So, I was out with my father today. He gave me a ride to a trunk rental place to pick up a truck. I was moving a few items out of my storage facility. Along the way I got gas for my SUV and the conversation went to the price of gas. With record oil prices ($135 a barrel), it seems like it will only get worse. Clearly I realize that I’m not pointing out anything new, but for the first time today, the severity of the situation was made clear to me in a small personal way. My dad loves to take short drives out on LI, just 10 or so miles out. He said that he probably won’t do that much anymore because with the price of gas, it’ll cost him about $10. I realize that gas is expensive, but I generally fail to quantify things in those terms. It sucks to see that my dad won’t do something that he enjoys.
On a brighter note, the state of the economy can help with the obesity issue in the US. Food is getting more expensive. I suppose that within the year, serving sizes will get smaller. Check out food portions 20 years ago here: Portion Sizes - Then and Now. I’d say that poverty is the key to healthy eating habits had it not been for the fact that water costs more then soda .. heck, water is even more expensive then gas.
Read what Warren Buffett says about the state of the economy
So, I spent most of my weekend working on Java code for the telecom swithching sofware I’ve been writing. I’ve always been a hack at coding Java, but I’m getting much better as a result of this project. The project itself is also somewhat difficult and in its third iteration. Initially, the code was to rip data from a telecom switch, perform calculations on the data, and insert the new data into a database. The project itself does not sound overly taxing, but I ran into some road blocks in the process.
1) Data is created about each phone call at the switch. The amount of data per phone call is enormous. Handling that many fields made writing the software somewhat unwieldy.
2) Call volume. The amount of call volume is enormous. Not only do I have tons of data about each phone call, but I also have tons of phone calls
3) Some of the calculations I’m making per phone call is based on data that resides in the database. So, for each phone call, I may have to make five or six database calls.
Because the amount of data is so huge, and speed is necessary to finish each iteration of the software before the next run starts (runs every 5 minutes), this Java program has went from being a simple application, to a giant multi-threaded service with all the database tables resident in memory. I’m using all kinds of snazzy data structures to manage the data. It’s been quite a learning experience for me. Anyway, the final product is nearly finished. The telecom has a working copy of the code, but I’m currently making some really big changes to the code that will make it much much faster and more scalable.
It feels good to write code that you know is awsome.
We can’t really discuss disrupting communications without talking about taking down the Internet. When you connect to the internet, you connect to an ISP ( Internet Service Provider). Think of your ISP as just a big LAN. For instance, when I log in using my road runner cable modem, I find myself on the road runner network. I can communicate with other Road Runner customers. For me to be able to communicate with users off the road runner network, road runner must peer with other networks on the Internet Backbone. The internet backbone consists of numerous Internet Exchange Points, which houses core routers.
One could disrupt these Internet Exchanges and take out the internet. You wouldn’t have to take out all of them, but by downing a bunch of them, TCP/IP packets would redirect to the others thus slowing down the Internet to a crawl. To disrupt the Internet Exchanges, you could either damage the building or just sever the communication lines going to the building.
I don’t recommend doing any of this of course. As a systems engineer, I tend to spend lots of time thinking of potential disasters. These posts have been just me thinking out loud. If it makes you feel better, this is the thought process that goes into making things even more secure.
A few months ago, two submarine cable breaks under the Mediterranean, caused global Internet problems. While it wasn’t felt much in the United States, it brought some countries to a stand still. It got me to thinking; how would one bring communications to a halt world wide.
There are three methods in which voice and data transactions can transpire across the globe. Submarine communications cable, Communications Sattellite and, less popular High Performance Radio Frequency Transmitters.
This is a list of the Sub Marine Cables: here . I can’t imagine that it would take all the much to create disruption in places like this (Cable Landing Points).
This is a list of Satellite Orbits: here.
Like Cell phone towers, you can jam satellite and radio communications through flooding the frequencies in which the operate, with white noise. Powerful radios would have to be placed in strategic locations around the world. This of course would be expensive. Additionally, the radios could be quickly discovered. The closer to the source, the more powerful the signal. Satellites are also subject to hackers. Devices in space, need to have an interface to which they can be communicated with, Note this article: here
The real trick would be coordination. The plot would need to be carried out by a great number of people at once.
So, its been about three weeks since I’ve started working at “The Firm”. Before taking this position I had a few offers that I’d turned down because I felt that I wanted “just the right position”. My feeling was that I would be at whatever position that I’d accepted for a long time. Because I viewed the situation in longer terms, the position had to be rewarding in a few different ways. So, now three weeks later I can say that I think I did the right thing by holding out. The group of guys (and one lady) that comprise the systems engineering team are sharp as hell. We’re considered the most fun group in the entire company and I’m having a great time so far. The work I’m doing is totally challenging and I’m working with tons of technologies that I’ve never had the chance to get my grubby paws on. For the first time in my life, I’m not looking towards my next move. I’m content here.
May 1, 1964: First Basic Program Runs
Happy Programming
(BASIC Code from http://web.onetel.net.uk/~richardweston/Tutorial001.html)
PRINT “How does it do it?”
PRINT 5
PRINT 5+2
PRINT “5+2″
PRINT 6/3
PRINT 10*9
PRINT 10*(3+2)
PRINT 12/(5-3)
a=55
PRINT a
PRINT a/5
PRINT 10^2
PRINT 10^3
PRINT SQR(16)
PRINT SQR(2)
A$=”This computer is a smart cookie”
PRINT A$
L=LEN(A$)
PRINT L
PRINT LEFT$(A$,13)
PRINT RIGHT$(A$,14)
PRINT MID$(A$,15,2)
MODE 8
COLOUR 129
COLOUR 3
MODE1
PRINT TIME$
PRINT “Today is “;LEFT$(TIME$,15)
PRINT “The time is “;RIGHT$(TIME$,10)
