Be Careful When Following the Crazy Yellow Brick Link Trail

Links, what are they? When you go to a web site, links are the little bits of information that when clicked on will take you to another website of similar context. The thing is, with these strange and mysterious human minds of ours that we know so little about, these links if navigated subconsciously can take one to places of information you normally would never travel to. You could start out in the light and end up in a black hole. Let me give you an example of a trail I recently traveled without really thinking.

The other day I decided to search for a web site about one of my all time favorite musicians, Arlo Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie is a folk musician, son of another famous musician Woody Guthrie. When I was a little kid, one of the coolest things to do was to listen to his story/song entitled 'The Motorcycle Song'. So, I found his personal website through a Google search and it was pretty cool, and very positive. Guthrie runs a charity organization and a multi-religious church center where money is raised to help people with illnesses as well as giving less fortunate people a place to pray, meditate or just get off the streets.

So, I'm reading all about Arlo in his biography and there's a link to his court statement at the famous Chicago Seven court case. Well, as I'm a young guy I had never heard of this case, my curiosity was piqued and I clicked on the link. Next I was reading Arlo's funny comments about the time he was arrested for disposing of garbage in an illegal area on Thanksgiving because the dump was closed. Of course if you know about Guthrie you'd know that his famous song 'Alice's Restaurant' was based on this story. I get to the finish of the court transcript and there's a link for the 'Famous Trials' web site that the Chicago Seven trial was a page of.

Not thinking, I click on the site and start to absent-mindedly scan through all the famous court cases listed. Remember, I was originally looking up my old buddy Arlo, now I'm in a world of laws and crime. Well, I come across this crazy looking face: Charles Manson, and for some unknown unconscious reason I click on his court case. I didn't know much about the guy, but maybe because both my parents are x-hippies and he was from their era...

Now I'm spending an hour of my time (and nothing is more valuable than time, except love and peace) reading about the gruesome murders of Manson's Family as his group of devoted followers was called. I didn't consider myself interested in this sort of evil stuff, and still don't, as my feeling after the experience was one of distaste, sadness and plain wonder as to how people can do these sorts of negative actions.

In the end, following the absent-minded link trail led me to a place so much darker than where I started. I don't know if I ever would have spent an hour of my life reading about Charles Manson otherwise. It's not my cup of tea you know. I'm into peaceful music, humorous novels, Tai Chi and foreign films. This can be taken as a sign that we must be careful, conscious and alert when we are searching the Internet. It is such a huge mass of information, and like all things in existence has its dark side as well as its light. Be careful Dorothy, the yellow brick link trail can lead to the wicked witch as well as the wonderful world of Oz.

Open Sesame - Password Security

"Open Sesame!" is probably the most famous password in literature. It gave Ali Baba access to vast treasure. In the realm of technology, computer passwords also give access to valuable treasures: precious business and personal data.

Information about your personal life, buying habits, credit quality and life style is valuable to those who can profit from it. For the Corporation, information has even greater worth. It is not the "Bricks and Mortar" but the intangibles such as intellectual property, client lists, market strategies, pricing and compensation that account for over half the value of the modern enterprise.

All of this personal and business data most likely resides on a database somewhere and is available with a password. In fact, passwords are the most common means of entry in any system. They are also acknowledged as the most vulnerable points for security. 

"Weak" or compromised passwords are the easiest way for hackers to gain entry into a system.

Simple or short passwords can be easily discovered through "brute force" or "dictionary" 

attacks which concentrate intense computer power to crack a password. A two letter password, for example, has only 676 combinations. A password with eight letters offers more safety with 208,000,000 combinations.

Ideally, a password should consist of 8 or more characters. They should also contain 

a mixture of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers. "A$d3B5i9X" would 

be an example. Microsoft security has encouraged the concept of the "Pass Phrase" as an alternative. A phrase such as,"TheLastGoodBookUBoughtCost$25!" has all of the needed elements and is also easy to remember.

The human factor or social engineering contributes to password compromises. It is estimated that employees share their password eight times a year. Passwords can also be cajoled from untrained or naïve workers. The standard rule is NEVER share a password. 

Remember the cliché of the "Six Degrees of Separation." You cannot know who will eventually end up with your password and own it.

To cope with these issues, many leading edge firms are adopting a defense in depth strategy utilizing three elements to better safeguard their information

The three layers of authentication consist of: 

What you know...

A strong password or pass phrase 

What you have...

A Crypto-key, smart card or token 

Who you are...

A biometric aspect such as fingerprint, hand, or retinal recognition

Usage of these three defensive measures will increase dramatically in the future as people seek to thwart ever increasing threats to their private and personal information. 

Many companies will be mandating them as a significant part of their security best- 

practices to safeguard an extremely valuable asset: their treasured data.

© 2004 Terrence F. Doheny

On Mining and Numerical Solutions

Algorithms for well-known mathematical functions have been developed in numerous ways. One single postulate is implemented under different configurations to accomplish the same results. It is precisely this flexibility that allows excellent choices when selecting appropriate software in mining projects. The application of numerical analysis in mining is essential where the selection of the best, most accurate subroutines will assist to process a solution faster.

Consider for example exploratory drilling in geology. When we have a number of data points obtained by sampling and experimentation, it is possible to construct a function that closely fits those data points in order to estimate the size of a mineral field available for extraction. There are various techniques for the solution of interpolation applications where algorithms based on Cubic Spline and Newton Divided Difference theory are often used.

We are cognizant that science and engineering concerns itself with the manipulation of vector and matrices. Why should we in mining be concerned with linear algebra? Linear algebra algorithms offer powerful operations defined for vectors and matrices, where the concise notation for vector and matrix operations can be directly adapted to mineral object-oriented programming. Very often solutions consist of large matrices that can be used to describe linear equations where matrices can be added, multiplied, transformed and decomposed in many ways. A very far-reaching and extremely useful tool.

Quite often optimization algorithms are used to find values of variables that yield a minimum or maximum function value. In mining, this optimization technique is applied to mineral extraction where the objective function consists of minimizing the total cost of mining based on constraint parameters. Restrictive parameters like grade of ore, transportation costs, manpower and other factors are applied. Several methods are available where the Simplex Method for multi-variable functions is widely used.

Complex numbers, complex functions and complex analysis in general are part of an important branch of mathematics. Complex numbers can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided just like real numbers. In mining the implementation of trigonometric functions (trigonometric, hyperbole, inverse) are often utilized to reflect fluctuations (terrain, faults) under certain conditions. Sine and Cosine Function based algorithms are often used.

When dealing with measurement data inaccuracies obtained from drilling or sampling, we know it will contain significant variations due to measurement errors. The purpose of curve fitting solutions is to find a smooth curve that on average fits the data points. Curve fitting is applied to data that contain gaps and tries to find the best fit to a set of given data where the curve does not necessarily pass through all the given data points. The Straight Line Fit Method and a Polynomial Curve Fitting Method for distinct order-polynomials are widespread utilized algorithms.

Many scientific and engineering phenomena are characterized by nonlinear behavior and solutions of nonlinear applications and is a fundamental issue in engineering analysis. The simplest case to find the single root of a single nonlinear functions is widely used in underground mining operations where situations call for special requirements in underground construction (I.e platform at a slope, or ventilation equipment, or similar patterns). The Newton-Raphson Method is one of many used in industry. Fixed Point and Birge-Vieta methods are also popular.

We may recall that numerical differentiation deals with the calculation of derivatives of a smooth function (by bringing back our high school math). In mining, numerical differentiation occasionally is used to calculate displacements sometimes due to exploratory drilling or similar activities where terrain displacements (or any other discrepancy) may show different stress concentrations considered under uniform stress. To find the stresses and hence the stress concentration factors, it is necessary to find the derivatives of those displacements. Many algorithms exist: The Forward Difference Method, Backward Difference Method, Richardson Extrapolation, Derivatives by Interpolation.

When it comes to solving problems that involve given starting conditions, such as, volume, time, space and other parameters, differential equation techniques.are used. Several numerical methods exist to solve ordinary and high-order differential equations. The use of differential equations in mineral engineering is extensive. The scope of applications is as diverse as evaluating tasks quantifying the grade and tonnage of a mineral occurrence to everyday complexity encountered in open pit mining or underground shaft sinking, block caving, cut and fill, or similar extraction operations methodologies. Many commercial mineral algorithms are available based either on Euler Method or 2nd-Order Runge-Kutta Method or 4th-Order Runge-Kutta Method.

Problems originating in mining engineering often require the solutions of differential equations in which the data to be satisfied are located at two different values of an independent variable. These are called the boundary conditions and these algorithms approximate the differential equation by finite differences at evenly spaced mesh points. On occasion this technique is used in tunneling where the finite difference method is particularly suitable for linear equations. Commercial algorithms based on uch as, Shooting Method, Finite Difference Method, Finite Difference for Nonlinear Method, Finite Difference for Higher-Order Method and others.

Based on the few samples of algorithm utilization we can surmise that numerical solutions are attended to at every stage of a mining operation. The use of numerical analysis makes mining planning a much more organized and efficient form of mineral extraction. Mathematical algorithms in mining provide the industry with extraordinary tools to assist time-consuming tasks be reduced to manageable units to obtain solutions which otherwise would be very difficult to achieve.