Letters from America

Day or Night needs - Bike lights comparison and tests

2012-01-26T22:30:00.003-05:00

Another area of technology that has transformed is bike lighting systems and their use. The LEDs and rechargeable batteries provide industrial strength lighting while being compact and lightweight.

The most important change however is the ability to use daylight running lights with real visibility. Why is this so important? The answer is drivers perception and behaviour toward you is transformed.

I did not really believe this but having experienced this first hand, it is huge. I've ridden in all kinds of traffic in major cities around the world, and used traditional lights and then LEDs and "Blinkies". While these work OK at night on side streets, on major roads and during day time, they simply can disappear into the other lights and visual distractions.

This is not the case for these high intensity LED systems which provide light at levels usually associated with high performance cars and trucks. The bottom line is these systems make you visible and a big part of the perception system of other road users, and what that means is, they slow down, they wait, and they move around you because to their perception system you now appear 3 times larger than before.

A bonus is that these higher end systems are available from USA companies, many of whom are doing assembly here in the USA. This is spawned by demand for these lights systems by off-road users, water sports and adventure seekers and even field photographers.

I bought one of these rear lights off eBay - the Light and Motion VIS 180 - used it on my regular day time training ride - and the next day I ordered a CygoLite HotSpot for my wife's bike. This enhanced safety is well worth every last penny for these systems. I also found a used CygoLite 250 lumen front light off eBay. What these light systems can mean is that you are visible even in day light situations, such as riding into a setting or rising sun when road users may miss seeing a bike in the glare.

Check out these videos to see how this looks:

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/1580/cey.mp4

Sunglare example
http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/2372/yec.mp4

Setting sun
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1256/36i.mp4

and then more details in a review here.

A next consideration is narrow beam v wider flashers, and the VIS 180 combines both with a 35 lumen main light and a side flasher, while the CygoLite Hotspot goes for raw 65+ lumens. This is serious light output, so much so, they come with low settings so you do not blind the rider behind you if you are drafting up close. See the comparison shots here if you really still think your "Blinky" LED rear light with 2 AAA batteries that you paid $10 for from China meets the mark (mentioning which these lights are examples of externalizing costs). Need to know where things are really made? Check out Canadian sites such as this one.

For front systems I found this really excellent test video showing what these setups can do for serious commuting and night time riding even in darkness without street lighting. That is obviously the extreme end of the scale, but the bottom line is having these light systems will make you dramatically more visible in all situations. You can see a comparison sampling of available systems here and REI have a good product selection of rechargeable systems and then see this bike review of lights plus this interactive review collection. If you are riding on road situations day or night, then you owe it to yourself to give these systems serious consideration.

IEEE P1622 Election Data Standard published

2012-01-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

After almost 9 months of work the long awaited IEEE P1622 first standard for US election information processing has been published as a joint work product between IEEE/OASIS/NIST/EAC and individual contributors. The formal announcement is provided below.

This sets the stage for a significant improvement in transparency and verification of election information in the US and beyond. Several election system manufacturers are now incorporating the specification and data standards into their product offerings. This also has the potential to save costs and improve accuracy and availability of election information prior to and during elections.

In addition with the success of this initial work there are now several other use cases that are being worked on as follow-on specifications for US elections information processing including election results reporting.

While all this is not exactly earth shattering, the long term implications for better elections and election processes are significant. My good friend Dick (Richard) Johnson is sadly no longer with us to witness this achievement, but he was one who advocated for this work within IEEE at an early stage. To see this finally achieved is therefore doubly rewarding.

On Thursday, January 12, 2012, the IEEE Standards Association published IEEE Std 1622-2011, the IEEE Standard
for Electronic Distribution of Blank Ballots for Voting Systems. This standard specifies electronic data interchange formats for blank ballot distribution, primarily to assist in satisfying the needs of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act.

Subsequent standards may address other requirements for electronic data interchange formats used by components of voting systems for exchange of electronic data. This scope does not include return of cast ballots by electronic means.

This standard is available at no charge from
http://standards.ieee.org/getieee/1622/download/1622-2011.pdf

This standard is made available for free under sponsorship of the IEEE Standards Association because of the IEEE's desire to support this work of national interest and at the specific request of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

How good are modern bike wheels?

2012-01-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

Another use for cadence and speed computer devices is allowing comparisons between different wheelsets. I recently noticed a short 2 minute video of a Kinetix Pro 20" wheel. The hubs are made by American Classic and the complete wheel assembled by them from high end components for Dahon and others folding bikes. Obviously an excellent wheel, but how does it compare to regular 20" aero wheels, or 700cc road bike wheels?

I probably need to road test a Dahon with a set of these wheels on to see truly how it compares, but since no one has shop samples of these machines in the area, tough to do. In the meantime this simple spin test is an indication of how well the wheel rolls generally. This is the spin test from 60 mph for the SparCo 451 20" aero wheel, and then the Williams Cycling 30X wheel, with ceramic hub, same approach.

Verdict is that all three wheels seem to be about 80 to 90 seconds spin time on this test. Which tends to make one think the physics here is the real limit for how smooth and friction free the hub bearings and rachet mechanisms are. Cheap wheelsets however are in the 60 seconds or less range; I tried a couple of low end Shimano hubs and budget wheel rims also.

All of this is rather moot since of course ride quality, acceleration, weight, effort, power transfer, wind cross section, cornering and myriad of other factors that make a wheel handle well on the road, not shown in this test!

There is actually a ton of very high end science, wind tunnels, computer simulations and more being thrown at wheel development. Not surprisingly the math and science only has a limited sense of everything that is going on dynamically with a wheel as it moves under different load and wind situations. Traditionally this has all been trial and error development of course, to see what just "feels better" and delivers better more consistent results on the road against the clock and other peoples equipment. For certain that today's wheels well outperform older equipment simply because of the quality and materials now available.

Where is the Maytag man?

2011-12-28T13:10:00.000-05:00

Remember the Maytag service repair guy advertisements? Home appliance repair has now moved to the Internet and truly replaced him. I recently had my Maytag dryer stop running - and found this superb online video resource maintained by TheApplianceMan that gives step by step instruction on how to diagnose and repair your appliances. Over 250 videos are included. Why can't Maytag provide these resources? Also what about all major appliance manufacturers supporting their products in this way?

In traversing this thread of information it transpires that really Maytag has outsourced its entire repair and support operations, referring you to local distributors and repair. Then another facet is original parts or OEM parts - which is what TheApplianceMan wants to ship you naturally once you figure out what is needed.

What I have learned though is that Maytag make an easy to access and repair dryer from simple parts and materials. This should not be rocket science and it isn't. Maytag do a woeful job of making this easy for owners however. Clearly the next generation of home appliances will know exactly how to self-diagnose and optionally point you out to the right resources on the internet to show you how to clean and maintain them to keep them running optimally. This is also really good for the environment with less stuff ending up in landfills when a simple $15 part can get it up and running again like new.

Garmin Forerunner 305, Sigma, Android computer telemetry and cadence sensor.

2011-10-29T00:35:00.002-04:00

Just how many bike computers do you really need? Seems like I now have three. My original Sigma computer with heart monitor, the Android HTC myTouch, and now the Garmin Forerunner 305 and ANT+ heart monitor and cadence sensor. All of course give slightly different results and features and strengths.

The Sigma gives the most accurate speed, distance, altitude and heart rate because it is mounted on the bike and measuring directly off the wheel rotation using the wheel diameter. The Sigma has no GPS or storage and download however so its only useful for immediate riding and overall statistics. The on bike display is highly visible and provides instant diagnostics and feedback.

Next the HTC Android running Google myTracks does a terrific job. The GPS calculation accuracy is within 1% of the Sigma bike measurements primarily because of the high sampling rate every 0.5 seconds - essential for bike riding. Uploading to online tracking sites of the ride GPX files is quick and easy. However, there is no heart rate monitor or cadence and adding those devices is problematic as HTC is using Bluetooth connections. I keep the HTC in my back shirt pocket so it cannot "see" the heart rate monitor on my front chest, nor is there a cadence sensor available. This means tracking winter indoor rides on rollers or trainer is not possible.

Enter the Garmin Forerunner 305 which Walmart is now selling. How mainstream is that for a running/bike geek device?! The price varies though wildly, somehow linked to tides and moon phases. So much for Walmart's RollBack - all I've seen is roll up - going from $137.95 to $175.95 in matter of two weeks!

I purchased mine off eBay using some eBucks credit - so that meant I got a great deal. I then found the Garmin GSC 10 cadence device on Amazon for $30 with free shipping. These devices would have cost you well north of $300 together a couple of years back. Getting the GSC 10 working on my Bike Friday with 451 20" wheels however required some ingenuity to mount it successfully.

Garmin provide an additional rubber mount - and I used that one on top of the Paul brake arm, making a cut out on the inside of the rubber to accommodate the bolt on the brake pad retainer. The wheel magnet goes on the spoke nipple to reach the sensor arm on the GSC 10. Then the cadence magnet goes on the inside of the crank arm and while it is slightly ahead of the GSC 10 that still works fine.

Now to get the Garmin Forerunner 305 working optimally you have to remember the following:

1) Switch the 305 on outside and place it down away from buildings so the GPS satellite detection can work. That can take a minute or two - so go do something else while that happens.
2) For better accuracy set the data sampling rate to every 1 second, and not the automatic mode.
3) The cadence sensor wheel rotation is ignored when calculating speed and distance if the 305 can see GPS satellites.
4) Set the pause speed to be 2mph - so if you have to stop the 305 pauses recording
5) Before each ride remember to press down and hold the lap button (on left) until it does a Reset.
6) Press the start activity button and then don't forget to press it again to stop activity when you are done.
7) I wear the 305 with the display face down on the inside of my left wrist - that way a slight wrist rotation shows me quick glance at metrics as I'm riding.
8) Use the Connect.Garmin web site for logging activity - it is way better than the Garmin Training Center software provided with the 305.

Some things I find annoying about the 305 -

1) You have to switch it off - it does not switch itself off after say 15 minutes of no activity
2) No full GPX export capability with speed, heart rate, cadence - you can only export the GPS route track
3) You cannot make it use the cadence sensor wheel speed calculator as the main distance and speed device.
4) You cannot set the sampling rate to 0.5 seconds - which would be much more accurate for bike riding.
5) Having to wait while it scans for satellites - it should remember home setting and offer to skip the scan.

Otherwise the 305 is awesome. For the price it provides superb features and works with all the major online tracking sites that have Garmin interfaces.

I'm still debating on having all three computers running outdoors. When I'm indoors I skip the HTC Android as that is useless. But on outdoors rides the Google myTracks does a great job and the GPX works with sites that do not support Garmin. The Sigma is still the best for on bike display and metrics. I guess we just have to accept there is no one solution for now - until someone comes out with something that is clearly better and at a price that is affordable. Still by investing in ANT+ sensor devices that should be a win-win going forward.

Last but not least DC Rainmaker here provides the fullest review and information here on using the 305 for everything and more than you ever thought of. Kudos to him!

Bike Chains, Wheels, Gears, Brakes and other Parts

2011-09-03T19:23:00.000-04:00

Continuing the exploration of better biking facts and the details of small wheel bicycling. Recently I was in Philadelphia for a conference and hence out there riding the streets in the evenings. The downtown streets are challenging with old trolley line rails, cobblestones and just the normal city hubris of road works, pot holes and dug over tarmac, not to mention my kerb hopping to get around obstacles and diversions. The good news is that everyone bikes in the city so traffic expects bikes everywhere. The river areas out beyond the Franklin Museum toward the boat houses and rowing clubs are better off with bike lanes and smooth road areas and jogging paths.

Certainly it is a good way to check out how good your wheels, spokes and hubs are and my latest SparCo 451 wheels passed perfectly absorbing the punishment without complaint or consequences. Not so much for my favorite Kirkland vintage aluminum water bottle cage – it split at the weld between the rails and base. Lesson learned is that solid one piece water bottle cages are needed for extended off road and rough road trips.

Then the latest configuration on my Bike Friday Crusoe held its own well with the local group ride folks doing laps on the parkway. Not least of course because it’s so flat and I’m used to having to deal with serious hills on my daily riding. However I did notice the derailleur starting to make grinding and chunking noises in certain gear settings, but I put it down to the excessive rattling and shaking at high speeds on bumpy roads.

Back to wheels and chains, on my return home I installed new Specialites TA chain rings, KMC X9-SL chain and Paul Motolite brakes. Another lesson learned, if your gear changing is off, the derailleur noisy and general road pace down – you need a new chain! Modern chains wear out quite quickly in typically 1,500 miles of use; old chains did not that much because they were near tank proof and gear systems limited to 5 or 7 cogs. Now chains are tuned for modern extended gear systems and although a 1/8th of inch stretch limit does not sound much it really effects how the chain works with the chain rings and your overall power transfer. Having installed new TA chain rings from France, and a new KMC X9 gold chain, and then adjusted the FSA front changer the effect is dramatically better. Smooth precise changing with the shifters, quieter drive train and more efficient pedalling. All is goodness with this setup so strongly recommend this combination with 54T / 42T and the Capreo cassette. Plus they look absolutely amazing on the bike. Everything Specialites TA claims about their chain rings definitely I can’t fault. The changing and power transfer feels awesome, they made a believer of me, the whole ride quality and handling is now the best ever. Life is good as they say. Which also applies to the Paul linear pull brakes, these are pricey, but buy them off eBay direct from Paul Comp. No doubt that their design is the best out there when it comes to getting precise fit and alignment and stopping power on to the rims.

The travelogue with my Bike Friday doubtless continues with some more trips planned, but at least I am now very satisfied with the components and ride quality. The limiting factor at this point is truly myself and not how I have the machine optimized and setup for what I have invested in the components and frame. I will have to see how this stacks up compared to high end Dahon bikes if I get a chance to road test one of those. I highly doubt there will be much difference at this point as the gear ratios, bike weight and wheel sets appear very comparable so riding style and ride quality may be the determining factors.

The 406 vis 451 wheels debate and Bike Friday Crusoe

2011-08-07T14:45:00.000-04:00

The Bike Friday Crusoe is a multi-function machine with ability to mount either 406 or 451 wheelsets. So when should you use which wheelset? I’ve been riding my Crusoe for over a year now with Speedster 406 wheels equipped with Schwalbe Kojak tires. This is a great workhorse setup either on road or indoors on rollers. It also packs a solid performance punch combined with the Shimano Capreo cassette.

Now I have just installed a set of Spar Co 451 wheels and Schwalbe Stelvio tires its time to consider the differences. First I’ll discuss general handling characteristics and “feel” on the bike, and then look at the numbers to see if they confirm those subjective opinions. And then compare the specs and performance of the two wheelsets to compare those aspects as well.

Impressions from my first ride on the Spar Co 451 wheels were overwhelmingly positive. They are beautifully made and true, the hubs are completely smooth rolling and the black aero spokes perform great. The handling and cornering is more positive and direct than the 406 wheels with faster more stable overall cornering and better retaining of momentum going into hills. Speed wise the 451 wheels are clearly faster; it feels like you have one extra top gear even though both wheelsets have identical Capreo cassettes.

So why ride 406 wheels? At lower speeds for touring with the extra weight hauling equipment the advantage of the 451 disappears and now the extra tire width and depth of the 406 provides better ride comfort and grip in wet or loose road conditions. The 406 sits slightly lower by 1.5 inches, so seat post reach with the 451 is another consideration and dismounting off the bike back to the ground if you have the seat mast in a high position. Also having a 406 rim opens up more space on the frame for racks and fenders or if you are packing the bike into a 29 inch sized suitcase for air travel rather than the newer 31 inch suitcase. Therefore you will pick which wheelset better fits your use needs, or just have a set of each.

Interestingly you would think that the 451 wheelset would be dramatically faster but of course you have to make it ride faster which means more effort and work and power needed. So for the average Bike Friday rider this is probably a wash, they will simply down shift on the 451 wheel to the equivalent work ratio with the 406 wheel and have that 451 top gear only for high speed downhill sections. For spirited road riders however the 451 means the ability to ride a faster pace and train harder on each ride pushing the higher gearing.

What does it take to install the 451 wheelset on the Bike Friday Crusoe? First you can simply swap out the wheels as the rear frame and front forks have clearance for either wheelset. However the brakes either require V brake extenders (see ThorUSA here) to move the brake pads out 2 inches for the 451 rim, or installing a new 451 size brake set. Overall the 451 rim with narrow Stelvio tires works out about 1.5 inches taller than the 406 rim with the 1.35 form factor Kojak tires. That translates to 4.5 inches further on each wheel rotation, and with the Capreo cassette top gear that means 9.4 meters travelled per pedal rotation compared to 8.7 meters, or 8% higher gear on the 451 compared to the 406 which is why it feels like one higher gear riding on the actual road. That 8% however on a 16 mph average ride pace may net around a 1 mph increase in average speed. Ride speed with cornering stability and hill climbing will be noticeably improved with the 451 rims.

Looking at the specifications the two wheelsets are highly comparable. The Spar Co Bike 451 weigh 550 grams front and 800 gram rear and the Speedster 406 weigh 575 grams front and 760 grams rear giving 1,350 grams wheelset compared to 1,335 grams. The Spar Co uses black aero spokes while the Speedster comes with stainless steel aero spokes. Both are rock solid wheels using 20 and 24 spokes on the rims. The front hubs have indivisible performance in being whisper quiet and super smooth rolling. For the rear hubs the Spar Co freewheel ratchet and hub is quieter and seems to roll a little smoother but both are excellent and both are wildly better rolling than stock Shimano hubs.

That is the roundup on 451 vice 406 wheelset rims. I’ll provide further insights as my road testing proceeds and I also intend to try road riding with the 451 setup with regular road bike folks to see how viable that is for shorter rides. There the Bike Friday at 22lbs kerb weight is giving up 5lbs to an average carbon fiber road bike while the gearing and wheel characteristics provide further differences when group riding. Probably not an issue on around a 20 mile ride, but over 30 miles is sure to be more challenging. You can check out the Crusoe with SparCo wheelset here.

Bike Friday Crusoe Touring Folding Bike

2011-07-04T00:27:00.003-04:00

The saga continues here for bike aficionados - Bike Friday now list the Crusoe touring model on their revamped 2011 web site - as a custom option. This all makes sense - their road models are the Pocket Rocket series - whereas the Crusoe really offers a more flexible option - in a lightweight frame - for touring and more. Actually my experience with the Crusoe is that it is a true hybrid - doubling up in its roles. The one I have started life configured by its previous owner as a cyclo-cross machine with knobby tires and cyclo-cross bars, brakes and pedals. Now it has morphed into more of a road sport bike with Capreo cassette and aero spoked lightweight 20" 406 wheels and a new SRAM Force crankset. Shaving 3 pounds off its original kerb weight.

For the summer I reinstalled the original Shimano SPD pedals and have a super comfortable pair of Keen cycling sandals with the SPD cleat insert courtesy of Sierra Trading Post. Definitely cool summer riding choice - but read the Shimano warnings carefully - I managed to slip off trying too hard on a steep hill - usual road rash hurt and more - so you can over do things! Highly recommended however - beats sweaty over heating road shoes feet down.

Next up I have a set of super aggressive 451 rims on order, and brake extenders to configure the Crusoe as a road bike on a par with the Pocket Rocket Select. This will mean the same frame can support 3 different roles in a bike. Pretty impressive. As always you can track the picture gallery of the Crusoe evolution here.

Bike Friday Mystique Unravelled?

2011-04-24T18:12:00.001-04:00

Bike Friday holds an enviable place in the folding bike marketplace - so what makes it special compared to the raft of competing bicycles?

It comes down to a philosophy of simplicity, durability along with component compatibility in the marketplace and then a ride quality that is pure enjoyment on two wheels.

To be sure there are a raft of other technical factors relating to the different models offered - and about the best summary of all these - is by Sean at gmu.edu and while focused on the Tikit - there's a lot of general comments regarding Bike Fridays that I found insightful.

Like Sean I have migrated from a Dahon - in my case the Vitesse D8 with Nexus 7 speed hub to a Bike Friday Crusoe. Now the Dahon still gets the edge for pure city use - its small size when folded is more Metro and Train friendly - but I'm sure a Tikit would be way better - my BF Crusoe is just a different beast - a pure sports bike - with wicked fast performance - which is a blast around town - easily outpacing most cars in city traffic - but its less compact and easy to fold. The Crusoe is totally at home on weekend club rides out in the countryside.

This is part of the secret of Bike Friday success - when I first bought the Crusoe winning an auction on eBay - I had no idea what I'd bought - and neither had the seller - it was an estate auction item - and they thought is was a Friday NWT model. Whomever had originally ordered the bike back in 2002 decided on a weird setup with trail style tires knobbly and just a clunky configuration. The Crusoe is a thoroughbred while is was configured like a draft horse.

Even so it rode wildly better than my Dahon, so it took me over a year to figure everything out, and to slowly replace components.

For performance the Capreo cassette is a must have on 20" bikes. Likewise good rims and tires. So getting that right shaved 2lbs off the weight and transformed the handling. Similarly the zero offset seat post means more power to the pedals, and mentioning which I just fitted a SRAM Rival group crank set with 175 cranks, again saving 1/2lb weight and upping the power torque. End result is that the bike is now 4lbs lighter than originally at 22lbs kerb weight - and a ton faster - averaging 18mph instead of around 16mph on serious training rides. Not that I'm a hard core weight weenie - instead I've equipped this Crusoe with practical components that are bargain priced compared to high end components.

So what is the lessons learned here? Bike Friday ships mostly vanilla components on their bikes unless you order something boutique and top end priced from them. They err on side of average and reliable parts that work worldwide. Weight and performance less a concern.

What makes each Bike Friday so appealing is that you can make it your own. Standard parts fit just fine and eBay is a treasure trove of these at reasonable prices that make experimenting affordable.

So when I look at pictures of other peoples Bike Friday Crusoe bikes and other models - they are all wildly different and personal - no two bikes are the same. This reflects Bike Friday the company approach to assembling and configuring as well. Which is very cool - personalization rocks! It also explains the mystique and value of these machines. This is like the old school marque car companies where people valued the ability to customize and the high initial build quality. In the case of these bikes though they literally can last you a life time.

You can see the morphing of my Crusoe here - in reverse - current configuration working back to what it was when I first received it.

Enjoy and if you are considering adding a folding bike to your life I very much recommend what Bike Friday is doing and has to offer.

Bikeorama - new wheels on a Bike Friday

2010-12-28T01:17:00.002-05:00

Since acquiring a Bike Friday Crusoe off eBay earlier this year I have been slowly tweaking this to optimize the ride and performance of the machine. Now I have it back in solid mechanical condition and the kinks tuned out - I decided time to change up the gearing using the Shimano Capreo rear cassette which provides 9-26 cog sizes. With the standard Shimano Deore group set the bike definitely runs under geared for road use. I had put on a SRAM 10-27 tight ratio cassette that helped and added Schwalbe Kojak tires too. But the road ride still topped out around 2 to 3 mph slower than I felt capable to ride.

So, back to eBay to find interesting set of wheels available from Taiwan. The hand built Fastace 20" small wheelset comes with standard hubs for Shimano 10/11/12 cassettes - but inquiring of the supplier - they shipped me a Capreo compatible hub wheelset in 406 and 20mm rims for the same price and spec's (they have 451 available too). I was a little apprehensive how their Speedster hubs would compare and also the rims and wheel quality - hence this review here.

Well Christmas Eve USPS came up my driveway with a large package shipment - the wheels had arrived a week sooner than I expected! I had already ordered the regular Capreo cassette on sale and a lock ring tool - so that evening I was able to mount everything on the Crusoe. Setup was a lot smoother than I'd expected. I'd not put on my own cassette before, so I relied on Shimano's instructions. Turned out the trick was ensuring all the cogs are completely flush and down into each other, some turning and clicking down required. I did not get it completely right first time. You know when its right because the lock ring thread sits 3 or 4 turns clear above the 9 cog.

Having taken off the old Sun rim and Deore hub wheels I was in for a shock. The new rims and hubs are so much better, smoother, lighter and truer that its scary what I had been riding around on thinking the old ones were OK! Since the rims are only 20mm wide I did have to adjust the brakes inward some, but that is very simple on the Deore levers using the Alan key adjustment.

So what about actual performance? Well being winter I've been riding rollers the past two months and averaging 21 mph on 16 mile rides watching 45 minutes of video downloads; and with a top speed of 28 mph once I was good and warmed up. So up on the rollers with the Capreo straight out the gate I hit 31 mph and clearly the whole balance, acceleration and feel is better. Christmas day afternoon the weather cooperated and I was able to do a 7 mile road ride. The Capreo gearing was giving me 2 to 3 mph more speed along my usual bike route. Sharp acceleration on hills was noticeably better and top speed of 31 mph on a section I can only manage 28 mph on my 700cc road bike was especially impressive. So don't get carried away though, overall the performance on a 700cc carbon road bike will still beat the Crusoe but the gap is now probably just 0.5 mph average on my regular 15 mile ride. I like the handling of the 20" wheels though in wet and slippery weather.

Back on the rollers the next day - I was able to really start to crank pace. Because the new wheels are more stable I'm able to ride at 33 mph now for one mile - but this is about the limit of my VO max at my age - and pushes my heart rate to above 150 bpm. But it is a lot of fun and hard workout. Peak I just managed 35 mph for a brief second. Back down in the ratios I can spin 22 to 25 mph readily. One of the major reasons for the wheel change was to have a more challenging work out - so definitely achieved that goal!

Total ride was 15.68 miles in 42 minutes - average 22.25 mph when "pop" the rear wheel suddenly punctured from a rim pinch just as I was cranking a 30+ mph final segment! I'd used the old tubes from the wider Sun rims and no rim tape, so need to repair that in the morning with new parts from my friendly bike store.

So overall these new rims from Taiwan are working out to be a great deal. Quality, compatibility, weight, performance for the price cannot be beat! I think I'm finally satisfied with the setup on my Bike Friday and looking forward to the spring weather and being able to ride at solid road pace rides outside.

If you are interested in gear ratios on the Capreo - check out these online calculators:

http://www.wirewd.com/bike/hardware/calc/

then
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

and for every option possible see:

http://www.soulbikes.com/gears/

From this seems like I'm turning 100 rpm for 33 mph on top ratio on the rollers!

Enjoy and happy cycling.

p.s. Flat repaired - rode 20 miles in 52 mins on rollers = average 23mph

Chuck Norris, 1776, 1861 and the Fairtax

2010-11-21T14:05:00.001-05:00

It is heartening to see prominent figures starting to speak out on the issues preventing America from sustaining a fair and balanced society with prosperity for its people.

http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckNorris/2010/11/16/nothing_certain_except_death_and_a_fairtax

Chuck makes three key points here. Everyone sees Chuck as a icon of course, and all those 'Norris' jokes, but they forget that those who are truly steeped in martial arts embrace the holistic and moral codes as well. And these moral aspects reach right back and mirror those of the Founding Fathers and 1776. This is clear from Chucks own writings in his post:

"First, because the Internal Revenue Service is an unconstitutional system that is totally overreaching and overpowering for our republic, as well as a bureaucratic nightmare for anyone caught in its auditing web. It has no checks or balances; it can't be held accountable by we the people.

Secondly, as it stands, the present tax code penalizes productivity and cripples entrepreneurs and our capitalist economy. As The Heritage Foundation reports, the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of income taxes, and more than a third of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all; 47 percent pay no federal taxes.

It's time we had a system through which people don't have to figure out ways to cheat in order to save their money. As my friend Mike Huckabee says, "the FairTax is a completely transparent tax system. It doesn't increase taxes. It's revenue-neutral. But here's what it will do: It will bring business back to the United States that is leaving our shores because our tax laws make it impossible for an American-based business to compete. ... The FairTax was designed by economists from Harvard and Stanford and some of the leading think tanks across the country."

Chuck I thank you for your clarity.

Today we have a tax system that is not aspiring the American Dream through hard work and application - it is the American Nightmare that involves hundreds of thousands of citizens each year through no fault on their part other than being unlucky enough to being targeted by their own government! Worse - the harder you work, the more likely you are to be targeted. It pits historically low employment areas across the country where the IRS has planted its facilities, against the other areas that are economically better off. This perpetuates the same unspoken divisions that 150 years ago caused the Civil War.

In any other country this would be viewed as a Fascist government establishment; the methods and behaviours are identical using fear and draconian methods to illicit citizen compliance. Along with pitting citizens against citizens and having bureaucratic mandarins that set their own arcane rules that are administered through obfuscation. A quote regarding IRS policy staff makes this clear. Contract legal counsel working for the IRS complained that wording for new procedures was wrong and not compliant with the law passed by Congress. The response from the IRS staff was "we know, but we're using our interpretation and our wording until someone sues us and we lose". And they know that the odds of that happening are very very slim.

For more information on the FairTax see http://www.fairtax.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairtax

Health Care Free Falling - the real harsh answers are...

2010-11-21T13:33:00.000-05:00

This article from the NY Times defines the current metrics facing health care:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/health/views/18chen.html?src=me&ref=general

So - the conclusion is there's a tidal wave of patients arriving - while the medical staff are all retiring.
And its not just physicians - the average age of the approximately 1.5M active nurses is now close to 50.

The sad thing is - this all assumes future patients have no ability to prevent being patients!!!
It's that American notion of health care that you can abuse yourself and then merely pop a pill or three to make everything better again, just like when you were a kid.

Educating people is key - as is shown by the articles case of nursing care in-home having impacts in reducing relapses. But what about prevention in the first place? Over 80% of surgical patients in hospitals are now chronically obese and suffering related health issues. This type of problem is all self-preventative!

Meanwhile in the hospitals they are fostering a culture of careless in nursing staff by cutbacks in pension plans, medical plans, and penny pinching by hospital accounting bean counters. The scandal is also a complete failure to tie productive and patient care quality to nursing staff compensation. So a nurse who is in work slow mode who cares for only 2 patients in a shift is paid the same as one who carries the unit by taking care of 10 patients. And unit staff are full of go slow tricks using the hospitals own bureaucratic and computerized systems to keep work away from themselves. Hospital management actually reward this keep away behaviour because proactive staff are simply viewed as trouble making pointing to inefficiencies. How long can that culture last when a tsunami of patients are arriving?

Clearly the message is get and stay healthy folks - because the sad thing is the system is all setup to work against you - not for you. The unwell and unhealthy are simply a liability that you have to pay for.

And when is the government going to involve the food suppliers in this whole maintaining citizens health deal? As the Scripps Foundation study has shown conclusively - high fat and high sugar diets have the same impact on consumers as cocaine addiction - and hence 65% of the population is therefore hooked on these foods and obese.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/29/health/main6343889.shtml

The food industry is therefore in exactly the same position as the tobacco industry was. Denial that their products are addictive; denial that they a targeting consumers, particularly youngsters, to make them dependent; denial that they are responsible but merely fulfilling 'demand'. And part of the response, as with drugs and tobacco, has to be education in schools to ensure successive generations are not failing like their parents are.

Here's what the food industry complicit actions means in reality:
http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/12/the-worst-foods-in-america-from-eat-this-not-that-2011

These are mainstream food supply companies providing toxic products openly in main street, and this extends into the grocery stores as well, where just like tobacco products were, there is no warnings on high risk high fat, high salt products, or these only being available in a limited access area in the stores as with tobacco and alcohol products.

America cannot afford this abuse of its citizens any more. Now it is clear this is not citizens exercising free choice and liberty but instead cynical exploitation without any liability for the consequences on the perpetrators and for the long term survival of society itself.

The problem is with so many people addicted society itself is in denial. And like any addicts they see nothing bad with their own behaviour.

Toward collaborative information sharing

2010-06-23T10:31:00.001-04:00

I gave testimony today in New York on their proposed legislation on open government and open data. This whole world of Web 3.0 collaborative information and Gov 2.0 solutions is supposed to be self-describing as per the W3C and their “open data” RDF syntax.

However it is very unclear how this utopia is attained and at what costs.

The city of course is looking at their costs of getting data and then supporting that with archives and updates and publication feeds. Having a harmonized approach can potentially significantly reduce deployment and sustainment costs along with potential software development collaboration and cost savings for cities themselves. Having a common view also of course helps solution providers market to cities nationally not just locally. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the unspoken one of complexity. The more one steps into data sharing one sees the opportunity for people to interpose complexity. Keeping things simple, yet consistent and transparent requires constant vigilance and oversight to ensure that solution providers are not injecting their own self-serving complexity. After all complexity costs money to build and support, is a barrier to competitors, and hence vendors are naturally drawn to inject complexity.

This could be the opportunity for standards based development of “CityHallXML” providing the most common information components of financial, infrastructure and performance data along with census and demographic data.

Today also I published a paper on creating dictionaries of information canonical XML components, aligned to the NIEM.gov approach and CEFACT core components model.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=38385

This juxtaposes with the W3C world view of self-describing data instances and RDF. You have the approach of either the embedded RDF semantics, with all that overhead on each and every data item (aka “Open Data”), or you have this OASIS-based approach of semantics referenced in domain dictionary components and information structure templates that allow comparatively small concise data instances where the XML tags provide the content referencing between content and semantics about the content.

Equally important is that the canonical components are built using naming and design rules (NDR) that drive consistency of approach and convergence on terms and meaning.

This all contrasts with today’s approach of publishing mega-structure as a Schema that contains all possible exchange components for every facet of a business process. This then forces developers to unravel the puzzle of what each part of the business process needs from that mega-structure, often sending redundant or empty data elements, instead of dynamic content assembly templates using selected parts from a dictionary of canonical components.

Now, lets assume everyone drinks this OASIS "Cool-Aid" - they create domain dictionaries of canonical components, and then use shared open source tooling to create their information structures dynamically and the tooling takes care of all the plumbing, templates, extraction and creation of XML instances from backend data stores, and submission to XML online repositories for archiving and exposure through search and retrieval services.

Vendors and government collaborate to develop and deploy open source based portals that allow further sharing and open access to data. Additional niche services using collaborative social platform tools integrate into these and deliver a wealth of community facing solutions to citizens.

Life is good.

This means technically no one strictly needs to publish formal exchange structure schema any more, exchanges are dynamically built to purpose by the communities. We already saw this need happen recently during the Haiti relief effort, when OASIS Emergency EDXL had to be extended on the fly to support on the ground situations with hospitals and the services they can provide.

So what is left to achieve in this uber Web 3.0 world and data sharing dominated by XML based services driven by today’s technology underpinnings of SOAP, REST, RSS and http, IETF and W3C speak with RDF?

We could envision that there would be the need for a triumvirate to manage and steward the go forward where federal, state and local government stakeholders need independent oversight and technology guidance. This is similar to what NIEM.gov is currently doing federally and perhaps as New York and other states are seeking to do today.

Of course many vendors are out there pitching their wares and setting up stall, figuring if they can own a states data then they essentially have a license to print money from those needing access to data or pushing targeted advertizing content at them along with the data they seek. In New York was heard testimony that “It’s only a small monthly fee or one time subscription for a week’s access to what you need and we have analysts to help you”. Notice also that Microsoft has created OData to publish RSS driven feeds that link also into SharePoint, and then Google has its own open data APIs available and associated search tools.

So for the triumvirate this could be positioning in terms of long term objectives keeping data sharing truly open without the dominance of particular solution providers at the expense of smaller community based services, or even the community itself. Information empowers democracy but can also be used to track and restrict freedoms of those who would seek that truth and equality. Asking suspicious questions can incur penalties or allow law enforcement to track potential suspects.

Even in the traditional areas of formal legislated transactional information exchanges for secure B2B the gap there will continue to blur as the use case for open data encroaches on transactional data and network speeds continue to erode what is thought of as optimized high volume exchanges with small transactions.

The blurring is accelerated by building contextual business process driven data exchanges from components drawn from canonical dictionary collections with embedded links to open data sources; e.g. I send the city a price quote for items and embed reference links to my public company profile, my digital certificate public key registered with the city, and the links and references to item descriptions published by the city for the RFP. The city itself then on contract award can simply publish that same information as was submitted as the bid.

This ushers in a very collaborative new world.

A further need then is Web 3.0 enabled portals and services that can publish canonical dictionaries of component definitions to help drive standardization out there in the domain user communities. This then provides authoritative sources for good high quality components for use in building collaborative spaces and information exchanges.

Then just maybe the challenge lies beyond data and into rule sharing and systems?

If we have solved information sharing then the next piece of the puzzle is open sharing of the under laying rules and trap doors that can snag the unwary? Clearly rule sharing systems are the next step up from just data sharing because they have to be built on top of consistent information representations.

Back in the day in 1998 when we started the XML/edi work we talked about "The Fusion of Five" - XML, EDI, repositories, templates and agents.

Each of these represents:

XML - web foundation
EDI - business methods
Repositories - reference component dictionaries
Templates - process logic for exchanges
Agents - implementation control and intelligent automation tools

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.100.3149&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Checking off the first 4 here as becoming closed chapters in the brave new Web 3.0 world, so is the agent piece the next great frontier? We are already seeing related work such as the OASIS SET TC that is providing a framework for information mapping automation.

Clearly the world is redefining what is perceived as possible and what requires better solutions and standard representations.

The food industry and you! Are you addicted yet?

2010-06-12T09:48:00.001-04:00

In their March 2010 the Scripps Research Study shows compulsive eating shares same addictive biochemical mechanism with cocaine, heroin abuse (see article). Remember all those tobacco industry executives stating under oath that nicotine is not addictive?

I've suspected this for years but now we're seeing hard evidence and the culprits of course are high fat content and high sugar content, just like you find in most fast food joints and low priced foods including sodas, surprise, surprise.

The study reported that a diet of high-fat, high-sugar food led a group of rats to pursue obesity with passion. Offering the rats healthful food in place of the sweet and fatty stuff led only to hunger strikes.

The scientists studied the fat rats’ brains. They looked like a cocaine abuser’s: the animals were fiends, addicted to the core.

The solution? Well this is America - so Scripps has developed a pill for people to pop! This is based on ghrelin that the body produces naturally. Their quarterly Endeavor newsletter offers more insights.

Endeavor also talks to "evolution gone wrong" - “Sugar tastes good because our brains are tuned to detect sugar; fat tastes good because our brains are tuned to detect fat. Things that contain lots of sugar and fat are energy dense. Under conditions like those in which humans evolved, when food was scarce, the ability to identify these foods as preferred fuels, seek them out and eat them promoted survival. Unfortunately, in our current environment of plenty, the excess of such foods is making us sick. It’s evolution gone wrong.”

Statistically of Americans 20 years or older, more than two out of every three men and about 62 percent of women are overweight or obese. (Journal of the American Medical Association, 2006, 295, 1549-1555). For low income minorities it is even higher because they are more prone to buy low priced foods that are high in fats and sugars. The healthcare costs and lost productivity costs and social costs of this are staggering. Are we going to start charging the fast food industry for this, as we are doing for the tobacco industry?

Time to introduce legislation that limits the fat and sugar content of foods, place health warning labels on super high fat items, limit their portion sizes, and add a healthcare surcharge to those items to limit their purchase. How many years do you think that is going to take; five, ten, or fifteen? I'd bet that we are headed there.

At least some folks in the food industry are starting to see their responsibility to offer good food options that are simple to prepare and satisfying and healthy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18food-t-000.html

The Royal Navy, IRS and a new fair tax?

2010-06-06T15:41:00.001-04:00

Over 200 years ago the English Parliament enacted a personal income tax to solve the chronic financial management of the Royal Navy. Back then it was a classic tithe - 1/10th of incomes and it transformed the Royal Navy into a professional fighting force that built the British Empire. Citizens were contributing directly to their nations survival initially against Dutch, French and Spanish threats and even Moorish pirate incursions and then of course to a huge successful trade system built on naval domination. That also led to the worlds largest accounting bureaucracy that supported the Navy and its supply chain using paper based ledgers and ships logs recording.

In 1913 the US Congress went down the same path, with WW1 providing the impetus for a constitutional amendment - http://www.taxanalysts.com/museum/1901-1932.htm

Of course this is all a slippery slope. Once established there is no reverting to past practice. As Winston Churchill discovered when he brought in the road tax for cars to pay for roads. In the UK currently 40 billion is raised in road tax of which about 4 billion is spent on roads. But of course politicians find it easy to justify a road tax and people have to pay it.

And that is exactly the problem the US now faces. The whole income tax system is no longer "for the people, by the people", but is instead "against the people, by the government". This is made even more obvious by the stark reality of recession, when the government is ever more desperate for funds and hence taxes the successful wherever it can. And thus inhibiting the very economic recovery that is desperately sought. Worse those people who are trying to work their way out and pay down their debts are the very ones hit hardest by back taxes, penalties and interest when their year end incomes actually incur more taxes than they anticipated. Not to mention that working really hard exposes you to bureaucratic abuse by the IRS because it leaves you preciously little free time to deal with their demands, methods and procedures. Including the notorious "adjustments" to prior year returns that are almost impossible and impractical to contest, with inevitable penalties and interest tacked on. Also amazingly these adjustments work on the principle of guilty until proven innocent! Of course if sickness, unemployment or family strife intervene then this simply makes you even more vulnerable.

The IRS has become so adept at harassing citizens and false stepping them with an arcane and largely hidden bureaucratic infrastructure process distributed across the US. Notice that federal tax workers in lower income areas can be pitted against citizens working in urban areas thousands of miles away. Creating a divided society and exploiting those who are not in a position to question the IRS methods and for whom any government job is welcome (http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/cliffkule/2010/0520.html). Worse still for job creation, actually the current tax situation positively rewards companies for moving jobs overseas and away from the US.

How did a democracy founded on the very principles of freedom from excessive government end up with the very opposite in the current IRS? Two successive World Wars and then the Cold War clearly played a part. However politicians and the political system also has been a major contributor, using the tax system to reward the more powerful. Tax avoidance for businesses is clearly a major part of being a large enterprise and hence worth significant political contributions. And this has led to Congress turning a blind eye to the excesses of the IRS. How can the IRS justify charging penalties and interest on bureaucratic revisionism for citizens, when the government allows financial institutions loans at trifling interest rates, and similarly provides low cost loans to enterprises in research grants and other perks?

Particularly shocking in the "against the people, by the government" equation is now the obvious fact that the most beneficial scenario for the government is when middle aged citizens actually just die! This maximizes the benefits and revenues to the government, and provides cost avoidance on older age health benefits and retirement payments. In fact the more collateral stress and strife the IRS causes citizens the better because that puts them at higher risk for depression, suicide, stroke, cancer and alcoholism, in short all the high risk killers. Do not expect the IRS to keep statistics of that nature of course!

So what can be done to reverse the shame that the IRS has made itself? Fortunately 21st century technology provides the answer, allowing us to replace an 18th century imperial tax system with a system that rewards everything that being American symbolizes instead. And fittingly July 4th, 2010 is the date chosen for national awareness of this new system. It is called the Fair Tax initiative - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax and the http://www.fairtax.org web site provides resources and informative presentations.

Essentially modern America is built on consumption of goods and services. This came about particularly following WW2 (see The Story of Stuff - http://www.storyofstuff.com/) and the advent of modern consumer goods, gadgets and devices. So a tax system that is built on consumers makes complete sense, not to mention that this drives incentives for the government to keep you alive as a healthy, productive and happy consumer. Government for the people, by the people.

One thing that supporters have failed to highlight up until now is how modern computer accounting systems and particularly credit cards and other emerging electronic payments systems allow us to completely automate tax collection. This is illustrated by the UPromise initiative (http://www.upromise.com) that rewards users with college funds for each purchase made of qualified goods and services. You signup to push applicable transactions to their system from all the major credit card vendors. What this tells us is that the mechanisms to collect a Fair Tax already exist and work. Now of course this is NOT a pull system! The last thing we need is a replacement IRS with ability to pull every citizens financial accounts, that is way too much government intrusion in peoples lives. However for enterprises above a determined threshold of sales volumes it does mean that qualified transactions can be accounted, audited and accredited by third party services and hence fair payments made to the government. As the Fairtax folks point out, this is also way cheaper than the current tax accounting companies are burdened with. Hence cheaper tax systems mean more competitive American businesses globally.

Another good thing for citizens is that they get a significant chunk of their lives back. Since the current tax system expects every citizen to be an accountant, there is the small matter of days lost to current tax paperwork. Says this takes 2 days annually of your time, and you do this from age 18 to say 88 when you die. That is 70 x 2 = 140 days of your life = 4.5 months. Not to mention that the IRS has receiving funding during the Bush administration to allow it the staffing resources to audit each citizen once during their life time.

Good luck America - as the Fairtax initiative explains - you deserve a better tax system, and now is an excellent time to adopt it and help move America forward as a society. And that is key, it is not so much about taxation itself as about creating a society that can reward citizens who contribute to everyones well being instead of punishing them.

China and intrusive spyware - taking responsibility

2010-01-16T08:59:00.005-05:00

Google needs to step up and be aggressive in response to China's unacceptable activity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011300359.html?wpisrc=nl_tech

Once again people are overlooking the obvious. This problem does not go away by being passive. The heart of this issue is a double whammy - the poor system control mechanisms in Microsoft Windows and the inability of users to force Microsoft to make change occur so they can take proactive charge of their machines.

But this can be changed and perhaps Google are the right folks to lead the way, adapting open source software (OSS) such as SpyBot to give people the control dashboard they need to prevent unauthorized hijacking of their computer.

I'm seeing two things here. First the task manager and system startup controls in Windows are inadequate for showing what is really running on your machine, and doublechecking that those processes are authenticated versions and not ones that have been tampered with. This should be simple for the user to crosscheck, and provide a clear catalogue of items - no unlabelled mystery processes.

Your machine should ship with this catalogue pre-configured for the factory installed software, so any changes and discrepancies are documented and logged.

Second IP addressing and network access. I do 99% of my internet access to in-country servers. I'm sure everyone else is similar, and hence I could easily run a background process that continually vets my DNS and IP outbound network connections and provides a pop-up alert for anything suspicious - with what process issued the request and to where the server is geographically located.

Attack is definitely always the best defense - and hence dashboard software of this nature, open source, would provide the maximum protection. Of course the "other side" would then attack that software itself to try and spoof it and fake it out - but at least you have a level playing field in that battle and a worldwide community of OSS developers on your side.

Right now what we have is uninformed users being at the mercy of these foreign agents who are exploiting what is a woeful and negligent situation created by Microsoft and their decisions about how Windows handles these issues. Unfortunately the US Government is tacitly acquessing to this situation also, because their own counter-espionage efforts would be negatively effected. Although you can be sure that the really bad guys out there are using sophisticated tools both hardware and encryption to prevent intrusions.

So for the ordinary users mentioned in the Washington Post article, the charities and activists groups with limited resources, this all needs to change. Microsoft and Google are you paying attention?

Avatar - The Movie (in 3D)

2009-12-22T13:27:00.003-05:00

I'm not a huge fan of Hollywood, but there are some strong movies out there this season, and this is probably the one you want to see first.

Computer technology has just reached another landmark turning point. Rendered reality in 3D that is seamless and believable. Once again in our life times we experience an epic event. Of course as entertainment it is now wonderfully exciting to contemplate what is possible. The Avatar story line - the American Indians plight transplanted 6 light years away to another solar system - is a familar one, although the Rambo Marine Corp veteran thing was a little passe. Hopefully by the time we really do have the technology portrayed in the movie we do not have to rely on grunts and high explosives to carry the day.

Sometimes the physics was a bit flakey or inconsistent but overall Avatar gets high marks for entertainment, exilaration, pace and believable story line. And it is a super cool triumph of technology with a story book Disney ending! What is not to like?

At least we are spared the omnipresent 32 piece orchestra that travels everywhere in Disney movies, dah, dah, dah, da. Sounds effects though are totally immersive as well. Ten years from now we will be looking back and mark how Avatar launched the next generation of movie

experiences.

Looking back just thirty years and I see the first computers that did not even have a display screen, just teletype writers with paper roll as output. I remember writing BASIC programs that simulated moon landings and underwater scuba warfare using asterix, dashes and slash characters printed out as maps on the teletype paper roll. Then writing assembler routines to write characters and lines bit by bit in 8x8 grids on the first display monitors by direct access to the display RAM and writing in between the 60Hz refresh rate of the TV line scan. Then the thrill of using a graphics library in Turbo Pascal to draw charts, and working on simulations with a high end graphics workstation from Silicon Graphics. Now the average gaming PC has

way more power than available ten years ago on $50,000 SG boxes, and of course the Sony PS/3 epitomizes that.

We've come a long way in thirty years!

NIST workshop on voting data standards

2009-11-13T16:46:00.001-05:00

I recently presented at the workshop here in Gaithersburg. The event organized by NIST brought together experts from across the United States to discuss the needs and potential solutions.

Also John Borras, chair of the Election and Voter Services technical committee presented remotely by telephone from the UK.

Presentations and papers are available here:

http://vote.nist.gov/CDF-Workshop-Papers.htm

The OASIS EML v6.0 specification is available for public review and comment from:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/election

Life Changing Technology - T-Mobile / Google G1 device

2009-02-16T12:46:00.003-05:00

It's hard to call this a telephone! Just like the competing iPhone -this is a handheld computer with some very cool features not found onlaptops like auto-rotating display orientation, touch screen, built-inGPS and 3G network access. The reality is that most mobile phones will be like this within two to three years.

Ever since I had my first Palm device I've been wanting to combine the tools and functionality that is the G1 now. My trusty Palm LifeDrive has served me well, but now the G1 is the new king on the block.

There is just so much to like about the G1 its hard to know where to start. Let's try to go from the stance of the non-geek - because those are the real end users that will drive the market.

There is so much of the average persons life that the G1 can make a positive change in. Let's run through what I've found in the just the first week.

Answering and managing phone calls (it is a phone after all!) is much more empowered. You can conference up to 6 people and easily switch between on hold callers. But also if you are in a meeting or unavailable, just one tap of a button and you can send a text to incoming caller telling them you are busy and you will call back shortly. You can also install an app (more on this shortly) that can make the phone work like a walkie-talkie between a group of people. And the speaker phone mode is excellent and clear.

There's a missed call management application that allows you various options for reaching back to a missed caller via text, email or callback.

For text messaging there are handy tools that make sending and receivingtext (SMS) much smoother and easier and you can use either the built-in QWERTY keyboard or an on-screen touch keyboard (if you don't want to open the phone).

Your office and GMail emails can be managed right from the G1, no need to buy Blackberry service. And you can Blog from the G1 too - I wrote part of this piece from the G1.

Satellite Navigation and GPS - when you have the G1 in powered profile (I found with the car charger this works best) then the G1 will connect to Google Maps and let you navigate in real time. It will work in battery mode, but the updates are on a slower refresh rate.

This also connects to the new Google Latitude application that let's share your location in real time. Great for when the kids need to know how far away you are from picking them up - without having to text you while you are driving!

GPS tracking and you - with the tracker application the G1 will post updates on a preset timer (I'm using every 10 seconds) and this is great for tracking your exercise regime, bike rides, walks, runs and then afterwards log in to the InstaMapper website and review total distance, average and top speed and optionally download these or choose to share the map. It can also help you find a lost phone in certain circumstances.

Weather services from WeatherBug and other global services keep you up to date with all aspects of the weather quickly at your finger tips. Even watch weather videos directly on your phone. Plus when you move location it will automatically update for your new location.

Next there is the calendaring and meeting organizer tools that integrate to Google calendar or your Office Exchange and Outlook server and provide you quick summary of your day and alerts. Also the contacts manager synchronizes to the T-Mobile servers so that keeps a backup copy for you.

The music player is outstanding, best I've used, sound quality is superb. And you can connect the G1 to your computer via USB cable and manage your own music collection. I replaced the standard 1 gigabyteMicroSD card with an 8 gigabyte card. You can download extra ring tones and desktop backgrounds from the HTC web site for free.

The camera can take 3 megapixel images or video and can upload to all those social sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flicker and so on. Combining the camera with the internet, you can snap a barcode off a product and then do a price check via the internet.

Then there is the internet. Real internet with WiFi anywhere you can connect to a network or 3G networking for on the road. The browser is excellent and I also installed Opera Mini which works fantastic too. Speed is quick and the built-in browser has some nice time saving favourites and up to 4 sites in windows that you can flip between.

I'm using the browser for my morning commute on the train. I can track where the next train is from their web site and this makes my drive much safer as I know exactly when I need to be at the station. Conversely in the evening I can time leaving from work to meet the right train of there are any delays occurring.

Then of course another great site is the TV and cable channel program listings. Not to mention built-in Wikipedia which allows you to store facts from online Wikipedia directly into your G1.

Similarly there area set of translation tools for language help while travelling.

In the fun applications department you can find things like the bubble spirit level and the compass, you never know when you might need these!?

In the games department I've stayed away from those as they are just productivity sinks but I've seen there are a ton of those too, and especially leveraging the shake sensor to control action in the game, not to mention voice control.

You pretty soon realize that this phone is replacing a whole raft of devices and tools you used to have to haul around. And that makes the price point even sweeter too. So far I have GPS device, MP3 player, game console, calendar and notebook, PDA device or Blackberry, a translator, and of course a phone too.

Not bad for one week and counting!

We mentioned "apps" above, how do those get created and how do you findthem and how do you know they are safe? Google has created a whole marketplace set of tools built in to the G1. It's very easy for end users to search the marketplace of approved apps and add an app to their G1. Most of these a free currently, Google have created a bunch already and then saavy developers are jumping in there and creating traffic to their sites by building these.

So what is in this device for geeks? Well it is running the Android operating system which is based on LINUX. It is rock solid and Google have created a whole open source world to develop into and a built-in Android Marketplace to download apps from. And you can connect the USB to your development machine and do interactive debugging. The development environment is Eclipse and Java.

This all adds up to a very sweet application environment for the geek!

The screen display resolution is excellent HVGA - 320 x 480 pixels andthe user interface tools that come with Android development suite makebuilding simple applications quick. Here is a link to the technicaldescription of the G1 device from HTC:
http://www.htc.com/www/product/dream/specification.html and for the "wow"
http://www.htc.com/www/product/dream/overview.html

Last but not least is the street appeal. Frankly the wow factor is the biggest selling point. People see this device and know that their next phone is likely to be one of these. Obviously the providers are also going to be competing to get you to take one too because they want to sell you the monthly data subscription that you need for the internet and data services.

I'm sold! Once you have one of these devices you are not going back to the old world of "just a phone". It's not a phone - its a G1. Thank you Google, T-Mobile, HTC and the Open Source movement!

More from the Looking Glass World of Patents

2008-11-30T21:12:00.003-05:00

Google has a fabulous patent searching tool.

Looking back a year and a half - I see I had 26 patents referencing my two on XML and EDI methods.

That total had bumped up 4 in 5 months. I voiced then that perhaps the new ruling on obvious inventions would slow the torrent of nonsense down. Can the US PTO kick this drug that pumps those $ dollars directly into their veins? Well from the 15 patents awarded in 2007, we are down to just 2 in 2008, so maybe there is a trend here?

Courtesy of Google, now I can quickly see which patents reference mine ( 5909570, 6418400), and there are now this list of 39 in total - see below.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=HEQZAAAAEBAJ&dq=6418400

http://www.google.com/patents?id=HEQZAAAAEBAJ&dq=5909570

Enjoy!

Referenced by
Patent Number
Title
Issue date
6061700
Apparatus and method for formatting a web page
May 9, 2000
6216131
Methods for mapping data fields from one data set to another in a data processing environment
Apr 10, 2001
6295561
System for translating native data structures and specific message structures by using template represented data structures on communication media and host machines
Sep 25, 2001
6418400
Representation and processing of EDI mapping templates
Jul 9, 2002
6457003
Methods, systems and computer program products for logical access of data sources utilizing standard relational database management systems
Sep 24, 2002
6601071
Method and system for business to business data interchange using XML
Jul 29, 2003
6701322
Interactive customer-business interview system and process for managing interview flow
Mar 2, 2004
6701345
Providing a notification when a plurality of users are altering similar data in a health care solution environment
Mar 2, 2004
6748594
Object mechanism and method for retrieving attribute values in a object oriented framework
Jun 8, 2004
6757739
Method and apparatus for automatically converting the format of an electronic message
Jun 29, 2004
6842881
Rule based system and method for automatically generating photomask orders in a specified order format
Jan 11, 2005
6871187
Translator for use in an automated order entry system
Mar 22, 2005
6915312
Data processing environment with methods providing contemporaneous synchronization of two or more clients
Jul 5, 2005
6938052
Access to server resources from heterogeneous platforms
Aug 30, 2005
6996450
Automated manufacturing system and method for processing photomasks
Feb 7, 2006
7114123
User controllable data grouping in structural document translation
Sep 26, 2006
7120663
Method and apparatus for updating XML data
Oct 10, 2006
7155455
Method and system for business information networks
Dec 26, 2006
7213061
Internet control system and method
May 1, 2007
7213227
Rapid application integration using an integrated development environment
May 1, 2007
7224366
Method and system for control system software
May 29, 2007
7225425
Rapid application integration
May 29, 2007
7236991
Changing the data structure which an application program in a computer system uses to access database systems
Jun 26, 2007
7237225
Rapid application integration using reusable patterns
Jun 26, 2007
7257818
Rapid application integration using functional atoms
Aug 14, 2007
7275038
Web enabled business to business operating system for rental car services
Sep 25, 2007
7281211
Automated method, system, and software for transforming data between extensible markup language format and electronic data interchange format
Oct 9, 2007
7363577
Techniques for serializing events
Apr 22, 2008
7403901
Error and load summary reporting in a health care solution environment
Jul 22, 2008

and

Referenced by
Patent Number
Title
Issue date
6601071
Method and system for business to business data interchange using XML
Jul 29, 2003
6732153
Unified message parser apparatus and system for real-time event correlation
May 4, 2004
6766368
System and method for providing an internet-based correlation service
Jul 20, 2004
6907564
Representing IMS messages as XML documents
Jun 14, 2005
6959340
Platform independent business to business messenger in an enterprise computer system
Oct 25, 2005
7043687
Document/message management
May 9, 2006
7143190
Method and system for remotely facilitating the integration of a plurality of dissimilar systems
Nov 28, 2006
7216101
Process for creating a trading partner profile
May 8, 2007
7225411
Efficient transformation of information between a source schema and a target schema
May 29, 2007
7233956
Method and apparatus for data migration between databases
Jun 19, 2007
7275038
Web enabled business to business operating system for rental car services
Sep 25, 2007
7281211
Automated method, system, and software for transforming data between extensible markup language format and electronic data interchange format
Oct 9, 2007
7308646
Integrating diverse data sources using a mark-up language
Dec 11, 2007

"Slots" Ballot Question Maryland: Preying on the weak and vulnerable to fund education

2008-10-24T23:15:00.002-04:00

There is much one wonders about in America but here we have people plumbing new lows.

What is amazing is that the teachers union has been dragged into this, along with the police federation and others to support the proposition. None seem to realize that the State is merely reneging on its commitment to adequately fund education and instead is looking to gamblers and race goers to fund it for them!

This is truly mind boggling. Since when did people with a weakness for gambling become the underwriters of education? These people need counciling and help, not the State exploiting them!

I know in Texas there is a 1 penny per round of ammunition tax and that funds $3,000,000 worth of school funding annually (yes that is 300,000,000 rounds of ammo fired in Texas every year) but that pales compared to the $650,000,000 that Maryland Government hope to dupe gamblers out of to pay for the States education system, along with the further $900,000,000 windfall they estimate the horse racing and gambling industry will make too.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-md.slots19aug19,0,4227950.story

Marylanders have in the past had the good sense to reject such immoral gambling industry manuevers.

Education is something that the community truly should proudly work together to provide for every child in Maryland, not outsourcing it to the gaming industry.

Hopefully Marylanders again see through the charade here and say no to this shameful proposal.

Wind inertia generators for energy?

2008-10-05T21:31:00.002-04:00

Current wind turbine technology does not impress in it physics. While wind energy is abundant the air itself is dispersed and fluid - making it especially difficult to capture and translate the energy from it. Unlike hydro-electicity where water can be conveniently stored, channelled and driven by gravity to yield energy, a row of wind turbines on a shoreline or ridge top look miniscule compared to the volume of the air moving around and over them.

So how to change that? Clearly building larger and large wind turbines is just yet more lessons from the book of the Hindenburg and the Titantic.

What we need is macroscopic generators; tiny devices that can be mass produced in silicon and plugged into a battery storage system. Solar cells already use this macro approach, but obviously do not work at night or on cloudy days.

Tiny wafers that vibrate like sheets of paper as air moves over them, can translate that energy into tiny currents that are then stored in batteries. This would work very well for home use in combination with solar arrays of cells, sharing the same infrastructure.

Sarah Palin - the next President of the United States

2008-10-05T21:26:00.002-04:00

There is so much déjà vu about the current November presidential election that I'd like to share here.

Having watched Sarah's performance last Thursday, it reminded me eerily of the first time I saw Margaret Thatcher, the parallels with a grocer's daughter, very ambitious, deeply right wing, and prone to wanting to win people over with homily expressions and her mannerisms. But underneath having an agenda of stark consequences for the very people who thought that they could trust their own well being to her.

So here is the scenario that leads to Sarah becoming President of the United States.

First in November, the Republicans once again pull off a win without winning the popular vote. America is deeply polarized between the democratic cities and the republican countryside surrounding them. You can see this from the voting patterns and general behaviour of each group. Travelling out to West Virginia this weekend, lots of McCain / Palin campaign banners displayed in peoples front yards and on their trucks. I only saw one Obama banner, carefully placed back in the yard so passersby can not easily drive off with it.

So Democrats win the cities, Republicans the towns and villages around them. However particularly in the 14 swing vote States we could again see voting machine irregularities leading to a narrow but crucial win for Republicans. Perhaps the last time they will be able to play this card because changes are coming in voting systems to safeguard them for the future.

So the McCain/Palin ticket gets their noses across the finish line by a hair for the win.
Next we have the inauguration and McCain in place for a brief moment before claims of health failure lead to him stepping down and handing the reins to Sarah. And the right press and media will line up behind her remarkable talents as meriting the chance to run the country.

What is especially disturbing is how this happened in the reporting of the Vice-Presidential debate. For instance CNN mentioned Sarah Palin 2-to-1 over Jim Biden in their front page piece, and also picked meaningless quotes from Jim compared to homily and targeted pieces for Sarah that her supporters clearer would resonate with.

Perhaps the most telling answer was when each was asked how they would react if they did have to take over as President (CNN left those answers out). Jim answered that he is deeply committed to the Obama program and the ideals they share together and that he would complete Obama’s program. Sarah said she and John were both mavericks and that she would make her own mind up on what would be needed to be done. If that is not a person who sees themselves as a President in the wings, I don’t know what is.

But even if I’m wrong on all this, the dice has been cast because next there is the 2012 election for which Sarah is clearly being already groomed to win.

I just hope that citizens realize that it is their country and they need to elect people that respect that and put citizens best interests ahead of corporate America and the global financial industry and energy industries.

White Paper on CAM v1.1 and W3C Schema v1.1 Insights

2008-09-09T11:47:00.002-04:00

Here are the collected thoughts on the current state of play with Schema and the XSD v1.1 work vis the OASIS CAM template work.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/29164/White%20Paper%20on%20CAM%20and%20XSD.pdf

Clearly we've made significant progress on all this over the past 5 years and more importantly end users are understanding the choices and how these impact the way their systems and solutions are engineered.

Gas-guzzlers - Edmunds.com attempting to re-write reality?

2008-08-09T22:22:00.016-04:00

Oil companies and Detroit would love Americans to continue to hang on to their gas guzzlers for as long as possible.

Enter Edmunds.com, obviously a stalwart of the car industry, to persuade everyone that switching out that gas-guzzler could be a bad move financially.

Here's the example they cite:

"A common example demonstrates the potential pitfalls of ditching that SUV: A consumer trades in a four-year old GMC Yukon, worth $13,483, for a new $21,647 Toyota Prius. The difference is $8,164. If the consumer drives 1,200 miles per month and gas costs $4.07 per gallon (national average), the monthly fuel savings will be $201.34. While this may seem attractive, it will take 41 months to pay back the additional cost of the Prius over the trade-in value of the Yukon".

Notice it is a little difficult to unravel what is going on here. When you check their online web tool it reveals that they rate the Yukon at 17 mpg and the Prius at 47 mpg. So the Yukon needs 1200 / 17 = 70.6 gallons to travel 1200 miles, while the Prius needs 25.5 gallons.

There are two things that Edmunds.com is not telling you. First in terms of global warming - the Prius is an AT-PZEV compliant vehicle. This means that the Yukon will emit from 5 to 10 times the amount of CO2 and NO2 polution.

Enter the battle of the calculators. The Green Hybrid site has one and when I put the Yukon numbers in that it reports that the Prius saves you $2,188 a year which is in line with Edmunds calculation of $2,400 a year. But what is the impact of the Prius being AT-PZEV rated? You can see that impact of the carbon emissions using this calculator. Using the simple method of gallons burned then the Yukon emits 7.44 metric tons of CO2 travelling 14,400 miles annually while the Prius emits 2.69 metric tons of CO2. Of course the AT-PZEV emissions control also impacts this dramatically downward too.

Now both calculators are ignoring the TRUE COST of gasoline and oil. Way back in 1988 people realized that the US government is providing all kinds of hidden subsidies to the industry. The experts at the ICTA estimate the result is that gasoline is really costing Americans closer to $12 per gallon more than the pump price, which they are paying through their regular taxes each year.

Using a cost of $16 per gallon - then the Prius purchase pay-off period drops to just 11 months.

Sobering thoughts and a reality that obviously the oil companies and Detroit definately do not want you to know.

Peer to Patent - Good Idea or Bad?

2008-02-24T22:12:00.005-05:00

The ACM Communications in February carries an article by Andy Oram extolling the virtues of the new peer to patent experiment that looks to ameliorate the problems in the patent process.

Snag is I'm not sure it is helping at all for those IT and software related patents.

The basic problem is two fold. First there really is nothing new being invented in computing - instead all the early inventions in the field dating back to the 40's through to
the 60's are merely being applied in interesting and useful new ways that are simply applications or refinements of the technology - most all of which are intuitively obvious to any practitioner in the field. The only exception being new hardware fabrications pushing the boundaries of practical physics - but that is really the field of applied engineering and not computer software and IT.

The second part of the problem flows from the first in that the real inhibitor to implementers is not having the "invention". Quite the contrary - ideas are aplenty and cheap - whereas the resources, time, backing and support to bring them to successful fruition are the inhibitors.

Moreover to compound this computing has entered every facet of modern life
so the scope for applications of computing is pretty much endless.

Enter a rag-tag army of patent-police dedicated to stopping frivolous patents by reviewing them via Peer-To-Patent's (PTP) website (http://peertopatent.org). Why are we wasting our time? I'd wager $10 that 99.9% of patents are not inventions at all - but simply applications of existing infrastructure and capabilities.
Certainly from the selection I saw under review at PTP's website today - they all fit that category - and
clearly PTP thought so too - so they'd selected them for attention.

I saw today this gem - "Method for generating mnemonic random passcodes" - I wrote something along these lines for my undergraduate work on a PDP11 30 years ago. These types of patents are submitted by eager patent attorneys who egg on their clients - better to have it patented - should be possible to have the PTO award it...

The bottom line is that the patent office has to stop recognizing these things as inventions and worthy of patents. They are quite clearly not.

Another example using GPS devices to track pets. This is not an invention. It's taking the same small format GPS device that athletes have been using for more than two years to track themselves and putting a doggie collar strap on it.

We have to go back to the original purpose behind patents.

It was to protect the inventor who toiled in his laboratory
to create some new breakthrough that had not been seen before
that surmounted previous limitations and challenges and brought
truly new capabilities and solutions to the field.

All those long hours of painstaking research, blind alleys and simply trail and error experimenting till you came up with the answers you needed.

Computing doesn't work that way. We work on software and accompanying hardware and create a solution from the
collection of preexisting "Lego bricks" or fabricate some new
bricks of your own to add to the designers collections.

This may take you a few days, a few weeks or a few months - but not years - quite simply your funding would dry up long before that - in fact the bean-counters these days want tangible results in weeks only - otherwise they are generally not interested.

And worse - the current patent system has been completely subverted by large corporations and patent lawyers each responding to the other - so even if the inventor now tries to patent something - its lost in a tidal
wave of filings from giant corporations - who can use their own phalanxes of patent portfolios to either attack of defend in the marketplace as they choose.

Then the patent office itself - that is self-funding - thanks to Ronald Reagan. So they themselves have a huge vested interested in a torrent of endless trivial patents and awarding them so that corporations feel threatened and file yet more patents. The last thing the executives at the PTO want is for people to stop filing trivial patents.

So whom or what is peer-to-patent helping? Intriguingly it is sponsored by GE, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Red Hat!

Having looked at PTP's site and purpose I'm not at all enamoured of investing my valuable time in this. Frankly the only way to solve the current patent chaos is to have the PTO continue to issue more and more increasingly stupid and worthless patents so that people can finally say "enough" and the whole rotten software patent edifice collapse under its own heaving morass.

Besides the marketplace is largely consigning all this nonsense to history
through new open source and open resource collaborative solutions
and by using new licensing techniques. The competitive landscape has
for ever been changed by the internet and services and solutions that
are replacing traditional 1980's delivery methods that foster and attempt
to continue the "let's patent it" mindset. The more products that are
rejected by the marketplace because they are patented and hence place
restrictions on how they can be adopted and purposed the sooner
people stop this disruptive and arcane practice that serves a tiny few
and restricts the many.

Recognition of contributions to the industry

2007-12-02T17:11:00.000-05:00

The software industry touches every facet of our lives because computers are present in everything from your refrigerator to your car to cellphone services, health, safety, finances and of course government.

It's difficult therefore to estimate the impacts of individual areas of work
in the bigger scheme of things, but we can definitely look at specific areas
of work and point to seminal events in time and space.

One such is the founding of the XML/edi Group (http://xmledi-group.com/) back ten years ago now.

This work was the precursor to first the ebXML initiative (http://ebxml.xml.org) and now the whole area of work that is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the concepts such as those enshrined in the OASIS BCM (Business-Centric Methodology) specification.

It's nice when some small recognition is possible - and the ACM is now
recognizing senior members who have made contributions in their specific areas of interest - a total of 98 for 2007.

While not quite the Emmy's at least this is satisfying and much cheaper and "green" to organize!

Brennan Center and Verified Voting learn old lesson the hard way

2007-11-04T14:43:00.001-05:00

The field of election audits is one that is attracting a lot of academic attention. It's a good field for academia where learned papers, funding, thesis topics and studies are aplenty.

It seems though that the academics involved are squabbling over the honey pot instead of focusing on the bigger social goals and picture.

The public view is centered on the need to have election auditing that is above reproach and using mathematically sound and agreed methods to give people a high level of confidence in the outcomes.

Of course exacerbating the situation in the US is the counting software and records available for auditing that are woeful at best. Work has begun - such as by the California SOS - to use open public recording standards for publishing election results. In the meantime statisticians have only bare information to work with. Nevertheless good strides have been made in the past couple of years in the area of election audit mathematics.

Enter the Brennan Center and Verified Voting who together sponsored an October event in Minnesota to showcase election auditing techniques and capabilities.

The first hint that this may be problematic for them is that they wished to keep this somewhat exclusive and to pick and choose who came and who presented. Lesson #1 - if you are espousing open public election auditing its a pretty bad idea to restrict attendance to only those people you think should be there.

Next up Lesson #2 - this is a field that demands peer-review and ideas that can be universally verified as sound and in-line with the latest state-of-the-art and consensus around that (see here). It looks really bad if you exclude people who are critical of your central ideas and finding flaws that you appear not to be able to counter or otherwise refute except by heavy handedness.

Lesson #3 - hiding does not get the job done. Using hotel staff to harass would be participants and exploiting arcane local legal bye-laws to circumvent basic free-speech rights looks downright nasty and mean spirited. It also puts you in jeopardy for future events where government attendees may see your prior actions as falling foul of OMB restrictions on their event attendance. In short if your ideas cannot stand up to public scrutiny and fair
open comment there is no way you can have any credibility in this field.  It's also not reality in the age of the Internet
and collaborative communities online that demand openness. Using
face-to-face opportunities to drive consensus building is the perfect opportunity - nothing like the lobby of a hotel or
the bar to really allow people to align their ideas and have frank and open talks.

Lesson #4 - just because you have a wall of PhD's does not mean you can brow beat people into submission - your ideas must be credible and work in the real world and stand up to formal peer review and public debate. You will not win contracts from election authorities to do auditing through exclusion of potential critics or competitors. You must demonstrate both that you have a solid team, and also that the ideas and techniques have passed open public peer review. Obviously it looks really bad if you deliberately exclude certain people to avoid such open debate occurring, for whatever reasons or justifications you may pro-offer up after the fact.

Lesson #5 - it not about your own personal Nobel Prize Award stupid!  Academics will squabble over who's paper did what in the
field, and who first developed what algorithms.  No place for this in a field that demands open frank and fair collaboration.  Do your citations, do your attributing, and just get the job done here please.  Just check your egos in with the cloakroom attendant at the door; you can collect those later.

Lesson #6 - can we PLEASE get back to solving the real needs in society here? A formal road-map involving combining good practices in building audit records, audit support techniques and then a suite of mathematical tools to operate on and verify the election outcomes are what is needed urgently. Showing how these align with EAC VVSG what steps vendors should be taking also will help build the case. Showing how using open public standards such as OASIS Election Markup Language (EML) can fundamentally empower election auditing is also essential.

Unfortunately instead the Brennan Center and Verified Voting seem to want to instead engage in a "three monkeys" exercise putting out statements like this one.

Hopefully the lessons learned are that they need to be fully inclusive at their future events; that they need an open road map that everyone in the field can objectively and fully contribute to; and then need open public standards and methods to be embraced at the core of that, not just a handpicked inner elite from academia circles.

A very emotive issue - American labour markets and exploitation

2007-08-08T21:38:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of working recently with Kim Berry on implementing an XML project for the State of California.

During the course of that I found that the bond was not just around a passion for good software development but also for the industry itself and its health.

Kim leads up the Programmers Guild organization championing rights and conditions in the industry.

His article in BusinessWeek today - sums up the situation facing employees in the industry and being able to maintain a career and job security for their families.

The .COM era following by the bust led to seminal changes in the hiring practices and pay scales. The .COM boom brought with it the advent of offshore development, and temporary on-shoring staff who learned and then took their knowledge back offshore.

The result has been a radical shift in the makeup of software teams across the USA with a preponderance of Indian and now Asian developers. Older American staff have been pushed into niche areas; government where citizenship is a prerequisite and management or specialized support and collaborative or support roles.

And the Indian staff themselves have to contend with sharp practice from employers who can exploit their fragile existence on expiring visas, and lawyers who demand payments for INS filing work.

The upshot has been to create a sea change in the industry and the long term prospects for younger home-grown staff coming up to replace the aging work force look particularly bleak.

The collusion of all decision makers in this has been tacit. Notice that contract awards have been driven by lowest price regardless of solution approach, even in government contracting. Noone stopped to think of the longer term consequences. Congress was led into thinking their measures on visas were abating a shortage of skills, instead of driving down costs and sending jobs overseas. And now Microsoft and IBM are building new universities and research campuses in India and China so they have offshored those resource opportunities away from Americans too.

It is all to clear to see how quickly this unfolded. The Genie is out of the bottle and not going back in. Where it becomes really interesting though is to note this initial round has focused on the software industry where high salaries drove the overseas engines thirst for market penetration. Once the software industry reaches saturation and the salaries bottom out, where to next?

The legal industry is the next on the block, where so many administrative legal actions can be moved via technology. Notice all New York City parking tickets are processed by workers in Sierra Leone keying in the details! The tickets are then sent electronically back to New York for printing and mailing.

It's only a matter of time before whole other areas of legal process are targetted. It's going to be interesting to see how lawyers react when they see plunging rates and demand forcing them to compete against each other for dwindling pool of prestige work. Then we may actually see some different legislation in front of Congress?

Patents update - sanity check?

2007-05-16T18:06:00.000-04:00

Since December when I posted my original linkage of the 22 patents referencing my original two - there are now 4 more - making a total of 26. Not bad in 5 months of elapsed time.

However there is now some ray of hope that there may be a halt called to this continuing "Alice through the Looking Glass" world of software patents.

A recent ruling by the Supreme Court has raised the bar on what is to be accepted as "obvious". eWeek reports here more details -

== Lawrence Rosen, a partner in the law firm Rosenlaw & Einschlag and well-known open-source law expert, is inclined to agree. "As of April 30, many fewer patents will be valid under the Supreme Court's newly articulated obviousness standard for patentability. Software developers and distributors are at much less risk of being sued over obvious patents."

Another result, according to Rosen, should be that "[t]he quality of issued software patents will rise, but there will be far fewer of them." ==

Then eWeeks Jim Rapoza's column on the case notes -

== In the case, which dealt with a patent for adjustable gas pedals in cars, the Supreme Court said the previous tests for non-obviousness were too weak and easily circumvented by unoriginal ideas. With their ruling they have set a much higher bar for showing that an idea isn't obvious and have made it easier to use prior art to prove the obviousness of an idea.

Even better, rather than sending the case back to a lower court, the Supreme Court ruled on the gas pedal case immediately using their new benchmark for obviousness. ==

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith interviewed with Fortune Magazine stated that many established and familiar open source tools violate up to 235 of its existing patents.

One immediately wonders just how many of those erstwhile Microsoft patents can stand up to the new measures of "obviousness"?

Brad did layout the areas - all of which sound extremely full of "obviousness" here.

== He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68". ==

Not that any one single entity can afford to take on Microsofts lawyers to find out. However the article further notes that there are also open source groups aligned together to protect themselves - such as the Free Software Foundation and the Open Invention Network.

Come to think of it - the software I just typed this with, and that you are reading this with - also probably infringes on lots of patents too!?!

Time to jump back into the Looking Glass...

Forrester Research - Web Services Specifications: What About ebXML?

2007-01-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

Forrester Research have published a paper (here) that they are asking $279 for. Their authoritative sounding title belays what is really transpiring: "How ebXML Compares With Web Services Specifications In Structure And Support. This is the tenth document in the "Status Of SOA And Web Services Specifications" series.

Obviously they are not expecting anyone to purchase this, because frankly - not only does their excerpt tell readers all they want them to know - it also reveals that the report is dubious research - and since readers are not required to pay for it to find out its message - clearly the sponsor is more likely a corporate spoiler who is intent on discrediting ebXML - yet again.

The list here is short but familiar - and the pattern reminiscent of those reports flung at LINUX by its frantic detractors while saavy users were forging ahead installing LINUX on their servers (hint - detractors include companies with an 'M' in their name).

Why? Because now that ebXML has legitimately gained real momentum in key industry sectors in 2006 - including healthcare, automotive, electrical utilities and eGovernment - the nay sayers once again need someone to rain on the parade. Congratulations Forrester Research - you receive the "Most Obviously Sycophantic Research 2006" award.

Forrester proudly reports - "According to data from recent Forrester surveys, there is very little vendor or user support for ebXML".

And then they note - "Along the way, the industry has created confusion around and between ebXML specifications and the emerging Web services specifications". Really? I wonder if the confusion could have been created by reseachers providing misleading reports and surveys?

One wonders who they mailed their surveys out to? And if they even bothered to enter "ebXML" into Google - and note and investigate the over 1,540,000 hits?

Let's see now - I just wonder who those hits could be? Obviously not developers working for Oracle, BEA, Fujitsu, IBM, Tibco, and Sun - all of whom have ebXML implementations.

Forrester does note very cagely - "unless they have a targeted reason for using it and
good support from their vendors" - such as Oracle perhaps - the worlds' largest application software providing company?

Continuing on - the users surveyed clearly are also not in Norway and the UK - where their national healthcare systems are being run by ebXML, or in Austria where electrical power is distributed using ebXML.

Likewise - Forrester failed to realize that the DHS and CDC/PHIN national alerting system that links critical care centers across the USA is underpinned by ebXML message exchanges.

Then Forrester overlooked the work by GM and VM who are installing ebXML systems to deliver spare parts to their dealerships here in the US and worldwide - Forrester employees obviously do not drive cars that require such servicing.

Meanwhile the Agricultural Chemical industry was strangely missed off the list - despite its members underpinning America's food industry - and the entire industry is now using ebXML messaging for their supply chain getting critical chemicals to farmers across the country for the vital farming cycles in the year. Oracle recently implemented an exemplar project for Helena Chemicals (as reported in SOA Web Services Journal) using ebXML B2B and BPEL and the industry RAPID standards for ebXML.

Also Forrester researchers clearly do not read InfoWorld - who awarded Xenos Inc the prestigious "Top 10 Healthcare Projects in 2006" - for their ebXML implementation.

And what about the relationship between ebXML and web services? Forrester notes "... and even though ebXML is incorporating some of the Web services specifications, a clear relationship between the two has yet to emerge". A quick inspection of Forrester's prior reporting in this area reveals a trend of such disinformation starting in 2003 and continuing to today's latest critique.

Let's spell this out so you do not have to waste $279 - the relationship has always been very clear - if you want proven and tried internationally approved standards based B2B interchanges for secure reliable eBusiness via the internet - then you have ebXML.

The ebXML technology itself can be viewed as a custom specialization of web services technology for use in formal B2B configurations. They both co-exist easily as Oracle's implementation of ebXML messaging and BPEL apply proves.

The foundation between web services and ebXML are identical - http, SSL, SOAP, digital certificates, internet server (Apache), and XML. The only differences are in the XML syntax itself overlaid on top. The ISO 15000 specifications detail these for ebXML, while the W3C and WS-I and OASIS have made numerous components for web services use.

1 - You use web services when you want quick DIY (Do-It-Yourself) simple point-to-point query/response exchanges using WSDL and SOAP or REST messaging and your applications handle resend and delivery status logic for you (loosey exchanges are not an issue). You also do not care about the information control policy - you send it and everyone can see it. And you have a very limited set of message types.

2 - You use ebXML when you need formal push and pull delivery asynchronously that is reliable and guaranteed. With ebXML you also get formal partner agreements and collaboration methods including versioning and message type control. You can restrict who can send and receive what from and to your systems.

3 - You use the web service WS-I stack with all its components when you need DOD levels of information control and security down to the byte level. Your customers are likely large corporations or governments who already have extended IT infrastructure.

Too bad that Forrester is advising its clients to not follow the success enjoyed by those industries and users and vendors already using ebXML.

Well at least those Forrester clients will not be bidding on or launching B2B projects this year - while that leaves the field wide open for everyone else.

Congratulations Forrester Research!

Randy Heffner, Gene Leganza, and Jacqueline Stone - take a bow - I hope you are enjoying eating your stone soup paid for by your sponsors' research money.

Related links:

Adoption of ebXML - Hiding in Plain Sight - Feb 2007

Comparing the Features of ebXML, WS-I, EDIINT and more - Mar 2007

What are you wishing for in 2007? (22 software patents and counting...)

2006-12-17T12:13:00.000-05:00

There's obviously several things high on people's list - mine would include -

a speedy amicable end to the Iraq conflict that is tearing the country apart - Bush needs to admit he is part of the problem and not the solution - and remove himself personally
end to the attrocities in Darfur and US complicity in that
more real focus on causes of global warming - especially cars, wasting power and laziness / profit making
local sustainable power options for solar, wind and high efficiency wood - but NOT giant flawed wind farms
healthcare systems that are not owned by insurance companies and plagued by ill people who eat tampered food to excess that makes large profits but results in chronic sickness
voting systems that are based on open public standards, open source and paper verification and then last but not least
the end to the scharade of software patents.

This last item is what I want to talk about here. My work includes much that is in the front line of software patents and public open standards and open source. The OASIS standards group is currently implementing new IPR modes for all its technical committees - one of which I chair.

The bottom line is that the apocolypse is when it has become impossible for software developers to write code for ANY reason - that someone else cannot claim is infringing on a patent they already have.

Folks - I now have concrete evidence we are there already and beyond - and what is more the "Big 5" - Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun and BEA know we are already there - and have been acting accordingly for the past 3 or more years. One such manifestation of this admission is the new OASIS IPR policies and especially the non-assertion covenants adopted by Sun and IBM (also while these seem very philanthropic there is an under current of implied threat to transgressors).

I have two US software patents - that took me much hard effort to get awarded - because I believe they represent true inventions - and the USPTO had a hard time even understanding the ideas in them - because they are used to an entirely different patent style - written by patent attourneys - not programmers.

This is all just like playing chess - assuming you could get chess playing patents. Imagine that an invention is a chess opening - and sound new openings - well those are really tough to do - even Kasparov with all his genius has only improved on existing opening theory - not created entirely new branches. But what if you could get a software patent merely by moving just one pawn one square over and claiming you just invented something entirely new?

That is exactly the situation today. But its even worse - imagine - since obviously "pawn shifting" by itself may be fairly limited and the PTO could reject on the basis of someone else having already logged that move - but wait it gets better - what if you could reference someone elses' patent and simply switch the "move order" of the sequence of play and claim an entirely new patent?! Guess what? You can!! The PTO also employs people to review your applications who are not actually real "chess players" - so the protection afforded by the constraint - "that the claimed invention cannot be anything that is self-evident to 'average practitioners in the field'" is minimal at best.

Let's look at my specific two patents - USPTO 5,909,570 and 6,418,400 - and see this in practice. There are now 22 new patents that reference my originals. Now this is quiet flattering in one sense - until you start to examine what is really going on. I'll come back to those actual 22 in a moment. Let's look at why there are 22 references first.

The PTO finds my patents regularly during their 16 hour review process of new patents - because they search for similar and existing work - and mine happens to be extensive in scope and applicability in their particular area. So you would think this would mean the reverse - that other people would have a tough time getting awarded patents that really do not offer anything new. Presto - all you have to do is REFER to my patent - and then suggest something extra - and now you have invented it! This is like there being a patent on doors - and you being able to get new patents by just attaching different handles in different positions on the door and claiming a new invention!

This does keep patent attorneys in work - but it is having the REVERSE EFFECT of what patents are supposed to do in the first place - foster an environment where business is encouraged to innovate and develop new products and services. Unfortunately writing code is now OUT - first you have to write a patent to defend your code - and then write your code. And worse - what about developing open public standards and open source that does not infringe somewhere? Frankly this has now become impossible - hence Sun and IBM's resorting to the threat of non-assertion covenants.

Let's go back and look at some of those 22 patents referencing mine - to see just how knowledgable the USPTO is about "playing chess" or developing new software?

Would I have awarded any of these 22 additional patents referencing 5,909,570 and 6,418,400?

7,120,663 Method and apparatus for updating XML data - This is incredulous "pawn shifting" that is entirely common practice in everyones XML code - well done NEC for getting this award!
7,114,123 User controllable data grouping in structural document translation - this is even more incredulous - IBM I tip my hat - practically every XML editor uses this obvious technique.
6,915,312 Data processing environment with methods providing contemporaneous synchronization of two or more clients - Starfish Software - you guys ever owned a Palm PDA? Yeah - I thought that is where this idea came from.
6,871,187 Translator for use in an automated order entry system - Dell - you guys are amazing - you've never heard of catalogues and order processing before? I'm stunned the USPTO have not either - because they gave you this patent.
6,757,739 Method and apparatus for automatically converting the format of an electronic message - Contivo Inc - when I first met these folks I realized their product infringed on my patent - and further more - that they did not understand how to do it better - because their method is weaker. Clearly the USPTO also did not get it either - because they allowed them a patent for something mine already does.
6,457,003 Methods, systems and computer program products for logical access of data sources utilizing standard relational database management systems - this is just IBM protecting itself from patent trolls - of course logical name resolution (aliases) is a standard industry wide technique - better get a patent on it before USPTO gives it out to someone who just wants to use it to blackmail large corporations.
6,601,071 Method and system for business to business data interchange using XML - Oracle take a bow - yours is the most outrageous and laughable of the bunch - how could the USPTO have given you a patent for processing data in and out of XML?!?

I've not covered off all 22 here - but safe to say most all of these exhibit the same sad litigany of the USPTO abject incompetence in the face of manipulation by slick abusers of the process.

What is truely disturbing is that this is just 22 patents here - while there are tens of thousands of software patents issued each year!

Can we all just admit that software patents have degraded to nothing more than just sets of "chess moves" that have no real bearing on what practitioners are doing in the field - quite the reverse - just threaten this vital sector of industry and make it impossible for small inventors, standards bodies, and those truely seeking to advance the field especially to do so without threat of poverty and ruin.

Congress and the EU between them should immediately disband the issuing and practice of software patents.

At least this seems a relatively easy decision to implement compared to the other items on my 2007 wish list - so maybe I'm not dreaming when I think this might just be attainable if enough people make enough protest?

References - ACM article - The patent holder's dilemma: Buy, Sell or Troll?

ABSTRACT
"The current patent process in many ways works against IT innovation by making the road to realization too dispiriting for today's independent inventors".

Defective by Design?

2006-10-03T14:56:00.000-04:00

Many times we see ideas and products around us and intuitively see the simplicity, elegance and value - and that age old reaction - "why did I not think of that?".

Naturally there is also the reverse. Where something is so obviously ugly and a grubby attempt to mostly disenfrancise customers. The music / entertainment industry driven by Disney is a point in case - and its promotion of digital rights management (DRM) technology.

It is a sad state when we see quotes such as "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed" - Disney Executive.

While the mainstream thrust of the software industry is towards open standards, open platform and open collaborative projects with open source, the message does not seem to have penetrated to people who are still trying to operate in a pre-dot-com mode of patent-own-monopoly as their business model. Collaborate-share-enable and the freedoms its provides through greater wealth creation does not seem to be getting through.

Many of these issues cut to the heart of what is a healthy democracy and who controls the means of distribution of information and content? The Defective by Design group have taken up the challenge of educating the public at large about the issues. They have a wealth of materials, videos and more online.

Meanwhile I foresee many more similar challenges and conflicts coming. One such example is the grubby attempt to extort dane-geld from hybrid car manufacturers based on pending patents issued. Again the old model and thinking applies - when people innovate and provide real solutions to burgeoning problems in society then their reward is become a target for the less well intentioned. Notice that the fundamental ideas behind hybrid gas-electric powerplants were first applied on railways to trains in the 1950's - so how can anyone realistic claim to have invented a whole new ground breaking idea here? Unfortunately the notion of what is a patentable or unique idea has been trivialized to the point of the absurd.

I prefer the notion of - Successful by Design.

Using XML Scripting for Business and Life

2006-07-09T21:55:00.000-04:00

I did a presentation recently to the PESC 3rd Annual Conference (Postsecondary-education Electronic Standards Council) on XML and its application to education systems needs.

XML is now entering its 3rd phase. Phase 1 was evanglism, Phase 2 was build-out by technology vendors, the 3rd phase is seamless usage by the general public in their daily lives. Pretty much like sending a FAX - people do that - but they do not have to know about Class3 protocols and device handshaking - all that technology stuff just "happens" for them. They put the paper on the scanner platter, enter the "address" and press "send".

So my focus was showing people how to learn to use freely available tools from sites such as Google combined with open source software tools to automate your business and life tasks.

The first example uses Google's Blogger site and shows how the RSS XML underneath peoples Blogs can power group collaboration tools and then turns simple email into a group knowledge base/coordination system. I'm using this right now for a soccer team resource center. The live demonstration site shown in the presentation gives details on how to do this yourself.

Similarly you can develop sophisticated photography slideshows using XML-enabled scripts. In an education context this is great for making teaching slideshows and learning/tutorial systems with graphics and photographs. And the students themselves can build these and learn too.

On to more examples of common place tools today - like seeing how XML scripts run voice response menu systems such as 1-800-555-8355 (TELLME) street navigation directions for anywhere in the USA.

The last segment is more technology geek focused and shows how to automate information integration systems using open source XML scripting to load data to/from database systems and the associated importance of understanding context and roles to keep processes simple and clear.

The PESC presentation can be found here.

Sensible Energy Alternatives for America

2006-04-19T13:12:00.000-04:00

Once in a while USA Today actually publishes an article that runs to the core of what makes America the power house it is today. The ability for individuals to go out there and create something new and compelling from the edge of what society is told is its only choices.

And exploiting the natural resources that America is so blessed with. While on the one hand big businesses are garnering huge government subsidies for invasive project to erect land-based wind mines in ecologically sensitive mountain areas (see http://uswindpower.info) - other thinking people are seeing that small delivery at point of use makes total sense!

Right now this is somewhat of a cottage industry by fervent and creative individuals - but that is of course exactly how another recent phemnonminom - the internet - also got its start.

From the USA Today article - "Amid soaring electricity prices, the renewable energy industry is increasingly being driven by families such as the Doucettes who choose to be off the grid for environmental or political reasons and by a much faster-rising number of Americans adding solar and wind systems to grid-connected houses. Such equipment used to be bought almost exclusively by off-the-gridders in remote rural reaches who couldn't afford fees of $30,000 or more to tie in to electric lines.

Now, in 29 states, homeowners on the grid can get state rebates or tax breaks that subsidize up to 50% or more of the cost of clean energy systems. They then sell the electricity they generate, but don't use themselves, to utilities, offsetting the cost of the power they draw from the grid as they spin their meters backward and drive their electric bills toward zero".

There is much more substantive analysis and examples given that provide a rounded picture of this corner of America today. With several States announcing (e.g. Maryland) that electricity power prices will almost double this summer as regulations change for suppliers - consumers are suddenly going to find extra reasons to need to find alternative energy sources.

Knowledge Management, Bird Flu, and medical research?

2006-02-12T23:04:00.000-05:00

Last week I attended a very interesting focus day on Knowledge Management for Healthcare held on the NIH campus. The videocast for this is available publically - "Knowledge in Service to Health: Leveraging Knowledge for Modern Science Management ". The quality of the material and thought leadership presented was exceptional - along with the tools and techniques demonstrated. Speakers from the US, Netherlands, Germany and Wellcome Trust in the UK gave some fascinating insights.

Monday, February 06, 2006
Total Running Time: 03:34:54

and the individual PPTs are available here.

The medical community is working hard at leveraging knowledgement management (KM) to improve medical research and science.

Allied to this is the need to have better semantic understanding and alignment.

A recent paper published on semantic representations in registry shows how to work toward alignment of domain terms across a community of interest (CoI). The use of XML and OWL syntax to enable storage mechanisms inside the ebXML registry system is particularly insightful.

Once again it comes down to a balance between vision and pragmatic hard work - providing the means to support the knowledge tools with sound practical information sources and shared community information.

The changing landscape of software services

2006-02-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

Oracle has recently done what would have been unthinkable even a year ago - provided a free version of their flagship database, and also *finally* released a free tool to replace the aging and decrepid SQLplus - called appropriately enough - "Raptor". I've been using the 2nd pre-release version of Raptor - and this is all good news. The SQLplus debugger alone is worth the "price" of downloading and installing it.

And that examples the new measure for software today - the initial ten minute test-drive factor. The cost of software is not the license charge - but how much burden does the software place on my computer and on my time to deliver meaningful results?

With RedHat making a half billion dollars last year - its pretty clear where the industry is now headed. People will pay for services and support in association with the software they are using, but not the software itself.

This is all being driven by the pervasive nature of computers - and clearly a per seat license when you have to deploy to 1,000's of systems rapidly becomes not only cost prohibitive but also complex to manage. Not only that - but also the interdependences of software - that now means that very little can be considered "standalone". Even games now require that you have some supporting components - such as video drivers, Flash or DirectX installed to be able to run.

All this means more weight to the notion of component software - and subscription based services and pricing models.

Certainly the big winners here in the database marketplace are consumers who for years have not had real choices or competition to speak of.

Saving the Planet - 1 gas tank at a time?

2006-01-15T13:10:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of thrash out there on the subject of hybrid cars and actual gas mileage in real driving conditions.

In the interest of providing some real information - I've posted the 2005 mileage charts and details for my Honda Civic (manual transmission). Quite a year - I bought the car new in January, and we have put 24,000 miles on it since. A lot of time spent behind the wheel in a complete mix of driving conditions and loads in suburb Washington DC traffic.

Here's the charts and fuel log details.

What is interesting is comparing my figures to the EPA #'s on the 2005 Honda Civic Manual - 51 highway and 45 traffic. These seem pretty fair for the Honda. I certainly can average over 51mpg in pure highway driving, while in mixed driving I've averaged over 45mpg.

They are planning to revise the EPA system for 2008 - see NYT article here. The article seems to think these new testing methods will bring down numbers on hybrids - but I'm not so sure. Certainly the conventional cars will see worse EPA numbers that will improve the comparison. For example my Lincoln LS is rated 23mpg EPA - which I've never got - more like 19mpg average. That's around 25% worse gas mileage than sticker. If I compare the Lincoln to my Honda I'm getting well over double the gas miles - and a savings of over $1,000 per year on gas alone looking at 2005 gas prices.

Beauty of Planet Earth captured on CCD!

2005-10-22T09:51:00.000-04:00

I just posted an entry to the Shutterfly landscapes photography section from my trip to the semantic registry conference in Norway last summer of midsummer's day, midnight, when of course the sun does not really set at all and you get spectacular blue colour highlights. No this was not taken with a filter!

So many entries are really great - just shows how much easier digital photography is making this for the shutter bugs out there. Of course there's always the filtered and air brushed sunset pictures, but the ones that really catch the eye are the early morning pictures from lake and mountain settings.

Well worth 15 minutes of surfing through the entries, and of course, please vote for mine!

SQL, XML and state-of-the-art programming...

2005-09-27T11:05:00.000-04:00

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Just this week I created a utility SQL procedure to dump an Oracle database record as XML into a file:
http://drrw.net/downloads/XML/go-file.sql

Much to my horror this state of the art programming is using routines that Oracle implemented way back when in V1.6 over 15 years ago when I was working on UNIX and Windows 3.1 environments with their original product release. This includes such gems as 255 byte limits on line print statements that allowed their code to run on 8086 machines.

Hands-up anyone out there running Oracle 10g on a 8086 machine? I did not think so!

About time Oracle upgraded these antiquated and archiac parts of their product to 2005+ standards and to provide XML DOM compatible API routines for their dbms_xmlgen library and also output options to web service and email interfacing not just file locations inside the server. It's not like these things are shocking radical wide-eyed notions here!

Latest version of full debugged and tested SQL XML dump utility - nicely procedurized - just plug in your own SQL statements and run.

The Energy Equation - making a difference individually in our homes

2005-08-17T11:09:00.000-04:00

The Americans for Energy Independence website has an excellent editorial on switching to solar power for the average home, and what that entails, what tax incentives are available and so on.

http://www.ei2025.org/previous_editorial.asp?e=85

Certainly something to be considered and bringing this within reach of a higher % of Americans and providing the technology to make this seamless is obviously something we can all look to understand more about.

A Timeless Lesson of Life, Family, Human Spirit and the Closeness of Evil

2005-08-08T19:37:00.000-04:00

Alan Elsner was at Kent University, Canterbury with me; we were both active in student politics with our different circles and colleges. Fast forward to 2005 and Washington DC and we now live 15 miles apart.

Alan has just published a book about his family and their life through worn-torn Europe - Guarded by Angels - a deeply inspiring recounting :- http://www.alanelsner.com/WWIIbook.htm

Behind the mere mechanics of the story is the realization that this happened just 60 years ago. The line between life today in Europe and N.America and the Europe of 1939 is all too thin. Technology has changed our lives but people still live the kind of life experiences of the Elsner family in Africa, Asia, parts of Europe and S.America today.

Everyone needs to read this book and take inspiration from it, especially the younger generations who cannot quite believe that this could be "real". Life is not just merely about what you own, it is about what you do and how you respect others. It is about how society allows those with power to treat people also. It is the unheard voices that still cry out uncounted today.

Alan has laboured hard over this book, the Elsner family is sharing a true gift in this recounting of all the details of this darkest time for their family and it deserves to have the widest possible audience. The story may not be market or Hollywood "fashionable" but the message is timeless and essential.

This book is deeply inspirational - I hope that you purchase this book and tell other people about it.

DW

Becoming a virtual merchant in 2005

2005-08-03T23:45:00.000-04:00

My 15 year old son has just completed a summer project making the construction of "Paintball Surplus!" as an online resource for his friends and marker fanatics. Actually it only took him a few hours to stand up the first version.

He is using the VisualScript toolset that exploits Amazon.com webservices. Essentially he is now a virtual merchant, adding his time and energy to create a branded focus site from the millions of items Amazon sells. This saves people time and effort trying to hunt and find these items themselves on Amazon. Leveraging his expertise and knowledge about the particular topic to allow you one-stop shopping and great deals from the menus and site he has created.

To try this for yourself - download the tools from http://visualscripts.net and see the sample website for Wines - http://winebin.net that is included.

Welcome to a whole new concept of sales and marketing!

New Honda Hybrid 2006 facts and figures

2005-07-15T23:16:00.000-04:00

Wonderful set of details and video on the new Honday HCH. Unfortunately we have to wait till September+ to get a chance to drive one of these. My predict is that the manual transmission version will get serious 60+ mpg figures, based on the 50+mpg possible with the HCH 2005 if you drive it right.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/07/honda_introduce.html#comment-7383352

Also - if you just wonder about mini-cars in Europe and the comparisons - then the Clio III detailed here really points up the big differences, especially pollution emissions.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/06/renaultrsquos_n.html

How does a hybrid car work exactly? See here for excellent diagrams and descriptions and side-by-side comparisons:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybridtech.shtml

What alternate news sources are available, with live video feeds?

2005-07-11T23:19:00.000-04:00

The power of the internet to dispense news, and its use by both the traditional news media services and alternate services can be powerfully accessed through this site today:

http://www.reallynews.com

It's hard to go back to watching television news after all the great resources that this site puts at your finger tips.

Add to this the growing use of RSS feeds to channel break news from trusted sources into an array of such news consolidation sites, and this all shows the future emerging on how and why we receive on personal news choices.

Congressional Reports online

2005-06-29T21:59:00.000-04:00

American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a "think tank" that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained.

Until now that is - and the launch of this handy new website facility:
http://www.opencrs.com/

A virtual treasure trove of current research information previously reserved for those only with access to these public documents.

American Idles: Gas up and pay up

2005-06-12T21:28:00.000-04:00

President Bush continues to cost Americans more - added to the $175+ billions in Iraq is now $5B at the gas pump - and uncharted costs in environmental effects beyond that.

The Sierra Club's new report, “Shifting Out Of Reverse: Making Pickup Trucks Go Farther on a Gallon of Gas." gives details. They say that automakers can use existing off-the-shelf technology—such as starter-generators, cylinder deactivation, and more aerodynamic design—to raise the fuel economy of a full-size pickup from 20 mpg to 34 mpg.

The net result would be 9.3 billion gallons of savings every year. Ironically, the list of off-the-shelf technologies that the Sierra Club recommends to boost fuel economy are all important components of GM’s nascent hybrid program. The Sierra Club says that inaction on the part of the automakers cost pickup truck drivers alone $387 million at the pumps last year.

The U.S. PIRG Education Fund issues its own report on the same subject, entitled, “American Idles: President Bush’s Inaction Costs Americans $5 Billion at the Pump in 2005.”
http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=17204&id3=USPIRG&%20-%201

Meanwhile the big oil companies and automakers continue to fight this progress; in fact, while consumers are paying more at the pump, oil companies are recording huge profits. In 2004, the top ten oil companies enjoyed net profits of $100 billion, an increase of more than 30 percent from 2003. Surprisingly they are not offering their windfall profits toward the cost of the Iraq war.

The best way to reduce our dependence on oil and save consumers money at the pump is to make cars go farther on a gallon of gas. Today, fuel economy is at a 24-year low of 20.8 miles per gallon (mpg). The National Academy of Sciences has stated that we already have the technology to make cars get 40 mpg.

Since I drive a car today that regularly gets 46mpg up to 52mpg and with ULEV emissions - this is no surprise.

The chances of President Bush doing anything more than talking about technology being the solution and actually adding some push to get to the solution are of course vanishingly small.

Cool uses of XML - maps and overlays

2005-06-09T11:47:00.000-04:00

The new Google maps allows programmatic access and this has opened up some interesting new uses where demographic information is overlaid onto the maps.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20050609/D8AJQ81O0.html

The ability to toggle to satellite imagery makes this especially compelling. These images are very useful - (I use them alot to locate soccer fields for away games where the directions are woeful - road signs poorly located - and Americans just do not give good directions - not a skill taught in school!)

Microsoft is also implementing technology too with 45' angle views:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050523-125208

The next step is to get these search interfaces using a common XML syntax based on ISO23950. to see how this can work - and also examples of the underlying XML query syntax, see:
http://www.gils.net/srwGoogle.html

Can the software patent process be fixed?

2005-06-09T10:58:00.000-04:00

Seems like its an open question. And especially when the people doing the fixing are the ones that broke it in the first place.

Here's the latest attempt at righting the ship and making it more seaworthy. http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5737961.html

The only problem is that the patent system is rapidly becoming a dinosaur with respect to how the software industry really is run, with open source public collaborative projects built around technology where there are no existing IPR claims.

Hopefully sooner than later everyone will realize that patents on software are no longer relevant and do far more damage than good, add costs and overhead to customers, and certainly never helped the people that they should have done in the first place.

The continuing debate on OSI v OASIS RAND licensing

2005-05-27T12:05:00.000-04:00

A new set of claims and counter-claims was exchanged this week.

http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/05/24/1526226.shtml?tid=93

While earlier we heard that the two sides were working on jointly resolving these issues, seems like they have not moved closer yet. However the OASIS BOD elections due in June may open up some changes. Clearly this is going to be one of the issues for OASIS members in deciding the structure of the BOD for the next two years.

Unfortunately the "old guard" has managed to retain its BOD position, post June 24th election results. Therefore little change be forseen and the two parties remain as apart as before:

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/oasis.html/view?searchterm=patents

Mecca for aircraft buffs!

2005-04-25T22:29:00.000-04:00

Paid my first visit to the Air Museum out adjacent to Dulles Airport.

Highly recommended. Several of my favourite types available
and the presentation and layout is innovative and often spectacular.

For the virtual tour see: http://drrwpics.fotopic.net/c514802.html

and the official website: http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/

Enjoy, DW

Reading and Webservices

2005-04-06T16:48:00.000-04:00

I'm finally putting the finishing touches to a new site:

http://readingheaven.com

The book parts of the site are constructed using a VisualScript model
that then generates all the necessary code for the pages.

Interesting concept - leverages the Amazon webservices XML
behind the scenes.

I will have the models and resources posted to my modelling site:

http://visualscripts.net

later this week when I've finished packaging everything and completing
the documentation.

Enjoy, DW

Trusted Logic Voting and OASIS EML 4.0

2005-03-28T17:35:00.000-05:00

Have finished my first overview analysis of EML 4.0, the EU CoE process requirements and trusted logic.

This all appears to fit together very well. I have produced a draft PPT overview (and PDF) here: http://drrw.net/backup/Trusted-Logic-Voting-Systems-with-EML40.pdf

I've tried to keep this at a reasonable level of understanding - keeping above the XML-level / UML activity diagram view of things for now.

I'm seeing this can provide a formal basis for supporting VVPAT and how vendors should be implementing voting - backed up by rigorous international process requirements - rather than the flimsy ad hoc approach of today.

The EU CoE requirements are particularly comprehensive - as noted before - and the OASIS EML work supports adherence to those.

Being able to inform legislators that there is a clear and minimum set of voting process requirements they should be insisting on I believe will dramatically improve the state of voting systems from today's vendor anarchy.

More importantly - moving to a point where we can have confidence in the reliability of voting systems is essential in order to maintain high levels of democracy worldwide.

There is still much technical work to be done, but the foundations appear to be coming into focus.

Enjoy, DW

What price software?

2005-03-16T10:57:00.000-05:00

This article details a change I have been seeing for some time already.

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60404498

I've been arguing this has been with us for a while - even at the height of
the .COM boom.

Customers appreciate the open source approach and paying for service and value - the RedHat model.

And this is the real driver behind the battles around IPR and licensing between the traditional major corporation vendors and the open source and open public specification communities.

The traditional vendors are trying to minimize customers options - and preserve the old selling models as the only viable option. They need to change, or whither and fail in the after shock from the .COM meltdown.

People are not being fooled.

DW

Let's get rid of software patents

2005-02-23T20:26:00.000-05:00

This is becoming one of those self-evident truths that underpin our society.

Patents are supposed to protect the inventor, promote innovation and
thereby advance society and life in general.

Software patents do none of the above. They penalize those seeking to
implement broadly useful solutions that advance society; they allow
big companies to inhibit the work of small innovators; and small
innovators find that even with patents they are powerless to
enforce or pursue them.

This article in eWeek agrees:-
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1666755,00.asp

And added to this we see big companies trying to poison innovation
in the open source community by crippling the OASIS specification
process by tainting it with IPR mechanisms:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1768389,00.asp

The future of software is open collaborative communities - that
has become the nature of information technology in the 21st
Century. We need to recognize that and remove this chronic
and potentially dehabilitating disease from the equation.

I hold two US patents filed ten years ago now, and I have
long since given up on the USPTO once I realized what
a pathetic and embarassing process it has turned into.

The notion of software invention has become a shallow
concept defined by patent lawyers and not software
engineers. But software has reached the point where
any future developments, by the very nature of
software process are connected to components that
someone else has developed, and thus for someone
to claim a true software invention is now
non-sensical.

DW

Hybrid Cars - and HCH (Honda Civic Hybrid)

2005-02-21T19:52:00.000-05:00

Well this January the old family Ford Aerostar van was making it clear that the constant abuse on Maryland roads was taking its toll.

So on my wife's insistence we went shopping for high mileage vehicles. We drove every hybrid out there, but as soon as I drove the Honda Civic manual I fell in love (it was the last one too!). The European handling and manual transmission are just a joy to drive. And it lives up to its numbers - you really can get 48mpg on a regular basis driving normally - eg not like a granny! The winter weather does knock down that. Worst we had was 39mpg week when the temperatures were in the 5'F range and I was driving at 5:30am to the train station every day.

My favourite site for Hybrid info is: - http://www.greenhybrid.com/ followed by
http://www.hybridcars.com

If you want to review how switching to Hybrid can help the planet (less emissions) and your wallet (less $ paid for gas) try the Calculator on this link:
http://www.hybridcars.com/calculator/index.php

Of course the Civic is my favourite; my wife liked the Ford Escape but we worried about build quality in it first production year; the Prius I liked - more traditional American handling, but my wife did not like the visibility out of it; the Accord is a beauty 225BHP and luxury handling but we were budgeting $20K. Result - Honda Civic manual clear winner for us. I love this car - a driving gem.

Go Hybrid!

DW

ebXML Benefits, Presentations and Adoption

2004-12-07T13:09:00.000-05:00

The recent announcement of the UK DHS implementation of ebMS as the TMS Spine for patient information exchanges shows that ebXML is continuing to mature and prove its value as the open standard of choice for e-Business interchange systems.

See - http://www.ebxml.org/case_studies/NHS-ebMSG-casestudy-041206.pdf

In addition the XML2004 OASIS Interop display of ebXML benefits when combining ebMS, CPA, Registry and jCAM to provide partner provisioning services on an unprecedented level shows how far the ebXML solution set has come in 2004. The components to deploy this are all open source, but also work with commercial solutions such as Cyclone Commerce too.

The presentations can be found at: http://www.ebxmlbook.com/interop along with the documentation, installation and Java code needed to recreate the environment on show at the Interop.

Enjoy, DW

http://drrw.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Fooling some of the people, some of the time

2004-11-26T16:25:00.000-05:00

Rationalizing the truth is obviously a Washington political art form these days.

As for software development it is also not immune. Bigger projects like the IRS modernisation seem to be an intermiable sink hole.

I did enjoy this short and pithy PDF on the vaguaries of the CMM process:

http://www.psmsc.com/UG2004/Presentations/ReiferDonald_CMMI_inCommercial_Use.pdf

Page 12 could definately lighten your mood if you are in the throws of an ugly and eggregious project!

Enjoy, DW

Patterns, Layers and Business Solutions - GM, SOA, ebXML

2004-10-15T08:52:00.000-04:00

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine has an excellent article on-line - and I really enjoyed the introduction to layers and patterns that this gives.

When you add this to the OASIS BCM work on use of layers and templates and patterns then you see how empowering all this potentially is together.

We're still feeling our way here - but my sense is that both BCM and this article are shining the
light in the right direction for the future of systems development and business solution deployment. The OASIS ebSOA work is trying to formalize this right now.

Tools like ebXML BPSS then provide the implementation layer pattern facilitation for
orchestrating this, along with EPR and EUD work for the front-office layers, with tools like
XDS providing the core information sharing, identity and privacy management.

We continue to make progress with utilizing XML to not just mark-up data, but to script the entire business interchange process and enable business level views to manage and control the processes that the computer systems are directing.

Enjoy, DW

e-Voting systems issues exposed

2004-10-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

If you had any doubts that this is a classic case of right question, wrong answer - and the need to continue the battle to get this done right - then read the following!

http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=73

and the article from the ACM archives on how just one vote changed per voting machine could change a close election result with almost zero ability to detect the fraud due to the normal levels of statastical varience in election voting casting.

There are also many good articles from the same issue of the ACM Communications October issue.

My position on this is we need open source software, developed with government resources if necessary, to ensure that we can always verify the actual software process being used.

2004-10-11T11:57:00.000-04:00

News on ebXML Messaging V3

Just a short note to point out that the feature preview document is now publically available.

Overall I would say I am happy with the general the direction being taken and the enhancements. The greater flexibility is particularly noteworthy across all aspects and also the move away from tight-coupling to CPA and having an abstract partner agreement view that works across CPA and WSDL is empowering.

There's some slideware being developed for XML2004 that I will share shortly, as an alternative to reading the PDF here, that helps give a high level view. However, reading the PDF is definately an excellent way to dig into the details.

2004-09-30T12:06:00.000-04:00

Web Services Resource link

While the definitive view on web services is hard to find - certainly a comprehensive introduction to all the moving parts can be found here - at Microsoft's site.

The big debate continues between the ebXML architecture stack and the WS* stack.

The two key discriminators for me are the differences between the BPSS and CPA in ebXML and the WSDL underpinning everything WS* is doing.

Basically this is a religious and architectural difference between formal e-Business exchanges, and raw machine-level interchange coding.

While BPSS and CPA/ebMS provide a formal interchange model with recovery and QoS parameters, WSDL does not. Therefore backend systems have to supply these Business Service Interface (BSI) behaviours and characteristics on the WS* side - and certainly you can see how extended this can become (with vendors naturally preferring their own flavours).

Anyway - the irony is that we have been here all before - in terms of the original batch EDI and then real-time EDI which was going to replace old batch EDI systems.

That never happened - and the reason is that only about 20% of business interactions need to occur in real-time outside the enterprise, while the remaining 80% actually need formal batch asynchronous exchanges because that provides control and minimizes risk of information abuses. In real-time exchanges you actually have to have alot more agent-based controls and monitoring software running to avoid DoS attacks and abuse of content, especially if those interfaces are publically visible. And that adds up to more dollars.

My bet is that ebXML deployments are going to accelerate dramatically - especially given that now an extended set of tools are available to support that, including open source solutions. So for external enterprise-to-partner exchanges you will see this 80:20 mix establish itself as the norm through basic business factors and pressures.

For the latest list of ebXML compatible tools see here.

Enjoy, DW

2004-09-18T23:22:00.000-04:00

Voting Machines and Software

The latest edition of Scientific American has an excellent article.

Also - the resource site here is very instructive:

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/

This is roughly in alignment with my own ideas for breaking the empasse that currently exists - and this is just a microcosm of what ails the software industry generally.

I have been trying to get peoples attention to the notion of using open-source voting software as the means to drive transparency in e-Voting processes.

My thoughts are that having an open e-Voting software code-based that is community developed and maintained achieves several things.

produces an open public specification for the software process, the hardware interfaces, and the results auditing and authentication steps that can be independently verified.
prevents reliance on proprietary vendor software - and therefore allows a wide range of hardware vendors to deliver solutions that are capatible - thus removing reliance on single supplier.
ensures that software being used has underwent an open validation process.
allows verification of the software used to obtain and compile the results using open testing procedures
allows use of a double-blind check - where output from one set of hardware being used by the voter - is feed into two independant solutions - and then both must tally at close of voting.
verification that the actual software used is the same as the open standard, (ensure what is loaded onto the machine at open of polling - and verify it is still there during and after).

I have not seen any discussion of this approach - and I do believe we need to move to open solutions and processes for this.

There are several good national standards bodies that could collaborate to jointly develop such a software specification and solution.

Clearly more debate and research on this is all excellent.

2004-09-14T21:04:00.000-04:00

Making America Safe From Terrorists

America just does not seem to learn, from Vietnam, South America, Africa and now the Middle East.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091504A.shtml

Fire begets fire.

2004-09-13T22:13:00.000-04:00

The US Patent Blight

While the promise of open source software is substantial, there is a blight in the system caused by the US PTO - spurious patents.

The time allocated to a PTO examiner to entirely process a patent application is 12 hours. That's for all associated paperwork and review over typically a 3 to 5 year period from application to either rejection or acceptance.

The PTO issues software 100,000 patents a year. This is a mindnumbing level of incompetence.

Speaking as someone who already has two US software patents with a third pending - I can honestly say that 99.9% of these patents are worthless. Worse - when you do have a groundbreaking patent to file - the PTO treats it like the other 99.9% it receives - eg things like the patent for the key sequence you push on the ATM terminal to withdraw cash from your bank account - thus resulting in them not being able to comprehend a serious invention because it not at a "Fisher Price" level of numbness. The whole notion of 'invention' has been perverted and trivialized.

I originally submitted patents through the naive belief that this would protect the small inventor from predation of ideas from large companies. Again - this has been totally perverted so there is no such protection and relief even with an issued patent.

The best thing the PTO can do is to scrap this whole sorry and sad process, but unfortunately this has now become a major money making machine - at $400 a patent, times 100,000 - this is big money.

The very least the USGovernment can do is to rule that patents do not apply to any open public consensus standards bodies - such as ISO, W3C and OASIS. This can be coordinated through the WTO to be internationally applied to key software technologies especially that support the web and internet today - and are publically developed.

For direct action initiatives see: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/09/09/1612239

and for example of impact see: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-09-03-a.html

This blight is a sad reflection of the inability of the US Government to act against the abuses of major corporations today because those same corporations excerpt undue influence through funding of the political process.

DW

2004-08-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

Why open source is better!

I'm currently working deep in several open source initiatives so the profoundness of this religious experience is of course critical to validate.

The following does just that!

Enjoy, DW

From Linus the Learned:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040818_1593.htm

"I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software.It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. Inscience, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's resultsand building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build onit.Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just diedout. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge."

Politically charged comments: Witchcraft didn't die out. It moved to the Beltway where keeping small secrets about large issues has become a science.

2004-07-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

On-line photo-sharing services like Fotopic.net are great, but wouldn't it be even nicer if you could create interactive multimedia storyboards using the photographs on these sites?

Well now you can!

I just uploaded my latest SMIL editor template example for VisualScript.

http://drrw.net/visualscripts/#SMIL

along with an example storyboard to try out.

This is a way cool use of SMIL and very easy to do - and sharing the resulting storyboards is also easy - as they are nothing more than XML and xhtml command files.

Enjoy, DW

2004-07-09T08:27:00.000-04:00

Finished the latest iteration of the BPSS editor tools for VisualScript last night.

This new model includes Signals support, and fully integrated Context handling.

IMHO it's looking really good. The upcoming BPSS V2.0 release is going to be by far the strongest yet.

Next up I'm working on multi-party models using an eMarketplace scenario. Should have that ready next week.

In the meantime - enjoy the latest model and tutorial on creating business processes - http://drrw.net/visualscripts/#ebxml

2004-06-17T13:42:00.000-04:00

Continuing the discussion around UMLing:

http://blogs.msdn.com/stuart_kent/articles/142330.aspx

Nice to have corroboration of my earlier posting on
this topic - and my work with VisualScript - and
using context along with UML style activity
diagrams - as the BPSS model shows:

http://drrw.net/visualscripts/#ebxml

Essentially VisualScript allows you to build
richer and deeper components than UML can do -
and directly output the XML script dilect(s)
that you are targetting.

Enjoy, DW

2004-06-13T18:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we launched the EPR forum website - http://www.eprforum.org

The EPR work - Electronic PRocess - is focused on enabling Global e-Service Solutions, and particularly and open source implementation.

The EPRforum vision is fostering development of public interest services solution which give every citizen, enterprise and administration full opportunity to gain from the e-Society, bridging the digital divide and providing netcentric solutions for all - including :

e-Government
e-Healthcare
e-Construction
e-Inclusion
Services for SMEs (eBusiness)
Trust and Security services
Citizen Collaboration Portals

This is a natural progression of all the work we have been doing with ebXML, then BCM, BPSS and now SOA and finally EPR.

The main fulcum of this work right now is Europe - so check out the site and the
associated organizations that are helping move this all forward.

Enjoy, DW

2004-06-01T19:40:00.000-04:00

Open source is just good business sense.

As an original shareware author I see the same
metrics at work here. Within five years the bulk
of business software will be founded on open
source solutions.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1603596,00.asp

That is why I'm actually involved in two open source
initatives right now - OASIS CAM (http://jcam.org.uk)
and OASIS BCM/EPR (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bcm)

2004-05-14T14:14:00.000-04:00

UML and Origami?

This week in my perennial discussions with collegues around the value and meaning of UML - and its accessibility to the common man - I suddenly was struck with the simularity with Origami.

In Origami you can model anything - given enough time, folds and large enough sheet of paper (see amazing Dragon models that take 30 hours to fold).

It's that approach with a standard set of small parts carefully assembled in a logical way that can be made to present anything. There are also of course patterns and base components that can be used for a variety of common items. And a formal rigour to the method and way of annotating it.

So the alternate to Origami is scissors, coloured crayons and glue - to assemble paper models (of which I've made over a 1,000+ BTW - I really should post some web piks of those - note to self!). As anyone doing a school project knows - this is the way most people go!

Anyway - Origami aka UML - so what is the scissors and glue method for the rest of us? Give VisualScript a spin - http://www.visualscript.com and check by my VisualScript models area : http://drrw.net/visualscripts/

You really can model all manner of XML models and script processes - and you do not need UML either.

Enjoy, DW

2004-05-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

Wow, this new Blog interface is lightyears better than the old one!

Anyway - as a find my way around - just wanted to draw your
attention to a great paper of Schema Conformance and schema
tools that was presented at Extreme XML 2003.

The only glaring omission here is an assessment of the
OASIS CAM toolset - which looks to improve on what
Schematron offers - ( see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cam ).

Anyway - I've written Bob to get his further insights,
but until then - his paper is available here:

http://www.idealliance.org/papers/extreme03/html/2003/Lyons01/EML2003Lyons01.html

Excellent analysis of Schema, DTD, RELAX NG and more.

Enjoy, DW

2004-05-04T19:01:00.000-04:00

Good endorsement and article on the progress of ebXML from a leading analyst.

http://www.ebizq.net/topics/b2b/features/4323.html

ebXML’s Move To SOA: Clearly A Good One
By David S. Linthicum, CTO, Grand Central Communications
About this feature:
Integration thought leader and ebizQ columnist David S. Linthicum describes himself as a “big fan” of ebXML, which he says is a big step forward from the likes of EDI and other “outdated” B2B standards. And he says the latest trends on the ebXML front hold much promise for companies choosing to use it.

2004-05-04T19:00:00.000-04:00

Good news on the healthcare front today and ebXML. This should
lead to excellent lowcost solutions for healthcare providers in
general.

An open source ebMS release is available from: http://freebxml.org

>
* Version 3 ebXML Transport Specification--The standard is designed to
enable the transmission of messages in XML or any other format and be a
"transport structure" capable of handling new and legacy messaging formats.
"We're not going to have separate standards for different messaging
formats," says Paul Knapp, co-chair of HL7's XML special interest group and
chief technology officer for Ottawa-based Continovation Services Inc. "We
need a road where we can drive old cars and the new cars coming out."

For more information on the draft trial standards, visit www.hl7.org.

Trends News

2004-04-28T20:18:00.000-04:00

My presentation today at the OAGi meeting at NIST was well received from a technical crowd.

The download is available here:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/6547/Introducing%20CAM%20-%20Tutorial.zip

The tutorial introduces the CAM technique and shows you how to augment XSD schemas for eBusiness applications by applying context driven assembly and validation against structures and content of eBusiness transactions.

That's a run-on sentence but in essence this gives you an XML scripting technique to capture the business logic between partners sending XML messages.

The jCAM processor available here: http://www.jCAM.org.uk is an open source
implementation of the CAM specifications.

I'm sure you will find some interesting items here if you are into semantics, rule based techniques and XML!

Enjoy, DW

2004-04-12T20:59:00.000-04:00

Death by UML Fever!

The ACM Queue magazine published online today this article
from the March edition.

The print edition includes a side-bar from Grady Booth himself too.

This article is a must read. This is one of those things that your
experience and knowledge told you - but you just could not
put your finger on it!

Personally this article is a huge validation of the work I have
been doing with both VisualScript as a tool and the OASIS BCM
approach.

Death by UML Fever!

Enjoy, DW.

2004-04-09T17:33:00.000-04:00

Wow!

Just found the most amazing resource for maps and photographs around Europe.

For example - here's the link to photos of places in Kent, England

Click here

Then there is the map resource itself: Multimap.com

Enjoy

2004-04-09T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's Easter already - and right on cue this week weather is marvellous.

Took the bike out for an 11 mile spin to get the dust shaken out.

Looking forward to aggressively working on CAM templates and
VisualScript models next week for a variety of applications.

Also preparing for presentation at NIST for OAGi - so building
open source parts for CAM processing with OAGi BODs.

Goal is to show how to use CAM - in three key use cases -
XSD assembly, Content Validation, and Business Transaction assembly.

2004-02-27T15:19:00.000-05:00

Frantic Friday, but relatively quiet. Weather finally on the warm; snow and ice melted off.

Been a good week on the XML standards front; good progress with the BCM, EPR and CAM
work.

Expecting to be able to post OASIS press releases on these shortly.

2004-02-18T23:51:00.000-05:00

Interesting meeting today at XMLWG in town. Definately movement afoot on implementing semantic dictionaries for eGov applications.

Other than that - our first warm day for two months! Still two inches of ice in the backyard - but not its shrinking steadily and cracks easily under foot. Time to think about spring soccer again...

2004-02-12T22:36:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Letters from America

Not much to report today - waiting for the long winter freeze to end, and trying to not panic about the overwhelming work backlog currently piled high.

click here to go to my website