Posts from — February 2006

Gracie, one of Mad Mikey’s friends left a very nice comment on my previous post about Mikey.  She assures me that he is indeed real and very much appreciates any support.  She also said that a lot of really well known blogs are talking about him, and in fact many people in the blogosphere knew him before all this happened.  Her word was good enough for me! I’m glad Mikey has good friends…

Then, though I wasn’t looking for any “proof” I came across this in a comic strip that I read every day – click it for a full view.

Go Mikey!

Don’t forget that the new season of The Sopranos starts March 12th.  I’ll be watching all its usual grittiness in HD splendor.

I know – its not exactly a family show, but I’m an Italian that grew up in NJ, and some of the characters in the show remind me of characters from my childhood.  I swear Paulie Walnuts is my “Uncle” Vic and I don’t even want to talk about the flashbacks that Livia gave me…  

My Dad, who is 100% of Italian descent, won’t watch the show.  I, being more of a mutt of Western Europe, have no such challenges.  Honestly, what I enjoy about the show is how it is about the characters more than anything else.  For a good outline of why that’s important, read these two articles from my brother’s blog.  You’ll never look at entertainment the same way…

Anyway, The Sopranos only USED to be the darkest show on television – that title now belongs to Deadwood.

Yow.

“Muslim pop singer Deeyah has irked the Muslim world with her provocative new music video that shows her stripping off a burka to reveal her bikini-clad body.”

See the full report here. Oddly enough, the song words themselves should garner more controversy than the video, but somehow I doubt that they will.

via Michelle Malkin

OK, so I’ve done more reading on all of this, and I don’t often find myself in the position of disagreeing with people like Michelle Malkin (who I highly regard), though it has happened once or twice in the past.  Anyway, here are my current thoughts:

1. Saying that Dubai Ports World is out of the running simply because they are from an Arab country is a knee-jerk, stupid position – in fact, and I NEVER use this word as quickly as some, it is racist.  But, honestly, that isn’t what is being said by anyone who is saying anything intelligent.
2. Nearly a thousand US Naval ships are serviced every year by managed DPW ports.  We haven’t had a challenge with them there.
3. UAE is a needed ally in the war on terror.  They are one of the most cooperative nations in that region, and we have enjoyed a win-win relationship for years.  As to them being horrible people, remember that The UAE is one of the only countries in the region where non-Muslims can openly practice their religion – and has been this way for over 20 years.
4. That being said, there certainly is room for improvement – like condemning the radical Takfir doctrine as Jordan has.  Or, the fact that the cash required for the 9/11 attacks mostly made its way through the UAE banking system.  We will need continued, and indeed increased cooperation for these things to be fixed.  We better have a damn good reason for blocking them out of our industry.
5. DPW will have no responsibility for security.  The Coast Guard has that responsibility, and that isn’t going to change.  DPW will be required to cooperate with the CG, just as any other company would, and should.  There is some credence to the fact that any managing company officials will most likely be apprised of security measures and emergency procedures.
6. To the people who say that we should keep this kind of job here in the good-ol-USA - well 30% of the port terminals in the US are already controlled by foreign companies, so I don’t even take that as a serious argument.
7. In fact, from what I can tell, 24 of the top 25 port management companies are foreign based, which means that the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of our incoming shipments are already managed by foreign interests just like DPW.  Since we only inspect 5% of our incoming shipments, we already trust these people quite a bit.  We leave a 95% open hole and we’re worried that somehow DPW will screw up our ability to look at the 5%, when it isn’t their responsibility to begin with?
8. The “Ties” to the Bush administration are weak and tenuous at best.  Treasury Secretary Snow was chairman of CSX Rail before joining the Bush cabinet – a year after he left CSX sold its international port interests to DPW.  Um, so what?  As I mentioned, there are only a few of these large companies in the world.  The fact that one sold something to another has nothing to do with anything. 

The most intelligent thing I’ve read about this to date is on the Counterterrorism Blog - we don’t necessarily come to the same conclusion, which concerns me.  They are the supposed experts and I’m not, so my tendency is to say that I’m ignorant and they are right.

Their most interesting point (found under the Administrative versus security section) outlines how the Jihadists would go about infiltrating DPW and how we would be put at risk as a result.

The deeper danger of penetration will be more complex: First, the enemy will penetrate from the UAE end, aided by Salafi or even Khumeinist sympathizers. This first line of defense could be breached by hiring elements to form a network inside the company, or subcontracted “hostile” entities in the future. Second, while moving inside the layers of the “management” the “net” could then hire elements coming from the American side. If we project that Jihadists are operating inside the US, a UAE company “managing” six main US ports would be a first rate opportunity for them to “connect.” Hence, one can project that once a “network” installs itself inside the corporation, it would be able to recruit US citizens and residents sympathizers with or part of the movement. A bridge would thus be established between the outside cells and the inside cells through a perfectly legitimate outlet.

Action would come once the bridge is operational. It could develop into multiple directions. General intelligence and spying in the US is only one possibility. Storing material in these sensitive areas is two. Learning about the security systems in these ports from the administrative end is three. Disrupting national security operations is four. The deeper the layers, the wider possibilities would open to the Jihadists. But the initial “hole” is what allows the chain to develop.

That is fairly terrifying to be sure, but they don’t go into detail about why this is more likely with the UAE than with other foreign companies.  They put it at the feet of Salafi and Khumeinist sympathizers – but these are not exactly unique to the UAE.

The fact is that we already outsource this type of work to foreigners and therefore the question becomes, is the UAE less trustworthy than any other country?  And, if they are, why do we already trust them with our military assets?

What really concerns me, whether it’s DPW or any other firm, is that there is no cohesive hiring or screening process for port workers whatsoever.  Now THAT should certainly change.  Also, I continue to be appalled at how little is actually inspected at our ports. Hong Kong inspects 100% of every shipment that hits their ports.  Why don’t we?

Just came across a post about a guy named “Mad Mikey”, a US Navy vet who suffered a bad stroke recently.

His loved ones are asking for some help with donations.

Now, I don’t know this guy, and the entire time I was reading the story, I was thinking, “Hey, I’d love to help, but who knows if this guy is real or not?”

Then it hit me – if it’s all a lie, then its not TRUE.  Meaning that there isn’t a person going through this tough time, and there isn’t really a family hurting like this.  And my thought wasn’t “yeah, so I got ripped off…”, it was, “Oh, thank God that that isn’t happening to these people…”

That’s when I knew that sending some money, no matter how little, was the best thing to do.  Now, call me a sucker if you will, but if this is a real story, then the money will help and if its not a real story – well, I would have paid a lot more than this to have it NOT be true anyway.

God bless you and your family Mikey, real or not…

—

I used to have this same problem giving money to people on the street.  My thoughts were always along these lines: “They are just going to turn around and buy alcohol or something else that will continue the destructive pattern that got them to this point already…  Why help them hurt themselves?” or “These guys are just lazy and won’t go get a job, so why give them money?” or even “These people make a ton of money fleecing the rest of us hard working people.”

Then God changed my heart on this in a big way.  After a time of my own financial hardship, God told me in that still, small voice that is always there if you listen for it – “You take care of the giving and trust Me to take care of how it’s received…”

Now, that’s a different story entirely.

The Politechnical Institute (great name, isn’t it? heh..) has an interesting view of the port security hubbub.

His post isn’t long, but one has to wonder if he really has hit the nail on the head by saying:

This is brilliant politics. Telling people not to worry about security is like telling them not to think of an elephant.

Now the Dems will begin detailing our security short-comings and accusing the President of lying and putting the nation at risk.

All this might just allow him to re-shape our port and border security without being the Bushitlerburton. Kudos to Rove, who’s been bringing his A-game since the NSA “spy” thing.

Hmmm…  Could it be? Just the idea of it makes me laugh… As the parent of a toddler, I never underestimate the power of making someone believe that your agenda is their idea in the first place.

Brilliant!

Sony’s PS3 is supposed to be out this spring, but there seems to be several issues that may hold them back.  Of course, Sony isn’t backing down from their date just yet…

First is cost.  The financial people are saying that each box is going to cost over $800 at launch.  OUCH!

Second seems to be the IBM Octopiler, better known as the software that is supposed to tame the beastly Cell Broadband Engine.  See, most programs that run on the PC that you are reading this on, or even that run on gaming consoles are written in some kind of high level language (like C++, Java, etc.).  This language is then turned into a program that you can execute by a “compiler”.  In very simplistic terms, it turns the human readable source code language into the 0′s and 1′s (binaries) that your computer can read and understand.

Well, the Octopiler (multiple armed compiler…) is much more ambitious.  Even its headline is complicated – “Supporting Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) and Heterogeneous Parallelism Automatically!”  Huh?

Well, for those of us who DON’T think in 0′s and 1′s – basically that means that the Octopiler is going to put out binaries that are already optimized for multiprocessor and massively multiprocessor systems.

What’s the wow factor?  That just isn’t being done today.

And you say: “But I know that there are computers with 2 CPU’s in them, and they even have DualCore CPU’s now, with two processors on a single chip.  There is nothing new in that…”

Oh, but there is.  See, in today’s world, most of the heavy lifting of using multiple processors is left to the OS – a huge beefy chunk of code that needs to be BETWEEN the program you want to run and the multiple processors that will actually do the work.  If an application is written to be multi-threaded (meaning it spawns off multiple little processes of data crunching), then the OS can hand off these multiple processing threads to multiple CPU’s.  The program itself doesn’t think about multiple processors – it leaves that to the OS.  And, people write multi-threaded code for many reasons – not just this benefit when running on a dual processor machine.

Well, the Octopiler is set to change all of that.  It is intended to be the next level of compiler – one that can take a sequential program that’s written to a unified memory model, and output binaries that BY THEMSELVES make efficient use of beefy multiprocessing systems like Cell’s.

The closest analogy I can think of is this:

Task

Say you need 16 items, 2 each from 8 different stores.  Your spouse has to follow your plan for a shopping trip and they have to be back home by 5pm with everything purchased.

Today’s Compiler

You are today’s normal compiler, the task is your source code, your spouse is the CPU and the goal is to have all 16 items in your house as quickly as possible.

So, as today’s compiler, you sit down and lookup all the addresses of the stores, map them out and come up with what you think is a logical plan of attack based on distances, etc.  You factor in traffic patterns, pee breaks and lunch. You come up with an exact, optimized step by step process from point A through to Z.  You hand the plan to your spouse and walk them out to the car.  But, when you get outside, you find that there are actually 3 more people there to help your spouse achieve the results (spouse + 3 more = 4 processors).

Hmm..  Nuts.  An agent for the other three people (the OS) takes your detailed A to Z one person plan and tears off individual pieces of it and hands each person 1 store to go to, directing them to come back to him when they are done to receive their next task.  1 person ends up going to 3 stores, 2 people go to 2 stores and the last person only went to 1 store.

The final results?  Even with these inefficiencies, more is still less – time that is.  The job is finished in 1/2 the time you originally expected because of the extra help. Why not 1/4 the time since you had 4 times the number of people?  Easy – the inefficiencies of not knowing all the facts before you made the plan.  A lot of time was “wasted” in extra round trips for each person to receive their subsequent instructions.

The Octopiler

Now you are the Octopiler, the task is still your source code, your spouse is still the CPU and the goal is still standing at home with your 16 items as quickly as possible.

But, this time you know that it won’t just be your spouse going on the trip.  You aren’t exactly sure how many people will be there, but you do know that there will be more than 1.  Instead of mapping out the procedural process (go to store 1 then store 2, etc.), you instead figure out all of the operations that can be done in parallel with each other – meaning that it is completely possible for multiple people to be going to store 1 and store 2 at the same time – that can be done in parallel.  But it is impossible for efficiency to have people going to store 1 and be buying the items from store 1 at the same time – that needs to be done 1 step after the other.

So, once you have figured out the parallel nature of the tasks, you then figure out the relationships that exist between these parallel tasks, taking into account their relative distances from each other, the multiple pee breaks and lunches, traffic patterns, etc.  You then make a little chart that outlines optimized plans for X number of people.  When you find out how many people there will be, all you have to do is look up the plan for that specific number.

So, with your planning done, you walk outside and find out that 3 other people will be working with your spouse.  You hand them each their portion of the 4 person optimized plan while the agent just looks on and nods – the 4 people zoom off to do their work.  The 4 person optimized plan calls for 2 people of the people to each go to 3 stores and for the other 2 to only go to one store.  Since you had all the facts up front, you provided the most efficient plan to accomplish your specific task for the specific number of resources you had at your disposal.

The results? The task is completed in 1/4 of the time allotted for your spouse alone and is also done in 1/2 the time taken by the ”regular” compiler plan.  Why? Because you had an exact plan that was optimized for the specific number of resources for the specific task to be performed.

—–

Now, that is an extreme oversimplification and I even fudged some of the real workings of the two systems to better cram them into my silly analogy.  But, I’m sure you get the point.

You can see how the Octopiler is much different than what currently exists today. It needs to be able to take high-level source code that outlines a unified memory model sequential program and output optimized binaries for a massive, heterogeneous multiprocessor system-on-a-chip.  In fact, this task is so different from what exists today, that it prompted the Ars Technica folks to say this:

This isn’t just a tall order, or even a doctoral dissertation. It’s a generation’s worth of doctoral research. Meanwhile, the PS3 is due out in 2006.

I would say, “One long, expensive step for the PS3; One giant leap for mankind…”

And, that’s why I’m not a full time journalist, and the Ars guys are.