So various news articles and chats with friends and family prompted me to write this post, this article is a general thought blog and not a citation of facts.

400 BCE- 1900’s – Live Stock, Farming

Small groups of people living of the land, bartering and exchanging goods for monetary units. This by far is the longest phase of the human state.  Note the level of acceleration on all further states.

1900 – 1950 – Late Industrial Era
Cotton , Railroads and the wars usher in the industrial era of our times. Many new advances are made in Chemical, mechanical and electrical fields.

1950-1990- Post Industrial

Outsourced manufacturing , Parallel development in multiple fields Atomic , Medical , Electronics Energy, generation provides for the cities of the Post industrial human state.

1990- 2015 The Digital Age
Brick and Mortar establishments fall to virtual super highways and automation in multiple sectors, Retail, Manufacture, Banking, redefining social interactions spurring jobs creation in tech sectors and automation.

2015 – 2040 Robotic Age/Virtual Age

Now thinking into the future analysts expect a robotic age where even the most menial tasks are automated. No doubt this would bring in a huge industrial complex and a new variety of jobs.
I think this is the age when our fundamental human existence starts being challenged, and we need to transcend humanity *somehow* it raises a lot of questions and am sure a sci-fi movie exists for every one of these.

• What happens when your every whim is taken care of ?
• What happens when a human thought process is considered too slow for any action (this is already happening ex: NYSE)
• What happens to institutions of social consequences. Family, Fundamental interactions with other humans are lost or becomes an inconvenience.
• What happens when products of human intelligence overtake biological evolution.

This can go on and on but this post was not about a Skynet scenario, how do we evolve from this point on? and how do we find the equilibrium to give us time, so biological evolution can catch up (or maybe we cheat and enhance our own DNAs?). This is where some inspiration from Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s foundation  may come in handy both of these look into the future and suggest possible outcomes over the millenia.

But here is the rub, every scenario looking far ahead requires us to grow up, to be moving out of our cradle “Earth” and not fear whats ahead.  No scenario allows for indefinite pillaging of our planets resources.

• We need to find ways to spread across space.
• Finding  “the way” to spread needs to become the next industrial complex after the 2015-2040 Robotic Age.
• The human combined collective intelligence needs to focus on that task.
• Governments needs to recognize the need and agree.  (This is part of the human kind growing up process)
• Enabling technologies are critical, there is no way we are getting past our Solar system without finding a new “exotic” particle. I think Governments to a certain extent realize this with the CERN initiative. If this fails only options would be multi generational ships into space.
• We need to balance the human social institutions and interactions. Not everything should be driven from “convenience”.

“But man had been created with a hole in his heart, a hole that no possession, power, or knowledge could fill.” – Hell Boy II

Have a daughter becoming a teenager and having more than 3 gadgets, figured will do my best to keep her annoyed by restricting internet access 🙂

Here’s what to do to create a safe and censored home internet connection, this works for all devices connected to a router with a few exceptions.

You can also use a software like NetNanny but if u have a like a few hundred devices kids use at home, iphones, ipods, pcs, android devices, laptops, ps3 etc and you don’t have the patience to install software on every one of them then below would help.

Things you need to know

1. Prevent visiting adult websites directly thru urls or clicking links

This is done by registering up at opendns.com

•   Create an account @ opendns.com and create a network – you basically register your home public ip as a protected network. they also provide a small client which updates the network ip dynamically on opendns if u have a dynamic ip
•   On your primary router @ home go to control panel and update the DNS ip provided by opendns, so now all dns requests go to opendns.
•   Set the security level you want on opendns, they automatically filter lots of domains you dont want your kids to see.

2. Censor keywords or prevent pages with keywords they shouldnt visit.

• If your router has “Content Filtering” you are in luck , else you may not be able to do this.
• This is important cause if anyone is searching for like restricted keywords on google we wont be able to prevent results from showing up. The previous step can only block whole domains.

3. Localized safe locks on inviddual websites like youtube – this depends on control these sites provide.

• Youtube provides a safe lock for mature content, Login in as you and set the safety toggle and “lock it” this has to be done for every browser on every pc/laptop and is a pain to do.
• Other websites you dont want your kids to see, block them in opendns.com control panel.

* fine print – none of these methods are 100% fool proof, if you are kids know more about computers and networking they can get around these.

*first off the disclaimers – I am not paid to write this review.
2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee User Review..
@ 1112 miles

Pros : 

• Amazing transmission .
• Shifts when you expect it.
• Dare i say it on a jeep.. Great mpg on the V6 atleast.
• Interiors are done very wll, nothing feels tacky.
• the new larger uconnect is ok.
• Love the lcd screen in the center of the Dash.

What could be better :

• For a vehicle priced this much could have a better sound system, sound quality feels average. maybe jeep can fix with a software update !
• Was wishing the sound stage was higher than it is.
• the Uconnect screen could do with a higher resolution to keep up with the rest of the quality interiors.
• the suspensions feels a little bouncy, probably needs more damping.
• Would love to have traffic overlay on Uconnect Nav, like google maps does instead of sirius xm traffic.
• the paint coating on the voice activation buttons are easily scuffed off with nails.

<<UPDATE 04/23/2013 >>

Uconnect head Unit is bricked, pissed off. Dealer is shipping new head unit from Chrysler. Like posted in the other thread Chrysler/Dealer is replacing the entire Head Unit !!!
8PM EST 04/24/2013
Symptoms :
“Phone Requires Service Message pops up”
“GPS Unit showing wrong location on NAV”
“Compass pointing in the wrong direction”

@3500 miles –
Head units fixed for a while and humming along.Thanks Chrysler! No issues

@4000 miles – the rear tail light conked out, waiting on part to be shipped.
wasnt a part problem was a software update needed , go figure.

Deceleration pops on VROD engines with straight /baffled pipes.

So after spending more than I wanted to on trying to get rid of deceleration pops on a VRSCDX with tuners and auto tuners heres a $20 solution that works.

Create a Disc of 85mm outer dia and 31mm inner dia and attach it to your pipes this increases the back pressure and makes the engine much more smoother.

This has probably been discussed to death in various books, discussion forums and groups. What i present here is an observation of 5 years of agile practices in 2 different companies (1000+ employees and the other 100+ employees) and about 12 different projects.

Initial reactions on Agile ( 5 years ago) :

• WTF is this ?
• Never gonna work.
• So are we winging it ?
• Is someone gonna tell us how the dev-qa handover should be ?
• where are the specs ?

Observations now :

• Works for products / companies where the sales team are still trying to define what the market is. If you are working on something mission critical that would mean life or death, I would suggest to look elsewhere and have a *classical* process with vigorous checkpoints.
• Rapid Iterations mean exactly what you think it means most of the time (buggy and unstable), needs a full regression cycle to make sure other stuff dint break or a robust automated suite of end to end tests. If your rapid iterations was perfect and dint have any bugs – you are lying 🙂
• Code inevitably gets merged at the end of sprint, tendency to mark story as complete if QA work is pending, QA work adds up quickly and accumulates.
• Tester role needs to be redefined and reinterpreted, there is no “tester” anymore whats needed is a term I would coin as “DesTer” aka Dev-Tester.
• The old days where terms like a “manual” tester did this or “automation” tester did that doesn’t work. There’s only one goal of getting the product with quality out. “DesTers” need to be focused on that. Whatever that gets it done is what the team needs to do. Try helping folks who are hard set in their belief on what qa or dev need to be doing, if it fails weed them out.
• With progression of time no one remembers what the original functionality of a piece of logic was. I call this time slicing and is inherent to the way scrum is everyone remembers a snapshot but not the cumulative addition of functionality on a piece of logic or why it was done in the first place.
• Every new architect/dev who joins the team wants to re-invent the wheel. if its Java convert to C#, if its C# move to python. if there are 2 layers we want 4 to “modularize” it, if there are 4 layers we want to internally call methods to speed it up . Takes a brave soul to really look at something and say this could be good AS is or not.
• Independent of Dev or QA -> What does failing a story mean ? the interpretations vary wildly and your management should define what would happen in this case, especially if after a few failed stories you are starting to develop a thick skin and getting used to the idea that stories can fail.
• Stop creating new test cases if you are reworking existing functionality you’ll have an un-wieldy test set within a few months. You dont have to prove you have x number of test cases and the amount of work you have to do. All that matters is that you are confident that you have a reasonable coverage and confident in the build released.
• As a QA person remember you are here to support and progressively move a product forward, support your dev team but hold your ground if you think something is not right.
• Dont whine without reason, if you are stuck jump on a call with dev and see if theres anything you can do to help progress forward, remember the agile manifesto one person clears obstacles and the other person paves the road. Its a team effort.
• Documentation or the lack of it. Lets face it no one likes to document things. Human nature leans towards attaining a lower entropy. This is a problem when the company or team is larger than a certain size and communication needs to happen.

Judging the true performance of a QA team :

The question comes down to this, what contributes to an efficient QA team ?
Number of test cases run per regression cycle ? Raw defect count in a build ?

After countless projects some of them which have been shelved have come to the conclusion that although the above 2 are factors are useful they dont tell the full story. To make this synopsis on Agile QA quanitifcation I’ve boldly decided to take the next step and provide a solution for judging QA effectiveness in an agile world :

Below assumes your team does a regression activity before putting it into Production
QA Team efficiency coefficient  (working with various QA folks in various companies for a definition) : ** Check back later

[Update] 2015 – So Just read this http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/yahoos-engineers-move-to-coding-without-a-net

Says “there was less bugs” and couldnt help smiling. Of course there are less bugs when the folks validating stuff works are laid off. These erosions are long viewed.  @Yahoo  – They only matter if your company plans to stay in business long 🙂