Reminder: "The Codebreaker": A film about Alan Turing-to youngstown state university, in two weeks

Reminder: "The Codebreaker": A film about Alan Turing-to youngstown state university, in two weeks on Sept. 12th.

NASA's first-ever Software Engineering Handbook (SWEHB) released to the public

After years in the making, NASA has now released to the public their first-ever Software Engineering Handbook (SWEHB); NASA-HDBK-2203 (2013-02-28).

YouTube video showing how a person can navigate through the NASA Software Engineering Handbook to find software engineering related information. This video is about ten minutes long and can be used as a good training or awareness tool.

Each section of the SWEHB provides six areas of information per entry: the requirement, its rationale, guidance for implementation, notes for small projects, associated resources, and related lessons learned.

The 135 software engineering requirements for NASA projects are listed in a small, blue booklet, seventy pages long, called NASA Procedural Requirement (NPR) 7150.2 AKA NASA Software Engineering Requirements; View all pages in PDF. The new handbook is "A sort of hitchhiker's guide to the NPR". The handbook does not impose additional requirements; it is meant to be an assist.

Haley Stephenson explains how the SWEHB was developed as a collaborative Wiki in The Hitchhiker's Guide to Software Engineering at NASA. Many mangers do not seem to appreciate the value of using something like Dokuwiki to collaborate and document the development of a project. Without such documentation, years later, we are left to wonder "why did we use the red widget, rather than the better blue widget?". Perhaps they are afraid of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 26; Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery? See also Michael Barr's Dead Code, the Law, and Unintended Consequences.

Always keep in mind that Software never works in isolation. Safe Software is useless if the system as a whole is not safe. To that end make sure that NASA Systems Engineering Handbook (in PDF here) has a place on your desk or bookcase.

Related Documents:

• Standard for Software Assurance with Requirements Compliance Matrix [MS_Word] and Requirements Compliance Matrix [MS_Excel].
• Software assurance standard; NASA-STD-8739.8 (2004-07-28)
• Software Safety Standard; NASA-STD-8719.13 (2013-05-07)
• Software Formal Inspections Standard; NASA-STD-8739.9 (2013-06-17)

My wife's Suicide

I have worked with many of you over the years. You know that I'd occasionally be absent for that planed meeting and recently was out of town for a few months to get my wife treatment for a Cerebral Spinal Fluid Leak (CSF or CFSL); Intracranial Hypotension.

Her problems started with a car accident 23+ years ago and it was only last fall that she learned, through her own studies, that the cause of her debilitating headaches were from CSFL.

Your brain is supposed to be floating around in your skull as a protective shock absorber. A leak of this fluid cause the brain to start hitting things and yanking on things that were never meant to be yanked.

Ultimately she could bare the pain no longer and this Wednesday, Aug./7th/2013, she took her own life to stop the pain.

There are no words to describe the emptiness I fell right now. If you have a wife/spouse/significant other make sure you appreciate all the things they do for you, and let them know it. Also make sure you know how to do the important ones too. At the moment I have no idea how to pay the gas bill on the on line account she setup. Would you know the passwords if you had to take over this duty? Fortunately I do in this case as she was good at keeping some of them written down, but alas not all of them.

Her funeral is tomorrow, August 12 2013.

The research into CFS Leaks is only about ten years old and Karen had this problem for nearly 24 years. We only know two people that are known to have had it longer at 26 and 32 years.

I refuse to let Karen's death be in vane. To that end I am paying for a private autopsy to be done Monday morning Aug. 12th, even tho the cause of death is known. The reason for the autopsy is to have her spine removed. It will be sent to Duke Medical School to be studied in the hopes something may be learned to prevent an other suffer of this painful condition from taking the same route Karen did to end her pain.

Karen touched so many lives that the outpouring of sympathy and support has been amazing that I can not keep up with the number of people she helped. I will be updating Karen's web site with more details and resources to help others, and most of all educate doctors about CSFL.

It was always hard to get Karen to leave the house on time for any event. She may indeed be late getting to her own funeral...

Bringing the movie "The Codebreaker": A film about Alan Turing-to youngstown state university. Free Viewing with Executive Producer Patrick Sammon Questions and Answers

The Northeast Ohio Professional Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (NEOACM), in association with the Youngstown State University's Student ACM and Computer Science Department is sponsoring a college screening of a drama-documentary on the life of Alan Turing titled CODEBREAKER. Patrick Sammon, the Executive Producer and Creator of CODEBREAKER, will attend this screening to introduce the film and provide Q & A afterward. This screening will be free and open to the public and will take place on September 12, 2013 at the Williamson Auditorium on Youngstown State University's campus. NEOACM is looking for sponsors for this event.

This drama-documentary is about the heroic life, death, and legacy of Alan Turing, one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, yet few people have heard his name, know his story, or understand his legacy. Turing was a British mathematician and logician, who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and biology. He also laid the foundations for computer and cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life thus laying the foundation for our modern society. Turing's crucial involvement in breaking the German naval Enigma code during World War II is accredited by historians in helping shorten the war by two years and saving millions of lives. Tragically, this great mind only lived 41 years. In 1952, British police arrested him for having a relationship with another man. Two years later, Turing committed suicide due to events surrounding his arrest.



Considering Turing's wide influence, this film is ideal to be watched by students and professionals of a wide variety of disciplines including computer science, mathematics, engineering, informatics, information security, biology, and history. During 2012, marked the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth, universities, technology centers, and professional associations worldwide celebrated by honoring his legacy. This special screening will enlighten a well-varied audience and inspire them to value diversity in their profession and in our world.
It is our hope you will see the value of this screening on YSU's campus and will choose to serve as a sponsor for this important event or join as an advertiser!
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Tracey Hughes: secretary@neoacmchapter.org

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Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act or SHIELD Act, to prevent EMP damage

Can your teenage children survive without Texting or Internet, for a day, a weak or years? Recent storms across the country have had many go without power for days, and a few people without power for weeks. Now consider what happens when the power goes out for years. The U.S. has 80,000 miles of extra-high voltage (EHV) transmission lines making up the backbone transmission grid that enables the long-haul transport of electricity for our nation, all of it acting as a giant antenna to pick up Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) events. Such a EMP event could come from natural solar storms or a man made deliberate attack. "The first warning the U.S. would have of such a strike in progress would be the EMP..."

Congressional documents (see below) from the Committee on armed services indicate that a small nuclear device detonated 250 miles above northeastern Nebraska would have wide spread devastation throughout the continental United States, as well as Canada and Mexico.

As hard as it is to believe, Congress (113th Congress, 1st Session) actually tries to do something that makes sense on a very rare occasion. In this case they created H. R. 2417 "Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act" or the "SHIELD Act":

Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act or SHIELD Act - Amends the Federal Power Act [16 U.S.C. § 824a(c)] to authorize the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), with or without notice, hearing, or report, to order emergency measures to protect the reliability of either the bulk-power system or the defense critical electric infrastructure whenever the President issues a written directive or determination identifying an imminent grid security threat.

Directs FERC to consult with governmental authorities in Canada, Mexico, and the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) regarding implementation of emergency measures.

Prescribes: (1) implementation procedures; and (2) related cost recovery measures affecting owners, operators, and users of either the bulk-power system or the defense critical electric infrastructure.

Directs FERC to require any owner, user, or operator of the domestic bulk-power system to implement measures to protect the system against specified vulnerabilities.

Requires FERC to issue an order directing ERO to submit for approval, within 30 days, a reliability standard requiring implementation, by any owner, operator, or user of the bulk-power system in the United States, of measures to protect the bulk-power system against an identified grid security vulnerability (including a protection plan with automated hardware-based solutions [This could be creating a new market area for Embedded Systems]).

Directs FERC also to order the ERO to submit reliability standards to: (1) protect the bulk-power system from a reasonably foreseeable geomagnetic storm event or electromagnetic pulse event (EMP); and (2) require entities that own or operate large transformers to ensure their adequate availability to restore promptly the reliable operation of the bulk-power system in the event of destruction or disability as a result of attack or a geomagnetic storm or EMP.

Directs the Secretary of Energy to establish a program to: (1) develop technical expertise in the protection of electric energy systems against either geomagnetic storms or malicious acts using electronic communications or electromagnetic weapons; and (2) share it with owners, operators, or users of systems for the generation, transmission, or distribution of electric energy located in the United States and with state commissions.

If you are not familiar with the potential threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) events, I've have explained how it works and the decades worth of damage that could be caused in the past:

• Scientists, Politicians Take Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat Seriously. Human Exposure to EM Fields.
• Natural or man-made EMP attack on the horizon?
• Comet to cause EMP Armageddon? Are you prepared for EMP?
• DHS Study of Critical Infrastructure Risks from GPS Disruptions.
• From Its Birthplace: A Symposium on the Future of Nuclear Power, March 27 and 28th and the coming Grid Collapse.

Some of the mega-transformers have a two year lead time, when they need to be replaced. 90% of consumed power passes through a high voltage transformer at some point. If these transformers fail, especially in large numbers, therein lies a very big problem. --- Power Hungry: Prototyping Replacement EHV Transformers EHV transformers, and the nation's electric grid, are on the Department of Homeland Security's mind.

Alas in typical politics can't just get something done in one try, H.R. 2417 has been handed off to the Energy & Commerce Committee, where it may take a EMP event to get it moving...You may want to speak to your congressional representative about this issue.

Not addressed is the issue of the cost to the 'user', which is you and I. In typical government overreach The Man could come and demand that you retrofit your house with EMP protection, at your expense. On the upside the massive and permanent failure of The Grid could finally result in things like Cold Fusion becoming a reality on a large scale.

Make no mistake here, far more than just The Grid will fail during a EMP event. Potentially every unprotected semiconductor, that is your fancy phone for example, could be damaged beyond any hope of repair. The hobby of Steampunk, that typically features steam-powered machinery, could suddenly go from a hobby of some, to the survival of the fittest for all in a EMP flash...

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Congressional Committee on armed services EMP reports, and other government documents:

• Threat Posed by Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) to U.S. Military Systems and Civil Infrastructure.; July 16, 1997
• Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP): should this be a problem of national concern to private enterprise, businesses small and large, as well as government?; June 1, 1999
• The report of the commission to assess the threat to the u.s. from electromagnetic pulse attack.; July 22, 2004
• Terrorism and the EMP threat to homeland security.; March 8, 2005
• R. James Woolsey testimony before the house Committee on Energy and Commerce.; May 21, 2013 "Information Warfare Operation of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. These potential adversaries in their military doctrines include as a dimension of cyber warfare a wide spectrum of operations beyond computer viruses, including sabotage and kinetic attacks, up to and including nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack..."

They could not afford Linux?

I was recently walking down Beverley Boulevard in Beverley Hills, where I walked past a store that my bank account is unworthy of entering. In the store's window there was a very large multicolor LED sign. What the sign was selling was the Windows[TM] crash dialog, asking for a button to be pressed. I'm sure this is not what the store wanted to be selling. My first thought on seeing this was "This place can't afford a sign that uses Linux?".

It is unlikely that the buyers of that sign had any idea of what made it work, until it crashed. Makes me wonder if we should start labeling our products like "Linux Inside"? A quick web search even found a GNU/Linux distribution intended for digital signs.

While Linux has no fee that does not necessarily mean it has no costs with designing it into a product. A designer that has only ever used Windows may end up spending less money designing in Windows[TM] due to the learning curve that it takes to embedded Linux in a product.

Something that I find a bit annoying is that the majority of the world thinks the choice is either Linux or Windows[TM] when there are other options available. Commercially there is QNX, vxWorks. uCOS-II and uCOS-III from Micrium, and other commercial vendors. I'm partial to uCOS-II myself, as you find my name in the first edition of the book for helping getting it debugged and documented.

In the Free and open-source software (FOSS) area there is NetBSD that works, and can be made to work, on many kinds of odd hardware. I'd prefer it over Linux due to its non-viral license. There is also Minux-III, the original Minux being the direct parent of Linux. Inferno is also interesting if you need a large scale networked system for something like a medical office application.

What uncommon systems do you recommend? Do you even think such systems are always required for embedded devices? Sometimes a simple 'big loop' might be enough, or be preferable as it is easier to verify.

Bug of the Month Ends

For the last ten years Gimpel Software has posted a short stand alone program with an obscure C bug in it, with the challenge to the reader to figure out the bug.

Gimpel does this to show off their static analyzer Lint, the nitpickyest of all programs, something that I use almost daily. Lint exposes bugs by looking at a project as a whole, with multi-pass value tracking, rather than just as a file at a time as most humans would. Lint also can test for compliance with various guidelines such as MISRA or The Barr Group's Embedded C Coding Standard.

You can even input your own bugs to test short snippets of code that you might come across. For example the abysmal "if( A==B==C )" found in some of Freescale's USB stack code (I'll save the rant on poor manufacture example code for an other time).

I always looked forward to the challenge of the Bug of the Month, sadly it has be discontinued in favor of a new blog (May not be operational until late summer). I really don't like how everyone thinks replacing something useful with something akin to 'Social Media' is a good thing, how about you?

Colleagues over the years have complained that Lint puts out to many warnings. That is usually the case of Linting legacy code. Error messages may be turned off in layers. Get rid of the ones that will crash the system first, followed by the ones that might, until you get down to none or the ones you are willing to live with. Also with people trying to turn serious development in to some kind of game, see Development has become the game. Whats your Potty Mouth Score today?, make Lint a game. Can you write code that will give no Lint errors today?

The Cyborg Era Begins

Looks like I'm up for a trip to the library, just came across an intriguingly titled paper: The Cyborg Era Begins by Robert F. Service in Science in the area of Bioelectronics.

Abstract: Electronic components are invading the body. In the lab, cling wrap–like circuitry draped over the hearts of test animals can track the activity of each of the heart's four chambers and kill tissue that initiate potentially deadly arrhythmias. Other arrays penetrate brain tissue to monitor the abnormal nerve firing patterns in epilepsy or induce gene expression in the brain tissue of mice. One team has even made a 3D printed bionic ear able to pick up ultrasonic bleats that humans cannot hear. These early prototypes can't produce science-fiction cyborgs; most are used in medicine. But over time, expect devices that will make us better athletes and soldiers, or even improve our complexions.

Science 7 June 2013:
Vol. 340 no. 6137 pp. 1162-1165
DOI: 10.1126/science.340.6137.1162
Robert F. Service

M. Scott Veach and I have been discussing the ethics of replacing our organs so that we can live forever, or until the batteries run down at least, in the comments of my Brain Boost Button one step closer article from last year. Ahead of the curve again it seems...