Last year I attended a few lectures and read news reports about the pharmaceutical business where drug researchers and clinicians spoke about how the allocation of money was disproportionally being spent on life-style drugs and existing (often unique) drugs were being discontinued. This got me thinking about how we could continue to allow pharmaceutical companies to make gobs of money (I don't object to profiting from a great product) and also allow clinicians to depend on a consistent supply of drugs. We need a segmenting and deregulation like what was done with electric utilities in the mid-1990s.
The electric utilities in the mid-1990's were split into three segments: generation, transmission, and local distribution. While the customer does not have a choice of local distribution and transmission they should have a choice of generation. Local generation and transmission continued to be regulated. Generation was deregulated to enable competition. This change was fundamental in the motivation to build wind farms, solar farms, etc.
The pharmaceutical companies need to be split into three segments: research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and distribution. No one company can be in more than one segment. Manufacturing and distribution are typically low-risk, low-margin businesses. They are also critical to continuing care and so will be regulated. The R&D segment is typically a high-risk, high-margin business. This will be unregulated (well, more like less regulated). Within R&D there are two means of funding. The first is the self-funding pharmaceutical industry we have today. The second kind of R&D companies are the startups financed by venture capital.
Given these segments how does the money flow to encourage innovation and discourage abandonment of established, low-margin markets. Firstly, by separating manufacturing and distribution these businesses can continue to exist and be profitable as they do not need to directly bare the costs of R&D. People, world over, continue to get sick with the same diseases!
How is R&D paid for? R&D works within a venture capitol environment. Money comes from outside the pharmaceutical industry and money comes from inside the pharmaceutical industry. The money from within the industry comes from the sale of drugs to manufactures and a royalty on retail sales. This money does not go directly to the R&D businesses. This money goes into a venture capital fund. This is one of the many funds that R&D businesses can pitch a therapy to. I do not know how the internal fund is managed. This might be a kind of utility with public oversight.
This segmentation and organization allows for the continuation of the high-risk and high-reward therapy R&D but takes out of R&D's control the manufacturing and distribution. A win for all interested parties -- and we are all interested parties in health.
Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It - The Long Now
I have mentioned before Lawrence Lessig's work to remove the inequitable distribution of power through money and the dependency corruption that is pervasive in US politics, esp. at the federal level. His book Republic, Lost is a challenging read. He recently gave a talk at the Long Now Foundation that I highly recommend. Please do listen to it. Well worth an hour of your time.
Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It - The Long Now
Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It - The Long Now
Rants (aka Tweets) on resumes
Rants (aka Tweets) on resumes:
A resume should not be a ouija board. Your mother might not need to understand it but I do. Make your work clear.
Your resume should tell me about the teams you were on; team size; team duration; role(s) you played; tools you used. Everything else is BS.
If your resume can't hook me on the first page the following pages are doing nothing more than annoying me.
I hope to god that I never see a 3 page resume again.
A resume should not be a ouija board. Your mother might not need to understand it but I do. Make your work clear.
Your resume should tell me about the teams you were on; team size; team duration; role(s) you played; tools you used. Everything else is BS.
If your resume can't hook me on the first page the following pages are doing nothing more than annoying me.
I hope to god that I never see a 3 page resume again.
The realpath command line utility
I seem to use my command line utility realpath all the time. All it does it take a relative path and return its absolute path. It is very useful. So useful that I can't believe all systems don't have one in /usr/bin/. If you are missing this functionality too then here is source
#include <stdio.h>Save this to the file realpath.c and then build with make realpath.
#include <limits.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main( int argc, char** argv ) {
int i;
char _realpath[ PATH_MAX ];
for ( i = 1; i < argc; i++ ) {
if ( realpath( argv[i], _realpath ) != NULL ) {
printf( "%s\n", _realpath );
}
else {
exit( 1 );
}
}
exit( 0 );
}
Cloning a Subversion repository
If you are following the explanation in Version Control with Subversion, "Repository Replication", page 177, of how to clone a Subversion repository and want a working example then here it is as a Makefile
Replace SOURCE with a value appropriate to you. (Here I am using a convenient, small, public repository.)
# NOTE ROOT must be an absolute path
ROOT=/tmp
CLONE=$(ROOT)/clone
SANDBOX=$(ROOT)/sandbox
SOURCE=http://css-boilerplate.googlecode.com/svn/
all:
svnadmin create $(CLONE)
ln -s /usr/bin/true $(CLONE)/hooks/pre-revprop-change
ln -s /usr/bin/true $(CLONE)/hooks/start-commit
svnsync init file://$(CLONE) $(SOURCE)
svn co file://$(CLONE) $(SANDBOX)
svnsync sync file://$(CLONE)
( cd $(SANDBOX) ; svn update ; ls -l )
clean:
rm -rf $(CLONE) $(SANDBOX)
# END
Replace SOURCE with a value appropriate to you. (Here I am using a convenient, small, public repository.)
A comment on "So which IDE is the best and why?"
My comment to So which IDE is the best and why? Im a beginner and only know of a few I prefer Eclipse : java:
All the IDEs tend to have very aggressive code editing help. This is great when you are working with new packages but the help gets tiresome as your packages familiarity increases and yet the IDE continues to make suggestions when you know full well what you want. Code navigation in modern IDEs is a godsend. To be able to move easily between classes, up and down the inheritance hierarchy, and around usages. Code debugging is less about the source and more about the data and the threads. The better the tools are at showing data structures -- the plural is important! -- and visually connecting threads w/ stack traces the easier your job becomes.
An IDE gives you three very useful tools. Code editing. Code navigation. And code debugging. Each of the commenters, I am sure, have different needs and styles of these tools. You will also.
All the IDEs tend to have very aggressive code editing help. This is great when you are working with new packages but the help gets tiresome as your packages familiarity increases and yet the IDE continues to make suggestions when you know full well what you want. Code navigation in modern IDEs is a godsend. To be able to move easily between classes, up and down the inheritance hierarchy, and around usages. Code debugging is less about the source and more about the data and the threads. The better the tools are at showing data structures -- the plural is important! -- and visually connecting threads w/ stack traces the easier your job becomes.
I have not answered your question because there is no answer. We shape our tools and our tools shape us. It almost does not matter which you pick -- Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans, Emacs w/ JDEE, Vim w/ JDE, .... What matters is that using the IDE becomes second nature to you.
And don't fool yourself that you will fix the IDE's problems. You don't have that much free time.
Calliope Sounds has an ISSN
I work for a small publisher intermediary and while working with our data recently I needed a testing ISSN. It got me thinking about the work involved with getting an ISSN for my blog -- an online serial publication. There is one form to complete and that is then mailed to the Library of Congress along with the "front page" of the publication. I did this about two weeks ago and today the Library of Congress, United States, ISSN Center delivered my new ISSN. In all its glory, here it is
ISSN 2165-0861
Using reflection for command line option parsing
Over the last few days I have needed a few command line tools -- mostly for data cleanup. I got tired of manually parsing command line arguments. I wanted something more automated. My first thought was to design a data-structure that expressed the command lines arguments then write an interpreter that would parse the arguments with its guidance. I spent an hour doing this only to realize that preparing the data-structure was almost as much work as manual parsing. Then I remembered that Ant has a simple facility that uses reflection to execute a task expressed in XML against an object. This is what I wanted. So, for example, the command line tool
would be implemented as
The ReflectiveCommandLineParser is used to handle the magic within the main()
java ... Sum --multiplier 25 --verbose 1 2 3 4
would be implemented as
public class Sum implements Runnable {
public void setVerbose() {
this.verbose = true;
}
public void setMultiplier( Long multiplier ) {
this.multiplier = multiplier;
}
public void addPositional( Long number ) {
this.numbers.add(number);
}
public void run() {
long sum = 0;
for ( Number number : this.numbers } {
if ( verbose ) {
System.out.printf("%d + %d= %d\n",
sum,
number.longValue(),
sum + number.longValue() );
}
sum += number.longValue();
}
if ( this.multiplier != null ) {
if ( verbose ) { ... }
sum *= multiplier;
}
System.out.println(sum);
}
...
}
The magic, of course, is reflection. The reflection-based parser sees "--verbose" and matches it against setVerbose(), "--multiplier" matches against setMultiplier() and that it takes one numeric option. The remaining positional arguments are passed to addPositional() as numbers. Once parsed run() is called.The ReflectiveCommandLineParser is used to handle the magic within the main()
public static void main( String[] args ) {
Sum sum = new Sum();
ReflectiveCommandLineParser.run(sum,args);
}
See ListFiles implementation for another example.
How MySql loads result sets
I was having a devil of a time yesterday with the simple task of using a Java program to copy records as objects from one MySql database to another [1]. I kept running out of memory. While the root problem had to do with creating 2M objects in memory it did lead to a better understanding of how MySql loads result sets. In short, it loads the whole result set into memory in one shot. So, if you have 1M records at 1K each in the result set you will need at least 1G of memory to hold them. If you then build 1M objects from these records you will need an additional 1M * object size of memory. In other words, a lot of memory. You can have the MySql JDBC driver "stream" the result set, however. That is, read the records row by row from the database. It is less efficient for the driver -- multiple trips back and forth between the server -- but doing so requires far less memory. You can turn on streaming at the statement level or at the datasource level.
Statement Level
To turn on streaming at the statement level you need to use a set of common JDBC settings that, when used together, inform the driver to stream. When you create or prepare a statement you must define how the result will be used and what is the fetch size. For example,
and
For more information see section Result Set in JDBC API Implementation Notes. DataSource Level
To turn on streaming at the statement level you need to add a property to the JDBC uri. For example, Integer. MIN_VALUE is -2^31 and so use
For more information see Driver/Datasource Class Names, URL Syntax and Configuration Properties for Connector/J. [1] I could not use the MySql tools for dumping and loading the table data because I used an auto_increment column in one of the related tables, the target database was active with data, and so could not reset the target's auto_increment column to an appropriate value.
Statement Level
To turn on streaming at the statement level you need to use a set of common JDBC settings that, when used together, inform the driver to stream. When you create or prepare a statement you must define how the result will be used and what is the fetch size. For example,
Statement statement = connection.createStatement( ResultSet.TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY, ResultSet.CONCUR_READ_ONLY); statement.setFetchSize(Integer.MIN_VALUE);
and
PreparedStatement statement = connection.prepareStatement( "select ... from ... where ...", ResultSet.TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY, ResultSet.CONCUR_UPDATABLE); statement.setFetchSize(Integer.MIN_VALUE);
For more information see section Result Set in JDBC API Implementation Notes. DataSource Level
To turn on streaming at the statement level you need to add a property to the JDBC uri. For example, Integer. MIN_VALUE is -2^31 and so use
jdbc:mysql://localhost/?defaultFetchSize=-2147483648
For more information see Driver/Datasource Class Names, URL Syntax and Configuration Properties for Connector/J. [1] I could not use the MySql tools for dumping and loading the table data because I used an auto_increment column in one of the related tables, the target database was active with data, and so could not reset the target's auto_increment column to an appropriate value.
Response to "EasyMX - An alternative to JMX"
A response to EasyMX - An alternative to JMX | Javalobby:
An advantages to using JMX is that the JMX client gets to the service via a different network path than the service's users. When the service is running well the path taken does not matter much. It is often the case, however, that the main service path becomes inaccessible under adverse conditions. Your HTTP requests are not being serviced before timeouts kick in, for example. And, consequently, your monitoring is also inaccessible. JMX clients use RMI or direct socket pathways to connect to the service and so the JMX client can continue to monitor and manage the service.
As Mr Fisher says (first comment to the posting), JMX is one of the "golden parts" of the Java ecosystem. (JBose was built on top of it.) Current JMX coding practices are more sophisticated than in the early days. The "MBean" and "MXBean" interface suffix continue to support quick and dirty monitoring and publishing. And for those with lots of monitoring and management touchpoints we too use sophisticated Java annotations processing to turn existing code into touchpoints.
An advantages to using JMX is that the JMX client gets to the service via a different network path than the service's users. When the service is running well the path taken does not matter much. It is often the case, however, that the main service path becomes inaccessible under adverse conditions. Your HTTP requests are not being serviced before timeouts kick in, for example. And, consequently, your monitoring is also inaccessible. JMX clients use RMI or direct socket pathways to connect to the service and so the JMX client can continue to monitor and manage the service.
As Mr Fisher says (first comment to the posting), JMX is one of the "golden parts" of the Java ecosystem. (JBose was built on top of it.) Current JMX coding practices are more sophisticated than in the early days. The "MBean" and "MXBean" interface suffix continue to support quick and dirty monitoring and publishing. And for those with lots of monitoring and management touchpoints we too use sophisticated Java annotations processing to turn existing code into touchpoints.
In praise of gnuplot's dumb terminal support
I have to say, again, I find gnuplot's dumb terminal support is so useful when you are at the command line and need to see a plot of some data. The plot is very rough but this is usually enough to give you enough insight into the data as to whether or not to continue to exploring it. The script I am using now is
#!/bin/bash
function show_usage {
echo \
usage: $(basename $0) \
[-x label] \
[-y label] \
[-t title] \
[-s width:height] \
[-f time-format-strftime] \
timeseries-input ...
}
function swap {
echo $2 $1
}
function parse_size {
W=$(expr $1 : "\\([0-9]*\\):[0-9]*")
H=$(expr $1 : "[0-9]*:\\([0-9]*\\)")
echo "$W $H"
}
TIMEFMT="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"
XLABEL="Time"
YLABEL="Units"
TITLE="Timeseries"
SIZE=$(swap $(stty size))
while getopts "x:y:t:f:s:h" opt
do
case $opt in
x) XLABEL=$OPTARG ;;
y) YLABEL=$OPTARG ;;
t) TITLE=$OPTARG ;;
f) TIMEFMT=$OPTARG ;;
s) SIZE=$(parse_size $OPTARG) ;;
h) show_usage ; exit 0 ;;
*) show_usage ; exit 1 ;;
esac
done
shift $(expr $OPTIND - 1)
for INPUT in $*
do
if [ "$INPUT" = "-" ]
then
INPUT=$(mktemp /tmp/timeplot.XXXXXXXXXX)
cat > $INPUT
fi
gnuplot <<EOH
set terminal dumb $SIZE
set autoscale
set xdata time
set timefmt "$TIMEFMT"
set xlabel "$XLABEL"
set ylabel "$YLABEL"
set title "$TITLE"
plot "$INPUT" using 1:2 with lines
EOH
done
# END
For example, if the data in /tmp/data is 2011 34 2012 34 2013 56 2014 24then this can be quickly plotted using
timeplot -f %Y /tmp/dataand get
Under glass they can have it all
I have been deeply troubled more recently by having been given a name to what I/we see happening. Our world's experiences are rapidly being shared "under glass" [1]. Be it phones, tablets, desktops, etc. We photograph our children and show the image under glass and not on paper. We hear a poet not in person but from under glass. The Call of Duty gets adrenaline rushing with only the risk of spilling your soda. Ever more of our worlds experiences are under glass. For kids under glass has become their first experience. For some it will be there only experience. You can look and listen but you can not touch. Experience as diorama. The outside framed. Technology advances and so we might just be at a low point in the development of experience+technology. I don't think this is the case. The soma of instant gratification to even the artificial is too strong a force. Umberto Eco talked about American's allure of hyper-reality. Under glass they can have it all.
[1] A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
[1] A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
Genevieve Bell
Enjoyed Genevieve Bell's presentation about the lives of data: Genevieve Bell's presentation on bordom:
An ode to Dennis Ritchie
An ode to Dennis Ritchie, of C and Unix fame, who died this week. A Unix command that echos the input characters and swaps the foreground and background colors after every 7th line break
#include <stdlib.h>Unfortunately, with all candor, I am glad I don't code in C anymore.
#include <stdio.h>
void main() {
int l = 0;
int c = 0;
char** f = malloc(sizeof (char*) * 2);
f[0] = "\033[0;7m";
f[1] = "\033[7;0m";
while ( ( c = getchar() ) != EOF ) {
if ( c == '\n' ) {
if ( l % 7 == 0 ) {
printf(f[l%2]);
}
l++;
}
putchar(c);
}
printf("\033[0m");
}
Re: Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying
In the posting Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying a commentator noted that at 98% accuracy the facial recognition software would have 200,000 false positives per year for a typical airport. This is an inconvenience. The terrifying part is that you also have to consider the false negatives. Assume (for ease of calculation) that 1% of the population are terrorists. Within a population of 1,000,000 there are 10,000 terrorists. Within that, 2% of terrorists will not be recognized and 200 of them will be allowed to fly. Boom! It really doesn't matter what the real ratio of terrorists to non-terrorists is. What matters is the human costs of a false negative.
Comment on David Ascher's posting "Am I reading these trends right?"
My comment on David Ascher's posting is Am I reading these trends right?
What if the big 5 are perceived as "magazines." That is, if you look at what the big 5 are doing it is little more than gaining an audience by offering remarkable content. When you buy a magazine you don't think about the conveyance, the staples or glue bound, high-resolution images on paper. The same will happen with tablets and other hardware. You pickup the "Vogue tablet" to read its curated content. And "Maker tablet" to read its. I am sure there will be national and international standards shaping a convergence of software and hardware as these "magazines" accumulate. Just as there is, today, an international standard for shower-curtain rings.
What if the big 5 are perceived as "magazines." That is, if you look at what the big 5 are doing it is little more than gaining an audience by offering remarkable content. When you buy a magazine you don't think about the conveyance, the staples or glue bound, high-resolution images on paper. The same will happen with tablets and other hardware. You pickup the "Vogue tablet" to read its curated content. And "Maker tablet" to read its. I am sure there will be national and international standards shaping a convergence of software and hardware as these "magazines" accumulate. Just as there is, today, an international standard for shower-curtain rings.
What if the singularity is not centered on intelligence but instead on population
I attending Verner Vinge's lecture at URI on Tuesday night. He talked mostly about the art and mechanics of writing science fiction and a little about the "singularity." Like Ray Kurzweil, he sees the singularity as the appearance of super-human intelligence. He is a little more open, it seems to me, as to whether this is embodied within humans or wholly non-human. (As a side note, I like Jessie Schell's definition where the singularity is the point at which the future is unpredictable because the future changes come, to human perception, instantaneously.) My question to Vinge was
"What if the singularity is not centered on intelligence but instead on population. Nano beings that's population grows (near instantaneously) to consume all the planets resources."Unfortunately, it was not one picked by the moderator and so I will have to answer this myself.
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