The Science and Economics of Nutrition, Part 1

In some ways, this is not about what most people would call technology. However, the science behind nutrition is something that can be useful to all of us. There are a lot of people who do not understand just what is involved with "good nutrition" and they rely on aids, such as food pyramids, to attempt to create a good diet. However, understanding allows making better choices and knowing why we make those choices.

A healthy diet is composed of two factors -- calories and nutrition. On average, an adult needs approximately 15 calories per pound to maintain their weight. There's a lot of variation on this. Athletes and pregnant or lactating women need more. Sedentary people need less. But let's go with the 15 calories (actually kilocalories -- but most people just call them calories) per pound. This means that a 120 pound person (or someone who wants to get to 120 pounds) needs 1800 calories per day.

Calories are a measurement of the energy from food and, once again, it is simplified in presentation. A gram of fat is about 9 calories and a gram of protein or carbohydrates is about 4 calories. In general, it doesn't matter what kind of fat it is -- it will give you the same amount of calories. So, olive oil may contain "better" (from a nutritional point of view) calories but it will still be the same amount as that from lard. Proteins, once again, are all about the same for calories but the ability to be "burned" (metabolized) varies depending on the mixture of other foods with the protein.

At any rate, fats are the most calorie-dense foods at 9 calories per gram. This means that an average 120-pound person could get their daily calories from drinking 18 tablespoons (1 1/8 cups) of oil. They would also get severe diarrhea and eventually die of other causes -- but they would have enough calories. Prices of food vary around the world but, in the U.S., you can get canola oil at about $10 per gallon. There are 16 cups per gallon, so this amount of oil would cost about 70 cents.

At the high end of the scale -- I just don't know what that would be -- probably some rare gourmet low-calorie item. Let's just say that you can probably spend more than a $1000 for your 1800 calories. This is talking about actual base food costs -- eating at a restaurant would certainly increase your costs.

OK. We see that you can spend from 70 cents up to thousands of dollars to satisfy your caloric needs. But, we said at the beginning that a healthy diet is composed of calories AND nutrition. What is nutrition? These are the various components that your body needs to be as healthy as possible. It includes a proper balance of fats (and the right kinds of fats), protein (and the right kinds of protein), and carbohydrates (and the right kinds of carbohydrates). It also requires minerals, vitamins, and dietary fiber.

In the next post, I will start talking about the nutrition aspect of a healthy diet along with the economic impact of choices.

Updating an Electronic Device

A few months ago, I talked about computer memory and its various types. One of the important types is Read Only Memory (ROM). This contains the basic instructions (including the instruction that is executed first when power is applied to the device) to bring up all of the supporting programs (Operating System, etc.) that allow you to do what you want to do.

What happens if you have a device (such as a cellular phone or a game system) that is "updatable"? This device also has ROM but, somehow, the basic system that is in ROM is still able to be changed.

This is possible because there are different types of ROM. In particular, there is a type called "Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory" (EEPROM). Like general ROM, this memory is non-volatile -- it will retain its contents even when there is no power. However, by applying a higher-than-normal power through the device, the contents can be erased and then new contents can be written. Thus, a device which is meant to be upgradable can split its base program memory into two parts -- one in ROM which still contains the initial program upon powering up the device and one in EEPROM which should not normally be altered either during use or when powered down.

The program in ROM is enhanced to include the program(s) that allow updating the EEPROM. Then, when an update is desired, it stores the new system program to be written to the EEPROM in some type of RAM, erases the original contents of the EEPROM and then copies over the new system program into the EEPROM.

There are variations on this, of course. When a device is updated via a host computer, there is the option to back up the data and current contents before doing the update. This reduces the danger involved in case power is interrupted, or an error occurs, before the update can complete. The time when an update is in progress is still a critical period of time and, if at all possible, the device should remain powered up until updating is complete.

Once the update is complete, the device should operate the same as before (with whatever improvements exist within the new system program).

The Dangers of Hi-Tech

I am NOT a Luddite. I enjoy technology and, even more, I love the thinking processes involved in creating something new and tweaking (called "hacking" in programming) existing things to make them perform even better.

However, that does not mean that I am not always aware of the dangers of advanced technology. Sure, there is the Frankenstein aspects -- designing "smart" robots that take over the world. I'm not that awfully fearful of that -- although it certainly could happen.

The Luddites were more fearful of how technology affects society and how new things cause the old things to be denigrated. What happens to the horses when a steam engine can pull the plow? Each change in technology affects the society and people involved with the old technology. That is still true today and, perhaps, even more true as the pace of change continues to increase. Still, that has always happened and it always causes chaos. The first people who made use of iron weapons were ascendent over those who still used stone weapons and the people who used bronze weapons were ascendent over those using iron and so forth. This has not changed -- only the rate of change where now the change can occur many times in one's lifetime rather than over a period of several generations.

My primary fears are the pyramid effect of Hi-Tech.

If I worked carefully over a period of a few weeks, I could make a gramophone. (This is one of those old "record players" with a big copper funnel over the needle to make the noise louder.). With more time and access to more tools, I could probably make a "record player" that connects to a home-built electric speaker. It wouldn't be of great quality but, with practice, I could make pretty good ones. But could I make a ceramic cartridge magnetic needle casing with a full powered amplifier and multiple speakers? Yes -- but only by using a lot of other tools that are a per-requisite to make it. Over a lifetime, I might be able to create the entire set of tools and then use those tools for the final product. A lifetime wouldn't be enough to create a CD player.

My father would have been even better qualified to build something than I am -- among his many jobs, he was a machinist and an auto mechanic. He could have built a working carburator from chunks of metal. However, even he could not have mined the ore, smelted the ore, refined the metal and created the metal chunks that he needed.

Every "hi-tech" product relies on components that, in themselves, are "hi-tech" and requires specialized tools to build. On and on down the line.

I have a "landline" phone in addition to my cell phone. I have no intentions of giving it up (although economics may eliminate them as an option someday in the future). Why? First, the sound quality of a dedicated circuit-switched line is better than anything you can currently find in cell phones and probably better than you ever WILL find in cell phones. But, more importantly to me, a basic landline phone is powered by the line that leads to the phone company. They have banks of batteries to supply the very low voltage current needed to power the phones. If the electricity goes out -- I still have a working phone! Even there, most people have landline phones that are connected to local electricity -- and those won't work without the power. They COULD be designed to make use of the line power but most aren't.

So, what is the danger? The danger is that a disruption in one vital element of a product will eliminate the feasibility of the product. Many things are dependent on oil products -- run out of (or be separated from the access to) gas/oil/diesel and much of society's products will stop working. Have an electromagnetic pulse take place in New York City and much of our economic records would disappear -- even worse if backup sites are attacked/broken.

So, when you pick up your smart phone, think a bit about what it really took to make it and be able to use. There's a lot of industries, professions, and people involved in that one product. Then turn on a light and do the same type of thinking -- still a lot of factors involved in the use of that light switch. If you have a gas cooktop you are reliant on a steady gas supply but if you have an electric cooktop you have a different set of dependencies.

What does the cloud provide?

OK. We have seen that the cloud is a nickname for the potentially changing and somewhat mysterious connections that allow equipment (and people) to talk and send data to each other. The modern cloud will usually make direct use of the Internet Protocol (IP) network -- although that is not mandatory. The advantage to using the IP network is that each request can be routed to a different location.

In the old cloud, you basically had a direct connection (often called "point-to-point") between two pieces of equipment (possibly phones). With an IP network, since each message contains the address of the originator and the address of the destination, the resulting connections are "many-to-many". Your local equipment probably has a single IP address but the IP address is used in conjunction with another piece of information called the "port". The IP address identifies the physical device that is receiving and transmitting data and the port is used for routing the data to the right application or task.

What does this mean in real life? Let's say that you have a word processing application open and you also want to listen to music while you are typing on the document. The word processing app might be using a combination address of "53.13.18.01:2022" where the part before the colon (":") is the IP address and the part after is the port number. The music application makes use of "53.13.18.01:1954" (these are arbitrary numbers). Since the two apps are making use of two distinct ports, the data can be routed appropriately.

On the other end, the word processing app might be connected to "103.44.17.34:1113" and the music app is getting the music (data) from "87.19.33.92:1954". Note that the music app and its data are using the same port number -- it's not required but it does simplify some of the interactions. We can see from the addresses that we have two applications on a single physical device connected to two separate data providers which are likely on separate physical devices.

This is the power of the cloud -- the physical and logical separation of the data from the applications making use of the data. The data storage might be of music, documents, spreadsheets, ebooks, or whatever else you can imagine.

Next, what about applications in the cloud (sometimes referred to as "Software as a Service" or SaaS)? Well, actually, the data providers are applications and are interpreting the data coming from the "local" application in order to retrieve and route data appropriately. SaaS moves most of the processing of the data to the remote server. It isn't actually in the cloud but, from the point-of-view of the local user, it may still be located anywhere and, thus, part of the cloud from one endpoint's point-of-view.

Finally, the cloud can provide alternative paths and destinations. This can provide data transparent backup. Let's say that you have your endpoint making use of data stored at location C. Unknown to the user, C is constantly backing up ("mirroring") the data at location D. If the physical device hosting C goes down (is now unavailable) then the local app can be routed to D without the user even knowing anything has gone wrong.

The cloud provides many services and will provide even more in the future. However, with this complexity comes different types of vulnerability. I will address that in the next blog.

So, What is a Cloud?

Clouds have been around for a long time. No, I'm not talking about the groups of water droplets that sometimes are between us and the sky. The cloud has been the nickname for the general network for a long time. When a picture was drawn of two people talking together over the phone system, the picture usually had the originator (call this person 'A') talking on a phone which had a line to a cloud-shaped symbol which then had another line leading out of it to the recipient (call this person 'B') of the call. When a physical connection exists between A and B, it is called a "circuit-switched" line.

Over the years, what has actually been within that cloud has changed. Long, long ago, the contents of the cloud were a series of connected wires such that, physically, there was a single wire leading from A to B. In order to achieve this connection, various people ("operators") would use a small section of wire (called a "patch cord") to connect lengths of wire together. So, your local operator (which had ALL the local phone wires leading into the office) would connect your wire to a wire leading to a long-distance operator, who would then connect to the destination region, who would connect to a destination city who would connect to a local phone company who would then connect to B's line and then put a "ringing signal" on the line to tell B that they had a call.

The next iteration of content in the cloud was to replace part (then all) of the human operators with mechanical analog (no bits and bytes) switches. One switch type, called a "cross-bar" was an important development that allowed this progression to change. There was still, by the time a call was completed, a single physical connection from A to B.

The change from analog to digital allowed "breakage" of the physical connection. While there was still, after the call was completed, a physical connection, the form of the signal now changed from section to section of the connection. This usually meant a parallel line that contained "signal" information. The signal information includes such things as to whom the call has been placed, who made the call, when it occurred and (for billing purposes, in particular) how long the call was active.

Packet-switching broke the physical connection. Packet switching includes the address information (telephone number, etc) with the data (voice, video, music, ...). Since the address was included along with the data, it could be sent anywhere -- it could even be stored temporarily if a connection was unavailable. Finally, the Internet Protocol (IP) started to take over this type of combined address/data format.

However, when you make a call (or, access a computer or network service or whatever), you don't really know what is happening in the network -- and that is why it is still envisioned as a cloud. And, you don't really CARE how it gets from A to B as long as it gets there. It is likely to be a mixture of technologies and it just isn't important to A or B -- but it is vitally important to the providers of the network.

Modern "cloud" services rely on a packet-switched Internet Protocol network to allow access, storage, transfer, and interpretation of data. The next blog will talk about some of those specific services.

Here Come the Clouds

Once upon a time, I had a Cathode Ray Terminal (CRT -- similar to old televisions) that was connected to a MODEM (MODulator DEModulator -- a box that converted digital signals to/from analog signals on a phone line) which connected to a "mainframe" (very large -- for those days -- computer). My terminal, an ADM 3A, was a monocolor screen with a keyboard. No local processor, no local storage. When I logged into my account on the mainframe, I had my own set of files and access to any applications that had been installed on the main computer.

Now, with the computing clouds, I can have a computer (possibly without a disk drive/local storage) of, perhaps, limited computing power connected to the Internet which gives access to one or more main computers and multiple storage areas. I can connect via different devices and from different locations and get access to my own set of files and make use of various applications installed on those devices/computers.

It sounds very similar between 1981 and 2012 doesn't it? It certainly does to me. What are the differences that exist and what makes those differences?

The first is access speed. In 1981, connections were slow. A person could type in a set of commands (no Graphical User Interface (GUI)) and expect to receive back sets of words or numbers -- possibly some crude pictures made up of typeable characters. The terminal would allow some movement of the "cursor" (think of the marker from the mouse) after receiving special characters that would be interpreted specially. But, basically, it was for sending and receiving text.

In 2012, expectations of connection speed are FAST or FASTER. This means that the user can use a GUI and can receive back all forms of data including video, music, and multiple windows of information.

The second difference is primarily on the "mainframe" side. Via the Internet, the user has access to many different computers, different environments, and a multitude of applications. Thus, the user can treat the "cloud" environment as their own individual computing setup. Plus, since the computer that one uses usually has its own memory (even without a disk), work can be divided between the local computer/PC and the cloud devices.

From an outside point of view, 1981 and 2012 seem rather similar. The effect of access speed and the Internet's capability of hiding where and what is happening creates a very different experience.

The next blog will go into greater details on the advantages (and disadvantages) of the cloud environment.

New and Future Memory

I've got a few more ideas to talk about, but I thought it best to come through with what I said I would do next.

There are two trends going on with memory (for computers -- there is also some fascinating research going on about human memory) nowadays. The first trend is putting it elsewhere (in the "clouds") and the second trend is to eliminate the mechanical aspects of data storage and access.

I will push off the discussion of clouds to the next blog. We'll concentrate on the second trend.

There are a lot of excellent disk drives at the moment. The manufacturers have increased storage capacity, decreased the time to get to (access) the data, and greatly improved reliability.

Most improvements on disk drives have been associated with data density -- how many bits can be packed into the smallest area. The data density helps both storage capacity and transfer rates (the amount of time that is needed to move data from the storage device to working memory (or vice versa)). Blu-Ray disks work with a higher-frequency laser than do DVDs and DVDs use a higher-frequency laser than Compact Disks (CDs). The higher frequency means that the data density can be higher. Thus, Blu-Ray disks can hold more data than DVDs and DVDs more than CDs.

Further improvements are being made on materials, optics (the part that actually reads optical disks such as Blu-Ray), Wikipedia is a great source for more on specific formats and improvements.

What do these disks have in common? They have to move. In order to read (or write) the data, the reader ("sensor") must be over the datum. Usually, this means spinning the disk while the reader stays in the same place. Some magnetic hard disks have speeds exceeding 7800 revolutions per minute. However, movement means something to move it with and mechanical devices just will not work forever no matter how great the quality and design.

We now have many different electronic items -- phones, cameras, tablets, toys, and so forth that make use of non-moving memory. There are a lot of different categories for this, so lets just call them "flash" memory. In this case, there are still lots of data to access -- but the access method is built into the design of the memory device. Let's take a game cartridge as a simple example. The cartridge will contain data which can be addressed. It also has leads (usually copper) that connect to the game player. The game player makes use of these leads to address, and transfe,r the data. No physical movement (except for connecting the cartridge to the game player) is required. Another common example is a "memory card" which is inserted into a camera. Some printers allow photos to be directly printed from that memory card (taking the card out of the camera and inserting it into the printer).

Direct access memory devices are (currently) more expensive that disk drives -- but the cost continues to decrease as they become more popular and it is my opinion that they will take over for local storage eventually. Personally, I am still hoping for holographic cube storage as was seen in Star Trek.

Let it be so.

Old Memory

Yes, I walked a mile through the snow to school. But, that really wasn't such a big deal (still isn't). I lived in a small town where walking was quite safe and there were sidewalks in front of almost every house.

But, in terms of computers, I started programming when the main input media was punched cards (I saved a lot of them for shopping lists for a number of years). When I started college, I worked on a "personal" computer that used punched tape along with toggle switches on the main processing unit. The main storage devices for the larger computers (IBM 360 at first, migrating to IBM 370s before I left) were huge disk drives.

However, memory (as mentioned before) can be categorized into temporary working memory and long-term storage memory. Working memory at that time was core memory -- little magnets that looked like donuts and linked together with copper wires. We still call it core memory after the memory of those days. Most working memory of today is now located within DIMMs (Dual In-line Memory Modules -- see Wikipedia) or, for older systems, SIMMs.

The memory modules have great advantages over old core -- speed, size, and capacity. They also generate much less heat which is both an energy savings as well as a design improvement.

Storage memory is another category which has moved from technology to technology. The first was paper (well, the VERY first was probably clay tablets or chiseled stone). For people, writing or drawing stored the data/information and reading brought it back. It's kind of funny, but efforts have been quite intense over the past twenty years to allow computers to do the same thing that humans have done -- to be able to directly make use of printed text and images.

For early computer systems, it was not possible for the computers to directly use text or drawings. They needed a way to detect a contrast between spaces. This usually meant holes. The holes allowed light, or a mechanical probe, to move through the paper. The areas without holes blocked the light or probe. In this way, the computer could read the "bits" (present/non-present, on/off, 1/0) and save it.

Next came magnetic methods. These were primarily on discs and tapes. The technology of disk drive design has developed enormously over the past 30 years such that a portable disk can hold the same data that a room of luggable, replaceable disks did way back when.

Currently, we are moving farther and farther along to making working memory cost-effective to use as storage memory -- which will lead to the next post on "New and future Memory".

The tree of data connectivity

The goal of data connectivity is to allow people to communicate with everyone else. The form of the connection may be voice, text, video, files, or some other type of data. However, the ideal is that it can transfer between any two (or more) people.

So, how does that happen? Well, the actual form of the data is in files that have some type of format. These formats, or organized forms, are standardized so that it can be created and transmitted, and then received and used. Examples of these are Adobe PDF files, Audio MP3 files, and Video MPEG-4 files. Voice is usually digitally encoded using one of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardized formats such as G.711 or G.729.

Once a file has been created, it is transferred to the desired recipient. The current dominant types of transferring may be classified into wireless and landline. Wireless includes cellular data (and voice), Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. Landline (using a physical medium for transfer such as a cable or fiberoptic line) makes use of many different protocols.

Wireless is the current popular option for the "end user" -- the person who is making use of the device that allows them to transfer data (remember that voice is just one form of data). However, wireless has significant restrictions. These restrictions are distance and/or speed. Companies are now marketing devices called "femtocells" (the actual brand and name of the device may not include this name) which are placed in homes or businesses to allow faster transmission by reducing the distance between the cell phone or Wi-Fi device and a landline.

Yes, a landline. Because of transmission requirements (which go beyond the scope of this current blog), it is just impossible to handle all of the data needs without going to a landline. A landline is self-contained for bandwidth (data capacity) while wireless must compete with all other wireless activity. So, landlines will (in my limited ability to read a crystal ball) always be needed and they form the trunks and branches of the tree of data connectivity with the wireless devices now being used as the leaves.

Hackers are positive people

I was looking around at the movies coming up and looked into "The Social Network" which led me to Wikipedia for Mark Zuckerberg.

Once upon a time, I wrote a book about how computers work -- meant for the everyday person and trying to explain/show how the various parts of computers worked together. Although unpublished (and probably unnecessary anymore), one of the chapters dealt with hackers. According to Wikipedia, Zuckerberg said that hackers are people who aren't afraid to break something in order to make it better.

Personally, I would go a bit further. I would say that hackers are people who are curious about how software works, aren't afraid to break it, and who want to make it better (in the past, this often meant more efficient and faster, nowadays it more often means more features). At any rate, it is a positive purpose -- Bill Gates Jr., Wozniak (also a hardware tinkerer), and others are all hackers. I am also a hacker and proud of it.

So, why does the word "hacker" have such a negative connotation? Leave it to the sound bite. It sounds good and the media, rather than going into more detail as to what was actually done (which might bore a majority of their viewers/readers) just lumped all people working on software as hackers. This includes a sub-group of hackers which does NOT have such benevolent motives -- the "crackers". Crackers work to exploit the inherent weaknesses of software structure to allow misuse.

Crackers are a pain in the rear -- they do things for their own egos and pocketbooks and make the rest of us have to deal with their behavior. Hackers have made the fusionfalls (a current favorite of my kids), the facebooks, the Linuxes, and the spreadsheets possible (among thousands of other software programs). Hackers have found a home in the open source community but, for the most part, remain in individual obscurity.

Where did they go?

Well, I decided to be inspired by one of the Blogs I follow -- "The Retirement Bubble" and accept the fact that I just am not going to be a daily blogger. So, I headed to my blog and "ZAP", my last blog was no longer there. In fact, my stat counter for visits (which I watch not go up very fast ) went backwards from 184 to 121.

I'm sure that things of this nature happen to you, also. What can the reason be?

Well, first, of course, there is the jello-like consistency of memory. I could have just imagined that I posted a blog entry last month. People look at memory as the chronicle of the past but it just doesn't really work that way. If you think about doing something enough times, with enough detail, it will blur the boundary between "memory" and "dream". Given an amount of elapsed time, that boundary may easily disappear. I know people who have very fixed "world views" and you can tell them "yes" to a question and, because they just "knew" you were going to say "no", they will HEAR "no" and remember "no". This is a bit more severe of a split between "memory" and "dream". The bottom line is -- one cannot really rely on memory

But, do I think that is what happened? No. Of course it could be vanity -- "other people may not remember correctly but I certainly do". No, the main reason I don't think that was the case is because of the stat number. Everyone has certain areas where their memory is well exercised and more reliable. My stepdaughter can remember what someone wore for a given date within the past few months and practically forever about what SHE was wearing. Other things aren't so important to her and she just doesn't remember. For me, it is numbers. I can visualize that "184" in the stats area and I'm pretty sure it isn't a false memory.

There are some aspects to irregular posting that are certainly suspect. For example, some of the formatting aspects of this blog seem to be strange to me -- but, for that, I will just blame my memory and not doing this blog often enough.

Assuming that I'm not crazy and my memory is not totally faulty, where did the blog go? Two possible avenues seem to rise to the surface. One, a system crashed and the disk got backed up (which, for Google, does seem a bit scary to think that backups are unreliable). Two, I didn't do something correctly to commit the blog into permanent status.

Actually, there is a third possibility but paranoia just isn't my thing. "Someone" could have removed it. Since the blog was concerned with firmware and quality control (and Toyota) I guess that there is a little weight to that but I don't really believe it.

At any rate, my last blog vanished and I'll have to think about it a bit to start over the chain. The last blog was on embedded software (firmware) and quality control. The next was going to be about embedded software on cars, unit testing and system testing -- and the difficulties of fully system testing real-time software for interconnecting modules (groups of software). And the next was going to be quality control and testing in general.

However, since the first of the series has vanished I guess I'll think it all out again.

Google, if you're listening -- maybe YOU can find out what happened to my last blog .