Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Cuphacker - salty bits beta released

Have sailing footage? Have a wtp2 full off data? Have you ever watched a film with vlc (videolan.org) player. Then listen to this.
Cuphacker has a tool where you can watch your sailing video with selected wtp2 data overlaid and all for free.

Get it here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/saltybits/

It's still beta, updates will follow also a OSX version will be released. Comments / problems contact me here: cuph4cker@gmail.com

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

OTS or DIY ?

"Off the shelf" OTS or "Do it yourself" DIY when it comes to software engineering in teams the DIY approach is usually the one followed. Some poor guy/gal develops some tool that grows and grows over the duration of the campaign and becomes a dependable tool for the team to do whatever... (sail vision, management, performance, construction.....).

Great one would think, this is EXACTLY what we need. Well maybe but not really. The reality shows different:

- The people designing this mostly don't have great knowledge about software engineering / database modeling, or system resource management -> The program doesnt scale, database models can't grow,

- Nothing will be documented so when the person leaves the project, the software becomes usless.

With the money and time invested these people trying at their best to solve a problem, one has to understand that this is not cheaper. At the end the product is more expensive, less reliable and there is no investment protection because of the probability that if the designer leaves the program becomes unusable/changeable.

OTS "Off the shelf" will most likly do whatever one is looking for. Lets be honest what does a team need to do with data, it does data mining and charts/graphics from that, this all needs to be fast and easy to use. Correlate it with whatever boat setup/weather... it's not really rocket science.

Conclusion is that maybe an OTS solution is more expensive, but at least there is company behind it that will hopefully be there in 3-4 years, and they do the development, not someone in the team, there is a support hotline and all the other features that come along when one buys software.

So for whatever project a DYI is on the table one should look at the size of the tool and then maybe weigh in the OTS solution aswell.

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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Why should they care? Risk Assessment for a Cup Team

no related, but funny :-)

Why should they care? The teams. What is the hype all about? We are all friends, aren't we?

Ok lets draw a picture here


  • 5-6 Teams (each spending 30-75 million euro)
  • Most probably half of the staff have worked with numerous people from other competitors
  • Depending on the format/venues all competitors will be in a short proximity to eachother
  • New boat need to hit the water in less and 1.5 years, a boat never has been constructed before. Putting a great pressure on designers and builders to get it pretty right the first time. Solve problems they don't even know about yet....
So what risks is upcoming team exposed to?

Biggest risk 'confidentiality'!

  • How do I keep cell phone cameras out of my boat building shed without killing the cooperate climate?
  • How do I run a tool like Skype that is highly functional and adapted by so many in a cooperate secure way. Upps just dragged and dropped my new wing profile to the wrong contact?
  • Is it really cheaper to tell everyone to bring along their own laptop and work from it?

3 Questions alot of answers possible.

1. Problem: Cell phone cameras. It takes 15 sec to take a high definition picture with a Iphone4 and send it via email to a outside party, post it on facebook, or even better straight to an sailing anarchy forum! Solution, well my not buy disposable cell phones for all the builders. The ones without cameras of course! Ban cameras and keep the builders connected to the outside world. (hence these poor guys will spend the next 4mnt straight in the shed building....)

2. Problem: Skype, flexible, fast, cheap and super handy. A corporate nightmare! Files are dragged and dropped onto a contact and sent over an encrypted channel to the other person. No logs, no way to kill it. How do I keep this tool running without running the risk of the just fired aero dynamic specialist that didn't seem to be as good as we thought to just drag and drop the entire plan folder to someone willing to give him a new job? Solution... Many but think separation of duties...

3. Problem: We are a small team we will save money and tell everyone to just bring their own computers. That will save money. Really? Small team, ok small salaries, so everyone thinks what they create belongs to them because they are  underpaid, so kiss the intellectual property goodbye.
Like in any team constellation, its only as strong as its weakest link! So do you really want to let the security of your data and reliability of systems depend on how a sailmaker, sailor or boatbuilder setups his system and treats it. (I am not saying they are not able to do so, but would you let me recut a 3DL sail?). Solution: Today computer run for less then 400 euros, some netbooks are 260euros.. . If the team owns them, then the team has the right to say how they are run and treated. An investment that will pay out in the long run.

Of course there is no 100% security, but getting things setup right from the beginning is cheaper and easier then trying to fix it later. And also one has to trust one another. But as a famous sailor once said. It's a Gentlemans game thats why you need be really careful who you trust.
If someone spends 50 Million on a campaign, its not gonna hurt him to pay a eastern script kiddie 5000 USD to hack the hotmail account of the CFD designer of the other team. Protocol and Rule69 back and forth, proofing that Chen, Sergei or let call him Ken received funds and did break the law is not gonna happen.

Think about it! how much it it be worth (just in time) for team C to know what teams B 2nd wing will look like? Call me paranoid, if 50% is true someone is in trouble.

be afraid, very afraid.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

cuphacker - salty bits and bytes

The Americas Cup, sailings more precious trophy. You win it, you own it. And if you are smart you might make a nice sum of money with it as well. The 34th America's Cup has introduced a new era into this legendary competition. 72foot wing powered multihulls screaming down a race course for the search of success.
This blog will be monitoring the world of the 0s and 1s of this competition. Computer Technology has definitely made its hard path into this competition, salt water and computer dont go well. Cuphacker predicts that this edition the electronic and computer side of a campaign will pay a even more important role then ever. Therefor we should have plenty of material to chat about.

Stay tuned.