text:
|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Oct 4, 2005
|Filing date
|Aug 22, 2002
|Priority date
|Aug 22, 2002
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Thomas Lumpp, Juergen Schneider, Wolfgang Kuechlin, Carsten Sinz
|Original Assignee
|International Business Machines Corporation
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (13), Non-Patent Citations (14), Referenced by (19), Classifications (8), Legal Events (3)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and device for automatically testing the correctness of a control system. Particularly, the present invention relates to a method and device for verifying a set of rules in a rule-based expert system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of knowledge bases as components within safety or business critical systems has become more and more widespread during the 90s, and has attracted renewed attention in agent based intelligent web-applications. A very common technique to store knowledge in these systems is via rules. This form of expressing knowledge has—amongst others—the advantage that it employs a representation that resembles the way experts tend to express most of their problem solving techniques, namely by situation-action rules.
Most of today's expert systems are rule-based. They consist of a set of condition-action rules, which—taken together—define the overall behavior of the system. Each single rule describes a situation in which a certain action has to take place. For example, in an expert system for E-mail processing, a rule may say that whenever a message for user A is received with a subject containing the word W, it is forwarded to mailbox M on system S.
Small expert systems consisting of just a few dozen of rules and maintained by only one person may well be fully understood without too much effort. But as the number of rules increases, the complexity of the whole system increases disproportionately. Multiple persons working together on the same rule base aggravate this effect. This weighs even more as it is often impossible to partition the rule set into mutually independent groups of rules. The resulting dependencies may lead to unintended behavior, for example, by simultaneously activating two rules with contradictory actions. In such situations, the expert system may enter a loop characterized by oscillation between two or more computation states, which ultimately results in a non-terminating computation.
Thus, in such a case, the expert system gets hung up and does not produce any further answers. Clearly, this has to be avoided, especially when the expert system is used as a component within a safety or business critical computer system.
Due to the high complexity there is a strong potential for errors during the generation and maintenance of rules. In this patent we present a solution to a very common problem of expert systems: the existence of overlapping rules or inconsistently interacting rules, which lead to program cycles or loops. With increasing size of the rule base the detection and avoidance of such faults becomes dramatically harder, and thus has to be handled systematically.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,063,132 by William Frantz DeCamp et. al., assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., US, filed Jun. 26, 1998, issued May 16, 2000, "Method for verifying design rule checking software", design rules for VLSIchip design are verified by repeatedly running predefined checks on these rules. This is only applicable to IC (integrated circuit) design rules, there is no check for consistency of rule systems mentioned.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,559,718 by Allen Baisuck et. al., assigned to Cadence Design Systems, Inc., San Jose, Calif., US, filed Apr. 28, 1994, issued Sep. 24, 1996, "System and method for model-based verification of local design rules", shows a method to verify properties of ICs composed of different cells, each described by rules of a design model. It checks dependencies between cells, and the cells itself. However, the method is not applicable to rule-based expert systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,737 by Kyou Suzuki, assigned to NEC Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, filed Sep. 18, 1997, issued Jun. 20, 2000, "Design rule check method", relates to detection of violation of design rules in IC design, including overlapping rule violations. However, the subject matter is applicable to IC design only, not to general expert system rule bases.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,590 by Christopher H. Jolly, assigned to General Electric Company, Schenectady, N.Y., US, filed Jul. 1, 1994, Jan. 7, 1997, "Method for efficiently detecting covered rules in a knowledge base", teaches a way of detecting of useless rules in a knowledge base. However, no detection of infinite computations is taught, hence, it refers to a different class of errors.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,751,595 by Harry John Beatty et. al., assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., US, filed Mar. 14, 1996, issued May 12, 1998, "Method for building and verifying authenticity of a rule system", shows a method to check for unauthorized modification of rule base. However, a detection of errors within rule base is not disclosed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,670 by Robert Anthony Weida et. al., assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., US, filed Dec. 30, 1998, issued Aug. 22, 2000, "Checking and enabling database updates with a dynamic, multi-modal, rule based system", describes an update mechanism for databases employing rules. However, no error checking of dynamic aspect of rule system is taught.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,739 by Peter Vincent Homeier, Philadelphia, Pa., filed Apr. 25, 1997, issued Oct. 5, 1999, "Method for verifying the total correctness of a program with mutually recursive procedures", discloses a verification method for procedural programs by building verification conditions based on procedure call graph. However, the discloses method is not applicable to rule bases.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,946 by Tai An Ly et. al., assigned to O-IN Design Automation, San Jose, Calif., US, filed Oct. 20, 1997, issued Jan. 16, 2001, "Method for automatically generating checkers for finding functional defects in a description of a circuit", descriptions of IC functionality ("checkers") are automatically generated in order to find errors. This is not applicable to rule bases.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,752 by Helge Knudsen et. al., assigned to Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale, Calif., US, filed Mar. 11, 1993, issued Jan. 21, 1997, "System for creating, editing, displaying, and executing rules-based programming language rules having action part subsets for both true and false evaluation of the conditional part", relates to maintenance of rule systems. However, there is no method for error detection within rule system described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,228,116 by Larry R. Harris, assigned to Aicorp., Inc., Waltham, Mass., US, filed May 17, 1991, issued Jul. 13, 1993, "Knowledge base management system" relates to checking of if-conditions in (COBOL-)programs using an expert system, with rules stored in external data base. However, there is no error detection within rule base.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,250 by Alan Trefler, assigned to Pegasystems Inc., Cambridge, Mass., US, filed Jun. 19, 1996, issued Oct. 20, 1998, "Rules bases and methods of access thereof", relates to a special kind of expert system allowing inheritance of facts. There is no error detection involved.
Grumberg, O., Francez, N., and Makowsky, J. A., "A Proof Rule for Fair Termination of Guarded Commands", Information and Control 66(1/2):83-102, 1985. This paper describes a highly abstract method to detect non-termination of rule-based programs. The method relies on the generation of a well-founded partial ordering (W, Table 1), but there is no algorithm given for its computation.
Gamble, R. F., Roman, G.-C., Ball, W. E., and Cunningham, H. C., "Applying Formal Verification Methods to Rule-based Programs," International Journal of Expert Systems: Research and Applications 7(3):203-237, 1994.
Preece, A. D., Grossner, C., and Radhakrishnan, T., "Validating Dynamic Properties of Rule-Based Systems", International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 44(2):145-169, 1996. Here, a method to check dynamic properties of rule-based systems is presented. It generates an execution graph and examines paths in this graph that correspond to possible program runs. However, only a fraction of possible runs can be covered in reasonable time. Therefore the method cannot, e.g., guarantee the absence of loops.
Thomas J. Laffey, Walton A. Perkins, Deanne Pecora and Tin A. Nguyen, "Knowledge Base Verification" A1 Magazine, AAAI Press, Summer 1987, 69-75.
The examples above showed that a correct definition and the maintenance of rule-based expert systems are hard and error-prone. Considering all possible cases one by one is prohibitive as, for example, a rule set with only 25 (binary) variables generates over 33 million theoretically possible combinations. Therefore, a systematic and automatic methodology has to be applied.
Further related references cited in the System Automation (SA) example hereinafter are as follows:
[GBOO] S. Garone and N. Buck. Capturing, Reusing, and Applying Knowledge for Competitive Advantage: Computer Associate's Aion. International Data Corporation, 2000. IDC White Paper.
[HA99] J. Horl and B. K. Aichernig. Formal specification of a voice communication system used in air traffic control: An industrial application of light-weight formal methods using VDM++. In FM'99-Formal Methods, Vol. II, volume 1709 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 1868-1868. Springer, 1999.
[Har84] D. Harel. Dynamic logic. In D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner editors, Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume II: Extensions of Classical Logic, pages 507-544. Kluwer, 1984.
[HS82] D. Harel and R. Sherman R. Sherman. Looping vs. Repeating in dynamic logic. Information and Control, 55(1-3):175-192, 1982.
[KaiOl] A. Kaiser. A SAT-based prepositional prover for consistency checking of automotive product data. Technical report, Wilhelm-Schickard-Institut fur Informatik, Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tubingen, Sand 13, 72076 Tubingen, Germany, 2001. Technical Report WSI-2001-16.
[KMS96] H. Kautz. D. McAllester, and B. Selman. Encoding plans in prepositional logic. In Proc. Fifth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'96), pages 374-384, Cambridge, Mass., November 1996, Morgan Kaufmann.
[SGBOO] S. Spreeuwenberg/, R. Gerrits, and M. Boekenoogen. VALENS: A Knowledge Based Tool to Validate and Verify an Aion Knowledge Base. In ECAI 2000, 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 731-735. IDS Press, 2000.
[Som98] F. Somenzl. CUDD: CU Decision Diagram Package, Release 2.3.0. University of Colorado, Boulder, 1998. Available at http://vlsi.colorado.edu/fabio.
[Str82] R. S. Streett. Propositional dynamic logic of looping and converse is elementarily decidable, Information and Control, 54(1/2): 121-141, 1982.
Starting from this, the object of the present invention is to provide a method and a device for automatically verifying a set of rules in a rule-based expert system.
The foregoing object is achieved by a method and a system as laid out in the independent claims. Further advantageous embodiments of the present invention are described in the sub claims and are taught in the following description.
According to the present invention a method and a device is provided for verifying a set of rules in a rule-based expert system. First, a set of rules is retrieved from an expert system and one or more logical expressions are provided specifying cases of faulty behavior of said expert system. Then, an automatic theorem prover is executed in order to verify of whether or not the retrieved set of rules fulfill the provided one or more logical expressions. Subsequently, if yes, a message is generated indicating the existence of a case of faulty behavior and, if no, a message is generated indicating the correctness of said set of rules.
In one embodiment the present invention may be used to verify non-looping properties of programs implemented as rule-based expert systems. The method and device according to the present invention detects conditions under which the expert system enters erroneous infinite program loops, which lead to non-terminating or oscillating computations, or otherwise proves the absence of such conditions. The automatic procedure taught by the present invention may also give advice on how to correct these errors.
The present invention may be used with a wide variety of expert systems. However, preferably, the expert system to be verified according to the subject matter of the present invention consists of condition-action rules (IF-THEN-statements), whereby the conditions are logical expressions (formulas of a propositional finite domain logic), and the actions modify the value of a single variable which in turn can be part of other logical expressions. There may be additional (external) variables not controlled by the expert system, and each rule may have an associated evaluation priority.
Two short examples are meant to visualize the difficulties occurring when using rule-based expert systems. Both of them describe parts of a simplified room (climate) controller that, e.g., drives roller blinds up and down, or opens and closes windows based on certain environmental conditions.
In the first example a window is opened and closed, depending on room temperature and weather condition (cf. Rule Set 1). The expert system consists of two rules, which define that the window is opened when the temperature is higher than 30� C., and closed when it is raining. It is obvious that this rule set does not define a correct behavior when at the same time the temperature is over 30� C. and it is raining. Both actions of opening and closing the window are constantly activated and lead to a looping program behavior.
Rule Set 1:
An error in such a simple arrangement such as the exemplification above may easily be detected. However, the subject matter of the present invention provides a way to automatically identifies the case
temp>30, raining=true,
and moreover shows that this is the only case in which a loop can occur.
With the next example, in which "|" denotes logical OR, and "&" denotes logical AND, (cf. Rule Set 2) it becomes apparent that a growing number of rules increases the need for an method and device for verifying a set of rules in a rule-based expert system.
Rule Set 2.
In this case, it is not clear at first glance whether or not a problematic case exists. However, there is one for temp>30, airCondition=off, raining=true, sunshine=true, rollerBlind=up and fireAlarm=false. In this case an erroneous loop behavior occurs.
With these simple examples it should become apparent that for a complex rule base consisting of dozens or hundreds of rules an automatic error detection is needed. In addition to this, rule sets occurring in practice typically contain rules where output variables of the THEN-statement are also used as input variables of the IF-statement. For instance, it is assume that the sun never shines when it is raining. Therefore, the additional rule
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention the set of rules is converted from the expert system's format into logical expressions. Additionally, multi-valued logic variables my be converted into two-valued logic variables.
As mentioned above the set of rules may be basically formed by a series of IF-THEN-statements and the action part of the IF-THEN-statement may be transformed into a logical expression. In addition said one or more logical expressions specifying cases of faulty behavior may be derived from one or more abstract definitions of erroneous scenarios, such as logical expressions specifying rule-overlaps and/or inconsistently interacting rules and/or providing a logical expression specifying overlapping IF-statements of rules with the same variable in the THEN-statement and/or providing a logical expression specifying inconsistently interacting rules in the sense that the THEN-statement of one rule activates the IF-statement of another rule and vice versa.
Preferably, deriving said one or more logical expressions specifying cases of faulty behavior from one or more abstract definitions of erroneous scenarios includes taking into account the set of rules retrieved from the expert system.
Advantageously, the result provided by said automatic theorem prover gets simplified, for example, by removing irrelevant variables.
It is acknowledged that the concept of the present invention may also be implemented in a device for verifying a set of rules in a rule-based expert system or even a computer system containing a rule-based expert system and such a device. Advantageously, it could be ensured that changes applied to the set of rules are automatically verified in order to ensure a correct behavior.
Hence, the method and device according to the present invention allows the detection of errors in the expert system's rule base, such as errors that provoke infinite program loops. Since in the present setting all non-terminating computations of the expert system arise as infinite program loops, the method of the present invention advantageously covers all possible kinds of non-termination. Compared with other quality assurance procedures like testing, this method has the major advantage to encompass all possibly emerging situations, not only those covered by the generated test patterns. In case the method indicates the absence of loops, this statement has the quality of a rigorous mathematical proof, whereas testing can only guarantee this property for the—often small—fraction of explicitly considered cases.
Furthermore, providing help for correcting the reported errors is a significant part of the applied methodology. The automatic simplification of error conditions makes the error cases easier to understand for persons maintaining the expert system's rule base.
Thus, major advantages of the subject matter of the present invention are the following: It covers a broad class of errors that occur in the design and maintenance of rule-based expert systems (loops, non-termination). It detects loops without misses, i.e., a complete coverage of all cases is guaranteed and correcting of errors gets simplified due to the automatic analysis.
The above, as well as additional objectives, features and advantages of the present invention, will be apparent in the following detailed written description.
The novel features of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objectives, and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
With reference now to
The expert system 110 based on one or more set of rules 112, 114, whereby one set of rule may also consist of all rules provided by the expert system 110. It may be implemented as a computer program or as part of an apparatus for controlling electrical devices such as a climate control system or a complex computer system comprising database, storage, execution units and networks. One or more logical expressions 116, 117 and one or more descriptions of erroneous scenarios 118, 119 are provided. The logical expressions 116, 117 and the erroneous scenarios 118, 119 may be formed by a text file that may follow a predetermined standard, such as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) based format.
The device 100 may also be implemented in hardware or software and is configured to verify the set of rules 112, 114 in the rule-based expert system 110. It further comprises means 120 for retrieving the set of rules 112, 114 from the expert system 110, means 122 for providing one or more logical expressions 116, 117 specifying cases of faulty behavior of said expert system, an automatic theorem prover 130 for verifying of whether or not the retrieved set of rules fulfill the provided one or more logical expressions and means 140 for generating a message, whereby said means for generating a message is configured to generate a message indicating the existence of a case of faulty behavior and a message indicating the correctness of said set of rules depending on a result generated by said automatic theorem prover 130.
In a preferred embodiment the device 100 further comprises means 150 for converting the set of rules 112, 114 from the expert system's format into logical expressions.
Preferably, the device is further equipped with means 160 for deriving said one or more logical expressions 116, 117 specifying cases of faulty behavior from one or more abstract definitions of erroneous scenarios 118, 119.
In a further preferred embodiment the device further comprises means 170 for simplifying the result provided by said automatic theorem prover 130.
In principal a single rule of the set of rules 112, 114 consists of two parts, where the IF-statement is typically a logical expression. Today, there is an established mathematical theory for the computation and evaluation of such logical formulas.
A lot of different languages and logic have been developed to reason, e.g. about universally valid facts (propositional logic), about properties of computer hardware (computational tree logic) or about simple abstract computer programs (dynamic logic). Moreover, for many logic algorithms and computer programs (so-called automatic theorem provers, ATPs) have been developed to automatically find out whether or not a given formula is true. Mathematicians themselves use these automatic theorem provers in order to prove results in their field mainly, but in principle all concrete systems that can be described by purely logical means can be handled by these ATP programs.
According to the subject matter of the present invention an automatic theorem prover (also in the form of a model checker, a satisfyability checker or as binary decision diagrams) is employed for fast, automatic and systematic loop error detection in rule-based expert systems.
With reference to
First, a set of rules is retrieved from an expert system (block 202) and one or more logical expressions are provided specifying cases of faulty behavior of said expert system (block 204). It is acknowledged that the order of the steps depicted in blocks 202 and 204 does not matter. It could also be opposite or both actions may occur concurrently. Then, an automatic theorem prover is executed (block 206). Followed by a decision step in which it is verified of whether or not the retrieved set of rules fulfill the provided one or more logical expressions (block 208). If yes, a message is generated indicating the existence of a case of faulty behavior (block 210) and, if no, a message is generated indicating the correctness of said set of rules (block 212).
Now with reference to
Rules are retrieved from or somehow provided by an expert system (block 302). This may include an automatic language conversion (block 304) from the expert system's language into the prover's logic language (e.g. propositional logic).
The language used to define rules in the expert system may differ with respect to syntax and semantics considerably from pure logical languages, which are used as input for the automatic theorem prover. Therefore as a first step a language conversion may be employed that translates all the rules of the expert system into the logic's language, and considers the rule execution and evaluation schema of the expert system (block 304). Of course, a prover could also be implemented that uses the expert system's language directly.
Part of this conversion may be an adaptation of variables, e.g. from multi-valued variables (like variables with enumeration types in Pascal, C++, Java) to binary-valued (Boolean) variables (block 306). The conversion may also proceed by an additional step, which converts the expert system language into an intermediate language, e.g. propositional dynamic logic, by transforming the action part of the IF-THEN-statement into a logical expression (block 308). This step generates as output the logical content of the rule base and the expert system program.
With reference now to
The logical expressions are provided or otherwise gathered that specify faulty behavior (block 402). This may include automatic looping property generation.
Before a rule set can be validated, additional logical expressions are generated which can be used to examine specific loop check conditions (LCCs) of the rule set (block 404). An LCC is a logical expression that checks for a scenario in which the expert system's program could loop. An LCC is true in all those situations where a loop occurs. It consists of all rules or a subset of the rules of the expert system and additional logical expressions describing a particular test scenario. Depending on the problem description there may be only one or a whole set of LCCs, and all LCCs taken together cover all possible scenarios. Of course, these LCCs have to be generated automatically, which is done in the looping property generation step.
Depending on the implementation of the expert system there might be different possible situations in which interactions between rules can cause unintended loops. One example for this is overlapping IF-statements of rules with the same variable in the THEN-statement (block 407), as is the case in Rule Set 1 above. Here both conditions (temp>30, raining=true) can occur at the same time causing the loop error by overlap. Another example is to determine inconsistently interacting rules (block 408).
Inconsistently interacting rules may be detected by looking for one variable in the sense that the THEN-statement of one rule activates the IF-statement of another rule and vice versa. Yet another example is to check for loops involving rules containing two or more different variables in their THEN-statements (block 409).
As already mentioned, there are a lot of other different situations to check for, which are all covered by this method as long as LCCs can be generated for the situation. Especially, the opposite of rule overlaps, namely the case that no rule at all is activated for one variable, can also be modeled by LCCs.
With growing size of the rule set of the expert system the LCC generation should be performed automatically. It is even possible to have a specialized language for the description of loop error situations. This language would allow the abstract definition of possible loop error scenarios, which are taken as base for the generation of the LCCs from the expert system rule set.
As already explained with reference to
In this step the LCCs are provided as input for the automatic theorem prover, and are sequentially checked. Algorithms providing suitable automatic theorem proving capabilities include, among others, the Davis-Putnam procedure, binary decision diagrams (BDDs), resolution, and model checking.
Finally, with reference to
The prover generates for each LCC the information whether a loop can occur for the situations described by the LCC (block 502). This output may vary in the amount of information that is given to the user. One possibility is that it merely gives a yes/no-answer. Another possibility could be an explicit list of possible variable combinations under which the loop occurs, or even a logical formula describing this list.
Advantageously, the results may be simplified (block 504).
In many cases the information given by the automatic theorem prover may be simplified using existing standard techniques from mathematical logic. For example, a list of variable combinations may be extensively long and can be dramatically simplified by removing irrelevant variables (block 506). Irrelevant variables can be those that are not contained in the rules under investigation. Another example is logical simplifications of formulas describing a looping scenario (e.g. by BDD-based abstraction or similar techniques).
The present invention can be realized in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. Any kind of computer system—or other apparatus adapted for carrying out the methods described herein—is suited. A typical combination of hardware and software could be a general-purpose computer system with a computer program that, when being loaded and executed, controls the computer system such that it carries out the methods described herein. The present invention can also be embedded in a computer program product, which comprises all the features enabling the implementation of the methods described herein, and which—when loaded in a computer system—is able to carry out these methods.
Computer program means or computer program in the present context mean any expression, in any language, code or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a system having an information processing capability to perform a particular function either directly or after either or both of the following a) conversion to another language, code or notation; b) reproduction in a different material form.
System Automation (SA) Example
The basic idea behind SA is to fully automate a computer center and to increase the availability and reliability of business applications. It allows to define complex software environments in which applications are automatically started, stopped, and supervised during runtime. In the case of an application or system failure, SA can react immediately and solve the problem by restarting the application or, if this is not possible any more, restart it on another system in the cluster. SA provides functionality like grouping which allows to automate a collection of applications as one logical unit. Furthermore, dependency management allows the definition of start and stop relationships, for example start A before B.
For a better understanding of SA, let us consider a simplified flight reservation system that can be used by hundreds of users in parallel. Such an application consists of various functional components: a database that stores information about flight schedules, reservations, and billing; a transaction management system which guarantees overall data consistency; a network infrastructure with different protocol stacks and firewalls; a web server environment for the user interface; and possibly further system dependent components. To model this application in SA, we define a top level group "flight reservation" which has each of the functional components as a member. Since the functional components themselves consist of various applications these are also each defined as groups.
Besides, most of the applications have start and stop dependencies to other applications. In our example, parts of the transaction management system may depend on the underlying database to work properly. With SA, one can define that a start of the transaction management is only performed when the required database is running (start dependency). Therefore SA would start the database first in order to start the transaction management system. Starting the database, however, may in turn depend on system specific applications having been started before. Similar relations can hold when stopping applications (stop dependency). For example, it should not occur that the database is stopped before the transaction system is brought down. So moving an application with complicated start and stop dependencies from one system to another (for example in case of a malfunction) can be quite an elaborate task. Moreover, applications that can or should not work simultaneously on the same system can generate conflicting requirements.
Outline of SA Software Architecture
The SA software consists of two logical parts: a manager and an agent. There is only one active manager, but additional backup managers can be defined. Agents are located on each system in the cluster. The manager acts as a Sysplex-wide decision maker. It determines for all applications when they have to be started or stopped, and observes their activity. When making its decisions the manager takes grouping and dependency restrictions into account.
The manager does not perform application starts and stops by itself. Instead, it sends a start or stop command to the agent on the system where the application is located. This agent receives the order and does the actual start- or stop-processing. Furthermore the agent informs the manager about the current status of all applications on the system where it is running. Thus the manager possesses information about the complete status of the cluster. The manager does its internal processing based on abstract (proxy) resources. The implementation of the manager is done in a generic way: Most parts of the manager are implemented as a rule-based expert system. For example, the start and stop dependency behavior is defined by a collection of specific rules in the expert system. In the rest of this paper we will focus on this rule-based expert system.
The Automation Manager's Rule-Based Expert System
The Automation Manager is implemented as a rule-based expert system. Its core consists of an automation engine which besides rule execution can interpret a few hundred different instructions which are used to create and manipulate abstract resources within the manager. For each definition of an automation entity (application, group, etc.) an abstract resource is generated by the manager. Groups of rules are then associated with each resource. These rules, called correlation rules, are taken from a basic rule set of a couple hundred of rules contained in SA, and their variables are instantiated for their resource. All correlation rules are of the form
To compute, for example, the compound state of a resource, rules are evaluated according to the following scheme: As soon as a variable changes its value, the automation manager re-evaluates the rules to reflect this change: the rules are tested one by one, whether the formula of the rule's when-part evaluates to true under the current variable assignment. If this is the case, the action part is executed, which may result in further variable changes. The whole process stops when no more variable changes occur. The order in which rules are evaluated is not specified—with the exception of a fairness condition stating that no rules are missed out.
Changes on the variables' values may occur for two reasons: (i) by a "spontaneous" change of volatile (transient, observed) external variables not controlled by the correlation rule system or (ii) by execution of SetVariable-actions in the then-part of a rule. We therefore partition the set V of variables contained in the correlation rules into two disjoint sets: a set of computed state variables VS and a set of observed external variables VO, such that V=VS
Formalization of Correlation Rules and Consistency Properties
For a formalization of the correlation rules and the computation done by the Automation Manager, we have selected PDL. There are many reasons for our choice. First, correlation rules can easily be translated to PDL, and the resulting formulae are quite comprehensible. Furthermore, the employed rule-based computation contains an indeterminism in that the exact order of rule evaluation is not specified; PDL allows easy formulation of and reasoning about indeterministic programs. Communication between resources is not the key issue here, so the formalization language need not reflect this aspect. For the specification of the correlation rules we only need constructs from PDL, whereas formalization of the termination property of the Automation Manager requires an extension of ordinary propositional dynamic logic. We employ ΔPDL, which adds a divergence operator Δ to PDL to enable the notion of infinite computation. ΔPDL was introduced by Streett [Str82], a similar extension can be found in the work of Harel and Sherman [HS82].
PDL allows reasoning about programs (denoted by α,β, . . . ) and their properties, and thus contains language constructs for programs as well as for propositional formulae. Atomic propositions (P,Q,R, . . . ) can be combined to compound PDL formulae (F,G, . . . ) using the Boolean connectives
Encoding of the Correlation Rules and the Status Computation
Encoding of correlation rules and formalization of the Automation Manager program is accomplished in four steps: First, we encode the variable's finite domains in Boolean logic; then we translate the rule's actions and their semantics to PDL; afterwards we are able to give PDL encodings of complete correlation rules; and finally we give a formal description of program executions of the rule-based Automation Manager.
Finite Domains
Each variable ν occurring in a correlation rule can take a value of a finite domain Dνdepending on the variable. For our PDL encoding, we first need to decompose the finite domains into Boolean propositions. We therefore introduce new propositional variables Pν,d for each possible value dεDν of each variable ν, expressing the fact that variable ν takes value d. We then need additional restrictions, expressing that each finite domain variable takes exactly one of its possible values. Supposing a set V of correlation rule variables, we thus get an additional propositional restriction RV:
Formulae similar to RV also occur in the context of propositional encoding of planning problems, where they are referred to as linear encodings [KMS96].
Atomic Programs
The atomic programs of our formalization are assignment programs, denoted by αν,d, where αν,d assigns value dεDν to variable νεVS. Each assignment program is, of course, deterministic and after its execution the variable has the indicated value. Other computed variables are not affected. Therefore the following PDL properties hold for each program αν,d and all propositions p:
We will denote the conjunction of these propositions for all atomic programs by Rα.
Correlation Rules
In the following we assume for each variable-value pair (ν,d) at most one rule with an action setting variable ν to d in its then-part. If this is not the case, the when-parts of rules with common actions can be merged disjunctively. To encode a correlation rule, its when-part is recursively translated into a Boolean logic formula using transformation τ, which is defined for the base case by
τ(νE{d 0 , . . . , d j})=P ν,d
τ(νNOT E {d 0 , . . . ,d j})=
Given a rule's translated when-part Fν,d and its translated then-part αν,d, we get as PDL program Rν,d for that rule:
R ν,d:=(F ν,d P ν,d)?; αν,d,
expressing that the action of the then-part is executed, provided the when-part holds and the variable is not already set to the intended value. The additional restriction
We are now able to formally specify the computations performed by the Automation Manager program. As there is no rule evaluation order, the program just selects any rule, evaluates its formula, executes the action part and starts over again. The single-step Automation Manager program S and the Automation Manager program AM therefore look like this:
For each SA resource a program of the above kind is generated. Each Automation Manager program runs until no further rules can be applied (reflected by the last test in the Automation Manager program AM), and is restarted as soon as an observed external variable νoεVO changes its value.
Consistency Properties of the Correlation Rule System
The computation relation generated by the correlation rules should be functional and terminating. For example, a status computation should not result in different values depending on the exact order of rule application, and it should produce a result in a finite number of computation steps. Moreover, we are faced with the situation that there are external variables (observation variables) that may change their values during computation. Thus, to produce sensible statuses, short computations are needed, and observed external variables should not change frequently. For our consistency properties we therefore assume all external observed variables to be fixed.
We now turn to the formalization of the two consistency criteria termination and functionality. As above, we denote by AM, respectively S, the part of the Automation Manager program that deals with full, respectively single step, computations. In the following, formula PRE encodes common preconditions for all consistency criteria. This includes the finite domain restrictions RV, the atomic program specifications Rα, and the fixing of all observation variables during computation. We therefore define
The following ΔPDL formula, provided it is valid, guarantees that there is no divergent computation: 1
1Note that this property cannot be expressed in ordinary PDL [Str82].
To ensure functionality for a computation starting in some state, we need a final result that is unique. So, if there is a terminating computation sequence of the Automation Manager all other computations have to end in the same state:
There are other consistency criteria (for example confluence) that could be checked, too. We will not elaborate on this, but instead concentrate on the termination property in the following.
As termination is defined as the absence of an infinite sequence of consecutive computation states (
As the number of states is finite, all non-terminating computations are caused by loops in the program transition graph. For example, the 2-loop
generates an infinite computation oscillating between the states s0 and s1. As another example consider the 4-loop
that is not decomposable into two simpler 2-loops. Showing termination of the Automation Manager program can thus be accomplished by proving the absence of n-loops for all n≧2. Note, that the case n=2 in particular covers those situations where the loops are due to an overlap of the when-parts of two rules for the same variable, i.e. when s0, s1|=Fν,d
To prove the non-existence of loops—as well as the other consistency criteria—directly within the ΔPDL formalism, we can in principle distinguish two main approaches: either by model checking or by theorem proving. For the first approach, a Kripke structure has to be created based on the elementary properties Rα of the atomic assignment programs and on the validity of the propositions Pν,d, considering the restrictions RV. This step builds a structure that fulfills the general precondition PRE. Then it is checked, whether or not the ΔPDL consistency criteria (without preconditions) are fulfilled in the generated model. In the theorem proving formalism, we try to derive the consistency criteria directly from the preconditions.
We have chosen yet another way, which translates the PDL proof obligations into purely propositional logic formulae. We thus enable the application of advanced propositional SAT-checkers.
Conversion to Propositional Satisfiability
Conversion to a purely propositional formalism requires handling of different states within one formula. We use restrictions to achieve this goal.
The proper restriction F|ν=d of a propositional formula F is defined as the homomorphic extension of the function
The following lemma is easily shown and allows the formulation of propositional properties concerning multiple computation states.
At first, we want to consider 2-loops. All 2-loops are of the form
Thus, the absence of 2-loops is expressed in accordance with (1) by
The two αν,d
s 0 ,s 1 |=R V s 1 |=P ν,d
s 0 |=F ν,d
According to Lemma 0.1 this is equivalent to
s 0 |=R V P ν,d
As a propositional formula for the absence of 2-loops we therefore get from (4) by dropping the now superfluous semantics of atomic programs from PRE and after further simplification:
Not all loops detected by this method really do occur. For example, in the formula above, so has to be a reachable state of the computation. Moreover, rule evaluation in the Automation Manager program is subject to a fairness condition, stating that a rule is eventually executed provided its when-part is satisfied.2 We modeled the fairness condition by considering only starting states s0 in which all non-affected variables are already computed. I.e. we demand for a loop involving variable ν that all rules containing other variables w≠ν in their action part cannot be executed.
2The actual condition in the Automation Manager is even stronger in that rules are cyclically checked for execution.
For our experiments we therefore checked the extended formula E instead of Formula (5) where E is defined as
Verification Techniques
We will now describe the techniques we used to prove the propositional formulae of the last section. We also show how the counter-models that appear in case a proposition could not be proved can be made more intelligible.
Davis-Putnam-Style Prover
We used a Davis-Putnam-style prover to show the unsatisfiability of the negations of the aforementioned formulae. The prover is our own implementation (see [Kai01] for a more detailed description) which, in contrast to other DP implementations, does not require the input to be in conjunctive normal form. Moreover, it allows the direct specification of n-out-of-m-constructs that frequently occur in practical applications, in our case in the translation of the finite domain restriction RV to Boolean logic. So instead of formula RV which is quadratic in the domain sizes Dν, we just have to deal with a linear-size formula in our extended language.
BDD-Based Approach
We also experimented with a conversion of the formulae to binary decision diagrams (BDDs), where we used Somenzi's CUDD package [Som98]. One reason to use BDDs was to get a manageable representation of all counter-models in case the propositions did not hold.
To further simplify the counter-model representation we applied an existential abstraction over variables not occurring in the currently investigated rules, i.e. we retained only variables occurring in Fν,d
Implicit Assumptions on Observation Variables
Not all combinations of possible values for observation variables do really occur. But which of them are possible and which are not is not laid down in the Automation Manager's expert system. For our verification task we thus added some further restrictions to the set RV reflecting cases that do not occur in practice. Such cases can be specified by SA experts after an investigation of the counter-models.
Experimental Results and Experiences
We conducted experiments with a subset of the rules of the Automation Manager and exemplarily investigated the 41 rules for the compound status computation. The compound status indicates the overall status of a resource, depending on its automation goal, the actual state and on other resources' states. It can take any of seven different values, so we had to perform 21 proofs of Formula (6) to show the absence of 2-loops. Instead of proving these formulae directly, we tested their negations for unsatisfiability.
We used our DP-style prover implementation to check the generated formulae. As our implementation allows special select-n-out-of-m-constructs [Kai01], formula sizes could be kept small. Proofs or counter-models for all formulae were found in under a second. Initially, seven of the 21 instances were satisfiable, each indicating a possible non-terminating computation. However, further examination showed that most of these cases cannot occur in practice. The reason for these false error readings lies in an incomplete formalization in the rule system. E. g., implicit assumptions on which states are reachable have to be made explicit in order to achieve practically usable results. Thus, we added the abovementioned further restrictions on observation variables, which brought down the number of inconsistencies to three. For these three cases we generated BDDs of the 2-loop-formulae. The times to build up the BDDs again were under a second. Whereas SAT-checkers can only deliver counter-models of the termination property, BDDs allow a direct representation of the condition under which the loop occurs and thus enable further processing of the result. We made use of the BDD representation by applying existential abstraction to variables not occurring in the rules' when-parts. This helped greatly to find out in which situations a loop occurs and thus facilitated correction of the rules.
All of our detected 2-loops were reproduced by emulation on a zSeries test system and resulted in a modification of the final product. The final version thus contained no 2-loop-errors. So, by identifying real defects, we could further increase the reliability of the Automation Manager.
By formalizing the SA Automation Manager's rule-based expert system we could prove a restricted non-looping property for a part of the rule system. After encoding the rules and consistency properties in ΔPDL and converting them to SAT, our approach led us to a set of propositional properties that current SAT-checking techniques can easily handle. We also consider it an important observation that in practice rule systems may be incompletely specified and that formalization requires to make implicit assumptions explicit in order to avoid meaningless results.
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|U.S. Classification
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Owner name: INTERNATIOANL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, NEW Y
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:LUMPP, THOMAS;SCHNEIDER, JUERGEN;KUECHLIN, WOLFGANG;AND OTHERS;REEL/FRAME:013242/0823;SIGNING DATES FROM 20020723 TO 20020731
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Red Potato Bundles
Yield: 2 servings
- * 6 small red potatoes, quartered
- * 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- * 6 whole garlic cloves, peeled
- * 2 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 to 2 teaspoons dried rosemary, crushed
- * 1/2 teaspoon salt
- * Dash pepper
- * 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
- * 1/4 cup olive oil
InstructionsPlace the potatoes, onion and garlic on two pieces of heavy-duty foil (about 12 in. square); top with rosemary, salt, pepper and cheese. Drizzle with oil. Fold in edges of foil and seal tightly.
Grill, covered, over medium heat for 40-45 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Carefully open foil to allow steam to escape. To bake in oven:
Set the oven to 350 and bake for an hour. Or you could set it at 425, bake for half an hour, Open the packets and bake for another 5-10 minutes to brown them. Just put them on an ungreased cookie sheet. They can be prepared as written.


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reconnect sub-branch vpn to main branch server after router change
This project received 15 bids from talented freelancers with an average bid price of £59 GBP.Get free quotes for a project like this
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Project Description
we have two branches (one main and one subbranch). which use a specialist sales system.
the mainbranch is where the server is located. (server 2003 dell poweredge 2900)
the sales system (which is provided by a uk it company) runs off the server, and all other pc's connect to the server to run the software.
the sub-branch which has 1 pc, was working by some form of vpn, and thats how he was accessing the sales software.
this was done via 2 draytec routers. vigor 2600plus.
the problem was yesterday, we had bt infinity (fibre optic) installed and because we had to change our main branch's router to a bt business hub3 (because the draytec was not fibre-optic enabled)
all pcs and server work at main, but the subbranch is unable to connect to our server like they did before. they are now using teamviewer to temporarily access the sales software.
we want it working as before.
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Welcome to the Official Website for the North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company
It has been 15 years since the horrific attack on our Country on September 11, 2001, where thousands of innocent lives were lost.
On Sunday, September 11, 2016 the 15th anniversary of this tragedy the North Babylon Vol. Fire Company will join other local fire departments and dignitaries to participate in a Memorial Service at Overlook Beach on the Ocean Parkway at 10:00am.
The North Babylon Vol. ... (Full Story & Photos)
The Atlantic basin is tracking Tropical Storm Hermine
Hurricane Landfalls:
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The ... (Full Story & Photos)
Tips for Preventing Heat-Related IllnessThe best defense is prevention. Here are some prevention tips:
•Drink more fluids (nonalcoholic), regardless of your activity level. Don't wait until you're thirsty to drink. Warning: If your doctor generally limits the amount of fluid you drink or has you on water pills, ask him how much you should drink while the weather is hot. •Don't drink liquids that ... (Full Story & Photos)
The North Babylon Fire Company was called to a reported vehicle fire on Jerome Avenue about 01:30 July 16, 2016. Engines 1-8-1 and 1-8-8 responded and on arrival found a Chevy Camaro involved in the street. The driver noticed a problem with the vehicle and was able to pull to the side of the road and exit safely. Crews put one 1 3/4 hose line and booster line in operation to extinguish the fire about ... (Full Story & Photos)
Pool SafetyDid You Know?• Ten people die from drowning each day in the United States.• Many children drown in backyard swimming pools and insmall kiddie pools.• Children between ages one and four are most at risk for drowning.• Most young children who drown have been out of their parent'ssight for less than five minutes.• Three out of ten deaths in children aged one to four are caused bydrowning.• ... (Full Story & Photos)
The Officers and Members of the North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company, hope you and your family have a safe and healthy Memorial Day.... (Full Story & Photos)
On Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 8:13am the North Babylon Vol. Fire Company was alerted by Babylon Central Fire Alarm of a reported vehicle fire at Deer Park Avenue and Sunrise Highway on the overpass. First arriving engine 1-8-2 began the initial attack with the crews from engines 1-8-1 and 1-8-8 right behind to assist with the extinguishment of the vehicle. All units were under command of 1st Assistant ... (Full Story & Photos)
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Author Archives: Mundabor
Even NYT Writers Start Seeing That Francis Has Failed
When was last time you heard about the "Francis effect"? Yep, and you now know why: even the secular press knows it did not work.
The article is, as you would expect by a libtard publication like the NYT – the author works for "First Things", though; more about this later – entirely centred around secular issues. In line with the forma mentis of your average IYI ("Intellectual Yet Idiot") reader, The Church is seen like a party, or a product, or a firm: where an "innovator" who seems "in line with the times" steps in and "revitalises" the ailing organisation. And this leader does such wonderful things as living in a luxury hotel, wearing black shoes, shooting selfies, and other such like stupid things very much liked by a stupid age.
The article, showing the great ignorance of his author in matters of Catholicism, (but we are talking of Libtards here) even absurdly criticises the Pope because
Francis has also shied away from big changes on doctrinal matters. Instead of explicitly endorsing communion for the divorced and remarried couples, he has quietly urged them on with a wink and a nod.
(Yes: you can facepalm here. No, really. It's ok).
The secular mind sees the secular Pope at work; it sees him trying to make of the Church something similar to the Democratic Party; it sees, also, that he is failing miserably.
The secular mind cannot understand the Church more than the devil can like holy water. They just do not get that the Church – as an organisation – prospers when she opposes the world, and withers when she cozies up with it. If they knew this simple truth, they would never invent strange and absurd expressions like the "Francis effect" and mean that it would be good for the Church as an organisation.
The Catholic mind understands the folly of all this. But hey, they are "homophobic", so they don't count.
As the author points out, very rightly, Francis has failed miserably even in the other – and originally, we were told, the most important – reason for his appointment: the reorganisation of the inefficient, corrupt Vatican apparatus. We knew that already, because we know that South American dictators tend to be extremely stupid wreckers of everything they touch. But it' s nice to see that some libtard notices that, too.
However, the obviously Catholicism-free author must have heard, at some point, something about Catholicism at First Things, because he seems to have a very confused idea of how the Church works. Examining the cause of the continuing decomposition of the Church in the US, he writes something that has always been a mainstay of this little effort:
Francis has built his popularity at the expense of the church he leads.
The cult of man damages the Church of God. Francis, in his vanity and folly, presents himself as the good guy in opposition to the bad guys of the sixty generations before his. It can work for him, for a while, until people understand what a phony the man is. But it will never be any good for the Church. This is now apparent, and the "Francis effect" thingy has gone the way of "reading Francis through Benedict".
The author, who is so blind that he sees something positive in Francis "paying his own hotel bill" and "eschewing the red shoes", still has some ideas left of what Catholicism is:
Those who wish to see a stronger church may have to wait for a different kind of pope. Instead of trying to soften the church's teaching, such a man would need to speak of the way hard disciplines can lead to freedom. Confronting a hostile age with the strange claims of Catholic faith may not be popular, but over time it may prove more effective. Even Christ was met with the jeers of the crowd.
So, is this author Catholic after all, and just too servile to the NYT to write like one? I don't know, and I am not interested to know. What interests me here is that even the entirely secular outlook of this article must see Francis' dismal failure.
The Church is the enemy of the world. Francis is the friend of the world. Francis is the enemy of the Church.
And he has failed.
Even Libtards see it now.
Keep Talking, Hillary!
Hillary freezes in panic, oblivious to the world, with a "what I am doing here?" face that is just plain scary.
Big Black Guy (secret agent? Or rather a nurse of sort?) is very fast in recognising what's happening (methinks, not the first time…), jumps on the stage and promptly reassures her; she still remains there, smiling but still clearly unable to connect with the reality around her. It's only when Big Black Guy urges her to "keep talking" that she recovers and remembers her line and her purpose on that day.
You can say "panic", it looks more like incipient Alzheimer to me. In both cases, this is the most stressful job on the planet. How is anyone fit to do it who needs to be reassured in the middle of a panic attack/ loss of reality that the people around her are "not going anywhere"?
This video was watched more than one million times, I think it's from August or earlier. Can't think it brought her the vote of many still undecided.
if I were Trump, I would run this and the other one of the 11 September in my own ads.
The Breaking Of The Dams. Part II: The Education Revolution And The Religion Of Youth
I have already explained in Part I what I think was the main factor in the rapid advancement of the "Spirit of V II" within a Church so strong and self-assured only a few years before. I would now like to spend two words about what was, if you ask me, the second most important factor: the rapid changes in education and the connected giovanilismo, the exaltation of everything "young" typical of those years.
The unprecedented economic progress since the end of WWII had brought another huge social upheaval: the education revolution. In less than twenty years, the entire West had undergone a massive change: the son of the peasant was on its way to become an accountant, and the son of the accountant was listening to new (and often crappy) ideas at University. Never had such a transformation occurred so rapidly. Never had so many young people been so obviously better educated than their parents and grandparents.
This caused a rapid deterioration of a traditional hinge of the social fabric: the respect for the elder.
Once seen as the depositaries of wisdom, old people were suddenly seen as uneducated, ignorant, prejudiced, superstitious obstacles to progress. In parallel, the young men and women (better educated, optimistic, full of reformist zeal, and often able to speak without accent or dialect) were seen as the new frontier, and the pathfinders to the discovery of a new and better world. A new world which saw all the prejudices and limits of the old one (and they were there; they were clearly there) and thought that the old system of religious rules, piety, and rigid propriety was pretty much on the same level with the countless superstitions they saw in their old people. The young people might have loved, but they did not esteem their parents, and they did not think their parent had much to teach to them. They were grateful to the peasants who had, with their sacrifices, allowed them to become accountants or teachers or lawyers or civil servants. But they saw in their parents just that: peasants.
For their teaching and guidance in life, they started to look elsewhere. In all the wrong places.
It is apparent to me – and I have seen it very often in real life – that the old generation had, very often, an instinctive sense of what was right, and that they were right; but they were unable to defend themselves, to appropriately articulate their belief against the tide of opposition of their own children and grandchildren; children who spoke so well, better than they ever could, and were filling their parents and grandparents with pride and joy even as the latter were worried at what their children and nephews were actually saying.
These were the children for which the old generation had made so many sacrifices. Look at them now, speaking like lawyers and pharmacists! The son of the small tenant, or of the daily labourer; the daughter of the milliner, or of the domestic servant! They know so much more than their parents and grandparents! Yes, they are wrong. But how to explain it to them? They speak so well…
And the entire world, the entire planet told the older people that the future belonged to the young, who would make a better planet for everyone. Largo ai giovani, "make place for the young" – possibly the stupidest slogan of all times after "Liberte', Egalite', Fraternite' " – was not much questioned in those times. The "Springtime of the Church" is just the same madness in a different way. Guitars in the church are just another byproduct of the same stupidity that gave us the May 1968 in France.
And so, my dear readers, we have it, the explosive cocktail that gave us first Paul VI, then Assisi, then the rock mass concerts and mass media popes, then eventually the Evil Clown himself in all his wheelchair-embracing, Castro-cuddling, planet-"saving", heresy-promoting, perversion-protecting, sacraments-desecrating debauchery. It was an explosive cocktail of growing welfare and growing, but secular, education; sadly not contrasted by a clergy too often tired of being party poopers when the party, which had been going on for a while, seemed to want to go on forever.
Too many were weak. Countless others were simply ill-equipped.
Satan was, as always, looking for those whom he may devour.
Glorious "Gloria TV" On The "With Burning Concern" Letter
I had never seen the like.
Gloria TV does not dedicate one part of their news to the Letter "With Burning Concern". No. They dedicate to it the entire edition.
Oh joy! The thinking Catholic heads may be a minority, but there are still more than a couple around. As for those who refuse to think, I wonder how much FrancisMercy they will receive when they die.
As I write this, the video was clicked 6,100 times. Please follow the link and spread the word!
The Breaking Of The Dams. Part I: "Il Papa Stupido"
I read around the (right) consideration that not all must have been good in pre-V II times; otherwise it would not be explained how V II could do so much damage in just a few years.
I will, therefore, try to make some considerations about this myself.
We tend to see a strong Church as a wonderful apparatus, eliminating sin from around it like a hoover gets rid of the dust. I am afraid it might not work that way.
Fallen nature being what it is, even a strong church can only be something similar to a strong dam, opposing a strong wall of faith to the immense quantity of sin pushing against it. You can stand at the bottom of the huge wall and observe its majesty, and you will certainly think the dam beautifully strong; but what you won't see is the huge amount of water ceaselessly applying its pressure on the wall, and which would flood to the vale below if allowed.
Such was, in my opinion, the Church of that Great Pope, the Pastor Angelicus. An extremely strong dam, for sure; cared for by many trusted guardians; but still, with the huge mass of world sinfulness exerting a huge pressure against it. This pressure was growing and growing as the Western world left behind it the years of great deprivations (and, as always, strong faith) of the war and marched resolutely towards unprecedented prosperity and optimism; and, to an extent, unprecedented belief Religion is now not the basis for life, but an optional not really useful in times of advanced medicine and ever-growing individual security.
Strong as the dam is, the water behind it will always be immense, and will always be ready to flood everything if a leaked, no matter how small, is found.
The leak has a name: il papa buono; or, as I think it far more appropriate, il papa stupido. Pope John XXIII was really so dumb, that he thought a little leak would do no great harm, and the bit of water coming the other way would be a welcome refreshment and cleansing force for the dry, dusty, at times crusty walls of the old, majestic, very hard dam.
The rest all followed from the initial madness: as it is in the nature of things, once the water found a small aperture it did not take long before the huge pressure, which had always been exerted (but was kept in check by the Pastor Angelicus and his very smart Church) caused a big leak, then a break, and a huge quantity of water naturally rushed the other side in a roaring waterfall. When Roncalli died too many were already those now tasting of the water, and desiring to shower in its roaring freshness.
Pope Roncalli had contracted two typical diseases of the age: the first was niceness, and the second a boundless, rather stupid optimism about the future. These diseases belied the traditional, realistic and dryly somber evaluation of the human shortcomings prevalent up to then. John XXIII was probably so dumb that he really believed in a new era of sort; as if humanity could transition to a new phase just as easily as the Soviet Union could transition from Stalin to Khrushchev or the US from Eisenhower to Kennedy.
Pope Roncalli is, therefore, the main – if unwitting – agent of the flood. But not he alone, of course. The flood came because of the original sin-laden water that had never ceased to apply its huge pressure on the Church, and which only the strong dam of a very fortunate series of excellent Popes (five of the last six rather stellar by any Church History standard) had kept in check for so long, and with such success. But human sinfulness is a huge weight to keep in check. The desire to "make peace with the world" is an extremely heavy temptation. The water will still be there pushing, pushing all the time…
Here ends Part I.
Part II will deal with what is, in my eyes, the second most important factor in the unfolding of the first, brutal stage of what was to become, as we can now safely say, an apocalyptic tragedy.
Give Christ A Chance: Hippy Gay Pope Talks About "Lurv"
Mahound's Paradise has excerpts from the latest, extremely stinking public performance of the Evil Clown.
The following atrocious words attracted my attention more than the (almost equally atrocious) rest of the ramble.
"We are called always to live out and proclaim the newness of the Lord's love: 'Jesus truly loves you, just as you are. Give him space: in spite of the disappointments and wounds in your life, give him the chance to love you. He will not disappoint you,'" Francis said.
This is so gay, it redefines the boundaries of Eltonism.
Francis sounds like a hippy homo on pot: not only the "lurv" that does not care for truth is worthy of foul tomatoes, but – worse still – the clear idea that one should consider giving Christ a chance even as he does not want to change a thing in himself is the perfect denial of all Christianity stands for. What a gracious step, what a moving concession this entirely secular person would be making to Our Lord and Saviour!
I picture your average pot-smoking, fornicating, ugly, fat, aborting feminist slut out there thinking: "oh well, I love myself just the way I am, too, and I do not see any reason to change at all! So the old man got that right, for sure! Therefore, I might give this Christ the man talks about the chance to love me just as I am, and let's see if this Christ knows what is good for him! Of course, I am expecting a lot from his unconditional, non-judgmental, guilt-free, gender-neutral relationship now, because that's what the man in white promises".
Francis keeps peddling around a Christ resembling a whining, groaning, whimpering, extremely beta guy dying for some attention whatsoever, and not asking anything in return: I do not say adoration, but even some basic respect and attention. "Oh please, please, just give me some thoughts every now and then! You don't need to do anything! No repentance, no change, nothing at all! You are so wonderful as you are! If you love me,
keep my command it's quite enough for me, and you won't regret it!"
Michael Coren Not Catholic Enough (Even For FrancisChurch!)
When I read it on Vox Cantoris I thought it might have been in jest, but actually it is real news, as EWTN confirmed: Apostate Homosexualist Michael Coren has been stripped of his Papal Knighthood, has been requested to return the medal, and has so far refused.
Boy, this is funny. A man who decides to leave the Church and insult her with his homoheresies is peeved at being told bu the same Church to draw the consequences, and does not want to return the symbol of something in which he does not believe anymore, and says publicly so.
But the funniest thing is this: that Coren must now realise that even in FrancisChurch, where even Muslims and Lutherans are treated like the same thing plus some squabbling theologians, he is considered worthy of public rebuke.
Can't wait for the man to appeal to the Evil Clown himself to allow him to keep his medal, though he doesn't believe in that which the medal represents.
We truly live in a world of self-obsessed, deluded hyper-individualism, in which every cretin thinks he can make up his own religion at will.
Can't imagine what kind of people will buy his books.
Or perhaps I do.
It Is Bad To Want To Be Mainstream
I have published all three parts of the "With Burning Concern" letter; therefore, you all know which side I am on.
I think it very wrong that those (names not named) who should all be on our side waste their time and undoubted intelligence for this kind of mini-squabble.
I will offer this thought: it is bad to want to be "mainstream", and it is bad to want to have a big readership. The world is such, that if you want to have a big readership, and be able to boast that you are so and so big, you will have to get "middle of the road" positions even when more uncomfortable roads are the only ones indicated. The "mainstream" is unlikely to ever be persuaded that the Pope is a heretic. They will drink all the cool-aid they have to drink to persuade themselves of the contrary instead.
This Pope is a heretic. A tool of Satan. An old, lewd man obsessed with sex and social so-called "justice". He is an Atheist through and through. In short, he is an Evil Clown. That's it. If you still can't see the evidence, you will always refuse to see it. Still, the harsh truth of a heretical Pope will never be "mainstream".
And please don't give me that rubbish that we can't judge people's heart. No one uses the argument with Hitler. We can see actions, and from the actions we see the motives. As outside, so inside. You can't act like Martin Luther outside and be Padre Pio inside.
This Pope may repent one day, and we should all pray as much as we can that he may one day come back to be (or, more likely, become) a Catholic. But if he swims like a heretic, walks like a heretic, and quacks like a heretic, I will leave this rubbish about the "not judging" to others.
Let your nay be nay. Don't go to your judgment and be told you listened to hundreds of episodes of defiance of the Church, and all you could say was that you were "surprised" or "confused".
Being neither cold nor hot is rather dangerous.
"With Burning Concern": Part III Is Out
Part III on Catholic Family News
This part deals with the "pastoral heresy", the blatant situational ethics, the aggressive secularist and anti-catholic behaviour demonstrated at every turn and, last but not least, why faithful Catholics cannot remain silent in the face of such a disgrace.
Once again I repeat my appeal: please spread these links as much as you can. Opposition to the Evil Clown can only be effective if more and more people are helped to understand the reality of this truly unbelievable Pontificate.


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|By Marketwired .
Article Rating:
|January 30, 2013 09:00 AM EST
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/30/13 -- SiSense and Microsoft Corp. announced today that they are working together to add Windows Azure to SiSense Cloud offer. By installing SiSense on Windows Azure, customers can enjoy the benefits of the company's software in the Cloud as they did on-premises.
SiSense has been serving customers in the Cloud via Amazon, and by adding Windows Azure to its global offer, the company will allow more companies to start crunching data in no time, without having to purchase or configure expensive hardware and software.
"Windows Azure gives customers a more secure and scalable cloud platform for building flexible solutions," said Eugene Saburi, General Manager, Server and Tools Marketing, Microsoft. "SiSense takes advantage of Windows Azure to provide a solution that works seamlessly on-premises and in the Cloud. Their approach helps make Big Data Analytics a reality for everyone."
"Big Data Analytics is too complicated," says Amit Bendov, SiSense CEO. "Customers have to buy dedicated hardware and hire technical teams to configure and administer their infrastructure. It can take months before users can draw value from their data. In an era where traditional solutions can take time to deploy and cost millions, SiSense aims to change the game and provide an affordable solution that works for all," he continues.
SiSense provides everything a business needs to succeed with Big Data Analytics. When deployed in the Cloud, SiSense solution, Prism, allows any business users to sign up for its service online and be up and running in no time, without having to worry about hardware architecture or configuration details.
The benefits of SiSense's offer include:
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