OddThoughts

It is a well believed myth that we live in 3 Dimensions. If you want to know the location of any object you can give things such as Latitude, Longitude, and Elevation which should pinpoint the object(at least on the earth; there are equivlent names for the universe as well)

Of course this is a false assumption.  We live in a word of 4-Dimensions, the 4th being, of course time. We don’t often consider time as a dimension. If I ask my wife “Where did I put my wallet?”, she doesn’t have to tell me the location (X, Y, and Z)  and the time, since the time is assumed to be “now”

If I could time travel though, It mike make sense ask, where was my wallet yesterday? or where will my wallet be tommorow?

4 Dimensions can be a tricky thing to get your mind around and first glance to some it sounds paradoxical. It can also cause questions of free will. Is the future already determined? Are we not able to change it?  What keeps me from killing my parents in hte past and thus prevening myself from being born, but then how could I have time travelled in the first place?

The best analogy for understanding 4 Dimensions is actually a simple computer game cartridge/DVD game. Think of you favorite computer/console game.

If you hold the game in your hands, you can see it look at it touch it. Now imagine you are a being existing outside of hte normal 3 Dimensions.  Although you are unaware of the “outcome” of the game. This is the 4th Dimension, all that is needed for all the possible outcomes is present within that cartridge. There is no ‘magic’ to it. It’s all just a bunch of bits and bytes, that when played (when experianced) flow in time.

You see once you decide to play the game you switch your point of view. Now longer are you looking in 4 Dimensions, you now “experiance time” and there fore switch from a 4 Dimensional view to a 3 Dimensional view.

This is related, in a similar manner to the idea that the “observer” effects the expirement simply by watching it. (see: The Plausibility Agrument )

Do you remember back in high school, the debate, is light a particle or a wave? Why does it seem to have both properties?  Same problem, and it is no coincidence, for things that can move at the speed of light. Sub-atomic particles for instance essentially “exist” in 4 Dimensions, and therefore when observed, we are only observing from a 3 Dimensional point of view so they don’t exactly “behave” normally.

A dangerous post title to be sure. Hackers can’t back down from a challenge. I suppose it is part of the OCD or ADHD that causes them to try. When you put something out ther like “You can’t … crash, you can’t break in, etc. you just know your asking for trouble !

I however am not asking for someone to try and crash this post (or this server), as it would probably make the nice folks that host this blog for me very angry.

What I am wondering about is crashing simply by getting a lot of traffic. Blogs want traffic, lots of visitors reading what they have to say.

Bloggers may try techniques such as Digg, Technorati, or StumbleUpon. But it’s a 2 edged sword. If you get a lot of traffic, it’s great, lots of people are reading your content, perhaps you are actually making some money at it !

But what happens if you get too much? For example there is something called the “Digg Effect “. If one of you articles happens to make it to the front page of Digg, you may get so much traffic, the server that hosts your wonderfull content won’t be able to keep up and it will crash.

I am curious as to which sites/people have this “magic power” . Digg of course being one such site. But what if your site is spoken on various podcasts such as “TWIT “, or “Daily Source Code “. Can they crash their servers.

It’s somewhat like when Oprah brings a new book into her bookclub. The poor lady (or man) who wrote the book is probably blown out of his seats. It’s an immediate best seller, all because she spoke the name.

Who, then are the “oprah’s” of the internet. What are the people/blogs that can crash this post (or any post)? You’re suggestions of who can do this are recommened.

Some call them ‘crackberries’. Blackberries were one of the first mobile phones out there that had a) a keyboard and b) email through a mobile phone; as simple as text messaging.

This doesn’t make them the best. And for my fellow Canadians. I’m sorry that I’m not supporting the Canadian “RIM”.

I actually have nothing against Blackberries. I just don’t think they are the “best” device for mobile phone and messaging. I’m a swiss army knife kinda person and Blackberries just don’t cut it for me.

What tends to happen is a) a company releases a “new thing”. That new thing becomes a buzz word (eg: in business) and everyone buys one.

This company then gets the largest share of the market (you can call it ‘first to market popularity).

As other companies come out with perhaps even better products, the first product continues to hold the share. Usually because of popularity/loyality.

And hence the blackberry remains popular, though there are several other products that can do a better job

The Opportunity

Often, you want to have users submit a form with specific data and have that data emailed to you.

However, you might be on a host that does not support emailing automatically, or perhaps you can only write html pages for the website your have.

A simple script can be created that will allow you to give others the ability to email all form data they create to an email address of their choosing.

This program should incorporate specific security to prevent against attacks and spam, as well as not reveal confidential email addresses to users.

Read More…

I hear this said all the time by people. Joe got diabetes because he was overweight. If he wasn’t overweight he would not have gotten it.

It causes a dangerous stigma amongst fellow diabetes like myself and is a mis-conception that I would like to clear up.

The facts:

There are 2 types of diabetes (aka Diabetes Mellitus - Sugar Diabetes)

TYPE 1 DIABETES

This is the ‘uncommon’ form (and happens to be the kind that I have). We have to take daily injections of insulin because our body is no longer producing insulin. Type I usually occurs at birth or when very young and is sometimes known as juvenile diabetes. Although it doesn’t always. In my case I was diagnosed with Type I at age 18

Type II Diabetes

This is the more common well known one that is often associated with obesity. For type II Diabetes their body does make insulin, but it does not use it effectively. So they usually need to take medication (pills) or sometimes insulin injections as well to control it.

Type I diabetics have no relationship to obesity at all. The pancreas is broke and doesn’t work (there are various theories why this is). You can’t control it without insulin . You are dependant upon insulin injections to survive.

For the Type II diabetic the more weight you have; the harder it is to control your diabetes because the effectiveness of insulin is highly related to your body weight. Some Type II diabetics can even have a normal life without any medication simply by keeping your weight low.

So if you have diabetes then keep your weight low is very important to your overall health

The effectiveness of insulin in your body is dependant upon your weight. The more you weigh, the less effective the insulin is. This is true regardless of weather or not you are diagnosed as diabetic or not.

Just like every other organ in your body; everyone’s pancreas is a bit different, some do a better job then others. If you have a weak pancreas as you gain weight your body cannot use the insulin effectively, and your pancreas is unable to keep up with the demand.

If you are born with a weak heart and you try to run a marathon, you might have the same problem.

So now imagine that floating over everyone’s head in the world is a is a number. Everyone’s number is different and no one knows what the number is. If a person gains more weight then this number, their pancreas will not be able to keep up, the level of sugar in the blood will rise and if the go to the doctor they will get a diagnosis of diabetes.

So gaining wait did not cause diabetes as much as it allowed you to ‘discover’ your diabetes. The problem was always present; you just didn’t know it until you gained too much weight.

Statistically speaking, if we were to graph everyone’s number it would probably form a normal distribution, there will be a few people with very low numbers (who will show diabetes at low weights), and a few people with high numbers (who would have to gain like 5,000 pounds before they had a problem). But most of us fall somewhere in the middle, such that somewhere around say 350-400 pounds we would start to see the problem.

As we get older the pancreas (just like other organs) don’t work as well, so your “number” decreases with age. So you may have been fine at 250 pounds at 25 years old, but this weight may become a problem at 50.

So in conclusion, obesity does not cause diabetes, it is not even a risk factor for diabetes. It simply allows you to ‘discover’ the problem and learn what your ‘number is’. That’s why you may heard it said that it is suspected that over 1 million people may have diabetes but half of them don’t know it yet, because they have not yeat reached their number.

And when the statistics show that an increase in obesity co-relates to in increase in diabetes. It just means that more and more people as they gain wait are learning what their own ‘personal’ numbers are.

Don’t agree with me?

Okay, here’s your challenge! Find me some documented scientific evidence (not some half brained theory) that proves obesity causes damage to your pancreas, and only then will I change my mind.

As an example, we know that as you gain weight by eating high cholesterol foods, a substance known as plaque builds up in your veins and arteries, which eventually causes blockages and leads to heart attacks and strokes; and therefore obesity is a causal factor for heat disease.

If you don’t brush your teeth, plaque will also build up there, which will cause tooth decay.

There is no known substance or condition that occurs when you are obese that causes damage to your pancreas!!!! If you think you can find one please let me know.

Hope this helps clarify things once and for all !!

I don’t know if you realized it or not but in my definition of truth I automatically assume that the person(s) believing a truth have the freedom to do so. There are many people who would argue that this is not the case and would state that everything either is Determined or PRE-Determined. Interesting enough some of these people still believe that there is Freedom they just choose to interpret it in a different way. Let’s consider another example: Your walking down the street and suddenly you feel hungry and decide to go to Tim Horton’s for a bite to eat. You don’t stop to think for one moment that you don’t have any choice because feel that should you decide to change your mind and go somewhere else you are free to do so. The argument held by some people is that this feeling of freedom is purely imagined. Now here comes the fun part, let’s apply TRUTH to FREEDOM. If we imagine freedom, freedom is TRUE because we believe it to be so and that is all that matters according to my definition. Ah hah ! There you have it…some more “common knowledge”

Would you like to know why I am so fond of these words “common knowledge” ? Back when I was in elementary school, the fifth grade to be exact, I was told to do a project on the tongue. Well what I did was look the word tongue up in the dictionary and then I elaborated on this one definition with diagrams of taste buds and elaborate words, it was a very impressive project. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Murphy, came up to me and asked, “Where did you get all the information for you project?”. I bet you can guess what I said, “Common Knowledge”. That’s what it was and I suppose that’s when I learned the power of those two words. I did get strange looks from the teachers when I responded with that answer in case your interested.

“Universal Truth is imaginary”

What exactly did I mean by that anyway? Well if TRUTH is subject to what an individual believes to be true, I should stress at this point that you really must believe it and not just SAY you believe it (there’s a BIG difference), the individual must therefore have a personal truth which is different from other’s personal truths since it is widely recognized that no two people see the same thing the same way. You may think in your mind that everyone believes that “X” is true when in fact only you believe “X” is true while the next person believes “Y” or “XX” or “X” only when “Y” is true.

There are a few other definitions I should clarify in this chapter before going on to Chapter 2. If you look these definitions up in the dictionary (and I urge you to try it) you will find that they wind up leading into complex definitions that tell you nothing at all. Truth is one such definition - probably something like “faithful to fact or reality”. Doesn’t that tell you a lot? Some definitions even say “not false”. Being the type of guy I am I immediately looked up false and found “contrary to truth”. Isn’t the dictionary wonderful!

There has been some recent attention to the idea of ‘disclosure badgets’ and disclosure policies for bloggers.

The basic principle being that if you are reporting on information about products and services, and if you are being paid for such postings/endorsements that you should disclose this information.

This got me thinking about traditional media, and yes, they have various codes of ethics they must follow when reporting stories where their information may be biased. However, let us not forget, that the news is not just out there to inform but to also entertain.

Interesting news sells newspapers, and advertising. Journalists, reporters only get *credit* for stories that will sell. So if your story has a specific spin, and that spin is popular (in the web world we might say “viral”. Then you are recognized for it.

But this too affects objectivity. The media might tie together otherwise unrelated stories and activites in an attempt to put a certain ’spin’ on a story to make it more interesting.

Let us consider media attention given to several stories regarding poor quality products being shipped from China. If we weave all these stories together we end up with a pretty poor picture of China, causing people to wonder, should be be buying anything from this country?

Then add to this recent calls to boycott China products due to the treatment of Tibet, again asking people to stop buying items from China.

Now I’m not saying China is perfect, no country is, I’m just asking folks to consider that there is more to these stories then meets the eye? Could somone / some group be pulling the puppet strings here?

I want to combine the above statement which I am sure is well known to most people into a condensed version. “It is the American Way to find the Truth and make sure that Justice is served.” Justice is served when the person(s) responsible feel remorse for their actions. This is the way many criminal punishment systems work. It should be noted also however that the public must be satisfied with the way justice is served otherwise the system is not held in very high regard. Given my definition of truth.. Justice can easily be served once we make the individual believe he/she has a conscience and then remorse will follow which will thereby serve justice.

What I have just stated is done everyday and maybe commonly known as “hitting below the belt” when we are hurt it seems to be tendency for us to “hurt” back with something at least, if not more hurtful than what hurt us. We, as a people, will do almost anything to make another feel guilty for his/her actions because we want that person to understand how we feel. So our system of justice, given my definition of truth, is based upon my second example (given above) of “common knowledge”

The next question to ask is whether or not such a system is a correct system? Let me ask you this: If I physically hurt you ..would you WANT to hurt me back. Keep in mind that I’m not asking WOULD you hurt me back. I’m just asking would you WANT to. This question deserves a whole chapter on its own but just in case you answered the question already then keep in mind that I did not yet give you all the relevant information. For example: Suppose I hurt you when I pushed you out of the way of a car that was about to run you down.

Would you still want to hurt me back?

I came across and interesting entry the other day over at geekyspeaky regarding what is known as a “Google Bomb” at the time (Feb5th) when you did a search for the phrase “Dangerous Cult” the top result returned was to the Scientology.org website. It doesn’t seem to work now and unfortunately, I didn’t take a screen cap, but it did work when Colleen posted it and I found this quite fascinating.

I did some research and found that the idea of Google Bombing is actually quite simple, and has been around for quite a long time. It is based on the ‘popularity’ algorithm that Google uses to match key words/phrases with websites. So for example, if everyone with a website / blog suddenly linked to the scientology websites with the phrase “Dangerous Cult”. The google engine happily matches that keyword with the referenced site, and returns it in the top results.

Here is a screen cap I found where people did just this for the term “miserable failure”

And that’s all there really is to it. It does seem that Google keeps track of these, or that the algorithm changes as needed because an interesting results page one day does not gaurentee to stay that way the next day, but it is very interesting indeed.

I once had a link to an interesting post (well I thought it was interesting anyway). It was called ” SOA as an evolution of ideas and practices” by the SOARanch.

I was completely disappointed this great informative site is now nothing but a bunch of hard core sex pics and fantasies. What has happened?

Would most people rather go look at some naked pictures of male anatomy and perverted pictures then to read a post about service oriented architecture? Perhaps the next frontier in web based software?

So I keep very careful track of the sites that I link to, and within 2 days of the site switching to this sex site (no one told me by the way), the hits to the site increased over 1000% (yes that 4 zeroes). Am I the only one disgusted by this?

Well I’ve change the link, now it points to this post! So all you perverted folks when you find the page will hit this page, and probably be disappointed (keep it in your pants !)

Service Oriented Architecture is fancy phrase made up by computer scientists and/or engineers. Like other worlds by the league of extraordinary geeks and nerds it has been shorted to the acronym (SOA).

It is in fact, nothing new, and is simple an evolution of the existing concepts from Object Oriented Programing (OOP) Distributed Computing (DCOM). The basic idea is quite simple, use the web to enhance the notion of computing and applications over the network, using fancy terms such as XML and “web services”

Instead of everyone writing their own “private” web solutions to existing backend databases, what if everyone followed an established standard; and then everyone’s programs could communicate with one another using this standard. In fact this blog, the xml behind it and things like pings and trackbacks are an excellent example of how this all works.

Well anyway, I thought this was all pretty cool, and if you still want to see some of the old “SOA Ranch” you can check it out on the good old Internet Archive Way-back machine here :

http://web.archive.org/web/20080211121640/www.soaranch.com/what-is-the-soa-ranch/

And for those of you disappointed perverts who were so bored they couldn’t wait 2 minutes to read this interesting post, this is the closes “dirty” pictures you’ll get to see:

The only dirty picture you’ll get here is something like this:

Dirty Pictures? | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Now stop being so dirty minded !