I Am. When?

Using the outside-in approach to computer security, we are now at a point to begin covering the actual computer systems. Before we get to that, I thought it prudent to put up a simple FAQ covering the common questions and/or concerns from parts 1 thru five 5. Well, really 2 thru 5, seeing as part 1 was the introduction.

This FAQ mostly covers home network security and does not replace reading the actual articles in this series, or getting help from a professional if you are completely inept in the field of computers.

1. Why are passwords important?
Passwords provide a means of proving your identity to a computer system. Without having this method of identification, everyone could pretend to be anyone they wished and the world would quickly fall into chaos, until someone finally pretended to be the guy with permissions to launch nuclear missiles; at which point the world would just end. This is all very bad.

2. How do passwords help protect me?
As mentioned in item 1, passwords provide a means of identifying you as you, rather than someone pretending to be you. Secondly, passwords are used in some systems to encrypt data so that if someone were to look at a file without the password it would appear as gibberish.

3. What is a complex password?
While the exact measurement of a complex password is system specific, the general rule requires that a password contain at least eight (8) total characters. Of those eight characters at least one must be an uppercase letter, at least one must be a lowercase letter, and one must be a number or other non-alphabetical character. This is the base guidelines, and to be honest are quite antiquated. Realistically, a password should contain at least 13 characters, with the other rules staying the same.

4. How often should I change my password?
Passwords should be changed at least once every three months, depending on what the password is for. Passwords used for more sensitive information should be changed more often than passwords used for nonsense; as an example the password to your online bank account should be changed at least once every two months, while the password for your Netflix account would not be as critical and could be changed every three months (unless you save credit card information in your Netflix account at which time it becomes more critical). Your passwords should also be changed anytime you suspect any of your accounts to have been hacked or your computer becomes infected with a virus/spyware (once the virus has been completely removed).

5. Can I write down my passwords?
Do you leave the keys to your car dangling from the door handle in the bad section of town? That was a rhetorical question. The answer is NO.

6. How do you expect me to remember all these complex passwords that change so often?
I don't. I expect you to use passphrases instead.

7. What is a passphrase?
Passphrases are sentences, phrases, exclamations or questions that are used in place of complex passwords. Passphrases are easier to make complex and are generally much easier to remember. "My6catsareallSiamese!" Often passphrases can include spaces, making them even easier to type. "My 6 cats are all Siamese!"

8. What is a firewall?
A firewall is a device (hardware or software based) that restricts certain types of traffic from entering or leaving a network.

9. Why do I need a firewall?
There are bad people in the world who think it is fun to screw up other people's lives. There are also people who want to steal from you. And then there are people who are just nosey and want to snoop. If these people can get to your computer they can do all sorts of bad things such as deleting all your files, stealing your bank account and credit card information, stealing incriminating files from your computer (nude photos, etc), or just using your computer to send out spam email messages. Firewalls can help keep these people from getting to your computer from the Internet.

10. Why should I restrict outbound traffic on my firewall?
There are many ways for bad people to get to your computer and firewalls do not stop all of them (i.e. malware and viruses). Once your computer is infected with a simple piece of malware it can be used to download more dangerous software from the Internet. The malware can also turn your computer into a tool for the bad guys, such as by using your computer to send out spam email messages or attack other computers. If you have ever wondered why it is so hard to catch the bad guys on the Internet, it is because they use "innocent" people's computers to do their dirty work. Restricting outgoing traffic across a firewall can help stop these things from happening.

11. What ports do I need to allow for email?
Some ISPs use alternate, or nonstandard, port numbers for their email, but for most you will need to allow outbound traffic on port 25 for SMTP and port 110 for POP3 (both are used, the first to send, the second to receive emails). You should also restrict which external Internet addresses (IP Addresses) these ports are allowed to connect with, so that you don't inadvertently allow the bad people to use your computer to send out spam emails (see question 9 above).

12. My wireless router came with WEP enabled, isn't this secure?
No. WEP is not secure. WEP is akin to locking the screen door on your house and thinking no one can break in.

13. What security option should I use on my wireless router?
WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is currently the most secure wireless option. If you have a very old wireless device that does not support WPA2, your next best option is WPA, although you should check with the manufacturer for firmware updates to bring it up to WPA2, failing that you should replace your wireless device.

14. What is the SSID?
Service Set Identifier. The SSID is a nice friendly name used to identify a wireless network. This allows you to connect to "MrMoms Network" instead of some long convoluted string of hexadecimal characters.

15. Why should I turn off SSID broadcasting?
In order to connect to a wireless network, you have to know the SSID. When the SSID is broadcast, everyone in range is told what it is. By disabling SSID broadcasting you have added an additional level of protection to your wireless network and helped to prevent nosey people from "just browsing" through your network.

16. My son/daughter/niece/nephew/neighbor's kid said I don't need to do X.
Not really a question, but if X is something I said to do above or in one of the related articles: your son, daughter, niece, nephew or neighbor's kid is an idiot. If they happen to be a CISSP and have a better alternative solution to put into place, then by all means listen to them. Otherwise, I stand by my calling that precious little bundle of joy an idiot and adamantly state that you should not listen to them.

The world does not change itself to who I am, so I must change who I am in order to change the world.

Tough one to learn, or perhaps just accept...

Once upon a time in the land of Bohr's atom, scientists tried to explain electrons floating around the nucleus and came up with the magical faerie tale of orbitals. Orbitals are on par with medieval Christian medicine; that is, the physicians explained ailments in terms of demons, curses and sin. Sometimes the physicians got lucky with the diagnosis and treatment, but there was no concrete method to prove when they were wrong, it was just the sinner’s disbelief that killed them, not a misdiagnosis. You have just got to love absolute truths. Orbitals are one of those truths.

Orbitals are a faerie tale. A story. A guess. An educated guess perhaps, but a guess all the same. When you describe something as being "90% likely to be located someplace in this region" you are guessing, just like medieval physicians did. They based their guess work on the religion of the Christian God; modern scientists base their guess work on one incorrect theory, which in turn grew to hundreds and thousands of incorrect theories. Or at least, incorrectly based theories.

Let's put a little truth back into those theories. For simplicity's sake we are only going to talk about the "original three" subatomic particles: electrons, protons and neutrons. The remainder of the particles actually fall in line and make much more sense with what I am going to point out. Ready then?

Electron's move in logical, predictable orbits around the nucleus of an atom.

Bold and brash, right? Wrong. Here's the simple understanding of it all.

1) Electrons are influenced by the positive-to-negative electromagnetic pull of the nucleus of the atom. Given this, an electron should get sucked into and become part of the nucleus of the atom (this is why physicists first started to make stuff up).

2) The distance between the source of a given force and an object the force is acting upon changes the strength of that force. Meaning an electron located in North Carolina is not going to get sucked into the nucleus of an atom located in Virginia. Still means that electron is going to get sucked into its own nucleus though.

3) Enter my Hypothesis (I'm about ready to do a nice write up to move this officially to a theory, as well as a slight rewrite to bring it more inline with scientific wording): The faster an object is moving relative to a source of energy/force, the less influence said force exerts upon the object. You can read my initial write-up entitled Classical Mechanics Rule to see how this affects an electron. Basically, electrons move too damn fast to allow the electromagnetic pull of the protons to suck it into the nucleus; instead the force gets reduced thanks to the electron's speed and a stable orbit is created.

Based on this first part, a hydrogen atom in a complete void would have an orbital pattern that looks exactly like what everyone thinks an orbit should look like. There is even a mathematical formula for this orbital pattern, because it is the same mathematical formula for any circular orbit. Of course, not all atoms are hydrogen atoms and none reside in a complete void, nor are all hydrogen atoms simple one proton nucleus atoms. This is where things really are complicated. If only there was a mathematical formula that could accurately describe that complicated orbit just as well as one describing a circular orbit, but surely if there was such a mathematical formula someone would have come up with it by now (and won a Nobel Prize as a result).

The good news is there is one. The even better news is that, to my knowledge, no one has won a Nobel Prize for it yet. There might have been, and I just missed it, but given that the world is still using (and teaching) quantum physics, I am fairly certain that no one has released said formula. What is the mathematical formula then? I don't know. Crap, so much for that Nobel Prize.

Alright, that is partially a lie or I wouldn't be bothering to write up an entry about all this. I know almost all the pieces of the formula, or rather I know what all the pieces are and the mathematical formulas for most of those pieces. Being a nice person, and thinking science should be expanded for sciences sake, here are the components that make up the mathematical formula of a stable orbit (planets, electrons, black hole event horizons, etc):

1. The mathematical formula for a standard orbit (Trigonometry, baby).
2. The mathematical formula for force applied based upon distance (available in Physics or Chemistry books incase you don't know it by heart).
3. The mathematical formula for force applied based upon speed (yea, this is the missing one, but can actually be easily figured out. Heck, someone might actually know it already, but if not, there are simple experiments).
4. The mathematical formula for force applied to an object through specific barriers (neutrons are a barrier, as are certain solar phenomena).
5. The constant values of each force for each object.
6. The speed of each object.

Pretty simple right? Number five is a "gotcha" in that not only does a proton pull on an electron and a star pull on a planet, but electrons repel one another and planets have gravitational forces of their own. Number six is an easy one, except when additional energy is applied, but that can be factored in; we do after all know the speed of an electron in a vacuum, and, well, between the electron and the nucleus is a vacuum (pretty clever).

When you throw all this together you can model a complete, stable orbital system. Sooner or later I will get around to producing this formula in its entirety. Of course this will require all the textbooks to be rewritten as well as many of the existing theories (like, because I mentioned them previously, a ton of the stuff on black holes), but that is what science is all about. Change based on new information, and currently the new information is that Orbitals do not exist. Do the math and you will agree.

This has been a bit of a hectic week for me. My first set of assignments and tests for Calculus are all due this week, along with the work from Intro. Chemistry. Two classes I can normally balance with my professional and personal life, but I have the addition of my mom visiting with me for the week. All and all it makes for a little more of a hectic week and unfortunately my blog suffers a bit as a result.

Should you be one of my handful of regular readers, I would like to suggest only checking once a week for the next month. I am certain I will find my professional, personal, and academic groove (again) before too long, but do not want to frustrate any of my readers with hopes of consistent updates. I have stopped reading several web comics in the past for that very same reason and do not want anyone to have to feel that level of loss. The image of the same exact comic showing up on my computer screen every day still haunts me at night. It was, and still is, a horrifying experience. Really.

In other news fronts, the reason for my mother's visit (and part of my week's schedule) is that my daughter is graduating from High School, with today being the actual ceremony. It is finally happening, and if her turning 18 did not make me feel old, her graduating from high school pushes me over that limit. I am an old man. I need a Porsche. Actually, a Tesla Roadster. Porsche are so last year’s mid-life crisis. Anyway, everyone repeat after me...

Congratulations Phaide on your graduation from High School!

A quick note to point out that I have updated the About Me page with a link to my O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P. Badges. I am quite proud, so go take a look. Go on.

I have decided that scientists need to devote a large portion of their time and energy into cloning Peter Sellers and rapidly growing him back to adulthood. Yes, I am saying we should resurrect Peter Sellers. I am certain everyone out there can think of a million reasons that this would be desirable, with not having Steve Martin portray Inspector Clouseau on the top of everyone's list, but I have alternate motivations.

My reasons for wanting to bring Peter Sellers back to life might be dated by a few weeks, but still valid:

1. Every time the media uses the phrase "Swine Flu" there should be a law stating that the words would be dubbed in by Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

2. The Pink Panther movies should be remade, with every instance of the word "swine" replaced by "H1N1", just to bring the movies up to date.

3. Because the only decent thing Steve Martin did in the media was The Jerk and he should not be allowed to ruin another Pink Panther movie.

If someone could startup an Internet petition to make this happen, I would be forever grateful. Thanks.

Spend enough time around robot hobbyists or their message forums and you will come across the two "How Do I" topics that popup over and over again. It depends on the time of year and climate as to which topic is more popular, but the first is "How do I build a flying robot?" To be honest, this question made the mode of transportation for the You Design It project a foregone conclusion before voting even started. Flying is really cool and the number two dream of every man, woman and child, hence the reason so many roboticists want to create a flying robot (the number one involves Rebecca Romijn and the Mystique costume).

That is all well and good (Mmmmm, Mystique), but this entry is more concerned with the second of those questions, "How do I implement robotic vision?" It seems like everyone in the robotic world is obsessed with hooking up a 500 gigapixel camera to their robot and letting their robot see exactly like we humans do. Even more so, they all want object recognition thrown in their as well. This is such a popular request that there are a dozen opensource and inexpensive retail projects out there dedicated to allowing hobbyists to do exactly this. Of course none of these projects ever have the disclaimer that the hobbyist is going to be incredibly disappointed with the outcome, but they will. Oh yes, they will.

In order to see (ha! a pun) why robot hobbyists are going to be disappointed, let us backup a moment and look at the human brain. The human brain is arguably the most complex and powerful logical processor in the known universe (some more than others). Even if you made a silicon processor the same size as the human brain, it would still not compare in power because organic brains are analog processors, not digital (they all lied to you in school when they told you the brain uses binary). In addition, a brain is made up of multiple sections dedicated to performing specific tasks, with one of the larger sections being dedicated to visual processing (striate cortex, prestriate cortex, etc). Basically, a brain is a lot of very powerful analog computers working in parallel and roboticists want to make a single 8-bit 16MHz processor accomplish the same functionality, plus handle all the other sensors, motor control and logic programming. Disappointmentville here we come.

I can fully understand why someone would want to build a flying robot that can see and fully appreciate Rebecca Romijn, but it is not going to happen at the hobby level easily. Throw in a few more processors, reduce the pixel count and make it a 16 color count, and suddenly you are in the realm of possibility. Rebecca is not going to look good at that resolution though, so let’s look at other options instead.

I said in the Herbert 1701 Species C Gen 1 & 2 entry that sensors get skimped on for robots, and to explain what I mean by this I am going to once again jump to biology. We all know the five senses, but most biologists can tell you there are more (and none would fall into the X-Files anywhere). Magnetic field detection is well documented in migratory animals, many snakes (and other animals) have specialized sensors for detecting heat (thermoception), everyone knows bats deal with ultrasonic sound waves, and the list goes on. Robots have all these senses available to them and more, yet rarely will you see more than a couple sensors on a given robot.

I do understand that the organisms people associate with just the five basic senses fall into the "very complex evolved species" classifications. So now it is time to shame that belief with a little more biology. Most single cell bacteria (yes, we are talking micro-organisms here) have both a wider variety of senses and a higher count of sensors than ASIMO, one of the most advanced robots in the world. There are bacteria that are not only covered with touch sensors, but some can even tell you which direction is north from south, know which way is up from down in pitch black liquid while at a zero buoyancy, can sense temperature, know whether there is light or not and how bright it is, and even sense minute chemical changes in the surrounding environment. Single cell organisms. And you want to put two IR sensors on your robot and say that is "enough"?

If the robotic community (hobby and professional) is going to have a hope for making complex robots, we are going to have to loosen up on the sensors a bit. There is a limit to the number of I/O (input/output) ports available on a microprocessor, thus a limit to the number of sensors, but that just screams that maybe you should have more microprocessors to support more sensors. Ugobe understood this a bit when they designed Pleo: more sensors meant more "life-like", which also meant more processors. Granted Ugobe just went belly-up, but that has nothing to do with the sensor count and how much more realistic Pleo was compared to other "toy" robots.

The evolution project artificial robotic life forms are very limited in the number and type of sensors currently, but it is an evolution project. These robots are starting off very simple and evolving into more complex organisms, where, I imagine, the number and variety of sensors will increase with the growth. I am intentionally evolving the Herberts in this manner to increase my own understanding of robotics, and also to generate the best options for each generation. That's my excuse for not having more sensors and processors in each robot (yet), what is yours? Really, when you design a multi-thousand dollar robot (yes, I am talking to you Mr. Universities like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, & Stanford, as well as companies like Honda and everyone who enters the DARPA Grand Challenge), you have given up the right to any excuse.

About a month ago I received my notice from the H. John Heinz III College at Carnegie Mellon University that I was not to be accepted into the Master of Science in Information Technology program. With all the reasons I had given for wanting to attend CMU in my article, aptly entitled Carnegie Mellon, you might have guessed I was a little disappointed in being turned down. It had been a long shot though, so I wasn't completely heartbroken when I read the letter, and I would be lying if I said I did not breathe a sigh of relief over not having to figure out where I was going to come up with over $5K per class. I still think the price is worth it and the school is the best choice for this particular program, I just now know it is not the right school for me (or rather I am not the right student for the school).

The second choice on my list for Master Degree programs was, and still is, the Harvard Extension School. It is Harvard; need I really say more on that subject? UC Berkeley would actually be my true number two choice, but they do not have a distance learning program at this time and, despite some people's belief that I have liberal views, I am not enough of a hippy to step foot on the campus of Berkeley. I would probably pass out from the smell of patchouli and sweat. Anyway, as fortune would have it, I missed the last course startup at the Harvard Extension School while waiting for news from CMU and the next registration for courses does not open until August. Enter idle mind syndrome.

I have been aware of my need for an electronics refresher for a while now and I actually have a few books in my library for this purpose, but these books never get as in-depth into electronics as I would like. I thought about completing the MIT OpenCourseWare courses on Electronics, as I am certain these courses would cover all that I was looking to remember. The idle mind in me then figured that if I was to take actual electronics courses, I should get full credit for these courses this time around (little real credit for Nuke School courses). Thus I should enroll in electronics courses at one of the local colleges. Simple enough, except that idle mind of mine figured that if I am getting college credit for something like this, then I should put it to use and go after a second degree in Electrical Engineering.

One thing lead to another and it turns out that just about every EE program out there requires at least three semesters of Calculus, as well as Differential Equations. And you can't take Physics without taking Calculus I, either. So now I am spending the summer in classes at my local college in support of the possibility of enrolling in an Electrical Engineering program at some unknown time in the future; rather than taking a couple simple refresher electronics courses. And people wonder why I immerse myself in all sorts of projects to keep my brain busy. Idle mind... More like insane mind, but that is where I am at.