The number of Salsa dancers in Seattle who are engineers is staggering. Maybe it's the linear approach to teaching that is employed by most Salsa instructors or maybe its the challenge to do something non-linear in nature that appeals to these linear thinkers. Whatever the source of their fascination, I think the linear approach to dance can easily be taken too far. Ballroom dancing may be a good example of that. It is certainly true that my favorite dancers are the most non-linear thinkers I know of. Anyway, despite my predilection for reductionism and linear thought in general, I was stunned when I was directed to one geek's categorization of Salsa dance moves [Phil's Salsa Step List][via SalsaFix]. Good luck trying to learn Salsa like that. 10:52:39 AM      

An Australian engineer has invented "an underwater jet engine" that is capable of generating 30 horsepower of force in a device that is only 20 centimeters long. If that weren't enough, it is powered by the tried and true workhorse of the industrial age, steam [NewScientist].

The Pursuit Marine Drive produces thrust by using the energy from high-pressure steam to draw in water through an intake at the front and expel it at high speed through the rear. The steam emerges at high speed from a rearward-facing ring-shaped nozzle into a cone-shaped chamber, where it mixes with the water (see graphic). Shock waves created as the steam condenses are focused by the chamber to blast water out of the back.

This is a good example of how something can seem completely obvious after it is invented, yet no one came up with it sooner. How is it possible that the concept of the jet-engine-in-water was not developed and deployed by the U.S. military during the Cold War? The airplane was displaced by the jet-plane because jet engines produce a lot more thrust than prop engines. With the "underwater jet engine," we can expect a similar displacement for water craft. Yet despite the similarities, this engine has emerged in 2003 instead of 1963.

As I read the article, one drawback did come to mind. The concept of turbine engines for cars has been around for a while, but it never caught on. Turbine engines operate in much the same way as jet engines and are able to produce a large amount of work in a very efficient manner. However, unlike conventional internal combustion engines, you have to wait a couple of minutes for them to rev up before you can actually drive away. Car users find that to be an unacceptable trade-off. We want to turn the ignition key and immediately speed away.

For a steam powered water jet to function, it needs steam. Unless you can find a way to generate steam almost instantaneously the moment that the ignition is turned on, these water jets will succumb to the same weakness that has hampered the introduction of turbine engines in cars. However, that won't stop the water jet engine from being introduced into other more specialized applications like ferry boats and other craft that operate continuously for large stretches of time.

The New Scientist article mentions a number of other benefits and uses of this steam powered jet. It has a number of excellent properties and, assuming there are no major technical barriers, it is likely that we will be seeing these engines in all kinds of applications in the near future. 10:21:49 AM      

Here's a slightly irreverent if not accurate analogy for why the State should stay out of making laws governing a woman's choice to have an abortion:

...unprecedented numbers of Americans are getting irresponsibly fat. Lyposuction is an easy way out. But the only responsible thing for an obese person to do is to make a lifestyle change. So the state outlaws lyposuction. And the conservative pro-diet-and-exercise crowd scorns obese activists by saying "You should have controlled your own urges to stuff your fat faces with donuts! You made your bed, now you lie in it!" This scenario is absurd, because clearly the poor self-control of the obese is no one else's business. There are fat people and there are unwanted pregnancies. Both conditions arise from powerful biological urges. To say "you should control yourself" is ignorant, condescending, and (most importantly) not your concern [Corpse Divine].

More fundamental to the problem of pro-choice vs. pro-life is the criteria that should be used to determine when a belief on morality should be translated into a law. It isn't an easy question, but it seems to me that laws should only be made to protect a group or individual from the actions of another group or individual. Laws should not be made to limit the actions of an individual if their actions don't infringe on the rights of another. Using this criteria, the only thing that needs to be decided is the point at which the rights of the unborn need to be considered. At conception? First, second or third trimester? Birth? There is no constraint imposed upon us by nature, so it comes down to arbitrary ideological differences, usually religious in origin. The best decision by the government in this case is to attempt to define a point when the majority of people would agree that the unborn has rights and to keep its laws out of the grey areas. Let individuals govern themselves according to their own conscience where the grey areas are concerned. 10:46:50 AM      

Kasparov won his first match against Deep Junior, but remains cautious about the outcome of the series [Yahoo! News]. 10:29:49 AM      

Last year, I read about some research that demonstrated how common compression algorithms, such as gzip, could be used to categorize a block of text based on the language it is written in [Language Trees and Zipping]. The idea is that a higher degree of compression will be achieved when a block of text is compressed along with sample text in the same language versus sample text in a different language. In other words, take some text in an undetermined language, compress it individually with blocks of text in known languages, then measure the amount of compression achieved in each case. The matching that achieves the highest compression rate will be the one in which the unknown text and known text are in the same language, say English-English.

This same process has been used, although in a much less formal context, to identify spam [Kuro5hin]. The idea is that if you compress the body of an email message against a block of spam messages, then against a block of non-spam messages, the one that compressors further is likely to identify the category of the message being tested. What I find most interesting about this process is how simple it is. Compression tools have been used for years with the most mundane of applications, and seemingly out of nowhere we find that these compression algorithms are almost intelligent. 10:14:44 AM      

In case you live under a rock and Synthetic Morpheme is your only source of news, a worm rocked the Internet over the weekend targeting Microsoft SQL Server machines. It resulted in a massive slowdown of the Net at various places due to the huge amounts of traffic it generated [DaveNet][ArsTechnica]. Since I was playing XBox all weekend instead of using the Internet, I wasn't personally affected, but a lot of my friends were. 9:49:04 AM      

I have periodically come across the name "WebDAV" without having any idea what it was, so today, after running across the word twice in a matter of a few minutes, I decided it was time to learn more about it. It turns out that WebDAV is a standard that builds upon the HTTP standard to provided support for collaborative maintenance of documents [WebDAV].

Without WebDAV or some similar tool, collaboration on a document can be very cumbersome. The parties involved are required to email to each other any changes they make, they must merge changes manually, manage multiple versions and other perform tedious tasks. This can be both a time consuming and error prone way of working on a document. WebDAV provides a means of hosting a document on a web server so that it can be shared among the collaborators. When an individual is editing, a lock is placed on the document. Any other parties involved must wait for the lock to be removed before they are allowed to make modifications. Because only one person can edit the document at a time, errors can be avoided because there is never any need to merge changes that were made concurrently to different versions of the same document. Using WebDAV, all users will always have the most up-to-date version of the document available to them.

There are other tools that perform these types of task. In particular, software developers have been using version control software for years. CVS is one of the most used tools of this nature and a cornerstone of open-source software development. However, though CVS is much more powerful than WebDAV, the simplicity of WebDAV opens up document control to a much wider audience. 10:51:05 AM      

Hatred of the recording industry runs deep in America. Take me, for example. I right about the RIAA on a regular basis in this weblog and I never have anything nice to say and I'm in good company. From teenagers to Generation X, musicians to congressmen, nobody really likes the RIAA. So, how long can they hold out?

In the first six months of 2002, CD sales fell 11 percent - on top of a 3 percent decline the year before. Sales of blank CDs jumped 40 percent last year, while the users of Kazaa, the biggest online file-trading service, tripled in number. Meanwhile, the labels' new legitimate online music services attracted fewer paying customers than the McDonald's in Times Square [Wired].

As surprising as it may seem, it is eminently possible that the music industry as we know it could crumble within the next few years. The only people that wouldn't benefit from that would be the likes of Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. 5:01:37 PM      

I've been following progress in .Net at arms length since I first started hearing about it a couple of years ago. I am very intrigued by the whole concept of being able to write code in any language, compile it to an intermediate language (CLR), and then run it on a JIT compiler. Microsoft's rhetoric is that .Net will be cross-platform, but the reality is that it isn't yet and many detractors claim that Microsoft has not and will not put any investment into overcoming the hurdles to making it truly cross-platform. However, Miguel de Icaza, one of the founders of Ximian and the head of the Mono Project disagrees:

"There's a lot of crack being smoked...I'm going to tell you what it is -- there are very very very hard parts in .Net, extremely hard parts to do, and those are the things that got standardized. The binary file formats for .Net applications, that got standardized. Everything else that was easy didn't get standardized, but the important parts did" [Salon].

If anyone is in a position the slam Microsoft, it's de Icaza. Ximian is writing open-source software that is in direct competition with Microsoft. So, his words are a strong statement of support for .Net.

I think Java is a great framework, but .Net is superior. Microsoft has had the luxury of looking at Java, looking at other ideas that are out there and then crafting a solution that goes one step further. They have floated the cross-platform promise that Java tries to deliver on and it is a matter of time before we know if .Net will deliver on that promise.  In the mean time, it is exciting for me to think about the possibilities. 10:47:41 AM      

Articles about the future of Linux are a-dime-a-dozen, but here's one that is worth a quarter all by itself [FT]. 10:16:12 AM      

I have had an old 200MHz Pentium MMX laptop sitting on a shelf at my house for nearly two years. Not thinking it was worth the time to install Linux and realizing that it was just too slow running Windows, it sat collecting dust. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I just got the bug to set it up with Linux. I'm a devout Debian user, so I created a couple of installation floppies and installed the "woody" distro over the Internet. Since then, I have been spending a bunch of my free time reacquainting myself with the various productivity tools and desktop environments that are now available for Linux.

I should point out that for years I used FreeBSD, then Linux as my primary workstation environments. It wasn't until the middle of 2001 that I switched to Windows 2000. That was primarily motivated by the externally imposed need to use Microsoft Outlook. Anyway, during the years that I was using open source operating systems on my desktop I tested every window manager and productivity suite then available; from Enlightenment to FVWM2 and WordPerfect for Linux to StarOffice. I also tried the early versions of KDE and Gnome, but gave them up since I didn't feel that they had much to offer at the time. So, I settled on Window Maker to run my desktop and Windows 98 under VMWare from which I would run Excel when I needed it.

Now, even though I betrayed Linux for a while in favor of Windows on my desktop, I had by no means abandoned Linux. As a matter of fact, I have continued to use Linux on a daily basis. Linux has never stopped being my server platform of choice. And, I probably would have found a way around my need to use Outlook had cygwin not come along to make using Windows halfway palatable. However, my familiarity with Linux GUI tools has remained stuck back in 2000.

Anyway, with my old laptop with a fresh Debian installation, I started messing around with the desktop tools that are now available for Linux and have been left amazed.

First of all, Gnome and KDE have come a long way. They are both much cleaner, much more powerful and come equipped with a more diverse and useful set of tools. OpenOffice/StarOffice, AbiWord and KOffice have also all improved to the point that I wouldn't really miss the complete feature set of Microsoft Office applications. I've always liked Microsoft Office, especially Excel, but let's face it; I've never used more than a handful of the features available in such tools as Word and PowerPoint. By switching to the open source tools I really don't miss very much.

Two years ago, I tried to stay on the fence in support of the notion that Linux could ever pull desktop users away from Windows, but I ended up falling off and using Windows myself. However, Linux has continued to improve and has begun to emerge as a serious contender for Windows on the desktop. It isn't quite there yet, but it is easy to see that in another two years it could be. Look for Linux on a desktop near you within three years. 10:14:30 AM      

In one day I have come across two images from completely different sources that both demonstrate a wonderful fact about nature: natural, autonomous processes can create some fantastic structures [Corpse Divine][Aftenposten]. So, I decided to compile a few images together that exemplify this phenomenon [here].

If you take all of the structures that non-biological processes have created, you will come up with a set ranging from the simplist to the most complex and everything else in between. Upon reflection, then, it isn't so hard to accept that among these complex processes exists one that was able to start the chemical chain reaction that we call life. Once started, life was able to add complexity to itself that was beneficial for it through another autonomous process that we call "Natural Selection." As we continue to explore the nature of complexity, I think we are going to learn that all of these processes are closely related and not as unique or rare as we may believe. 12:28:28 PM      

If you've seen the movie X-Men, you may remember that the main conflict of the movie was between the human and mutant populations. The humans were afraid of the mutants, the good mutants were struggling to be accepted by the humans and the bad mutants wanted to end the human race and take over the world. Of course, the mutants were all born from human parents, so, were they human?

In an ironic twist, a U.S. Judge has ruled that the X-Men are not human [Slashdot]. So the conflict leaves the world of fantasy and becomes reality. 12:16:46 PM      

Gary Kasparov will once again be facing a computer chess opponent [New York Times]. Since his defeat in 1997 against Deep Blue, I've been wanting to see a rematch. On Sunday, he will face the "three-time world chess champion," Deep Junior. Back in August, there was a report that he would be facing Deep Junior in October [Aug 08], but there have been a couple of postponements since that time. It looks like it will really happen on Sunday. Stay tuned! 9:37:55 AM      

Microsoft will have to start shipping Java with Windows XP! [ArsTechnica]. That will open up a lot of possibilities for the Java community. 7:00:25 PM      

The Supreme Court upheld the Sonny Bono Act as being constitutional today in a 7-2 decision [Slashdot]. This is a big win for large media corporations who stood to lose substantial sums of money had the Act been overturned. Unfortunately, this is a loss for everyone else. These same corporations are sitting on tons of media that they refuse to distribute because they don't see any monetary benefit in distributing it. Hundreds of films and other media are locked away in warehouses when they should be available in the public domain. 10:59:48 PM      

A pro-euthanasia group in Australia has designed a machine that uses carbon monoxide to end a person's life. Apparently, Australian Customs officials weren't too happy about the idea and seized it before it could be brought on a plane to the U.S. [The Age].

Of course, many people have created their own carbon monoxide suicide machines. In these machines, you go in your garage, start your car and wait. Then again, many environmentalists would have you believe that the world industrial complex is a large carbon dioxide suicide machine bent on euthanizing the entire human race. 12:06:08 AM      

Some interesting news in Astronomy this week: the discovery of the hottest known planet [The Economist] and pictures of the oldest light sources yet discovered [The New Scientist]. 10:52:36 PM      

The Open Web Application Security Project has release a list of the top 10 security vulnerabilities affecting web applications [OWASP]. This guide is targeted at web application developers.

The security issues raised here are not new. In fact, some have been well understood for decades. Yet for some reason, major software development projects are still making these mistakes and jeopardizing not only their customers’ security, but also the security of the entire Internet.

The way they say it here, they seem surprised that developers are making the same mistakes over and over again. Well, it really comes as little surprise to me. Most web developers don't know a whole lot about security; they figure things out as they go along. There is no cookie cutter recipe for building applications of any sort and even less when it comes to web applications. When a development team goes about building a web application, the knowledge that is brought to bare on the problem is diverse and in no way guaranteed to be "complete". Therefore, mistakes are made and made again in a continuously repeating cycle.

Anyhow, documentation like this can only help. It at least provides a simple checklist that developers can use when working on a project to help them avoid the most common security problems. 10:46:16 PM      

The RIAA and MPAA have finally managed to get Sharman Networks, the parent company of Kazaa, into a court under U.S. jurisdiction [ArsTechnica]. They've been trying for a while now but have been unable to do so since Sharman is based out of Australia. I'll try to keep you posted as the story develops. 10:24:54 PM      

Despite all of its marketing power, technology hype and online service, the Microsoft Xbox undersold the Sony PS2 during this holiday season [Wired]. It's a good thing their Office and OS monopoly is there to pay the bills [Nov 18]. 11:04:34 PM      

The RIAA has been slapped with a class action lawsuit for price fixing and they lost! Now, they are being required to pay $20 to anyone who purchased a CD from a retail outlet between 1995 and 2000 [ArsTechnica]. Go here to get your $20. 10:44:49 PM      

Ever wondered what it was, exactly, that Einstein did that was so great? Here's a fun little page that gives a number of concrete and easy to follow examples of what the Theory of Relativity tells us [Putting Relativity to the Test]. 10:35:39 PM      

The MPAA was finally put in its place in Norway; Jon Johansen, the young kid who wrote DeCSS was finally acquited [ArsTechnica]. I think the tide is finally turning against antiquated intellectual property law. 10:33:05 PM