And so it was done!
Mood: Fin.
Spiney Wisdom
Proving once and for all that Cactai have feelings too 'ya know!
Friday, June 17, 2005
Now that I think about it
Um, just in case you didn't know, I'm no longer using the devided methodology for my blogging, and the LJ won out over this one as my central blog, so you may want to look at http://www.livejournal.com/users/jimthecactus/ if you're looking for a post or something silly like that.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
A Question of Ethics: Fandom and the Question of Copyright
*sigh*
I have large quantities of stuff I would love to post up on either my gallery or on my deviant art space. But every time I go to do it, I find myself deciding not to.
Why?
Because fan art, especially my desktop images wallpapers (I'm particularlly fond of making collauges,) are in clear violation of copyright. Now I can argue, and probably reasonably sucessfully, that me making the works is within fair use. However, the moment the presentation audience expands beyond myself, and maybe a few of my friends, by say, putting it up on deviant art, what little argument I had dissapears. But because of this, I feel stifeled as an artist. And worse yet, when I'm working with the art of a "fan artist" who has an explicit thing about stealing work, I find myself torn.
Specifically, all forms of fan art are in some way dervitive works, (see Circular 14. from the U.S. Copyright Office) and as such, can only be commisioned by the original author. Because of this, without special permission, drawing your own picture of the Sailor Moon character is a blatent violation of U.S. copyright law. Because of this, people like Fred Gallagher, dispite the fact that they have wounderful talent and bring a whole new outlook to the character, have violated the law.
Now normally I say, let the fan community be. Realisticallty speaking, the fan community (Well, I should specify, the fan artists, not the people who share their favorite animes over the web) Have no intent to devalue the work of the original author. It's just something they do so that they can show thier support for a given work. This behaviour is normal and does nothing but increase the value of the original work. But the moment that those fan artists loose sight of the goal, and begin claiming the inspiration as their own, not only have they fallen away from the spirit of the fan art community, but they have also moved out of the protective shadow of fair use. This is where ol' Mr. Gallagher has gone. He has placed strong limitations on the use of his work, (*read can not use for any purpose*) and as such, hampered the spreading of his work to other fans. The question that comes to my mind is, does he know that he's in violation in the first place.
Mr. Gallagher has endorsed, and even encouraged the generation of fan works derivitive from his work base (Megatokyo) in many situations, but in the same breath he has staunch limits posted on his sight that clearly indicate that in-fact no one without his explicit permission may use his works and even has a link on his site to a group that he participates in of "fan artists" who state with harsh, direct language, that producing derivitive works of their fan works is STEALING. The funny thing to me is that the process of generating fan works classifies as generating dirivitive works in the first place, and that the right to all the content from the original source remains the property of the original author (This has an interesing effect when dealing with works that are in the public domain, since that means that all the content from the source work REMAINS in the public domain, even while used in a derivitive, copyrighted work.) The "crusaders for the preservation of the IP rights of fan artists" are effectively a non group, since they have no IP rights within the context of their works.
So this raises the question to me: why would people like Mr. Gallagher (No, he's not alone, I just like to pick on him because of the pleathora of contradicting evidence,) participate in this kind of practice? If they where complaining about people who don't cite their source or try to claim someone else's work as their own, I'd have no problems. Both of these are not just IP rights problems, their a matter of artist pride and courtesy (Honor among theives ^.~) But it's not about those things (Ok, yes it is, but their arguments include more than that,) it's about people publishing their works in additional contexts and people who derive works of their own based on their work base. Under the common (yet legally flawed) thought process of the fan community, there are two things that should always be allowed. #1, the ability to publish fan works (this rule does carry over slightly into professional works but only under the review section of fair use) that they enjoyed as long as proper source credit is given, and #2 the ability to derive fan works of their own from either a professional work, or another fan work. Now, like I said, this is legally flawed, and BOTH actions are in violation of copyright law, but the community has always felt that these where a fair thing to be alowed to do as long as no compensation was expected. Donations are kosher in he fan work system, but demanding money for premium content derived from a professional work was just wrong.
I guess I should jest send him an e-mail and ask. Maybe his big thing is that he wants to know is who has his stuff so he can keep track of how it's being used. However, I think that's probably not it since he has a quote, "don't snag my stuff. make your own. i'ts more fun :)".
I have large quantities of stuff I would love to post up on either my gallery or on my deviant art space. But every time I go to do it, I find myself deciding not to.
Why?
Because fan art, especially my desktop images wallpapers (I'm particularlly fond of making collauges,) are in clear violation of copyright. Now I can argue, and probably reasonably sucessfully, that me making the works is within fair use. However, the moment the presentation audience expands beyond myself, and maybe a few of my friends, by say, putting it up on deviant art, what little argument I had dissapears. But because of this, I feel stifeled as an artist. And worse yet, when I'm working with the art of a "fan artist" who has an explicit thing about stealing work, I find myself torn.
Specifically, all forms of fan art are in some way dervitive works, (see Circular 14. from the U.S. Copyright Office) and as such, can only be commisioned by the original author. Because of this, without special permission, drawing your own picture of the Sailor Moon character is a blatent violation of U.S. copyright law. Because of this, people like Fred Gallagher, dispite the fact that they have wounderful talent and bring a whole new outlook to the character, have violated the law.
Now normally I say, let the fan community be. Realisticallty speaking, the fan community (Well, I should specify, the fan artists, not the people who share their favorite animes over the web) Have no intent to devalue the work of the original author. It's just something they do so that they can show thier support for a given work. This behaviour is normal and does nothing but increase the value of the original work. But the moment that those fan artists loose sight of the goal, and begin claiming the inspiration as their own, not only have they fallen away from the spirit of the fan art community, but they have also moved out of the protective shadow of fair use. This is where ol' Mr. Gallagher has gone. He has placed strong limitations on the use of his work, (*read can not use for any purpose*) and as such, hampered the spreading of his work to other fans. The question that comes to my mind is, does he know that he's in violation in the first place.
Mr. Gallagher has endorsed, and even encouraged the generation of fan works derivitive from his work base (Megatokyo) in many situations, but in the same breath he has staunch limits posted on his sight that clearly indicate that in-fact no one without his explicit permission may use his works and even has a link on his site to a group that he participates in of "fan artists" who state with harsh, direct language, that producing derivitive works of their fan works is STEALING. The funny thing to me is that the process of generating fan works classifies as generating dirivitive works in the first place, and that the right to all the content from the original source remains the property of the original author (This has an interesing effect when dealing with works that are in the public domain, since that means that all the content from the source work REMAINS in the public domain, even while used in a derivitive, copyrighted work.) The "crusaders for the preservation of the IP rights of fan artists" are effectively a non group, since they have no IP rights within the context of their works.
So this raises the question to me: why would people like Mr. Gallagher (No, he's not alone, I just like to pick on him because of the pleathora of contradicting evidence,) participate in this kind of practice? If they where complaining about people who don't cite their source or try to claim someone else's work as their own, I'd have no problems. Both of these are not just IP rights problems, their a matter of artist pride and courtesy (Honor among theives ^.~) But it's not about those things (Ok, yes it is, but their arguments include more than that,) it's about people publishing their works in additional contexts and people who derive works of their own based on their work base. Under the common (yet legally flawed) thought process of the fan community, there are two things that should always be allowed. #1, the ability to publish fan works (this rule does carry over slightly into professional works but only under the review section of fair use) that they enjoyed as long as proper source credit is given, and #2 the ability to derive fan works of their own from either a professional work, or another fan work. Now, like I said, this is legally flawed, and BOTH actions are in violation of copyright law, but the community has always felt that these where a fair thing to be alowed to do as long as no compensation was expected. Donations are kosher in he fan work system, but demanding money for premium content derived from a professional work was just wrong.
I guess I should jest send him an e-mail and ask. Maybe his big thing is that he wants to know is who has his stuff so he can keep track of how it's being used. However, I think that's probably not it since he has a quote, "don't snag my stuff. make your own. i'ts more fun :)".
We'll just have to see.
Mood: Depressed, angry, slightly confused
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Fiscal Management: The Torture of Self Restraint
Well, I'm broke.
Yup, I bought the car. A nice buggy. The problem is, I now have just enough cash for NDK, and books and thats it. No more pennys. And I'm SERIOUSLY gonna have to save up during this school year. I think with my current lifestyle I've actually been making about $2000 less than I'm spending annually. What this means is that without an adjustment to my fiscal practices, I'm going to either find a way to work more hours, or risk having to skip a semester in order to build up funds. However, both cases are not likely to be reasonable, so the obvious fall back comes into mind: Adjusting my spending habits.
I guess that means that I should actualluy work out a full fledged budget and stick to it. It's going to be rough, but I think that with a $20,000 a year income while living at home, I shouldn't have this much trouble keeping in the black. So I guess it's time to work out the specifics. Now the fact that I'm spending $3000 a semester on books, tuitions, and fees doesn't help. I mean that's $14,000 a year for food, entertainment, supplies, and transportation (Which costs me about $40 a month, $480 annually.)
I purchase 2 meals a day on average mon-fri, 1 on sunday, and 7 meals on saturday (Accounting for other people I buy food for. Since I make the most money of the group, I like to take them out to eat for dinner on saturdays to help spread the wealth.) At $6 a meal that's 6*(2*5+1+7) or 6*18 or $102 a week. That's an additional 408 dollars a month or $5300 annually, so I'm up to $11,780 annually. For supplies for school I spend about $500 a semester (Including clothes, pencils, paper, etc) for $1000 annually, so I'm up to $12,780 annually for all of the other things. This suggests then that I spend about $7000 annually on entertainment. When you consider that I replace either my desktop system or my laptop each year (Spending $1000 for a desktop or $2000 for a laptop) we can account for alot of it. Add the cost of video games and MMORPG subscriptions (currently about $15 a month) and we come to another $1000+ a year. That suggests that my "splurge" budget is running about $4000 a year for things like video cameras, anime, RC cars and the like.
Hmm... I think that the best road for me to take would be to calculate my exact monthly nessicary expenditures (food, transportation, supplies, and MMORPG subscriptions) and then work out how much money I should spend on junk monthly, then calculate how much more I make than that during summer and winter break and see if I'm making enough money to catch up during these times. I actually think that I am, I just have to have more self restraint.
We'll see. ^^
Yup, I bought the car. A nice buggy. The problem is, I now have just enough cash for NDK, and books and thats it. No more pennys. And I'm SERIOUSLY gonna have to save up during this school year. I think with my current lifestyle I've actually been making about $2000 less than I'm spending annually. What this means is that without an adjustment to my fiscal practices, I'm going to either find a way to work more hours, or risk having to skip a semester in order to build up funds. However, both cases are not likely to be reasonable, so the obvious fall back comes into mind: Adjusting my spending habits.
I guess that means that I should actualluy work out a full fledged budget and stick to it. It's going to be rough, but I think that with a $20,000 a year income while living at home, I shouldn't have this much trouble keeping in the black. So I guess it's time to work out the specifics. Now the fact that I'm spending $3000 a semester on books, tuitions, and fees doesn't help. I mean that's $14,000 a year for food, entertainment, supplies, and transportation (Which costs me about $40 a month, $480 annually.)
I purchase 2 meals a day on average mon-fri, 1 on sunday, and 7 meals on saturday (Accounting for other people I buy food for. Since I make the most money of the group, I like to take them out to eat for dinner on saturdays to help spread the wealth.) At $6 a meal that's 6*(2*5+1+7) or 6*18 or $102 a week. That's an additional 408 dollars a month or $5300 annually, so I'm up to $11,780 annually. For supplies for school I spend about $500 a semester (Including clothes, pencils, paper, etc) for $1000 annually, so I'm up to $12,780 annually for all of the other things. This suggests then that I spend about $7000 annually on entertainment. When you consider that I replace either my desktop system or my laptop each year (Spending $1000 for a desktop or $2000 for a laptop) we can account for alot of it. Add the cost of video games and MMORPG subscriptions (currently about $15 a month) and we come to another $1000+ a year. That suggests that my "splurge" budget is running about $4000 a year for things like video cameras, anime, RC cars and the like.
Hmm... I think that the best road for me to take would be to calculate my exact monthly nessicary expenditures (food, transportation, supplies, and MMORPG subscriptions) and then work out how much money I should spend on junk monthly, then calculate how much more I make than that during summer and winter break and see if I'm making enough money to catch up during these times. I actually think that I am, I just have to have more self restraint.
We'll see. ^^
Tada!
Mood:
Monday, August 09, 2004
Pushing the Window: An exploration in Vanadiel timekeeping
Been a while again. Seems the one or two topics I felt like talking about here where so strong to me that I ended up scrapping them in favor of the "If you can't say something nice, say nothing" rule. Now this is a blog, and self-censorship isn't really what one would hope to see, but there's a difference between stating a variance in opinion and lambasting someone. And it just wansn't nessicary for me to say the things I felt like saying, so I didn't. (If your interested as to what I would be so adament about, I scrapped a post on Creationisim and another one on SCO, Linux, and the open source community)
So instead of writing some biting criticisim of people's fundamental views, or attacking the ethics of several groups of people, I'm going to write about my efforts to get my Race Specific Equipment (RSE) in Final Fantasy XI. ^.^;;;
For those of you who don't know, the RSE quests are different than most quests in the FFXI world. Normally, it's get 'this' item (ususally by killing some nutorious monster or by going through a "Big Goron Sword" kind of trade) and then walking some enormous distance to deliver it to someone. The RSE however adds a twist. Each race is given a 1 week (FFXI Time) window of oppertunity to open a chest in one of three zones. Which race can open the chest, and where, cycles every FFXI week. Now each week is 8 Vanadiel days long. Now Vanadiel time runs faster than earth time (25 times faster,) meaning that each Vanadiel day is about 57 minutes long (Actually it's a fraction more than this, but that's close enough). There are 8 races, meaning that each oppertunity comes around every 64 Vanadiel days. What this all means is that in the real world, your oppertunity is right about 7.68 hours long and comes around once every 2.56 or so days.
Now for the dedicated players this isn't a problem, they can get their whole set in 8 hours easy (There's 4 peices, and you really need 2 hours per peice to find the key , then find the chest, warp back to Jeuno, talk to the gobbie, and then get back) Worst case they have to wait for another oppertunity to roll around in 2 and a half days. For us casual players, we have a much larger problem. See the fact that the oppertunity comes around just over two and a half days from the last one, this means that our actual usuable windows only come around every couple of earth weeks. And last for 2 weeks, giving about 3 chances in that time. In my case, for example, the next oppertunity taht lands in my 5 pm - 10 pm usuable window will roll around on the 11th, three days from now, and every second oppertinity after that will be usable for the next 2 weeks. However, this comes just after the two week bad period, where there are no real oppertunities.
But that's not why I'm writing.See... I tried to push the edge of a window that really didn't line up properly with my schedule. I came home with 70 or so minutes left in the window and tried to get my last peice. Well, Tander and I wandered around the Shakrimi Maze killing Wights and Scorpions. It took us 45 minutes to find the key, so we started sprinting around the maze looking for the chest, we searched and searched. Finally in the first place we looked (or overlooked as the case seems to have been) we found the chest with only a couple of Vanadiel minutes to spare (So we're talking earth seconds). Well, unfortunately, in my haste to find the chest, I hadn't payed a whole lot of attention to my safety, and had wrecklessly trained a vary large number of mobs with me. Then, in the process of trying to give the chest the key, I stumbeled (twice) and didn't trade. On the third try, at 23:53 Vanadiel time on Darkday (The last day of the 8 day Vanadiel week) I had gotten my trade window up, my key selected, and was moving to click the trade button when the horde finally managed to finish me off.
*sigh*
After getting a raise from the guy who was supposed to be making sure that the horde didn't kill me in the first place (who I had thuroughly outrun ^^) I took the key, which was now useless, and open the chest to claim my totally worthless 500 gil prize. I had spent the last hour taking great risks, and loosing 1500XP to try and get the RSE that I missed by a matter of seconds. I was seriously disapointed.
But the rule is, "If the oompa-loompa's get you, level up, and go stick it to them" so I'll be back, in a better window. And I WILL get my RSE body peice. -.-
So instead of writing some biting criticisim of people's fundamental views, or attacking the ethics of several groups of people, I'm going to write about my efforts to get my Race Specific Equipment (RSE) in Final Fantasy XI. ^.^;;;
For those of you who don't know, the RSE quests are different than most quests in the FFXI world. Normally, it's get 'this' item (ususally by killing some nutorious monster or by going through a "Big Goron Sword" kind of trade) and then walking some enormous distance to deliver it to someone. The RSE however adds a twist. Each race is given a 1 week (FFXI Time) window of oppertunity to open a chest in one of three zones. Which race can open the chest, and where, cycles every FFXI week. Now each week is 8 Vanadiel days long. Now Vanadiel time runs faster than earth time (25 times faster,) meaning that each Vanadiel day is about 57 minutes long (Actually it's a fraction more than this, but that's close enough). There are 8 races, meaning that each oppertunity comes around every 64 Vanadiel days. What this all means is that in the real world, your oppertunity is right about 7.68 hours long and comes around once every 2.56 or so days.
Now for the dedicated players this isn't a problem, they can get their whole set in 8 hours easy (There's 4 peices, and you really need 2 hours per peice to find the key , then find the chest, warp back to Jeuno, talk to the gobbie, and then get back) Worst case they have to wait for another oppertunity to roll around in 2 and a half days. For us casual players, we have a much larger problem. See the fact that the oppertunity comes around just over two and a half days from the last one, this means that our actual usuable windows only come around every couple of earth weeks. And last for 2 weeks, giving about 3 chances in that time. In my case, for example, the next oppertunity taht lands in my 5 pm - 10 pm usuable window will roll around on the 11th, three days from now, and every second oppertinity after that will be usable for the next 2 weeks. However, this comes just after the two week bad period, where there are no real oppertunities.
But that's not why I'm writing.See... I tried to push the edge of a window that really didn't line up properly with my schedule. I came home with 70 or so minutes left in the window and tried to get my last peice. Well, Tander and I wandered around the Shakrimi Maze killing Wights and Scorpions. It took us 45 minutes to find the key, so we started sprinting around the maze looking for the chest, we searched and searched. Finally in the first place we looked (or overlooked as the case seems to have been) we found the chest with only a couple of Vanadiel minutes to spare (So we're talking earth seconds). Well, unfortunately, in my haste to find the chest, I hadn't payed a whole lot of attention to my safety, and had wrecklessly trained a vary large number of mobs with me. Then, in the process of trying to give the chest the key, I stumbeled (twice) and didn't trade. On the third try, at 23:53 Vanadiel time on Darkday (The last day of the 8 day Vanadiel week) I had gotten my trade window up, my key selected, and was moving to click the trade button when the horde finally managed to finish me off.
*sigh*
After getting a raise from the guy who was supposed to be making sure that the horde didn't kill me in the first place (who I had thuroughly outrun ^^) I took the key, which was now useless, and open the chest to claim my totally worthless 500 gil prize. I had spent the last hour taking great risks, and loosing 1500XP to try and get the RSE that I missed by a matter of seconds. I was seriously disapointed.
But the rule is, "If the oompa-loompa's get you, level up, and go stick it to them" so I'll be back, in a better window. And I WILL get my RSE body peice. -.-
Only three more days till my next attempt...
Mood: Depressed, Frustrated, and Driven
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
For the Public Good - BAH!
Well... I've decided something: Civil engineers, you know, the people who build life saving devices like dams and bridges and the like, ya the kind of stuff that could kill thousands, no millions of people should the engineer make a mistake, are not the kind of people that should have that kind of power in their hands.
In working with them (I must specify that I work for storm water engineers) I have discovered a couple of important things: (Remember I'm a computer programmer working for storm water engineers, so these are going to be heavily biased towards computer related complaints)
#1. They don't want the computer simulation to produce results that match reality. Instead they want the simulation to reproduce results generated by older, buggy computer models that are known to be erroneous.
#2. Because of this they have no interest in advancing the practice of civil engineering, but instead, focus on advancing their own career by helping propagate buggy models that have THEIR method in them.
#3. To them, "Calibration" is the process of filling in minor details of the model to make a particular simulation match a real life event, and you only need to calibrate against one event to be able to use model for prediction. This is OBVIOUSLY wrong, and does nothing but hide the bugs of the model (And it's methods.) They don't attempt to calibrate the model against multiple storms with known data. Because of this they are unaware of how far off their predictions are.
#4. In lew of the aforementioned "Calibration" They are more than happy to accept a 300% error margin (as compared to real measured data) on the model when it is first run. As a scientist I see 300% and say "WOAH! Obviously my model's fundamental equations need to be adjusted." they say "300%? No biggy, we'll just calibrate it and it'll be fine."
#5. Since every time they've actually looked at anything they're using they realize they are probably going to kill someone with it, the term "testing" has just been removed from their vocabulary. Ask a civil engineer to test the model and what will happen is that they'll install the program, open the about box, and correct your spelling of "High Lord God" next to their name. And then manage to completely miss the fact that when you tell the program to run the model it doesn't, and instead displays the message "You mother sucks monkey tails!" Then when someone notices (which it can take up to 2 years after RELEASE!) they get all mad at you instead. When you bring up the fact that that kind of bug should have been noticed during the testing phase, and that the only way that it could have been missed is if they hadn't even actually opened the program, they claim that it's unreasonable to expect them to have actually tested it when you asked them too. (I've actually had this happen! Ok... So it didn't make any references to primate sucking, but the model completely failed to run and actually crashed to desktop)
#6. "Consistency" is more important than "Accuracy" to civil engineers. What this means to you, the citizen of "who knows where", USA, is that if the model was horribly bugged before, no amount of inventiveness will ever be applied to fixing the problem. Instead of running the better algorithm (which they will agree is FAR superior,) they will instead demand that all new software be able to produce the invalid result. Meaning that if an older model was flawed in some way that caused them to build the dam too weak, a newer, better model that says that they're going to kill 20,000 people downstream is inherently "wrong" and that the old way (Which they will admit is "also wrong, but still superior to the new method", despite evidence to the contrary) must be written into the software.
#7. The effect of "Simplifying Assumptions". When the models are written, some number of variables have to be left out (A point which I can understand) to make the model actually reasonable to run. So a "Simplifying Assumption" is made, and the variable is removed from the calculations. However, these assumptions inherently create limitations in the model that have to be understood when using it. However, they don't tell anyone these assumptions. This means that if a model designed to simulate water in a channel has the requirement "The channel cannot be longer than the distance water travels in one time step", there's nothing stopping the other, equally unenlightened civil engineers from using the model to simulate a mile and a half long channel, with one minute time steps, and water that's moving about 3 ft/s.
#8. Because of #5 and #7, no one ever checks the numbers to see if the result of the model actually makes sense. Instead they treat it like a perfect black box that produces perfect little gold plated numbers that are irrefutable, no matter what kind of garbage they feed into it. GIGO (Garbage In - Garbage Out) doesn't seem to click with them. So court battles are won and lost based on these happy little garbage numbers. (I've tested this: as long as you give them a number with the right number of digits, you could have selected it out of a hat and they won't notice.)
#9. And yet, however inaccurate, and imprecise the number may be, if it doesn't have EXACTLY the right number of decimal places, it's a wrong number. If the engineer claims that the model is accurate to 10%, so you make it clip the number to 2 significant figures (Note: SIGNIFICANT FIGURES, not decimal places, (they don't seem to understand the difference...)) they will give you all kinds of hell. You can try to defend yourself with "Look, I gave them a whole extra garbage figure to work from," and the response you'll get is "You WILL display it to 3 decimal places!?
#10. If you haven?t already noticed, the fine art of error analysis is kind of lost on civil engineers. I have NEVER seen any civil engineering report (Including the ones that I've had to make programs to write) that gives any kind of reasonable error report. Not one 1000 CFS +- 20 CFS.
#11. Civil engineers are one of the few academic groups that DOES NOT USE METRIC. For some idiotic reason, ALL of their math is done in Imperial units. Even suggesting the possibility of rewriting the equation to use metric units to make them simpler will result in a cry of "BLASTPHEMY!" (You'd be amazed how many of their equations could have EVERY coefficient removed if you used the appropriate metric unit)
#12. They have zip, zero, zilch understanding of statistics. To them, a storm that is on average stronger than 99% of storms is a "1 in a Hundred Year Storm" (No kidding, you know those late afternoon thundershowers? Ya, the ones we see like twice a week during the summer? Ya, those are classified as "1 in Two Year Storms") And when they say it, they actually BELIEVE that a "one in two year storm" only happens once every two years! Turns out that the statistical analysis they're running returns the "excedence probability" in terms of once excedence per X storms. So in actuality, a "2 year storm" is actually a "One in Two STORM storm" (i.e. If this storm isn't at least that strong, the next one likely is.)
#13. Worse yet, they design systems to handle the "One in a Hundred Year Storm". What this means to you, home owner extraordinaire, is that since that actually means that one in a hundred storms is stronger than the design, and (in my area) there are 30 or so storms a year, that your house should get flooded about once every three to four years. Luckily, many of their models are absolutely horrible, and since they typically are off by 300% or so, the things are often so horribly over designed that it's actually funny. Unfortunately the models are off by + OR - 300%, so sometimes the thing doesn't even handle any water at all.
I think that's all of the big ones. Well, the ones that will eventually kill us all, anyway. (The civil lawsuit system being the ONLY reason that more people haven?t died). There's plenty more, but those are the ones that I think have the biggest impact on the health and welfare of the populace at large.
In working with them (I must specify that I work for storm water engineers) I have discovered a couple of important things: (Remember I'm a computer programmer working for storm water engineers, so these are going to be heavily biased towards computer related complaints)
#1. They don't want the computer simulation to produce results that match reality. Instead they want the simulation to reproduce results generated by older, buggy computer models that are known to be erroneous.
#2. Because of this they have no interest in advancing the practice of civil engineering, but instead, focus on advancing their own career by helping propagate buggy models that have THEIR method in them.
#3. To them, "Calibration" is the process of filling in minor details of the model to make a particular simulation match a real life event, and you only need to calibrate against one event to be able to use model for prediction. This is OBVIOUSLY wrong, and does nothing but hide the bugs of the model (And it's methods.) They don't attempt to calibrate the model against multiple storms with known data. Because of this they are unaware of how far off their predictions are.
#4. In lew of the aforementioned "Calibration" They are more than happy to accept a 300% error margin (as compared to real measured data) on the model when it is first run. As a scientist I see 300% and say "WOAH! Obviously my model's fundamental equations need to be adjusted." they say "300%? No biggy, we'll just calibrate it and it'll be fine."
#5. Since every time they've actually looked at anything they're using they realize they are probably going to kill someone with it, the term "testing" has just been removed from their vocabulary. Ask a civil engineer to test the model and what will happen is that they'll install the program, open the about box, and correct your spelling of "High Lord God" next to their name. And then manage to completely miss the fact that when you tell the program to run the model it doesn't, and instead displays the message "You mother sucks monkey tails!" Then when someone notices (which it can take up to 2 years after RELEASE!) they get all mad at you instead. When you bring up the fact that that kind of bug should have been noticed during the testing phase, and that the only way that it could have been missed is if they hadn't even actually opened the program, they claim that it's unreasonable to expect them to have actually tested it when you asked them too. (I've actually had this happen! Ok... So it didn't make any references to primate sucking, but the model completely failed to run and actually crashed to desktop)
#6. "Consistency" is more important than "Accuracy" to civil engineers. What this means to you, the citizen of "who knows where", USA, is that if the model was horribly bugged before, no amount of inventiveness will ever be applied to fixing the problem. Instead of running the better algorithm (which they will agree is FAR superior,) they will instead demand that all new software be able to produce the invalid result. Meaning that if an older model was flawed in some way that caused them to build the dam too weak, a newer, better model that says that they're going to kill 20,000 people downstream is inherently "wrong" and that the old way (Which they will admit is "also wrong, but still superior to the new method", despite evidence to the contrary) must be written into the software.
#7. The effect of "Simplifying Assumptions". When the models are written, some number of variables have to be left out (A point which I can understand) to make the model actually reasonable to run. So a "Simplifying Assumption" is made, and the variable is removed from the calculations. However, these assumptions inherently create limitations in the model that have to be understood when using it. However, they don't tell anyone these assumptions. This means that if a model designed to simulate water in a channel has the requirement "The channel cannot be longer than the distance water travels in one time step", there's nothing stopping the other, equally unenlightened civil engineers from using the model to simulate a mile and a half long channel, with one minute time steps, and water that's moving about 3 ft/s.
#8. Because of #5 and #7, no one ever checks the numbers to see if the result of the model actually makes sense. Instead they treat it like a perfect black box that produces perfect little gold plated numbers that are irrefutable, no matter what kind of garbage they feed into it. GIGO (Garbage In - Garbage Out) doesn't seem to click with them. So court battles are won and lost based on these happy little garbage numbers. (I've tested this: as long as you give them a number with the right number of digits, you could have selected it out of a hat and they won't notice.)
#9. And yet, however inaccurate, and imprecise the number may be, if it doesn't have EXACTLY the right number of decimal places, it's a wrong number. If the engineer claims that the model is accurate to 10%, so you make it clip the number to 2 significant figures (Note: SIGNIFICANT FIGURES, not decimal places, (they don't seem to understand the difference...)) they will give you all kinds of hell. You can try to defend yourself with "Look, I gave them a whole extra garbage figure to work from," and the response you'll get is "You WILL display it to 3 decimal places!?
#10. If you haven?t already noticed, the fine art of error analysis is kind of lost on civil engineers. I have NEVER seen any civil engineering report (Including the ones that I've had to make programs to write) that gives any kind of reasonable error report. Not one 1000 CFS +- 20 CFS.
#11. Civil engineers are one of the few academic groups that DOES NOT USE METRIC. For some idiotic reason, ALL of their math is done in Imperial units. Even suggesting the possibility of rewriting the equation to use metric units to make them simpler will result in a cry of "BLASTPHEMY!" (You'd be amazed how many of their equations could have EVERY coefficient removed if you used the appropriate metric unit)
#12. They have zip, zero, zilch understanding of statistics. To them, a storm that is on average stronger than 99% of storms is a "1 in a Hundred Year Storm" (No kidding, you know those late afternoon thundershowers? Ya, the ones we see like twice a week during the summer? Ya, those are classified as "1 in Two Year Storms") And when they say it, they actually BELIEVE that a "one in two year storm" only happens once every two years! Turns out that the statistical analysis they're running returns the "excedence probability" in terms of once excedence per X storms. So in actuality, a "2 year storm" is actually a "One in Two STORM storm" (i.e. If this storm isn't at least that strong, the next one likely is.)
#13. Worse yet, they design systems to handle the "One in a Hundred Year Storm". What this means to you, home owner extraordinaire, is that since that actually means that one in a hundred storms is stronger than the design, and (in my area) there are 30 or so storms a year, that your house should get flooded about once every three to four years. Luckily, many of their models are absolutely horrible, and since they typically are off by 300% or so, the things are often so horribly over designed that it's actually funny. Unfortunately the models are off by + OR - 300%, so sometimes the thing doesn't even handle any water at all.
I think that's all of the big ones. Well, the ones that will eventually kill us all, anyway. (The civil lawsuit system being the ONLY reason that more people haven?t died). There's plenty more, but those are the ones that I think have the biggest impact on the health and welfare of the populace at large.
To think that I work for these kind of people... I should quit.
Mood: Angry and Frightened
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
An Exercise in Hardware/Software Design
Here's a nifty idea for a hardware architecture design change for the plain ol' PC: Take a lesson from hand held devices and store the os on a rom module.
Now I'm not talking flash rom, no. Nothing that slow. Instead I'm suggesting that when you pay the $300 for an operating system, that you get a hard burned ROM module that has a release version of the operating system on it.
Basically the idea is to add a slot (that would probably look like some kind of ram module, but mostly because it's connected to a memory bus) to the motherboard that allows you to insert either a a rom module, a flash module, or a hybrid flash/rom module. Then rewrite the bios so that if it's a rom module, the drive is treated as read only, and read-write if it's a flash or flash hybrid module. Then when you write your OS, you write your own "OS Drive" driver module. This module would first find the ROM drive, then it would load a "changed files" image off of the hard disk. The OS would take and create a virtual file system that has the OS files (from the rom/flash module) that has the OS and the HDD on it. In the case of rom/flash hybrid modules (Which would be the preferred method), OS patches would be installed into the flash space, and then between the rom/flash/hdd a virtual drive would be created. If the file exists on the HDD, the HDD file is preferred over the flash file, which is preferred over a rom file. This would allow for patching and the like to be used, but would take the basic operating speed of the computer and send it through the roof. And if you make the OS patches do a forcible install onto the flash module, then you can minimize the amount of terribly slow HDD access. And if you keep a list of files in memory that have HDD overlays, you can speed up the search process by knowing in advance to bypass the rom module.
The hope would be to have maybe two or three slots (three preferred) that could be filled in. The hope would be to have a "OS" module, a slot for a dedicated applications module (Which would allow business computers to have tiny hard drives and just FLY), and a slot for a dedicated patched file flash module. On computer labs and processing banks, this, coupled with a ram drive, would allow for completely disk less systems. If the "Overlay File System" where made to natively support a ram-drive in it's design, the terminals you could build would be just scary fast. And since hard burned rom modules are cheap and fast, the cost of implementation would be small. It'd be kinda like being able to buy a system from Dell or some such with the applications preinstalled while still being able to customize the system. It's the best of both worlds, and on top of that, it doesn't force a single os either. You could leave the extension slots empty and still make the system work. You could install all of the OS onto the HDD, or an experienced user could take their own custom OS and burn it onto a flash module. This way even Linux and OpenBSD users could have their cake and eat it too.
There would be a strong limitation, and the bios would have to check this, and that's that all of the modules and the associated HDD partition would have to be designed to work together. I mean consider, you really would have to make sure that the file system was truly aware of this design. But that would be pretty easy if you where to modify an existing file system to include markers for what module layer the file is on, and then actually keep the file system on the HDD (Which would probably be merged with the discovered module file systems at boot time by a software utility in the OS.)
A second problem exists in dealing with moving HDD's around. I mean, how do you handle the scenario that a person with OS module X takes his HDD out and puts it in a computer with OS module Y. Especially in the case that OS module X and Y are two slightly different versions of the same OS (Keep in mind, just a slightly different DLL is enough here) I think it would be important to have a way to copy the data off the modules onto the HDD and mark the HDD as a non-layered file system, so that you could make a transfer. I really don't think it would be wise to go the other way, but even in the case of the slightly different OS case, it would be quite useful to be able to go the other way as well. Basically do a file compare between all of the modules and the HDD and if a module has an appropriate file, mark the file to use it instead and then mark the partition as layered again.
Oohh... oohh, what if this tech was built into an "external hard drive controller" and made into a PCI board? The controller would emulate a standard ATAPI IDE controller, and would actually have an IDE controller on it, but it would map the ROM to a fixed space in the HDD's virtual address space. Wouldn't be anywhere as good as making a true implementation at the OS level (Because a whole bunch of optimizations could be done to make better use of the virtual address space,) but it would definitely make for a useful transitional solution.
Hmmm... I think this one may actually be within my skill level within the next 3 years (Being an EE major kinda helps there...) Maybe I should sit down and actually build a computer with this hardware structure and then modify a version of linux to handle it. I would have to write my own hardware drivers, and file system drivers, but it might definitely be a worthwhile project.
Now I'm not talking flash rom, no. Nothing that slow. Instead I'm suggesting that when you pay the $300 for an operating system, that you get a hard burned ROM module that has a release version of the operating system on it.
Basically the idea is to add a slot (that would probably look like some kind of ram module, but mostly because it's connected to a memory bus) to the motherboard that allows you to insert either a a rom module, a flash module, or a hybrid flash/rom module. Then rewrite the bios so that if it's a rom module, the drive is treated as read only, and read-write if it's a flash or flash hybrid module. Then when you write your OS, you write your own "OS Drive" driver module. This module would first find the ROM drive, then it would load a "changed files" image off of the hard disk. The OS would take and create a virtual file system that has the OS files (from the rom/flash module) that has the OS and the HDD on it. In the case of rom/flash hybrid modules (Which would be the preferred method), OS patches would be installed into the flash space, and then between the rom/flash/hdd a virtual drive would be created. If the file exists on the HDD, the HDD file is preferred over the flash file, which is preferred over a rom file. This would allow for patching and the like to be used, but would take the basic operating speed of the computer and send it through the roof. And if you make the OS patches do a forcible install onto the flash module, then you can minimize the amount of terribly slow HDD access. And if you keep a list of files in memory that have HDD overlays, you can speed up the search process by knowing in advance to bypass the rom module.
The hope would be to have maybe two or three slots (three preferred) that could be filled in. The hope would be to have a "OS" module, a slot for a dedicated applications module (Which would allow business computers to have tiny hard drives and just FLY), and a slot for a dedicated patched file flash module. On computer labs and processing banks, this, coupled with a ram drive, would allow for completely disk less systems. If the "Overlay File System" where made to natively support a ram-drive in it's design, the terminals you could build would be just scary fast. And since hard burned rom modules are cheap and fast, the cost of implementation would be small. It'd be kinda like being able to buy a system from Dell or some such with the applications preinstalled while still being able to customize the system. It's the best of both worlds, and on top of that, it doesn't force a single os either. You could leave the extension slots empty and still make the system work. You could install all of the OS onto the HDD, or an experienced user could take their own custom OS and burn it onto a flash module. This way even Linux and OpenBSD users could have their cake and eat it too.
There would be a strong limitation, and the bios would have to check this, and that's that all of the modules and the associated HDD partition would have to be designed to work together. I mean consider, you really would have to make sure that the file system was truly aware of this design. But that would be pretty easy if you where to modify an existing file system to include markers for what module layer the file is on, and then actually keep the file system on the HDD (Which would probably be merged with the discovered module file systems at boot time by a software utility in the OS.)
A second problem exists in dealing with moving HDD's around. I mean, how do you handle the scenario that a person with OS module X takes his HDD out and puts it in a computer with OS module Y. Especially in the case that OS module X and Y are two slightly different versions of the same OS (Keep in mind, just a slightly different DLL is enough here) I think it would be important to have a way to copy the data off the modules onto the HDD and mark the HDD as a non-layered file system, so that you could make a transfer. I really don't think it would be wise to go the other way, but even in the case of the slightly different OS case, it would be quite useful to be able to go the other way as well. Basically do a file compare between all of the modules and the HDD and if a module has an appropriate file, mark the file to use it instead and then mark the partition as layered again.
Oohh... oohh, what if this tech was built into an "external hard drive controller" and made into a PCI board? The controller would emulate a standard ATAPI IDE controller, and would actually have an IDE controller on it, but it would map the ROM to a fixed space in the HDD's virtual address space. Wouldn't be anywhere as good as making a true implementation at the OS level (Because a whole bunch of optimizations could be done to make better use of the virtual address space,) but it would definitely make for a useful transitional solution.
Hmmm... I think this one may actually be within my skill level within the next 3 years (Being an EE major kinda helps there...) Maybe I should sit down and actually build a computer with this hardware structure and then modify a version of linux to handle it. I would have to write my own hardware drivers, and file system drivers, but it might definitely be a worthwhile project.
Yum... Booting in 20 seconds... Nice.
Mood: Creative
Monday, July 12, 2004
-Disrupt the Democratic Process-
CNN.com - Officials discuss how to delay Election Day
ABCNews.com: Officials Want Election Rescheduling Rules
MSNBC - Exclusive: Election Day Worries
CBS News | Pondering An Election Day Delay
I can't believe it, I just can't believe that ANYONE would even CONSIDER the possibility of delaying the election. Ok, now normally I'm a "take the blows as they come" kind of person, but this is way beyond my limit.
Consider the possibility that a person got into office, (And no, I'm not trying to insinuate anything, this is intended purely as a hypothetical exercise.) that had some kind of agenda that just couldn't be done if they weren't president. Now consider the options that he would have at his disposal if there was a clause allowing the election to be rescheduled in the event of a terrorist attack. Keep in mind, the president is a human just like us, and worse yet, a human with a lot of power. What if that president where to arrange for a terrorist attack on election day. It could be reasonably made such that he was president indefinitely.
Now, this is an obvious extreme case, and not really fair. But the use of such a clause, even to just delay the election in hopes of creating a biased condition during the voting process is extremely easy. And who would be the person with the power to make this decision? Would it be vested in one man? Or would the act require an act of congress to activate?
Oddly enough, I can see why such a clause would be necessary, but I don't see how it would be possible to implement it in a safe way. Because of this, I think it's in the better interest of the American people to not have such a clause. The risk for abuse is far too great. If a Madrid bombing like event where to sway the election unfairly, it really wouldn't be any different than having a kin relative of one of the canidates decide when to stop counting the votes now would it?
ABCNews.com: Officials Want Election Rescheduling Rules
MSNBC - Exclusive: Election Day Worries
CBS News | Pondering An Election Day Delay
I can't believe it, I just can't believe that ANYONE would even CONSIDER the possibility of delaying the election. Ok, now normally I'm a "take the blows as they come" kind of person, but this is way beyond my limit.
Consider the possibility that a person got into office, (And no, I'm not trying to insinuate anything, this is intended purely as a hypothetical exercise.) that had some kind of agenda that just couldn't be done if they weren't president. Now consider the options that he would have at his disposal if there was a clause allowing the election to be rescheduled in the event of a terrorist attack. Keep in mind, the president is a human just like us, and worse yet, a human with a lot of power. What if that president where to arrange for a terrorist attack on election day. It could be reasonably made such that he was president indefinitely.
Now, this is an obvious extreme case, and not really fair. But the use of such a clause, even to just delay the election in hopes of creating a biased condition during the voting process is extremely easy. And who would be the person with the power to make this decision? Would it be vested in one man? Or would the act require an act of congress to activate?
Oddly enough, I can see why such a clause would be necessary, but I don't see how it would be possible to implement it in a safe way. Because of this, I think it's in the better interest of the American people to not have such a clause. The risk for abuse is far too great. If a Madrid bombing like event where to sway the election unfairly, it really wouldn't be any different than having a kin relative of one of the canidates decide when to stop counting the votes now would it?
I may actually have to e-mail my congressman about this one...
Mood: Deeply Worried
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