thinking-out-loud

NANT 0.85 RC2

A new version Nant was released recently. Check out the feature list, or download.

Will the real 'thinking out loud' please stand up?

Heh. Sadly, we may both need to stand in line. I am sure that Tim's got tenure, and besides, I really want to rename mine to "things i've likely forgotten." Alas, typepad warns against such renamings.

Now, if only you can help me understand REST in the context of security (specifically, confidentiality).

If you use TLS, of course, then you get the confidentiality, but lose the visibility, cacheability, etc, that contribute so well to the scalability. However, if you want confidentiality, then you obviously don't want visibility, and it is likely that you do not want the cacheability either.

An alternative to TLS would be to encrypt the payload, but leave the headers in tact. S/MIME, PGP-MIME, WS-Security. Sounds familiar. An unscruplous attacker may track your requests and infer meaning from the uris that you access, but that could be alleviated via limiting access to a single uri between parties. And you could limit the requests to the good ol' "Do Something" method of choice, POST. If you want to actually target a different uri (and method?), then that would be included in the encrypted content. D'oh. Now we're starting to sound like web services, eprs. I am sure I am missing some key bits. Help, please.

It seems to me that this is a question of interest to enterprises conducting or thinking about conducting confidential business over the internet. It also seems to me that it could call in to question the importance of visibility and cacheability for scalability on the internet, or perhaps more correctly, could call into question just how important or perhaps [im]possible "internet scale" is to business interactions that require confidentiality. Ebay might disagree.

It is likely that I have already forgotten this.

Coupling and, eh-hmm, er, Cohesion?

David Linthicum chats about coupling and cohesion. As I am reading through it, I get feeling that I am looking in on some isolated culture in a remote region of the world where the language is remarkably similar to the language I know, but the meanings are completely different.

His "definitions" of coupling and cohesion both describe coupling. There is a simple way to tell the difference between the two, though. Coupling is a relationship between concepts. Cohesion, on the other hand is a metric reserved for a single concept (or a group of related concepts treated as a whole.) Cohesion is not really about relatedness. Cohesion is also not about completeness.

Cohesion is more about integrity. Dogs bark and Dogs wag their tails. Neither is necessarily related or similar, but if they were to be a part of a model of Dog, that model would be cohesive. Evaluating cohesion is about evaluating the 'Dogness' of the Dog model.

The worst thing, to me, is that he chooses to label service-orientation as coupling and cohesion as "information exchange."

I am sure that he has some actual advise to deliver, but I am lost in semantics.

I believe he is basically saying that sharing information imposes fewer constraints that expecting a service to exhibit a certain behavior, and so the coupling is looser. No arguments there. But really, did it need more than one sentence? And stating that the so-called "cohesive" (i.e. information exchange) systems are independent of each other seems a little generous.

Xml Schema Fallacies

This is really just a bookmark  for me, but you may enjoy if you haven't read it: Xml Schema Fallacies

Analysis Services Algorithms

I also have found this site and forum for discussing MS/.NET focused data mining. Scroll down in the forum for a basic description of the various algorithms that Microsoft implements in Sql2k5 Analysis services.

SQL Server 2005

I have been working on a project recently that has a significant BI component. We're churning through large numbers of records to assess risk in the transactions were analyzing. To that end, I have had the opportunity to get the latest Sql 2005 beta and try it out. Though I can't talk about the project particulars, I will try to get some of my thoughts out on the tools and server soon. The documentation is in various states of completeness, especially for doing more than using the analysis services wizards. I googled this site on data mining from the sql server dm team.

Random Numbers and Time Flow

I can’t pass up posting a link to this article, which I think is the tip of the iceberg in furthering our understanding of the metaphysical world. 

It’s of special interest to me because when I was in grade school, I developed a sense for the presence of my closest friend.  If he was out of town, I could feel when he made it back home.  I would know when the phone rang if it was him calling.  In college I developed this sense for another close friend in my dorm, and eventually a couple of girlfriends.  I also had a number of experiences playing card games where I could feel the cards.  Go Fish is a simple game, but the simple ones can bring out the strongest sense.   I was always reluctant to call it a “psychic” sense, but ultimately it’s a good term. 

Since that impressionable time in college, I have seen some reports on studies done by the US government proving that the best Air Force pilots have a measurably better than average intuition.  The CIA tried out remote viewing, which they’ve proven to work, though completely unpredictably and therefore of no use. 

So, in conjunction with my studies of philosophy, developing my own theories on psychology, and generally trying to understand what makes the most effective software architect/person I can be, I’ve come to this conclusion: the human brain is an awesome pattern recognition and creation organ, capable of subconsciously detecting very subtle ripples in the fabric of reality.  Moreover, similar to the wave-like behavior of sub-atomic particles radiating their probabilities through dimensions we don’t fully understand, the reality of the present seems to radiate forward through time, allowing the perception of future reality.  I can’t quite tell if what’s radiating is the physical form of inanimate objects, or the thoughts of people.  This article seems to indicate both are the case, as well as people’s ability to influence reality with their minds – a la Wesley Crusher in Start Trek-TNG .  I’ll have to ponder this idea for a while.