tech R I V E T

Population BOMB! Or perhaps not.

2012-05-08T21:51:00.0000000-07:00

There is the prevailing belief that the world is DOOMED by the unstoppable growth of the human population. This is a belief that seems to be rarely questioned.

Let's question it.

To get the historical data I went directly to the UN Population division: http://www.un.org/esa/population/

First of all the scary chart.

(fig.1) Population Growth: 1950 - 2010

This chart is the one that scares people. Look at that rise: steady, steady steady. We are most certainly doomed.

Let's look into the first derivative, the change year over year.

(fig. 2) Population increase per year 1950 - 2010.

Hmmm. Not much better, except between the years of 1986 and 2005 when for that Twenty year period there was a steady decline in additional persons added per year. Interesting.

Let's look at the second derivative. The rate of change year over year.

(fig. 3) Rate of population increase 1950 - 2010.

This one is interesting. Here we see that year over year there is a decreasing rate of change over time. It is a mostly steady decrease in the RATE of population increase. From this we see an interesting generational blip. The baby boom is very clearly shown in the 1950s and 1960s. The resultant baby boomlet is visible as well in the 1980s. And now the end of the decrease year over year in 2005 is explained. That is the second boomlet from the baby boom.

So what does this all mean.

We have two trends that seemingly contradict each other.

The inexorable rise in population growth over time.
The inexorable decline in rate of growth over time.

Well. Now the projections.

We have the ability to take some averages from this historical data and plug them into a future model of population growth. We can take an average for whatever length of time is most appropriate. What is most appropriate? That is the assumption made by the modeler. But an argument could be made for a 10 horizon or a 20 year horizon or a 50 year horizon. So I plotted all three.

(fig. 4) Projected population growth 2010 – 2250.

Quite a disparity. The best line in the projections was from the 20 year average. The next best was the Ten year average and the worst was the 50 year average.

The peaks below:

10 year average - peak
2082	10,433,777
20 year average - peak
2047	8,560,336
50 year average - peak
2092	11,056,257

There is a lot of variance in those numbers and depending on your assumptions you could make a case for any of the three outcomes. My expectations are that the population growth rate will be closer to the 20 year average than the other two. I base my opinion on two factors.

As the world continues to become better off and more free and more democratic, standard of living will increase and therefore the rate of population growth will continue to decline worldwide.
Malthusian doomsayers have continuously and repeatedly called for the end of the world due to some cause or another and have consistently been wrong. Therefore I expect it is a lower number than a higher, this may not be a valid way to evaluate the projection, but I’d bet money on it.

Conclusion:
The population of the Earth is going to have more growth over the next 40-100 years. In my opinion it will be a supportable number in the range of 20% of additional growth. And then it will decline to some lower equilibrium level which is too far out to estimate.

SOAPUI - Peer not authenticated exception.

2012-04-30T12:43:15.0057479-07:00

This post is the result of the lonely Bing search problem. You know the one where you have a problem and you head out to the intertubes and ask the oracle of Google how to fix a problem and all you get back is a bunch of unrelated answers or a single voice in the wind asking and getting answers like “I don’t know.”

ouch.

So here’s my response out on the interwebs for those souls lost and looking for a solution.

If you are using SOAP UI and you are getting a javax.net.ssl.SSLPeerUnverifiedException: peer not authenticated error then let me tell you what I did to get it solved.

Fix (at least for me):

I found I was using the Beta for SOAP UI, version 4.5.
I uninstalled it.
Then installed version 4.0.1
…and it just worked.

Go figure. I had been around and around looking for a solution and this was a suggestion from one of my Testers on my team.

Costs of Genetic Sequencing–or as I like to say Holy Sh**!

2012-04-27T08:40:36.2759491-07:00

I am reading this book: As the Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez. It is a 12 year old book, which is interesting in a few ways particularly when there is a lot of CREDIT given to the AOL-Time Warner merger (remember that) and there is NO mention of Google or Facebook among other companies that are now ubiquitous.

It’s a very simple book to read, laid out with eye catching usage of font and layout, kinda like reading a fancy powerpoint. But its basic point is WATCH OUT because genetics as a science and the knowledge we collect, gather, parse, and use from genetics is growing exponentially.

To the point that you can’t comprehend the changes coming down the pipe.

So.

I went and looked up a couple of modern graphs of the knowledge and speed employed in this field today 12 years later.

Here’s what I found:

the US National Institute of Health, has compiled extensive data on the costs of sequencing DNA over the past decade and used that information to create two truly jaw-dropping graphs. NHGRI’s research shows that not only are sequencing costs plummeting, they are outstripping the exponential curves of Moore’s Law. By a big margin.

Costs of DNA Sequencing Falling Fast – Look At These Graphs!

And that’s a logarithmic scale, meaning the arithmetic change is a drop approaching a vertical line…The cost of sequencing DNA is dropping to zero!

The problem with this is that the PROCESSING and UNDERSTANDING of the raw data has not kept pace, this is the cost of GENERATING the data. But with more data correlations can be automated. All we need is more computing power and we’ll be able to see THOUSANDS of full genomes of a group of people with say Lou Gehrig’s disease and find the correlating bits.

This analysis can be automated.

This analysis will become faster and faster and discovered and known.

The next step will be repairing and/or preventing said disease.

And if you want to peruse the entire breadth of the knowledge based industry and its cross-industry rush to the SINGULARITY take a look at these graphs:

http://singularity.com/charts/page73.html

Peter Diamandis, James Cameron and others to announce space resource venture

2012-04-19T17:02:59.5199700-07:00

James Cameron, Peter Diamandis, and a handful of other billionaire investors, including Eric Anderson, Charles Simonyi, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, interested in investing in space ventures, have scheduled a press conference next Tuesday in Seattle, WA, to “unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity's prosperity.”

> > >

In past talks on TED, Diamandis has publically expressed interest in asteroid mining. Although they aren’t disclosing yet what the venture will be, some kind of space mining is a good bet.

This is a spectacularly exciting development in the growing private space industry. For decades, it has been obvious that there are untold riches in space. M type asteroids, some in easy to reach orbits like 3554 Amun, contain nickel, iron, and potentially billions of dollars worth of gold, platinum, and other precious metals. Other more mundane resources, like water, might be even more valuable, if and when we begin to develop space on an industrial scale. Water can be used for radiation shielding, rocket propellant, or as a biological resource.

Another topic which has been in the news recently is the decades old outer space treaty. Signed in 1967, the outer space treaty reflects a cold war outlook on the use of space resources that today is more of a hindrance to the private space industry, as it complicate recognizing private property rights in space. Diamandis and other will likely need to address these issues before beginning such a bold venture, but world governments are likely to be keen to update the antiquated legal framework of the outer space treaty to encourage the growth of a new industry.

Fun With Data–Live Map of the wind direction and velocity for the entire USA.

2012-04-11T08:27:11.8899342-07:00

This is pure brilliance. Have fun.

Google Goggles - What do you think? En-stupidifying or cool or creepy?

2012-04-05T08:20:18.7124437-07:00

<\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/div>";" alt="" />

I have a few observations:

It’s already pretty weird when someone is on their bluetooth earpiece phone and talking and you think their a crazy person off their meds until you realize they are talking on their phone…Now this comes along and everyone will be talking to themselves all the time. Gonna be weird for us old folks, y’all are gonna look crazy.
You probably don’t even remember, but you used to have a bunch of phone numbers memorized. You didn’t need your phone to keep track of your close friends phone numbers, that was what your brain was for…remembering. Now we are going to have this device to remember more and more stuff for us? Our MEMORY is going to the cloud. As a long term trend this is a bit disturbing. Of course as a short term thing, this is pretty cool.
Can you say - pedestrians walking into lampposts - because they are too focused on their goggles?
Does this switch off in the car? Or will we be using autonomous cars by google at the same time? (Johny Cab anyone?)

Just thinking, that’s all.

Is Slashdot any different than the DailyKos?

2012-04-02T09:49:01.6718750-07:00

Case in point: http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/03/29/1355221/conservatives-trust-in-science-has-fallen-dramatically-since-mid-1970s

The recent survey that purported to show that conservatives are less likely to believe science: http://www.asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr12ASRFeature.pdf

The way it is framed by the media and everyone that read the report in the media, including the posters at Slashdot, is that conservatives trust in science has declined precipitously since 1974. What the survey actually asked was a much more precise question. Here it is below:

“The GSS asked respondents the following question: “I am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them [the Scientific Community]?”(page 172)

So the question states: "As far as the people running these institutions..." This is a very different question than the one reported in the media and argued vociferously at Slashdot. It is also a very valid point. I see no contradiction there at all, my trust HAS fallen for the institutions and people running scientific institutions. It is quite obvious to me that a percentage of them are being influenced by politics and policy and advocating an agenda rather than just reporting results.. The list in the last ten years of malfeasance by the scientific community is long and embarrassing but you need go no further than the fraudulent Hockey Stick.

I expect such stupid, political, hackneyed and immature arguments to be made at the DailyKos. But at Slashdot I would expect some skepticism, some ability to use the internet, and some curiosity as to "Hey, I wonder what that survey actually said."

What we get instead is, blindered, simplified, yelling and denigration of conservatives by supposed intelligent reasonable people.

Slashdot can do better. You should not let the media or anyone tell you what to think.

Outlook Tip–Managing the flow with Categories.

2012-03-27T08:58:53.5625000-07:00

Working for a large software company as a Technical Program Manager means you get a lot of emails. On the order of several hundred per day. It is essential that you have effective rules to clean out your email inbox so you can manage the flow. But it is also true that once a message is moved out of your inbox via a rule it is unlikely to be acted on in a timely manner.

So I filter first making sure to keep messages of known importance in my inbox and only after they are filtered, continue with the rest of the rules. The way I do this is to set a rule for items "Sent To Me" and set a rule for items "CC me" and once those two are processed more complex rules cleaning out the incoming chaff can be done.

My Sent To Me Rule puts a category marker on it. I use the "red" category marker. This lets me see at a glance to my inbox the messages to me. I do the same for cc (purple) and voila: I have a clear look at the most important messages to respond to.

That's it. The category marker highlights the emails. it's simple, yet effective.

SpaceX on CBS 60 minutes.

2012-03-19T16:00:47.6093750-07:00

Evernote and Powershell–A match made in Heaven?

2012-03-05T18:07:51.4218750-07:00

PowerShell and Evernote Scripting Goodness.

Admittedly this probably falls under the category of productivicrastination but I think it will really help my GTD process going forward.

I love Evernote.

I use it for my GTD engine. I've experimented with some heavy handed methods to run my daily GTD, but what I have ended up with is a simplified daily list of items that need to be completed.

This leads me to one of the small missing features with Evernote, it's ability to seamlessly import notes the way you want. You are able to export note templates and then import them, but the import method creates this USELESS import notebook, you have to move the note, and delete the notebook, needless to say it's tedious.

What I want is a quick way to import a note template every morning from which to run my day.

Enter the Evernote script exe.

I built a system off based on this tutorial: http://www.thoughtasylum.com/blog/2010/3/14/an-improved-template-system-for-evernote.html. Most awesome and thank you Mr. Stephen Millard. OOOOHHHH so close.

But you see when you export the Evernote template it creates two useless xml nodes: "created" and "updated". They screw up the importing and you have to go into the .enex file and delete them. TEEEEDDIOUSSS. Can't we skip this step.

Well with PowerShell you can, because with PowerShell you can load the file into an xml doc and strip those fields.

So that's what I did.

Much of the work is the same as the batch file that Stevie did, but with a few tricks.

Here is the script. Copy it and save it as a MyFile.ps1 file and it should run.

          $ENscriptLocation="C:\path-to-evernote-script-exe\ENScript.exe" $EvernoteDatabaseLocation="C:\path-to-your-evernote-db.exb"
$DefaultNotebook="Expedia" $DayofWeek=Get-Date -format ddd $LongDate=Get-Date -format
"dddd - dd MMM yyyy" $NoteToImport="C:\gonzo\gtd\TODO_"+$DayofWeek+".enex" #load note
file #put in xml object $xml_template = New-Object XML $xml_template.Load($NoteToImport)
#modify nodes #change title to add date $xml_template.SelectNodes("/en-export/note")
| Where-Object { $_.title} | ForEach-Object { $_.title = 'TODO - '+$LongDate } #look
for create node and update node and remove $root = $xml_template.SelectSingleNode("/en-export/note")
#remove created try { $nodes = $xml_template.SelectNodes("/en-export/note/created")
[void]$root.RemoveChild($nodes.item(0)) } catch { "problem with clearing created node"
} #remove updated try { $nodes = $xml_template.SelectNodes("/en-export/note/updated")
[void]$root.RemoveChild($nodes.item(0)) } catch { "problem with clearing update node"
} #save xml file over note file $xml_template.save($NoteToImport) #clean up objects
#import daily GTD template & $ENscriptLocation importNotes /s $NoteToImport /n
$DefaultNotebook /d $EvernoteDatabaseLocation

The one remaining trick is that PowerShell doesn't let you run a script from a shortcut. Well a quick Bing search fixed that:

Implement this and you're golden: http://learningpcs.blogspot.com/2010/08/powershell-run-script-from-shortcut.html

I'm not going to go into details about how to do this. If you are looking to use PowerShell to launch the Evernote executable to import a template automatically, I'm gonna assume you can read code. If you want anything clarified please feel free to comment.

:)
Greg