Sung-Chi's Blog - Fun & Personal category

Some Old News

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 11:39:22 GMT

[2005]

jan.1. 'e-work' was coined by Professor Shimon Nof in 1999 to describe works that involved collaborations of people, machines and computers. It was said that these 'elements' of e-Work are often distributed and networked to work together. 15-dimensions were identified to help designers to put systems together to facilitate e-Working. Four domains are used to group these dimensions and one of them is "distributed decision support." With RFID technology in development, the 'sensors' as part of the "e-work domain" could be carrying a more prominent role in guiding the integration and collaboration - which is part of another domain. See Article >>.

apr.30. U.S. State Department's plan to embed a contactless RFID chip in passport continues with the renewed privacy protection concern. Instead of not protecting the un-encrypted data on the chip of a passport, officials are looking for ways to protect the personal data - authenticated readers can activate the sending of encrypted data on chip (originally data was not encrypted on chip). Two terms were used in this article that is of interest: 'skimming' and 'eavesdropping'. Skim refers to the capture of data surreptitiously (stealth), and eavesdrop refers to the capture of data during its transmission. The International Civil Aviation Organization proposes a process called Basic Access Control (BAC) to help provide an effective way of reading information from a passport RFID chip with minimum privacy concerns. BAC helps prevent skimming and eavesdropping. Read inhibitor (such as metal fiber) can be inserted in the cover of the passport, interrupt any skimming if the passport is not open. Article was dated April 26, 2005.

WorldCup 2006

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 13:30:45 GMT

Last post was on May 1 - almost two months have passed; unsettling feel. Few tasks remain on the radar, with a few seep into the ether space of others awaiting responses if our views cling like Sarawrap, or simply the ideas form like a soccer, protruding into the recycle bin. Nonetheless, my interests of RFID and AOLA still keep me up once in awhile.

The privacy and security issues arise in the RFID life cycle (raw materials, products, consumption, disposal, recycle, then back to raw materials) find some common threads from raw materials to consumption in business chains. These threads (constructs or dependent variables in empirical lingo) support characterization of supply chain partners with respect to sharing data. Development of privacy and security framework for data sharing in a EPCglobal network-like environment can move forward. Of course, there is no EPCglobal network in operation per se [a new flash on June 22 2006 discussed the 'Acer RFID Network' completion in Taiwan], and we do not look at the e-infrastructure of the RFID space with only the EPCglobal Network. Anyhow, we will move to data sharing from consumption-to-disposal next.

AOLA remains in the activityEditor development cycle. The activityEditor allows participants to create e-Activities (or lessons) for the ePlatform for Mathematics Education. I was sidetracked with an interesting applications that use PDFTextStream, iText, and Faceless for extraction, regeneration and presentation of PDF-based information. Wonder if searching of mathematics symbols can be done now on the Web (with the big assumption that mathematics symbols are unified - is this word right?!).

Along the way, I just finished reading 'Beach Road' by James Patterson with Peter de Jonge, and will start on 'At Risk' by Patricia Cornwell. I enjoyed the interplay between fictional characters more than anything else.

Security Policy

Mon, 01 May 2006 12:51:24 GMT

I spent most of my 'Labor Day' holiday trying to figure out why an CGI script won't go. Oh, 'Labor Day' in the Chinese sense (May 1). Some told me that 10 day holiday is the norm in China. Here in Hong Kong, it is only this day is a holiday. Anyway, as operating systems are getting prepared to be more secure - or I should say, there are now more options for you to secure a computer via operating system implementation.

I am using Fedora 3 and Apache 2.0.53 and I am ready to port my Perl scripts over from a faithful RedFlag system. I created a directory /opt/www/cgi as the default cgi-bin and appropriately modified httpd.conf for Apache to know where cgi-bin is. I insert a very simple show time CGI program (Perl script), and it won't work. That puts me in defensive mode. I should know how and I had done this many times and why the http log file shows me the (13)Permission denied... message? Why? Why? Why? Well, retracing my steps and I did not know why.

Yes, I searched the web. This problem was there as early as a 2002 post!! A solution was provided by Mr. P. Howarth (at this page), and warned by another poster to read the SELinux Policy page. There are security types and the unified concept. I did not read into the details. Now, I am a bit more comfortable in doing the chcon command to 'grant permission' for httpd to execute the CGI scripts (Is this right? Setting the policy type to 'httpd_sys_script_exec_t' is effectively telling httpd to 'go ahead, make me run.' And it did.

I thought I understood what the 'SuexecUserGroup' would do, so I insert that in httpd.conf and restart the server. No go. The 'Permission denied' is now gone, but I have the 'Premature end of script headers...' message and the script does not go. I am at a loss, not fully understand what is going on (of course, duh, you did not read the documentation well!).

This incident puts me in perspective of what we have to deal with on 'security' across partners in a supply chain. Each partner is simply cannot manipulate the security policy within four walls and expect the policy will serve the needs of information sharing in a supply chain that is facilitated by RFID technology. The concept of policy preference from the owner perspective does show promise as a viable solution. We will see.

"Technology Meets Mathematics Education"

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:51:19 GMT

I draft an email to seek advice from the local mathematics education community of what issues to bring up at the ATCM 2006 conference. I have not checked if anyone will respond. A calculator of simple operators (+, -, *, /) was all I had during my Form 7 (or grade 13, or one year after US high school) study. My own experience of technology in mathematics education was zero, nothing, null, or an empty set! From the technology standpoint, I can see technology could help the learning process in mathematics education. With this void, I start to read. Searching the web, I come across this article, not dated but most likely around 2000, "Technology Meets Math Education: Envisioning a Practical Future" by Andee Rubin at this website (http://www.air.org for American Institutes for Research). The sentence at the introduction page states "This paper insists that, rather than looking at math education from the perspective of the computer, we must look at computers from the perspective of mathematics education." I am INTERESTED in "look at computers from the perspective of mathematics education" and really like to see what will be said.

I, myself, may not be concise of "looking at mathematics education from the perspective of the computer." I am not sure what is 'the perspective' of a computer. Or, rather, is technology computer, or computer is technology? Would there be interests in 'Information Technology' when there did not exist such thing as a computer? The term 'technology' itself was of different interpretation ("East Meets West: What Americans and Hong Kong People Think About Technology," in Journal of Technology Education 17(1), Fall 2005 by Kenneth S. Volk and William E. Dugger Jr.) I would be more comfortable talking about mathematics education from the perspective of technology, than from that of the computer. There is another twist. A friend (once a colleague of different departments) was saying he knows how to integrate 'technology' into mathematics education and there are only a few in the WORLD that can rival his domain knowledge. He knows fair enough of mathematical software (maple, cabri, autograph, sketchpad, and some graphics calculator software) and no doubt, there is nothing wrong with the statement of knowing 'technology for mathematics education' if technology implies software.

Well, if technology is not software, then what is it you may ask. From Merriam-Webster Online, it gives a first definition as a noun as "the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area." Is there "technology" involved in enriching uranium (recent news on Iran)? Is 'artificial heart' a medical technology? I would say so by the definition. So, simply using the word 'technology' in mathematics education is not sufficient to convey the intention of studying, say, information technology (IT), in mathematics education? Then, why not 'information and communication technology (ICT)'? Nonetheless, we will sort it out later. Let us get back to the point: "look at computers from the perspective of mathematics education" and see what the author's view is.

To be continued...

How Personal Can You Get Online?

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 13:00:40 GMT

If you don't feel good today, you may want to skip this posting. It is about death.

One of my friends in the States came back last Christmas to visit his father, living alone, of age late 70's. It was a short trip - less than a week and nothing accomplished. He was not successfully in getting his father to 'move' into an old folks' home. In the 'home,' someone will look after him, in case he falls, in case he is not eating. Knowing someone knows is better to not knowing? He left then. He was back here last month unexpectedly to take care of his father's funeral. Sadly, his father passed away in a hospital.

I went to the funeral. The ceremony was in the back of the district hospital, a small one-room single-storey brick building - as if someone forgot to take it down when some buildings it attached to were razed. A waffle-tin roof was put up next to the building like a car port to a trailer or a small ranch. And yes, it was under the tin roof that his father was laying in an open coffin for final viewing. Emotions were absent from my friend. He might not know what hit him yet, hopefully.

I went to another friend's father's funeral last Wednesday (3/29). No emotion - for all the sons that were there. Am I being sensitive? Am I just simply a person do not know how to handle my emotions? This friend found out his father had terminal cancel about 3 weeks ago. Then I was told the father passed away. Three days after that, we have a meeting with the friend and he was all ok.

Help me here. Some western culture will gather and eat after a death in the family (there was a term for this?). Acceptance versus denial. Whatever it is, where should one tuck his or her emotions of losing someone dear in the family? I don't know. I would be sad for awhile, acceptance or not. I have a story to tell for how my father passed away, or rahter how did I find out he was gone some 4 to 5 year later (yes, I don't remember exactly). Sad and I don't know if I know I have get that out of my system.