I started programming for the Win8 Metro interface last week. There were few issues converting my touchscreen desktop to Win8, but Visual Studio 2012 had more issues. It didn't play well when VS2010 was also installed, and you can't have both Express and Pro installed together either. The XAML Designer is nearly useless for Metro Apps, but I expect it will get better before release.

Metro  takes a bit of getting used to, but I think I'm starting to "get it". Yeah, I immediately missed the Start Button and TaskBar. The Start Screen, if you play with it a while, will suffice. I spent an hour trying to launch hidden System Utilities and trying to close active "apps" (you tell me, how do you get a command window?). It does work with a Keyboard/Mouse, but you won't like it. The Touch Screen is almost a necessity (you can't "pinch" a mouse).

Sliding tiles are a different way of looking at hierarchical data. The press on the subject says it is like Win7 Phone. It  is not. They also say Silverlight isn't dead, because Win8 still supports WPF and Silverlight on the optional Desktop Interface (now legacy). Silverlight is dead - much to my dismay.

Metro is a HUGE change for Microsoft. I feel it is as big a change as the switch from DOS to Windows (the Win 95/NT a close second and third). There are no more "Windows" in Metro; only Tiles (does anybody remember TopView?) The Start Menu is gone, the major system utilities have a new face, and "BIG SURPRISE" Microsoft now has their Metro App Store up and running.

Like the Apple App Store, this is how Metro Apps will be distributed. As far as I can tell, this is the only way, too. Publishing to the App Store requires a MS Live ID, and a strict registration process. This ain't the Internet - this is proprietary.  That you will have to get your Metro Apps solely from Microsoft is a mixed blessing. Installs will be easier for consumers (well, so was Silverlight), there will be a single place to search for Apps (like Apple?), but.. um... there will be a single place to search for Apps... Microsoft.

Win8 and Metro is a make or break for Microsoft. Their 25 year dominance in OS is at stake. I personally didn't mind Microsoft's monopoly on desktop Operating Systems. It gave me a solid target to program against. I don't program iOS, Android, Linux, or even Mono. But these OS's are changing the market, and until now, Microsoft hasn't kept up with that change.

Things are about to change fast.

Dell, Acer, and Sony have already announced Win8 Tablets/Laptops to be released Q4 this year. I hope the stranglehold Apple has on this market will ease up.

Followup:

 Silverlight held a promise. It was to be a single UI across phones, tablets, and desktops - regardless of OS. It was a promise that "could have" been kept. The potential was there - the commitment wasn't.

Win8 & Metro will, most assuredly, work consistently across all phones/tablets/desktops. It really isn't a bad interface. I'm getting used to it. It IS, however, proprietary. Metro ONLY works for Win8 - Apple and Android be damned.  I don't like this fragmentation. Silverlight could have overcome it, but it is not to be, apparently (*sniff).

If you don't like Metro, most likely it is because you don't use Tablets... yet. You will. That's where the market is heading. It is as inevitable as the Keyboard/Mouse combination was.

Finally - some good news,

That's pretty cool, and has been needed for a while.

A new version of the neuFund Manager Financial Calculator is now available to non-members. You can try it here (click the image): 

The neuFund Manager Financial Calculator can be used as a traditional multi-function calculator. In addition, there are over 60 predefined Financial Functions which can be used to evaluate Symbol, Fund, Member, and Symbol Group trading data over a wide range of trade history.

The routines that evaluate the Financial Functions are used by neuFund Manager internally to display both Symbol Charts, and to evaluate Trigger Functions. Here's a quck video showing the Symbol History Chart usage.

Triggers use special Formulae that evaluate to either True or False. They are evaluated on a timed interval, and when TRUE, an EVENT is fired that can inform the user via Messages or eMail and/or initiate a Symbol trade (buy or sell).

Because Financial Functions are date/time insensitive, they can be setup once, and evaluated for any specified period of time (from the current time backward). The Financial Calculator, therefore, can be used to test these formulae for the current time. The Formula can then be used as the basis for a Trigger.

There are also many Logic and Date functions that can be used to specify how and when the formula is to be evaluated. For example, a scenareo such as "IF the current day is a Monday, and the Nikkei 225 Average is trading lower than 10% of the previous close, signal a sale of all owned shares of all Stocks in the 'Nikkei Group'" is a trigger that can be created created using the Logic and Date functions. The Financial Calculator will evaluate any valid result regardless of type Trigger Formulae must evaluate to either True or False.

To use the Symbol Functions, you must specify a Valid Symbol and, depending on the Function, the evaluation period.

The Function above specifies a calculation of Microsoft's Average Close across a 30-day period. Formula Functions may be used in conjuctin with each other, nested, and encapulated with paranthesis to specifiy evaluation order.

-- Note --

This DEMO version of the neuFund Financial Calculator does not require a valid Member Login. Because of this, the Member, Fund, and Symbol Group functions have been disabled. In the standard version, Fund Function evaluation can only be performed on Public or Member owned Funds. Member Functions can only be evaluated by and for the logged in Member. Likewise, Symbol Groups are setup by Members and, therefore, cannot be evaluated by this Demo Version.

Also, this Demo version is available in only a single style (Expression Dark). The normal version can use any one of 12 available styles.

If you ever find yourself face up in the middle of the road with a paramedic hovering over you saying, "Relax, everything is going to be all right..." it's not a good thing to hear. Don't believe him - you're in trouble. There are other times, however, when these words are true.

Last weekend, I installed Linux for the first time on my old XP box sitting in the office. I kept telling myself, "relax, everything is going to be all right...", and to my surprise - it was. In fact, it was the easiest OS install I've ever done (thanks mostly to Ubuntu).

20 years ago, I toyed with the idea of switching my development efforts to Linux. Back then, it was called Unix (BSD or otherwise) and was owned by ATT. It wasn't free. Not only was it not free, compared to Windows it was damned expensive. The tools were expensive, the development environments were expensive, the C libraries (that was my language of choice back then) were...um... expensive.  But I sure did like X-Windows the UI environments, the multi-tasking, the Pipes, the memory usage. There were many reasons for switching, and only one for not. Because of the cost, for the next 20 years I've been living in a Microsoft World.

Before long, Windows 3.11 came out which gave me TCP/IP (another Unix standard); followed by Win 95, Win NT, XP, Vista, Win 7...  There was never the need to switch because each new version of Windows got me closer and closer to that Unix environment I longed for. 

Why now?

neuFund Manager is developed in Silverlight. I've tested the system on all flavors of Microsoft OSes and browsers. I've also tested on the system on fruit (um, that would be the Apple flavors) with no problems. Silverlight is also supposed to run under Linux using an environment called "Moonlight" which is a joint development between Novell, Microsoft, and the Open Software Communities (mono). I wanted to give this environment a try also.

Today, Linux is free. There are many versions that share the base core, but these are mostly flavors of the UI and installation variations. The two most popular flavors are Ubuntu, and KDE. I decided to install the Ubuntu flavor because it looked like the easiest, and I was just testing anyway.

Easy? That's not quite right. Effortless is more like it. Initially, I went to the Ubuntu web site and downloaded the ISO image of their OS onto a boot CD. I expected to have to boot to the Linux OS, perform some disk partition magic, setup my dual boot environment, perform the side-by-side install, download the drivers, and on, and on, and on.... You know, like installing a new OS.

What I ended up doing was clicking on a link on the Ubuntu web site for the auto-install under XP, and watched as the installation did all this for me. After one reboot, I had the option to boot under XP, or boot under Ubuntu Linux. "The hell you say!" I said.

That was it. After 20 years I was finally running Linux - with about 30 thousand free programs and utilities available to me. Even these free programs were easier to install than under Windows (thanks again to the efforts of the Ubuntu group and their installation standards).

My Opine

So, I played with Linux for a few days. This is what I came away with...

I like it, but there's not much to not like. The UI feels like Vista, only with a different set of display options. Because the Gnome UI (as well as KDE), has so many Themes available (which can be switched on the fly) the interface can be made to look just like Vista if you wish.

I wasn't blown away by the speed, but the speed of the OS was still good. It took just as long to boot as Vista. The Gnome UI did have some heavy memory requirements, but I had plenty of memory available (I do run Windows, after all). The OpenOffice Suite that comes with the install I've used before. It too is fine, not as good as MS Office, but good enough for almost anything I do.

There is a whole Linux World out there that is more geeky and technically superior (on average) than the Microsoft World. I don't get into the ubiquitous Flame Wars between Microsoft, Linux, and Apple - like I don't care much whether the hammer I buy from Sears is any better or worse than the one I buy from WalMart. They're tools to me. Still, the Microsoft tool fit better in my hand because I'm used them. I still think the software available for Windows is better, though I could easily use Linux for all development today. And the Linux software is, for the most part, free.

Almost all Web Sites run under Linux using the Apache Server. Almost all of them use MySQL for the database interaction. The installation for both of these is also very easy under Ubuntu, but only if you choose to the default setups. Customization and tweaking requires that you know what you're doing. In fact, there's also a big World under the hood of Linux that takes years to learn. For now, I'm sticking with Win 7 for my choice of OS and interface.

If you want a great OS on an older machine, however, try out Ubuntu. I promise - everything is going to be all right...

Post Note

The bad news is Moonlight isn't compatible with neuFundSL.

The current version of Silverlight, which neuFundSL uses, is Version 4. The current version of Moonlight only supports the APIs of Silverlight up to Version 3 (and some V.4). The .NET mono which Moonlight uses for compatibility, is also a few steps behind the latest versions as well. Because of this, neuFund Manager will not currently run on Linux - much to my dismay. With a little playing around, I now know what APIs are failing, and it might even be possible to fix the environment so it will run. At this time, I'm not putting in the effort. If I see any requests for neuFund to run under Linux I will reconsider.

So you want to be a Hedge Fund Manager?  You can be the equivalent as a Public neuFund Manager by taking your Private neuFund... well - Public. While the legal requirements are being worked out, the terminology may change, as well the current restrictions, but a Private neuFund Portfolio CAN be openly traded within the neuFund Manager System (not yet on the open market). To allow share of your neuFund to be traded by other neuFund Members, these procedures have been outlined...

To go Public

1. Fill out Personal Data and request to become Public Fund Manager. Data must be validated before the Member Type can be changed.
2. You must have at least one Private neuFund (hopefully with a successful trading history).
3. Issue Shares for the neuFund - the number of shares is up to the owner, but the minimum share value must be above 10 cents per share. The Share Value is the Fund Value divided by the number of shares issued. You can only issue shares for a neuFund once. You can later split shares.
4. Create Fee Schedule - the fee schedule is static once you go public. As a Public Fund Manager, you can create any number of Fee Shedules, but any neuFund that you own can only have a single Schedule assigned. Assign the Fee Schedule to the Fund before going public.
5. Offer shares for sale - up to 100% of the shares may be offered for sale, but it is good practice to reserve a percentage in case a later split is needed.
6. Request to go Public -
7. Upon validation, neuFund Type is changed to Public
8. As a Public neuFund Manger, you may create other Private neuFunds. They are treated as separate accounts, and any may later go Public upon following these same procedures.

1. Offer any amount of non-outstanding shares.
2. Un-purchased offered shares may be retracted at any time.

To Buy Back Shares

Shares may be bought back at any time. There is no required interaction with any Member. An equal percentage is bought back from all Members owning Shares of the neuFund. There must be enough Funds in the neuFund Account to purchase all shares. If less than 100% of all shares are bought back, there must be enough cash left in the neuFund account after the buy-back to process the next Schedule.

To Split Shares

There must be non-outstanding shares in the neuFund Account - otherwise there is no point in splitting the shares. The share split ratio must be less than 100-1. After the split, all Member owned shares will be devalued by the ratio, and the counts will be increased by the same ratio. Negative splits are not allowed.

The reason to split shares is to be able to off more shares for sale than are available from the initial neuFund Share Issue.

 To Change Fee Schedule

Public Funds cannot change their fee schedule. They must first go private by buying back all shares. Once Private, the fee schedule can be changed, and the procedure to again go Public must be followed.

To go Private

1. Buy back all outstanding shares
2. Retract all shares for sale
3. Request to go Private

neuFund Manager may still be operated as a private portfolio management system by any Member. By allowing neuFunds to be traded by Members within the system, neuFund Manager becomes a clearing house for successful neuFunds, and the system becomes an on-line Exchange - without the exorbitant fees usually associated with trading on-line.

Though neuFund Members may view Public Funds, the view is retricted. Transactions are not visible to anyone but the Fund Owner. Other Member Names owning the Fund are visible, but no detail information. The Fee Schedule is visible, but not editable by anyone execpt the Fund owner. For now, all Public Fund Summary information is viewable by all neuFund Members.

These new option add important views to determine how ownership has changed over time by Symbol, and how the Symbol price fluctuations have affected the Fund's value.

neuFund Update

New Activity Calendar

There are many ways to display Fund activity in neuFund Manger. The primary editors (Fund, Symbol, Member) all have transaction grids that allow you to view details of all transactions, sorted by date, type, etc.

Sometimes, however, you want to get an overview of ALL transaction activity in one view. The new Activity Calendar PlugIn provides this overview.  As a "System PlugIn" it is always available, and shows all transactions for any selected day, week, or month.

Usage

There are two panels in the PlugIn. On the left is a calendar which can be used to select the day, month, year for the detail panel view on the right. The detail panel view can show the month view for the selected date, with a short description of each transaction by day for the month. The Week View shows 7 days of transactions with more detail. The Day View shows a single day's transactions, with each transaction showing the Time, Transaction Type, Amounts, and Notes.

By clicking on a Date in the Month View, the View will "drill down" to the Week View for the Date selected. Likewise, clicking on a Date in the Month View will drill down to the Day View. The Views can also be changed using the Tabs on the Upper Left of the PlugIn.

 Benefit

Use the Activity Calendar to view transaction grouping across various time frames, as well as a quick reference to recent trading activity.

It's the beginning of the year, and we're already 1/10^th into the 21^st Century. This seems like a good time for predictions...

It's not easy to make technological predictions more than a few years into the future. Like science fiction, we can only extrapolate from what we have now. What we will have, as far as technology, 10 years from now, well... hasn't been invented yet. I'd like to do some of that inventing, if only theoretically...

I've Got the Power!

Here's an easy one: Smart phones are getting bigger, faster, and more powerful. Laptops are getting smaller, faster, and increasingly cumbersome. What's stopping them from being the same thing?

It's the power. You might think the difference between smartphones and laptops are the size of the screen and keyboard, but those factors are, for the most part, irrelevant. Screens can be made as small or as large as you wish, as can QWERTY keyboards. Soon, your smartphone will be able to "plug in" any I/O device you can dream up, including speakers, keyboards, microphones, and monitors. Most likely that connection will be wireless.  When this happens, what you consider a phone today, will be more like tiny laptop you carry around with you wherever you go and you'll use whatever I/O devices that are available.

The main obstacle for this device irrelevance is the availability of portable power connections. Smartphones are getting more powerful, but the speed is limited by the processor's power consumption, not the size. That's why you can have 4 GHz processors on your home PC, but not on your smartphone (yet). Laptops support the faster processors, but only because they have bigger batteries.

There will be gradual innovations with battery storage that will their size and increase their energy storage capacity. This innovation will be slow coming. Given existing CPU technology, in order for your phone to be as powerful as your PC, you'll still have to plug in to some power outlet.

In the next few years, however, dynamic power CPUs will start to emerge. These will "sense" the existing power availability, and adjust their consumption/speed accordingly. While at the bistro, you may get 1-2 GHz. In the car, you can plug-in and get 2-3 GHz. At the home or office... zoom-zip-pow! Full power.

At that point there will be no difference in processing speed between your PC, laptop, and smartphone. 

Expanding Horizons

Wasn't it cool when your phone got a color LCD? Whoopee! Now your contact list could be displayed in 4 colors! That response was similar to what PC users experienced in the 1980's when we transitioned from monochrome monitors though CGA, EGA, VGA, XGA and on, and on, and on...

Today we don't need any more colors. We already have the capability to do photo-realistic displays in higher and higher resolutions. It's the size that matters now. Just as televisions went from 19 inch to 72 inch almost overnight, computer monitors grew in size. You don't want to sit at your desk and work on a spreadsheet with a 72 inch display two feet from your eye-glasses, but multiple monitors in sizes ranging from 15" to 32" are now the norm.  Where will future-tech take this?

There are two paths innovation may take us. One path will lead to dynamically sizable displays. These will allow you to physically expand or reduce the size of the monitor you're looking at. Ultimately, you will be able to reduce the display to the 2x4 inch display you're used to on your current smartphone, then pull at the edges to make the same display as big as your three 32" multi-monitors at your desk. Same monitor, same resolution, the size is up to you. Here again, power availability will be a limiting factor, but resolution scalability is right around the corner.

The other path display resolution may take will make Imax seem passé. How about full horizon visibility? This can only be done if you fake your senses into thinking the horizon and the monitor are the same thing. Yeah, your computer display will be worn on your eye-glasses.

This technology is already available, although currently these glasses are the size of a motorcycle helmet and the resolution isn't as high as your current PC monitor. It will get better. Soon, you will be able to put on a pair of glasses not much different than reading glasses are today, and with the flip of a power switch transform your view into a 360 degree environment of applications, images and videos. Built in speakers and microphones are a given.

Our children's children will think it ridiculous that we ever sat in front of a little monitor to watch TV or movies. Their "heads-up" displays will enable them to walk through their movies in three dimensions.

What of the Software?

When the device you hookup to your phone/laptop/PC thingy becomes irrelevant, what will the software look like? Let's extrapolate from the ubiquitous MS Office...

In the realm of word processor/spreadsheet/data applications, we're about done with feature creep. Few ever use even half of the functionality built into MS Office. Innovations like the Ribbon and app-sharing are noteworthy, but not Earth-shattering. Furthermore, we've come to expect that our "work" will be available whether we're at Starbucks, the beach, or the office. That's not new.

Once again, software will have to keep pace with the hardware. If the displays are to be dynamic, so will the software need to "sense" what devices are available, and scale just as dynamically.

Can you imagine using MS Word on your 2"x4" smartphone display? You will. Soon, all software interfaces will be able to adjust according to size and display preferences. The available options in those interfaces will be up to you, and will also change based on past use. Software will know where you are, what you're doing, and how you did that task recently. How you interact with the options available to you will be as dynamic as your display.

Reality Bites (and chews, and swallows...)

Ok, so I've jumped ahead a decade or so. I've taken a few hypothetical steps into the near future. Why not take a walk around the block...

In the past I worked on software for manufacturing. My Xfactory software was fairly well received as a Manufacturing Execution System, and I also did a fair amount of work on what's called HMI Systems (Human Machine Interfaces).

The early versions of this type of software allowed plant operators to see a visual representation of real-world "live" equipment on their computer screens. This started out with simple stuff like a red button if the equipment was "off", and a green button if the equipment was "on". This evolved into a simple 2-dimensional representation of what that equipment actually looked like. A water tank with an open/close valve, kinda looked like a water tank on the computer screen. Animation was added to show the valve actually opening and closing. Today, that tank can be displayed in simulated 3 dimensions, almost photo realistically. Real-world equipment sends data to the computers that tell their current state/status and the monitors display them as they look. That's state of the art. Let's go for that walk.

Remember those glasses you can put on to walk into your children's children's movie in 3-dimensions? You will also be able to walk through a real-world manufacturing plant. You'll be able to fly through lines of robotic arms piecing together a variety of appliances in real-time, and see visually what each arm is making as it makes it. You'll be able to walk through the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant, and sink through the cement floor to view the radioactive uranium rods as they heat up and cool down. You'll also be able to take a lunch-break, and stroll through the coliseum in Rome... you pick the historical date.

You see, in this future, all devices that can communicate, will do so in an ever-increasing web of data. The visual representation of that data will be ever-increasingly realistic. You'll not get all the sensory input as if you were actually there... but close. Think of the walks you'll be able to take then.

neuFund SL loads faster now.

That's pretty much the only news, and to most users the response will be, "That's nice."

It is nice that your on-line applications show up on your screen before you finish sipping the cup of coffee in the morning. Responsiveness is a feature that you don't pay much attention because it's expected. That is, of course, unless it's not there.

That isn't the case with some Desktop programs. If you click on your favorite full-featured photo editor (I won't mention any names but think "Photo" while you're "Shopping") you can finish that sip of coffee, and get a refill before the application is loaded and ready to use.

That's because, traditionally, Desktop programs did stuff, and Browser Pages just showed stuff. Destop programs did more, so there is more to load. This has changed with Java, Flex and Silverlight. Browser Pages now do stuff too; but they are expected to load fast just the same.

Believe it or not, loading times are more important to old-time programmers than you might think. The time it takes to load a program is one of the last reflections of a required skill left over from when they were constrained by 640k (or 8K chunks if you go further back in time). Back then it was a necessity that code was small, fast and responsive on a 6 MHz computer. Today, computers have gigabytes of memory, terabytes of storage, and speeds are measured in gigahertz and MFLOPs - sometimes on massively parallel processors and GPUs. Sloppy, bloated code runs faster than ever, so the only leftover measurement of size/speed (and good programming, hopefully) is how long it takes to load across your Internet connection.

So please allow me to say this one more time...

neuFundSL loads faster now.

This week I broke up the main program into dynamically loaded modules with a very much smaller initial loading kernel. Translation: neuFund SL shows up in half the time within the browser.

Security concerns prohibit me from telling how I managed to dynamically load the program parts while keeping the internal security checks intact. I wish I could because it's cool, but that part is only important to other programmers.

There are two situations in all spy movies that always amuse me. The first is the red LED count down timer on hidden bombs. This is amusing because the brilliant criminal, bent on destroying something using his cleverly crafted mechanism which took a great deal of time to construct, decided to spend some extra time adding a display to tell the good guy exactly when it is going to boom. Snip the wire to the countdown display, and the world is saved (usually when the countdown gets to 3-2-1).

Back in the old, old, movies, the bomb was black and round and had a long fuse burning from the top.  Of course, real bombs don't look like this anymore, nor do they have red LED timers on them. These effects are only added for suspense in the movies.

The second amusing situation is the password guess. It goes like this:

The spy has moments to break into the bad guy's computer, but it is password protected. Knowing something about the soon-to-be ill-fated criminal, the super spy tries to guess the password, but oops - it's wrong. He guesses again. Wrong. A light goes off in his head, and the third time he smiles, types a stupid phrase and BINGO, he has access to all the world-destruction plans the criminal ever contemplated. The world is saved and it only took three tries.

Is this closer to reality? Can you guess a password in three tries? Not really, but passwords can be hacked.

"Guessing" passwords is best left to computers. There are public domain programs floating about the inter-tubes which will go through every combination of letters, numbers, and symbols one at a time until the correct password is found. Some are so sophisticated they will use parallel processing across networks of processors to save time. It is time that is the issue.

Given enough time, all combinations of characters can be found. If the password has less than five characters, it could take a matter of hours. The more characters the password has (and the more numbers and symbols) the amount of time necessary to cover all combinations grows exponentially to the point where it could take months (or years) to come across the right sequence.

This isn't science-fiction, nor in the realm of spy-movies - this is real world. Your password "FIDO" that you've been using since 1994 is not secure - and neither is your data once the password is found.

Many well written login interfaces don't let you guess more than a few times before locking you out for a period of time. This is a good deterrent. A better one is choosing a stronger password.

"Password Strength" is a measure of how difficult it is to "guess" the combination of characters. The stronger the password, the harder it is to crack. The measurement is a little complex, but usually it can be thought of from 1 to 10 (1 being the weakest, 10 the strongest).

This weekend I changed the New Member sign-up page to require password strength of at least 5 for New Members, and added a graphic display of strength as you enter the password.

Instead of going through all of the rules for passwords, here are some quick tips:

  1. Use at least 6 characters (the more the merrier).

   2. Use a combination of letters (a-z), at least one Upper-case letter (A-Z) and at least one symbol (., #, @, !, etc.).

   3. Don't use your ID or name in the password.

   4. Avoid words that you can look up in the dictionary.

   5. Avoid repeating and progressive sequences (aaa, 123).

   6. Don't use the same password for every site or program you log into.

 By following these tips, you can log into neuFund with a password strength of at least 5. This way, it will take that super-spy more than three tries to gain access to your account.