to them. I say voting constituents should be allowed to sue rather than a non-voting constituent because if you don't vote you are saying you don't care what lawmaker gets in and what he does. People might say this might increase frivolous lawsuits. Not necessarily. If a lawmaker makes a legally binding contract with his constituents and breaks that contract then (s)he should be held liable.
   
7. Accrual accounting should be used in calculating the gov't capital.
   
8. Voters should be allowed to vote on legislative pay raises.
   
9. No lobbying by foreign companies or foreign diplomats.

Iran Cuts Internet Speeds

It is too bad when a country has to restrict access to information so its citizens cannot be influenced by the outside world or be reminded by its past civil rights violations. I am not talking about a government restricting top secret information from the public. Especially if revealing that information can help the enemy and/or harm the countries defenses. I am talking about Iran cutting the Internet speeds to homes and cafes because they don't want its population to be Western influenced. What's worse is that Iran completely banned satellite TV. What is the government of Iran afraid of? Are they afraid the citizens are going to hear the truth on Fox News about their leader for example. The leader of Iran cannot let that happen.

China is not any better. They censored any references of the Tiananmen Square protesters on the Internet and the gov't censored other web sites they did not approve of.

I should say true censorship can only be done by a government because it makes the laws. If a store does not want to sell a product for whatever reason that is not censorship. It has the right to choose what to sell. You can still buy the product somewhere else. Now if a government bans the product being sold--that is restricting the populations options of buying the product somewhere else in the country. The same goes with a homeowner. (S)he has a right to restrict any item in the home that his/her child brings into the home as long as the child is under 18 or living under the parent's roof.

Massachusetts School Bans The Game of Tag

It seems a Massachusetts school is banning the game of tag amid fears of injuries. The school is also banning touch football and other contact sports too. If school kids are getting fat and the school is not going to let them play tag and other contact sports then how are the kids going to lose weight? Tag is a good cardiovascular game especially if the kid you are trying to tag is a fast runner. It seems this is not the first school to ban tag. A Santa Monica elementary school in 2002 banned tag for similar reasons.

In all fairness, you can get hurt playing touch football. According to the Better Health web site the common injuries for touch football are lower leg, hand (the football players are touching each other way too hard. Maybe they ought to switch to flag football.), hamstring, head (what are the players doing? hitting each other upside the head? This is a rough game!), and impact injures such as from falling over or colliding with another player. Talking about colliding with another player, in Klein Oak High School in Texas, two students got hurt by colliding together when they were playing touch football during P.E. Heck, students can collide together when going to class especially if one of the students is late for class.

Let's face it any activity can get a person hurt. According to the same Better Health web site you can even get injures while dancing. The common injures are sprains and strains, stress fractures in the bones, tendonitis, blisters on the toes and feet if a dancer is wearing ill-fitted shoes, toenail injuries, and impact injures such as bruises, caused by falling over or colliding with another player (dancing can be so rough!).

Then there is that dangerous sport of bowling. A fellow bowler or a spectator can get hurt if another bowler accidently releases the ball during the back swing. Bowling balls are heavy. It can knock somebody out that is behind the bowler. (Okay, I'm joking here, but who knows it could happen.) Here is a question: If that freak accident does happen should the bowler yell "fore!". Just a thought.

If the Left Wins in November

• Amnesty for 12,000,000 illegal immigrants. No where in the DNC agenda is illegal immigration mentioned. This is not surprising since the Left is for open borders especially George Soros who is a big donater to the Democratic Party.
• A push to make homosexual marriage and polygamy legal in all 50 states. If you open the door to homosexual marriage, then polygamists can say they have a right to get married too. Not to mention group marriages also.
• Only liberal judges will be appointed. They will create laws to implement the social agenda liberals cannot get passed through the legislative process. It was liberal judges (5-4) on the Supreme Court that ruled that local governments may force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development. Those judges that voted that way were not looking out for property owners.
• Liberals will make the killing of the unborn more difficult to stop. The Left feels that this is privacy issue--that a woman has a right to do anything to her body as she pleases. A fetus to the Left belongs to the woman. So, a fetus can be aborted. Well, a fetus has her own DNA. If you do define a fetus as a person and claim it as belonging to you like a chair or something that is slavery. If you define a fetus as a person and say he has his own individuality and abort him then it's murder. If you claim that the fetus is not a person (as the Left does) then what do you define it to be? Another species like a baby porpoise? I wonder if the Left thinks aborting baby porpoises is okay. Maybe, human fetuses should be put on the endangered species act, like the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly. In all fairness I should say, there are Democrats for Life. If you never heard of this group, it is not surprising since the drive-by-cloned-media never reported it. I wonder why. Anyway, you learn something new every day.
• Liberals will continue to try to rid our society of Christian influence, including any reference to God in our Pledge and on our currency. Sometimes I think the Left would rather see "In Government We Trust" on paper currency. If you remove God from society, He has to be replaced with something. As the saying goes, nature abhores a vaccum.
• A return to the "Fairness Doctrine" in broadcasting where opposing views must be given equal time. Every conservative talk show host will be forced to give a liberal equal time on every issue. The purpose of this rule will be to shut down conservative talk shows. This doctrine is stupid. Anyone can call a talk show. Not just conservatives. Rush Limbaugh lets the Left have their say when they call him up. Is the Left going to make left-leaning TV talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey put on more conservative guests? I don't think so.
• An increase in taxes to push new social programs. Raising taxes is just a reflex action for the Left.
• Passing a new "hate crimes" law making it illegal to refer to homosexuality in a negative manner. I have always thought "hate crimes" makes the prosecuting of felonies more complicated than necessary. It's hard enough for a jury trial to determine if a defendent is guilty or innocent then decide if the crime was premeditated or not, now the jury has to decide if the defendent hated the victim or not. What if the defendent hated the victim for personal reasons and not because of his skin color or sexual preference?
• Liberals will give terrorists from other countries who try to kill Americans the same rights American citizens enjoy under our constitution. President Clinton prosecuted terrorists acts as criminal acts. Then 9/11 happened because the FBI, CIA and other gov't agencies could not share information on terrorists among each other.
• We will withdraw from Iraq prematurely, sending the message to the terrorists that if they will just be patient they can win and bring their terrorist acts to the U.S.
• Unneeded government regulations on business to curb global warming. After all to the Left global warming is the real enemy! (Well, other than President Bush, that is.)
• Since the Democrats love the United Nations the U. S. will have its sovereignty limited more and more.
• Democrats like Senators Clinton (NY), Kerry (MA) and Boxer (CA) would push their bill to grant felons the vote. The Democrats are hoping that allowing felons to vote will increase their voting base.
• Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House. Think about that.

For those of you Conservatives who think the Republicans deserve to be voted out, do you deserve the above? Do you want the Left to run the war on terror? The Republicans can only lose if you don't support them at the polls. That is what the Left is counting on.

Stereotypes of The Left

The Left categorizes people into three groups: The Oppressors, The Oppressed, and The Saviors. The Oppressors are the powerful bullies. These are people in the eyes of the Left are mainly White Male Christian Conservatives (WMCC). It might be just enough to be a WMC (White Male Conservative). The Oppressed are defined as being powerless against the Oppressors and gullible. They are traditionally Women and Minorities (W&M). Finally, we come to the Saviors. This category the Left saves for themselves. Saviors are wise, caring, infallible, powerful people who try to save the Oppressed from the Oppressors. The Left can never be an Oppressor or be Oppressed. The Saviors actions should never be questioned, because they always intend to do right. In the view of the Left since the Oppressed are powerless they will always need the Saviors for protection. That is the way the world works. Also, since the Oppressed are gullible they will always need to be enlightened from the Saviors. The Oppressed will always be in that state. They cannot change their situation.

If the Oppressed by chance thinks they no longer need the Saviors' "help" anymore this is bad. The Saviors lose their power especially ones in Congress and The House. If we lose our power, the Saviors ask, how can we take on the Oppressors? If this situation happens then the Oppressed person must have been coerced, tricked or even brainwashed by an Oppressor. After all the Oppressed are gullible. They do not know any better.

The Saviors try to stay in power by punishing the Oppressors (like the progressive tax structure and over-regulating businesses who they think are mainly owned by WMCs) and giving subsidies to the Oppressed. The Saviors tell the Oppressed that this should make them feel better regardless if it helps their situation or not. If you will just trust us, the Saviors say, we will eventually help you.

It does not matter if W&Ms are really oppressed or not, it only matters if the Saviors perceive them as being oppressed. Perception is reality, and perception to Saviors is all that counts. Since Saviors are infallible their perceptions are too.

One other thing. WMC are always the Oppressors and never the Oppressed, and WMC are not good enough to be Saviors. W&Ms are always Oppressed and would never think about joining the Oppressors, and could not anyway (because they are powerless). Any oppressive behavior from a W&M is purely self-defense. W&M cannot be Saviors either. Everyone has to stick to their role.

Good Programmer Attributes

1. Good problem solving abilities.
2. Good debugging skills.
3. Has good command and understanding of the computer language (s)he is using.
4. Able to make use of reference material.
5. Is creative and mentally agile
6. Patience and a cool head when any programming troubles happen.
7. Logically minded. Marilyn vos Savant in her book Brain Building In Just 12 Weeks suggests these tips to build a logical mind:
   1. Think for yourself.
   2. Separate the problem from the symptoms.
   3. Define and analyze the problem.
   4. Take a critical look at statistics.
   5. Take no premise for granted.
   6. Try other avenues of logical approach.
   7. Get enough information.
8. Able to see the end user's viewpoint.
9. Efficiency minded.
10. Good documentation skills.
11. Good communications skills when in a group or team situation.

Human Interrupts

In computer speak, an interrupt is a signal from hardware or software indicating the need for attention. There are two different types of interrupts: Asynchronous (random), and synchronous (predictable). People also have interrupts. All human interrupts are asynchronous unless otherwise noted.

• Pain.
• Biological needs (synchronous).
• Strong external stimuli.
• Doorbell, phone, pager, or any other real-time device that someone else uses to get your attention.
• A sudden thought, a flash of insight, or intuition.
• An alarm or timer (synchronous).
• A stop sign or stop light (synchronous).
• Anything that blocks or stops what you were doing for a long time.

Brain Thoughts

Brain-body interaction:

1. The brain interprets a situation.
2. The body reacts according to how the brain interprets the situation.
3. If the brain replays the situation, then the body's reaction increases each time the brain replays the situation.

How the two hemispheres handles a problem:

1. The right hemisphere generally knows there is a problem, but does not know what specifically what the details are.
2. The left hemisphere narrows the problem down to specifics.

Comparison between computers and the brain:

• hardware- neurons, synapses, neuroglial cells.
• software- habits, philosophy, preferences, mind sets, etc.
• firmware- instincts, emotions, reflexes.

Thoughts on Education

1. To get an accurate sampling of course knowledge from their students in a medium to large class (say 10 or more students), I think teachers should randomly pick a student every time to answer questions. This will alleviate teacher bias and shy or quiet students have a chance to answer questions or get involved in the discussion.
2. Knowledge is easier to learn if the student can relate to the knowledge or make it his/her own.
3. Knowledge is easier to learn if the knowledge is fun or interesting.
4. It's easier to learn concrete knowledge than abstract knowledge. For example, learning geometry was easier to learn for me than calculus, because geometry was less abstract than calculus.
5. A student can learn when the teacher's teaching style matches the student's learning style. For example, if a student learns best visually and a teacher uses visual aids in her classroom then the student will learn more quickly than if she did not use visual aids.

Good Scientific Theories

A good scientific theory should have these characteristics:

1. You should be able to prove the theory false. It does not matter if you think it is false or not, but can you prove it false.
2. The results of the theory has to be repeatable. This rules out any chance or flukey results.
3. The more simpler the theory the more ring of truth it has (Occam's razor). That is the theory's explanation should not be overly complicated.

Let's say your theory is "My dog Molly, a German Shepard, can read my mind." This is a theory you can prove false. If you think a command to Molly and she does not do it then all indications is that the theory is false. Of course, you would not want to do the experiment when she is sleeping or eating. And you want to make sure she cannot sense you in any other way to rule out other contaminating factors.

The "Molly" theory can also be repeatable. If she can read your mind on Tuesday she should be able to read your mind on Thursday or any other day of the week.

As for Occam's razor, it depends on if you prove the "Molly" theory in the first place, and state a simple explanation for it. How does Molly read your mind? That is the tricky part.

Notice you state "Molly can read my mind." Not that "Molly can read someone else's mind." Or that "Any dog can read my mind." They are separate conjectures that have to be proven true or false. If you state "Molly can read anyone's mind." Then you have to have someone else think commands to Molly. The problem here is that Molly already has to be able to respond to spoken commands from other people. Otherwise, you might get a false negative.

If Molly can read your mind, what does that say about telepathy? That is a real phenomena worthy of further study. The theory does not prove that any dog can read minds not just yours. The theory cannot prove that other German Shepards read minds--Molly might just be a one-of-a-kind telepathic dog. Like I said further study needs to be done.

A German Opera Being Cancelled

So, the German opera is going to be cancelled because of fear of Muslim reprisal. I have several observations about the whole situation. First, the German opera left out of Moses and Hindu gods. They only had the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and the prophet Mohammed. Why choose Poseidon? Would not Zeus be a better choice for a Greek god? He was the leader of the Greek gods.

Two, would it have been easier to just remove Mohammed's head and keep the opera playing. To be fair, they should have removed all the prophets and gods. Although, the opera fans might not have liked that. Then again the braver thing would have not changed anything and kept the opera playing.

Is this how it is going to be? Not doing anything that might make the radical Muslims mad? Are bookstores and libraries not going to have any books critical of the Muslim religion in their buildings like the Satanic Verses? I hope not.

I read on the Internet that some gay Muslim film producers are going to show a film about gay Muslim life in the Muslim countries. Good luck to them. They probably should use fake names or just use anonymous on the credits of the film or they might be persecuted by the radical Muslims. Even killed.

Unplanned Design Behaviors

In January 2004, the NASA Mars Rover froze when it had too many open files in its flash memory. This is an example of an Unplanned Design Behavior (UDB). UDBs are not intentional. I like the UDB term because it does not denote a deliberate error. Since mankind's knowledge is imperfect there are bound to be UDBs.

Why do UDBs specifically happen? It usually happens when the mental design does not match the actual design of the designer. Call this Type 1 UDB. In software programming Type 1 UDB is called a bug. The more complex the program is the more bugs the program will have. Here I define complexity of a program as the number of conditional statements the program has. Conditional statements are IF...THEN...ELSE statements.

Type 2 UDB is where someone is following a plan and misses an instruction or misinterprets an instruction. For example, a cook following a recipe may leave out a step or by accident misread a cooking instruction. Or a killer puts on gloves so not to leave any fingerprints on a gun but does not have them on when loading bullets in the gun. In law enforcement leaving fingerprints behind is called evidence.

Type 3 UDB is where the design is either incomplete or inconsistent. Both completeness and consistency is not possible. So, what usually happens the design is not complete or not as complete as it should be. Choosing incompleteness over inconsistency is not a bad choice. A designer has to choose one or the other, and I would rather settle with an incomplete design rather than an inconsistent (read: illogical) design. Since the design is incomplete the final product will not be able to deal with events outside its parameters.

How does a designer prevent UDBs? You cannot completely get rid of all UDBs. You can only minimize the number of them and try to make the system robust enough so it does not crash or go completely out-of-control. You cannot really prove the system won't have UDBs. Try proving a cake will be delicious before cooking it. Especially if you have never eaten the cake before. Or that a program will run correctly or will not crash completely. If you are designing an airplane or a Mars Rover you can simulate the behavior of the system on a computer but the simulation has to be calibrated correctly. I think it is impossible to prove that a system will behave according to design specifications completely because the designer is dealing with instructions that have to be done in a certain order. He has to process the instructions one by one to see what the behavior of the system is. A mathematician does not have to do this when proving a theorem. For instance, the statement Bob is mortal can be proved by the two premises: Bob is a person. All people are mortal. The two premises do not have to be in any specific order to make the premise true--they just have to be true themselves.