Category: Technical

Getting Your Python for Data Science for Dummies Extras

The process of discovering how to use Python to perform data science tasks begins when you get your copy of Python for Data Science for Dummies. Luca and I spent a good deal of time making your data science learning experience easier and even fun. However, it only starts there. Like many of my other books, you can also find online content for Python for Data Science for Dummies in these forms:

I always want to hear your questions about my books. Be sure to write me about them at [email protected]. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your Python for Data Science for Dummies reading experience. Thank you for your continued support.

20 July 2015: Updated to show correct link for the companion files.

 

3D Printing Done Faster and Better

A technology becomes viable at the point you start hearing about it on a regular basis. When the buzz around a new technology becomes loud enough and you begin to see real products from it, you know that it at least has a chance of becoming something worthwhile and interesting. Unfortunately, many technologies achieve critical mass, but then die on the vine as a fad because they lack something else. People are willing to give a technology time to grow, but only for so long. At some point, they get bored and move on to the next promising technology unless the current technology manages to grab attention. The technology must do something that keeps the user coming back for more—it must make things faster, easier, less expensive, or have some other benefit that makes it a must have technology. 3D printing is beginning to achieve both critical mass and the must have functionality that will make it the technology to have in the near future.

It wasn’t long ago that a Chinese company actually printed the parts for a building and put it up. In fact, you can find a number of such buildings now, but the buildings are more for publicity than practicality for the moment. You won’t see buildings produced by 3D printing at any scale for some time—the technique will remain a specialty. A little more practical is the printing of larger consumer goods. For example, another story tells you about efforts to print items such as snowboards and motorcycles. However, read the details about these new printing feats and you find they don’t really make the technology a must have development. The motorcycle, for example, is underpowered, overpriced, and requires way too long to build. These examples all demonstrate that 3D printing is doable and they create the excitement needed to move forward, but if the technology were to stay at this level, 3D printing would eventually become just a fad.

Another story talks about how 3D printing could eventually print organs in place. A previous post, Using 3D Printing for Urgent Medical Needs, discusses some of the medical uses for 3D technology, but this use would kick things up several notches. The new technology takes advantage of the body’s natural abilities to help promote cell growth and it would be less invasive than today’s methods of organ replacement. Medical uses currently provide much of the “must have” emphasis for 3D printing, but again, if it remains in this realm, the technology will be too expensive to reach a critical mass of products that ensures it becomes something everyone must have.

Organizations are starting to take notice of 3D printing, which is a good sign. Apple may eventually create a 3D printer for general use. The patent trolls are also showing up, which believe it or not, is a positive sign. All these signs means that there is interest by organizations in 3D printing because there is a sense that they can make money by various means. Even so, the technology still isn’t of the “must have” caliber needed to continued existence.

It was with great interest today that I read about how 3D printing is changing. Not only is it becoming faster, but it’s also becoming more practical. Ford has become involved in using 3D printing to make car parts. The process is faster and it can actually shave time off the production process (a lot of it). It’s this story that is starting to convince me that 3D printing will stay around for the long haul and that we may finally see a radical new way of producing the items we need. The technology has a long way to go yet, but it’s starting to build that “must have” aura around it that will ensure it remains a viable technology. Let me know your thoughts about 3D printing at [email protected].

 

Death of Windows XP? (Part 5)

Windows XP, the operating system that simply refuses to die. The title of this post should tell you that there have been four other posts (actually a lot more than that) on the death of Windows XP. The last post was on 30 May 2014, Death of Windows XP? (Part 4). I promised then that it would be my last post, but that’s before I knew that Windows XP would still command between 10 percent and 15 percent market share—placing it above the Mac’s OS X. In fact, according to some sources, Windows XP has greater market share than Windows 8.1 as well. So it doesn’t surprise me that a few of you are still looking for Windows XP support from me. Unfortunately, I no longer have a Windows XP setup to support you, so I’m not answering Windows XP questions any longer.

Apparently, offering Windows XP support is big business. According to a recent ComputerWorld article, the US Navy is willing to pony up $30.8 million for Microsoft’s continued support of Windows XP. Perhaps I ought to reconsider and offer paid support after all. There are many other organizations that rely on Windows XP and some may shock you. For example, the next time you stop in front of an ATM, consider the fact that 95 percent of them still run Windows XP. In both cases, the vendors are paying Microsoft to continue providing updates to ensure the aging operating system remains secure. However, I’m almost certain that even with security updates, hackers have figured out ways to get past the Windows XP defenses a long time ago. For example, even with fixes in place, it’s quite easy to find headlines such as, “Hackers stole from 100 banks and rigged ATMs to spew cash.”

What worries me more than anything else is that there are a lot of home users out there who haven’t patched their Windows XP installation in a really long time now. Their systems must be hotbeds of viruses, adware, and Trojans. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that every one of them is a zombie spewing out all sorts of garbage. It’s time to put this aging operating system out of its misery. If you have a copy of Windows XP, please don’t contact me about it—get rid of it and get something newer. Let me know your thoughts on ancient operating systems at [email protected].

 

A Windows Security Alert, Courtesy of Samsung

I’ve gotten used to a whole lot of silly vendor tricks over the years. Just about every vendor I’ve worked with has done something completely idiotic, just to cause the other guy woe. The user always ends up hurt. Readers of Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core, Microsoft Windows Command Line Administration Instant Reference, and Windows 8 for Dummies Quick Reference need to be aware that according to a ComputerWorld article, Samsung has turned off Windows Update. The worrisome part of all this is that there is apparently an executable to turn the support off, but not another executable to turn support back on. Sites, such as engadget, are recommending you perform a clean install of Windows on your computer to get rid of the problem.

The whole issue seems to revolve around Samsung being worried that Microsoft’s updates will interfere with Samsung’s updates of its software. The result could be that the system won’t work. Phrases, such as “could be” and “might not”, always bother me. Samsung must not have tested the problem fully or they would have had a more positive and straightforward comment to make when asked about the problem. The point is that the user loses. Advice such as telling users they must reinstall Windows from scratch to get rid of the problem sounds just dandy until you figure out that most users can’t perform this task, so they’ll be out extra money getting someone else to do the job or we’ll all face the issues that happen when updates don’t occur. It’s not as if the Internet really requires yet more zombies (computers under hacker control)—we have no lack of them now.

A similar problem occurred not long ago when Lenovo thought it would be a good idea to pre-install the Superfish adware on the computers it put out. Most computer vendors add bloatware to their systems, which really does make it a good idea to perform a clean install when you buy a new system, but purposely adding adware seems a bit deranged to me. Lenovo later apologized and fixed the problem, but the point is that they made the mistake in the first place.

Some of my readers have asked why so many of my books include installation instructions or at least pointers to the installation instructions. The answer is that vendors keep doing things that make me shake my head and wonder just what they were thinking about. When you buy a new system from someone, perform a clean install of the operating system to get rid of the bloatware or have someone else do it for you. If you choose to keep the pre-installed operating system in place, make sure you research any oddities of the installation (such as turning off Windows Update). Otherwise, you might end up with a situation where Windows Update simply doesn’t do the job because someone told it not to. Let me know your thoughts on pre-installed software, bloatware, and vendors who seem completely clueless at [email protected].

Story Update!

According to a ComputerWorld article, Samsung will end the practice of disabling Windows Update. Of course, one has to wonder why they did it in the first place. If you have one of the systems that disabled Windows Update, a patch will restore the system to perform the required updates.

 

Contemplating the Issue of Bias in Data Science

When Luca and I wrote Python for Data Science for Dummies we tried to address a range of topics that aren’t well covered in other places. Imagine my surprise when I saw a perfect article to illustrate one of these topics in ComputerWorld this week, Maybe robots, A.I. and algorithms aren’t as smart as we think. With the use of AI and data science growing exponentially due to the fact it can help improve a company’s marketing tenfold, you might think that computers can think. They can’t. You can learn about the role data science has in marketing here but for now, I think it’s important to reiterate the fact that computers can emulate or simulate the thinking process, but they don’t actually think. A computer is a machine designed to perform math quite quickly. If we want thinking computers, then we need a different kind of a machine. It’s the reason I wrote the Computers with Common Sense? post not too long ago. The sort of computer that could potentially think is a neural network and I discuss them in the Considering the Future of Processing Power post. (Even Intel’s latest 18 core processor, which is designed for machine learning and analytics isn’t a neural network-it simply performs the tasks that processors do now more quickly.)

However, the situation is worse than you might think, which is the reason for mentioning the ComputerWorld article. A problem occurs when the computer scientists and data scientists working together to create algorithms that make it appear that computers can think forget that they really can’t do any such thing. Luca and I discuss the effects of bias in Chapter 18 of our book. The chapter might have seemed academic at one time-something of interest, but potentially not all that useful. Today that chapter has taken on added significance. Read the ComputerWorld article and you find that Flickr recently released a new image recognition technology. The effects of not considering the role of bias in interpreting data and in the use of algorithms has has horrible results. The Guardian goes into even more details, describing how the program has tagged black people as apes and animals. Obviously, no one wanted that particular result, but forgetting that computers can’t think has caused precisely that unwanted result.

AI is an older technology that isn’t well understood because we don’t really understand our own thinking processes. It isn’t possible to create a complete and useful model of something until you understand what it is that you’re modeling and we don’t truly understand intelligence. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that AI has taken so long to complete even the smallest baby steps. Data science is a newer technology that seeks to help people see patterns in huge data sets-to understand the data better and to create knowledge where none existed before. Neither technology is truly designed for stand-alone purposes yet. While I find Siri an interesting experiment, it’s just that, an experiment.

The Flickr application tries to take the human out of the loop and you see the result. Technology is designed to help mankind achieve more by easing the mundane tasks performed to accomplish specific goals. When you take the person out of the loop, what you have is a computer that is only playing around at thinking from a mathematical perspective-nothing more. It’s my hope that the Flickr incident will finally cause people to start thinking about computers, algorithms, and data as the tools that they truly are-tools designed to help people excel in new ways. Let me know your thoughts about AI and data science at [email protected].

 

What Net Neutrality Means to You

I’ve written about Net Neutrality before in the Understanding the Effects of Net Neutrality on Web Programmers post. The post described how Net Neutrality affects developers in particular and made a passing reference to its effect on other users as well. The issues haven’t really changed. Enforcing Net Neutrality could mean free and equal access to the Internet by everyone who needs to use it, but nothing I’ve seen so far really defines what the government means by free or equal. I have concerns that some high priority needs, such as medical or real time communications, will suffer under Net Neutrality. However, the longer I think about the issue, the more I come to realize that some form of Net Neutrality is essential to the health of the Internet as we know it now. In addition, most medical posts I’ve read favor Net Neutrality as being essentially good for patient access to healthcare needs.

A number of things have happened since that post. The most notable is that Net Neutrality has become an issue of Democrats versus Republicans, rather than an honest effort to provide the sort of service that everyone wants. As I predicted, the whole matter ended up in the courts where an appeals court has decided to allow the FCC to implement the Net Neutrality rules. To counteract the court decision, House Republicans have added riders to a must pass bill to fund the government that affects the FCC’s ability to enforce Net Neutrality rules. Apparently, the cable companies have called in the favors they provided politicians in the form of campaign contributions. The Republicans are taking this action despite evidence that most people support Net Neutrality regardless of political identity.

The whole Net Neutrality issue has taken a new direction—one that is becoming all too familiar to Americans. One side, the Democrats in this case, choose to champion an issue and the other side, the Republicans in this case, decide against it. Our legislators seem determined to waste time and energy fighting with each other, rather than accomplish anything resembling real work. In the middle of it all are companies offering money—paying legislators to do their bidding. In this case, the people are on the losing side of the equation. Everything I’ve read tells me that this is a situation where the government really doesn’t care what the people want—it’s all about the money.

Of course, there is a group of people who are caught in the middle of all this—application developers. Actually, anyone responsible for ensuring content moves on the Internet is caught in this current decision to do anything but act responsibly on the part of the government. It isn’t possible to create applications that perform well when you don’t know how the communications used to transfer the data will work. Until the government gets its act together, developers and other IT professionals will simply have to take their best guess as to how to make applications perform well and that hurts everyone. Let me know your thoughts about Net Neutrality and the developer at [email protected].

 

Star Trek, One Step Closer

I’ve written a number of posts about 3D printing because it has so much potential for creating a new kind of world where things aren’t such as concern any longer. If all you really need are some raw materials to print out anything you need, the overstocking of stuff really isn’t a concern any longer. You will have only those items you need because spares of anything aren’t a problem. That’s how things were on Star Trek. People seemed less inclined to hoard anything because there simply wasn’t a reason to do so. That’s why a recent ComputerWorld article, How astronauts 3D printed a wrench they needed in space, grabbed my attention.

The article points out another use for 3D printing, which is fine, but there are a lot of articles about 3D printing now so that’s not really the focal point. The focal point for me is that the printing process met a practical need in an environment where the need couldn’t be met in any other way. The kicker is that the astronaut in question really wanted a ratchet to go with the wrench and they were able to send him one! In reality, the printer received the plans for the ratchet and simply printed it out like any other part.

The essence of the article is about printing things in space that the astronauts need to accomplish useful tasks. At one time, not long ago, if an astronaut didn’t take something along, it wasn’t available. However, read the story in more detail and you find out that the setup recycles the old plastic devices. This means that an astronaut can create a wrench when needed, discard it, and use the same plastic to create something else. That’s the principle behind the replicator in Star Trek. Old things were remade into new things. So what we’re seeing is science fiction becoming science fact right before our eyes.

The future holds the promise of allowing people to perform tasks in a creative way without having to worry nearly as much about resources. The use of 3D printing will eventually make it possible to create anything needed anywhere. Just how long it takes us to move to the next step will be interesting. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit to pick on the technology tree, but eventually we’ll need to conquer the harder issues of being able to produce complex items at the atomic level. That step should prove interesting indeed. Let me know your thoughts about 3D printing at [email protected].

 

Computers with Common Sense?

The whole idea behind products, such as Siri, is to give computers a friendlier face. Much like the computer on the Enterprise in Star Trek, you converse with the machine and get intelligent answers back much of the time. The problem is that computers don’t currently have common sense. A computer really doesn’t understand anything anyone says to it. What you’re seeing is incredibly complex and clever programming. The understanding is in the math behind the programming. Computers truly are machines that perform math-related tasks with extreme speed and perfection.

It was with great interest that I recently read an article on the Guardian, Google a step closer to developing machines with human-like intelligence. The opening statement is misleading and meant to bedazzle the audience, but then the article gets into the actual process behind computers that could emulate common sense well enough that we’d anthropomorphize them even more than we do now. If the efforts of Professor Geoff Hinton and others are successful, computers could potentially pass the Turing Test in a big way. In short, it would become hard to tell a computer apart from a human. We very well could treat them as friends sometime in the future (some people are almost there now).

Articles often allude to scientific principles, but don’t really explain them. The principle at play in this case is the use of sentiment analysis based on words and word n-grams. You can build a sentiment analysis by using machine learning and multiclass predictors. Fortunately, you don’t have to drive yourself nuts trying to understand the basis for the code you find online. Luca and I wrote Python for Data Science for Dummies to make it easier to understand the science behind the magic that modern applications seemingly ply. Let me know your thoughts about the future of computers with common sense at [email protected].

 

Odd Fallout of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Laws generally help define correct behavior when there is a difference of opinion between groups of people. They do things like ensure public health and safety. After all, when everyone agrees that certain behavior is acceptable (or unacceptable), you rarely see a law about it. Most laws also free people from the whims of government by providing a rule upon which to base decisions of whether someone is law abiding or not (the requirement to prove guilt, rather than innocence).

The context of an act usually comes into play. Stealing Intellectual Property (IP) is one of those areas in which there is a difference of opinion and context most definitely comes into play. There is a group on one side that says all information wants be free and that there is no such thing as stealing IP. This group is represented by people who download music or other forms of media without paying for it and feel the act is perfectly acceptable. On the other side is a group the vigorously defends IP, even when there isn’t a good reason to do so. This group is represented by organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Of course, artists and consumers alike are stuck in the middle between these two warring parties.

A law is considered fair and good when it represents the interests of as many parties as possible in an equitable manner. Over the years I’ve read about the truly odd fallout from the DMCA. For example, the RIAA suing a dead grandmother is an example of the sort of negative publicity that tends not to produce a desirable reaction when the goal is to get people to actually buy the music they want to hear. Of course, you’ve read about my viewpoint on IP a number of times. However, the fact of the matter is that publishers are slowly losing ground because the majority of people are ill-informed as to the need to buy IP and those who do know have decided that getting free IP for as long as they can is the only consideration. Most authors and artists (myself included) are starting to move toward means of earning a living that don’t involve fighting with customers over who should pay.

Unfortunately, the fight over IP is one of those things that just won’t go away because you want it to. I recently read an interesting InfoWorld article, Copyright act could make it illegal to repair your own car, that has me thinking of future stories in the news about Ford hauling dead grandmothers into court over repairs done without the consent of their local Ford dealer. The fact of the matter is that the DMCA is a bad law that represents only one side of the dispute—those who stand to make a huge profit from IP. Until the consumer is involved in the process and the voices of radical elements are heard, you can be sure that people will continue to ignore their rights and responsibilities when it comes to IP.

What do you see as the future of IP? The current situation isn’t sustainable. Authors and artists of all types need to earn a living just like everyone else. Someone has to pay for the IP or the people producing it will decide to do something else to meet their financial obligations (possibly creating lower quality and substantially less IP during their off hours). At the same time, consumers should be free to use the materials they purchased in any reasonable manner they see fit. If you buy one of my books, I guarantee that I’m not going to use the DMCA to haul you into court for marking it up or using it in a manner consistent with fair use laws. I’d like to get your feedback at [email protected].

 

A Future of Fast Connectivity

When I was growing up, our home had a party line (at least, when I was younger). Of course, most people have no idea of what a party line is because most people have never experienced one. A party line is a telephone connection that you share with several of your neighbors. That’s right, you don’t have your own personal telephone connection or even a dedicated connection to your home. When you receive a call, a unique ring tells you that the call is for you and not for one of your neighbors. I’m really not kidding-this isn’t April Fools or some type of other fiendish joke foisted by someone who is older on an unsuspecting public.

The new world order of cellphones where every individual not only has an individual phone, but a separate telephone number is a huge advance over the days of my early youth. Of course, some of us still have landlines because cell access is a tad spotty, but eventually the cell providers or some other concern will address the problem. The idea that you can connect through your cellphone to the Internet and create a wireless connection is amazing. It’s not a fast connection in many areas of the country today, but at least it works much of the time.

Some people haven’t really stopped to consider the huge changes that have taken place during this transition. At one time, getting away from it all really did mean being out of touch and people survived just fine. Today it’s hard to get disconnected. Most people are tethered together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no private time and the thing we called privacy is a long forgotten dream. With the loss of privacy has also come a certain loss of freedom. Just how free are you when someone can track your movements and check up on you at any time.

Unfortunately, like it or not, the trend will just continue. I read an article entitled, Ultrafast Internet opens up new possibilities: experts, not too long ago that paints a picture of the future that some will find exciting. However, I have to wonder just how exciting it will actually be once it arrives. The mere act of walking around your home will possibly take on new meaning because virtual people could simply pop in at any time. Just think about it. You won’t be able to simply ignore the cell call you don’t want to receive anymore-the person will simply appear in your house unbidden. Of course, there won’t be anything illegal about the act because no one has bothered to create laws regarding it.

Lest you think that this is some future technology that you’ll never see, companies such as Google are making it happen as I write this post. Even though the connectivity isn’t yet what most would consider high speed, there are vendors who will sell you Internet connectivity literally everywhere-connectivity that brings this whole virtual reality one step closer. In just a matter of years, we’ve moved from the incredibly slow dial-up internet to high-speed broadband across the nation. Even those in more remote areas are able to access decent speeds using satellite internet (learn more at https://www.satelliteinternetnow.com/how-does-satellite-internet-work/). The fact of the matter is that it won’t be long and there will be no getting away from it all and there will be no privacy of any sort for anyone. We’ll be monitored, checked, validated, categorized, and controlled 24 hours a day unless laws are put in place now to keep this rampant technology in check.

The question, of course, is whether people really are ready for virtual holidays where everyone attends the family dinner from their own home (a technology called telepresence). Yes, you can see the other people, but will you truly be able to interact with them? What are your thoughts about the whole issue of connectivity so fast that our real world will be subsumed by a virtual world? Let me know at [email protected].