Thursday, June 26. 2008
I came across this article entitled, " How To Hide An Airplane Factory."
During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.
Check out the site, the photos are quite remarkable.
This reminds me of the video game Red Alert, which is a real-time strategy game dealing with the Allied Forces VS The Soviet Union. One of the Allied abilities was creating fake buildings, so enemy forces would waste time attacking fake targets. Looks like the Allies were pretty good at disguising high value military targets as well.
I'm going off on a slight tangent now, but one of the most successful Allied deceptions was Operation Fortitude.
Operation Fortitude was the codename for the deception operations used by the Allied forces during World War II in connection with the Normandy landings (Operation Overlord). It was divided into Fortitude North, a threat to invade Norway, and Fortitude South, designed to induce the Germans to believe that the main invasion of France would occur in the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy. Fortitude was one of the most successful deception operations of the war and arguably the most important. Both Fortitude North and Fortitude South were related to a wider deception plan called Operation Bodyguard.
[...]
It was initially envisioned that deception would occur through five main channels:
- Physical deception: the creation in the mind of the enemy of non-existent units through fake infrastructure and equipment, such as inflatable rubber tanks and plywood artillery.
- Controlled leaks of information through diplomatic channels, which might be passed on via neutral countries to the Germans.
- Wireless traffic: the creation of non-existent units through simulation of the wireless traffic that such units would generate, which would be detected by the enemy
- Use of German agents controlled by the Allies through the Double Cross System to send false information to the German intelligence services
- Public presence of notable staff associated with phantom groups, such as FUSAG (First U.S. Army Group), most notably George S. Patton, the best known senior Allied combat commander.
During the course of Fortitude the almost complete lack of German aerial reconnaissance, together with the absence of uncontrolled German agents in Britain, came to make physical deception almost irrelevant. The unreliability of the "diplomatic leaks" resulted in their discontinuance. The majority of deception was carried out by means of false wireless traffic and through German double agents. The latter proved to be by far the most significant.
In fact, Fortitude was so successful that Hitler regarded the Normandy invasion as a feint: he kept his Panzer units where he expected an attack and away from Normandy, until the battle was decided—in Normandy.[1] Although Fortitude was controlled from SHAEF, London Controlling Section retained responsibility for what was called "Special Means": the use of diplomatic channels and double-agents.
History is pretty awesome.
Wednesday, June 25. 2008
About this time last year, I had applied to Carmanah Technologies for a job. The company specializes in manufacturing solar powered lights in Victoria. I originally applied to them because they were listed as one of the top 100 tech companies to work for in BC. I also remembered seeing some positive news coverage about the company's innovative products.
I submitted my resume for a web developer position, and I promptly landed an interview. When I got to the office for the interview, I observed the people working there, and it was a bit of a turn off. Everyone was dressed up in business clothes, and it seemed very office-like, and not so much a tech company (in the computer high-tech sense).
I met with two of the guys who were maintaining all of their web applications in-house, and I wasn't too impressed. One guy was a self-taught programmer, and the other guy did some computer stuff in community college. The technologies they were using for their web applications were a huge turnoff as it was a Microsoft technology stack. The problems they were trying to solve were quite unappealing as well, because they focused most of their time working on a content management system. This is a fairly boring problem space because I consider this to be a "solved" problem, and there are plenty of free open source content management systems out there. There's no sense in trying to write one from scratch and reinventing the wheel.
I asked the other interviewers what other interesting web applications could I expect to write. One of the guys said, oh, if you're advanced enough, you can help write an online calculator. Unfortunately for me, a calculator definitely falls under the "solved" problem category as well. It's a fairly trivial problem, and it didn't even come close to the type of complex work I was working on before.
The biggest turn off in the interview was that they never got me to write a single line of code on a white board, or solve any technical problems. As a rule of thumb, I never accept jobs from companies that don't do a proper technical interview (including writing code). This is because from experience, my former teams have hired some terrible programmers before, because in the interview a candidate could talk a big game, but we discovered later on that they couldn't program properly. Talking to a programmer about their technical skills in an interview isn't a great way to figure out their coding abilities. As a result, we forced every candidate to write some simple code to prove they can code competently. So, if a company interviews me, and doesn't get me to write code I won't join them. I'm too scared because there's a good chance that they have some awful programmers. A single bad programmer in a team can be a huge drag on the team.
Anyway, in hindsight, I'm quite glad I didn't accept Carmanah's job. Myron just sent me a link that says Carmanah was closing their Victoria branch due to cost-cutting. In addition, their stock has been doing absolutely horrible in the last year.
Thank God I didn't take that job.
Monday, June 23. 2008
More belated pictures of Adam & Sarah's trip down to California.
This is the Santa Cruz beach which is about a 45 minute drive South-West of San Jose.
Thursday, June 19. 2008
As I've mentioned before that high gas prices are definitely having an effect on our habits and the environment. The USA Today has an article entitled, " Drivers cut back by 30B miles."
Americans drove 22 billion fewer miles from November through April than during the same period in 2006-07, the biggest such drop since the Iranian revolution led to gasoline supply shortages in 1979-80.
Among potential impacts of Americans driving less:
- Drivers might notice "some reduction" in traffic congestion, said Tim Lomax of the Texas Transportation Institute. "But over several months, the typical commuter will adjust their driving patterns," he said. "If they normally leave at 6 a.m., they might find they're getting to work without congestion, so they'll say, 'I'm going to spend an extra 15 minutes sleeping or reading the paper and leave at 6:15.' You get enough people doing that and you're back to congestion."
- Housing patterns could change as more people buy houses closer to work or find jobs closer to home, Lomax said. "We might not be seeing so much of that right now since so many people are upside down on home loans because of the mortgage crisis," he said.
- A shift in the way the nation pays for roads, bridges and transit. As people drive less, the federal Highway Trust Fund — derived from gasoline and diesel taxes — is receiving billions less, Peters said. She's promoting tolling and making drivers pay more during peak hours.
I realize the title says drivers have cut back 30 billion miles, but the news article quote reads 22 billion miles. I think it's because the newspaper is measuring miles from November - April, which was 22 billion miles. If you go Novemeber - June, it's probably 30 billion miles.
Anyway, this is quite an amazing change. One ironic thing though is that I still think gas is cheap. Down here in California, it's about $4.55/gallon of gas, or $1.1375/L. In Victoria, gas is about $6.00/gallon, or $1.50/L. Next time I head back to Victoria, perhaps I will bring some gas as a Christmas gift.
Tuesday, June 17. 2008
Over the last year or two, I consistently had people approach me and talk about The Office which apparently was one of the best sitcoms ever. I usually responded with a blank stare as I had never watched an episode. This is where people would be confounded, and wonder why I wasn't watching it, because apparently it was my kind of show. The short version is, during my blitz through academia, I didn't really follow any shows as I never had time. There's a good chance that if you named some movie between the years of 2004-2007, there's a high probability that I hadn't watched it. Academia was a very busy and anti-social stage of my life.
In either case, a few weeks ago, I was introduced to the movie Office Space by some rabid fans, and they forced me to watch The Office. I have to say, I'm hooked on the show. The Office just captures a lot of office related absurdities that I can totally relate to. I had come from a fairly dysfunctional office environment, with lots of crazy people, so watching this on TV brings back some horrible memories, which I look back on and laugh.
Anyway, Saturday Night Live had an awesome parody of The Office. I present to you, the Japanese version of The Office. It's funny because it's racist 
I am working my way through Season 3 of The Office now.
[Updated]: Video link fixed.
Saturday, June 14. 2008
The other day I received quite an odd security notice from the company. Apparently car thieves have been working our parking lots on our campus. The surprising thing is that they're after catalytic converters, which are used for emission controls. These converters are valuable because they contain precious metals such as platinum.
So this is how the hit goes down. Some dude enters our parking lot with a backpack, and he looks for SUVs because there's enough room for him to sneak under the vehicle. He then goes under the vehicle and goes to work, cutting out the catalytic converter with an electric saw. Once the converter is out, he slips it in his bag, and discretely leaves the parking lot. Apparently there's been four of these incidents in the past, and it's quite an unpleasant thing to discover if you're the car owner.
To get it fixed, you need a new catalytic converter, and a new tail pipe. You're probably looking at a $600-$800 trip to the car mechanic.
Anyway, this is the first I've ever heard of such crimes. I continue to be astounded.
Wednesday, June 11. 2008
As we move forward in time, it seems like talk about climate change and the environment is intensifying. Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of solutions out there that are merely bandage solutions that are designed with good intentions, but the net effect is pretty minimal. One example is Earth Day at my work. The company that runs our cafeteria decided to make us all aware of how much carbon it takes for various food to arrive onto our plates. To drive home the point, they decided to ban cheese for the day because it has a big carbon footprint. Has this one day ban on cheese reduced my consumption of cheese? Not at all. I can point to other futile acts like Earth Hour, which I've ranted about before.
In either case, the capitalist in me believes that true solutions to climate change is more of an economics problem. You may have heard of the invisible hand of the market which was introduced by Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations.
The "invisible hand" refers to the ability of the market to correct for seemingly disastrous situations with no intervention on the part of government or other organizations (although Smith did not, himself, use the term with this meaning in mind). For example, Smith says, if a product shortage were to occur, that product's price in the market would rise, creating incentive for its production and a reduction in its consumption, eventually curing the shortage. The increased competition among manufacturers and increased supply would also lower the price of the product to its production cost plus a small profit, the "natural price." Smith believed that while human motives are often selfish and greedy, the competition in the free market would tend to benefit society as a whole anyway. This was later adopted as a universal principle by the laissez-faire economists of the 19th century.
So how does this relate to the environment? I present the argument that high gas prices is actually doing a lot of good for the environment. Lets look at General Motors' business, which has primarily focused on building large trucks. GM recently announced they were shutting down 4 truck plants, and considering dumping Hummers. GM is shifting their production lines to creating more smaller cars, and plug-in hybrids. The market reality is that people are trading in their large fuel inefficient vehicles for smaller more efficient cars.
|
