Desicritics Category: BizTech: Innovation

Beautiful Mathematics in Control Theory

Sumanth — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 00:12:02 EST

I became nostalgic as an angry Boman Irani asks Sharman Joshi in 3 Idiots,”how does an induction motor start?” Sharman Joshi answers “broom, brooooom......” imitating the noise that a motor makes as its starts accelerating. Many years back, I spent many days over a couple of months to understand how exactly the rotating magnetic field is produced by the coils in the stator of an induction motor and how this magnetic field cuts the squirrel cage rotor making the rotor to rotate to oppose the cause of electricity.

Most students of electrical engineering in those days of course loved the great bible by B.L. Theraja for mugging up all the concepts and mathematics just for exams. One day my Iranian friend showed me the Iranian (translated) version of this bible.

However, as the guys of these Engineering disciplines graduate to final semesters, they encounter a serious course called “Control Theory”. This course throws mathematical bouncers from day one and there is no one who can mug up this subject. The Laplace transforms, differential equations, the stability criteria, and the observability and controllability conditions make their life miserable. Most guys in those days used to feel greatly relieved once they escaped with minimum required credits to clear the course.

However, those few who can spare time and persist long enough during and after the course, can hope to tame the wild dragon and its mathematical equations and land riding on it at a beautiful place, which unravels many secrets to working of machines and complex systems all around.

Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics, that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The process of designing a system to control behaviour of a dynamical system is called “control philosophy”.

Control Systems are not about anything specific. It is all about information flow and feedbacks. It is all about massive chains of feedbacks that run inside machines, humans, societies and systems all around. In a way, it connects the researcher to “Unified Systems Theory”. The researchers practice to observe only at the information flow, the non-linear elements in systems and the feedbacks that take place. Soon they realise that the feedbacks can be altered and the behaviour of the system can be changed.

At an undergraduate, graduate course, project or dissertation work, it mostly involves the machines. Most students start practicing to observe the behaviour of machines and systems around, model and control them. Then they work to improvise the mathematical algorithms for optimisation.

For example, a student can find a crankshaft of vehicle behaving same way as an electrical network of inductors, capacitors and resistors. A human being walking can be visualised as an inverted pendulum balancing itself. It is all about behaviour of dynamical systems, their stability and their control.

Inverted Pendulum Video:

Robot balancing itself:

Controlling a massive inverted pendulum in sky:

The students learn that corrective actions to reach a desired state in a dynamical system not only depend on the error, but also the integration of errors over a period of time. It is also important that overshoots due to a badly tuned control systems can lead to unwanted oscillations with the states of the system badly swinging across a desired state creating havoc.

The students know mathematically, how deadly the time delays between actions and results (inherent in systems) coupled with bad control strategy can make a system unstable, instead of improving its behaviour. For example, imagine how difficult it would be to drive a car, when there is a 2 seconds delay in the behaviour of steering wheel and/or the accelerator pedal. You will not be able to drive such a car. However, huge delays exist in systems around us on which we intervene so often. For example, the way a child responds to positive or negative feedback, is known only after a certain delay, for which many people never have any patience. As a result, there are enough small children who manipulate and control their parents instead of getting controlled.

The feedback and interventions play an important role in global markets. Bad sentiments in market makes people withdraw money and remain in cash and this positive feedback (or vicious circle) causes further crash to happen. Similarly, the higher liquidity due to government stimulus or funds from across the world can boost markets and make the feedback loop run in the opposite direction boosting the sentiments. Now, this entire phenomenon can be modelled using an autoregressive with moving averages (ARMA) models or by difference equations.

The future states of any dynamical system are a function of its current states and also a function of its series of part states and series ofpast inputs (or interventions). When a dynamical system has many actors, many couplings, times delays, non-linear behaviour, then that system is intelligent enough to fool any number of best brains in the world. So, most often sincere and highly popular interventions further screw up a badly behaving system, making the people demand further increase of interventions, which leads to a completely screwed up system. In fact, this entire phenomenon can be understood when one mathematically simulates it in a program in Matlab.

Technology Lapses

Halima Khan — Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:36:09 EST

The tools of the information age which were once welcomed as a great step forward for mankind are now progressively more so being turned into weapons in the "war on terror." For instance, the G8 countries in recent times approved to integrate biometric passports based on microchips or databases that predetermine physical characteristics such as facial dimensions, fingerprints, iris patterns and voice patterns. More than a few governments are operational in attaining, developing, and linking databases of personal information. Subsequently they will build up on data mining software to verify "signatures" of terrorist movement.

It is argued that these intricate information systems engage artificial constructions of the "terrorist" which are too complex for any single human being to comprehend, yet too reducing to serve as a dependable basis for suspicion. Additionally, sanctioning high technology to categorize suspects complicates the matter of liability and responsibility for what is already being practiced in a relatively low-tech approach: the detention, deportation, and even torture of suspects presumed guilty of terrorist association.

The role of information technology in countering terrorism in an era of globalization can itself come under question. Modern terrorism has been typified as a negative comeback to globalization, but at the same time, terrorism has become so effectual by exploiting the very engines of globalization itself. The role of information technology in fighting terrorism, especially intelligence analysis comes fully loaded with the legal challenges that lie as consequence. It takes a network to fight a network, an analyst puts very rightly. But then it takes a network to create a counterfeit network as well.

Information technology is at the heart of both modern terrorism and globalization. Globalization has distorted the distinction between international and domestic terrorism. Terrorism became strictly global in the late 1960s, with the arrival of cheap commercial intercontinental airline travel and international communications. Not accidentally, cheap intercontinental travel and international communications are two of the engines driving globalization and aiding terrorism. Terrorists veil their planning and preparation in a sea of global noise, but a well-resourced terrorist faction has a global scope, span, and presence, withholding no borders and jurisdictions. Terrorists have revealed an ability to exploit information technology. Many have hypothesized that terrorists may soon begin targeting information technology itself, as well as using it as a weapon, for instance with attacks against decisive infrastructures and cyber terrorism. To tackle these issues sufficiently, technology and law must be urbanized in parallel, with mutual respect for each other. This is unprecedented, but indispensable, if a balance is to be maintained in civil security, civil and economic liberty, and technological progress.

Technology Betrayal

Halima Khan — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:55:17 EST

A two-edged Sword is how it was and how it still is; technology is a blessing that turns into a nuisance without much warning. The War on Terror has been an ongoing activity since a fateful September 11. It has been waged in areas some experts pronounced as the hub of terrorism. Technology is an unparalleled weapon. However not only for the good side; it is available on both sides. This is where this whole War on Terror business gets tricky. And messy too!

It is unanimously agreed that this is the age of information technology with tools infinite with power uncontainable and global reach. As the War on Terror ensues, technology is more frequently leaned on to tilt the balance in favor. This advantage exists for both those who are waging the War and also those against. This to some extent goes to make a little clearer on why this war has been more or less in a deadlock. America’s unparalleled superiority in technology is considered supreme in maintaining homeland security just as it is considered absolute in the War on Terror. What is sometimes ignored is the implementation of particular technologies is important, but in the course of this struggle this information soon reaches the other side as well. Once the information has reached the other side and its understanding is achieved, they manage to either foil it or brainstorm a counterattack. Thus the technology is more or less fallible, even useless. The technology assessment of costs, benefits, effectiveness, impacts, economic brunt, human value, society is all washed down.

The technology related to War on Terror can vastly be divided into three categories. Technology concerning to precluding or detecting terrorist acts is continuously updated and tested for potential break-ins. As continuously it is being attempted to over rule these bars and void this security tactic. Then there is technology detecting when terrorist activities occur. Lastly, technology is put to use to cope with consequences of terrorist activities.

This vicious cycle hasn’t reached a concluding point and doesn’t seem to be going near one either. Perhaps this is why talks of negotiations are in the air. Finally, someone seems to be realizing war is war and it can never be good for humanity.

Movie Review: Avatar - A Movie for the Theater Audience

Aditi Nadkarni — Sun, 7 Feb 2010 04:40:11 EST

Finally watched Avatar. Sat in a chilly theater with a pair of terribly ugly 3D glasses awkwardly balanced on my nose. I did not know what to expect from the film so my mind was blank, consumed by the most bourgeois of things. I was worried if the diet Coke would make me want to pee during the film, and if the whole 3D thing would get me motion sick. Then all too suddenly, within minutes of the film having started, I was transported into a world where all these petty concerns of mine, sheepishly shrunk and right before my eyes turned into luminescent little seeds of the Eywa tree.

I was in Pandora and I did not want to leave. One minute it was scary and dangerous, coming at you, teeth bared and the next moment it was lit up, fragile and beautiful, just like Neytiri, the brave and lovely heroine of the film. It is easy to see why Zoe Saldana is the star here. She brings emotion and authenticity to a character which otherwise might have seemed cartoonish. The magical world that James Cameron delivers does not have a Disney or Pixar like unbelievable quality. Not at all. He creates a world that you truly want to believe exists. The creatures and the flora are all wildly colorful but still very much alive. Pandora is the planet of our imaginations, the one where we hope scientists will finally discover life one day.

Lets face it, Cameron films have never been known for their plots and his direction is not subtle. The plot is usually predictable and the story is peppered with romance. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that this tale of a white man transforming into the much awaited hero for a race and saving them from other terrible white people is a bit old and borrowed from the many films about the fate of Native Americans. Anti-imperialism is the political favorite of the masses and of award committees as well. Everyone wants to be that one white guy, the hero who stepped in and saved people from tyranny. Unfortunately, in the context of history it is too late because Native Americans, Indians and Africans all fought their own wars against forced colonialism without a white Toruk Makto.

The tough military guy as the penultimate villain and the bulldozing of the Navi homes in the quest of "unobtanium" are familiar themes which have appeared in other less spectacular films. For a film with such a revolutionary style used in its making, Cameron could have employed a more memorable and unique plot just so that his remarkable effort did not seem like a gimmick or become outdated years from now. But the film left an impression on me. It gave my imagination a wild ride and then some. I will likely dream of Pandora tonight or wake up with a jolt as I fall off my Ikran. And ultimately I think Cameron's film making strategy might just be about delivering a memorable experience for the audience at the movie theater.

As I walked out of the theater, I thought to myself, James Cameron could easily be the crowned king of Bollywood for he excels at the one philosphy that scaffolds our commercial film industry in India: escapism.

Is The Apple iPad an i-Wash?

sufferingsocrates — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:31:37 EST

You could call it jealousy or plain refusal to acknowledge what Apple defines mobile technology to be. But I have come to admire, yet distance myself from the giant strides Apple has created in the vast technological space. No doubt, the iPod revolutionized what a mobile mp3 player should be. I have always admired the user friendliness of the iPod. But the key aspect about any Apple product is reliability. If you purchase an Apple product, you can place a safe bet that what they claim to work will work flawlessly and seamlessly.

On a personal level, I have always wished to own the not so well known brands. But which eventually still are very highly regarded in their own niche segments. Be it the Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ7 (Panasonic Lumix cameras have now created a strong name, but not when I bought it in December 2006) digital camera, or the Cowon D2 mp3 player. The list of features these products give you are unbelievable. It’s just that, Apple's products are professionally done, and extremely reliable. While the Cowon D2 player for example, needs the user to be motivated and eager enough to explore and unearth the true value. And believe me you, it’s one helluva player.

Apple's announcements are so widely anticipated, that the latest one on their tablet pc, took the sheen off the CES event in Las Vegas last month. Google maybe slowly inching up to Apple in the mobile telephony segment, but the iPhone certainly has a cult following, with rapidly growing success. Expectedly, the announcement by Apple on January 27th last week in San Francisco was hyped up. Steve Jobs, who has epitomized the Apple class of products, unveiled the iPad to an audience wanting to be mesmerized. Without going into further details of the iPad, I have my doubts about the future for this segment of products.

Embarrassingly for the iPad, the name itself has been questioned for being eerily similar to what women might claim as being a technological advancement for guarding their biological cycle. To be fair to Jobs and his Apple colleagues, there could have been no sinful thought of offending the Eves of the planet. After all, where will all the Adams go if they possess an iPad and their Eves turn them down for being offensively tech savvy ?Surely, this can't be a deterrent to the sale of the iPads.

The other pertinent question that comes to mind, is the segment which the iPad wishes to target. Admittedly and expectedly, iPad has once again shown why Apple products are so sought after with their sleek finish. But, it seems like a confused business thought to embrace mobile computing with laptop computing. Surely, neither are women going to purchase the iPad inadvertently for their biological purpose, nor are there going to be individuals carrying an iPhone in one pocket, and the iPad in another. Unless, the iPhone is going to fade away due to the iPad.

I wouldn't want to hold the iPad to my ears for taking a call while I am walking! So, what is it? A phone? Or a MacBook ? Or an Apple Netbook ? Or is Apple trying to bluff the consumer into buying an iPhone AND an iPad? This is what leads me to believe the confusion around such an important technological advancement. If mobile computing is the way forward, then one might as well have a fully fledged laptop with calling facilities. Oh wait, Steve Jobs also claims and garners attention to the claim of the iPad being an ebook reader. So what happens of the Kindles at Amazon? Honestly, the Kindle will continue to enjoy its success, simply because, the Kindle is a not-so-confused e-reader as the iPad is.

Now, my only thought as to the naming of this confused device as iPad has to be because Jobs wanted it to remind people of a writing pad kind of mobile, light weight device. And what Apple has been doing with its mobile products, is prefixing an "i" before them. Thus came about the iPods, iPhones, iTunes and so on. So for Apple, "i" epitomizes mobility of a device, and fittingly enough prefixed "i" to give birth to the iPad. Its a different matter that the iPad will take more time to sink in as a recognized segment in mobile technology.

As the ongoing poll results beside suggest, that probably will be a wait much longer than anticipated by Apple. Note

: This is a snapshot from the poll currently run on CNET as on today. Go ahead and cast your vote here.

Software Review: Seesmic Look - Twitter For The Masses

Aaman Lamba — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:27:04 EST

Innovation comes in little steps, it has been said, until one finds a new paradigm has been reached, and then its like things were always that way. Back in the old days, as it were, a telephone connection was a wondrous thing, connoting affluence of sorts, or at the very least, connections to the powerful.

Connections have become the currency of the social age, and a telephone is no more a means to share news and views with people one knows. It is fair to say that more information is broadcast to strangers today than to one's own family. This might explain the explosion in popularity of services like Twitter, which allow you to listen to the chatter of the masses as much as to the thoughts of the powerful.

There still seems to be a magical barrier though that Internet communication services have not yet crossed - that between the extraordinary and the mundane, where a mode of communication becomes commonplace enough to be accessible without needing to learn how to use it.

Seesmic claimed to have cracked the puzzle with their launch of Seesmic Look, a new Twitter client built on Microsoft's Silverlight platform, styled with Windows 7 thematic elements, and Tablet-friendly.

It is structured into channels that move in and out of the central space. Lists finally become easy to view and navigate, appearing as sub-folders in the Social space. Tweets vary in size as you scroll up and down, a somewhat disconcerting effect at first. The fonts are also not one's first preference, and there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak the interface other than to switch between light and dark.

Hot topics and trends have their own zone, and are visible even to not-logged in users. This is the first innovative step as Seesmic Look provides a preloaded set of channels and topics, giving the general Internet user a look-see without having to sign up. This does not translate to ubiquity but does increase the curiousness factor, making Seesmic Look more immersive than the lame Twitter home page. The application carries a 'Powered by Twitter' seal, quite unusual among third-party apps.

The most interesting innovation is the Playback mode, where recent tweets appear and disappear as floating bubbles. The effect palls after a while, though.

The channels are actually sponsored timelines by brands such as Red Bull, the Huffington Post, and Time. A channel has its own color theme and logo. Photographs and videos auto-expand, though not all sites. It isn't a feature regular users will stay with much, though.

Seesmic Look has really nailed Twitter Lists, with the easy navigation between a list and the main timeline. I'm running Windows 7 and the UI renders beautifully. There is an occasional graphic glitch though where a blue bar that appears when you switch windows from Look to another application. The application does freeze occasionally when scrolling through the timeline. The 'in reply to' link between a response and the original tweet also seems to have been lost in the interface design. A final quibble is the poor placement of the refresh button - bottom right of the window, leading one to click the settings button which is right next to the update bar on top.

Overall, it is a good departure from the norm and fits more smoothly into the new Windows UI metaphors than Adobe AIR apps, for example. The television-style interface and glossy feel will draw it many followers, although it will be hard to measure Twitter usage uptick purely as a result of Seesmic Look.

Making Universities Independent Makes Them More Productive

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:47:27 EST

Universities are usually under very tight control of the governments, which is a shame and is of a comparatively recent origin. From a historical perspective, universities were independent bodies, privately funded, and having high standards. Ever since we ended up having education, specially tertiary education, as an element of state policy, the universities have become tied to the government purse strings, which frankly sucks.

Recently, the UK announced cuts of up to $500 million. Broadly, this just continues a tradition of poking their noses into something that should be left independent and to their own devices. Why on earth would a government desire to tie up the independence of universities? I dont understand this, but because of this behaviour, quality has dipped, many subjects are no longer taught, core sciences get hammered and generally the universities are a pit. And because of this, the output suffers.

I have seen similar situations in USA, in mainland Europe and of course in India. The case of India is really shameful, between the UGC and the other accrediting institutions, they have stopped the growth of universities. While the funding aspect is important, just see the difference between institutions which are independently managed (IIM’s, ISB, IIT’s etc.) and compare that to where everything is government controlled. Having been inside one of these jails, it's highly surprising that any kind of research emerges. Forget about teaching, which is pathetic anyway. Just think about it. If we had managed to make our universities independent post WWII, we would have had sixty years of more research from two generations, more papers, more patents, more discoveries, more improvement of humankind and advancement of human knowledge from independent universities. So that's the opportunity cost that we are paying for the governments control of the universities. And then we want all to be knowledge societies The shameful thing is that because of this stranglehold, we have missed out on so much productivity. And that’s criminal - to actually kill off so much research which could have helped our lives to become so much better.

Here’s an interesting research paper and its abstract.

We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output. To obtain causal evidence, we investigate exogenous shocks to US universities' expenditures over three decades. These shocks arise through the political appointment process, which we use to generate instrumental variables. We find that an exogenous increase in a university's expenditure generates more output, measured by either patents or publications, if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition. Exploiting variation over time in the 'stakes' of competitions for US federal research grants, we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes. We draw lessons, arguing that European universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability. Greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants, enhanced competition for students and faculty (promoted by reforms that increase mobility), and yardstick competitions (which often take the form of assessment exercises).

The researchers use the Shanghai and HEEACT rankings of world universities to compare them. Shanghai uses the following metrics:

The number of alumni from the university who have won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, or economics or Field Medals in mathematics (10% of the overall index).
The number of faculty of the university who have won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, or economics or Field Medals in mathematics (20% of the overall index).
The annual number of articles authored by faculty of the university that are published in the journals Nature or Science (20% of the overall index).
The annual number of articles authored by faculty of the university that are in the Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20% of the overall index).
The number of Highly Cited Researchers (copyright Thomson ISI, 2008) in the university's faculty in 21 broad subject categories (20% of the overall index).
All of the above indicators divided by the number of full-time equivalent faculty (10% of the index).

The HEEACT adds the following metrics to the equation:

The number of research publications in the relevant field in the last 11 years (10% weight) and the current year (10% weight).
The number of citations to research publications in the relevant field in the last 11 years (20% weight) and last 2 years (10% weight).
The number of highly cited papers in the last 11 years (15% weight), the number of articles in 'high-impact' journals in the current year (15% weight), and the H-index for the last 2 years (20% weight).

Quite a simple answer if you look at the correlations. The researchers have also done some regression analysis to confirm what we know. Autonomy, competition and independence from government clutches helps in the productivity of the universities. The overall impact is startling, they produce more patents and publications, and I quote specially for the US universities:

“expenditures are more than twice as productive in states with the most autonomy and competition, compared to states with the least”

The situation in Europe is more complicated, but still there are pockets of good behaviour (Switzerland, Sweden and UK!!!) where more competition and more autonomy are good drivers of university excellence. But will it happen? I doubt it, because the governments in these countries have a stranglehold on this sector of the society, which is a shame really.

The less said about ME universities the better. While I was closing this, I came across this Memri report. Pretty interesting what it said:

In TV Debate on Arab Universities, Arab Students' Union Head Ahmad Al-Shater Says Western Universities Are 'Laboratories for Weapons... Who Created Swine Flu, Bird Flu, & the Financial Crisis?'; Jordanian Professor Adib Al-Zu'bi Says Arab Countries 'Imported All the Prostitutes [After the U.S.S.R. Fell]... Scientists Imported by Israel & the U.S

I wouldn't even repeat what the student said, but the professor was quite right in many ways. I loved this bit:

There is a well-known example from an Arab country, which goes like this... A teacher asked: Who can give me the name of a creature that flies? One student said: A cow. The teacher said: You idiot, cows don't fly. Whose son are you? The boy said: I'm the son of so-and-so, who's a colonel in the army. So the teacher said: Cows fly, but they don't rise up from the ground. That is the situation.

Again, no exceptions, it's just relative across the world. Here the universities are tied to the government purse strings, in India and the ME, they are tied in even more ways. Forget about publications and research, they can't even teach properly if the foaming of the student above was any example.

Book Review: Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Sunil — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:46:03 EST

Ever thought about how healthcare could be improved? How doctors could reduce errors or complications during serious operations? Almost everyone has a theory on why hospital errors always occur. But Gawande, in his latest book The checklist manifesto: How to get things right, suggests that a major part of the solution lies in an innocuous and mundane a checklist. The book’s point is very simple. No mater what you do, checklists can help you do it better. This applies to the usual suspects (like the airline industry which pioneered checklists) as well as what would seem improbable; a hospital.

He sets us up well, starting with typical medical almost horror stories, of near misses and tragedies in the operating theater, and lays out what he calls “the problem of extreme complexity”. Medical cases are astounding in diversity and complexity. Problems can arise at any time during a medical procedure, and quickly go out of hand. So what can be done to improve this? Aren’t doctors and nurses doing their best already? And then, right away, he throws at you a solution so startlingly simple that you almost laugh it off. A checklist. Checklists work and are widely used in a whole range of professions (who sometimes don’t even call it a checklist). Gawande first describes a few cases in medicine that he came about during his academic research, which intrigued him because they achieved improvements that were way above the typical average in those settings. Piecing together the facts, he realizes that what works here is a little list of things that doctors and nurses run through before, during and after every medical procedure, as part of a defined yet flexible and adaptable checklist.

Digging deeper, he starts to explore checklists in a diverse range of industries. The airline industry is an obvious place to start, and Gawande draws us into the process by taking us to testing facilities at Boeing, starting from the first checklists the airline industry drew up in the 30s and 40s. But from there he starts seeing and then describing checklists in a whole range of industries, from the building industry to investment bakers, top chefs and Wal-mart. The story on the response to hurricane Katrina, the government bungling and incompetence, and the emergence of Wal-mart as an unlikely hero in New Orleans thanks to its superb enforcement of checklists is as amazing as it is inspiring. By the time he gets into specific studies in the medical profession, you already know that checklists make a huge difference. Then comes the studies he helped carry out in hospitals across the world, from rural Tanzania to crowded urban India through the UK and America. In every case enforcing these checklists dramatically improve hospital performance. And the items on the checklist are simple, obvious things. Check antibiotic, wash hands, change gloves, change tubing, that sort of thing. But in the heat of a critical operation, or when overwhelmed by huge patient numbers the obvious is often skipped. By setting up the checklist, giving nurses the authority to enforce them, and making medical teams work like a team the checklist becomes a staggeringly effective weapon, taking little time to enforce, but packing a massive wallop of effectiveness. The errors that come up can be quickly spotted and fixed, the entire medical team becomes more effective, and the doctor’s ego can be kept in check.

Regular readers of Gawande’s books or articles on healthcare in The New Yorker know that he is a consummate writer. He combines a doctor’s thorough knowledge of the healthcare system in America with the rigors of a scientist and the vivid imagery of a fantastic, old fashioned story teller. In his books you’ll find bits of the old sage, and the thriller writer, and the writer of a whodunit. The checklist manifesto is no different. With every old medical war story he brings up, and with every other profession he dives into, you are sucked into the details of that story, even while you shout out the solution; “a checklist!”. He draws you into the story, makes you feel involved in the process, and you gasp with him when checklists work, or scowl when medical professionals resist them, and smile when a great victory is won thanks to an error the checklist caught. Whether he overstates his claim or not, time, the clinical and hospital review process and accumulating evidence will tell. But he certainly does a fantastic job of convincing you that checklists can make a big difference in medicine. While medicine will remain a highly specialized skill requiring years of study and training, the adoption of a simple, rigorous, adaptable checklist is not only possible in medicine, but works magnificently.

Some might think that something as simple as a checklist does not deserve a whole book dedicated to it. By the end of this book though, even a seasoned skeptic will accept defeat. Through the book and this one simple point Gawande is able to give the reader a vivid description of the range of errors or complications in medical science, the immense complexity of modern medicine, and a whole host of issues doctors and nurses face in hospitals in every corner of the world, developed and developing. Some problems are not as disparate as one might assume. By the end of the book, it becomes obvious that some aspects of medical practice isn’t that different from any other complex (as opposed to complicated) field of work, and when checkpoints work so well elsewhere, there is no reason for it not to work as well in medicine. Even smart, intelligent, highly trained people can make mistakes, and checklists can help reduce them. And this is a smart, intelligent, simple book that is well worth reading.

Google Says - Next Us with Nexus

sufferingsocrates — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:54:20 EST

Google finally unwrapped an as yet rumored phone for the U.S market. While in the U.S market all mobile phones come with a telecom carrier package, Google has launched Nexus One as a direct offering to the consumer. When Apple launched its iPhone, it was priced at over $400 with a 2 year bond with AT&T, Google Nexus One is being offered directly to the consumer, without a carrier tie up for $529. Essentially Nexus One will come unlocked for those who don't want a carrier tie up, but for those who want it unlocked and have it on a carrier will have to sign a contract accordingly.

A little over a decade after Google came into being, the decade from 1999-2009 has ended with Google making giant strides in what can be called, the future of the web. Google has quietly eaten into the businesses of Apple and Microsoft, especially in 2009, with announcements of their very own Chrome browser and now the Google phone. Google is leaving its footprints on all the trends of the technical world, besides defining how computing will be in the following decades.

Google's Nexus One announcement is even more significant given the timing of it. CES, which is the most eagerly awaited technology event the world over, will begin two days after the Nexus One launch. Google may just have taken the sheen off the event by making such a major announcement. Google has done it the smart way. It introduced the Android, then slowly partnered with mobile handset makers like Motorola, HTC to market their open source Android platform. Once the Droid became a hit earlier this year, Google seems to have gained enough confidence to press forward with its own phone. The push for an open source Google Android platform could also significantly dent Apple's iPhone Apps which tends to scrutinize the app developers no end.

Besides such a big announcement two days before a mega event like the CES, another objective which Google has quietly achieved is to whittle down the raging interest in the Apple Tablet PC. Apple's rumored Tablet has been gaining raging publicity over the web without it having to spend a penny on marketing. While a January 27 announcement by Apple on this is being talked about, there is no confirmation as yet. By announcing the Nexus One well before this event, Google has indeed stolen a march over its many rivals at the beginning of the decade.

Book Review: Practical Intrusion Analysis

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 3 Jan 2010 19:00:33 EST

With a core emphasis on intrusion detection systems(IDS) in networks, the book includes further topics like wireless IDS, Intrusion Prevention System(IPS),etc.

SNORT and Bro are the two main IDS tools discussed. Both of them are open-source tools. While SNORT is representative of signature-based IDS, Bro is an example of anomaly-based IDS. A signature-based IDS looks for signatures in the network transmission indicating an attack in progress whereas an anomaly-based IDS goes by a normal traffic pattern and raises alert if there is an abnormality detected.

There is some discussion on writing signatures for SNORT. There are sites on the internet where signatures can be downloaded. However, any intrusion analyst using SNORT in detail, would need to know the techniques for writing signatures. There are methods discussed in this book for strategy to create good signatures while going through a vulnerability' life cycle.

Some of the other network analysis tools described in this book include vulnerability assessment scanners(ex. Nessus, Nikto, router audit tool a.k.a RAT), packet sniffers(ex. Wireshark, TCPDump), file integrity checker(ex. Tripwire, RANCID, AIDE), password auditing(ex. Cain and Able, Brutus, RainbowCrack), wireless security toolkits(ex. AirCrack, AirSnort, Kismet), vulnerability exploitation tools(ex. Metasploit), network reconnaissance toolkits(ex. Hping2, nmap, ngrep, ntop). The distinctions between these may be small and sometimes even overlapping such as an essential packet sniffer in an intrusion detection system.

There is some discussion on web application firewalls, wireless IDS/IPS, some other less frequent topics like physical intrusion detection and geospatial intrusion detection. Web Application Firewalls are specialized IDS to cater to the practicalities like more percentage of secure network protocols in use and wide variations from web applications across organizations. This makes the the general IDS tools practically ineffective as a intruder can go within a tunneled traffic which is not configured for monitoring out-of-the-box.

To summarize, the book covers a lot of topics within its scope. It is a good read for a introduction to current intrusion analysis,detection and prevention techniques. A more continuous discussion with more real-world examples and their solutions within the topics would have made this a delightful read.