Tag Archives: Society

Object-Oriented … software world

Something is definitely wrong with the object-oriented software design. Did you notice? I forces the hierarchical view of, basically, anything onto the designer. This is equally a property of the languages and the design methods. If you make object-oriented design or you write object-oriented software you equally end up with a hierarchical system.

What’s wrong with it? Maybe nothing. It just severely limits the view of the problems that we attempt to resolve with our software. The world is not always hierarchical but we try always to drag it kicking and screaming into our unified model. Sometimes that will fail. Actually, given the variety of problems, probably even most of the time it will fail.

And the important thing is that we do not notice this anymore. We think in limiting ways. We are used to the model. We assume the model of object-oriented design will fit anything and everything without ever thinking about it. Unconsciously, we made the decision to narrow our choices. And that is definitely wrong.… -->

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Software Security Philosophy

What is “security”? Well, not in broad sense, that is, but in software security? What does it mean: to develop secure software? What do we understand to fall into the realm of software security?

I tell you what I mean when I say “software security”. For me, the software security means to bring the intent of the original designer to the customer.

This is very simple. The designer had some idea in mind when designing the software. He had some intention for the software to function in a particular way. That mental picture is translated into design, brought over into development, translated into source code, translated into binary, delivered, installed and configured at the csutomer’s site. And our task is to ensure that what operates now at the customer’s site reflects exactly what developer had in mind. If it does not – we have a breach of security.

I know that this is a very broad definition and it encompasses many areas traditionally thought to be … -->

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Sticky mind… has to go!

I realized finally after all these years the simple truth of the mind stickiness. My mind sticks and clings to everything – projects, transactions with people, relations, objects, ideas etc. It is horrible. It is also described over a zillion times in psychological and popular literature. It is equally well known in practically all teachings of the world. But, all of that is to no avail. I had to really feel it and see it to realize the truth of the situation. It does not help to know it in theory until you feel it in your bones, so to say. Now I suddenly did.

Our mind has a part to it that makes me chew on the gristle of the past life and spend time and energy on non-consequential thinking. This part makes me go back time and again and review, relive the situations and other things. My life mostly consists of exactly that. No. It consisted of mostly that. Now that I know, I am determined to stop this insane nonsense.

Here is my new quest. I have to stop this part of my conscience from wasting my time an energy on useless chewing of the past. My guess is that as a consequence I will also stop clinging to other things, material or not.… -->

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Assembly points au pair

I have a thought about those positions of the assembly point that pertain to the “norm” of the society. The common thinking is that there is one. I think it is not. I think there is a set of positions close to each other that form a sort of an “area” accepted and reinforced by the society.

When I meet someone and start an interaction, that person tries to reinforce his position of the assembly point in me, so that perhaps we have a better understanding. That is, I think, a natural mechanism. That is, natural to this particular organization of this particular society. Anyway, I can also reinforce my position of the assembly point and force it onto the other. Some positions are more easily forced than others.

What happens when two people live together is that they have to agree on a common position of the assembly point. Otherwise they would have to oscillate all the time between their own and that of the partner. Or keep their own and forget about deep bonds. Unproductive. So, they have a choice of agreeing on following either of the partner’s position or picking a totally new position for both. If they are lucky they both will feel comfortable with this common position and then they accept it and reinforce it. The position becomes solidified and it is much easier to keep it when there are two of you. Or more, counting the kids.

Any person with half a brain should come to this selection of the position of the assembly point as to the single most important decision in his life. This is the decision that will govern his life from that moment on. The position of the assembly point is the state of your consciousness, the state of your mind, and that results in the tasks, targets, restrictions that you set for yourself. With one swipe of the pen you sign a contract with yourself and your partner that will govern the rest of your life. This decision has to be taken very seriously and certainly with some critical analysis and meditation. And the partner must follow.… -->

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Colonial wars

It simply amazes me to watch the colonial wars in our time. Somehow years ago I thought it would not be possible to do large-scale colonial wars anymore, that nobody in their right mind would actually dare start a war like that anymore. And there we are, it is all happening in front of our very eyes. Simply unbelievable. Yes, like Iraq, Syria and Libya and all that.

Today they have it in the news that NATO provides air support to the “rebels”. I do not even know where to start laughing at that. At the notion of “rebels”? At the NATO support to anyone but the rightful country administration? At the fact that they are fighting over the control of oil fields? At the comments of Australians that the actual government’s “days are numbered”? At the equally cool reaction to all this of the whole brainwashed population right across the globe?

We had recently an outbreak of some weird bacterias that took away several lives and almost started an epidemic in Northern Germany. I guess nobody sees this as a direct result of the colonial wars or what? No, the services that must know – they know, I am sure. The disease that combines the most horrible parts of two bacterias and resists contemporary antibiotics comes from cucumbers and lettuce? Give me a break! It comes from the demonstrated desire of France and UK to join the colonial wars and cut a piece of pie for themselves and from the outspoken desire of Germany to stay away from it. You want a piece of war? You do not want to give support? Here is a bit of bacteriological warfare for you, think twice before cutting ahead of Uncle Sam.

Strangely, we do not seem to be able to trust ourselves anymore. You know, a hundred years ago people were more honest, I think. Honest to themselves. They would admit they are going to war. They would say to their own population that we are a country at war and there will be casualties even if we all do watch out. Now we pretend that nothing has happened and blame it on the farmers. Yeah, right.

I do not think they can keep up the good appearances forever. There are destabilizing forces that force EU time and time again to look internally rather than externally. Those forces are man-made. I think they have to be known. It is much more efficient to fight against known enemies. The people must know what they are up against. Well, that is, if we really are up against something… -->

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Urgent and important… not!

How often do we come across things that are extremely urgent and painfully important? Some people more often than others but pretty often I would say. What is the problem? It is difficult to make well reasoned decisions under that kind of duress.

However, that situation is totally artificial. In the “real world” out there, the world outside the purely human territory, the things are never urgent nor important. They are immediate. And immediate is quite different from urgent if you dare to think about it.

So the “urgent” and the “important” are inventions of the purely human world. And being the way they are, artificial constructs, they possess an interesting quality: they are not compatible with each other. That is, things can be either urgent or important but never both at the same time! The combination of the two is an artificial trap to lock your attention and force to make mistakes under duress. In a word, it is a trap.

Next time someone tries to trap you with “urgent and important” – think about it. It is not.… -->

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Solar power wars

I came across an interesting article about solar trade on Reuters. The article describes the rather well known tactics that Chinese use to push their products on the market, this time in the clean energy sector. But that was not so interesting, the interesting part was towards the end, where they talk about the First Solar, a US company, who apparently signed a preliminary deal on installing the solar panels to a large China project. Why they received the deal? Because they have an advanced technology – their production of thin-film panels is cheapest in the world.

Do you think they simply got the deal and that is all? Check it out:

  • The deal is not final, it is only a MoU, not binding in any way
  • The first part before anything happens will be a pilot project in a partnership with a Chinese company that will take a majority stake
  • A Chinese company is opening a plant right next door to the First Solar in US

Now you may call me a paranoid, but I think First Solar is never getting that final project.… -->

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Randomly life…

Возникает четкое ощущение, что эксперимент по созданию личности не удался. Ну не получается развернуть в жизнь то, что мне, видимо, хотелось. По этому поводу самое лушее, что приходит в голову, – это уже просто уничтожить данное воплощение и попробовать всё с самого начала ещё раз. Это было бы, наверное, проще всего. Но это не наш путь. Ведь собственно результат здесь не важен, да и результата как такогого никакого нет. Важен как раз опыт разворачивания, воплощения сознания в этом странном мире. А посему надо как раз продолжать упорствовать в продолжении эксперимента до конца, пытаться всё-таки выровнять своё воплощение, свою личность, невзирая ни на какие препоны. Видимо, главное – это всё-таки выделить и удержать вниманием цель. А то вокруг столько помех…… -->

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Ubuntu on X201i

Finally, I got the Ubuntu graphics properly work on my Lenovo X201i. It took quite a while and the problem was the graphics card. It would give me blank screen at start-up during the installation, so I gave the kernel the “i915.modeset=0” option according to the advice found after some searching high and low. It worked.

The problem is that it doe snot really quite work… First, the graphics mode is weird, it does not use the accelerator, it seems, so you can’t have the bells and whistles of the interface. That I could live with. The other problem was more serious, the screen would not come back from blank when going to the sleep mode (close the lid).

That second problem was sort of fixed with the option “SAVE_VIDEO_PCI_STATE=true” given to the ACPI (/etc/default/acpi-support). Unfortunately, this never worked reliably and sometimes the computer would freeze on suspend or on resume. Finally, that got me fed up.… -->

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