tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83340189898827028422024-03-06T19:34:14.994-08:00relativistic observerMark Zimmer: Creativity + Technology = Future<br>Please enter your email address and click submit to follow this blogMarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-91509457309952454342020-04-21T16:44:00.003-07:002020-04-24T10:05:52.099-07:00Notes on Goodbye My Friend<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<b style="font-size: 14px;">Writing and production history</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDQU6FI7EjknAJUHPvJZRSrfd-85IvQSVWe7FW6DvHU7VfcHjoz2qDL2EX5IcaRO5LWmWFOGi877SPq5W0tu3VWP8v6_LvUOXPcq4-ZPckPiS-fFmfPfD4qazZJRk-S8IubPAMIMYkaMdD/s1600/Tom+1c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1063" data-original-width="1508" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDQU6FI7EjknAJUHPvJZRSrfd-85IvQSVWe7FW6DvHU7VfcHjoz2qDL2EX5IcaRO5LWmWFOGi877SPq5W0tu3VWP8v6_LvUOXPcq4-ZPckPiS-fFmfPfD4qazZJRk-S8IubPAMIMYkaMdD/s320/Tom+1c.jpg" width="320" /></a>This song was written in May, 2019 as a farewell to Tom Hedges who died in November of 2007. I worked with him for 30 years and we became business partners at Fractal Design, where we created Painter, ImageStudio, ColorStudio, and other great products. The song is all guitars, bass, and drums (aside from vocals). Tom was a Beatles fan, and he liked John Lennon. Lennon mainly respected rock songs that used the traditional rock instruments, so that's why I arranged the song this way. I also altered my voice like Lennon, who always wanted something different. The song chronicles many memories, and tries hard to show how much he influenced me.</div>
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It starts with a chorus, with the drum setting the tempo and an iconic guitar riff, subtly fuzzed. In the background are some descending chromatic vocals. Slow arpeggiations on a clean guitar trace out the harmony in a wistful way while the drum fills get your attention.</div>
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The first verse sets the scene. He was, at first, my mentor, but eventually I took over as lead coder. Apps took over in importance and salability. The B-section of the first verse chronicles our relationship - we fought over lots of things but always somehow remembered to be friends the next day.</div>
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The second verse talks about how we were the progenitors of our software Apps. But we didn’t write them all — others helped write them like John Derry (UI and brushes), Bob Lansdon (watercolors), Priscilla Shih (general coding), Shelby Moore (PC version, multi-point color fills), Glenn Reid (R&D Management), Christina Hall (general coding), Vahe Avedissian (general coding), Scott Cooper (general coding), Erik Johnson (general coding), and our Ray Dream friends, Damien Saint-Macary (web features), François Huet (web features), and Nicholas Barry (Web features). These were the people that actually touched the code (and there were a few more I can’t recall). These were “our loyal crew”. And they were awesome!</div>
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But our loyal crew also consisted of a few more people who were instrumental to the development of the complex software base. For instance, Michael Cinque, who headed QA and Steve Rathmann, an early hire that always adapted to the task.</div>
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In the B-section of the second verse, the tale of difficulties competing against the software giant Adobe gets told. We fought the Painter fight ten years. All through the time, Tom’s health got worse and worse. He was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989, went into remission, had it flare up in 1995, and went into remission again. However, his radiation therapy treatments ended up creating a spreading neuropathy that started with his hands, and eventually affected his lower arms, and then his whole arms (by 2005) and finally his lungs.</div>
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We believe what caused this was his brief tenure as KSJO’s chief engineer. He spent a lot of time in the Optimod room up near the peak of Mt. Hamilton, where their radio antennas and microwave transmitters resided. I went in there once (but only once). You could literally feel the radiation.</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSJO#/media/File:KSJO_Radio_Antenna_-_panoramio.jpg">KSJO's Antenna Tower - Next to the Optimod shack</a></div>
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He also had a spectacular lack of good luck with the women in his life. And I’ll say no more about that (for now).</div>
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<b>Reprise references</b></div>
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The reprise from this song contains a dozen references to arcana from Tom’s life and the time we shared. Here, I’ll pick it apart, line by line.</div>
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Remember the days in Boston town</div>
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Tom and I were Fractal Software, a partnership, in 1986-1989, with Letraset as our marketers. We often traveled to Boston for the MacWorld East show, to show our product. Letraset had demo artists and a medium-sized booth. Later on, Fractal Design, the company that Tom and I had a hand in founding (along with Steve Manousos, Lee Lorenzen, and Steve Thomas), had a much larger booth presence. Tom and I would arrive in August in Boston, set up shop in a nice hotel, hit the bar, and wait for the other people showing products to arrive. It became a growth period for both of us.</div>
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Remember the day we lost our friend</div>
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Bob Lansdon was our odd friend from academia. He was constantly in search of a PhD in math. There was no doubt he was smart. Bob introduced me to Fourier transforms, and taught me how to vary the phase of the frequency signal, an incredibly useful trick. He and I dreamt of laser interferometry for measuring paper surface texture. Bob wrote the first watercolor capability in Painter. One day in 1994, Bob came into Fractal Design the office on Spreckels Drive in Aptos, and into the suite where Tom, John Derry, and I had our desks, and we talked for a bit. He had completed his PhD, finally after all these years (his thesis advisor was Ralph Abraham). We were a busy group and he left. A few days later we learned of his suicide. When I announced it to the new at Fractal, that was one of the few times I actually cried in front of the company I ran.</div>
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Remember how Water Tank went down</div>
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In the early 1990s, Tom was married to Joanne Etheridge (née Stoner) and they became a couple. They had two kids, Colin and Broghan. By the late 1990s, the relationship between Tom and Joanne was strained for a reason I never knew. It might have been Tom’s personality, which was a wee bit crude for many people’s taste. I don’t know. But there was a point where Joanne hired her parents, both real estate agents, to get them a second home. They bought a house on Water Tank Road in La Selva. To me as an observer, I felt that their strained relations, compounded with the fact that Joanne was literally creating a bachelor pad for Tom, meant that they were headed for divorce. But somehow Tom never saw it.</div>
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Remember the goldfish bowl and then</div>
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WhenI first met Tom Hedges at Calma Company in 1974, he was an RA at Stanford with his first wife, Rabbit (I never learned her name). So he came in late because those were his remaining working hours. I had been hired at Calma (at 4 bucks an hour, by Art Collmeyer) as an applications programmer for a new APL-based language (called GPL) that Carl Smith was creating. I needed a real workstation to do the work I was doing (which usually involved not doing what I was supposed to do). I was working on a demo of a rotating dodecahedron with hidden lines suppressed that ran on a Tektronix storage scope. One night Tom and Bruce Holloway, high as a kite, entered the demo area at Calma, which was surrounded by glass, and hence its name “the goldfish bowl”. They hopped on to the wheeled chairs and scooted themselves across the demo space, very close to me, and said “boo!”. I barely looked up from my code, which irked them a tiny bit. But they just kept abusing the 5-wheeled chairs, skating to and fro. It was a funny time for me, to be sure.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kUi01uK9MzNya6na1uxrObKBv9HOB4v_IV_eIKzyC3uwUMZaULs-Jswf7isyLbXaQ_fAAIDNduAeLbRVXJhptKOZFaiZK1Qsa9CVmCP865pt3yoVCNB03HvdXsdm8cltsE223JUgbK9c/s1600/LansdonPlot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="1024" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kUi01uK9MzNya6na1uxrObKBv9HOB4v_IV_eIKzyC3uwUMZaULs-Jswf7isyLbXaQ_fAAIDNduAeLbRVXJhptKOZFaiZK1Qsa9CVmCP865pt3yoVCNB03HvdXsdm8cltsE223JUgbK9c/s320/LansdonPlot.jpg" width="320" /></a>Remember the wall-sized plots we made</div>
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Tom introduced me to Bob Lansdon as a one time co-resident of Ruddock house in their days at Caltech. I myself was a Page house resident, but a few years later on. Bob was a shy nerd who rarely spoke. But he knew his math. At Calma one night, with access to a brand new Versatec raster printer, with four-foot-wide rolls of paper, they decided to make a plot. Tom suggested that the plot be of a nice mathematical function. Bob suggested a Fourier transform of a set of points on the unit circle (I think it was 9-point). A gigantic plot was produced and it hung on the walls for a time. I've recreated the plot here.</div>
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The end of your set you played that song</div>
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Tom worked for KZSU, the Stanford radio station as a DJ for a while in the 1970s. He divorced his first wife Rabbit (she was unfaithful to him I heard) and married Carolyn Foster. At the end of his DJ set at KZSU, Tom always played a song “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond as a tribute to her.</div>
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Remember how partner’s draw was great</div>
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Tom and I were partners in Fractal Software from 1985 to 1990. When we got Letraset as a marketer was when we met Marla Milne, a product manager from Soho in New York. She spotted my demo of Gray Paint at a party thrown by Marc Canter. Once we built our first image editing App, ImageStudio, the royalty checks started coming in once a quarter. When they arrived, we deposited the check and then each drew out half of the check in “partner’s draw”. We bought houses on those checks and bought our first BMWs.</div>
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Remember how Cheshire cowed your dog</div>
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Tom and Caroline had a large German Shepherd mix, Pokey. It was a huge dog. One day they came to visit me and Ruth Zimmer (née Rasmussen), my second wife at our house in Evergreen. Ruth’s old black cat was named Cheshire and it was, let’s say, a bit strong-willed. Once Pokey came through the door, Cheshire pounced! Cheshire, with one tenth the body mass of Pokey, soon had Pokey literally cowering in the corner by the door. Poor dog!</div>
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Remember the Gershwin rhapsody</div>
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Tom’s dad, who had passed by the time we became partners in Fractal Software, was an avid pianist. He often played the Gershwin <i>Rhapsody in Blue</i>. When Tom and I met Ed Bogas (Steve Capps introduced us, I think) and his crew of musicians and programmers in the mid-1980s (including Neil Cormia and Ty Roberts), we both got interested in the possibilities of music and computers. We were tasked to sample a piano, so we did exactly that and produced an 88-key set of sound samples. I had created a program that could play MIDI format, triggering sound samples, and mimicking the sustain pedal and Tom laboriously keyed in the Gershwin Rhapsody so we could play it back. He also keyed in <i>Wasted on the Way</i> by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. With the Rhapsody, I think Tom was literally constructing a tribute to his Dad.</div>
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Tom and I had both profited from ImageStudio and ColorStudio, both Letraset-branded products, because we received royalties from their international sales. One day in 1990, we got a call from Letraset’s General Manager Jack Forbes who told us they were getting out of the software business in North America. I had been working on Painter for 11 months at my home (in secret). I chose that day to introduce it to Tom. He and I both thought it had definite possibilities, so we contacted some friends and started Fractal Design.</div>
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Remember the exit strategy</div>
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Tom, John, and I worked on Painter for nearly ten years. The board of directors had hired me back as CEO (of MetaCreations) and ordered me to sell off the software. Which I proceeded to do. It was an unpleasant time for me. But as it happened, we sold Painter and associated products to Corel and set up a consulting gig with them for the three of us. That was our exit strategy. It wasn’t planned.</div>
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Remember neuropathy’s dismay</div>
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All through our time when Fractal Design was in Scotts Valley, Tom Hedges began experiencing neuropathy in his hands. This was a result of his radiation therapy in 1898 for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an aggressive cancer. Unfortunately his radiation therapy had to be concentrated on his lymph nodes in his neck. At first he had problems typing. Now, Tom was always a two-finger typist to begin with. Eventually it cost him his productivity. Later on, it cost him the use of his arms.</div>
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Remember the picture Marla made</div>
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In 1985, we built ImageStudio, to be distributed by Letraset. Marla Milne was our product manager. Tom had a picture of his family. Tom also had a chipped tooth. Marla, as a joke, scanned that image and applied Tom’s chipped tooth to all his other family members. When I saw it, I had a laugh for about an hour. What a crazy, disrespectful idea. After I had my laugh, I said “Bummer, man” to Tom and resumed my coding. It was a thing we did. The funny thing was that Tom had that chipped tooth fixed within a week.</div>
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Remember the sadness near the end</div>
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On Tom’s 57th birthday. He had a small gathering in his local pub, CB Hannigan’s. Tom’s arms hung limp at his sides because of his neuropathy. He and I spoke for fifteen minutes or so. His situation was not good since his lungs’ function was finally being impaired by his neuropathy. I listened to his situation and gave my final “Bummer, man” to him. He smiled (the only time that day I saw a smile from Tom) and we drank our beers. Mine was from a mug. His was from a tall glass with a long straw. It was a sad moment.</div>
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Remember the time you were betrayed</div>
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Really it was the “times” he was betrayed. But this line is referring to his months-long relationship with a woman known as “Yolanda”. She wasn’t straight with him. He took her to Tahiti on one vacation I remember, and lavished her with jewels and such. But as It turned out, she had never left her relationship with her previous boyfriend and actually brought him with them on the pretext of scuba training (for her). Later, when he wised up, he had a detective discover that she was still seeing him, with pictures and all. And that was it.</div>
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Remember I’ll always be your friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye old friend.</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2px;">
<b>Lyrics</b></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye My Friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I said goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Though your time is gone</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I look back upon</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
All those years we spent together</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Working on and on</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
You were outta sight</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
And you taught me right</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
When you handed me the reins</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I drove on through the night</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Day by day</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We learned to get along</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Along the way</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We remained strong</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We both wrote the song</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Others sang along</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
You know, even when the earth moved</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We kept on keepin’ on</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We worked to create</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
And our stuff was great</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Yes our loyal crew was awesome</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
When they stepped up to the plate</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Year by year</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
We fought the hardest fights</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Have no fear</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Soon comes the night</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I said goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Too much time in the radio station</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Took its toll out on you</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
And even so it never made you blue</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Too much trust in the ladies that found you</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Left a few scars on you</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Too bad that none of them could be true</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
I said goodbye my friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
(Reprise)</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the days in Boston town</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the day we lost our friend</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember how Water Tank went down</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the goldfish bowl and then</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the wall-sized plots we made</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
The end of your set you played that song</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember how partner’s draw was great</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember how Cheshire cowed your dog</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the Gershwin rhapsody</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember when Painter saved the day</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the exit strategy</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember neuropathy’s dismay</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the picture Marla made</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the sadness near the end</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember the time you were betrayed</div>
<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Remember I’ll always be your friend</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-2018470992988422892017-01-10T17:25:00.000-08:002017-01-10T17:26:58.547-08:00On WikiLeaks Methods and MotivationsRecently, the <a href="https://twitter.com/WLTaskForce/status/817432546086682625">WikiLeaks Task Force</a> tweeted something quite inflammatory:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>We are thinking of making an online database with all "verified" twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
In other words, that it was determined to create and publish a database of personal interconnections between verified Twitter users. This database would include information about finances, family connections, cohabitation, jobs and so forth.<br />
<br />
This statement has, at the very least, <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/01/06/wikileaks-database-verified-twitter/#0PFlvmAcuaqi">sparked outrage</a>.<br />
<br />
Let's look at this statement from two points of view: (1) that WikiLeaks made the statement , and (2) that someone else made the statement and wants us to think WikiLeaks said it.<br />
<br />
<b>(1) WikiLeaks made the statement</b><br />
<br />
That, on the face of it, would be galling.<br />
<br />
I ask you here, honestly: does everything have to be public?<br />
<br />
I can understand Facebook and why they would want to collect their user graph. They protect their users' privacy (although that's far more nebulous, even given their periodic missives, <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/2409285/facebook/facebook-flops--the-social-network-s-10-biggest-mistakes.html">famous missteps</a>, and explanations of policy).<br />
<br />
But let's look at the author of the tweet: WikiLeaks. This sounds more like a sinister plot to me. Let's address the main reason for this.<br />
<br />
What's all this about WikiLeaks working with the Russians?<br />
<br />
Though WikiLeaks may never have dealt directly with the Russian intelligence services, they certainly had to know that release of the data played right into the Russians' hands. It seems pretty clear, given the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/dec/18/john-podesta/its-true-wikileaks-dumped-podesta-emails-hour-afte/">timing of the release of the Podesta emails</a>, that WikiLeaks understands perfectly the consequences of their actions.<br />
<br />
In fact, WikiLeaks' sensitive data releases almost always damage the west and leave Russia unscathed. A visit to the <a href="https://wlstorage.net/torrent/">wlstorage.net torrent repository</a> shows us specifically who they target. There are very few Russia-related information troves.<br />
<br />
If they released a trove of data on the Russians, it seems clear to me that Assange and many others at WikiLeaks would find themselves sipping Polonium-210-laced tea like that ill-fated ex-KGB whistleblower <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19647226">Alexander Litvinenko</a>. Bad press for the Kremlin (in his case, looking into the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya) is generally punished by death in Russia. Dig too deeply and you'll discover, much to your chagrin, that it's your own grave you have dug.<br />
<br />
WikiLeaks <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/11/03/assange-says-wikileaks-didnt-get-emails-russia/93245454/">denies they received the leaked emails from the Russians</a>. The US <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/intel-report-says-us-identifies-go-betweens-who-gave-emails-to-wikileaks/">claims they know the go-betweens</a> that prove Putin ordered the operation.<br />
<br />
Let's just say for a moment that WikiLeaks are enemies of the west. Then this is completely consistent with publishing a database of who is related to who, what their jobs are, how much they make, and where they live. This process, called doxing enables people and organizations with malicious intent to get handles on people they want to attack. If this were true, the database WikiLeaks apparently would want to publish is, in fact, an analog of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine">human flesh search engine</a>.<br />
<br />
This kind of data would be of immense use to the Russian intelligence services, such as the FSB. So it certainly seems plausible to me that WikiLeaks was behind the tweet. But what about the other possibility?<br />
<br />
<b>(2) Someone else made the statement and wants us to think WikiLeaks said it</b><br />
<br />
Did they even say it? It was tweeted by the WikiLeaksTaskForce, the Official WikiLeaks support account. It is explicitly intended to "correct misinformation about WikiLeaks".<br />
<br />
Very soon after the original tweet, which has since been deleted, WikiLeaks itself tweeted the following:<br />
<br />
<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Media note: </span><a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link js-nav" data-mentioned-user-id="16589206" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">@<span style="color: inherit;"><strong>WikiLeaks</strong></span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the only official account of </span><strong style="color: #292f33; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">WikiLeaks</strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">. No other accounts are authorized to make statements on </span><a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link js-nav" data-mentioned-user-id="16589206" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks" style="color: #1b95e0; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">@<span style="color: inherit;"><strong>wikileaks</strong></span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> behalf.</span></i><br />
<br />
So the narrative might be that some troll joined (or hacked into) WikiLeaksTaskForce and posted the tweet to spread false information.<br />
<br />
Its not unlikely at all that someone would want to discredit WikiLeaks. After all, their business is to enable whistleblowers by providing foolproof ways to release sensitive information. So anyone that has been damaged (or may be damaged) certainly has the motivation to discredit WikiLeaks. This is a big list of people, like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and organizations, like Bank of America, the American Intelligence community, and so on.<br />
<br />
Tom properly discredit WikiLeaks, they would plausibly possess the means to accomplish the database in question. To assess that, we must first know exactly how WikiLeaks works.<br />
<br />
<b>How does WikiLeaks work?</b><br />
<br />
Their primary modus operandi, I believe, must generally be given by the following steps:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>accept large corpora of whistleblower information</li>
<li>put it onto an air-gapped network</li>
<li>strip it of all attribution, which entails editing it</li>
<li>separate it into bins of sensitivity</li>
<li>encrypt and encapsulate (using BitTorrent) the bins for transport</li>
<li>upload the information on wlstorage.net</li>
<li>get other sites to mirror the information</li>
<li>periodically release keys for the purpose of disseminating the information a bit at a time</li>
</ul>
<br />
They would use an <b>air-gapped network</b> to prevent anyone from hacking into them, which is definitely possible. They would want to isolate the sensitive data to completely control what is done with it and where it goes.<br />
<br />
The <b>stripping of all attribution</b> information, including email headers and telltale references is done to protect their sources. This may involve redaction of information that can hurt innocent parties. But also look at this on the face of it: they are intimately acquainted with the forensics of data present in email headers.<br />
<br />
They have admitted that they <b>separate the data into bins of sensitivity</b> so they can control the impact of the releases. After all, the idea that some information is more sensitive than others is a natural consequence of the information itself. But they might also want to keep the most inflammatory information as a deadman switch. Such information can be released if Assange is killed, for instance. This was demonstrated recently when, in October 2016, <a href="http://gizmodo.com/ecuador-confirms-it-has-cut-off-julian-assanges-interne-1787949101">Ecuador cut off Julian Assange's Internet access</a>. Soon thereafter, <a href="http://gizmodo.com/these-cryptic-wikileaks-tweets-dont-mean-julian-assange-1787866602">WikiLeaks tweeted hashes to various troves of information</a>, aimed at John Kerry, Ecuador, and the UK FCO. So it's a virtual certainty that Assange has deadman switches.<br />
<br />
Their favorite method of leak data storage is by <b>encrypted, encapsulated databases</b>, posted as a single file. This is so they can withhold the release of the data, processed using AES 256-bit encryption, until a later date, without withholding the data itself. Often, the files are hundreds of gigabytes in size, so they use BitTorrent as their transport. The file names <a href="http://anewdomain.net/2013/08/19/torrent-wikileaks-insurance-files-encrypted-insurance-file-links-here/">often contain the word "insurance"</a>. This also corroborates the theory that the files constitute a deadman switch: if Assange or another key-holding WikiLeaks person is killed, then keys may be released by the others in retribution.<br />
<br />
After the data is packaged, it is then <b>uploaded to wlstorage.net</b>, a storage site run by WikiLeaks that promotes mirroring. Unfortunately, from time to time, this data has often <a href="http://www.joshwieder.net/2015/09/wikileaks-website-that-hosted-torrent.html">included malware</a> which gets cleaned up, generally as soon as it is discovered.<br />
<br />
Once there, any number of <b>sites mirror the WikiLeaks databases</b>. This includes CableDrum, and <a href="http://anewdomain.net/2013/08/19/torrent-wikileaks-insurance-files-encrypted-insurance-file-links-here/">many other sites</a>. This measure of redundancy prevents any single site from simply being destroyed to prevent the sensitive information from being released.<br />
<br />
When WikiLeaks releases a trove of information, they simply need to <b>release the AES 256-bit (64 hex digit) key</b>. This allows anybody having access to any of the mirror sites to decrypt the information and begin the process of data mining it. Usually this means the press.<br />
<br />
<b>How does WikiLeaks modus operandi make the tweet more plausible, specifically?</b><br />
<br />
First, because WikiLeaks is known to accept large corpora of hacked data, who says they haven't been able to get ahold of the verified Twitter database? If it's not plausible, then this tweet is a call to arms for the many hackers out there who need the cred that would stem from such a successful attack.<br />
<br />
Second, because WikiLeaks is adept at stripping attribution information from email, metadata from photographs, wrappers from tweets, and other media, they are the perfect institution to be able to make use of that attribution information, symmetrically, to work against the "system".<br />
<br />
Third, knowledge of encryption and the limits of its usefulness means they must also be knowledgeable about decrypting and cracking such information. They have a milieu of hackers that they are in regular contact with, certainly. They are trusted by hackers because it is WikiLeaks specific mission to protect them. They need to know what can and can't be cracked so they can keep their publicly available information troves secret from the most capable intelligence agencies in the world.<br />
<br />
<b>How does the tweet discredit WikiLeaks, specifically?</b><br />
<br />
The ghastly specter of Big Brother looms over the tweet, that some clandestine organization is gathering information on all of us. This makes WikiLeaks the new NSA, the new GCHQ. Which makes those two organizations the ones most likely to discredit Assange.<br />
<br />
<b>Do they really need discrediting?</b><br />
<br />
Currently their leader Julian Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for 4 years and 7 months. This is because he has been granted asylum by Ecuador. Assange suspects that he will be extradited to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act of 1917. This could net him 45 years in a supermax prison, and potentially the death penalty.<br />
<br />
Assange is also wanted for "lesser degree rape" in Sweden, a charge that will not expire until 2020.<br />
<br />
The NSA has labelled WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor".<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-84581356537683341432016-12-17T11:35:00.000-08:002016-12-17T11:36:01.472-08:00Profit Angle<div style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
I have <a href="http://1reddrop.com/2016/12/03/apple-reason-microsoft-google-will-never-quit-mobile-hardware/">read</a> that Android's success is a direct result of Apple's iOS being a walled garden. Let's look at this statement now from two different angles. First, is the walled garden really bad? Second, is this the real reason that Google and Microsoft are actively developing their own hardware?</div>
<div style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<b>Is the walled garden really bad?</b></div>
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Apple curates the apps that are allowed into the App Store. This has demonstrably reduced malware compared with Android. Recently, a form of malware, called Gooligan, was found to be present in about 100 apps. It is present in about <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/gooligan-android-malware-steals-access-to-one-million-accounts">one million phones</a> in the wild, and increasing at a staggering rate of about <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/android-gooligan-ghost-push-hack">13,000 smartphones per day</a>. I would actually say curation is a plus. So, what is it that people prefer about the Android operating system?</div>
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Let's look at what makes Google's Android shine over Apple's iOS.</div>
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.lifewire.com/android-vs-iphone-1616830">This article</a> points to three main reasons: Android...</span></div>
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<b>Rooting</b></div>
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Talk about dubious value. Being able to root Android means (in hacker parlance) the phone can be rootkit'd. In plain English, it means that apps can enter superuser mode and obtain administrative privileges on your smartphone. Once that happens, they can reconfigure your device, redirect its output, and install their own choice of apps. In other words, you are exposed to malware that can steal your passwords, the money in your bank accounts, access your email, snapchat photos, microphone, track your location, keep logs of your text messages, listen in on your phone calls, and essentially every bad thing you can imagine. Malware on Android is a critical problem right now.</div>
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Your average consumer should never, ever root their phone. It's only for hackers, spies, and criminals to take advantage of you. What this represents is Google <b>not</b> looking out for you.<br />
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Now let's look at how pleasant rooting is on Android. Why should you root your phone? <a href="http://www.androidcentral.com/root">This article</a> spells it out perfectly (while detailing how complicated, dangerous, and potentially undesirable the rooting process can be). The main reason that people want to root their phones is to get rid of the bloatware that's typically installed by the manufacturer (Samsung, for instance). Welcome to the same problem we had in the last millennium with PCs: shovelware. This is how they differentiate their phones from each other in the Android ecosystem -- the same way vendors used to differentiate their PCs in the Wintel ecosystem. But, in comparison, it's a fact that Apple now allows you do delete the pre-installed apps you don't want on iOS 10, without rooting your phone.<br />
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Many users want to bypass the complexity of using Terminal to obtain superuser mode on the phone's Linux kernel to change various privileges. Hey: what consumer would want to do that? So they buy rooting software to do it. Can you trust that software? No. In July 2016, rooting software was reported to have installed malware on <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/virulent-auto-rooting-malware-takes-control-of-10-million-android-devices/">10 million Android handsets</a>.<br />
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And, by the way, each manufacturer's phone has a different rooting process due to the security bloatware they've installed. Joy.</div>
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<b>Non-proprietary software formats</b></div>
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This means that, unlike iOS apps, which are available only through Apple's own App Store, Android apps are available from several sources. The Google Play Store is not the only place you can buy and install Android apps. There are many alternatives, including Amazon Appstore for Android, SlideME, 1Mobile Market, Samsung Galaxy Apps, Mobile9, Opera Mobile Store, etc.</div>
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Is this a good thing? It does open up multiple sources for Android apps that run on various smartphones.</div>
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But what are the downsides of multiple app stores?</div>
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The first problem is fragmentation. Each Android smartphone has a different hardware configuration, which turns out to make the app developer's life hell. Each smartphone has a different screen configuration, for instance. Before buying an app with a specialized purpose, like using the GPS, or a game app with high demands, it's important to decide if that app will run properly on your phone. This is precisely why smartphone manufacturers have been building their own app stores -- not all apps in the Android ecosystem run on every phone.</div>
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The second problem is trust. Can you trust the app you download to be free of malware? You would like to know that the App Store you are using is checking for malware. Fundamentally, if they do not have access to the app's code, <a href="https://www.proofpoint.com/sites/default/files/pp-why-app-stores-cannot-protect-enterprises-from-malware.pdf">app stores cannot protect you from malware</a>. What happens is this: you download an app, as it runs, it loads and install malware from some server somewhere. This installs Gooligan.<br />
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Nowyou find new apps simply appearing on your phone. This happens because ratings are actually steered by app companies through the use of the Gooligan software. Gooligan installs itself, initially, for the purpose of buying apps it wants you to buy, forging your approval to buy them (and possibly spend money on them) and then rating them highly. These apps can be installed because Gooligan can obtain system privileges. Usually this happens because you enter the admin password for your machine. Perhaps it's to give the app privileges to install some fontware or customization feature. These new apps it installs potentially contain the real malware, because you do not have a choice nor can you control where they come from.</div>
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<b>Customizable interface</b></div>
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Really? Can't you customize the interface of an iPhone? You can customize the wallpaper and the lock screen photo. If you want to go further, you can use customization apps like Pimp Your Screen, Call Screen Maker, iCandy Shelves & Skins, Pimp Your Keyboard, and so forth.<br />
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On Android, you should ask yourself how much you want customization. After all, it might come with malware.</div>
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<b>Oh, cost!</b></div>
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One of the main reasons that people prefer Android is the cost of the phone. Which really has nothing to do with Android. Actually, cost is normalizing because deals with carriers are being made that pay for the phone up front, in exchange for locking you into the carrier for two years (usually). But this applies to all phones now. So, cost is not as much a reason as it used to be. But the plain fact is that, without a carrier deal, Apple's iPhones do cost more.</div>
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<b>Why Google and Microsoft are developing their own hardware</b><br />
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Second, is that even the reason that Google and Microsoft are developing their own hardware? No, it isn't. The real reason is <b>profit envy</b>. The price of software has been dropping quickly since the App Store was created. This means it's harder for software-only companies to keep operating margins high. Think Microsoft, who has gone to subscription software to guarantee upgrade revenues, amidst unpopular OS upgrades, like Vista. The profitable niche, mobile devices, must look pretty good to them. Should they merely license OS to hardware manufacturers, like Windows? Will that work? No. Google gives Android away for free: upgrades don't cost anything. So nobody will buy Windows Phone if it costs money. Also, hardware and software both need to be upgraded.</div>
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The real reason is that, given that software is becoming essentially free, to make the profit you must make your own hardware. Also to make the hardware work best, you must develop custom software. In fact, the best features require both hardware and software to make them work.</div>
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This tight vertical integration is why Apple reaps well over 90% of the profits in the smartphone industry year after year. They sell their own hardware. That, and their profit margin is about 40%.<br />
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<b>Value proposition</b><br />
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So, why are people willing to pay a premium price for iPhones?<br />
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As always, the price is paid based on the value perceived. The value of better user experience on iOS, easier installs, significantly better privacy and security, and great design is huge. It leads to unprecedented user satisfaction ratings and loyalty. People pay for this, and enjoy the rewards.<br />
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Apple devices, on the whole, are more up to date than Android devices. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/271774/share-of-android-platforms-on-mobile-devices-with-android-os/">Here</a> is a chart of Android OS versions as of September 13, 2016 and their share on smartphones. It clearly shows the latest version, Marshmallow, at 18.7% installs. And on iOS? As of November 27, 2016, 63% of iOS devices have upgraded to iOS10, 29% are running iOS 9, and 8% are running earlier versions. Get the latest stats on <a href="https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/">Apple's App Store page</a>.<br />
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Clearly Apple's customer base upgrades significantly faster.</div>
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<b>General comparison</b><br />
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Consider this<a href="http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iphone/iphone-vs-android-why-iphone-ios-beat-google-android-new-update-3454817/"> article on iPhone vs. Android</a> as a near-complete analysis of the subject.<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-57305438849392651472016-11-08T11:02:00.000-08:002016-12-17T11:22:38.246-08:00Analysts: What Are These?<div style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Analysts are not always a savvy breed. In fact, sometimes they are downright stupid. Their general types of stupidity can be broken down into classes. I'll just name a few.</div>
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The first class, <b>show offs</b>, often throw around terms like disruption, logistics, zero-inventory and so forth without actually knowing their implications. Showing off is a pointless pretense of prowess, unless it shows valuable insight. Usually this class misses the forest for the trees.</div>
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The <b>complainers</b> just have axes to grind about their specific issues. They consider their beefs to be of paramount importance while ignoring the majority of users. A specific kind of complainer is the <b>port complainer</b>. They have whined about their disappearing serial port, FireWire port, headphone jack, and old-style USB port. But, hey, things change. It's disruption in action. Old media becomes obsolete, like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs: this is because media is now delivered online. Cords disappear and wireless connections dominate: this is because virtually all updates are now accomplished over-the-air (OTA).</div>
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Then there are <b>trolls</b>. They know that the <a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/11282937/1/how-to-be-a-troll.html?client=safari">generation of disinformation</a> creates knee jerk reactions that budge stock price. Close your eyes and imagine for a minute that many of them are simply Russians from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house">St. Petersburg Troll Factory</a> and you will be just about right!</div>
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The <b>feature creatures</b> are typically Windows people who just care about feature lists and spec bullet points. They count ports, processors, gigaHertz, and keys on the keyboard. They are the ones that think shovelware makes for good workflow. If they actually use the features that they write about then they would know better. It's the <a href="https://uxmag.com/articles/the-experience-makes-the-product-not-the-features">user experience</a> that leads to user satisfaction and commands user loyalty.</div>
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I don't want to forget the <b>price people</b>. To them price is everything. Forget about surprise and delight, user experience, or even quality! I can't tell you how annoying these people are. Their inevitable assertion is that the cheapest product always wins, which as we know already is totally wrong. Even if you're selling refrigerators! It's the <a href="http://www.naijapreneur.com/competitive-strategy/">product that gives the best value that wins</a>. If you get into a price war, you've already lost.</div>
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The <b>market share obsessors</b> are yet another class of flawed analysts. To them, it's only about units, no matter if these units are only used for limited purposes, left in a drawer, or even if they are catching fire. They totally avoid the issue of who is actually profiting and thus who will see the consistent growth. For instance, Apple has 12.1% of the smartphone market yet <a href="http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-iphone-grabs-104-of-smartphone-industry-profit-in-q3/">makes 104% of the profit</a>. Yet Android has 87.5% market share. How can this be? The Android hardware makers' profit is largely negative. Yep - they are losing money.</div>
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The <b>software profiteers</b> subscribe to the <a href="https://www.google.com/amp/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/5/25/11767200/microsoft-mobile-past-and-future?client=safari">90s Microsoft model</a>: just build the software and let other idiots kill each other making cheaper and cheaper hardware; there's no profit in hardware, right? Wrong! If there's no profit in hardware then who is going to make it? By the way, the hardware makers often want their own unique look, defeating the standardized software. Also consider that software prices are plummeting. With the introduction of the App Store, Apple has turned software into a $2 commodity. This has <a href="http://www.tnl.net/blog/2012/09/15/four-strategies-to-selling-hardware/">forced the software profiteer into the subscription model</a>.</div>
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Finally I give you the <b>walled garden haters</b>. These are descended from the people who like to build their own computers and hack them. They want freedom from carriers, authoritarian systems, and so forth. They want to pwn their hardware. In their minds all software is free, regardless of the time and effort expended by software developers. This class doesn't fundamentally grok the concept of an ecosystem, along with why ecosystems are essential to the survival of modern hardware. The hubris of these haters is in ignoring that hacking, device security, and identity theft has become the defining crucial problem of our time. All this for one reason: walled gardens are inherently more secure. IT people have <a href="http://bgr.com/2012/06/05/apple-ios-open-source-education-business-iphone/">long ago figured this out</a>.</div>
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It's disappointing to find that so many analysts are last-millennium-thinkers, and they have themselves become disrupted. They're still betting on Microsoft for God's sake! Don't let their investment firms get ahold of your portfolio!</div>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-8565553541320174562016-09-25T11:58:00.002-07:002016-10-26T20:29:55.546-07:00Security Researcher HitWhile we were being distracted by the <a href="http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/yahoo-reveals-nation-state-borne-data-breach-affecting-a-half-billion-users/d/d-id/1326984">Yahoo half-billion-user data breach</a>, within the last few days, <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/" target="_blank">Krebs On Security</a>, a blog which I often reference here was slammed with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack of gargantuan proportions, literally silencing the blog. This was after the venerable Brian Krebs published papers on the vDOS owners. vDOS is an attack-for-hire service hosted in Israel.<br />
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Hey, what a surprise, after Krebs, a well-known security blogger (and researcher) <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/israeli-online-attack-service-vdos-earned-600000-in-two-years/" target="_blank">made the people behind the attack-for-hire service <b>also</b> well-known</a>, he was himself targeted by the world's largest DDoS attack! These are rich teenagers - they earned more than $600,000 (well, in Bitcoin!) in two years. Apparently their service is in great demand.<br />
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How do we know this? Oh it figures - vDOS got hacked and their client base was fully extracted and published (this is known as being "doxed", <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing">a term</a> which I sometimes use). And Krebs obtained the information in July. This, and the fact that the FBI took notice, is why those cyber-criminal-teenagers Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani (known as AppleJ4ck) were <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/alleged-vdos-proprietors-arrested-in-israel/" target="_blank">arrested</a> in Israel.<br />
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It's possible that these teenagers, after <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.741282" target="_blank">being arrested in Israel</a>, were simply drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), because they are both 18 years old (my speculation). Now they can't use the internet for 30 days.<br />
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Wow! I was <b>sure</b> it was just going to be a slap on the hand for these two.<br />
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Seriously, I hope they can be extradited to the US for prosecution.<br />
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The curious thing is that the documents Krebs found indicated that vDOS was literally responsible for the majority of the DDoS attacks on the web, and that the number of packets and data sent might indeed have been Internet-crippling. Apparently DDoS attackers are now taking over <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/09/why-the-silencing-of-krebsonsecurity-opens-a-troubling-chapter-for-the-net/" target="_blank">personal home routers</a> and using them to accomplish their attacks, which can result on a MUCH larger number of packets being sent because literally anybody can be sending them.<br />
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When a security blog gets hit and you are temporarily in the dark about a current threat, you will need to refer to some other security blogs. Here is <a href="https://digitalguardian.com/blog/top-50-infosec-blogs-you-should-be-reading" target="_blank">a decent list</a>.<br />
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If you get hacked, you can find out if your data was included in a recent massive breach at <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">haveibeenpwned.com</a>.<br />
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If you have more serious concerns, there is a company, <a href="https://terbiumlabs.com/">terbiumlabs.com</a>, that can persistently search the dark web for your personal info. The info you enter is encrypted on the client side (open your computer) so even they don't know what you are searching for. This is particularly useful for corporate customers, when they're breached, and also for companies monitoring their information security (infoSec).<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-73478331625867371292016-08-15T10:14:00.003-07:002016-08-17T09:27:57.574-07:00Data Compromise: The Next Chapter<b>Updated</b>: The Equation Group hack has been verified.<br />
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It seems the Oracle MICROS malware insertion hack went a bit deeper and had a suspicious purpose. <a href="http://www.heihotels.com/list-of-properties" target="_blank">Several hotels in the US</a>, run by HEI hotels and resorts, that run the MICROS points-of-sale and hospitality software, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/08/15/major-hotel-operator-hit-data-breach/88753160/" target="_blank">have been breached</a>. This means the credit card info for lots of people has been compromised. The list of dates affected by the breach indicate that the MICROS hack went in as early as March, 2015!<br />
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It is curious that the Westin City Center in Washington D.C. was included in the list, and was compromised for more than 9 months following September, 2015. This amounts to total operational awareness for whoever is running the breach. Let's admit it: if you wanted to know what is happening in US politics, what better way than to own than the comings and goings in Washington D.C.? I suspect FSB, the entity that has replaced the infamous Russian KGB.<br />
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I doubt we have seen a complete list of breaches with MICROS. If you are an IT person, visit <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/" target="_blank">Krebs on Security</a> for a good list of IOCs (indicators of compromise). If you use MICROS, then change your passwords immediately.</div>
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Recently we saw the DCCC hack and the dox'ing of a huge amount of congress, <a href="https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/guccifer-2-0-hacked-dccc/" target="_blank">on Guccifer 2.0's site</a>.</div>
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This, once again, speaks of a state actor attempting to disrupt American politics.<br />
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But there are still a few hacks that can't be assigned easily to state actors. The recent <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d594c72-6181-11e6-a08a-c7ac04ef00aa.html#axzz4HQBlua7p" target="_blank">data breach of Sage software</a>, based in the UK, used for accounts and payroll processing, indicates that hackers are still largely following the money.<br />
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My sense is that data compromise is perpetrated on an agenda rather than simply because "people have the right to know", the tired axiom used by the media to depict crusading whistleblowers.<br />
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More often than not we are seeing criminals looking for ways to pry money out of rich people. Or directly from banking systems. But that might simply be a cover for state actors, who are building a database much deeper than Google's. And for much darker purposes.<br />
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<b>And Now For Something Completely Disastrous</b><br />
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In today's news is another story that strongly correlates to the awful scenario in which <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/08/hackers-claim-auction-data-stolen-nsa-linked-spies/" target="_blank">the NSA's reputed-to-exist Equation Group has been hacked</a>. This group is responsible for Stuxnet, Duqu, Gauss, and other famous modular virus architectures used to hack, among other victims, the Iranian uranium centrifuges.<br />
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This story is developing as I write, but an <a href="https://medium.com/@msuiche/shadow-brokers-nsa-exploits-of-the-week-3f7e17bdc216#.wc6cnz5z9" target="_blank">analysis of the example data provided by the hackers</a>, the Shadow Brokers, by Matt Suiche appears to confirm the hack. Just read that source to see how desperate the situation is.<br />
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Here is an example of a state actor being hacked. My fears for the Gauss modular virus architecture used to be that it would get reverse engineered and modified by less scrupulous hackers. Now my fears are that essentially every hacker will possess this toolkit. Some eastern European hacking consortium will productize it, make it easy to use, and disseminate it for bitcoins. It's a virtual Pandora's Box.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: The Equation Group hack appears to heavily utilize RC5 and RC6 encryption. <a href="https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/75812/the-equation-giveaway/" target="_blank">Comparison of the code by Kaspersky's GReAT team</a> shows it matches the Equation Group's signature. It's all wrapped up in the magical P and Q constants used by Rivest's RC5/6.<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-16946649786830691052016-08-09T11:37:00.001-07:002016-08-17T09:22:27.423-07:00Big Time Infosec Issue!<b>Updated</b>: five more point-of-sale systems breached. More info on how long the breach existed. And yet more info on where the compromises might have hit you. More identity information for Carbanak.<br />
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Did you ever get a message in a email that says: "We're letting you know your card may have been part of a compromise at an undisclosed merchant."? And not to worry because "We're Issuing You a New Card To Help Keep Your Information Safe". In <a href="https://medium.com/@jsaito/making-a-case-for-letter-case-19d09f653c98#.n6nkl2fmq" target="_blank">title case</a>, no less (thanks, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/" target="_blank">daring fireball</a>, for that link).<br />
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Apparently the time has come when data compromise becomes huge. Anybody who watches <a href="http://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot" target="_blank">Mr. Robot</a> probably knows that credit card hacking is a serious issue, and can get much more serious. We keep closing insecure points as they are discovered, of course. But, it seems, there are still plenty of ways to get into our credit card data stream.<br />
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One such way is through the Oracle MICROS system that handles point-of-sale transactions with credit cards (specifically at restaurants, delis, and hospitality points of sale). Apparently it is possible to rootkit these transaction processors, take control of them, and capture your name, credit card number, and secret code as it goes by. And, of course, send that data to the identity thieves.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/08/11/oracle-micros-hackers-breach-five-point-of-sale-providers/#731061185eb8" target="_blank">five more systems are reported by Forbes to be hacked</a>, possibly by the same Russian cybercrime gang. These are UK-based Cin7, ECRS, Bankcard Services' Navy Zebra, PAR Technology, and Uniwell.<br />
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<b>What Happened?</b><br />
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According to <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/" target="_blank">Krebs on Security</a>, malware was placed on some internal Oracle server at their retail division. They thought it was just a small number of systems until they upgraded their security software to a new version. And at that point, they realized more than 700 systems were compromised! From there, it spread into the MICROS point-of-sale processors that accept your credit card and verify little things like that little gold chip on it. That was supposed to make the credit card SO much more secure.<br />
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The bottom line for us, the customers, is that the breach was detected only on July 25, 2016. And here's the catch: they don't really know how long it's even <i>been</i> active. Could be months.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: Bad news! There is <a href="http://www.heihotels.com/notice/1" target="_blank">info from HEI hotels</a> that the breach might have existed since March, 2015.<br />
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<b>Who Did It?</b><br />
<br />
This is a very sophisticated hack. This was no script kiddie.<br />
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Apparently the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbanak" target="_blank">Carbanak cybergang</a> is responsible. According to Kaspersky, they <a href="https://blog.kaspersky.com/billion-dollar-apt-carbanak/7519/" target="_blank">stole $1B</a> by attacking bank system intranets in an advanced persistent threat (APT) campaign culminating last February. This gang is a big time threat, and we have stumbled onto one more page in their playbook.<br />
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It gets even more interesting. Carbanak is connected to a Mr. Tverinov, <a href="http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/07/carbanak-gang-tied-to-russian-security-firm/#more-35321" target="_blank">as reported by Krebs</a>, and supported by the sleuthing of Ron Guilmette. Artim Tverinov is CEO of InfoKube, a Russian security firm, that builds the LioN anti-virus application. A Trojan horse?<br />
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It's not rocket science - Krebs, while communicating with the shadowy Mr. Tverinov through the Vkontakte Russian social-media site, literally eye-witnessed Tverinov's Vkontakte page get deleted! This was followed by a direct-email denial of any and all wrongdoing.<br />
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Supposedly <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/russia-detains-50-suspected-hackers-for-malware-bank-attacks" target="_blank">Russia arrested 50 alleged members of the Carbanak cybercrime gang</a> on June 1, 2016. Kaspersky Lab helped to identify the hackers charged, but Tverinov wasn't among them.<br />
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It also seems that <a href="http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/37170/cyber-crime/carbanak-c2-points-fcb.html" target="_blank">Carbanak was using a C&C server that is tied to the FSB</a> (the successor of the KGB). This according to <a href="http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/" target="_blank">Security Affairs</a>.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: Carbanak is sometimes also known as Anunak.<br />
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<b>Where Was I Most Likely Compromised?</b><br />
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This would have occurred at a chain restaurant, or perhaps a modern restaurant that is taking advantage of modern technology. And you would have used your credit card to pay. Unfortunately, this is not too unlikely a scenario, is it?<br />
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You might have seen a colorful point-of-sale display on a tablet or monitor (like <a href="https://www.oracle.com/industries/hospitality/products/simphony/index.html" target="_blank">this one</a>) at a restaurant, hotel, deli, charcuterie, or even a burger chain.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: Forbes, in the same article as the above update, reports that your credit card might have been compromised at Donald Trump's Hotel group, Hyatt, Kimpton, or one of 1000 Wendy's restaurants. Also consult the list of hotels in the HEI list.<br />
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<b>The Big Android Hack</b><br />
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Qualcomm GPUs and kernel modules are vulnerable to being rootkit'ed. This involves a huge number (900 million) Android devices. They are called the QuadRooter vulnerabilities, as explained by security researcher Adam Donenfeld in his <a href="http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/08/07/quadrooter/" target="_blank">blog post</a>. This affects the Samsung Galaxy 7, the most popular Android device.<br />
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On another note, the <a href="http://us.blackberry.com/smartphones/dtek50-by-blackberry/overview.html" target="_blank">Blackberry DTEK 50</a>, "the most secure smartphone in the world" utilizes a Qualcomm 8992 Snapdragon 808 Hexa-Core, 64 bit with Adreno 418, 600MHz GPU. And so it is <a href="http://www.androidheadlines.com/2016/08/900mn-android-devices-affected-quadrooter-security-flaws.html" target="_blank">also vulnerable to four of the flaws</a>.<br />
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-46203633910617527312016-07-24T17:00:00.004-07:002016-08-15T14:47:28.512-07:00State Actors Up The Ante?One of the fastest changing landscapes on the planet isn't even a tangible one. It's more of a concept: security. Before we go on, for dear readers confused by modern hacker security terms, check out <a href="http://www.kaspersky.com/internet-security-center/internet-safety/faq" target="_blank">Kaspersky</a>.<br />
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I'm a proponent of good encryption. The reason is simple: <a href="http://www.coolcatteacher.com/if-you-dont-know-these-22-things-about-computer-security-youre-headed-for-trouble/" target="_blank">everybody needs security</a>. You need to keep your banking passwords secure. You don't want malicious actors (trolls) taking over your Facebook account and somehow ruining your life.<br />
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You especially don't want anyone to rootkit your computers! Once that's done, they can steal your identity, install malware for collecting passwords and account names, and so forth. Now go to the next level: your computer might then be used as part of a DDoS attack against Homeland Security. Your computer could wind up as the storage location for the malicious actors' illegal data ... without your knowledge. You become their fall guy.<br />
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Yes, there are plenty of good reasons for all of us to keep our passwords safe and distinct.<br />
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But encryption is not all black and white, is it? And that's the rub. Enter the relativistic observer, to tell you some of the latest. Things are changing too fast to blink, after all.<br />
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It's long been known that people outside the law use the Dark Web to organize, proliferate, distribute, and communicate. And the Dark Web is run using the Tor network. Tor, short for The Onion Router, is a volunteer network of servers running special protocols that relay your browsing history and other data through virtual tunnels.<br />
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To be fair, the Tor project has lofty goals. And gets used by "family & friends, businesses, activists, media, and military & Law Enforcement", according to their <a href="https://www.torproject.org/" target="_blank">web site.</a> The US Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, for instance. The EFF suggests using Tor for maintaining secure correspondence and keeping our civil liberties intact.<br />
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For people operating outside the law, the Tor network also maintains their OpSec. The Dark Net is called this because the communication within it has "gone dark". Surveillance doesn't work there.<br />
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The Tor network and the Dark Web must be a real pain to law enforcement. Given enough desperation, it might be something they would seek to infiltrate.<br />
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So what law enforcement would do is this: create their own honeypot counterfeit Tor server (or relay). But put in their own undetectable flavor of malware. Then they can watch the criminal's Dark Net traffic. And watch the crime happening. Collect the privileged conversations.<br />
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These really exist, as doctored Tor relays. There are over <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/malicious-computers-caught-snooping-on-tor-anonymized-dark-web-sites/" target="_blank">100 malicious relays</a> that have been detected. And who could they be? My guess is state actors like the US, China and Russia. If not them, then who? The criminals themselves? This is a game of spy vs. spy, updated for the 21st century. Could the FBI be doing this? Their <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/feds-bust-through-huge-tor-hidden-child-porn-site-using-questionable-malware/" target="_blank">arrest of child pornography criminals in January 2016 was supposedly accomplished by cracking Tor</a>.<br />
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There is a question as to how invasive such investigations should be allowed to be. I'm not saying that the FBI shouldn't go after child pornographers; they totally should. I just think that *everybody* is too broad a target for law enforcement. Privacy is a basic human right.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-31041167196186855702015-11-06T08:27:00.004-08:002015-11-06T08:27:42.450-08:00Rapidly Growing NicheWhat is disruption? How does it occur? When we answer these questions, we will see that in many cases the leaders in the market are blindsided by the <b>rapidly growing niche</b>.<br />
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The word "niche" describes a market that fits nicely into a crevice of the overall market, but, according to popular opinion, doesn't really matter. And that's actually the funniest thing of all, in a way: the market that <i>doesn't matter</i> can actually <i>take over</i> the larger market, given certain characteristics. Love this stuff.<br />
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<b>Cars</b><br />
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Consider the rise of the automobile. The specific market that internal-combustion vehicles displaced was the horse-drawn carriage, trap, dogcart, brougham, or whatever Sherlock wanted to call them. But consider the advantages of the new niche technology.<br />
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The space taken up by the conveyance is the first issue: having a horse and a cart means having both a stable and a garage, while a car only requires a garage. Umm, not to mention that the stable had to be swept out(!).<br />
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Which brings us to the next issue, consumables: a horse must be fed, and so must a car. But what the horse eats can go bad, and must be carefully regulated to avoid having the horse eat itself to death. Fuels can be easily stored. In plain fact, people were used to using fuels because they lit their houses with kerosene.<br />
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Repair was another issue: a horse can go lame and a car can also break down. But when a horse goes lame, it's usually not recoverable (and sad). However, a car can be fixed.<br />
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In the personal transportation market, the ever-growing advantages of the rapidly growing niche product, the car, increased its uptake dramatically, even exponentially, displacing the horse-drawn carriage. It took <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-100-year-march-of-technology-in-1-graph/255573/" target="_blank">decades to fully play out</a>.<br />
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Instead of sweeping out stables, we are now dealing with the hydrocarbon emission problem, and its carbon footprint. One thing is clear: we need to be smarter about the environmental impact of our disruptive technologies!<br />
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But now consider electric vehicles. In the US by the high cost of gasoline, <a href="http://www.gasbuddy.com/Charts" target="_blank">which was almost $4.10/gal in June 2008</a>, drove the hybrid Toyota Prius to great success as <a href="http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1014178_toyota-prius-a-brief-history-in-time" target="_blank">they were selling about 20,000 of them per month</a> at the time. The cost of gasoline went down, driven by an <a href="http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/fuel-prices/4599" target="_blank">economic downturn</a> (caused by hurricanes and a crisis in mortgage lending which led to bad debts and a foreclosure increase). This occurred simultaneously with the introduction of the disruptive technologies of shale oil extraction, fracking, and improvements in deep-sea drilling. This caused <a href="http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/economy/worlds-biggest-oil-producers/" target="_blank">the biggest oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia, to be dominated by the production in the US</a>, for a while. The Saudis countered, with their huge cash hoard as a life boat, by increasing oil production, thus decreasing the price of oil even more, <a href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Is-Saudi-Arabia-Setting-The-World-Up-For-Major-Oil-Price-Spike.html" target="_blank">but diminishing their spare capacity</a>. This had the dual effect of helping them to retain clients that they were losing left and right, and also of putting pressure on the Americans whose revolutionary oil extraction techniques might (still) be made too costly by reducing their profit margins.<br />
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All of this will eventually lead to a spike in oil prices and thus even greater reliance and demand for electric vehicles, like the Tesla Model S, which I am seeing everywhere. Perhaps because I live near Silicon Valley. Hmm.<br />
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<b>Progress is accelerating</b><br />
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As mechanical wonders turn into embedded computers and sensors make them ever more cognizant of our environment, the size of a gadget is going down dramatically and the capabilities of a gadget are increasing tremendously. Once you can carry it in your pocket, it becomes irreplaceable, essential. The smaller gadgets get, the faster they will improve: now the improvements are often a matter of simply writing new software.<br />
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So what used to take decades now takes a few years. In the future it likely won't even take that long. Now let's look at some more examples of disruption (and disruption prevented) in this era of faster progress.<br />
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<b>Computers in general</b><br />
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Well, now we come to the biggest disruption of all, which is actually in progress: computers. The rise of the <b>smartphone</b> shows that an all-in-one gadget can succeed over the feature phone. And by modifying its form factor and use cases, the rise of the <b>tablet</b> shows that there is a great alternative to the netbook, laptop, and even the home computer. Even businesses find that iPads can replace a host of other, clumsier gadgets.<br />
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What were the advantages that triggered the displacement of the feature phone by the smartphone? A single high-resolution glass touchscreen was an astounding improvement over the button-cluttered big-fat-pixel interfaces of the feature phones. A simpler interface with common visual elements won out over the modal menu environment that had to be searched through laboriously to find even the simplest commands. It can even be argued that the integrated battery made the process of owning a phone simpler. What cemented the advantages of the smartphone was the ecosystem that it lived in. On the iPhone, this is exemplified by the iTunes Music Store, the App Store, and the iBookstore. A telling, crucial moment was when the smartphone didn't have to be plugged into a desktop computer to be updated and backed up.<br />
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The next step was the tablet. In retrospect, it was more than just increasing the size of the screen. It required more power and it probably had a very different use case. The use case was closer to the laptop. On the smaller end, tablet sales are probably being cannibalized by the larger phones such as the iPhone 6S Plus. On the larger end, the power of tablets will increase until they become viable alternatives to laptops.<br />
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Still, I love my laptop.<br />
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But all it would take is a significant increase in battery technology to let the tablets reach the power of the best laptops. Then it will be purely a matter of ergonomics. Tablet are lighter, still quite useful, and clearly good enough for many types of businesses. The disruption of the PC market is but a few years away, I expect.<br />
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The post-PC era is nigh.<br />
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Those who call tablets PCs really don't quite have a handle on the form factor. Perhaps it's like Microsoft says: all it takes is a keyboard and your tablet becomes a PC. Detachables have the advantage of a keyboard and a bigger battery, with the prohibitive cost of the weight of the device.<br />
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While I like my laptop - it IS heavier than a tablet by a huge margin. Perhaps the rapidly growing niche of tablets will displace the laptop - but the growth isn't there yet.<br />
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<b>Social media</b><br />
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Now: why did Facebook buy Instagram? Because it was a rapidly growing niche that was taking on more and more of its customers' time. By purchasing it they accomplish two things. First, it's a hedge against the niche technology taking over and displacing them. Second, it prevents their competitor, Twitter, from purchasing it. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's leader is smart. He knows that the rapidly growing niche can take over. After all, Facebook successfully did the same to other portals such as MySpace and Yahoo.<br />
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And what comes around goes around.<br />
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com70tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-54434019914460136102014-06-04T15:11:00.001-07:002014-06-04T15:11:43.692-07:00Interesting Persons, Part 1Back in the 1980s I was fascinated by sound synthesis and analysis. The most well-known work I did was a little application called SoundCap (for Sound Capture) that was coupled with an Analog-to-Digital converter initially sold by Fractal Software, my partnership with Tom Hedges, and eventually sold by MacNifty. It is fortunate for many of the early Macintosh developers that this box hooked up to the back of a Mac through the serial port. Several sound-producing apps were produced with it, including Airborne! by San Diego's Silicon Beach Software.<br />
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<b>Stephen St. Croix</b> was a friend of mine. He contacted me at Fractal Design in the 1990s and wow'ed me with a few of his wondrous stories. We spoke at length on several occasions about digital sound synthesis, one of my many hobbies. I was surprised to learn that he was one of the inventors, at Marshall Electronics, of the Time Modulator, the box that introduced digital delay line flanging to more than a few famous musicians.<br />
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The most interesting story he told me was about the job he did with Lay's. Yes, the people who make the potato chips. It seems that their spokesman, Jack Klugman (of Quincy fame), had lost his voice as a result of throat cancer. This really made a problem for them because his commercials for Lay's potato chips were pulling quite well. After all, he was a very recognizable and a well-loved actor. His voice was distinctive. People listened to him.<br />
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Stephen informed me that they invented a new kind of voice synthesis device to recreate his voice. It used formant synthesis. Incredibly, they could exactly duplicate the distinctive gravelly sound of his voice in this manner! It seems that the very low-frequency warbling of his vocal cords, though inimitable by human voice impersonators, was entirely imitable by digital synthesis techniques.<br />
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At Marshall Electronics, they spent quite some time analyzing sound. They had room analyzers. And so they also had room simulators. But the least known cleverness involved voice analyzers. Imagine picking apart someone's voice, layer by layer. Figuring out the pitch-profiles and the syllabic inflections. Hand-tuning the cadence of the words. My mind was boggled constantly by <a href="http://mixonline.com/life_in_fast_lane/" target="_blank">Stephen's work</a>.<br />
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I informed him of my work in music extraction. I had a special application called Do-Re-Mi that allowed you to whistle a tune that could be output using MIDI in key duration format, complete with amplitude and pitch profiles suitable for modulating a pitch wheel and a volume pedal. It could tell you how many cents (hundredths of a semitone) sharp or flat you were when you whistled. I used a clever correlation technique that involved a time-delta histogram for correlation, pitch-multiple disambiguation, Lagrange peak-finding, and other techniques for isolating the pitch accurately. This work was all done in the 1980s, before Fractal Design, as part of Fractal Software's work.<br />
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Tom Hedges, of course, was the hardware designer of the first Macintosh sound sampling box and my contribution was the software, much of it written in Motorola 68000 assembler. Our work with sound continued when we did a bit of work with Bogas Productions, involving Ed Bogas, Ty Roberts, Neil Cormia and others. I met them through a mutual acquaintance, Steve Capps, who was working on the Finder in 1984.<br />
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I wrote a sequencing application in 1984 and Tom was fascinated by it. He modified it so it could sequence samples and then proceeded to digitize his piano, note for note. This was in a day when samplers existed, but were quite crude and expensive. He encoded Rhapsody in Blue (he was so proud of playing it) and also a perennial favorite, Wasted on the Way (a thickly vocal-harmonic piece from Crosby, Stills, and Nash). We were both musically literate, but in different ways. I was a composer who played piano and I was fully familiar with sheet music (actually, I had to teach the rudiments of it to Tom before he could digitize the songs, which took a week or so to get it just right). Tom was a DJ with KZSU Stanford and an advanced audiophile. And he had a very wide understanding of music. His father played piano (which explained Tom's interest in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue).<br />
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So when I began speaking with Stephen St. Croix, I was very deep into audio analysis and synthesis. And the author of a very popular application for sound manipulation on the coolest new computer around, the Macintosh.<br />
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It wasn't a big surprise at all that we spent hours and hours talking about sound synthesis, analysis, music, and the recording business. Crazy times and a really good guy.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-49663992728295220472014-06-04T13:11:00.001-07:002014-06-04T13:11:18.134-07:00Seven Ways<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDhmLakqWSOJ93CrDOsR_3RDKz22kMW-Uh0-0v7RbcmO5Pz2dWI2iaQDirRlyZOO_vK-zSylv8ZFdXKH1mXfRxmtwZs6vs1ZVSgQBhNih0UY9EO8Tl4LpLftEib2wlTkfqTonzytRBrZ_/s1600/HoneycombNumbers2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDhmLakqWSOJ93CrDOsR_3RDKz22kMW-Uh0-0v7RbcmO5Pz2dWI2iaQDirRlyZOO_vK-zSylv8ZFdXKH1mXfRxmtwZs6vs1ZVSgQBhNih0UY9EO8Tl4LpLftEib2wlTkfqTonzytRBrZ_/s1600/HoneycombNumbers2.jpg" height="159" width="200" /></a>There are seven ways that we best retain information, and five of these ways are tied to our natural innate skills as humans. These five are: typing, handwriting, speaking, seeing, and hearing. Two other ways help you complete the process of learning by semantic cross-tagging: mixing and anchoring.<br />
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<b>Typing</b> is a skill that we develop to codify something in symbolic notation: language. When we use keyboards for entry, this gives the language center of our brain a workout, which is concerned with coding and symbolication. But what are these codes and symbols? In language, we break our writing into chapters, chapters into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences, sentences into words, and words into letters. These symbols, their organization, and their semantic meanings are inherent to symbolic processing. And, as humans, we definitely excel at this.<br />
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But there are more kinds of codes and symbols. When we use a <b>musical instrument</b>, we usually produce music in a coded symbolic representation: note for note. We break songs into sections, such as verses, refrains, and bridges. We break sections into chords. We layer melody on top of accompaniment, on top of bass. We accent with drums. We break melodies and chords into notes. We even break notes into tone, duration, and volume. Unlike text, music has quite a number of internal properties of continuity. Like staccato and slurring notes together. All of these are also kinds of language symbols that our brains use. Clearly we are using our brains' auditory centers when we make music.<br />
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I certainly didn't miss that writing is a bit like music, also. Because when we write creatively, we use plots like we use the interrelationship of melodies and leitmotivs. We make characters and develop alternate realities. We use metaphor and hyperbole. We season our writing with alliteration and onomatopoeia. A theme can pervade a novel. The resolution of a character's arc can stir us like a brilliant cadence. But writing struggles in the last chapter to compete with the finality and intense closure of the coda for a great piece of music.<br />
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<b>Handwriting</b> is a perfect way to match our muscle memory to our brains. We coordinate our hands and eyes to denote what we hear or what we think. Taking notes can be a compelling way to retain your thoughts. When we combine it with symbolic representations, we can end up with text, mathematical equations, musical notation, or even scribbles, doodles, and drawings. Let's face it, we think a bit more when we are handwriting than when we type, because a different part of our brain is required to do it.<br />
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In some ways, handwriting is utilizing the visual center of our brain. Typing does this also because we use our eyes to verify the text we enter. It seems like it is the connections between brain centers that reinforce our understanding of knowledge and help us to retain and memorize.<br />
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<b>Speaking</b> is our natural form of expression. We use our voices conversationally and this method of communication is highly generative, using our cognitive powers to express a thought, a concept, to deliver commands, to convince or inform. We use our language processing centers in a different way, and this is evident in the way we often speak very differently than we write: less formally. When we are in front of a group, we speak from memory, following a train of thought. Actors and presenters learn to do this and shade their performances with attitude and gesticulation, making the art of speaking a multi-dimensional task.<br />
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When we sing, we are expressing much more than just notes and words. We are using emotion. We link our generative capabilities to our voice when we sing. When we learn to play piano and sing, we are using much more of our brain than we usually might employ.<br />
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<b>Seeing</b> is much more than just looking at a photograph or diagram. It's also seeing in the mind's eye. Some people are very visual and can instantly see a concept in their head before they can express it. They can see the directions on a map in their head when they drive. Our eyes are the key to visualizing, certainly. But even blind people can see concepts. We have spatial reasoning to thank for this. When you have a visual memory, you get to see an object when it is described.<br />
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There is more to visualizing than just what is real, though. We can thank our imaginations for this fact. We can imagine impossible figures, for instance, and this concisely illustrates that our imaginations can transcend the real.<br />
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Perhaps for many people the spark of an idea comes visually. Perhaps concepts are symbolic for others. Perhaps concepts are neither visual nor symbolic for some: just floating in consciousness waiting to be expressed in some way.<br />
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<b>Hearing</b> is a natural way to capture and acquire information. But few of us actually hear a sentence and turn it into text in our head. Maybe a few of us turn it into visual information. But most likely hearing is its own domain. Somehow what we hear simply gets directly converted to knowledge. Still, often we must write something down to retain it, usually.<br />
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When I am composing or playing piano, I do not generally rely on my ear to remember the tune and the rhythm. Thankfully, I can record what I play. In other situations, I write down what I play (by hand), in common musical notation.<br />
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Even so, I can hear quite a bit of music in my head. It even seems like it is playing back. At 17 years old, I used to do this just before going to sleep, in that nebulous state in between waking and sleeping. I would consciously play a piece in my head. One that I was working on, or a familiar song. Or even a symphony. I guess I was practicing the ability to imagine polyphony. I was on the verge of being a composer at that age.<br />
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<b>Mixing</b> modes is the most powerful form of memorization. Sight-reading is a great way to commit a piece to memory. Playing a piece I'm composing, to cement the chord and melody structure is a good way to hone a piece. Record it and listen to it later, to take a step back and form new ideas for where the piece is going.<br />
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Listening and taking notes is a good mixture of modes for memorization and retention. But if you really want to cement it into your memory, type up your notes later. Draw diagrams. Learning, though, is much more than memorization. True retention requires application of a concept.<br />
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<b>Anchoring</b> is an essential endgame for learning a subject properly. I have a friend who says "I don't want to hire the people who can memorize terms and subjects, I want to hire people that can do something with what they've learned". Memorizing words in a foreign language is useful, but using those same words in sentences is much more powerful because then the words will forever be connected to concepts and subjects in your mind.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-12372167448717331572014-02-02T16:18:00.000-08:002014-02-04T21:06:31.457-08:00The New Brand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGOrHevOqMdMuxdFeLX4NJfm9r9u6YGmnZ_owRaJsEtBPqgk_g2LBAWeQAhvaGR2w-vxyPXcnp_vs2kCDBY6oUkDss2xKoDRrTseHqjRyyBjmKmjn4kF_OshX198Fp1r6q9hFggt-AAkSi/s1600/fractal-letters5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGOrHevOqMdMuxdFeLX4NJfm9r9u6YGmnZ_owRaJsEtBPqgk_g2LBAWeQAhvaGR2w-vxyPXcnp_vs2kCDBY6oUkDss2xKoDRrTseHqjRyyBjmKmjn4kF_OshX198Fp1r6q9hFggt-AAkSi/s1600/fractal-letters5.jpg" height="154" width="640" /></a>In my notes from 1997 and 1998 I found this graphic from the last days of Fractal Design, immediately after the merger with MetaTools, and the start of the newly-formed company, which was to be called MetaCreations. It shows my irreverent take on typography, with letters verging on an alien alphabet. Perhaps this was my thinking in those days, clearly influenced by <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation</i> design and increasingly beginning to think that aliens were taking over my company.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqc75lL1o3G4QBP7oMU4WUJaTkAJy9c1P-mv4S07fgTlBbIglXH6WURBPKzoCGXsgKUyeDYLzwuLlLHjrswVvAezIlRF85fAsOIHBApr23LoyrzCQjUQ0xf-t4J0ItUQANQPIo6qhlyIgL/s1600/paper-clipping3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqc75lL1o3G4QBP7oMU4WUJaTkAJy9c1P-mv4S07fgTlBbIglXH6WURBPKzoCGXsgKUyeDYLzwuLlLHjrswVvAezIlRF85fAsOIHBApr23LoyrzCQjUQ0xf-t4J0ItUQANQPIo6qhlyIgL/s1600/paper-clipping3.jpg" height="140" width="200" /></a>The graphic was a last hurrah, buried in my logo-search stack. These were the papers that detail the search for a new company name and logo, begun as a result of merger. Those were turbulent days, full of interesting ideas that never made it. Here is another little sketch from that collection of the doodles drawn in those days when the meetings were long and the bickering was uncomfortable. I was already thinking about the metaphors for the idea processor.</div>
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<b>Name search</b></div>
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First came the name search. The first edict, from John Wilczak (the MetaTools CEO and soon to be replaced) was that the name should contain "Meta". Once you put that flag in the ground, there are only so many names that can be chosen. We all bought into it.</div>
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John Derry and I thought up several meta-rooted names for the company. We centered around various concepts, like <b>making</b>: names like metaforge, metafactory, and metaforce. We also tried words around <b>branding</b>: names like metabrand, metaware, metafactor, and metacraft. Next we covered <b>concept</b> names like metapath, metaform, and metadesign. Of course, we also looked at <b>location</b> names like metaworld, metastage, metasphere, metawave, and metalevel. <b>Combination</b> names sometimes became useful, like metalith and metastar. We were going for simplicity and pith.</div>
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We had a hundred names to choose from, and three or four made the top of the list. But it turned out that they were always taken by one company or another, and so proved themselves to be unsuitable for our purposes.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEPbjol2M_GyS2L6xTSO6hGtt_pL8olHwWOcTbJ6a1On_TLWYhl8EeqEaspxFFdo9gu6jOYdqmyDqT03il77j-h5CrYcCxGh4-jKzpxGWFmXrBymGMUxemGRRb5aDRmg4OFEyLM6uMBfb/s1600/MetaCreations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEPbjol2M_GyS2L6xTSO6hGtt_pL8olHwWOcTbJ6a1On_TLWYhl8EeqEaspxFFdo9gu6jOYdqmyDqT03il77j-h5CrYcCxGh4-jKzpxGWFmXrBymGMUxemGRRb5aDRmg4OFEyLM6uMBfb/s1600/MetaCreations.jpg" height="80" width="320" /></a>In the end, the root word meta (meaning "on another level") was merged with "create" and we somehow found MetaCreations as our new name. We worked out the typestyle, using a PR branding firm called 30SIXTY, contracted by Sallie Olmstead. The result was a very good type treatment. One of their designs stuck, seen here. MetaCreations passed the trademark search and so we found ourselves in the position of needing a good catchphrase to go with it.</div>
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<b>Catchphrase and Logo</b></div>
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At this point, we hired a new CEO and the branding began afresh. This cast us into disarray: the implications of three separate groups pushing in different directions. Let me introduce you to the three groups:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTSA-KNvNWKcqBfzPwING-4wrqmOhkv2jBu7MtuAJxOOVfnoWkfbzkAYnZlnT4Upnk1AcrdvukSf83884nF6WkwvMY69Y9Fg8maqvEjjNAj-HIY9McGpXmPdTtmtLVNfeGbj4tfBdWpZyv/s1600/overlapping-pages2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTSA-KNvNWKcqBfzPwING-4wrqmOhkv2jBu7MtuAJxOOVfnoWkfbzkAYnZlnT4Upnk1AcrdvukSf83884nF6WkwvMY69Y9Fg8maqvEjjNAj-HIY9McGpXmPdTtmtLVNfeGbj4tfBdWpZyv/s1600/overlapping-pages2.jpg" height="176" width="200" /></a>One group was <b>Gary Lauer</b>'s group. Gary was the new CEO, hired by the board and taking on the challenge of merging two cultures with a third culture of his own. The second group was <b>Kai Krause</b>'s group. Kai was the design thinker from MetaTools and the creative face of the company. The third group was <b>John Derry</b> and myself, <b>Mark Zimmer</b>. But, frankly, I took the lead because I was the representative to the logo group. As you will see, the three groups couldn't agree less. And yet we eventually found a logo. Here I show a doodle from a page drawn during the endless logo meetings.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhz6IuOux3ld6Ij9ur-R32EAE5cYLN3HQjf3f8Ua6PfNaaWOmi91E8lqHF1z5LR-Bp87STrbwlMxXyLPDRlykB1BDgYoPDcvMuZCM54CSGxF3-zY1Fpj_uBjQPJMhL5yAyYDRz0eUbtFW/s1600/Gary2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzhz6IuOux3ld6Ij9ur-R32EAE5cYLN3HQjf3f8Ua6PfNaaWOmi91E8lqHF1z5LR-Bp87STrbwlMxXyLPDRlykB1BDgYoPDcvMuZCM54CSGxF3-zY1Fpj_uBjQPJMhL5yAyYDRz0eUbtFW/s1600/Gary2.jpg" height="194" width="200" /></a>The catchphrase Gary preferred was staid and traditional: <b>The Visual Computing Software Company</b>. The logos from his group were not unlike the ones from Claris in style. The other two groups saw the logos as pedestrian and frankly uninteresting. Here you can see one of the color schemes of his final logo set. The earlier ones were considerably more amateurish. This one features an M-shape with a bit of a shine nestling into it. My comments on this particular logo are unprintable, sadly: I will leave them to your imagination. Kai felt pretty much the same about this logo.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXv5VWABp0xSNRYL1sRSq-rWzDmEJF0p49McSoNoWNcsZEUoE2scJnI8EoRKBQMkFkjmbxzz44njqZUsXCYbYUNdZLwcA2Sba1aM7g13pFTRJCIktWaYHWCouNlz1GYRZBMl6YeJuAoWS/s1600/Kai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVXv5VWABp0xSNRYL1sRSq-rWzDmEJF0p49McSoNoWNcsZEUoE2scJnI8EoRKBQMkFkjmbxzz44njqZUsXCYbYUNdZLwcA2Sba1aM7g13pFTRJCIktWaYHWCouNlz1GYRZBMl6YeJuAoWS/s1600/Kai.jpg" height="200" width="154" /></a>The catchphrase Kai preferred was genuinely clever: <b>where great ideas are born</b>. Also, John Wilczak, before he left, preferred <b>start the migration</b>, though I'm still not sure where he was going with that one. The logos from Kai's group initially centered on an egg - with the idea of hatching a new idea. Other groups just kept thinking "Meta lays an egg" as the headline. After a brief trademark search, we discovered Software Ventures had an egg with a shadow as its logo, and that was the final crack.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG8JntTw0KPChNcXwnNqYwxvART-yYPnTVXDAGUBOs9-podF7PFCr8HWp_9QUuYNIRwBdRwRSpD3HWpP_rNHMzKEw4-LdHD5XwtVQgMUr2fQb-4iEDBzbn9ueMHCbMiJHCHr3SsmJTkJm/s1600/handlogo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG8JntTw0KPChNcXwnNqYwxvART-yYPnTVXDAGUBOs9-podF7PFCr8HWp_9QUuYNIRwBdRwRSpD3HWpP_rNHMzKEw4-LdHD5XwtVQgMUr2fQb-4iEDBzbn9ueMHCbMiJHCHr3SsmJTkJm/s1600/handlogo1.jpg" height="200" width="180" /></a>In the sessions for my group, John and I tossed around the creativity concept endlessly. One catchphrase was <b>bringing creativity to you</b>. Another was <b>changing the way people think</b>. Our final try was <b>sparking your creativity</b>. While fascinating and very ambitious, I still think Kai's catchphrase was best. Our logo designs centered on a hand - for software that was human-centric. The hand was the artist's signature from the days of the cave-painters. Other groups just saw "stop" - a hand telling you not to enter. Here, we placed it inside an oval form to suggest an egg.</div>
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All three groups had a basic problem - the other two groups opposed their design. So Gary, thinking his group was more equal than the other two, decided to make a presentation of his logo. Allowing us to choose the color scheme. Ah, that was a rough meeting.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIKoQYZWY4ka-GD2eC2PvVNA8zZ7BNIDFMZC5-9h9nDdzv9kfFN-b2xcJZMFDC7bVq9Euwl5vUfEOf2Mglq5jd89kABxCptfsbUqTKqnIchyovd-eMjIr6U_Z0iPbkaB-AWCNpAFTyjGMy/s1600/chromeknot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIKoQYZWY4ka-GD2eC2PvVNA8zZ7BNIDFMZC5-9h9nDdzv9kfFN-b2xcJZMFDC7bVq9Euwl5vUfEOf2Mglq5jd89kABxCptfsbUqTKqnIchyovd-eMjIr6U_Z0iPbkaB-AWCNpAFTyjGMy/s1600/chromeknot.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>This required Kai and I to work together on a new logo. I dredged up an old design: the trefoil knot. I had made this design in 1983 when working as a consultant for Auto-Trol (I was building them a 3D system for computer-aided engineering). I had resurrected this design when working on Detailer, the 3D Paint Program, adding a mirrored surface to it. Here we see a small version of this knot, produced in Detailer using a brassy look. Kai's people used Bryce to create a much cleaner, smoother nicely-tilted version of this knot, and added a slight soft shadow underneath it.</div>
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This shadow was eventually omitted and the catchphrase was changed once again.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nTKoTnctJ_4CeK8d78nUUH1AHts4MdQQPzj53qWyqmrH3t8hi5MtQ4UATDxGdldiNO-UAv97nCFOK3QME1dUQN06UeAB1TaQX23iW4JP_8-I7IMduq0r4GH0LPWqDxQM7yzi3ZK6lrFo/s1600/MetaLogoFinal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nTKoTnctJ_4CeK8d78nUUH1AHts4MdQQPzj53qWyqmrH3t8hi5MtQ4UATDxGdldiNO-UAv97nCFOK3QME1dUQN06UeAB1TaQX23iW4JP_8-I7IMduq0r4GH0LPWqDxQM7yzi3ZK6lrFo/s1600/MetaLogoFinal.jpg" height="113" width="320" /></a></div>
This time I wasn't asked. As you can see, it became <b>The Creative Web Company</b>. The times were changing, and at this time, before the dot-com boom and collapse, everything had to be naively covered with web-web-web. The trefoil knot had a nice reflection and self-shadowing, though. Kai and I approved the form.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH3FIxukhybGtDZ-xAWSJF48gzWJHO-90BZth3MVnRiO47J6pZD_oDPiMLxDeCpJCKS8Ti62GmjO1lrtIoWECdfMj_21DC1am7wWJrlgygWxqGP-6hs1V3_3xYCWM1ABGNJbvkyIfzD74/s1600/Athena1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpH3FIxukhybGtDZ-xAWSJF48gzWJHO-90BZth3MVnRiO47J6pZD_oDPiMLxDeCpJCKS8Ti62GmjO1lrtIoWECdfMj_21DC1am7wWJrlgygWxqGP-6hs1V3_3xYCWM1ABGNJbvkyIfzD74/s1600/Athena1.jpg" height="195" width="200" /></a></div>
After Kai and I decided to redesign the logo, he had his people design some new forms. Many of them were based on threefold symmetry, which I also tend to prefer. One designer, Athena Kekenes, produced some iconic figures that still hold up today. The first figures were triangular-symmetry organic forms that had a very interesting, yet somehow alien, lilt to them. With tree-like branching properties and spherical ends, it looked a bit like some strange form of sea-weed. You can see one of the designs here. We asked for some more ideas.<br />
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One was a cube that had a sphere subtracted from it. This, when viewed from the direction of a corner, had a six-fold symmetry that was quite pleasing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC3bhUI0_8slgWvOjs3ulzbIiceFHR2eTrwr4KCcAHMhkN5w7i3w4EAE6bmGXI9-L29SdF8onHzg7hfmRO9HCOE9JR3Hwl8ALbJPBrJjPudM7ZLPChjNlwtfajYU_G3be7ESYNzy9kVV4I/s1600/CubeSection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC3bhUI0_8slgWvOjs3ulzbIiceFHR2eTrwr4KCcAHMhkN5w7i3w4EAE6bmGXI9-L29SdF8onHzg7hfmRO9HCOE9JR3Hwl8ALbJPBrJjPudM7ZLPChjNlwtfajYU_G3be7ESYNzy9kVV4I/s1600/CubeSection.jpg" height="173" width="200" /></a></div>
Here you can see the cube, with the sphere subtracted. With Boolean operations in Bryce, this stuff just jumped right out of the imagination into the page.<br />
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When you look at it, it's a bit busy. It has a shadow, the three visible sides of the cube have different shades. The sphere has gradations. The objects even shadows itself!<br />
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I'm sure this is what Kai and Athena were thinking when they came up with the simpler version of the logo.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8hfTym3Jz-hVTppMorgRu7chbx3fknaTqcCH0G2Q6H-pTMnHIaFW9hfDfHWhmtmTV7fhTeu7xub9jGnkso_ASVmXRSbECy_B6-DfqCMuc28StT0PpPs4HcKWlW0fqJR5ggbfDC_mP_u36/s1600/CubeSectionIcon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8hfTym3Jz-hVTppMorgRu7chbx3fknaTqcCH0G2Q6H-pTMnHIaFW9hfDfHWhmtmTV7fhTeu7xub9jGnkso_ASVmXRSbECy_B6-DfqCMuc28StT0PpPs4HcKWlW0fqJR5ggbfDC_mP_u36/s1600/CubeSectionIcon.jpg" height="186" width="200" /></a><br />
Here we can see the flower logo. It's very clean, simple, stylistic, and suggestive of 3D.<br />
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Negative space is used in two ways: the sphere is negative space when subtracted from the cube, and the flower is the result of looking through the negative space of the 3D form and coloring in the holes.<br />
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In some way, though, we found these cube-based logos to be too derivative of the Silicon Graphics logo. I even found the SGI logo in my notes right next to this one.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkG3GjI6vvq0UCq-U6npSuypeOuVdsrqwhJCq74kpi_w1f6F3pVbcRyP8jFJfP4kswSXn0l9QrMjkngfWqZR22-QCbLs8AWbWL-2jDfaqEFkZy4xf0gkB4uH2xvRg1d_VvD3Gef-NzM5G/s1600/egg-icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkG3GjI6vvq0UCq-U6npSuypeOuVdsrqwhJCq74kpi_w1f6F3pVbcRyP8jFJfP4kswSXn0l9QrMjkngfWqZR22-QCbLs8AWbWL-2jDfaqEFkZy4xf0gkB4uH2xvRg1d_VvD3Gef-NzM5G/s1600/egg-icon.jpg" height="191" width="200" /></a>Kai's group never really gave up on the egg, until the trefoil knot became our focus. By that time we were tired of the process of logo search.<br />
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Here is an egg-derived logo that used the shape several times in negative and positive space to form an op-art logo. This held up better because it could be reproduced in black-and-white. As any good logo should.<br />
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But eventually we centered on the trefoil knot. It's iconic form was clear. Before any of his people had a chance to perfect the trefoil with reflections and shadows, he had his people do special black-and-white versions of the trefoil.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT9w6tIWEmVt5dsn27csn7I3LCykE3QOyTSXTwDZNDa09d7W2imMC3uUSF_gsknZhWuo3gtIg3ukqBC9U57f4_6t2FIF0BL1Dyj0HM3PvY-GS1afzriHyPqPaOT3EZAmgrsro8VDuEI3F6/s1600/trefoil-layers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT9w6tIWEmVt5dsn27csn7I3LCykE3QOyTSXTwDZNDa09d7W2imMC3uUSF_gsknZhWuo3gtIg3ukqBC9U57f4_6t2FIF0BL1Dyj0HM3PvY-GS1afzriHyPqPaOT3EZAmgrsro8VDuEI3F6/s1600/trefoil-layers.jpg" height="195" width="200" /></a></div>
This version is exceptionally clever, using rotated versions of the knot silhouette in alternating colors, then subtracting out the middle.<br />
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Though we liked the line art reproduce-ability of this form, we thought it looked a bit too much like the woolmark logo.<br />
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In all, we spent too much time working on the logo. Gary, in his desperation, did an end-around and created his own logo and placed it on our products. This was done because, after all, we had to have something to put on shipping products. This was another logo based on the M (and, it seems, on Freddy Krueger).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjMd4PKsXd9N2UFW7wJ9h5m9C3xn7p4OMnCcLfkGuqp4Qy6PPCnhxj1qFM2Y259leu2uKYcsKVGln9MabZ1AOy-AGnnkb9kMCcJLjryJPJlkSztDgyA58Htmln3Ql7K9gubg7siXQ73v13/s1600/GaryMetaLogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjMd4PKsXd9N2UFW7wJ9h5m9C3xn7p4OMnCcLfkGuqp4Qy6PPCnhxj1qFM2Y259leu2uKYcsKVGln9MabZ1AOy-AGnnkb9kMCcJLjryJPJlkSztDgyA58Htmln3Ql7K9gubg7siXQ73v13/s1600/GaryMetaLogo.jpg" height="132" width="320" /></a></div>
As you can see, Gary even replaced the typeface we selected! His quest for a unified package design was next. This actually made us mad, because each product was a brand of its own and the entire concept of unified product packaging design seemed wrong.<br />
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What did we do to deserve this?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy14G71mNOGq9AVtCiNy01a24uTpFZoxBeHaufVZjuZruulLpq7EQGjwFEKYZdVoYSTdJwOFQ_hcijJtmuQ1LSlpY1PtP72HI2rAtjcJF6wxIBnXYZO_g74DkQ-eOSagV_RptJHWn0e5BS/s1600/cube2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy14G71mNOGq9AVtCiNy01a24uTpFZoxBeHaufVZjuZruulLpq7EQGjwFEKYZdVoYSTdJwOFQ_hcijJtmuQ1LSlpY1PtP72HI2rAtjcJF6wxIBnXYZO_g74DkQ-eOSagV_RptJHWn0e5BS/s1600/cube2.jpg" height="200" width="185" /></a></div>
In all, I wasn't really satisfied with what came out of this process. Personally, I doubt Kai was either. Meta continued to create great products, nonetheless. Bryce, Painter, KPT, and Poser saw fantastic new versions. And Ray Dream Designer metamorphosed into Carrara, which was a very ambitious project and a great product in its own right.<br />
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And I just kept drawing new iconic logo designs. I knew that someday they might be useful to me. And someday the story would be told.Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-33578371673910907332013-12-12T10:40:00.000-08:002013-12-12T10:40:31.232-08:00The Unstoppable Now<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM-P77Tl8WQOxXmpsmlh8V6ZZBnpiziFGzmkj3ZzA02608BiWrrG9A1vferBheIX-yghqkMXUJx4oqMFhsC7Jk3jz4FUIW8CNeK4xqRTvTLO6PiMO1ziKXEQFy9RU07IpBWBJGAQcpEbgC/s1600/Knot9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM-P77Tl8WQOxXmpsmlh8V6ZZBnpiziFGzmkj3ZzA02608BiWrrG9A1vferBheIX-yghqkMXUJx4oqMFhsC7Jk3jz4FUIW8CNeK4xqRTvTLO6PiMO1ziKXEQFy9RU07IpBWBJGAQcpEbgC/s200/Knot9.jpg" width="200" /></a>The universe seems to be moving forwards, ever forwards, and there's nothing we can do about it. Or is there? Is the world too tangled to unravel?<br />
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<b>Changing political landscapes</b><br />
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We all see the changes in the world. Climate change is the new catchphrase for global warming. Some areas of the world may never sort themselves out: the Koreas, the Middle East, Africa. Yet we can look to the past and see how a divided Germany re-unified, how South Africa eliminated the apartheid government and changed for the better (bless you Nelson Mandela, and may you rest in peace), how Europe has bonded with common currency and economic control.<br />
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Good and bad: will Europe solidify or become an economic roller coaster? Will Africa stabilize or continue on its path of tribal and religious genocide? Will Iran become a good neighbor, or will it simply arm itself with nuclear weapons and force a confrontation with Israel?<br />
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Despotic secular regimes have been overthrown in the Islamic world (Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya) and social media seems to have become a trigger for change, a tool for inciting revolution. Some regimes are experiencing slight Islamic shifts, like Turkey. But Egypt, having moved in that direction when the Islamic Brotherhood secured the presidency, is now moving away from it in yet another revolution.<br />
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The more things change, the more they stay the same.<br />
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The reason that social media became an enabler for the changes we are seeing is because <b>people care</b>. Crowdsourced opinion has an increasing amount of effect on government. Imagine that! Democracy in action. Even in countries that have yet to see democracy.<br />
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Let's look at one of the biggest enablers for this: the iPhone.<br />
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<b>The iPhone and its effect</b><br />
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Yes, this is one of the biggest vehicles for change because it raised the bar on handheld social media, on internet in your pocket, and on the spread of digital photography. The ability to make a difference was propagated with the iPhone and the devices that copied it. Did Steve Jobs know he was starting this kind of change? He knew it was transformative. And he built ecosystems like iTunes, the App store, and the iBookstore to make it all work. Without the App Store, we'd all still be in the dark ages of social media. The mobile revolution is here to stay.<br />
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Holding the first iPhone was like holding a bit of the future in your hands. It was that far ahead of the pack. Its amazing glass keyboard was met with skepticism from analysts at first, but the public was quick to decide it was just fine for them. A phone that was just a huge glass screen was more than an innovation. It was a revolution.<br />
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It's even remarkable that Steve Ballmer panned the first iPhone when it came out. By doing that, he drew even more attention to the gamble Apple was making, and in retrospect made himself look amazingly short-sighted. And look where it got him! Microsoft's lack of success in the mobile industry seems predictable, once you see this.<br />
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Each new iPhone iteration brings remarkable value. Better telephony (3G quickly became 4G and that quickly became LTE), better sensors (accelerometer, GPS, magnetometer, gyrometer, etc.), and better camera, lenses, flashes, and BSI sensors. Bluetooth connectivity makes it work in our cars. Siri makes it work by voice command. Each new feature is so well-integrated that it just feels like it's been there all along. Now that I have used my iPhone 5S for awhile, I feel like the fingerprint sensor is part of what an iPhone means, now.<br />
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This all-in-one device has led to unprecedented spread of pictures. It and its (ahem, copycat) devices supporting Google's Android and more recently Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 have enabled social media to become ever more present, and influential, in our world.<br />
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In 2012, <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/social-media-report-2012-social-media-comes-of-age.html" target="_blank">a Nielsen report</a> showed that social media growth is driven largely by mobile devices and the mobile apps made by the social media sites.<br />
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<b>Hackers, security</b><b>, whistleblowers</b><br />
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A battle is being fought in the field of security.<br />
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Private hackers have been stealing identities and doing so much more to gain attention, and <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2011/12/hackers.html" target="_blank">we know why</a>.<br />
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Then hackers began attacking companies and countries, plying their expertise, for various causes. The Anonymous and <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/hackers-part-2.html" target="_blank">LulzSec</a> groups fought Sony against the restrictiveness of gaming systems, against the despotic regime in Iran, against banks they believed were evil.<br />
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Enter the criminal hacking consortia, which build programs like <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/hackers-part-3.html" target="_blank">Zeus</a> for constructing and tasking botnets using rootkit techniques, for perpetrating massive credit card fraud.<br />
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Then the nation state hacking organizations began to do their worst. With targeted viruses like <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/06/hackers-part-4-flame.html" target="_blank">Flame</a>, Stuxnet, and Duqu. Whole military organizations are built, like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">China's military unit 61398</a> with the sole task of hacking foreign businesses and governments.<br />
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Is anybody safe?<br />
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It is very much a sign of the times that the latest iPhone 5S features <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone-5s/videos/" target="_blank">Touch ID</a>. You just need your fingerprint to unlock it. Biometrics like fingerprints and iris scans (<b>something only you are</b>) are becoming a good method for security engineering. There are so many public hacker attacks that individual security is quickly becoming a major problem.<br />
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New techniques for securing your data, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication" target="_blank">multi-factor authentication</a>, are becoming increasingly both popular and necessary. Accessing your bank and making a money transfer? Enter the passcode for your account (<b>something only you know</b>), then they send your trusted phone (<b>something only you have</b>) a text message and you enter it into the box. The second factor makes it more secure because it is more certain to be <b>you</b> and not some interloper spoofing you.<br />
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The landscape of security has been forever changed by the whistleblowers. Whole organizations were built to support them (WikiLeaks) and governments, banks, and corporations were targeted. The release of huge sets included confidential data from the US Military, from the Church of Scientology, from the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, from the Congressional Research Service, and from the NSA, via Edward Snowden.<br />
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It is notable that WikiLeaks hasn't released secret information from Russia or China. It is most likely that they would be collectively assassinated were that the case. Especially given such events as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko" target="_blank">death of Alexander Litvinenko</a>.<br />
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The founder of WikiLeaks, <b>Julian Assange</b>, is currently a self-imposed captive in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. In an apparent coup, one of the WikiLeaks members, <b>Daniel Domscheit-Berg</b> decided to leave WikiLeaks, and when he left, he destroyed documents containing America's no-fly list, the collected emails of the Bank of America, insider information from 20 right-wing organizations, and proof of torture in an undisclosed Latin American country (unlikely to be Ecuador, and much more likely to be one of its adversaries, such as Colombia). Domscheit-Berg apparently left to start up his own leaks site, but later decided to merely offer information on how to set one up.<br />
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The trend is that the general public (or at least a few highly-vocal people) increasingly expect <i>all</i> secrets to be revealed. And yet, I expect that they would highly value their own secrets. This is why there is such a trend towards protecting individual privacy.<br />
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The reality is organizations like WikiLeaks are proud to reveal secrets from the western democracies like America, but are reticent to do so for America's adversaries like Russia. Since this creates an asymmetric advantage, these organizations can only be viewed as anti-American. Even if they aren't specifically anti-American, they inevitably have this effect.<br />
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So they are playing for the Russians whether they believe it or not.<br />
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Does the whistleblower movement have the inherent potential for disentangling the world political situation? Perhaps in the sense that knots can be cut, like the Gordian Knot. But disentangled? No.<br />
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The only way that the knots can be unraveled is if everybody begins to play nice. And I don't really see that happening.<br />
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Perhaps Raul Castro will embrace America as an ally now that we have shaken hands. Perhaps Iran will stop its relentless bunker-protected quest for Uranium enrichment. Perhaps the Islamic militias in Africa will declare a policy of live-and-let-live with their Christian neighbors and stop the wholesale slaughter.<br />
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It's good to be idealistic. In idealism, when it is peace-oriented, we see a chance for change. In the social media revolution we see a chance for the moderate majority to be heard.<br />
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Only we can stop the unstoppable now.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-82704588419443240222013-10-22T22:15:00.002-07:002013-10-22T22:15:31.837-07:00Knots, Part 3<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7gozWlsuJjE2rTI1fVaEcGyndhm-73GJDDGspX4RI-ifltqktU5xFyN1j_ljOcSuh6sv1O2GGs6M9ikzuOtXIGrKd2vncGbLz6D7CTeHuR3zcYdvJDHotSguildBhoiMq786ScUjvZELy/s1600/Knot3Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7gozWlsuJjE2rTI1fVaEcGyndhm-73GJDDGspX4RI-ifltqktU5xFyN1j_ljOcSuh6sv1O2GGs6M9ikzuOtXIGrKd2vncGbLz6D7CTeHuR3zcYdvJDHotSguildBhoiMq786ScUjvZELy/s320/Knot3Colored.jpg" width="315" /></a>Knots are also intertwining, and sometimes present a bit of complexity when rendering them. Separate ends may be intertwined, as when we tie our shoes. But loops can also intertwine, and this creates a kind of impossible figure because they are most difficult to actually make. As with Borromean rings and the <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/10/triangular-forms.html" target="_blank">Valknut</a>, we can also use twists and loops.<br />
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In the <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2013/10/knots-part-2.html" target="_blank">previous post on knots</a>, I included what I considered to be the simplest intertwining of a loop containing a twist.<br />
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Here a gray four-leaf clover loop with twists at the corners intertwines with a brown loop with inside twists. This creates a form of duality because the brown loop is really a four-leaf clover loop turned inside-out. The over-under rule is used on each thread to produce a maximally tied figure. A bit of woodcut shading is also used.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7BQTW-cswl2hNr5zPeFQcqqsBNOGARskgzejLJeVO-YTj-6c-7i9QbB9RJmTDUKuqERc8t3hBZAoXg49q35ucxTSV2kf1R_670WIfb_11zRmhC9qixWqIrjoxTBUhH5_t-62XlxMRMjN/s1600/Knot6Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7BQTW-cswl2hNr5zPeFQcqqsBNOGARskgzejLJeVO-YTj-6c-7i9QbB9RJmTDUKuqERc8t3hBZAoXg49q35ucxTSV2kf1R_670WIfb_11zRmhC9qixWqIrjoxTBUhH5_t-62XlxMRMjN/s320/Knot6Colored.jpg" width="320" /></a>Now I'd like to show a natural extension of the figure eight intertwined with a simple loop. I designed this form a few days ago, but it took me a few days to get to a proper rendering. I used the same techniques to produce this as I used in the examples from the previous post. Except that I used a spatter airbrush on a gel layer to create the shading when one thread passes under another.<br />
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I used a simple airbrush on a screen layer to create the ribbon highlights. As always, I wish I had more time to illustrate!<br />
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But this figure shows how four loops can become intertwined in an interesting way by twisting each loop once.<br />
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Each knot I draw starts out as a thin black line on a page. I don't even worry about the crossings and their precedence. I just try to get the form right. The final result is very complex and simple at the same time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvxoinuDdAcn8nKdKZrAIAUq1NhFX41J3nKMKs_YJAZvsYx2B8ohLF3l-vEJ7UMspN_Re7P5rWdHcjQ5hn8A_cWsGIWeSfBU-tODM3qrFJPrQYp3mZKwsYOnlsp8HOTzMIzme01HFuHL4/s1600/Knot4Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvxoinuDdAcn8nKdKZrAIAUq1NhFX41J3nKMKs_YJAZvsYx2B8ohLF3l-vEJ7UMspN_Re7P5rWdHcjQ5hn8A_cWsGIWeSfBU-tODM3qrFJPrQYp3mZKwsYOnlsp8HOTzMIzme01HFuHL4/s320/Knot4Colored.jpg" width="320" /></a>Knots have their stylistic origins in antiquity. They were used for ornament and symbology by the Celts, the Vikings, and the ancient Chinese.<br />
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A purple loop with three twists intertwines with a blue circle in this knot.<br />
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The shines were created using a lighter, more saturated color and mixed into the gel layer using the Just Add Water brush in Painter. It's a bit like a Styptic pencil and was one of the first mixing brushes I created in Painter in 1991.<br />
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Enjoy!<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-12891765567088581512013-10-12T21:48:00.000-07:002013-10-12T21:48:00.884-07:00Knots, Part 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uN-fgcQxgoRIG9aXj6I4BTiFBWXFRfh8WJ2z9hNGMCNSb87rk0RwhdJyLWxsEeyljf-l1MdB4fjBoBsH8_0Gbb78_gglgXhpNm2crI_zTsb2JmIssIhteeVKmdS7iYYi8lj4_QynkZJy/s1600/Knot2Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1uN-fgcQxgoRIG9aXj6I4BTiFBWXFRfh8WJ2z9hNGMCNSb87rk0RwhdJyLWxsEeyljf-l1MdB4fjBoBsH8_0Gbb78_gglgXhpNm2crI_zTsb2JmIssIhteeVKmdS7iYYi8lj4_QynkZJy/s320/Knot2Colored.jpg" width="320" /></a>In an <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/04/knots.html" target="_blank">earlier post</a>, I talked about knots. And knots are entanglement, there is no doubt. They serve to bind, secure, to tie down, to hang up, and even to keep our shoes on.<br />
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In this post I will talk about knots as a way to entangle two threads. I will continue to use the planar method of showing knots, combined with precedence at crossover points. An over-under rule is used to keep the knots maximally entangled.<br />
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In addition, I will show how to draw knots using my drawing style, which is a little bit scratchboard-watercolor, a little bit woodcut, and a lot retro. You can find more of my style (and lots more knots) at <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/mysterytrain37/my-artwork/" target="_blank">my Pinterest artwork board</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2awgEeAtSgJQ8KDTCSBVYgXDhUn8Ddncah2Zga5rKpVmxAz5jJm0azLcUcFAa5r51hHORbAbOfFORD-Nf4Wtx64SWigreqr4R38Uv15AwTIQ0P3Eyd74FyxOyrG2YyafShlZxoIX8YRUK/s1600/Knot2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2awgEeAtSgJQ8KDTCSBVYgXDhUn8Ddncah2Zga5rKpVmxAz5jJm0azLcUcFAa5r51hHORbAbOfFORD-Nf4Wtx64SWigreqr4R38Uv15AwTIQ0P3Eyd74FyxOyrG2YyafShlZxoIX8YRUK/s320/Knot2.jpg" width="320" /></a>The over-under rule characterizes one of the best ways to organize the making of a knot. In its simplest form, you can see a less confusing, more iconic representation.<br />
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This knot is a clover interleaved with a ring. The ancient name for the clover symbol is the <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John's_Arms" target="_blank">Saint John's Arms</a></b>. The clover is used to symbolize places of interest on a map, the command key on Macs, and cultural heritage monuments in Nordic countries, Estonia, and a few other places. This symbol has been around for <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070417053338/http://www.gotmus.i.se/1engelska/bildstenar/bilder/havor_a1.jpg" target="_blank">at least 1500 years</a>.<br />
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The other day while working on a complicated programming problem, and I drew such a clover absent-mindedly and realized suddenly that I could pass a ring through its loops, hence this figure. When you draw the clover as a knot, it is also called the <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen_knot" target="_blank">Bowen knot</a></b>.<br />
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It seemed like the simplest thing at the time. Then I tried to draw it in its current form: not so easy! After a few hours (off and on) with Painter yesterday I finally had this figure smoothed out in nice outlines. Today I shaded and colored it. Sure, maybe the purple is a bit much, but I like the simple forms and the way they intertwine.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlOig5XrcsXkRwEeXnbEBKTeCLvu1ANeNnbXbRWKTeEIDbjA_kQizNaLwYEZf2LIwvQV9QqSgVwyPv4UZ_2i5MpdiEsbJo1_3WKn-6IpxHpdWgQG8ndgoLdGMwnbai77ebGorY9GSGFM_/s1600/Knot1Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlOig5XrcsXkRwEeXnbEBKTeCLvu1ANeNnbXbRWKTeEIDbjA_kQizNaLwYEZf2LIwvQV9QqSgVwyPv4UZ_2i5MpdiEsbJo1_3WKn-6IpxHpdWgQG8ndgoLdGMwnbai77ebGorY9GSGFM_/s320/Knot1Colored.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
After making this figure originally, I went back to my programming. But there was a nagging question in the back of my head. What was the simplest intertwined figure that had a twist in it? I had to think simple, so I drew an infinity as a twisted bit of rope.<br />
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Then I wondered how a ring might enter the picture. I tried one way and then it hit me: use the over-under rule.<br />
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This is the figure I ended up with. Now that's much simpler than the first, and iconic in its own way, I think. It could be a logo in an even simpler form. O-infinity? Well, there's nothing like a logo created for no particular reason!<br />
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But how are such knots created, really? Is there an easy way?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ueD5KCpfBL3QtLT_YC3q-JbX4r1_Qqpd0H9ka6cGqpTUv-Y7_C9A4dmJ9naMl97ZaLgbVV4zpMm4aG22RwSBzampSPrsHeM85Ez7Z3W8KNR9PNTITMnvj8-j5tbYkM3yIKxnCkuXmlcz/s1600/Knot1Lines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ueD5KCpfBL3QtLT_YC3q-JbX4r1_Qqpd0H9ka6cGqpTUv-Y7_C9A4dmJ9naMl97ZaLgbVV4zpMm4aG22RwSBzampSPrsHeM85Ez7Z3W8KNR9PNTITMnvj8-j5tbYkM3yIKxnCkuXmlcz/s200/Knot1Lines.jpg" width="200" /></a>Start with a line drawing showing the paths of the two threads. This is how I started. I put them at an angle because I drew the oval first. This was a natural angle for me to draw it right-handed.<br />
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Then I turned the page and drew the infinity so that the oval passed through each of the figure-eight's loops.<br />
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It wasn't exactly symmetric. Though I do like symmetry, I like even more to make my drawings a bit imperfect to show that they are hand-drawn. If I were designing for a logo, though, I'm not sure I'd make the same choice.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGtAru1qcnV-iMnGS9SzdEPdnXQAqJnZ86MItMpHzu1XV53d1CYer_lu98aqBbGy8CpJQUCaQUCipxH9H01m2A_zfV9I9Ma8RGK0yJRkUfBUr4qrmFWycEJIdOZRn-CvxxAc7C1S9UQod7/s1600/Knot1LinesA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGtAru1qcnV-iMnGS9SzdEPdnXQAqJnZ86MItMpHzu1XV53d1CYer_lu98aqBbGy8CpJQUCaQUCipxH9H01m2A_zfV9I9Ma8RGK0yJRkUfBUr4qrmFWycEJIdOZRn-CvxxAc7C1S9UQod7/s200/Knot1LinesA.jpg" width="200" /></a>Next I drew the figure again, but with an indication (by breaking the lines so they don't quite cross over each other) of which thread is on top and which crosses under.<br />
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Here is my first attempt.<br />
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But there is a basic flaw: if I were to grab the oval and pull it, it would easily come loose from the figure-eight! Needless to say this wasn't the knot I was looking for so I redrew it again using the tried-and-true over-under rule which states this: <b>as you pass along a thread, it must pass first over and then under the other threads, alternating in succession</b>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcr9Y1ALHoJWWR1FtQurk6WDaKs94xyjndny1VIZNIlA4m_khHqi326Xmi47bg3nPaY9PftCg37TuMybIOtXIBtocBbZL6JTfCLYcgLS8qG3TFHOG4pweb3Ymb9_LFpS6PBzDQJnDxJ68w/s1600/Knot1LinesB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcr9Y1ALHoJWWR1FtQurk6WDaKs94xyjndny1VIZNIlA4m_khHqi326Xmi47bg3nPaY9PftCg37TuMybIOtXIBtocBbZL6JTfCLYcgLS8qG3TFHOG4pweb3Ymb9_LFpS6PBzDQJnDxJ68w/s200/Knot1LinesB.jpg" width="200" /></a>Here is the result of redrawing it. As you can see, it has a much nicer integrity. It seems to be entangled properly.<br />
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So now I have a basic plan for the entanglement of the knot. Now I must plan to draw the knot using outlines for each thread. This means that each thread must really be two lines that are parallel to each other. I call this the <b>schematic</b> version.<br />
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I use the original line drawing as a guide and draw two lines parallel to the original line, one line on each side. Originally I worked in black ultra-fine Sharpie on thick 32# copy paper.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7yCXcOm720SaORR4RyH_5WCvlsGNUTh_2sMHhc5WwehN4QeHk0SQQsalV6qqAaKKyWx8FB7pIx1eKd3Em707kK34TtkqHSU1iidbYdaMO0NbQEzFBqRGs8lyB198-JAlgoFIexlAlobt1/s1600/Knot1LinesWide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7yCXcOm720SaORR4RyH_5WCvlsGNUTh_2sMHhc5WwehN4QeHk0SQQsalV6qqAaKKyWx8FB7pIx1eKd3Em707kK34TtkqHSU1iidbYdaMO0NbQEzFBqRGs8lyB198-JAlgoFIexlAlobt1/s200/Knot1LinesWide.jpg" width="200" /></a>The wide lines drawing, as you can see, is getting a bit complicated. But fortunately I have a legend for which lines to draw in and which lines to erase: the second hidden-line diagram above.<br />
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I use this as a template so I can redraw the image, using only the new wide lines. With this I can create a hidden-line version of the wider knot. It is easy to accomplish this by placing the blank sheet over the original and using it as tracing paper.<br />
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Of course when I do this, I avoid drawing the centerline. This keeps the drawing simple. In this way, you can see that the centerline was a for-reference-only diagram for what follows.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmMA9i7Cz2ZIjtEULgnqAXx8yMC0DxHd5j-Iq7zQH2I5JSapK1FH7F_2lm4k9OKuXi4mta_bv3nHuJpVmvsW-2faoK3wXgFasOEkf7EFC-qDXoaj8fx5i8ZIPcjxGNqPVUEMMwgkkWAt20/s1600/Knot1LinesWideHidden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmMA9i7Cz2ZIjtEULgnqAXx8yMC0DxHd5j-Iq7zQH2I5JSapK1FH7F_2lm4k9OKuXi4mta_bv3nHuJpVmvsW-2faoK3wXgFasOEkf7EFC-qDXoaj8fx5i8ZIPcjxGNqPVUEMMwgkkWAt20/s200/Knot1LinesWideHidden.jpg" width="200" /></a>Here is the wide <b>hidden-line</b> version. This one is much clearer and certainly much closer to what I was trying to create.<br />
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But it is a bit flat, like a road. And the crossings are really dimensionless.<br />
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I brought this into Painter and smoothed out the lines, making them a bit more consistent. Then I worked a bit of magic by using my woodcut style.<br />
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How do I do that?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07WsNyjjCXJaxCjuFqDXjDII21Mb-7DWTKlGBx7dgBmHYqBGU9lAIS2gj1iJBAZ1rb2TLI_AqsPUA06xMDKShE9Cbwxt3YgP_L6xsBdlvwjt4kKCJyH2OznQHHiUIzWmD5utaC8e53Xxr/s1600/Knot1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07WsNyjjCXJaxCjuFqDXjDII21Mb-7DWTKlGBx7dgBmHYqBGU9lAIS2gj1iJBAZ1rb2TLI_AqsPUA06xMDKShE9Cbwxt3YgP_L6xsBdlvwjt4kKCJyH2OznQHHiUIzWmD5utaC8e53Xxr/s200/Knot1.jpg" width="200" /></a>I'm glad you asked! At each crossover, I draw three or four lines on the "under" sides of the crossover. Then I draw to create wedges of black that meet very close to the "over" lines. Finally I use a small white brush to sculpt the points of the wedges, making them very pointy.<br />
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This simulates what could be created using a V-shaped ductal tool with linoleum or wood.<br />
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Well, this process takes a bit of time. If you count, you can see I had to create about 40 wedges, sculpting each of them into a perfect line or curve. But I am patient.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkstk52fJxTHBIKTVWtvPmst7jON23BwPwoyEHyZTKKAPAq3iGmM_sZcl500jEj5_GDEQcR2b6HoL7abKVT7Zb0z1KNdPbkuorKRGn5DcmCPy2xS0-RfBgE65CzCSkqaRIWIdaJM-4P9s/s1600/Knot1Colored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkstk52fJxTHBIKTVWtvPmst7jON23BwPwoyEHyZTKKAPAq3iGmM_sZcl500jEj5_GDEQcR2b6HoL7abKVT7Zb0z1KNdPbkuorKRGn5DcmCPy2xS0-RfBgE65CzCSkqaRIWIdaJM-4P9s/s200/Knot1Colored.jpg" width="200" /></a>Sometimes I widened the "under" lines to meet the outermost wedges. This makes a more natural-looking woodcut.<br />
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Finally, in Painter I use a gel layer and fill in color on top, filling in each area of the thread using a slightly different color.<br />
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This gives me the final result, a unified entanglement of two interesting threads! This result is quite similar to the scratchboard-watercolor look that I like. I used the same technique exactly to create the knot at the top of this post. In past posts, I have used this technique to create many illustrations, of course. I like this look because it's easy to print and it is good for creating logos.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFrcHfVUfR1WIDP6sHDfDyJwbbdZ2XYKzSmYLGzeOTtFNXdPREaOHXfN5DfViWBC_wjYPTBCw7VkHkt-IE7TUD1fHqkUKr-RxxEylK65bXBCDYEqjH_4tYzxhx6E2YGbWS07-2w8S8dEvK/s1600/Knot1Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFrcHfVUfR1WIDP6sHDfDyJwbbdZ2XYKzSmYLGzeOTtFNXdPREaOHXfN5DfViWBC_wjYPTBCw7VkHkt-IE7TUD1fHqkUKr-RxxEylK65bXBCDYEqjH_4tYzxhx6E2YGbWS07-2w8S8dEvK/s320/Knot1Logo.jpg" width="320" /></a>For instance, if I take the plain wide line version and blacken the white background, I get a version that can be manipulated into a logo form. After that, I invert the colors of the image and that gives me a clean black logo on white. Then I use a layer in Screen mode to colorize the black segments of the threads.<br />
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Here is a <b>logo</b> version of the knot, expressed in colorful tones. But this won't do for O-infinity at all! It might easily be an O in purple and the figure-eight in navy blue. On black.<br />
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But that's not my idea of a good company name, so I will leave it like this!<br />
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There are plenty of styles for redrawing this knot that make interesting illustrations.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMH-qs2nwGlQEOLNEn6fqotKG-OZsatVr9A5iibcgifhi_pDYJIXAisA9FiTQaiboiXyxwma8UE8KX3MD8FMhhIkTcxU4tyA_LnITetvozY2cj74OhAXLcHZnTjkQmeWr7_S_QiRkGZPH5/s1600/Knot1Inline3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMH-qs2nwGlQEOLNEn6fqotKG-OZsatVr9A5iibcgifhi_pDYJIXAisA9FiTQaiboiXyxwma8UE8KX3MD8FMhhIkTcxU4tyA_LnITetvozY2cj74OhAXLcHZnTjkQmeWr7_S_QiRkGZPH5/s320/Knot1Inline3.jpg" width="320" /></a>This one is not a knot, really. But it is an interesting redrawing of the figure.<br />
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This is called an <b>inline</b> treatment.<br />
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Remember the <a href="http://www.identifont.com/show?5EW" target="_blank">Neuland Inline</a> font that was used for the movie Jurassic Park?<br />
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This figure can be used as the start of about 100 different illustrations, depending upon which crossings you want to black in or erase.<br />
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I tried several before I realized that it wasn't the direction I wanted to go with the logo.<br />
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Trial-and-error is often the way with creativity!<br />
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I have other knots I'd like to draw, but they certainly do take time! It's good to be drawing again.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-27792957094606162342013-10-06T10:42:00.000-07:002013-10-06T10:42:07.367-07:00Bigger Pixels<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEt1kpwOmatCmsC16wqfuHm_t3oKffEwCU-RHW0HeCoKjcrCyGKRu65ty6k6RP4CKiQDKKmdAVMLHikzIpmnwqYZak_w164ZMLnnGfq_MT55vHf-AIrcA1-yztaDE5LEEQNm85p0AQJq6B/s1600/BiggerPixels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEt1kpwOmatCmsC16wqfuHm_t3oKffEwCU-RHW0HeCoKjcrCyGKRu65ty6k6RP4CKiQDKKmdAVMLHikzIpmnwqYZak_w164ZMLnnGfq_MT55vHf-AIrcA1-yztaDE5LEEQNm85p0AQJq6B/s320/BiggerPixels.jpg" width="320" /></a>What is better? Bigger pixels or more megapixels? In this blog post, I will explain all. The answer may not be what you think it is!<br />
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<b>Image sensors</b><br />
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Digital cameras use image sensors, which are rectangular grids of <b>photosites</b> mounted on a chip. Most image sensors today in smartphones and digital cameras (intended for consumers) employ a <b>CMOS image sensor</b>, where each photosite is a photodiode.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4D7mGpLVogFzWVm9Sl0HgGmpRI4FOehUKQa6aWhZ1-eFgtAnNvxsr65Eh5ZGjqL7_HZX1srVzWpyZTpRrZJATSho2qb8lMoVJZmb7SKSXUQiQVRqOPua2G_qf6udSkSRhkGFyWhKm5wa/s1600/Eye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4D7mGpLVogFzWVm9Sl0HgGmpRI4FOehUKQa6aWhZ1-eFgtAnNvxsr65Eh5ZGjqL7_HZX1srVzWpyZTpRrZJATSho2qb8lMoVJZmb7SKSXUQiQVRqOPua2G_qf6udSkSRhkGFyWhKm5wa/s200/Eye.jpg" width="200" /></a>Now, images on computers are made up of pixels, and fortunately so are sensors. But in the real world, images are actually made up of <b>photons</b>. This means that, like the rods and cones in our eyes, photodiodes must respond to stimulation by photons. In general, the photodiodes collect photons much in the way that our rods and cones integrate the photons into some kind of electrochemical signal that our vision can interpret.<br />
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A photon is the smallest indivisible unit of light. So, if there are no photons, there is no light. But it's important to remember that not all photons are visible. Our eyes (and most consumer cameras) respond only to the <b>visible spectrum of light</b>, roughly between wavelengths 400 nanometers and 700 nanometers. This means that any photon that we can see will have a wavelength on this range.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQt1Fwwb28fP-KiSxkkLVRQpsrHeg313vhwwuexOoTnX_4WSYKokH-nOsXlZWoP8D3849yTcIkbe5_o9PiVHMAkAY4YOdMKtzmgI3U5yAW5eEvVONiNM57V3jtxEYqDaIkiwZZrGYrb6n7/s1600/Spectrum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQt1Fwwb28fP-KiSxkkLVRQpsrHeg313vhwwuexOoTnX_4WSYKokH-nOsXlZWoP8D3849yTcIkbe5_o9PiVHMAkAY4YOdMKtzmgI3U5yAW5eEvVONiNM57V3jtxEYqDaIkiwZZrGYrb6n7/s320/Spectrum.jpg" width="64" /></a><b>Color</b><br />
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The light that we can see has color to it. This is because each individual photon has its own energy that places it somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum. But what is color, really? Perceived color gives us a serviceable approximation to the spectrum of the actual light.<br />
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Objects can be colored, and lights can be colored. But, to determine the color of an object, we must use a complicated equation that involves the spectrum of the light from the light source and the absorption and reflectance spectra of the object itself. This is because light can bounce off, be scattered by, or transmit directly through any object or medium.<br />
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But it is cumbersome to store light as an entire spectrum. And, since a spectrum is actually continuous, we must sample it. And this is what causes the approximation. Sampling is a process by which information is lost, of course, by <b>quantization</b>. To avoid this loss, we convolve the light spectrum with color component spectra to create the serviceable, reliable color components of <b>red</b>, <b>green</b>, and <b>blue</b>. The so-called <b>RGB color</b> representation is trying to approximate how we sense color with the rods and cones in our eyes.<br />
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So think of color as something three-dimensional. But instead of X, Y, and Z, we can use R, G, and B.<br />
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<b>Gathering color images</b><br />
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The photons from an image are all mixed up. Each photodiode really just collects photons and so how do we sort out the red photons from the green photons from the blue photons? Enter the <b>color filter array</b>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAe_S2D8TsK-ajSO4whg5xgHjsTXDhwOrbTCa_KY-jU4g2XjNkmd6rHder9MLtDYpsY2Od_8T4cZIdLEN8wUJB3k9HBzm_7HqCZKgsQOJqzRsxCzw4EbcZgTlatJCIcr5OTOp7_H89sxA/s1600/microlenses1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAe_S2D8TsK-ajSO4whg5xgHjsTXDhwOrbTCa_KY-jU4g2XjNkmd6rHder9MLtDYpsY2Od_8T4cZIdLEN8wUJB3k9HBzm_7HqCZKgsQOJqzRsxCzw4EbcZgTlatJCIcr5OTOp7_H89sxA/s320/microlenses1.jpg" width="320" /></a>Let's see how this works.<br />
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Each photosite is really a stack of items. On the very top is the <b>microlens</b>.<br />
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The microlenses are a layer of entirely transparent material that is structured into an array of rounded shapes. Bear in mind that the dot pitch is typically measured in microns, so this means that the rounding of the lens is approximate. Also bear in mind that there are millions of them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-i0Bi3tQzqlbGUJl0H7A4eo1iLdrDSpoXWnbYkK2v7lY6b6ngQIZgwXJrq224_bDEdirGEvGzHk00NXoUc-fS9a6VKGuxs3GWgDrI1I2DBDrCxo3oo8vzE3mpDIPbM-hMOFOTg3CLpg7/s1600/microlenses2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-i0Bi3tQzqlbGUJl0H7A4eo1iLdrDSpoXWnbYkK2v7lY6b6ngQIZgwXJrq224_bDEdirGEvGzHk00NXoUc-fS9a6VKGuxs3GWgDrI1I2DBDrCxo3oo8vzE3mpDIPbM-hMOFOTg3CLpg7/s320/microlenses2.jpg" width="320" /></a>You can think of each microlens as rounded on the top and flat on the bottom. As light comes into the microlens, its rounded shape bends the light inwards.<br />
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The microlens, as mentioned, is transparent to all wavelengths of visible light. This means that it is possible that an infrared- and ultraviolet-rejecting filter might be required to get true color. The colors will become contaminated otherwise. It is also possible, with larger pixels, that an anti-aliasing filter, usually consisting of two extremely thin layers of silicon niobate, is sandwiched above the microlens array.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC7Djtxsw0oxGxcdUGDB9wiCO-jleuG9hOkilPU5BbFtksxKOFxL3LZ-h3rM0F63nHeRsO2SXw6ZEZ1QYkPc-uiZEDBduqzKPrKK5nCXn8ri4-ouN5pGMMo0OKAJGFqxh_5qa-0l0f1xbM/s1600/microlenses3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC7Djtxsw0oxGxcdUGDB9wiCO-jleuG9hOkilPU5BbFtksxKOFxL3LZ-h3rM0F63nHeRsO2SXw6ZEZ1QYkPc-uiZEDBduqzKPrKK5nCXn8ri4-ouN5pGMMo0OKAJGFqxh_5qa-0l0f1xbM/s200/microlenses3.jpg" width="200" /></a>Immediately below the microlens array is the color filter array (or CFA). The CFA usually consists of a pattern of red, green, and blue filters. Here we show a red filter sandwiched below.<br />
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The CFA is usually structured into a Bayer pattern. This is named after Bryce E. Bayer, the Kodak engineer that thought it up. In this pattern, there are two green pixels, one red, and one blue pixel in each 2 x 2 cell.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8cWEtfniEEBGr2vZbOIRGWXUZALLPaqZukdE5fkRVTr22-1UE4lEf9mBhlkGa9mUVPrtq1JfGgXVHvclJE5nrYAP4pBFpYxjw5T8khiWNcMNvNBFn4ZajITzoghpmnkDX4H0Dp1OqAHyR/s1600/microlenses4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8cWEtfniEEBGr2vZbOIRGWXUZALLPaqZukdE5fkRVTr22-1UE4lEf9mBhlkGa9mUVPrtq1JfGgXVHvclJE5nrYAP4pBFpYxjw5T8khiWNcMNvNBFn4ZajITzoghpmnkDX4H0Dp1OqAHyR/s320/microlenses4.jpg" width="319" /></a>A microlens' job is to focus the light at the photosite into a more concentrated region. This allows the photodiode to be smaller than the dot pitch, making it possible for smaller fill factors to work. But a new technology, called Back-Side Illumination (BSI) makes it possible to put the photodiode as the next thing in the photosite stack. This means that the fill factors can be quite a bit larger for the photosites in a BSI sensor than for a Front-Side Illumination (FSI) sensor.<br />
<br />
The real issue is that not all light comes straight into the photosite. This means that some photons are lost. So a larger fill factor is quite desirable in collecting more light and thus producing a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Higher SNR means less noise in low-light images. Yep. Bigger pixels means less noise in low-light situations.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpMVIg5yiqhR69FtTx8B56SzZ7QAfejqA0mrY4m_FoWLvJEUxvjVlouHASzP5w9kCqvU9t87igq_pUQrg1Uwzp0N5gQJM_JIC7ibxsaQJuhk0leSGYYRr4PcF6lMhq49qEeG5MyZYgkAC/s1600/Bayer.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXpMVIg5yiqhR69FtTx8B56SzZ7QAfejqA0mrY4m_FoWLvJEUxvjVlouHASzP5w9kCqvU9t87igq_pUQrg1Uwzp0N5gQJM_JIC7ibxsaQJuhk0leSGYYRr4PcF6lMhq49qEeG5MyZYgkAC/s200/Bayer.jpeg" width="200" /></a>Now, the whole idea of a color filter array consists of a trade-off of color accuracy for detail. So it's possible that this method will disappear sometime in the (far) future. But for now, these patterns look like the one you see here for the most part, and this is the Bayer CFA pattern, sometimes known as an RGGB pattern. Half the pixels are green, the primary that the eye is most sensitive to. The other half are red and blue. This means that there is twice the green detail (per area) as there is for red or blue detail by themselves. This actually mirrors the density of rods vs. cones in the human eye. But in the human eye, the neurons are arranged in a random speckle pattern. By combining the pixels, it is possible to reconstruct full detail, using a complicated process called <b>demosaicing</b>. Color accuracy is, however, limited by the lower count of red and blue pixels and so interesting heuristics must be used to produce higher-accuracy color edges.<br />
<br />
<b>How much light?</b><br />
<br />
It's not something you think about every day, but the <b>aperture</b> controls the amount of light let into the camera. The smaller the aperture, the less light the sensor receives. Apertures use f-stops. The lower the f-stop, the larger the aperture. The area of the aperture, and thus the amount of light it lets in, is proportional to the reciprocal of the f-stop squared. For example, after some calculations, we can see that an f/2.2 aperture lets in 19% more light than an f/2.4 aperture.<br />
<br />
Images can be noisy. This is generally because there are not enough photons to produce a clear, continuous-tone image, and even more because the <i>arrival time</i> of the photons is random. So, the general rule is this: the more light, the less noise. We can control the amount of light directly by increasing the <b>exposure time</b>. And increasing the exposure time directly lets more photons into the photosites, which dutifully collect them until told not to do so. The randomness of the arrival time is less a factor when the exposure time increases<br />
<br />
Once we have gathered the photons, we can control how bright the image is by increasing the <b>ISO</b>. Now, ISO is just another word for gain: a volume knob for the light signal. We crank up the gain when our subject is dark and the exposure is short. This restores the image to a nominal apparent amount of brightness. But this happens at the expense of greater noise because we are also amplifying the noise with the signal.<br />
<br />
We can approximate these adjustments by using the sunny 16 rule: on a sunny day, at f/16, with ISO 100, we use about 1/120 of a second exposure to get a correct image exposure.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi63qG824p9zJt8Bx-HdVqgLbDgLP9EJ4bb5c2_5iSXny3wCkPppZScFqBZNXhmir7hWUJoGJ3XE9oPikBK3Lmk1uO764R5X0fstWK_J8ns8C9J60fPuZ64BPAGfj10MdqiWX0QSyqsHZ0u/s1600/LightDiagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi63qG824p9zJt8Bx-HdVqgLbDgLP9EJ4bb5c2_5iSXny3wCkPppZScFqBZNXhmir7hWUJoGJ3XE9oPikBK3Lmk1uO764R5X0fstWK_J8ns8C9J60fPuZ64BPAGfj10MdqiWX0QSyqsHZ0u/s400/LightDiagram.jpg" width="400" /></a>The light product is this:<br />
<br />
(exposure time * ISO) / (f-stop^2)<br />
<br />
This means nominal exposure can be found for a given ISO and f/number by measuring light and dividing out the result to compute exposure time.<br />
<br />
If you have the exposure time as a fixed quantity and you are shooting in low light, then the ISO gets increased to keep the image from being underexposed. This is why low-light images have increased noise.<br />
<br />
<b>Sensor sensitivity</b><br />
<br />
The pixel size actually does have some effect on the sensitivity of a single photosite in the image sensor. But really it's more complicated than that.<br />
<br />
Most sensors list their pixel sizes by the <b>dot pitch</b> of the sensor. Usually the dot pitch is measures in microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter). When someone says their sensor has a bigger pixel, they are referring to the dot pitch. But there are more factors affecting the photosite sensitivity.<br />
<br />
The <b>fill factor</b> is an important thing to mention, because it has a complex effect on the sensitivity. The fill factor is the amount of the array unit within the image sensor that is devoted to the surface of the photodiode. This can easily be only 50%.<br />
<br />
The <b>quantum efficiency</b> is related to the percentage of photons that are captured of the total that may be gathered by the sensor. A higher quantum efficiency results in more photons captured and a more sensitive sensor.<br />
<br />
The light-effectiveness of a pixel can be computed like this:<br />
<br />
DotPitch^2 * FillFactor * QuantumEfficiency<br />
<br />
Here the dot pitch squared represents the area of the array unit within the image sensor. Multiply this by the fill factor and you get the actual area of the photodiode. Multiply that by the quantum efficiency and you get a feeling for the effectiveness of the photosite, in other words, how sensitive the photosite is to light.<br />
<br />
<b>Megapixel mania</b><br />
<br />
For years it seemed like the <b>megapixel count</b> was the holy grail of digital cameras. After all, the more megapixels the more detail in an image, right? Well, to a point. Eventually, the amount of noise begins to dominate the resolution. And a little thing called the <b>Airy disc</b>.<br />
<br />
But working against the megapixel mania effect is the tiny sensor effect. Smartphones are getting thinner and thinner. This means that there is only so much room for a sensor, depth-wise, owing to the fact that light must be focused onto the plane of the sensor. This affects the size of the sensor package.<br />
<br />
The granddaddy of megapixels in a smartphone is the Nokia Lumia 1020, which has a 41MP sensor with a dot pitch of 1.4 microns. This increased sensor size means the phone has to be 10.4mm thick, compared to the iPhone 5S, which is 7.6mm thick. The extra glass in the Zeiss lens means it weighs in at 158g, compared to the iPhone 5S, which is but 115g. The iPhone 5S features an 8MP BSI sensor, with a dot pitch of 1.5 microns.<br />
<br />
While 41MP is clearly overkill, they do have the ability to combine pixels, using a process called <b>binning</b>, which means their pictures can have lower noise still. The iPhone 5S gets lower noise by using a larger fill factor, afforded by its BSI sensor.<br />
<br />
But it isn't really possible to make the Lumia 1020 thinner because of the optical requirements of focusing on the huge 1/1.2" sensor. Unfortunately thinner, lighter smartphones is definitely the trend.<br />
<br />
But, you might ask, can't we make the pixels smaller still and increase the megapixel count that way?<br />
<br />
There is a limit, where the pixel size becomes effectively shorter than the wavelength of light, This is called the <b>sub-diffraction limit</b>. In this regime, the wave characteristics of light begin to dominate and we must use wave guides to improve the light collection. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk" target="_blank">Airy disc</a> creates this resolution limit. This is the diffraction pattern from a perfectly focused infinitely small spot. This (circularly symmetric) pattern defines the maximum amount of detail you can get in an image from a perfect lens using a circular aperture. The lens being used in any given (imperfect) system will have a larger Airy disc.<br />
<br />
The size of the Airy disc defines how many more pixels we can have with a specific size sensor, and guess what? It's not many more than the iPhone has. So the Lumia gets more pixels by growing the sensor size. And this grows the lens system requirements, increasing the weight.<br />
<br />
It's also notable that, because of the Airy disc, decreasing the size of the pixel may not increase the resolution the resultant image. So you have to make the sensor physically larger. And this means: more pixels eventually must also mean bigger pixels and much larger cameras. Below a 0.7 micron dot pitch, the wavelength of red light, this is certainly true.<br />
<br />
<b>The human eye</b><br />
<br />
Now, let's talk about the actual resolution of the human eye, <a href="http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html" target="_blank">computed by Clarkvision to be about 576 megapixels</a>.<br />
<br />
That seems like too large a number, and actually it seems ridiculously high. Well, there are about 100 million rods and only about 6-7 million cones. The rods work best in our night vision because they are so incredibly low-light adaptive. The cones are tightly packed in the foveal region, and really only work in lighted scenes. This is the area we see the most detail with. There are three kinds of cones and there are more red-sensitive cones than any other kind. Cones are usually called L (for large wavelengths), M (for medium wavelengths), and S (for small wavelengths). These correspond to red, green, and blue. The color sensitivity is at a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell" target="_blank">maximum between 534 and 564 nanometers</a> (the region between the peak sensitivities of the L and M cones), which corresponds to the colors between lime green and reddish orange. This is why we are so sensitive to faces: the face colors are all there.<br />
<br />
I'm going to do some new calculations to determine how many pixels the human eye actually does see at once. I am defining pixels to be rods and cones, the photosites of the human eye. The parafoveal region is the part of the eye you get the most accurate and sharp detail from, with about 10 degrees of diameter in your field of view. At the fovea, the place with the highest concentration, there are <a href="http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/PenetrantTest/Introduction/visualacuity.htm" target="_blank">180,000 rods and cones per square millimeter</a>. This drops to about 140,000 rods and cones at the edge of the parafoveal region.<br />
<br />
One degree in our vision maps to about 288 microns on the retina. This means that 10 degrees maps to about 2.88 mm on the retina. It's a circular field, so this amounts to 6.51 square millimeters. At maximum concentration with one sensor per pixel, this would amount to 1.17 megapixels. The 10 degrees makes up about 0.1 steradians of solid angle. The human field of vision is about 40 times that at 4 steradians. So this amounts to 46.9 megapixels. But remember that the concentration of rods and cones falls off at a steep rate with the distance from the fovea. So there are at most 20 megapixels captured by the eye in any one glance.<br />
<br />
It is true that the eye "paints" the scene as it moves, retaining the information for a larger field of view as the parafoveal region sweeps over the scene being observed. It is also true that the human visual system has sophisticated pattern matching and completion algorithms wired in. This probably increases the perceived resolution, but not by more than a factor of two by area.<br />
<br />
So it seems unlikely that the human eye's resolution can exceed 40 megapixels. But of course we have two eyes and there is a <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/field-of-view" target="_blank">significant overlap between them</a>. Perhaps we can increase the estimate by 20 percent, to 48 megapixels.<br />
<br />
If you consider yourself using a retina display and then extrapolate to the whole field of view, this is pretty close to what we would get.<br />
<br />
So this means that a camera that captures the entire field of view that a human eye can see (some 120 degrees horizontally and 100 degrees vertically in a sort of oval-shape) could have 48 megapixels and you could look anywhere on the image and be fooled. If the camera were square, it would probably have to be about 61 megapixels to hold a 48 megapixel oval inside. So that's my estimate of the resolution required to fool the human visual system into thinking it's looking at reality.<br />
<br />
<b>Whew!</b><br />
<br />
That's a lot of details about the human eye and sensors! Let's sum it all up. To make a valid image with human-eye resolution, due to Airy disc size and lens capabilities, would take a camera and lens system about the size and depth of the human eye itself! Perhaps by making sensors smaller and improving optics to be flexible like the human eye, we can make it twice as good and half the size.<br />
<br />
But we won't be able to put that into a smartphone, I'm pretty sure. Still, improvements in lens quality, BSI sensors, wave guide technology, noise reduction, and signal processing, continue to push our smartphones to ever-increasing resolution and clarity in low-light situations. Probably we will have to have cameras with monochromatic (rod-like) sensors to be able to compete with the human eye in low-light scenes. The human retinal system we have right now is so low-light adaptable!<br />
<br />
Apple and others have shown that cameras can be smaller and smaller, such as the excellent camera in the iPhone 5S, which has great low-light capabilities and a two-color flash for better chromatic adaptation. Nokia has shown that a high-resolution sensor can be placed in bigger-thicker-heavier phones that has the flexibility for binning and better optics that push the smartphone cameras ever closer to human-eye capabilities.<br />
<br />
Human eyes are hard to fool, though, because they are connected to pattern-matching systems inside our visual system. Look for image interpretation and clarification algorithms to make the next great leap in quality, just as they do in the human visual system.<br />
<br />
So is it bigger pixels or simply more of them? No, the answer is <i>better</i> pixels.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-56510745140382735862013-08-23T11:37:00.000-07:002013-08-23T11:46:32.476-07:00Observing Microsoft, Part 4This day is an interesting one for Microsoft. First, Ballmer sends out a <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/23/technology/ballmer-retire-letter/" target="_blank">letter to employees</a> that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/aug13/08-23AnnouncementPR.aspx" target="_blank">states that he will resign within 12 months</a>. Then it is announced that there is a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/technology/ballmer-announces-retirement-from-microsoft.html?_r=0" target="_blank">committee on the Microsoft board, containing Bill Gates</a>, of course, which has the responsibility of finding a new CEO. No, I suspect that Ballmer is not on that committee.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-investors-should-not-be-that-excited-about-ballmers-departure-2013-8?op=1&source=email_rt_mc_body&app=n" target="_blank">Some writers</a> are saying that Microsoft is not forcing Ballmer out. But think about it. If you had to get rid of a failed CEO who owned 333 million shares of your company's stock, what would you do? It was most certainly a negotiated force-out. With a legal release. And probably some kind of honorary employment that requires Ballmer to only sell within certain windows of time and keeps him on a leash.<br />
<br />
Welcome to the mobile revolution.<br />
<br />
I must say that this change is way too late. After all, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2010/10/07/should-microsofts-board-fire-steve-ballmer/?source=email_rt_mc_body&app=n" target="_blank">in 2010 people were already clamoring to fire Ballmer</a>. And doesn't clean things up soon enough. Obviously Microsoft's board or directors should have been doing this for the last several years!<br />
<br />
The reorganization that Ballmer has been accomplishing seems like a smart idea, except that it is trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It's made for the PC era which is slowly fading away. Still, the new organization is probably one less thing that a new CEO will have to worry about. That is: if he accepts this vision for the new Microsoft. A vision that depends upon Microsoft succeeding in the mobile revolution. Still with the reorg, Microsoft has a corporate culture that can't simply turn on a dime.<br />
<br />
And Windows is exactly the problem.<br />
<br />
<b>Energy Efficiency</b><br />
<br />
The mobile revolution has created two very interesting trends in the computing landscape. These are battery longevity and cloud computing. In order for batteries to last a long time, the products they power must be energy-efficient in a system-wide way. In order for cloud computing, with its massive compute farms, to be cost-effective, each server must be singularly power-efficient and generate as little heat as possible since cooling is a power consumption concern as well.<br />
<br />
Of course battery longevity also affects electric cars like the Tesla. But, when it comes to computing, the battery longevity comes from three sources: more efficient batteries, hardware systems where power efficiency is an integral part of their design, and finally the economical use of resources in software. In the cloud computing arena, instead of more efficient batteries we are concerned with heat dissipation and cooling strategies.<br />
<br />
More efficient batteries is a great thing, when you can get them. But advances in supercapacitors and carbon nanotube electrodes on various substrates is yet to pan out. This means that hardware systems such as SoC's (Systems on a Chip) must be designed with power efficiency in mind. Power management solutions that allow parts of a chip to turn themselves off on demand are one way to help.<br />
<br />
Even at the chip level, you can send signals between various components of an SoC (System on a Chip) by using power-efficient transmission. For example, the MIPI M-PHY layer even enables lower power consumption by the transmission of the high-frequency data that usually chews up so much power. Consider using a camera and processing the data on-chip. Or using a scaler that operates from/to on-chip memory. These applications involve images, which are huge resource hogs and must be specially considered, in order to save significant amounts of power.<br />
<br />
But there's more to this philosophy of power management, and this gets to the very heart of why SoC-based gadgets are so useful in this regard. General tasks that use power by processing large amounts of data are handled increasingly by specialized areas of the SoC. Like image scaling and resampling. Like encrypting and decrypting files. Like processing images from the onboard cameras. Like display processing and animation processing. Like movie codec processing. Each of these applications of modern gadgets are resource hogs. So they must be optimized for power efficiency at the very start or else batteries simply won't last as long.<br />
<br />
Of course, you could simply user a bigger battery. Which makes the product larger. And less elegant!<br />
<br />
<b>Windows?</b><br />
<br />
So what is the problem with Windows? The Wintel architecture wasn't built from the ground up for power-efficiency. Or distributed specialized computing, like so many gadgets are constructed these days. And now you can see what a daunting process this must be for Microsoft engineers that basicaly have to start over to get the job done. It will take quite a bit of time to get Windows to run on an SoC. Almost all implementations of Windows today are built to run on discrete CPUs. The Surface Pro appears to <a href="http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+Teardown/12842/" target="_blank">use a regular CPU board with a stock Intel part</a>.<br />
<br />
You see, power efficiency isn't just a hardware problem to solve. The software must also have this in mind with everything it does. The consumption of resources is a serious issue with any operating system, and affects the user experience in a huge way. I can't even begin to go into the legacy issues with the Windows operating system. The only way is to rewrite it. One piece at a time.<br />
<br />
This problem has led many companies who lead the cloud computing initiatives to use Linux for their server operating systems. Mostly because it can easily be tailored for power efficiency. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems" target="_blank">The server operating system share of Unix-based operating systems is 64%, compared to about 36% for Windows</a>.<br />
<br />
Servers are almost certainly going to go the way of the SoC also, with dedicated processors doing the expensive things like video codec processing, web page computation, image processing, etc. But I do see multiple cores and multithreading still being useful in the server market.<br />
<br />
But not if they increase the power requirements of the system.<br />
<br />
On mobile devices, Windows hasn't done so well either. Windows Phone probably has less than 3% of the mobile space, if that.<br />
<br />
<b>The Surface never clicked</b><br />
<br />
Why didn't the Surface RT and the Surface Pro tablets succeed? First off, it's possible that they are simply yet to succeed. I just had to say that.<br />
<br />
But more likely they will never succeed. It's hard to move into a market where your competitors have been working on the hardware solutions for years. And when hardware isn't your expertise.<br />
<br />
At first, the Surface marketing campaign was all flash and no substance. A <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7UlE-o8DQQ" target="_blank">video of dancers clicking their tablet covers</a> into their Surface tablets was <a href="http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/10/16/the-surface-ad-sucks-balls/" target="_blank">certainly criticized</a> by a few bloggers as vacuous. The main problem was it stressed the expensive keyboard cover, and skirted the issue that the cover is totally needed. With the cover, the Surface tablet becomes just a crappy laptop. That you can't really use on your lap, because of the kickstand. Their <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Microsoft-Tablet-Surface-Video-Tour-Information,18532.html" target="_blank">follow-up video</a> was curt and to the point, but sounds a bit like propaganda. saying "Surface is yours. Your way of working. Your way of playing".<br />
<br />
Yeah. Trying to get into the mind of their prospective users.<br />
<br />
But it's clear that their strategies were simply not working, because they went to the old adage "if we don't look good, then maybe we should just make them look bad". And they started releasing anti-iPad ads. The first one used Siri's voice to sum it up "do you still think I'm pretty?". They compared the price of the legendary iPad to the Surface RT without a cover. I suspect that a Surface RT without a keyboard cover is pretty much useless. The next <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/08/07/microsoft-rehashes-old-arguments-in-latest-anti-ipad-surface-ad" target="_blank">anti-iPad ad</a> compared features in a less quirky way. But anybody using a Surface RT knew that it didn't support the apps that the iPad has, or really have any of the advanced iOS/iTMS ecosystem in place. And without the keyboard cover it was cheaper, certainly. But you really had to have the cover to get full functionality.<br />
<br />
So Microsoft decided to <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/15/4524454/microsoft-surface-rt-price-cuts-worldwide" target="_blank">drop the price</a>. This was echoed in the <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/18/4535976/microsoft-lost-900-million-on-surface-rt" target="_blank">nearly $1-billion charge</a> they took that quarter. Then they followed up by <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/4/4587228/microsoft-surface-pro-price-cut" target="_blank">dropping the price of the Surface Pro</a>! It seems desperate to sell their inventory. Otherwise they will be taking another huge charge against Windows revenues like before.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-8454200143621115342013-07-19T10:12:00.001-07:002013-11-24T11:55:16.425-08:00Observing Microsoft, Part 3<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxKdBSNxpzIgqJ59ZPwSfNS0H_JjWGecrolXER_Dypz-A_uR7TLSFSnHFD4F3S0mj86JR4jNEs2UvseB9p6ZZ9os-n2qllzZh4iTZ7qgqj2zYijXrT5iwg_O4LCZGgiA2iABJonL7nG4/s1600/steve-ballmer-clown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxKdBSNxpzIgqJ59ZPwSfNS0H_JjWGecrolXER_Dypz-A_uR7TLSFSnHFD4F3S0mj86JR4jNEs2UvseB9p6ZZ9os-n2qllzZh4iTZ7qgqj2zYijXrT5iwg_O4LCZGgiA2iABJonL7nG4/s320/steve-ballmer-clown.jpg" width="320" /></a>When a company chooses a strategy, it is usually important that the strategy must make sense given its existing business model. A strategy of <i>changing</i> the business model, however, is a much harder one to implement and takes years. And that's one of the reasons why I'm observing Microsoft.<br />
<br />
OMG there's so much to catch up on! But it's clear the trends I was referring to in my <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/12/observing-microsoft-part-2.html" target="_blank">previous</a> <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/12/observing-microsoft.html" target="_blank">installments</a> are being realized. To start with, I looked at their <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/12/observing-microsoft.html" target="_blank">Surface and Windows 8 strategy</a>, and then I looked at their <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/12/observing-microsoft-part-2.html" target="_blank">management of the Windows brand, and its subsequent performance in the crucial holiday season</a>.<br />
<br />
Converting themselves into a hardware company, in the Apple model, is sheer madness for a software company like Microsoft. It will kill off their business model very quickly, I think. And yet they continue to do it, company culture be damned.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331363,00.asp" target="_blank">Ballmer is a coach personality</a>, and clearly business looks like a football game to him. I can imagine him saying "if a strategy is not working against our opponent, then we must change it up". But it's clear that it's <b>much</b> easier to do this with a football team than it is to do the same with a company of <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx" target="_blank">100K employees</a>.<br />
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So I wonder why Microsoft doesn't just focus on making business simpler? Instead, they have been making it more and more complex by the ever-expanding features of Office, their business suite.<br />
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<b>Software, hardware, nowhere</b><br />
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As one of Steve Jobs' favorite artists, Bob Dylan, once said "the times they are a changin'". And Steve knew it, too. At TED in 2010, Steve said that the transition away from PCs in the <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/post-pc.html" target="_blank">post-PC</a> era had begun and that it would be uncomfortable for a few of its players. I took this to mean Microsoft, particularly. But how has it played out so far?<br />
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Microsoft is a software company that dabbles in hardware. Most of its revenues come from software, but remember that they make keyboards and mice and also a gaming console. These are only dabbling though, because the real innovation and money is to be made in gadgets like phones, tablets, and laptops. But their OEMs make gadgets, which requires a significantly greater level of expertise and design sense. So Microsoft's entry into gadgets can only represent their desire to sell devices, not licenses. They want to be like Apple, but specifically they want to own the mobile ecosystem and sit on top of a pile of cash that comes from device revenues. And the OEMs like HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, and Asus are a bit left out; they must compete with their licensor. That can't be good.<br />
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So Microsoft is clearly changing its business model to sell hardware and to build custom software that lives on it. Hence Surface RT and Surface Pro. But their first quandary must be a hard one: what can they possibly do with Windows? Windows 8 is their first answer. The live tiles "Metro" style interface is unfortunately like greek to existing Windows users. The user experience, with no start menu, must seem like an alien language to them.<br />
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This entire process is beginning to look like a debacle. If it all continues to go horribly wrong, the post-PC era could happen a lot sooner than Steve thought.<br />
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Microsoft ignores their core competence as they blithely convert themselves to a hardware company. Specifically, I think that's why they are doing it badly.<br />
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They could end up nowhere fast.<br />
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<b>Microsoft's numbers</b><br />
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Microsoft is a veritable revenue juggernaut and has done a fairly good job of diversifying their business. <a href="http://betanews.com/2012/07/19/microsoft-q4-2012-by-the-numbers-6-2b-charge-saps-record-quarter/" target="_blank">An analysis of Q4 2012</a> reveals the following breakdown of their business units in revenue out of an $18.05B pie:<br />
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23% Windows and Windows Live<br />
28% Server and Tools<br />
35% Business<br />
4% Online Services<br />
10% Entertainment and Devices<br />
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This reveals that business is their strongest suit. Servers also speak to the business market. Online services also largely serve businesses. Each division, year over year, had the following increase or decrease as well:<br />
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-12.4% Windows and Windows Live<br />
+9.7% Server and Tools<br />
+7.3% Business<br />
+8.1% Online Services<br />
+19.5% Entertainment and Devices<br />
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This reveals that Xbox is their fastest-growing area. It is believed that Xbox is leaving the PowerPC and moving to AMD cores and their Radeon GPUs. This could be a bit disruptive, since old games won't work. But most games are developed on the x86/GPU environment these days.<br />
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It also shows that their Windows division revenue was down 12.4% during the quarter year over year. This involved a deferral of revenue related to Windows 8 upgrades. Umm, revenue which most likely hasn't materialized, and so you can take the 12.4% as a market contraction.<br />
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Why is the market contracting? Disruption is occurring. The tablet and phone market is moving the user experience away from the desktop. That's what the post-PC era really is: the mobile revolution. Tablet purchases are offsetting desktop and laptop PC purchases. And <a href="http://www.asymco.com/2013/04/11/happy-birthday-ipad/" target="_blank">most of those are iPads</a>. It gets down to this: <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/i-was-an-ipad-skeptic/" target="_blank">people really like their iPads</a>. It is a job well done. People could live without them, but they would rather not, and that is amazing given that it has only been three years since the iPad was released.<br />
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The consequence of this disruption is that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22103079" target="_blank">PC sales are tumbling</a>. If you dig a little deeper, you can find <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24065413#.UWhzWLRbwZO" target="_blank">this IDC report</a> that seems to be the most damning. Their analysis is that Windows 8 is actually so bad that people are avoiding upgrades and thus it is accelerating the PC market contraction. On top of the economic downturn that has people waiting an extra year or two to upgrade their PC.<br />
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Microsoft CEO <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120905/ballmer-in-a-year-400-million-devices-will-be-running-the-latest-windows-os/" target="_blank">Steve Ballmer stated in September 2012 that in one year, 400 million people would be running Windows 8</a>. To date, it appears that only 80 million have upgraded (or been forced to use it because unfortunately it came installed on their new PC). That's why I said we need to ignore that deferred revenue, by the way.<br />
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If you look at OS platforms, Microsoft's future is clearly going to be on mobile devices. Yet they are <a href="http://www.splatf.com/2013/04/microsoft-comeback/" target="_blank">not doing so well in mobile</a>. In fact, they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, with about 80% of their Windows Phone models on only one manufacturer, Nokia. Soon, I think they may simply have to buy Nokia to prevent them from going to Android.<br />
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In the end, you can't argue with the numbers. The PC market is contracting, as evidenced by <a href="http://www.crn.com/news/mobility/240158575/microsoft-cfo-reorganization-puts-us-on-the-right-track.htm" target="_blank">Windows revenue declining year-over-year</a>. Tablets are not a fad. As the PC market contracts there are <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22999065/pc-industry-sees-worst-sales-quarter-nearly-20" target="_blank">several companies that stand to lose a lot</a>.<br />
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<b>Reorganization</b><br />
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What is the Microsoft reorganization about? There are three things that I single out.<br />
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The first and most noticeable is the that the organization puts each division across devices so the software development is not device-compartmentalized, and so that Windows for the desktop is written by the same people who write Windows for the devices. At least in principle.<br />
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And, of course, games are now running on mobile devices, dominating the console market. And undercutting the prices.<br />
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This <a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/12/in-microsofts-reorganization-a-lot-of-apple/" target="_blank">closely mirrors what Apple has been doing</a> for years. And this clearly points out that Microsoft is envious of the Apple model and its huge profitability.<br />
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Second, in reorganizing, Microsoft is able to <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021413605_microsoftearningspreviewxml.html" target="_blank">adjust the reporting of their financial data</a>, to temporarily obfuscate the otherwise embarrassing results of market contraction. This is because if each division reports across devices then the success of a new device will hide the contraction of the old ones. At least, in theory.<br />
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But Microsoft made a huge bet in the Surface with Windows RT. And <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044720/man-the-lifeboats-the-surface-rtitanic-is-sinking-fast.html" target="_blank">it's not panning out</a>. They have just reported that they had to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-18/microsoft-profit-misses-estimates-on-surface-writedown-weak-pcs" target="_blank">write off $900M of Surface RT inventory</a> in the channel. The translation is this: it's not selling. They have instituted a <a href="http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/07/microsoft-drops-price-of-surface-rt.html" target="_blank">price drop for Surface RT</a>. I bet they won't be able to give them away. But when they finally are forced to, they will be the laughing stock of the mobile market.<br />
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Today, Microsoft is down 11%. That's represents a <b>correction</b>. A re-realization of the capitalization of Microsoft. This represents a widely-help perception that the <a href="http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/07/19/microsoft-bets-big-on-surface-rt-and-loses-big/" target="_blank">consumer market</a> is lost to them.<br />
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Third, Ballmer wants the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-hanft/microsofts-massive-reorga_b_3619736.html" target="_blank">culture of Microsoft to change</a>. They have been having problems between competing divisions. Coach, get your team on the same page! Wait: they should have been on the same page all along. After all, the iPhone came out in 2007, right? Ballmer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U" target="_blank">didn't think too much of it at the time</a>. That's why coaches hire strategy consultants.<br />
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A reorg can be even more traumatic than a merger. It's all about culture, which is the life blood of a company. It's what keeps people around in a job market that includes Google and Apple.<br />
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<b>Monkey business</b><br />
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I have to give it to Microsoft: they really want to give their tablet market a chance. But they are doing it at the expense of their business market. They are <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/04/11/ballmers-latest-blunder-no-office-for-ios-and-android-till-2014" target="_blank">reportedly</a> holding off on their Office for Mac and iOS until 2014. A deeper analysis is <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-office-for-ios-android-not-until-fall-2014-7000013819/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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This is a big mistake. They need to build that revenue now because BYOD (bring your own device) is on the rise and they need to be firmly in the workplace, not made irrelevant by other technology. If they lag, then other software developers that are a lot more nimble will supplant them in the mobile space. Apple, for instance, offers Pages and Numbers as part of their iWork suite. And those applications read Word and Excel files. And they can also be used for editing and general work.<br />
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Microsoft should be focusing on making business simpler. Cut down on the complexity and teach it to the young people. Reinvent business. This entails making business work in the meeting room with tablets and phones. Making business work in virtual meetings.<br />
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They certainly had better make their software simpler and easier to use. They must concentrate on honing their main area of expertise: software.<br />
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If they don't do it, then <a href="http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-microsoft-office-alternatives/" target="_blank">somebody else will</a>. Microsoft should stop all this monkey business, trim the fat, and concentrate on what adds the most value. They simply have to stop boiling the ocean to come up with the gold.<br />
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<b>The moral</b><br />
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There are some morals to this story. First, don't <b>ever</b> let "coach" run a technology company. Second, focus on your core competence. Third, and most important, <b>create</b> the disruption rather than react to it.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-25287922413388157582013-06-26T09:25:00.000-07:002013-06-26T09:25:00.779-07:00Weaponized Computation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uahI48OG0cGrGOAIrYc5Q1weaYuTGTEl3wl2Fx_ZTDGfyhIH4M8eHHCJqCHsif8m8Chkh_R9Ltu9wiH7KssbO8PXqdBbTMosSWkNLAY122RKEzP5BDVmEFDNCY-FvNTrR0RqmqnMSSg/s1600/WeaponizedComputationHeroSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uahI48OG0cGrGOAIrYc5Q1weaYuTGTEl3wl2Fx_ZTDGfyhIH4M8eHHCJqCHsif8m8Chkh_R9Ltu9wiH7KssbO8PXqdBbTMosSWkNLAY122RKEzP5BDVmEFDNCY-FvNTrR0RqmqnMSSg/s1600/WeaponizedComputationHeroSmall.jpg" /></a>Ever since the early 20th century when primitive analog computers were built to help compute solutions for <a href="http://web.mit.edu/STS.035/www/PDFs/Newell.pdf" target="_blank">naval gunnery fire control and increasing bomb accuracy</a>, computing machinery has been used for weaponry. This trend continues to accelerate into the 21st century and has become an international competition.<br />
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<b>Once upon a time</b><br />
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I had an early gift for mathematics and understanding three-dimensional form. When I was 16 or so, I helped my dad understand and then solve specific problems in <b>spherical trigonometry</b>. It eventually became clear to me that I was helping him verify circuitry specifically designed for <a href="http://www.cdeagle.com/ommatlab/maneuvers.pdf" target="_blank">suborbital mechanics</a>: inertial guidance around the earth. Later I found out in those years he was working on the Poseidon SLBM for Lockheed, so, without completely understanding it, I was actually working on weaponized computation.<br />
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This is the period of my life where I learned about the <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid" target="_blank">geoid</a></b>: the specific shape of the earth, largely an oblate ellipsoid. The exact shape depends upon gravitation, and thus mass concentrations (<b>mascons</b>). Lately the gravitational envelope of the moon caused by mascons has been an <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-moons-gravity-explained-20130530,0,1983190.story" target="_blank">issue for the Lunar Orbiters</a>.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9fMY36fSblU6AkmFX8m24ZCtdcdMoutM1qtN_R86w1nK5Mkq0DuaR1Uh0z9wLeB8rAt16dzdGkz6WNajoZYYL3WEpGQP4gcDN_ZeqNv0PI8DR1vbQdMyunHStqTvENavORWsoRB6LnNY/s1600/Missile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9fMY36fSblU6AkmFX8m24ZCtdcdMoutM1qtN_R86w1nK5Mkq0DuaR1Uh0z9wLeB8rAt16dzdGkz6WNajoZYYL3WEpGQP4gcDN_ZeqNv0PI8DR1vbQdMyunHStqTvENavORWsoRB6LnNY/s200/Missile.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
At that point in history, <b>rocket science</b> was quite detailed and contained several specialized areas of knowledge. Many of which were helped by increasingly complex calculations. But there have been other fields that couldn't have advanced, where specific problems couldn't be solved, without the advances in computation. Ironically, some basic advances in computation we enjoy today owe these problems for their very existence. Consider <a href="http://www.computer-history.info/Main.Page.dir/pages/GAM.Intro.html" target="_blank">this amazing article</a> that details the first 25 years or so of the supercomputing initiatives at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0mcUjOj6ldG3e2TAgoK-QJKGeEB4Un1-LSGv_L63C7bHFbV3k1LpbIN-JkuXKYC7_r9cHhJDE7fGJ8vKIEEsa0QAh9Cs5hUywWV9mmg-uv0Rxe1DVEgnP2IHDexQdhKTIASP1pwjCy3A/s1600/Bombs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0mcUjOj6ldG3e2TAgoK-QJKGeEB4Un1-LSGv_L63C7bHFbV3k1LpbIN-JkuXKYC7_r9cHhJDE7fGJ8vKIEEsa0QAh9Cs5hUywWV9mmg-uv0Rxe1DVEgnP2IHDexQdhKTIASP1pwjCy3A/s200/Bombs.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="188" /></a><b>Bombs</b><br />
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Throughout our computing history, computation has been harnessed to aid our defense by helping us create ever more powerful weapons. During the <b>Manhattan Project</b> at Los Alamos, Stanley Frankel and Eldred Nelson organized the <b><a href="http://www.hp9825.com/html/stan_frankel.html" target="_blank">T5 hand-computing group</a></b>, a calculator farm populated with Marchant, Friden, and Monroe calculators and the wives of the physicists entering data on them. This group was arranged into an array to provide one of the first parallel computation designs, using Frankel's elegant breakdown of the computation into simpler, more robust calculations. Richard Feynman, a future Nobel prize winner, actually <i>learned to fix the mechanical calculators</i> so the computation could go on unabated by the huge time-sync of having to send them back to the factory for repair.<br />
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I was fortunate enough to be able to talk with Feynman when I was at Caltech, and we discussed group T-5, quantum theory, and how my old friend Derrick Lehmer was blacklisted for having a Russian wife. He told me that Stanley Frankel was also blacklisted. Also, I found <a href="http://home.vicnet.net.au/~wolff/calculators/Friden/Friden.htm" target="_blank">20-digit Friden calculators</a> particularly useful for my computational purposes when I was a junior in High School.<br />
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The hunger for computation continued when Edward Teller began his work on the Super, a bomb organized around thermonuclear fusion. This lead John von Neumann, when he became aware of the ENIAC project, to suggest that the complex computations required to properly understand thermonuclear fusion could be carried out on one of the world's first electronic computers.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWSFT05d7U593jsnxrftK04n7c7uifbnPWIkp0-yJECEu7Tf5AnRSxtRUhDV2ffX2dUdvVA2pJZHZSu8BqNEO4AmH91IijHUeQJeg9CIG84kCV4CrEgPjlq0m7-ZRAsFlFsHx-VdktQWU/s1600/Computation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWSFT05d7U593jsnxrftK04n7c7uifbnPWIkp0-yJECEu7Tf5AnRSxtRUhDV2ffX2dUdvVA2pJZHZSu8BqNEO4AmH91IijHUeQJeg9CIG84kCV4CrEgPjlq0m7-ZRAsFlFsHx-VdktQWU/s200/Computation.jpg" width="195" /></a><b>Codebreaking</b><br />
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In the history of warfare, codebreaking has proven itself to be of primary strategic importance. It turns out that this problem is perfectly suited to solution using computers.<br />
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One of the most important first steps in this area was taken at <b><a href="http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/exhibit/bletchley-park-home-of-the-codebreakers/wRANFg9s?position=0%2C-1" target="_blank">Bletchley Park</a></b> in Britain during World War II. There, in 1939, Alan Turing constructed the Bombe. This was an early electromechanical computer and it was specifically designed to break the cipher and daily settings used in the German Enigma machine.<br />
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This effort required huge amounts of work and resulted in the discovery of several key strategic bits of information that turned the tide of the war against the Nazis.<br />
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The mathematical analysis of codes and encoded information is actually the science of <b>decryption</b>. The work on this is never-ending. At the <b>National Security Agency</b>'s Multiprogram Research Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, hundreds of scientists and mathematicians work to construct faster and faster computers for cryptanalytic analysis. And of course there are other special projects.<br />
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That seems like it would be an interesting place to work. Except there's no sign on the door. Well, this is to be expected since security is literally their middle name!<br />
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And the NSA's passion for modeling people has recently been highlighted by Edward Snowden's leaks of a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/" target="_blank">slide set</a> concerning the NSA's metadata-colecting priorities. And those slides could <a href="http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/dear-nsa-let-me-take-care-ou" target="_blank">look so much better</a>!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpSBWmSpTXD1RXaSVy9pd_hvnemNN5J08OiWmByT8g9oHvOAfEO-hYLZZh1gHB4TaPc2d1O-mwHP5b4yb3KFPRrCmgYaTi_SUpWKsA_wni2iJ3FuZ2TBXLbdt6iVeHZlZutabya3tVV1A/s1600/Security.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpSBWmSpTXD1RXaSVy9pd_hvnemNN5J08OiWmByT8g9oHvOAfEO-hYLZZh1gHB4TaPc2d1O-mwHP5b4yb3KFPRrCmgYaTi_SUpWKsA_wni2iJ3FuZ2TBXLbdt6iVeHZlZutabya3tVV1A/s200/Security.jpg" width="195" /></a><b>Passwords</b><br />
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In the modern day, hackers have become a huge problem for national and corporate security. This is partly because, recently, many <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/" target="_blank">advances in password cracking</a> have occurred.<br />
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The first and most important advance was when RockYou.com was hacked with an SQL injection attack and 32 million (14.3 million unique) passwords were posted online. With a corpus like this, password crackers suddenly were able to substantially hone their playbooks to target the keyspaces that contain the most likely passwords.<br />
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A keyspace can be something like "a series of up to 8 digits" or "a word of up to seven characters in length followed by some digits" or even "a capitalized word from the dictionary with stylish letter substitutions". It was surprising how many of the RockYou password list could be compressed into keyspaces that restricted the search space considerably. And that made it possible to crack passwords <i>much</i> faster.<br />
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Popular fads like the stylish substitution of "i" by "1" or "e" by "3" were revealed to be exceptionally common.<br />
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Another advance in password cracking comes because passwords are usually not sent in plaintext form. Instead, a <b>hashing function</b> is used to obfuscate them. Perhaps they are <i>only</i> stored in hashed form. So, in 1980 a clever computer security professor named Martin Hellman published a technique that vastly sped up the process of password cracking. All you need to do is keep a table of the hash codes around for a keyspace. Then, when you get the hash code, you just look it up in the table.<br />
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But the advent of super-fast computers means that it is possible to compute billions of cryptographic hashes per second, allowing the password cracker to iterate through an entire keyspace in minutes to hours.<br />
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This is enabled by the original design of the hashing functions, like SHA, DES, and MD5, all commonly used hashing functions. They were all designed to be exceptionally efficient (and therefore quick) to compute.<br />
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So password crackers have written GPU-enabled parallel computation of the hashing functions. These run on exceptionally fast GPUs like the AMD Radeon series and the nVidia Tesla series.<br />
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To combat these, companies have started sending their passwords through thousands of iterations of the hashing function, which dramatically increases the time required to crack passwords. But really this only means that more computation is required to crack them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxgSiMNF3Zju0oDyWw9muCZGMuWEgbpQl0aBW4Lvkqnm5dUXNBNqPgw_S6nSJNydYSQS8h6-1EuGTDWo_LcGTU686SHQyfn4DQQ-26YyGli_94FQorvRraSSJY-pP8kUeoJOO0nqeqb8/s1600/Internet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxgSiMNF3Zju0oDyWw9muCZGMuWEgbpQl0aBW4Lvkqnm5dUXNBNqPgw_S6nSJNydYSQS8h6-1EuGTDWo_LcGTU686SHQyfn4DQQ-26YyGli_94FQorvRraSSJY-pP8kUeoJOO0nqeqb8/s200/Internet.jpg" width="180" /></a><b>The Internet</b><br />
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Many attacks on internet infrastructure and on targeted sites depend upon massively parallel capabilities. In particular, hackers often use Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to bring down perceived opponents. Hackers often use an array of thousands of computers, called a <b>botnet</b>, to access a web site simultaneously, overloading the site's capabilities.<br />
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Distributed computing is an emerging technology that depends directly on the Internet. Various problems can be split into clean pieces and solved by independent computation. These include peaceful projects such as the spatial analysis of the shape of proteins (<a href="http://folding.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">folding@home</a>), the search for direct gravitational wave emissions from spinning neutron stars (<a href="http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/" target="_blank">Einstein@home</a>), the analysis of radio telescope data for extraterrestrial signals (<a href="http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">SETI@home</a>), and the search for ever larger Mersenne prime numbers (<a href="http://www.mersenne.org/" target="_blank">GIMPS</a>).<br />
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But not only have hackers been using distributed computing for attacks, they have also been using the capability for password cracking. Distributed computing is well suited to cryptanalysis also.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaJfllDmrjObIt2kbZpG7ad10FTKCRUUGi8o7O99YydmhrLCDmG3-IpxG-VmIER8uxvXPGx1Wm25Jb3zBtVmtyDMCBbZ-W8m6W9ywOLS6FG9RvdHbxGbc_rmZGLm_rsE6XojuGju1-ks/s1600/Exascale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaJfllDmrjObIt2kbZpG7ad10FTKCRUUGi8o7O99YydmhrLCDmG3-IpxG-VmIER8uxvXPGx1Wm25Jb3zBtVmtyDMCBbZ-W8m6W9ywOLS6FG9RvdHbxGbc_rmZGLm_rsE6XojuGju1-ks/s200/Exascale.jpg" width="187" /></a><b>Exascale weapons</b><br />
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Recently it has been discussed that <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240230/Fear_of_thinking_war_machines_may_push_U.S._to_exascale" target="_blank">high-performance computing has become a strategic weapon</a>. This is not surprising at all given how much computing gets devoted to the task of password cracking. Now the speculation is, with China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, that weaponized computing is poised to move up to the <b>exascale</b>. The Tianhe-2 supercomputer is capable of 33.86 petaflops, less than a factor of 30 from the exascale. Most believe that exascale computing will arrive around 2018.<br />
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<b>High-performance computing</b> (HPC) has continually been used for weapons research. A high percentage of the most powerful supercomputers over the past decade are to be found at Livermore, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge.<br />
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Whereas HPC has traditionally been aimed at floating-point operations (where real numbers are modeled and used for the bulk of the computation) the focus of password cracking is integer operations. For this reason, GPUs are typically preferred because modern general-purpose GPUs are capable of integer operations and they are massively parallel. The AMD 7990, for instance, has 4096 shaders. A shader is a scalar arithmetic unit that can be programmed to perform a variety of integer or floating-point operations. Because a GPU comes on a single card, this represents an incredibly dense ability to compute. The AMD 7990 achieves 7.78 teraflops but uses 135W of power.<br />
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So it's not out of the question to amass a system with thousands of GPUs to achieve <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exascale_computing" target="_blank">exascale computing</a> capability.<br />
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I feel it is ironic that China has built their fastest computer using Intel Xeon Phi processors. With 6 cores in each, the Xeon Phi packs about 1.2 teraflops of compute power per chip! And it <a href="http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-phi-detail.html" target="_blank">is a lower power product than other Xeon processors</a>, at about 4.25 gigaflops/watt. The AMD Radeon 7990, on the other hand, <a href="http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/54421-amd-radeon-hd-7990-6gb/" target="_blank">has been measured</a> at 20.75 gigaflops/watt. This is because shaders are much scaled down from a full CPU.<br />
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<b>What is the purpose?</b><br />
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Taking a step back, I think a few questions should be asked about computation in general. What should computation be used for? Why does it exist? Why did we invent it?<br />
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If you stand back and think about it, computation has <b>only one</b> purpose. This is to extend human capabilities; it allows us to do things we could not do before. It stands right next to other machines and artifices of mankind. Cars were developed to provide personal transportation, to allow us to go places quicker than we could go using our own two feet. Looms were invented so we could make cloth much faster and more efficiently than using a hand process, like knitting. Telescopes were invented so we could see farther than we could with our own two eyes.<br />
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Similarly, computation exists so we can extend the capabilities of our own brains. Working out a problem with pencil and paper can only go so far. When the problems get large, then we need help. We needed help when it came to cracking the Enigma cipher. We needed help when it came to computing the cross-section of Uranium. Computation was instantly weaponized as a product of necessity and the requirements of survival. But defense somehow crossed over into offensive capabilities.<br />
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With the Enigma, we were behind and trying to catch up. With the A-bomb, we were trying to get there before they did. Do our motivations always have to be about survival?<br />
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<b>And where is it leading?</b><br />
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It's good that computation has come out from under the veil of weapons research. But the ramifications for society are huge. Since the mobile revolution, we solve problems that can occur to any of us in real life, and build an app for it. So computation continues to extend our capabilities in a way that fulfills some need. Computation has become commonplace and workaday.<br />
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When I see a kid learn to multiply by memorizing a table of products, I begin to wonder whether these capabilities are really needed, given the ubiquity of computation we can hold in our hands. Many things taught in school seem useless, like cursive writing. Why memorize historical dates when we can just look it up in Wikipedia? It's better to learn <b>why</b> something happened then <b>when</b>.<br />
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More and more, I feel that we should be teaching kids <b>how</b> to access and understand the knowledge that is always at their fingertips. And when so much of their lives is spent looking at an iPad, I feel that kids should be taught social interaction and be given more time to play, exercising their bodies.<br />
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It is because knowledge is so easy to access that teaching priorities must change. There should be more emphasis on the understanding of basic concepts and less emphasis on memorization. In the future, much of our memories and histories are going to be kept in the cloud.<br />
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Fundamentally, it becomes increasingly important to teach creativity. Because access to knowledge is not enough. We must also learn what to do with the knowledge and how to make advancements. The best advancements are made by standing on the shoulders of others. But without understanding how things interrelate, without basic reasoning skills, the access to knowledge is pointless.<br />
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-56207800574879359312013-06-16T21:09:00.001-07:002013-06-16T21:09:15.808-07:00Three-Dimensional Thinking, Part 2The <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/01/three-dimensional-thinking.html" target="_blank">last time</a> I wrote about three-dimensional thinking, I discussed <a href="http://impossible-world.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">impossible figures</a>. They are fun ways to challenge our brains to see things in a different way. But to me they signify more than just artwork.<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSLeC8p81gANlLzeoPf3FRYTVOTXXPIJc_kL4K_oGCcv6_LwA5RVy9EufPUXMeryjqBFeeSoVUJLUhWWC3MWeB-RXo8pPCWK_hLIR3Folg8AD-NQWB5rUIWOm_5XIGsjRN_l3pE0bevyQ/s1600/Tri-knot-Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSLeC8p81gANlLzeoPf3FRYTVOTXXPIJc_kL4K_oGCcv6_LwA5RVy9EufPUXMeryjqBFeeSoVUJLUhWWC3MWeB-RXo8pPCWK_hLIR3Folg8AD-NQWB5rUIWOm_5XIGsjRN_l3pE0bevyQ/s1600/Tri-knot-Small.jpg" /></a><b>Different Angles</b></div>
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Looking at objects from different angles helps us understand their spatial structure.</div>
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Looking at a given subject from different angles is a requirement for creativity. But eventually, in your mind, you realize that reality itself is malleable, and this is the domain of dreams. And dreaming is good for creativity because it helps us get out of the box of everyday experience and use our vision in a new way.</div>
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<b>The key</b></div>
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Once I asked myself a question about impossible objects: what is the key to making one?</div>
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The key trick which is used in impossible figures is this: <b>locally possible globally impossible</b>. In the case of a <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PenroseTriangle.html" target="_blank">Penrose triangle</a> (also called a Reutersvärd triangle because <a href="http://butdoesitfloat.com/filter/oscar-reutersv%C3%A4rd" target="_blank">Oscar Reutersvärd</a> was the first to depict it) local corners and pieces of objects are entirely possible to construct but the way they are globally connected is spatially impossible.</div>
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I have constructed another impossible figure which is included above. This figure contains several global contradictions, yet remains locally plausible. However, there are two global levels of impossibility in this figure. Let's consider what they are.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-bQtHRMJ-MU8tT6ClfK_wp-ViaMNeEPHK2BhuMCW2oN95jr5DpXUyL9Kmr6cEbU7yUWXKkBW70GtumtQVV-fmQ0e8Md2oI5XGEESAGdqo2ufWaEUr_rulsWlUZpPEZovc6H7Y6w-u0I/s1600/BigM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-bQtHRMJ-MU8tT6ClfK_wp-ViaMNeEPHK2BhuMCW2oN95jr5DpXUyL9Kmr6cEbU7yUWXKkBW70GtumtQVV-fmQ0e8Md2oI5XGEESAGdqo2ufWaEUr_rulsWlUZpPEZovc6H7Y6w-u0I/s320/BigM.jpg" width="320" /></a>First off, there are plenty of locally plausible geometries depicted in the figure. For instance, the M figure is a totally real and constructible object in the real world.</div>
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My original drawing didn't actually have M's at the three corners. It was a Penrose triangle. To make the figure compact, I added the M's on each of the three corners of the Penrose triangle. This doesn't make the figure any more possible though. It just adds a little salt and pepper to the mix; it helps confuse the eye a bit.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0-4dLWVExTDdNwYJjWxvXvlUaAYCzsYLTXDfBsXMRu80VtDN0MH2WuC0254uCIzA0wCoJPN_UvvHFq-QhUvSiicNJTvG3A__atCzBK0Bu4_sqsQUB27i_ptch5_6v-XNu_CTRLpYfRI/s1600/Three-Blocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR0-4dLWVExTDdNwYJjWxvXvlUaAYCzsYLTXDfBsXMRu80VtDN0MH2WuC0254uCIzA0wCoJPN_UvvHFq-QhUvSiicNJTvG3A__atCzBK0Bu4_sqsQUB27i_ptch5_6v-XNu_CTRLpYfRI/s320/Three-Blocks.jpg" width="320" /></a>The next part shows the three strands connected to the three loops that wrap around the Penrose triangle.</div>
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There is really nothing about this strong figure that is impossible either. It can be totally constructed in real space.</div>
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Actually, it is a nice figure by itself, standing alone. You can see each block sliding by itself through the set of blocks.</div>
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And further, I this this figure would make a good logo. It feels like an impossible figure even though it's perfectly realizable. And it can be depicted from any angle because it is an honest three-dimensional construction. I have an idea to construct one out of lucite or another transparent material.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfg7gFsurP5THTxtbblymW2CB3Pm3GyZxNdPrdv7-Jj9NZU3P9rR77h7cz1rqbfiu-HCOahCsQfGzSmglHY_ioLyT0SBr2nedfnP60OO5ChXXv6TjVrbedBg_8v9W0M0IaoekKB7Kk5Hg/s1600/Loop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfg7gFsurP5THTxtbblymW2CB3Pm3GyZxNdPrdv7-Jj9NZU3P9rR77h7cz1rqbfiu-HCOahCsQfGzSmglHY_ioLyT0SBr2nedfnP60OO5ChXXv6TjVrbedBg_8v9W0M0IaoekKB7Kk5Hg/s320/Loop.jpg" width="320" /></a>The next part of the figure is the loop. Each loop wraps around one of the sides of the Penrose triangle and creates an interlocking impossible figure, a concept I have shown examples of before in this blog. For instance, there is the <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/drawing-on-your-creativity.html" target="_blank">impossible Valknut</a>.</div>
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But this is the first level of impossibility. Such a loop is not really constructible without bending the top face. In this way, it is related to the unending staircase of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascending_and_Descending" target="_blank">M. C. Escher's Ascending and Descending</a>.</div>
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The second level of impossibility is, of course, the Penrose triangle itself. When it comes to levels of impossibility and a clean depiction of impossibility, consider Reutersvärd. Pretty much all of Reutersvärd's art contains this illusion as a key. Though, I would encourage you to look at all of his work, because individual pieces can be both stunning and subtle simultaneously.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh180-wrTVTRjY1q31yhEFdAiosbfSWwm7AhCVS9vOijNBc_qQ5UpEjTFMKeNj3C7vzUeIOO3EGfCk8ueHHmEvIsi9A5fAoftiIf_439vHsw9Is8gUZ421DQlMetHOjLfXFnGxv0_W4vuA/s1600/Tri-link-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh180-wrTVTRjY1q31yhEFdAiosbfSWwm7AhCVS9vOijNBc_qQ5UpEjTFMKeNj3C7vzUeIOO3EGfCk8ueHHmEvIsi9A5fAoftiIf_439vHsw9Is8gUZ421DQlMetHOjLfXFnGxv0_W4vuA/s1600/Tri-link-small.jpg" /></a>The next impossible figure is another modification of the Penrose triangle, showing what happens when the blocks intersect each other.</div>
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Any two blocks may certainly intersect each other, but to have all three intersect each other in this way is a clear impossibility.</div>
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It would probably have been more striking to make the triangular space in the center a bit larger.</div>
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Impossible objects take imagination out of the real world and into a world that <i>maybe</i> could be. Perhaps it's the world of flying cars, of paper that can hold any image and quickly change to any other, or of people whose thoughts are interconnected by quantum entanglement. In such a world, imagination can fly free.</div>
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-52030506896330689722013-06-06T10:28:00.001-07:002013-06-06T10:28:31.974-07:00My ArtworkFor those of you who have been reading posts and checking out my artwork for a while, I have a small present. I have posted the full-sized versions of much of my special artwork from this blog on Pinterest.<br />
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You can get to it <a href="http://pinterest.com/mysterytrain37/my-artwork/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Finally, if you click on into them, you can see the details and get an idea of how many hours I spent on these pieces. Sometimes a bit of work was so complicated it took several days to complete. Which totally explains why my posts take so long!<br />
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Enjoy!<br />
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I have other boards on Pinterest, some with cool patterns, clouds, and collections of things. Just a hobby, and I thought I'd share a bit.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-20617761780321667912013-06-02T11:57:00.000-07:002013-06-02T11:57:04.204-07:00Mastering Nature's Patterns: Basalt Formations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGpukFNrDkNiYdzKubZuhpwbZERHDqCfwvpydcL8Z77yFi9fZie_5ASVKOoK4gpaaF0Sdtul4T0w8ZU34KuekAs57CcwzLQNgsjVpXAMYJ8kFSGVKYy4J98zcp6ZNR8EL2RJmQWxGH1k/s1600/BasaltLayersSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQGpukFNrDkNiYdzKubZuhpwbZERHDqCfwvpydcL8Z77yFi9fZie_5ASVKOoK4gpaaF0Sdtul4T0w8ZU34KuekAs57CcwzLQNgsjVpXAMYJ8kFSGVKYy4J98zcp6ZNR8EL2RJmQWxGH1k/s1600/BasaltLayersSmall.jpg" /></a></div>
I love patterns. This all originally stems from my observations of nature's patterns. A lot of the objects I draw (and develop in code mathematically) come directly from nature.<br />
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Strikingly, nature will often conspire to produce objects of great beauty, ones which we cannot match without tremendous effort. An example of this are the <b>basalt formations</b>. Created by volcanic upwelling, great pressure leading to crystallization, and fracturing during cooling, they are nature's brilliant tessellations, awe-inspiring extrusions, and mad ravings simultaneously.<br />
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They resemble three-dimensional bar graphs. Their fracture pattern, in two dimensions, is a natural <b>Voronoi diagram</b>. I first saw this pattern in nature while observing the way that soap bubbles join. Without fully understanding it, this observation introduced me to the mathematical laws of geometry when I was very young. Little did I know that I would never stop trying to duplicate it.<br />
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In this post, I show you how I duplicated this particular kind of nature. And I did it in my style, as you can see.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5x3DYxe5xF850uZJOxsSkPkyMVbGOxGlHU6XyKthQXzQ-UpiUxgMOiZfKj1QqhwjUK8HeJmqXNvi7KevYR6S9yBelgIUUhHx74dEA5tMG8bJgHseegXC3CQgggQKYMYJOuegbDrAXcw/s1600/ThreeVoronoiLayersSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5x3DYxe5xF850uZJOxsSkPkyMVbGOxGlHU6XyKthQXzQ-UpiUxgMOiZfKj1QqhwjUK8HeJmqXNvi7KevYR6S9yBelgIUUhHx74dEA5tMG8bJgHseegXC3CQgggQKYMYJOuegbDrAXcw/s320/ThreeVoronoiLayersSmall.jpg" width="320" /></a>To create a drawing of a basalt formation, I actually used a rendered Voronoi diagram, which you see here, transformed it into a subtle perspective, establishing two vanishing points. Then I made three copies arranged as layers in a way that approximated placing them on three-dimensional transparent layers at various depths. This was so I could see the levels, and so the third vanishing point could be right.<br />
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Of course, I used Painter's Free Transform to do this!<br />
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I kept each layer a little bit transparent so I could get an intuitive feeling for which layer was on the top and which layer was on the bottom. This technique is called <b>depth-cueing</b>.<br />
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As you can see, it worked pretty well. I stopped at three layers because I didn't want the drawing project to get too complicated. But, of course, like all of my projects, it soon did!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBusDGZFNLX4bgfsVtxFP5bxksXv8ICjpXIqqT6SScPXHQ4kMalj9Y3Jp5IftE6Hm4hyNPSQbUaBuxuq-oaKMJwVy42ygT0JFskJKMAiLb_Ir9HRGVkRiJ3wwB1Z9IqJreyVYV2WhzoE/s1600/BasaltOutlinesSmallCrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbBusDGZFNLX4bgfsVtxFP5bxksXv8ICjpXIqqT6SScPXHQ4kMalj9Y3Jp5IftE6Hm4hyNPSQbUaBuxuq-oaKMJwVy42ygT0JFskJKMAiLb_Ir9HRGVkRiJ3wwB1Z9IqJreyVYV2WhzoE/s320/BasaltOutlinesSmallCrop.jpg" width="313" /></a>Next, on a new layer, I drew lines on top of the the lines that I wanted to represent the three-dimensional surface of the basalt formation. This meant choosing a three-dimensional height for each cell. The base layer that extended to the outside of the drawing was the lowest height, of course, and a second and third layer was built on top of it.<br />
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This causes cells to raise out of the base layer and appear to become extruded.<br />
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When I consulted some real images of basalt formations as a guide, I found that they were quite imperfect and usually were cracked, damaged, or eroded in some way.<br />
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I really wanted my drawing to represent a perfect un-eroded result.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNfk5Pm1VMf9g5xfIBT3EC_vQ95TrwDMGK7qEr73LLLaKLjPFnX_XWBVXcKi0xrvRShcP_0w55Rh8cyvG5nkD2hAbgtw5Q0zrAgmVQU6mqkGHMT2p3HzgZWP3bqnqxPZMZt-fd1jsUFR0/s1600/BasaltOutlinesNumberedSmallCrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNfk5Pm1VMf9g5xfIBT3EC_vQ95TrwDMGK7qEr73LLLaKLjPFnX_XWBVXcKi0xrvRShcP_0w55Rh8cyvG5nkD2hAbgtw5Q0zrAgmVQU6mqkGHMT2p3HzgZWP3bqnqxPZMZt-fd1jsUFR0/s320/BasaltOutlinesNumberedSmallCrop.jpg" width="312" /></a>I used an extra transparent layer (behind the layer with the lines) and marked each cell with a three-dimensional height index so I could be sure which heights corresponded with each cells. This told me where to put the shading and also told me how to interpret the extrusion lines.<br />
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This layer was for informational purposes only. You see here the original small layer with crudely drawn lines. It's actually kind of hard to see the three-dimensional relative positions of the cells in some cases, which is another reason I labelled each cell with a height index.<br />
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Once I had designed it, I found that the drawing was way too small to shade the way I like to (using a woodcut technique) and so I resized the image and went over each of the lines by hand to make it crystal clear at the new resolution.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifA1iYB1LCC8q02Ba0DK1dIl-uk-yt7CvcB1n0MKRLh_UpW8rlPqIxonFKfU__IxSQl0_n8T_W2VOkIlSM9mH5wOARsyUfromZjJAyPrKtI7OeVaO3EJ3xRWOlO_6VlhJ-GVO6yheyaFg/s1600/BasaltLayersLegendSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifA1iYB1LCC8q02Ba0DK1dIl-uk-yt7CvcB1n0MKRLh_UpW8rlPqIxonFKfU__IxSQl0_n8T_W2VOkIlSM9mH5wOARsyUfromZjJAyPrKtI7OeVaO3EJ3xRWOlO_6VlhJ-GVO6yheyaFg/s320/BasaltLayersLegendSmall.jpg" width="292" /></a>That only took a few days.<br />
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Why? After resizing the image, I found that each line was unusually soft. This meant that I had to go over the lines with a small brush, darkening and resolving the line. Then I had to go around it with white to create a clean edge. This is what really took the time!<br />
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Naturally I do lots of other things than just draw all the time, and so I had to use extra minutes here and there. I kept the Painter file on my laptop and brought my Wacom tablet with me in my bag.<br />
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I spent probably ten or twenty hours drawing this image.<br />
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Once the lines were perfect, the next step was shading. But of course it had to be in my style, and this also took quite a bit of time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYB8fbqPflY3T4ih6YM4PEGVnvwst9vvazOhy1WctY7HwLpKoN0a7HxytNdwmFNrPblhyphenhyphenrlh0lw0evALuFh6vEmcHNRaVGmeJCRYZ7cmMewm8dlCnNhShyphenhyphenaUO4AhbPofL3uObs-xDbsFg/s1600/BasaltLayersUnshadedSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYB8fbqPflY3T4ih6YM4PEGVnvwst9vvazOhy1WctY7HwLpKoN0a7HxytNdwmFNrPblhyphenhyphenrlh0lw0evALuFh6vEmcHNRaVGmeJCRYZ7cmMewm8dlCnNhShyphenhyphenaUO4AhbPofL3uObs-xDbsFg/s1600/BasaltLayersUnshadedSmall.jpg" /></a>I used woodcut shading to create shadows and accessibility shading. This created a very nice look.<br />
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To do this, I drew parallel lines at a desired spacing, taking care to make them correspond in length and position to the shading and shadows that would result from a light coming from the left side.<br />
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I thickened the lines at their base, and made them a bit triangular. Then at the end, I used a small white brush to erode and sharpen the point and clean the sides of each shading line to get the right appearance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6G7WFXK9Jq98vuPnBse8TcE1SuKTvba93MSCCXJG1KY1SP87FrfoXyFvWuLoCFjAOTp3On08NyL6GmryeIDHw9l1XhFpRg9DyToOO5ww_iFx5xUh1MiXlEZQYaEY196DoHAhz1N6JDk/s1600/BasaltLayersCrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6G7WFXK9Jq98vuPnBse8TcE1SuKTvba93MSCCXJG1KY1SP87FrfoXyFvWuLoCFjAOTp3On08NyL6GmryeIDHw9l1XhFpRg9DyToOO5ww_iFx5xUh1MiXlEZQYaEY196DoHAhz1N6JDk/s1600/BasaltLayersCrop.jpg" /></a>The final step was coloring the tops and the sides, using a gel layer.<br />
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I colored each layer using a different shade of slightly bluish gray. The top layer got the lightest shade.<br />
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Here you can see a close-up of the final image, which was very high resolution indeed.<br />
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Even though I started out with a computer-generated fracturing pattern, I was able to retain a hand-wrought look to the final image. None of the lines are really computer-prefect<br />
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Yes, nature's patterns often take a bit of time to master!Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-46744498009907509132013-05-21T17:11:00.000-07:002013-05-21T17:11:51.322-07:00Security, Part 1As much as we'd like it to be true, security is <i>not</i> all about ciphers; it's also about <b>physical security</b>, <b>the human factor</b>, and an often overlooked area called <b>side channels</b>.<br />
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<b>Physical Security</b><br />
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We all know that you need a password to keep a computer secure, right? But what happens when the hard drive is stolen? Your data can walk right out the door, that's what!<br />
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But even the transmission of secret keys and plain text is an issue. For instance, a keystroke logging program can easily intercept all the passwords you type. So you want to make sure that such a program never gets onto your computer.<br />
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With some cipher text, the more you get of it the easier it is to decode it. While this usually describes not-so-good security, things like feedback shift register xor cipher techniques are still employed in stream ciphers. To combat this, the feedback shift register must be re-initialized periodically to prevent the code from being broken. This is usually done by using a more secure encryption technique, like an RSA public-key cryptosystem.<br />
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But the best thing would be to make the transmission un-interceptable. This leads to the use of quantum key cryptography.<br />
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<b>The Human Factor</b><br />
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The mobile computing revolution didn't invent the need for accessing your data externally, but it did make it a lot more common. So we use passwords to protect our data.<br />
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Passwords are secret keys that are possible to remember. But humans are frail and forgetful and so often they use passwords that are easy to guess. Ones they <i>can't</i> forget. Like 12345. I talk about just how insecure these kinds of passwords are in my <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2011/12/hackers.html">first post on hackers</a>.<br />
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But humans are always doing dumb, insecure things, like leaving doors unlocked or ajar, leaving a key under the flower pot, or leaving the keys to the car behind the visor. This kind of behavior happens out of force of habit to some people and represents a massive security breach.<br />
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But the most powerful kinds of attacks are called <b>social engineering</b> attacks.<br />
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<b>Side Channels</b><br />
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This is the most interesting kind of insecurity, because it really describes an indirect attack.<br />
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One side channel is comprised of signals emanating from a device like an LCD screen. The video signals are generally leaked out and can be intercepted and reconstructed for spying on the device. For CRTs, a fellow named Wim Van Eck demonstrated in 1985 that he could display on a TV monitor the contents of a CRT screen, captured from hundreds of meters away, just by tuning into the video frequency emanations. The technique, known as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm_j9al13Wg">Van Eck phreaking</a>, can work on any display hardware.<br />
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When it comes to radio frequency (RF) emanations, a standard, known as <a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/nsa-releases-se/">TEMPEST</a> since the 1960s, covers the techniques and methods used in shielding devices and components from being surveilled in this way.<br />
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Simple things like wi-fi are easily broken into, in a process called <b>wardriving</b>. There are published approaches for how to crack WEP and other security protocols used in wi-fi. But other methods can also be used to gain the password. Once the wi-fi is accessed, then anything transported on the wi-fi is also accessible. Google got in trouble for accessing wi-fi from their street view vehicles, but the fact is it is too easy to collect data in this manner. Thus, the mobile computing revolution introduces a whole new set of insecurities.<br />
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Another side channel concerned cryptography and this one is a doozy: just by observing the process that is encrypting or decrypting some data, you can infer information about, for instance, the size of the prime numbers used in an RSA public-key cryptosystem. If you can tell how long it takes to divide the public key by a secret key, you can infer some valuable information about the size and bitwise complexity of the secret key. If, when producing a prime number pair, you can determine how long it took to produce it, you can tell a bit about the algorithm used to produce them. Each bit of information is useful in chopping away at the space of all possible answers to the question of what the secret is.<br />
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The data you observe about the cryptography process can be power consumption, the timing, or really anything that can be measured externally. With a power consumption curve, you can do differential analysis to get really precise information about how big the multiply was, and even which parts of the multiply are more complicated than others.<br />
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And you can also measure thermal and acoustic signatures as well. For instance, by focusing an infrared camera at a chip during a certain computation, you can determine which parts of the chip are active and at what times.<br />
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-61292156241069534672013-05-21T17:10:00.000-07:002013-05-21T17:10:12.235-07:00Hackers, Part 6: Methods of EntryI have often wondered how hackers gain control of your system when you are just browsing the web. It's actually an interesting process, and knowing about it can help you be aware of the threats.<br />
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<b>Through the rabbit hole</b><br />
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In order to understand what's happening when you get infected by a virus or another sort of malware, it seems a bit like going through the rabbit hole. This is because computer programming can be a bit of a dark corridor to the average person. Perhaps it's a place they don't usually go.<br />
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Have you heard of compromised websites? Well, I was surprised to know that almost any website can be compromised through a number of techniques. The main thing needed is for the website to contain a link that directs you to another website. This can easily be done, for instance in an ad. But HTML code often contains SQL code in it, when a database access is done. This kind of code is susceptible to SQL injection exploits. Perhaps the hacker gains access to the website's administration via a cracked password or some other mistake in configuration.<br />
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When you visit a compromised website, you don't really notice the intrusion. Actually it's supposed to be that way. They want to catch you unaware. So you will probably just see the website's normal content. But somewhere in the HTML stream, a malicious URL is included. This is what directs you to another website.<br />
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Wait: if it directs you to another website, then you should see your browser loading another page, right? No. Pointing you off to that website does not necessarily mean loading a page from that website. So you may not even notice anything at all. It can mean merely accessing a file at a specific URL in that website. But even accessing a single file can call for HTML code to be executed. Yes, before the file is loaded, special HTML code that verifies which kind of computer you are running and which OS version you are running gets executed first. This makes sure you are an intended victim: one with the vulnerability in question that is being exploited. And then a file is accessed, and loaded.<br />
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And Flash files are the most common kind of file that are chosen.<br />
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<b>Flash: what's happning there?</b><br />
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The file being loaded is specially crafted to make use of a buffer overrun or another specific security hole in Flash Player. This is the kind of fault that seems to get patched <a href="https://www.adobe.com/support/security/#flashplayer" target="_blank">nearly every month by Adobe</a>. A <a href="http://www.neowin.net/news/adobe-flash-player-115502149" target="_blank">recent update</a> is a priority 1 (critical) security flaw, initially reported by MITRE. Apparently it's quite a problem. When logging into yahoo a while ago, I was prevented from doing so until I installed the most recent version of Flash Player.<br />
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However it happens, once you load this Flash file, the inevitable process of being infected with a virus has begun.<br />
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Eventually, an unsuspecting Windows XP user ends up downloading an EXE file which gets run and the virus is now installed.<br />
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When examining the SWF Flash files, it becomes clear that hackers like to obfuscate their code internally, usually by XORing parts of it with an 8-bit key. This renders plaintext unreadable to the casual observer. Or to anti-virus code that scans for dangerous items.<br />
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Steve Jobs, in April of 2010, noted that Adobe Flash Player was the <a href="http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/" target="_blank">number one reason for Macs crashing</a>. Why is this?<br />
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One reason is that Flash allows code to be embedded into an animation file that gets run locally in your Flash cache folder. So just loading an animation file can cause actual code to be run! This code can be malware, of course. It can even be encrypted so it can't be detected by virus scanning software. And that presumes that the virus-scanning software even gets a look at that file.<br />
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Ah, but is this still true? Not exactly. Adobe has implemented a Protected View sandbox that prevents malware from being executed. But, as the recent security patch indicates, the wrinkles in this approach are still being ironed out. Still, it represents some progress.<br />
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It is well-documented that, in 2010, <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5483024/security-expert-flash-is-the-root-of-browser-insecurity-oh-and-ie8-isnt-so-bad" target="_blank">security experts denounced Flash</a>.<br />
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And nearly every computer has it installed. So Adobe has had a lot to lose.<br />
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Adobe has <a href="http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Urgent-security-patches-for-ColdFusion-Adobe-Reader-Acrobat-and-Flash-1863234.html" target="_blank">updated Flash once again</a> a few days ago, plugging memory leaks that get exploited so malware can insert their own code.<br />
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<b>Building secure software</b><br />
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But, treating security flaws like a perception problem is really at the flawed center of a <i>public relations</i> way of dealing with security. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(computer_security)" target="_blank">Sandboxing approaches</a>, internal <a href="http://www.hackerzvoice.net/madchat/vxdevl/avtech/The%20Art%20of%20File%20Format%20Fuzzing.pdf" target="_blank">file fuzzing</a>, and <a href="http://www.chaudhary.org/WhiteBox.pdf" target="_blank">white-box texting</a> are the proper ways of dealing with such issues. Also, it is possible to hire a <i><a href="http://www.techopedia.com/definition/16163/tiger-team" target="_blank">tiger team</a></i> of professionals whose job it is to break the software in question and use it to compromise test websites. In other words, <b>be the hacker</b>. A regimen of <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/code-reviews-just-do-it.html" target="_blank">code review</a> is useful as well. Some would say absolutely necessary, particularly close to a release, when it is impossible for QA people to properly assess the security of the software. It is also necessary to have the latest in compilers as well. This means having a compiler that rigorously and continuously performs deep semantic analysis: tests for logical flaws that can lead to insecurities such as buffer overruns, enumerates and discovers cases that weren't handled, spots unlikely code scenarios, and so forth. People who program make mistakes all the time. It is unconscionable (and just plain stupid) to use a compiler that does not perform as many checks as possible.<br />
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When management doesn't embrace the methods of building secure software, then the users are the ones that lose. This is because the software's insecurities cause the users to be compromised. And then the software manufacturer loses as well. Because users won't buy it. These days, word spreads pretty fast about insecurity. It's all over the news. So, even in the case of Flash, where it is a significant part of the workflow of the web, this problem can lead to market share slippage and eventual replacement by transparent standard technologies, like HTML5.<br />
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For many years, Adobe treated the problem like a public relations problem. I speculate that is because they were concerned merely with getting releases out and reaping the revenue. In other words managers were concerned with making the quarterly revenue. Not with the future viability of their product.<br />
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Those who use secure software methodologies can see the forest for the trees. They know that sustainability is important. Perhaps the page has turned at Adobe.<br />
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Back to public relations. How should public relations work when dealing with perceptions of security failures? <a href="http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/fighting-hackers-public-relations-p-1278/op-1" target="_blank">It's hopeless unless the company they are representing takes a proactive stance in preventing attacks to their security</a>. When the hackers laugh at your security, you are going to be a big target, because the word will spread through the hacker community that you are a low-hanging fruit. Ripe for the picking. You get it.<br />
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<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334018989882702842.post-23725278740884013862013-03-25T23:10:00.002-07:002013-03-26T21:12:33.611-07:00Seven<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbTIAJz_y8JNK0pOj7mRTDUt2hd5AHKFqbgwCjuc0m9WcZ0ZIj-oEvB0bU9wN2lBlTY_t-mTnzDMMdOLT1G45krptwURhY61KJqIbyL9HFnfrJHhtTQ7HbrESRQH7NRgw9QKKeQDW35dk/s1600/SevenApertureSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbTIAJz_y8JNK0pOj7mRTDUt2hd5AHKFqbgwCjuc0m9WcZ0ZIj-oEvB0bU9wN2lBlTY_t-mTnzDMMdOLT1G45krptwURhY61KJqIbyL9HFnfrJHhtTQ7HbrESRQH7NRgw9QKKeQDW35dk/s1600/SevenApertureSmall.jpg" /></a>After my post on <a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2013/03/five-fold-symmetry.html" target="_blank">five-fold symmetry</a>, I can hardly keep myself from writing about seven. It seems unlikely, but the number seven does have some surprising properties, which I will illustrate. For instance, despite being called an <b>octave</b>, the diatonic musical scale really consists of seven notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. With a remarkable sense of <b>synesthesia</b>, some people like to think each note has a color to it. I have folded my concept of the colors of notes into a paper aperture for your amusement.<br />
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Musicians like Alexander Scriabin developed systems to assign colors to key signatures based on the circle of fifths. The famous Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt, had a famous quarrel with Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov about the colors of the various key signatures; they saw them quite differently.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFG_ie7HauGUSP5M4cWTka3suHG544oS8BQtypQhjARk6TZNQoJf5_tmue53R5UVylJF1xZyFWoeA2XfWjxTT12W4Me90SihTkD6qKPjEmBMO8-J-9vEw8YGYE10tKrjRpYmPJkL-VvGs/s1600/NumeralSevenSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFG_ie7HauGUSP5M4cWTka3suHG544oS8BQtypQhjARk6TZNQoJf5_tmue53R5UVylJF1xZyFWoeA2XfWjxTT12W4Me90SihTkD6qKPjEmBMO8-J-9vEw8YGYE10tKrjRpYmPJkL-VvGs/s200/NumeralSevenSmall.jpg" width="140" /></a>Seven is an odd <b><a href="http://relativisticobserver.blogspot.com/2012/01/prime-numbers.html" target="_blank">prime number</a></b>. Because it divides evenly into 1001 (and 1001*999 is one less than one million) its <b>reciprocal</b> has a six-digit repeat block, and thus seven the first number to have a repeat block that has length equal to the number minus one. It is a noble prime.<br />
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999999 = 3*3*3*7*11*13*37<br />
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Note that 7 and 13 have six-digit reciprocals, but 7 is often associated with good luck and 13 is often associated with bad luck.<br />
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An odd, prime number like 7 would seem to be impossibly irregular until you try to lay out seven pennies upon the table, as I did when I was five or so. I was surprised that it made the most elegant, regular arrangement possible.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoc5GQUQw7lifaGqJYRXRCvJ19mnkzjtEMzNNsaa0ahiCeU_k0E8n6AOHMnipSS5El65wfkTpRUUcRTSjRyfmliJ7m7UG8x3VKgYlTpXSL4RrZ8Mrpg9kfWA4XYixUiBie05R9KooGhrI/s1600/seven-hex-tile-mixed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoc5GQUQw7lifaGqJYRXRCvJ19mnkzjtEMzNNsaa0ahiCeU_k0E8n6AOHMnipSS5El65wfkTpRUUcRTSjRyfmliJ7m7UG8x3VKgYlTpXSL4RrZ8Mrpg9kfWA4XYixUiBie05R9KooGhrI/s200/seven-hex-tile-mixed.jpg" width="198" /></a>And the seven pennies introduced young me to <b>hexagonal packing</b>. You can see that seven hexagons can make a hexagonal cluster. This is because it is a <b>hexagonal number</b>. The numbers 1, 7, 19, 37, ... , expressed as<br />
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1 + 6*T(n)<br />
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(where T(n) is the nth triangular number), are called hexagonal numbers because they give the exact number of smaller hexagons that can be put together to form a larger hexagon.<br />
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The clusters themselves can be fitted together. into an elegant offset packing, here shown using my Tile Patterns application. And a little help from Painter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLHeQ0ITEEtywNMYQVKI6DRxNICZca988DM3HXRDHXkyA1dB1kpbRSi7XbU25JgSOm48dUVW2oQXTyL6nPAgrd5KslDVyxmKFdwhDRqe0Ws9lhNn6TwdSgQfP_XGWGbUSywRhfkkfgAc/s1600/SevenPackingSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLHeQ0ITEEtywNMYQVKI6DRxNICZca988DM3HXRDHXkyA1dB1kpbRSi7XbU25JgSOm48dUVW2oQXTyL6nPAgrd5KslDVyxmKFdwhDRqe0Ws9lhNn6TwdSgQfP_XGWGbUSywRhfkkfgAc/s320/SevenPackingSmall.jpg" width="320" /></a>When I constructed this tiling, I had to work it out by hand first before I could enter it properly into Tile Patterns.<br />
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Here is my sketch of this tiling, giving some indication of the way I wanted to see it. Perhaps if we had hexagonally-packed eyes like the honeybee, and saw everything in these patterns, we would make our homes like they make their honeycombs.<br />
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It is only because my eyes are not hexagonally packed, I know, that I couldn't quite get the proportions right.<br />
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The green dashed parallelogram shows the <b>repeat block</b> of the offset tile pattern. It is because I like to think in squares and cubes that I can see it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-QknrGFwxAPw4AI5PKHdNMhRLYM29FqACJN5eEPmx6Aq5l-eNJDCpUg6tiKV0w_sLPpG2eDdgsDqb0PaVA0r1H7iiji6OmZ1caRXl-XQLQrLLhwjpGUg8-RnT_TplJboPcKzIpvRfztw/s1600/SevenCubesSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-QknrGFwxAPw4AI5PKHdNMhRLYM29FqACJN5eEPmx6Aq5l-eNJDCpUg6tiKV0w_sLPpG2eDdgsDqb0PaVA0r1H7iiji6OmZ1caRXl-XQLQrLLhwjpGUg8-RnT_TplJboPcKzIpvRfztw/s1600/SevenCubesSmall.jpg" /></a>Seven is an interesting number for cubes as well, because it is one less than the cube of two.<br />
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Here I have illustrated that concept for you. It's always easier to see it visually than to just read it, I think.<br />
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Put one cube in the <b>missing corner</b> and you can make a 2x2x2 block. Two cubed is eight. So this shows seven cubes. Plus, I like a good graphic!<br />
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When it comes to seven, we do spend a bit of time dancing around six and eight.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSqglYr0K1sLj2iH2qiCvgYqP3dUNjbsq5NyLLJjGwz0lS_nhUf4Lvm7rRkNJML-YrlleFje0-GeypdlMnqeQlKtq1DyldvGEgWd1c5wC1YYkr-Bk57PYLWrWYL4D7JiYGyTEmRTcZrKg/s1600/SevenMandalaSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSqglYr0K1sLj2iH2qiCvgYqP3dUNjbsq5NyLLJjGwz0lS_nhUf4Lvm7rRkNJML-YrlleFje0-GeypdlMnqeQlKtq1DyldvGEgWd1c5wC1YYkr-Bk57PYLWrWYL4D7JiYGyTEmRTcZrKg/s1600/SevenMandalaSmall.jpg" /></a>The first diagram I showed was a folded paper aperture with seven sides. Its outline is a seven-sided regular polygon, called a <b>heptagon</b>.<br />
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Connect the corners of a heptagon and you can make various forms of seven-pointed stars.<br />
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Many countries use five-, six-, seven-, and eight-pointed stars as their symbols. Normally there are the wide star and the thin star. The Sheriff's Badge symbol uses a seven-pointed star that's somewhere in-between the two.<br />
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Other than these I don't really know other ways that the seven-pointed star gets used. This illustration I have created is a mandala form. I have applied a little color so you can see the various shapes better.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgos2_o45uTNQlwGCW5cyXvSObqsP0K6htYtrqR2mnvp6uU2seoGHU0gO2V3bF2HS9RbVO4EZnN7d7YEzNzdZH-TstKhAwP9TCCfNb7fwjGfPiPJkLo7-JkHuqQhTZSaGMgo2vtGkWmVoc/s1600/SevenNodesSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgos2_o45uTNQlwGCW5cyXvSObqsP0K6htYtrqR2mnvp6uU2seoGHU0gO2V3bF2HS9RbVO4EZnN7d7YEzNzdZH-TstKhAwP9TCCfNb7fwjGfPiPJkLo7-JkHuqQhTZSaGMgo2vtGkWmVoc/s1600/SevenNodesSmall.jpg" /></a>Seven dots on a grid can be situated in several different ways. But if you look at seven as two times four minus one, then you can see how a corner of one square may be shared with the corner of another square.<br />
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Each number is unique and interesting. In music, there is more to seven than just the diatonic scale. There is also music that features seven beats per measure, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds" target="_blank">Money by Pink Floyd</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dly6I8pqXcI" target="_blank">Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel</a>, and the final Prec<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rfle8wSwJM" target="_blank">ipitato from Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat</a>. When I get in a mood, I will use this time signature. Usually it is broken up into two-two-three.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouFroUt8DykGaNIUbgiH_obV3BEwjGSCh4hURYedWNNfsvwfhxbgLX3rr6r7_pBDzFj5qB-7uT9metylPxzGQVXgAyQiGaFxOnq8AMXXg2DUjnjM1AZsWyzz-bSmBRDEGJ0WpHrWcX0s/s1600/KonigsbergSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouFroUt8DykGaNIUbgiH_obV3BEwjGSCh4hURYedWNNfsvwfhxbgLX3rr6r7_pBDzFj5qB-7uT9metylPxzGQVXgAyQiGaFxOnq8AMXXg2DUjnjM1AZsWyzz-bSmBRDEGJ0WpHrWcX0s/s320/KonigsbergSmall.jpg" width="320" /></a>Finally, did you know that graph theory is based upon Leonhard Euler's solution to the problem of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg" target="_blank">Seven Bridges of Königsberg</a>? Walk through the city, crossing each of the seven bridges exactly once. Once again the number seven provokes thought. Euler abstracted the two sides of the river and the two islands into four <b>nodes</b> and the bridges were thus abstracted into the seven <b>arcs</b> between them. The number of arcs attached to each node is called the <b>degree</b> of the node. If a node has even degree, then any path can enter and leave the node in an equal pairing. But if a node has an odd degree, then either the path must start or end there. It is easy to see that if more then two nodes have odd degree it is impossible for a single path to traverse all nodes, using the arcs between them. This is because a path must have only two endpoints. Königsberg's graph has four nodes of odd degree. Thus no such walk can exist.<br />
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So the number seven was actually the doorway to graph theory in the eighteenth century!<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05314130812566991108noreply@blogger.com0