From simon at photogabble.co.uk  Wed Dec  9 04:11:34 2009
From: simon at photogabble.co.uk (Simon Dann)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:11:34 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] Cloud is more than just data hostage
In-Reply-To: <d235cdc40912030603x2624c5a8p7e70a21615d9b443@mail.gmail.com>
References: <979097.23009.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<d235cdc40912030603x2624c5a8p7e70a21615d9b443@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <478c7da50912090411i33c61747gfdebd8adc9b2f538@mail.gmail.com>

hmm, this is interesting stuff. For my masters dissertation I wrote at
length about the problematic nature of the "cloud" it can be scary to
think of the many abusive ways in which certain organisations and
people could utilise it for illicit purposes.

But then again we already have that with certain applications, digital
and real world. So I guess it is too late to worry.

From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec  9 07:48:57 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 09:48:57 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
Message-ID: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>


If you haven't seen this yet, go look for it.

This has the potential, perhaps, to be the most important innovation  
since the Web itself, IMHO.  And it may well be *the* driver for mass  
adoption of AugR tech and the creation of a mass market for critical  
AugR consumer technologies (like practical everyday HUD gear, etc.)

Combined with a remembrance agent (perhaps fed with Wikipedia and a  
few other key public data sources) and total recall technologies, and  
we're at some kind of a critical tipping point in human intelligence  
augmentation.


$0.02,


jb


From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec  9 08:23:44 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 10:23:44 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Heh...  Quantum propulsion, etc.
Message-ID: <6A15FCD4-8D9C-4D45-BD8A-8A73D7A1F4DF@place.org>


I believe that this was proposed by somebody (ahem) on this list a  
decade or so ago...  not this specific mechanical arrangement, but  
something similar.  (In particular, the authors miss the fifth case:   
asymmetric nanoscale-quasifractal surfaces arranged around an axis of  
rotation.)

   http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24499/

So quick:  what's the speed limit?  (Conjecture:  2/3c.  For the  
reader:  why?)




jb



From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 10:05:29 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 10:05:29 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
References: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912091005t15ff7039r4469991b09beb42c@mail.gmail.com>

I should be getting a hands on of this over the weekend. I would think
this added to the Sixth Sense platfrom would make for one hella good
gargoyle agent setup.

The combo of the two with some other  methods/devices I have seen
floating about (glyph tracking, gesticulation base commands, shadow
lighting..etc) could well bring us some very interesting devices to
don in a few months.


-tom(I might even get a real cell phone )higgins

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 11:56:34 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 11:56:34 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Cloud is more than just data hostage
In-Reply-To: <478c7da50912090411i33c61747gfdebd8adc9b2f538@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <265585.16740.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Simon Dann <simon at photogabble.co.uk> wrote:

> hmm, this is interesting stuff. For
> my masters dissertation I wrote at
> length about the problematic nature of the "cloud" it can
> be scary to think of the many abusive ways in which certain
> organisations and people could utilise it for illicit purposes.
> 
> But then again we already have that with certain
> applications, digital and real world. So I guess 
> it is too late to worry.
> _______________________________________________
> 

Nope, it's never too late to worry. Indeed, it's only too late when you stop worrying.

           ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 12:25:14 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:25:14 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
Message-ID: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> If you haven't seen this yet, go look for it.
> 
> This has the potential, perhaps, to be the most important
> innovation since the Web itself, IMHO.? And it may well
> be *the* driver for mass adoption of AugR tech and the
> creation of a mass market for critical AugR consumer
> technologies (like practical everyday HUD gear, etc.)
> 
> Combined with a remembrance agent (perhaps fed with
> Wikipedia and a few other key public data sources) and total
> recall technologies, and we're at some kind of a critical
> tipping point in human intelligence augmentation.
> 
> 
> $0.02,
> 

You're kidding. Right? If I can remember where the hell I put the visual I can certainly remember whatever I need to know about it. (At my age I'm lucky to remember my name some days. I had to ask my wife what day it was yesterday.)

Or put another way, you STILL can't get an answer if you can't think of the right question. At least not a particularly useful answer. So I have to go out and take a picture of something I want to know about. Why don't I just go in and ask someone while I'm there? I'll probably get a lot better information than what someone takes the trouble to type into the computer. Same dealeo with someone's business card .. just pick up the damn phone.

I'll give you that it's an interesting toy that will probably turn out to have some useful applications for some people in some situations. I sure don't mean to knock anything that makes searching easier for more people, if this turns out to do that. (Have you seen the LMGTFY site? Stands for "Let Me Google That For You". Amazing how few people can think of the right questions to ask.) For the present I'll view it as not much more than an interesting toy. Maybe with potential.

But even if it turns out to be really really useful I don't get that it's "augmentation" any more than packing a PDA or smartphone is "augmentation". Perhaps our definitions of "augmentation" differ. Do you consider PDAs, smartphones or an automobile to be human augmentation in this context? (I don't.)

         ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier.  Optimized for Yahoo!  Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 12:56:12 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:56:12 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I need to clarify my last post (below). Google Goggles is predicated on your being "there" AND having connectivity with sufficient bandwidth to make it feasible. 

I get that it can be really handy if you're standing right beside something and have a good connection and can't be bothered to go inside and ask your question or ask a passerby. It's either useless or terribly inconvenient in any other situation. 

Yeah, some of us travel places where there's no cellular service AT ALL, never mind no, or poor, data service. For instance, almost every place I'm likely to be interested in the answer to the question, "What sort of plant is this?", will likely be outside coverage. Same goes for many landmarks. And some of us live in regions where cellular data plans are too expensive for this sort of frivolity if you're employer is not picking up the tab. (Naturally there's a bit of sour grapes in there.)

         ...ken...


--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> --- On Wed, 12/9/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org>
> wrote:
> > If you haven't seen this yet, go look for it.
> > 
> > This has the potential, perhaps, to be the most important
> > innovation since the Web itself, IMHO.? And it may well
> > be *the* driver for mass adoption of AugR tech and the
> > creation of a mass market for critical AugR consumer
> > technologies (like practical everyday HUD gear, etc.)
> > 
> > Combined with a remembrance agent (perhaps fed with
> > Wikipedia and a few other key public data sources) and total
> > recall technologies, and we're at some kind of a critical
> > tipping point in human intelligence augmentation.
> > 
> > 
> > $0.02,
> > 
> 
> You're kidding. Right? If I can remember where the hell I
> put the visual I can certainly remember whatever I need to
> know about it. (At my age I'm lucky to remember my name some
> days. I had to ask my wife what day it was yesterday.)
> 
> Or put another way, you STILL can't get an answer if you
> can't think of the right question. At least not a
> particularly useful answer. So I have to go out and take a
> picture of something I want to know about. Why don't I just
> go in and ask someone while I'm there? I'll probably get a
> lot better information than what someone takes the trouble
> to type into the computer. Same dealeo with someone's
> business card .. just pick up the damn phone.
> 
> I'll give you that it's an interesting toy that will
> probably turn out to have some useful applications for some
> people in some situations. I sure don't mean to knock
> anything that makes searching easier for more people, if
> this turns out to do that. (Have you seen the LMGTFY site?
> Stands for "Let Me Google That For You". Amazing how few
> people can think of the right questions to ask.) For the
> present I'll view it as not much more than an interesting
> toy. Maybe with potential.
> 
> But even if it turns out to be really really useful I don't
> get that it's "augmentation" any more than packing a PDA or
> smartphone is "augmentation". Perhaps our definitions of
> "augmentation" differ. Do you consider PDAs, smartphones or
> an automobile to be human augmentation in this context? (I
> don't.)
> 
> ? ? ? ???...ken...
> 



      __________________________________________________________________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 14:29:29 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 14:29:29 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


OK so I am just saying, yea...just saying.

As for the content on being there and use... I think you could make
the same arguments about a lot of tech that then goes on to find uses
not dreamt of in our curmudgeonuing. Who the hell would have picked
twitter as a thing of note.

-tom(I have kids to go pick up but would like to dig into this more
latter...and yea I want a Droid)higgins


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 15:19:11 2009
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 15:19:11 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>
References: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa00912091519k44e3d369q8dba3539e9e95a0b@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you could make
> the same arguments about a lot of tech that then goes on to find uses
> not dreamt of in our curmudgeonuing. Who the hell would have picked
> twitter as a thing of note.

I'll buy this one.  I think Goggles is a flat-out brilliant idea with
potential to become a major modality.

That said, I think that it's just one contribution within the larger
field of computing that is leaving the computer behind.  That's in
incredible branch of work.  What's the name of that project/scanner
which you wear like a necklace?  Whoa.  I'd love to have one of those
to hack with.

If I get a chance to make the jump from music to augmented reality I'll take it.

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 15:34:19 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 15:34:19 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912091519k44e3d369q8dba3539e9e95a0b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>
	<ab069aa00912091519k44e3d369q8dba3539e9e95a0b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912091534t2953c262gda7e9fedd4d15862@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:

> That said, I think that it's just one contribution within the larger
> field of computing that is leaving the computer behind. ?That's in
> incredible branch of work. ?What's the name of that project/scanner
> which you wear like a necklace?

The Sixth Sense thing I keep drooling over in TED videos

http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

The makers of that are open sourcing the thing, they claim a 300$
cost to cobble one togther from off the shelf parts and the  code.

Jebus forkers, talk about cottage/niche/longtailing  project base. I
am just about excited enough about  what I have been seeing from
Google , Sixth Sense and some other projects to think about doing
something other than raising kids. It is not helping any that I am
reading C Doctorow's book "Makers".

-tom(I await Beberg to talk me down from this perilous brush with
productivity:)- )higgins


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 15:34:52 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 15:34:52 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <739503.25377.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
> <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
> > Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the
> new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now
> for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/
> 

So if I had any way of anticipating what dreck Yahoo would append to each of my outbound missives I *promise* I would be embarrassed by that one. 

Just saying...

> 
> As for the content on being there and use... I think you
> could make the same arguments about a lot of tech that then goes on to
> find uses not dreamt of in our curmudgeonuing. Who the hell would
> have picked twitter as a thing of note.
> 

Which is why I specifically said I won't discount it. The major part of my professional life was spent working in the IT and Engineering departments of a Canadian telco. Much of that time I was fortunate to be working in areas of convergence (you may not be aware that our telcos up here are still of the full-service variety .. landline, long distance, cellular, internet, digital TV, hotel entertainment services .. which makes working in areas of convergence much more meaningful and so much more fun). I learned long ago to never bet on what will win and what won't. Certainly not to bet against something simply because it does not fit my particular needs or lifestyle choices or methods of doing things.

Perhaps, if you take a long enough view, JB is right and this is a precursor or harbinger to something we could eventually consider augmentation. But there are some things in the way of it being/becoming so. Or enablers yet to come, if you're the glass-half-full sort. 

> -tom(I have kids to go pick up but would like to dig into
> this more latter...and yea I want a Droid)higgins
> 

I hope you do (dig further). And yea I want data prices to come down to where I could afford to USE a Droid. And GSM service from my service provider. At which time I would likely want one. I should live so long....

         ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 17:09:26 2009
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 17:09:26 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912091534t2953c262gda7e9fedd4d15862@mail.gmail.com>
References: <673286.81686.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<391283.74523.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e3b2914c0912091429l6a747525ke198474d27bd4d02@mail.gmail.com>
	<ab069aa00912091519k44e3d369q8dba3539e9e95a0b@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3b2914c0912091534t2953c262gda7e9fedd4d15862@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa00912091709s53c7ac4doc3ec2dac5e4f4701@mail.gmail.com>

> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's the name of that project/scanner
> which you wear like a necklace?

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Sixth Sense thing I keep drooling over in TED videos
>
> http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
>
> The makers of that are open sourcing the thing, they claim a 300$
> cost to cobble one togther from off the shelf parts and the ?code.

Hell yeah.

That style of computing is a huge deal IMO.  Every time there's a new
form factor there are big product innovations in the wake, and that
sixth sense thing is a million different form factors in one.

Like, my iPhone is the last alarm clock I'll ever buy.  Boom.  No more
dedicated alarm clocks for me.  Product category vaporized just like
that.


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 19:16:27 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 19:16:27 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912091709s53c7ac4doc3ec2dac5e4f4701@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Like, my iPhone is the last alarm clock I'll ever
> buy.? Boom.? No more dedicated alarm clocks for me.? 
> Product category vaporized just like that.
> 

What took so long?  Mine went when I got my first Palm.  Or are you too young to remember Palm?  Rumour has it they might try to make a comeback some day.  :-)

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 19:27:30 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 19:27:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912091534t2953c262gda7e9fedd4d15862@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <958136.9217.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> > That said, I think that it's just one contribution within the larger
> > field of computing that is leaving the computer behind. ?That's in
> > incredible branch of work. ?What's the name of that project/scanner
> > which you wear like a necklace?
> 
> The Sixth Sense thing I keep drooling over in TED videos
> 
> http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
> 
> The makers of that are open sourcing the thing, they claim
> a 300$ cost to cobble one togther from off the shelf parts and
> the? code.
> 
> Jebus forkers, talk about cottage/niche/longtailing?
> project base. I am just about excited enough about? what I have been
> seeing from Google , Sixth Sense and some other projects to think about
> doing something other than raising kids. It is not helping any
> that I am reading C Doctorow's book "Makers".
> 

Okay, after you two I begin to see some of the potential for excitement that perhaps I missed in Jeff's brief note. The Getting-there-is-half-the-fun part, at least. Especially if you can do some of it the Altair or Heathkit way. Is that dating me again? Perhaps I should check to see if the parts or a kit are available on Make's website....  

Thanks for the pointer to the book, Tom. I'm cheap so perhaps I'll read the serialized version online.

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 19:33:13 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 19:33:13 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <ab069aa00912091709s53c7ac4doc3ec2dac5e4f4701@mail.gmail.com>
	<723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912091933w5c4aa4cfx51188d20382e399c@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> What took so long? ?Mine went when I got my first Palm. ?Or are you too young to remember Palm? ?Rumour has it they might try to make a comeback some day. ?:-)

I still use my Lifedrive every day, well mostly nights as its my
bedside netcast stream/podcast listener (gota love quicknews) as well
as for any bed time web browsing, email reading or homenet admining
(mostly thru vnc and an ssh client) I love that damn device. But Palm
as a company has lost my trust nearly completely. I have been thru
thick and thin with them since I got an early Pro.. No mas.

tom(I would love to get the lifedrive to use the widgets from Chumby)higgins


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Dec  9 19:44:46 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 19:44:46 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <958136.9217.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <e3b2914c0912091534t2953c262gda7e9fedd4d15862@mail.gmail.com>
	<958136.9217.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912091944x520e4a1ep14230a3aa6a7990@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Okay, after you two I begin to see some of the potential for excitement that perhaps I missed in Jeff's brief note. The Getting-there-is-half-the-fun part, at least. Especially if you can do some of it the Altair or Heathkit way. Is that dating me again? >Perhaps I should check to see if the parts or a kit are available on Make's website....
>

No kits yet for the Sixth Sense, but the MakerShed will probably carry
it. If you have the spare income and time to mess with something in
the time being they do still have some Chumby guts and tons of Arduino
kits. I was half tempted to get some of the Arduino kits for the boys
and I to mess with but in all honesty we are still getting a ton of
learning experience out of  the 2 old Radio Shack 200-in-1 spring
loaded electronic sets I thrifted last year.  Make  has yet to come
out with something as cool or as cheap. I think that by this summer my
7 year old will be ready for his first soldering iron. That sentence
still scares the snot out of me for so many reasons.

> Thanks for the pointer to the book, Tom. I'm cheap so perhaps I'll read the serialized version online.
>

By necessity and training I am what the hipsters now call a
"frugalista", I am reading it as an epub gotten for gratis off of the
authors site http://craphound.com/makers/download/
He has it in a few dozen formats. The next time my book budget allows
I will be buying a copy to donate to my teen agers high school.

-tom(not frugal enough to pas up getting new gear now and again
though, lords no ..MOON that spells new gear)higgins


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec  9 21:32:17 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:32:17 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912091944x520e4a1ep14230a3aa6a7990@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <361553.13888.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
>  I was half tempted to get some of the Arduino kits for the boys
> and I to mess with but in all honesty we are still getting
> a ton of learning experience out of? the 2 old Radio Shack
> 200-in-1 spring loaded electronic sets I thrifted last year.?
> Make? has yet to come out with something as cool or as cheap. 

This is a long way from being as cheap, even if you had bought them new, but it looks like it might be almost as cool .. it claims 300 projects:

http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKEL10

>
> I think that by this summer my
> 7 year old will be ready for his first soldering iron. That
> sentence still scares the snot out of me for so many reasons.
> 

When you get over being scared you can look at this one. And get scared again at the price. It's on sale at the moment but $39.95 is still pretty steep for something that doesn't even include a soldering iron and some solder .... some kinda "Learn to" kit that is. :(

> 
> By necessity and training I am what the hipsters now call
> a "frugalista", I am reading it as an epub gotten for gratis
> off of the authors site http://craphound.com/makers/download/
> He has it in a few dozen formats. The next time my book
> budget allows I will be buying a copy to donate to my teen agers high
> school.
> 

Again, thanks for the tip. I'll get a copy that works on one of the readers on my T|X. Buying a copy for the school sounds like a fine compromise. I am fortunate to be between teenagers at the moment. My daughter is beyond that and her kids still have a few years before they get there. Hopefully I will be old enough by then that they will tolerate my "guidance" better than my daughter did (does). ;-)

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
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From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 08:10:43 2009
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:10:43 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <ab069aa00912091709s53c7ac4doc3ec2dac5e4f4701@mail.gmail.com>
	<723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa00912100810i3e98b21dna4ddec106a138f8d@mail.gmail.com>

> --- On Wed, 12/9/09, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Like, my iPhone is the last alarm clock I'll ever
>> buy.? Boom.? No more dedicated alarm clocks for me.
>> Product category vaporized just like that.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> What took so long? ?Mine went when I got my first Palm. ?Or are you too young to remember Palm? ?Rumour has it they might try to make a comeback some day. ?:-)

Maybe I didn't make the switch in Palm days because I wasn't mentally
ready.  I started using a portable as an alarm when I first got a cell
phone for business travel.  But the alarm software in the cell was not
as good as a dedicated bedside alarm.  I don't even remember my
Handspring's alarm.


From jbone at place.org  Thu Dec 10 08:49:02 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:49:02 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
Message-ID: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>


<rant>

Okay, so here's the way I see it.

Lots of movement on the JavaScript front these days.  the 1.7-onwards  
series with e.g. generators / etc., commonJS, narwhal, node.js, er.js,  
competitive work in the engine space (particularly v8) etc. --- all  
headed in the same direction --- not converging yet, different  
wrinkles in each.  But the trends seem clear:

   - js is leaving the browser behind
   - js is gearing up to become a general "systems programming language"
   - js solves the adoption problem implicitly
     - ubiquity - some variant runs everywhere
     - familiarity - everybody's written a little bit
     - *good enough* --- for just about anything?
     - big dogs pouring resources on it
   - but *can* it be made to be performant enough?
     - most performance is architecture, not code paths
     - can it be made to play nicely w/ native-code for fast paths?
     - but of course:  it always *has* done exactly that!

We're moving a meta-level up the technology stack, same sort of move  
as assembler-to-C.  With appropriate new engine technologies like V8,  
it's looking like js could be used for all but the very-close-to-metal  
apps.  Hell, node.js isn't even to version 0.2 and it already gives  
thin a run for its money;  I like where this is going.

Don't get me wrong;  I've held my nose and done as little javascript  
as possible for years now, just like many of us.  It's got a lot of  
cons, not the least of which is bulk (node is ~2.5M by default on OSX,  
ugh;  compare / contrast w/ tiny Scheme VMs ala Wasp and Hedgehog.)   
But:  perhaps it's time to acknowledge the writing on the wall...

I'm not sure how I feel about all this, but I think it is what it  
is...  I'd like to see js evolve in the right direction --- tail  
recursion optimization a required feature, first-class continuation  
support, reified interpreter / vm / program state, cross-engine  
standardized FFI, etc.  I'm not sure it will get there.  (I'm not sure  
it has to, but...)  Those would provide a better substrate language  
for future systems.

But maybe we don't need all that fancy stuff, maybe it's good enough  
as-is.

I see a sort of stack evolving that looks something like this:

   - interactive user shell (in e.g. javascript)
   - javascript + runtime "user OS" / environment
   - javascript VM (eventually bootstrapped)
   - host OS
   - bare-metal

(Nb., the above looks a hell of a lot like the Inferno stack...  ala:

   - interactive user shell (Inferno sh, in Limbo)
   - Limbo + runtime Inferno "user OS" / environment
   - Dis VM (eventually bootstrapped)
   - host OS
   - bare-metal


Rather than continue down the road of dithering on substrate and  
vacillating between different toy implementations on different  
substrates, maybe I should just byte the bullet.

Thoughts?  Is js the "next" *real* "systems programming" language?


jb


PS - for the progeddit trolls, should this get cross-posted and should  
you stumble upon this...  enjoy.  Please note the rant tags.  Take  
this w/ a grain of salt, and in context please.  Just musing out loud...


</rant>

From danbri at danbri.org  Thu Dec 10 08:58:27 2009
From: danbri at danbri.org (Dan Brickley)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:58:27 +0100
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912100810i3e98b21dna4ddec106a138f8d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <ab069aa00912091709s53c7ac4doc3ec2dac5e4f4701@mail.gmail.com>
	<723550.38340.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<ab069aa00912100810i3e98b21dna4ddec106a138f8d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8544D005-F8B2-4672-8503-24613AFB2623@danbri.org>





On 10 Dec 2009, at 17:10, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:

>> --- On Wed, 12/9/09, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Like, my iPhone is the last alarm clock I'll ever
>>> buy.  Boom.  No more dedicated alarm clocks for me.
>>> Product category vaporized just like that.
>
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
> <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>> What took so long?  Mine went when I got my first Palm.  Or are you  
>> too young to remember Palm?  Rumour has it they might try to make a  
>> comeback some day.  :-)
>
> Maybe I didn't make the switch in Palm days because I wasn't mentally
> ready.  I started using a portable as an alarm when I first got a cell
> phone for business travel.  But the alarm software in the cell was not
> as good as a dedicated bedside alarm.  I don't even remember my
> Handspring's alarm.

Someday they'll invent a smartphone alarm smart enough to warn you  
that there's not enough battery left to be running in the morning.

Dan

From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Thu Dec 10 09:36:10 2009
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:36:10 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
Message-ID: <DC8AE993-B02A-43F9-B97B-D466F5D5679B@radicalcentrism.org>



Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 10, 2009, at 8:49, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

> I see a sort of stack evolving that looks something like this:
>
>  - interactive user shell (in e.g. javascript)
>  - javascript + runtime "user OS" / environment
>  - javascript VM (eventually bootstrapped)
>  - host OS
>  - bare-metal

I see JS eventually becoming performant and rich enough for more uses,  
but I'm still not sure the culture will ever support broad app  
programming, much less systems work.

Culture matters in the type and quality of frameworks that get  
provided, which can determine the fate of a language. Especially one  
driven more by committee.  Look at Java :-/

Also, do you really think VMs will be everywhere? We are moving the  
opposite direction with MacRuby and LLVM. 
  

From jbone at place.org  Thu Dec 10 09:58:12 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:58:12 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
Message-ID: <C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>


Dr. Ernie asks:

> Also, do you really think VMs will be everywhere? We are moving the  
> opposite direction with MacRuby and LLVM.

I think it's a strong possibility, perhaps in an even stricter sense  
than you may mean, though.  I think hardware virtualization and  
language-level VMs converge;  easier to implement mobility, adaptation  
to multiple devices, Internet suspend / resume, etc.  (I'd love it,  
for example, if somebody (else ;-) hacked v8 to support suspending /  
serializing internal state to an image then resuming it from such an  
image.  Cf.  IBM's ISR work from several years ago;  hardware  
emulation VMs are really just a kind of big brother to the typical  
language-level VM, and given API and other "sleep" related  
functionality ISR's an interesting possibility.  Network connection  
and other IO state mobility is a bit tricky, but various folks are  
working on that, too...)

But the trick is all the surrounding technology;  i.e. performant  
distributed filesystem for VM image distribution;  device adaptation  
to wildly different devices;  and so on all have to be "solved" to  
make adoption of this stuff ubiquitous for end users.  But here, too,  
the writing's on the wall, IMHO.  Data center virtualization proceeds  
apace, and the intersection between solutions there and the  
generalized solution for end users is large.  In the long view, we  
*all* have our own large, heterogeneous, dispersed "data centers" /  
personal clouds of devices, data and services to manage...  (For the  
even longer view, ^have^are. ;-)

I think the underpinnings change quite a bit, too...  LLVM etc. as  
cases-in-point.  But the VM as an architectural abstraction becomes, I  
think, an ever-more-visible feature of the user landscape in the long  
run.


jb


From sean at conman.org  Thu Dec 10 12:23:02 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:23:02 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
Message-ID: <20091210202302.GA32468@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> I'm not sure how I feel about all this, but I think it is what it  
> is...  I'd like to see js evolve in the right direction --- tail  
> recursion optimization a required feature, first-class continuation  
> support, reified interpreter / vm / program state, cross-engine  
> standardized FFI, etc.  I'm not sure it will get there.  (I'm not sure  
> it has to, but...)  Those would provide a better substrate language  
> for future systems.

  Lovely, we're headed right back towards the 80s, with a bunch of different
implementations, each with a slightly different "standard" library, only
this time without benefit of conditinal compilation [1].  Heaven forbid we
get fast software any time soon [6].

  But of all those, FFI *needs* to be standardized, otherwise JS will end up
like Common Lisp---a huge collection of standard library calls that are
inadequate in 20 years (CL---no threads or networking and without a standard
FFI, each implementation handles it differently, even if the same functions
as a C library are available).

  It also needs to be either dead simple to install, or available on every
system that exists.  Otherwise, it's dead [7].

> Thoughts?  Is js the "next" *real* "systems programming" language?

  I thought that was supposed to be Perl?

  -spc (Or is it D?  I've lost track of C replacements ... )

[1]	Ala the C Preprocessor [2].  No, what we'll get is run time
	checking, all the time, for various features [3]

[2]	Not that that's the paragon of macro expansion.

[3]	Yeah, I know---compile time checking is a form of optimization, and
	as we all know, optimization is eeeeeeeeevil [4]

[4]	Well, from reading several programming related webboards, the very
	notion of optimization comes across as eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil and that
	any point you attemp it, it's still to @#$@#!#$ early to even
	consider it.

	Then again, it appears that even thinking about the program is
	considered a form of optimization ... [5]

[5]	Ooops, hot topic button for me.

[6]	I kid, I kid!

[7]	Go ahead, try to install any form of Lisp under two different
	operating systems [8].  See how fun it is.  Then see if you can do
	anything with networking, or even threads.  And have your code run
	under the two different operating systems.

[8]	Out of three---Linux, Windows or Mac. [6]


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 10 15:58:13 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:58:13 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912100810i3e98b21dna4ddec106a138f8d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <596391.68384.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/10/09, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
> <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> > What took so long? ?Mine went when I got my first
> Palm. ?Or are you too young to remember Palm? ?Rumour has
> it they might try to make a comeback some day. ?:-)
> 
> Maybe I didn't make the switch in Palm days because I
> wasn't mentally ready.?...

I can relate. And thank you very much for that headslap. I still have my clock radio sitting on the night table, unused for years. Still sitting there from either habit or inertia. I never use it so it annoys me when I have to reset the time after a power failure. It never occured to me to simply unplug it and give it away rather than reseting it yet again ... until you mentioned mental readiness. 

It never ceases to amaze me how it's so easy to overlook the simple and obvious until some outside stimulous brings it into focus.

         ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.


From jbone at place.org  Thu Dec 10 19:40:36 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:40:36 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
References: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
Message-ID: <FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>


BTW...  in case anybody missed one implication...  the image queries  
themselves, their associations with existing stored images and what  
gets clicked on in search results are all independently *excellent*  
ways to do supervised reinforcement learning for visual processing of  
real world visual / temporal / spatial / social / etc. fields.  In  
combination, it's a heady thing.  I.e., this thing gets educated fast  
in a lot of associative ways, via a very pragmatic --- and unwitting  
mass collaborative --- means.

Before too long perhaps the Goggles will be wearing *you.* ;-)


jb

On Dec 9, 2009, at 9:48 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:

>
> If you haven't seen this yet, go look for it.
>
> This has the potential, perhaps, to be the most important innovation  
> since the Web itself, IMHO.  And it may well be *the* driver for  
> mass adoption of AugR tech and the creation of a mass market for  
> critical AugR consumer technologies (like practical everyday HUD  
> gear, etc.)
>
> Combined with a remembrance agent (perhaps fed with Wikipedia and a  
> few other key public data sources) and total recall technologies,  
> and we're at some kind of a critical tipping point in human  
> intelligence augmentation.
>
>
> $0.02,
>
>
> jb
>


From jbone at place.org  Thu Dec 10 19:50:30 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:50:30 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
Message-ID: <8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>


Mr. Sean Connery makes several excellent points, all of which I agree  
with.  (Love your movies, btw. ;-)

My post is intended as a bit of file for the gumbo, rather than  
especially seriously...

It's a bit of a paradox:  on the one hand, repeating the mistakes of  
Common Lisp while at the same time (perhaps) failing to learn the  
lessons of "Worse is Better."

If they could just get the last bit right, it might win.  Maybe not in  
the browser, because that's such a politicized environment...  but  
maybe outside of it.  (Isn't it ironic:  the browser was to be our  
gateway to freedom from vendor lock-in...)  Maybe it's too late even  
outside the browser.  Maybe not.  But the troops are seriously  
amassing on the horizon to make a run at it...

Don't quite know what to do about it.  Suggestions?


jb



From jbone at place.org  Thu Dec 10 19:53:06 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:53:06 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
Message-ID: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>


...it's easier to see what time it is by looking at those big glowing  
green numbers than fish around for the iphone on the bedside in the  
dark. ;-)


j ("the form factor is the application") b


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 10 20:02:24 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:02:24 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>
References: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
	<FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>
Message-ID: <73A31E4F-EF3B-4D87-B798-55F1966649EB@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 10, 2009, at 7:40 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
> Before too long perhaps the Goggles will be wearing *you.* ;-)


I have it on good authority that they do nothing.



From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 20:03:20 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:03:20 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912102003s2a3dc3dqc6c088b465701a7c@mail.gmail.com>

On the one hand... screw the religious bent of the code, its all about
the protocols and data
On the other hand... crack don't smoke itself...protocols and data do
not move, mash and reassemble themselves

So, we are all biotches to the companies, comities and conglomerated
mind shares that run the workings of both hands.

In a great and perfect world  the fairy unicorns would ride me the
science playground every morning and we would all spend our days  knee
deep in invention factory fun making great and wonderful things
without  a hitch from border collisions, meme attacks or territorial
pissing...and then you wake up and realize you have to fight the same
fights decades latter with a smile pasted on your face saying "Oh yes
sir thats some tasty  foo bar you are serving up, I never tasted
better in my life" whilst creating data stream parsers in some new
variant of MSjs(tm)(c)(yf)

Ok its not that bad, but yeah maybe it is. I still think Id rather
have open protocols and data standards that way you could do the code
end in whatever floated your boat that moment/month/year/decade/epoch
(your life/interest cycle will vary)

-tom(flat head or philips...ya see...turtles all the way down)higgins

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Thu Dec 10 20:07:15 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:07:15 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912102007p2c8f5d5bodb725ab9d6cc78a0@mail.gmail.com>

Personally I think the javascript-for-everything community will be
amongst the first to be put up against the wall and shot by future
energy-wastage tribunals.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:49 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>
> <rant>
>
> Okay, so here's the way I see it.
>
> Lots of movement on the JavaScript front these days. ?the 1.7-onwards series
> with e.g. generators / etc., commonJS, narwhal, node.js, er.js, competitive
> work in the engine space (particularly v8) etc. --- all headed in the same
> direction --- not converging yet, different wrinkles in each. ?But the
> trends seem clear:
>
> ?- js is leaving the browser behind
> ?- js is gearing up to become a general "systems programming language"
> ?- js solves the adoption problem implicitly
> ? ?- ubiquity - some variant runs everywhere
> ? ?- familiarity - everybody's written a little bit
> ? ?- *good enough* --- for just about anything?
> ? ?- big dogs pouring resources on it
> ?- but *can* it be made to be performant enough?
> ? ?- most performance is architecture, not code paths
> ? ?- can it be made to play nicely w/ native-code for fast paths?
> ? ?- but of course: ?it always *has* done exactly that!
>
> We're moving a meta-level up the technology stack, same sort of move as
> assembler-to-C. ?With appropriate new engine technologies like V8, it's
> looking like js could be used for all but the very-close-to-metal apps.
> ?Hell, node.js isn't even to version 0.2 and it already gives thin a run for
> its money; ?I like where this is going.
>
> Don't get me wrong; ?I've held my nose and done as little javascript as
> possible for years now, just like many of us. ?It's got a lot of cons, not
> the least of which is bulk (node is ~2.5M by default on OSX, ugh; ?compare /
> contrast w/ tiny Scheme VMs ala Wasp and Hedgehog.) ?But: ?perhaps it's time
> to acknowledge the writing on the wall...
>
> I'm not sure how I feel about all this, but I think it is what it is... ?I'd
> like to see js evolve in the right direction --- tail recursion optimization
> a required feature, first-class continuation support, reified interpreter /
> vm / program state, cross-engine standardized FFI, etc. ?I'm not sure it
> will get there. ?(I'm not sure it has to, but...) ?Those would provide a
> better substrate language for future systems.
>
> But maybe we don't need all that fancy stuff, maybe it's good enough as-is.
>
> I see a sort of stack evolving that looks something like this:
>
> ?- interactive user shell (in e.g. javascript)
> ?- javascript + runtime "user OS" / environment
> ?- javascript VM (eventually bootstrapped)
> ?- host OS
> ?- bare-metal
>
> (Nb., the above looks a hell of a lot like the Inferno stack... ?ala:
>
> ?- interactive user shell (Inferno sh, in Limbo)
> ?- Limbo + runtime Inferno "user OS" / environment
> ?- Dis VM (eventually bootstrapped)
> ?- host OS
> ?- bare-metal
>
>
> Rather than continue down the road of dithering on substrate and vacillating
> between different toy implementations on different substrates, maybe I
> should just byte the bullet.
>
> Thoughts? ?Is js the "next" *real* "systems programming" language?
>
>
> jb
>
>
> PS - for the progeddit trolls, should this get cross-posted and should you
> stumble upon this... ?enjoy. ?Please note the rant tags. ?Take this w/ a
> grain of salt, and in context please. ?Just musing out loud...
>
>
> </rant>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From michaelslists at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 20:11:23 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:11:23 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912102007p2c8f5d5bodb725ab9d6cc78a0@mail.gmail.com>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<8092dc770912102007p2c8f5d5bodb725ab9d6cc78a0@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912102011v6e0997ffx5e631432341c2dba@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
> Personally I think the javascript-for-everything community will be
> amongst the first to be put up against the wall and shot by future
> energy-wastage tribunals.

This is a most brilliant proposal ...

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

psychic monger engender UNRECOGNIZED: chaotic abettor open-minded
anticipatory output SORTIE ...

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 20:22:38 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:22:38 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912102022n330f0a9l836dbb1c9b611da6@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>
> ...it's easier to see what time it is by looking at those big glowing green
> numbers than fish around for the iphone on the bedside in the dark. ;-)
>

I have a small stand I put my lifedrive on right before I drift to
sleep. I set the audio to stream and then punch up the clock app (oh
yeah, that old freaking bit of tech fakes multitasking...)Screen
blanks in 1min...stream plays on...I wake up and touch the screen..pop
there is the clock as if to say to me...repent harlequin...but thats a
whole other post.

The problem I have with the those always  glowing friends ( I am not
actually your friend) alarm clocks is they ALWAYS FREAKING GLOW.  The
dark descending to sleep is not rendered anymore useful with the glow
of clocks, hard drives, power indicators or kids toys ... I have
standing orders that all such devices that enter the bedroom are taped
such that those lights are blacked out as sure as London during the
blitz. The light I need is the liht I will see, not the light  that
deamnds attention from devices better made the wallflower.


-tm(posted via my fIngers)higgins

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 20:26:35 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:26:35 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>
References: <FBC4D94A-9FD8-46E2-B579-CAB88A07B2D4@place.org>
	<FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912102026v5111dd02y9c5259bb5c450bbb@mail.gmail.com>

n Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 7:40 PM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> / temporal / spatial / social / etc. fields. ?In combination, it's a heady
> thing. ?I.e., this thing gets educated fast in a lot of associative ways,
> via a very pragmatic --- and unwitting mass collaborative --- means.
>
> Before too long perhaps the Goggles will be wearing *you.* ;-)
>

This Skynet takeover made possible by a grant from the National
Association of Science and by Google users like you.. Thank you...


-tom(resistance is fertile, baby)higgins


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 10 20:46:06 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:46:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Goggles
In-Reply-To: <FB1A91B9-E73A-4DC8-A586-2DDBA8C4A64B@place.org>
Message-ID: <734057.77990.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/10/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> 
> BTW...? in case anybody missed one
> implication...? the image queries themselves, their
> associations with existing stored images and what gets
> clicked on in search results are all independently
> *excellent* ways to do supervised reinforcement learning for
> visual processing of real world visual / temporal / spatial
> / social / etc. fields.? In combination, it's a heady
> thing.? I.e., this thing gets educated fast in a lot of
> associative ways, via a very pragmatic --- and unwitting
> mass collaborative --- means.
> 
> Before too long perhaps the Goggles will be wearing *you.*
> ;-)
> 

And Tom Sawyer getting you to pay him to let you paint his fence.

          ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

http://www.flickr.com/gift/


From sean at conman.org  Thu Dec 10 20:47:54 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:47:54 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
Message-ID: <20091211044754.GA28127@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> Mr. Sean Connery makes several excellent points, all of which I agree  
> with.  (Love your movies, btw. ;-)

  Thank you, but I do apologize for Zardoz (what can I say, it was the 70s
and I needed the work ... )

> Don't quite know what to do about it.  Suggestions?

  I personally like Lua better than JavaScript (or Perl or Python or PHP or
Ruby or ... ).  It interfaces with C very easily, and apparently, the new
LuaJIT 2.0 (output x86 code) is a drop-in replacement for the Lua library (I
haven't tried it yet, but it's been really well received in the Lua
community).

  Sure, it doesn't quite have all the batteries included, but that just
means it isn't a bloated mess quite yet ... 

  -spc (Who never expected modern software development to have so many
	moving parts ... )


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 10 21:06:13 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:06:13 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
Message-ID: <570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/10/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> 
> ...it's easier to see what time it is by looking at those
> big glowing green numbers than fish around for the iphone on
> the bedside in the dark. ;-)
> 

Well here's the mind-numbing idiocy of not getting rid of mine sooner. We have two other digital clocks with glow-in-the-dark numbers in the room. One on the video recorder; the other on my wife's alarm clock. 

But it gets worse....

We like a very dark bedroom so we have heavy dark curtains. In such a dark room, the numbers on my clock radio light up the room like a beacon. So one night a long time ago, in a fit of annoyance, I grabbed a small cloth and tossed it over the radio to dull the numbers at night. I have long been in the habit of uncovering the numbers in the morning and covering them when I go to bed.

On a clock radio that I never use.

Sorta puts real meaning to the word "thoughtless"...

> 
> j ("the form factor is the application") b
> 

Yes!!!

      ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

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From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Thu Dec 10 21:21:35 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:21:35 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>

Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> --- On Thu, 12/10/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>>
>> ...it's easier to see what time it is by looking at those
>> big glowing green numbers than fish around for the iphone on
>> the bedside in the dark. ;-)
>>
>
> Well here's the mind-numbing idiocy of not getting rid of mine sooner. We have two other digital clocks with glow-in-the-dark numbers in the room. One on the video recorder; the other on my wife's alarm clock.
>
> But it gets worse....
>
> We like a very dark bedroom so we have heavy dark curtains. In such a dark room, the numbers on my clock radio light up the room like a beacon. So one night a long time ago, in a fit of annoyance, I grabbed a small cloth and tossed it over the radio to dull the numbers at night. I have long been in the habit of uncovering the numbers in the morning and covering them when I go to bed.
>
> On a clock radio that I never use.
>
> Sorta puts real meaning to the word "thoughtless"...
>
>>
>> j ("the form factor is the application") b
>>
>
> Yes!!!
>
> ? ? ?...ken...
>
>
> ? ? ?__________________________________________________________________
> Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr!
>
> http://www.flickr.com/gift/
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From michaelslists at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 21:25:46 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:25:46 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.

Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
then it can gradually get lighter.

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

POLLING wizard! Plagiary disparate peacock edged-skier listlessness.

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 21:34:29 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:34:29 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912102134o345d2072k463f393f9ed39f7e@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:25 PM, silky <michaelslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
>> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
>> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
>
> Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
> configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
> fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
> then it can gradually get lighter.
>

Feh, Over enginering at its finest:)- Voice activiated , for me keyed
to the phrase "wuzdafraktimeizit". Of course it would respond not only
with a visual but auditorialy (ala http://www.voco.uk.com/  but more
like tuxdroid meets fry (rss feeds read to you as well as time...and
yeah I have mentioned this project before and have gotten just
baout..oh...no further with it than last I mentioned it))...Hmm now
shiz that reminds me... the tux droid has a light sensor and a sound
senor/mic. hmmmm

-tom(another project idea to fill up the  OneDay folder)higgins

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Thu Dec 10 21:45:57 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:45:57 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912102134o345d2072k463f393f9ed39f7e@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3b2914c0912102134o345d2072k463f393f9ed39f7e@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912102145h5220ce22g1fd9093dc0edc7ab@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:25 PM, silky <michaelslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
> > > Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
> > > capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
> >
> > Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
> > configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
> > fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
> > then it can gradually get lighter.
>
>
> Feh, Over enginering at its finest:)- Voice activiated , for me keyed
> to the phrase "wuzdafraktimeizit". Of course it would respond not only
> with a visual but auditorialy (ala http://www.voco.uk.com/ ?but more
> like tuxdroid meets fry (rss feeds read to you as well as time...and
> yeah I have mentioned this project before and have gotten just
> baout..oh...no further with it than last I mentioned it))...Hmm now
> shiz that reminds me... the tux droid has a light sensor and a sound
> senor/mic. hmmmm

No but voice activated means you need to be there; in the weight-based
system, it can be anyone who happens to be sleeping there and waking
up. Nobody wants to be talking the second they wake up, it seems to me
to follow the natural way you want to be aware of the time (to a
degree), without requiring anything more than a pressure-sensitive
mat.


> -tom(another project idea to fill up the ?OneDay folder)higgins


-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20


From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Fri Dec 11 03:33:10 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:33:10 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <5e01c29a0912102011v6e0997ffx5e631432341c2dba@mail.gmail.com>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<8092dc770912102007p2c8f5d5bodb725ab9d6cc78a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102011v6e0997ffx5e631432341c2dba@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912110333h1e131208u63f12c833cba20d5@mail.gmail.com>

These guys, in particular, will be the first to be put against that wall.

http://github.com/revis/Really-Cloudy

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:11 PM, silky <michaelslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
>> Personally I think the javascript-for-everything community will be
>> amongst the first to be put up against the wall and shot by future
>> energy-wastage tribunals.
>
> This is a most brilliant proposal ...
>
> --
> silky
> ?http://www.mirios.com.au/
> ?http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20
>
> psychic monger engender UNRECOGNIZED: chaotic abettor open-minded
> anticipatory output SORTIE ...
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From jbone at place.org  Fri Dec 11 04:58:40 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:58:40 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
Message-ID: <CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>


Re:  the light in the room from alarm clocks, I feel yer pain...   
totally agreed with those who said that, I like a dark room, too.   
OTOH, interrupted sleep schedule related to having newly-arrived child  
subprocesses* --- and the attendant need to frequently get a time hack  
during the numerous priority sleep interrupts --- have sort of trumped  
that for me.  The wife was in the habit of putting something in front  
of the alarm clock before, and that's now driving me batty.  Damien's  
eye-tracking may not be too far off;  perhaps some kind of motion  
sensing or something.  (Have been eyeing those clocks that project  
onto wall / ceiling / etc...  if I could figure out how to make it  
work *only when it needs to* that would be a winner for me.)


jb


* two of 'em, back in September.  Did I forget to mention that on-list?



From jbone at place.org  Fri Dec 11 05:02:29 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:02:29 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>
Message-ID: <D728BBD4-CC63-4FEF-9F5A-76DD44C0F5E4@place.org>


Tom suggests:

> rss feeds read to you as well

Feh, serialized, too damn slow.  Same problem I've got with the recent  
surge in popularity of e.g. video presentations (TED, DefCon, Google  
Talks, etc.)  Text still wins on a bandwidth basis for many  
applications.

Watching the presentation by the MOSREF guy --- for a full hour ---  
made me want to poke my eardrums out with sharp instrument.

Have noticed that Google is now providing auto-transcription to text  
of some videos...  sweet.  And says something about the state of  
feeding the beast, too...

jb


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Fri Dec 11 07:51:09 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:51:09 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>
Message-ID: <761488.28814.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 12/11/09, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

> ? (Have been eyeing those clocks
> that project onto wall / ceiling / etc...? if I could
> figure out how to make it work *only when it needs to* that
> would be a winner for me.)
> 

If you get one just be sure that there is only one clock in it. 

The cheaper ones have one clock in the main display and another clock in the projector display. Given the variability of the crystals in the cheap clock modules the two clocks are never in sync for more than the first few minutes after you manually sync them yourself. If you are a lintpicker you will find it annoying even though the difference is seldom more than a few of minutes, depending upon how often you get pissed off and resync them.

I found that it works best to project it at a wall, just high enough on the wall that both parties can see it while still lying down, rather than the ceiling. The one we had was brightness adjustable for the projector.

If you're looking for a new toy just pay attention to the caveats above and have fun. Otherwise I don't particularly recommend it. Ours was a Xmas gift so we felt obligated to use it for at least a little while before it hit the garage sale box.

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 08:19:51 2009
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:19:51 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <D728BBD4-CC63-4FEF-9F5A-76DD44C0F5E4@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>
	<D728BBD4-CC63-4FEF-9F5A-76DD44C0F5E4@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c0912110819i1c41127evf763978779a7016@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>
> Feh, serialized, too damn slow.

Not all the time. Waking up there is a window of time when my eyeballs
are not tracking text. I hold that in those states of waking,
sleeping, stupor or simply whilst hold a child sub process (OMG  did
you say you now have two of em??) the ability to scan text is
diminished...thus have it read to you. Sure it is slower, but it is
>0wps

-tom(i have also been playing with speed of the spoken feeds and
comprehension...you can crank that puppy up and get more bang for your
time..think Carl Kassel on speed)higgins

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Fri Dec 11 08:27:34 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:27:34 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912110819i1c41127evf763978779a7016@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <693331.86305.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 12/11/09, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> -tom(i have also been playing with speed of the spoken feeds and
> comprehension...you can crank that puppy up and get more bang for your
> time..think Carl Kassel on speed)higgins
> 

Yeah, go helium.

Look at some of the technology square dance callers use. You can tweak the speed considerably without changing tone. 

       ...ken...


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From paul at remsset.com  Fri Dec 11 09:24:20 2009
From: paul at remsset.com (paul)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:24:20 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B228044.5050206@remsset.com>

silky said the following on 12/10/2009 11:25 PM:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
>> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
>> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
> 
> Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
> configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
> fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
> then it can gradually get lighter.
> 

Wiring the bed with pressure sensors is too complicated. Perhaps just a 
sensor under one foot?  And then with a waterbed, how?

Do we want to need HDMI cables to connect the bed to the clock?

Simpler would be a photo sensor in the clock to dim the display.

Or how about a knob?  Like a volume control?  Like on the GE clock radio 
I bought at Woolco in 1977?

Very simple.  And it still works.


paul


-- 
_____________________________________
    http://remsset.com


    Do you smell something burning or is it me?
                                  - Joan of Arc


From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Fri Dec 11 09:47:31 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:47:31 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <4B228044.5050206@remsset.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B228044.5050206@remsset.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912110947v33c0659fm6efd657ba6a654e0@mail.gmail.com>

Knobs are, like, yesteryear.

Gaze detection is the way to go. Wide angle lens CMOS camera on the
face, a couple of infrared LEDs, look for pairs of reflections that
move together, then have your PTZ telephoto lens zoom in to find the
detail on where the pupils are. Might be possible to get rid of the
PTZ camera if you use a high megapixel video camera with digital zoom
capability.

Better yet - pulse picosecond pulses of UV and look for the veiling
glare. This will be so short it will be below the threshold of
perception. Might induce nightmares though. Hard to know.

I think that at a price point of $500, we would be delivering real
value to the US market.

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 4:24 AM, paul <paul at remsset.com> wrote:
> silky said the following on 12/10/2009 11:25 PM:
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
>>> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
>>
>> Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
>> configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
>> fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
>> then it can gradually get lighter.
>>
>
> Wiring the bed with pressure sensors is too complicated. Perhaps just a
> sensor under one foot? ?And then with a waterbed, how?
>
> Do we want to need HDMI cables to connect the bed to the clock?
>
> Simpler would be a photo sensor in the clock to dim the display.
>
> Or how about a knob? ?Like a volume control? ?Like on the GE clock radio I
> bought at Woolco in 1977?
>
> Very simple. ?And it still works.
>
>
> paul
>
>
> --
> _____________________________________
> ? http://remsset.com
>
>
> ? Do you smell something burning or is it me?
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? - Joan of Arc
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From geege4 at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 10:24:21 2009
From: geege4 at gmail.com (geege schuman)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:24:21 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912110947v33c0659fm6efd657ba6a654e0@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B228044.5050206@remsset.com>
	<8092dc770912110947v33c0659fm6efd657ba6a654e0@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <493a95a00912111024w3343435fgc1f664cc433ee5e1@mail.gmail.com>

http://www.dreamessentials.com/a_intro_eye_masks.aspx?gclid=CJmjya2Az54CFQwdswodVWORpw

From bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca  Fri Dec 11 10:37:50 2009
From: bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca (John Parsons)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:37:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c0912102134o345d2072k463f393f9ed39f7e@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <583819.89421.qm@web112302.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>

I rather like the constant, passive nature of the dimly glowing beacon of reality. I don't want a "Heisenberg" clock that only quantifies time when queried. Besides, the slight additional light is useful for verifying (in that confused, half-stupor of waking) that whatever limb which is still numb and asleep, is actually attached (if not functioning). :D

--- On Fri, 12/11/09, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
To: michaelslists at gmail.com, "Friends of Rohit Khare" <fork at xent.com>
Received: Friday, December 11, 2009, 5:34 AM

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:25 PM, silky <michaelslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
>> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
>> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
>
> Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
> configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
> fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
> then it can gradually get lighter.
>

Feh, Over enginering at its finest:)- Voice activiated , for me keyed
to the phrase "wuzdafraktimeizit". Of course it would respond not only
with a visual but auditorialy (ala http://www.voco.uk.com/? but more
like tuxdroid meets fry (rss feeds read to you as well as time...and
yeah I have mentioned this project before and have gotten just
baout..oh...no further with it than last I mentioned it))...Hmm now
shiz that reminds me... the tux droid has a light sensor and a sound
senor/mic. hmmmm

-tom(another project idea to fill up the? OneDay folder)higgins
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http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork



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From jbone at place.org  Fri Dec 11 11:13:50 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:13:50 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <D728BBD4-CC63-4FEF-9F5A-76DD44C0F5E4@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<CA0D679A-3371-407E-9DE5-5EFE8F364945@place.org>
	<D728BBD4-CC63-4FEF-9F5A-76DD44C0F5E4@place.org>
Message-ID: <A50EE6C9-0329-4B9C-8029-2D66F5B4C6E6@place.org>


Tom sez:

> OMG did you say you now have two of em??

Yup.  All at once.  Well, more or less;  12 minutes apart.

jb



From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 11:17:02 2009
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:17:02 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa00912111117g276df540u8048a883bacba202@mail.gmail.com>

A simpler way to implement this is by using a motion detector that's
pointing just above the horizontal position.


On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:25 PM, silky <michaelslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com> wrote:
>> Clearly what's needed here is an alarm clock with eye-tracking
>> capabilities, so that the number light up only when looked at.
>
> Substantially more trivial solution: The amount of light it shows is
> configured by the amount of pressure on the bed. If you stand up, it's
> fully lit, if you're lying flat, it's completely off. If you sit up,
> then it can gradually get lighter.
>
> --
> silky
> ?http://www.mirios.com.au/
> ?http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20
>
> POLLING wizard! Plagiary disparate peacock edged-skier listlessness.
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From corinna.schultz at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 14:28:31 2009
From: corinna.schultz at gmail.com (Corinna Schultz)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:28:31 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912111117g276df540u8048a883bacba202@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<570125.32038.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<8092dc770912102121v1b7d2b7aj691994f8bf4e79e3@mail.gmail.com>
	<5e01c29a0912102125w95ad4ccp89672975a0f87642@mail.gmail.com>
	<ab069aa00912111117g276df540u8048a883bacba202@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c8852d560912111428j6e290a69i97d4a2e7d15e0fed@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
> A simpler way to implement this is by using a motion detector that's
> pointing just above the horizontal position.

I'm boring, I guess. I plug in my cheap (free) Nokia phone to charge
overnight, and when I want to know the time, I find the big button in
middle by touch, press it, and the screen lights up for a second or
two. If I'm really sleepy, I look at it with one eye, so focusing is
easier. :)

It lets me curse the cat when she wakes me up 15-30 min before my
alarm is set to go off.

(I use my phone for the alarm, too. It makes  a gentle tap-tap-tap
sound that doesn't wake my husband.)

From pj at place.org  Fri Dec 11 15:59:07 2009
From: pj at place.org (Paul Jimenez)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:59:07 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B22DCCB.5040501@place.org>

On 12/10/2009 09:53 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> ...it's easier to see what time it is by looking at those big glowing 
> green numbers than fish around for the iphone on the bedside in the 
> dark. ;-)
>

Chumby FTW!


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 16:24:09 2009
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:24:09 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <4B22DCCB.5040501@place.org>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<4B22DCCB.5040501@place.org>
Message-ID: <ab069aa00912111624j6eaa0eb6j403f67491ed65913@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Paul Jimenez <pj at place.org> wrote:
> Chumby FTW!

My own Chumby is a paperweight these days, along with my old
Handspring and Zip drive.

Any ideas for constructive things to do with it?

From jbone at place.org  Fri Dec 11 19:13:39 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:13:39 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
Message-ID: <36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>


Mr. Sean Conner(y) suggests:

> Lua



Absolutely a contender for my own pet shell and related automation  
projects.  Very nice, very small and tight, properly tail recursive,  
has good coroutine support at VM level,  (though lacks first-class  
continuations, perhaps not a problem given the coroutine  
implementation, cf. HoPL '07 paper etc.), has a nice packaging system,  
gets a lot of things right, fast-ish...  and it has the purtiest FFI  
since Elk.  IMHO, of course.  Downside:  minimalism leads to lack of  
expressivity leads to higher LoC leads to lower readability and  
unnecessary complexity, take a look at e.g. some of the wiki  
implementations in it, e.g. Nanoki.  Hardly nano...  Suffers a bit  
from the lack of standards for modules, object system, etc. --- like  
lisps in that respect, or Tcl --- a little too meta for its own good,  
sometimes constraints can be empowering.  Has some momentum by virtue  
of its de facto standard in the gaming community;  obviously less so  
than js, but still fairly reasonable.  Spent a good several months  
playing with it intensively;  prior to 5.0 it posed some difficulties  
that have now been addressed, but I haven't picked it back up  
seriously lately.

For the record, here are the substrates / targets and approaches I've  
actually done more with (i.e. in the "new shell / user environment"  
space being discussed) than just considered at this point, over the  
last 10+ years:

(1)  roll your own in straight ANSI C.  Loses because of lack of  
"draft-ability" on other efforts.*
(2)  a Scheme, stock or roll-your-own, port Termite, build on that.   
Probably loses, too many Catch-22s.
(3)  Regular Python.  Great for prototyping, loses for GIL,  
performance, and other reasons.
(4)  Stackless.  Actually a contender, but suffers for same reasons as  
stock Python sans GIL.
(5)  Erlang.  Problem there is FFI...  also, very static, impl.  
unwieldy.  Needs a decent shell, though.
(6)  Lua.  Also Metalua.  Still strong possibilities...

Things I've considered but haven't really actively pursued too far for  
various reasons.

(7) various Occam-pi solutions, including TyCo and Transterpreter  
(sexy, baby!)
(8) LLVM.  Too compiler-centric, would need extensive runtime support.
(9) JVM / CLR.  GMAFB.  Bloat city, just don't like 'em.

Other things I've at least entertained conceptually for at least a  
little while lately include Go (no kidding) --- problem there is *they  
don't carry their own chosen abstractions far enough* --- i.e. if  
you're really itching to do pi-calculus then *just do it* --- having  
to jump out of the abstraction to do e.g. RPC is just silly.  These  
guys *invented* the "few high-level abstractions, uniformly applied"  
idea but apparently they lack the strength of their convictions when  
it comes to the process calculi their work rests upon.  Hell, if  
you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk.  Why stop in 1985 when  
you can sprint all the way to 1993?  That's irritating enough to put  
me off even attempting to use it, just on principle.

Have also burned a few days thinking about e.g. node.js, er.js  
(incompatible due to version support of former vs. requirement of  
latter) and friends, and various Prologs have tempted from time to  
time.  (Prolog as a language-implementation-language *may even beat  
lisps* in various cases.  If you're curious, ask, I'll point you to a  
couple of existence proofs.  An impressively-capable though toy Algol- 
like language interpreter can be had in literally a few 10s to 100s of  
lines of Prolog;  and some Prolog implementations offer nice substrate  
support for various concurrency experiments.  Compare and contrast to  
similar language implementation in Scheme in recent editions of EoPL.)

To date the most progress, and the testbed for all the ideas, has been  
Python (regular or Stackless, or Logix language toolkit --- or my own  
rather pathetic port of Budd's OO version of Kamin's interpreters;   
Pascal to C++ to Python, ugh.)  But I have no illusions that that's  
anything but a throwaway, a sort of language laboratory "whiteboard"  
substrate.

Erlang or Lua are probably the top substrate contenders if I ever get  
around to doing anything beyond monkeying around with ideas, with  
ground-up roll-your-own in ANSI C being a close third.  In all  
seriousness, though, non-browser js does have its attractions.  (I  
about gacked when I saw home many LoC in C++ there were in node.js +  
V8 + the additional dependencies, though.  About 240k > than what I  
want to deal with.  Not that Erlang's any better...  ;-)


While we're on the topic, here's an interesting new language that  
actually gets a lot of things right on the kitchen-sink "systems  
programming language" front:

   http://fantom.org

Their concept of actors --- async invocations returning promises /  
futures --- is seriously flawed, though.  But the language as a whole  
and its libraries, documentation, etc. --- the "whole enchilada" ---  
has the "feel" of being well thought-out and well-crafted, though.


Random thoughts...

jb

* PS - i.e., the goal is to be in the shell business, not the VM  
business.  But if you go the straight interpreter route, then you lose  
some nice abstraction boundary and portability properties...  OTOH,  
this (bare-bones ANSI C) is probably the least-risky choice from an  
adoption perspective.

PPS:  to be clear, there are two general use-cases that I'm interested  
in;  two general templates for my "everyday computing environment(s)"  
that I work within and move freely between daily.  These are:

   (a) typical highly-coupled mostly-homogeneous large-scale cluster  
computing with large data
     - order of 100s to 1000s of CPUs
     - terabytes of chunky, mostly-homogeneous (few kinds of) data
     - gig+ highly reliable redundant networks
     - generally compute- and IO-intensive problems
     - generally embarrassingly-parallel problems

   (b) very loosely-coupled (dispersed), highly heterogeneous,  
personally-focused computing
     - lots of little, some big, no huge data --- but highly  
heterogeneous in model and form
     - dispersed:  high standard deviation of latency, frequent  
disconnection
     - order of dozens of devices, very heterogeneous
       - controller-scale devices
       - plug servers (ala Sheeva / Tonido)
       - special-purpose shared devices (readers, touchpads, etc.)
       - personal end-user IO and compute devices (desktop, laptop,  
etc.)
       - personal end-user O-only and O-mostly devices (think TV...)
       - local and remote, often specialized servers (home media  
server, remote mail server, etc.)
     - lots of different applications and automation scenarios
     - generally coordination is a bigger problem than compute or IO  
intensity

The desire is to be able to treat each of these *sets of devices*  
conceptually as *a single programmable unit* by an individual user  
(e.g., me.)  (We punt the administration boundary problem;  each is  
deemed to be contained *within* a single administrative boundary, but  
implementations in the case of the latter at least must take care to  
implement enforce that boundary appropriately around the set of  
computational resources involved while crossing external boundaries.)

The thesis is that, with proper selection of abstractions, the *same  
set of abstractions* (universally / uniformly applied) works for both  
purposes.  The product of this  would therefore be an implementation  
of a distributed computing environment that spans both and provides a  
high-level, interactive, shell-like experience for *programming* both  
sorts of environments at the same level of expressivity and efficiency  
as e.g. existing shells do on UNIXen.  The proof in the pudding would  
then be that I could work exclusively within that meta-environment for  
most purposes rather than having to lash together a bunch of crap  
using dissimilar tools for each of these;  the "right tool for the  
job" proponents could then be clearly shown the Hobson's choice  
inherent in their limited view of the possibilities...

Whether this would have value for anyone else is beyond the scope of  
what I'm interested in doing...

The general shape of the solution is this:

   - start with a rich-data language for IPC (think JSON, OGDL, or  
similar with enriched types and symbols)
     - for integration purposes, mappings to some / all of:
       - HTML (output-mostly)
       - JSON (full round-trip)
       - XML (full round-trip)
       - possibly protobufs, Thrift, etc. (how to make reflection  
feasible?)
       - potentially others (texts -> some wiki markup;  etc.)
     - (some of) these mapping must have transitive closure
       - for some source data language S and target T and transforms  
x, x', y, y' etc.
       - x.S -> T;  x'.T -> S --> x.S | x'._ -> S
       - note intermediate forms are desirable  x.S | y._ | y'._ |  
x'._ -> S
     - path of least resistance might be:
       - extend JSON with first-class rich type literals, e.g. at least
         - URIs
         - quantities (numerics with dimensions, e.g. "5 joules")
         - symbols per se
         - possibly first-class node labels / references
           - consider Haskell data / labeled record declaration syntax
           - consider Lua table / method sugar:  T { foo = 1 } ...
       - possibly some additional syntactic sugar to make less onerous
   - build a shell around that
     - i.e., functions / filters / processes / commands / pipes /  
composition
     - seamless integration of in-node micro-processes and external  
processes
     - structure-preserving pipes and richer pipe wiring
     - runtime provides:
       - configurable universal resource namespace
       - local and remote access to resources via generic interfaces
         - native devices and services
         - synthetic devices and services
         - need less statefulness than 9p;  consider Octopus op
         - nb. op <~~> REST (!)
       - a decent distributed data store (implicit versioning,  
replication when appropriate, etc.)
         - cf. Amoeba Bullet filesystem, SOAP (not that SOAP)  
directory services, etc.
         - cf. OceanStore, etc.
         - cf. Lamport's, Cox's etc. research on distributed  
synchronization
         - cf. operational transform (OT) theory and patch theory,  
time / state vectors, etc.
       - mobility solution TBD.  Mobile u-processes or reflect /  
reify / migrate the entire node?
   - use that to build as much of an end-user environment for the use  
cases as possible
     - need task-farming / process mobility etc. in the cluster case
     - need universal eventing, coordination, code swapping, etc. in  
the dispersed case

Been sort of blocked (pun intended) on the idea of trying to define  
the shell's semantics as a block-reduction semantics with PAR, SEQ,  
ALT, and friends from Occam for a while now.  Getting a bit academic;   
starts to look like Piccola's form algebra, or in more generalized  
form the ambient calculus.  May simply punt on that;  defining a  
stream algebra and stream combinators is trivial by comparison, even  
though it leaves something to be desired in definitional rigor.

A couple of key requirements:

   - the meta-computer should be trivially extensible with / to new  
hosts and devices
     - "inject" / install / execute a single, small code unit to join  
into cloud
     - bootstrap from there into full environment
     - for tiny nodes (controllers, sensors) --- two options
       - host complete but minimal runtime environment (implies other  
requirements, ~prohibitive)
       - possibly two (or more) distinct roles hosts can play e.g.
         - "full" node vs.
         - merely sensor / controller "device" nodes
         - potentially others:  storage, compute, console, etc. nodes
       - bigger issue for the "personal cloud" case than the generic  
cluster case

   - the meta-computer contains a single administrative boundary from  
user perspective
     - but must smoothly cross certain "external" administrative  
boundaries
     - network barriers (firewalls), etc.
       - when appropriate
       -not suggesting unauthorized circumvention)
     - user environment / view of the world extends across these  
"translucently"

(One last, last thing to note:  the resemblance of my desiderata to  
what you see with e.g. botnets is not accidental.  A white-hat variant  
of the botnet concept is actually a pretty good model for end-user  
computing in the scenarios I mentioned, and the use cases are very  
similar, particularly (b), with the important exception that the  
motivation is to merely make use of one's *own* disparate resources  
more effectively.  Existing botnet technologies fall short of  
providing the kind of seamless global environment desired, though, and  
are pretty much a kitchen sink mishmash of crapware you'd never want  
to try to use and without any abstraction away from pure, native, if  
remote / distributed command-and-control.  Wasp and it predecessor  
Mosquito being, perhaps, the exception (and not enough of one.)  Admin  
tools like puppet and chef are, as previously mentioned, a lot closer  
on some levels, not on others.)

(One last, last thing to note:  was deeply into in the mobile agent  
thing back when that was tres cool, circa General Magic era.  Gave up  
on it back then as a solution in search of a problem;  agents for mail  
clearly trumped by my own then-company's standards-based e-mail  
product.  Have identified two problems for which it may be *the*  
solution over the last decade.  First, in the dispersed case, mobile  
computation is generally going to be the lowest-friction solution to  
certain problems (i.e., programming a limited controller or sensor  
edge-node, particularly one with intermittent connectivity).  And in  
the large-cluster / chunky-data case, it's nearly an absolute  
necessity to take the computation to where the data is...  These two  
recognitions have forced me to really move towards considering higher- 
order pi-calculi and friends, and even dabbling with the ambient  
calculus a bit.  Ambient in particular is really interesting, though  
Cardelli can be a bit formal and inscrutable (on this or any other  
topic) and it's a bit early-days in that regard, probably too big a  
mindset shift to make a practical solution out of, really.  FWIW, we  
dabbled with something so close to the ambient calculus that it was  
indistinguishable back at Active* --- w/o the formalism, of course.   
That was mostly Sean M.'s doing, though, props etc.)



jb





From jbone at place.org  Fri Dec 11 20:01:20 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:01:20 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] silky's links...
Message-ID: <04488445-476D-4E77-B7B8-34FA79F70AE9@place.org>


...hmm, deja vu... distinct feeling I've seen this before.  Quite a  
why the lucky stiff vibe...  could it be?  Or is that just a matrix- 
glitch?

;-)

jb



From sean at conman.org  Fri Dec 11 22:41:08 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:41:08 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
	<36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
Message-ID: <20091212064108.GB23958@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> Their concept of actors --- async invocations returning promises /  
> futures --- is seriously flawed, though.  But the language as a whole  
> and its libraries, documentation, etc. --- the "whole enchilada" ---  
> has the "feel" of being well thought-out and well-crafted, though.
> 
> 
> Random thoughts...

  Random thoughts indeed.  

  Here are a few of mine.  To me, they're related, but your milage may vary.

  About thirteen years ago (back when I was a tenured undergrad) I was
playing around with language design and implemented my own Forth-like
language (basically because I wanted to know how Forth was implemented). 
Unlike Forth, though, it had an object system, polymorphism and operator
overloading.  I even used the language for a class project---a Unix shell
(the class was "Unix Systems Programming").

  The real innovation in my "shell" (which was really an extention of the
language to execute programs) was the fact that a Unix command was a first
class object.  Not only simple commands but piped commands as well:

	unix var lspager	( declare a unix command variable )

	{ "-l" "ls" } { "more" } | 
	( 1st cmd )    ( 2nd ) ( this connects the two together in a single object)
	
	lspager !
	( var ) ( store object into var )

  Yes, syntax sucked (it's Forth).  But I loved the idea that Unix commands
could be stored in variables, and that you could do stuff like:

	{ "-l" "ls" } unix const ls
	{ "more"    } unix const pager

	ls pager | unix const lspaged

	lspaged exec

	{ "less" } some.function.that.needs.a.pager.program

  And so on and so on.  I even had easy ways to redirect stdout and stderr,
and adding support to pipe stderr would be easy, but the resulting pipelines
would have been rather interesting to construct (stderr through one set of
pipes, stdout through an entirely different set).

  It was also round this time that I was hired by a local company to help
port Unix programs to QNX.  QNX is an underrated operating system (kernel is
only 8K on an 80486 class machine, Pentium kernel probably isn't much
larger) but you really need a network of machines to see the full potential
of it:  it's entirely network transparent.

  Sure, at the command line it looks like a Unix system, but that's just a
superficial layer over the operating system.  Each machine on the network
(and really, it's a network segment as the underlying protocol is Ethernet
only) has an id and you could do stuff like:

 //5 ls | //3 grep foobar | //7/tr -d '\r' | iconv -f utf-8 -t iso8859-1 >//8/tmp/output

  Which translated into English reads:

	Run the program "ls" on node 5, pipe the output to the program
	"grep" on node 3; pipe that output to the localnode running the
	program "tr" which resides on node 7, then output that again to the
	program "iconv" which is on the localnode and finally place the
	output on node 8 in the file "/tmp/output".

  I used to regularly use the modem on my boss' machine, and he would use
the printer hooked up to my machine (yes, you can use devices from other
nodes as if they were local).  I really liked QNX, but never ran it at home
because the value (as I saw it) was in multiple machines, and while I had
multiple machines at the time, they all weren't 386 or better.

  A related thought---I was interested in the VAX architecture (not VMS, the
actual VAX assembly language) primarily because I was an assembly language
junkie.  The assembly language, despite being about as CISCish as you can
get, was also very RISCish in a certain regard---all instructions followed
the same format, and all instructions could use all addressing modes (and
with enough exposure, one could literally read hex code and decode the
instructions), and all the registers (including the PC) were general
purpose.  

  Two of the instructions, CALLS and CALLG were very interesting.  With
CALLS, you push parameters onto the stack and called the function:

		movl	#val2,-(sp)
		movl	#text,-(sp)
		calls	#2,printf	; two parameters being passed

(close to that---my VAX reference is currently unavailable to check right at
the moment).  Okay, nothing odd about that.  The other call, CALLG, takes a
pointer to a block of memory that contains the parameters:

	foo:	dw	2	; two paramters
		dl	#text	; pointer to text
		dl	val2	; some value

		callg	printf,foo

  But notice we can call the same functions as with CALLS!  printf will get
a pointer to the parameters (in R12 if I recall) regardless of which method
was used to call the procedure.

  Take a call like the following (please):

	gwindow = XCreateSimpleWindow(
			gdisplay,
			RootWindow(gdisplay,DefaultScreen(gdisplay)),
			0,
			0,
			WIDTH,
			HEIGHT,
			0,
			0,
			WhitePixel(gdisplay,DefaultScreen(gdisplay))
	);

  That's nine parameters to push onto the stack.  Not that much of a problem
when called once, but if I were creating several?  On the VAX, I could
(hypothetically) do something like:

	XCreateSimpleWindowParams swp;

	swp.display      = gdisplay;
	swp.parent       = RootWindow(gdisplay,DefaultScreen(gdisplay));
	swp.x            = 0;
	swp.y            = 0;
	swp.width        = WIDTH;
	swp.height       = HEIGHT;
	swp.border_width = 0;
	swp.border       = 0;
	swp.background   = WhitePixel(gdisplay,DefaultScreen(gdisplay));

	for (i = 0 ; i < 5 ; i++)
	{
	  swp.x = i * 100;
	  swp.y = i + 100;
	  window[i] = XCreateSimpleWindow(&swp);
	}

  Simpler, a bit more self-documenting and possibly a bit faster (especially
if you have repeated calls to functions that take a huge number of
parameters, most of which the same).  But when I realized that, another
thought struck me---this is a form of message passing!

  Flashback:  To the days of the Amiga (AmigaOS---a real run operating
system to code for) and passing messages between tasks (and this is why QNX
was so cool).  On the Amiga, you would do something like:

	struct mydata
	{
	  struct Message base;
	  int            a;
	  int            b;
	  /* etc etc */
	};

then fill in an instance of struct mydata (or maybe struct Message if that
filled the needs of the message), then pass that to the SendMsg() function
(on the Amiga, device drivers all registered a message port, so using a
device, or even a file system, was nothing more than passing messages).  

  But, getting back the VAX---CALLG looked more like sending a message than
calling a function that I suddenly made the realization that a function call
was nothing more than synchronous message call.  I'm sure there's some
implication of this, but of what, I'm still not sure.

  One other related thought I had years ago---again with the Amiga.  

  AmigaOS is actually comprised of three parts---Exec (the actual "kernel",
handles memory, devices, message passing and task scheduling), DOS (files,
filesystems and the concept of a "process") and Intuition (the GUI).  What
made AmigaOS even more unique (in my opinion) is that all three were (maybe
even still are) shared libraries.  All the functions in Exec were called the
same way as all the functions in DOS or Intuition or any other shared
library.  Device drivers were also shared libraries, but ones that could
have their own tasks (read: threads).  

  And in theory (but I never proved it), one could make an application that
was also a shared library.

  It always bugged me that Unix typically wrapped whole programs around
function calls (like kill, or stat or mkdir) and yet stuff I would have
loved to use in my programs, like grep, could not be used directly in my own
programs.

  Sure, Microsoft made it possible to use their applications as a library,
but that was more "remote control" than an actual library call.  Why can't I
just make a straightforward API call into an application?

  -spc (Then there's the filesystem I designed on paper that allowd one to
	use sound clips for "filenames" ... )


From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Fri Dec 11 23:39:39 2009
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:39:39 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
	<36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
Message-ID: <612446AD-876C-4BED-911D-338A33881416@radicalcentrism.org>

On Dec 11, 2009, at 7:13 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
> (8) LLVM.  Too compiler-centric, would need extensive runtime support.

I still have great hopes for MacRuby (just got commit access -- woot! :-). It is built on LLVM and the Objective-C runtime, and there's lots of clever ways we might be able to leverage the dynamic nature of Ruby to exploit both of those.  Plus, the GCD support opens lots of intriguing options for managing concurrency.

While not as pure (or easily made cross-platform) as the other languages you mention, MacRuby + LLVM + GCD opens some really interesting ideas; that might actually become mainstream (at least on the Mac).

-- Ernie P.

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Sat Dec 12 05:16:34 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:16:34 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] silky's links...
In-Reply-To: <04488445-476D-4E77-B7B8-34FA79F70AE9@place.org>
References: <04488445-476D-4E77-B7B8-34FA79F70AE9@place.org>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912120516g73742e2fq8d5c5302d0c913fd@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>
> ...hmm, deja vu... distinct feeling I've seen this before. ?Quite a why the
> lucky stiff vibe... ?could it be? ?Or is that just a matrix-glitch?

interesting; well I have heard this persons name before, but I haven't
seen any of his work. I can confirm that I am me, and no-one else :)

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

guileless: medicinal bravo. MUSIC INVARIABLY? UNREGISTERED.


From jbone at place.org  Sat Dec 12 05:47:30 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:47:30 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
	<36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
Message-ID: <BBFA61F1-FBE0-4BCC-B5B0-8964F441D750@place.org>


Sean writes:

> It was also round this time that I was hired by a local company to  
> help port Unix programs to QNX. QNX is an underrated operating  
> system (kernel is only 8K on an 80486 class machine, Pentium kernel  
> probably isn't much larger) but you really need a network of  
> machines to see the full potential of it: it's entirely network  
> transparent. Sure, at the command line it looks like a Unix system,  
> but that's just a superficial layer over the operating system. Each  
> machine on the network (and really, it's a network segment as the  
> underlying protocol is Ethernet only) has an id and you could do  
> stuff like: //5 ls | //3 grep foobar | //7/tr -d '\r' | iconv -f  
> utf-8 -t iso8859-1 >//8/tmp/output

Good stuff, Maynard!  Like the Forth thing, never thought about it in  
the shell context though (beyond e.g. using dc....)  Wrote a bunch of  
Forth back in the day (on mucks, and before that on the PC;  my second  
"serious" program I ever wrote was in a language called Graforth that  
ran on the original PCs.  The program was a 3d animated star map fed  
from real astronomical data (meticulously hand-typed in by me from  
some paper map that showed xyz in c-years with Sol at the origin.)   
Graforth was extremely cool for graphics programming;  it provided 3- 
ary cartesian coordinates and 3d point and wireframe animation at ~10  
FPS on a first-gen Compaq luggable!  That coupled with an early  
fixation on RPN sealed my fate for me for a while.  That said, I can't  
really stomach it enough anymore to take things like Factor  
seriously...)

Familiar w/ QNX;  had it running on a few machines at the house a few  
years back when they made it more freely available, and had read the  
papers etc. long before that.

One problem here, with this:  that style of network transparency isn't  
really network transparent at the level of the individual composition  
of commands.  For one thing, network transparency is a bit of a canard  
anyway, cf. Waldo et. al.  Anytime you've got a network of any  
complexity involved, you've got all kinds of failure modes that you  
don't have in the purely local case.  W/o making those explicit, your  
code tends to break in weird ways.  Second thing:  explicit *node*  
addressing is a bit troublesome, as it requires certain things of the  
namespace;  either a global name resolver or some significant amount  
of shared context between nodes.  This induces quite a bit of coupling  
in the code.  Various languages / systems of course tackle this in  
different ways;  in the "delay-tolerant networking" limit, it implies  
async store-and-forward and routing coupled with some clever naming  
tricks.  In the more usual sense, Erlang's process addressing (rather  
than e.g. channels) provides a bit looser coupling but still doesn't  
entirely suffice;  though at least failure is handled explicitly, even  
if remote PIDs embed the node name.

Still, yeah, even simply adding QNX-style node addressing into the  
shell leads to a lot of power, particularly in the more homogenous /  
well-networked cluster case.  The next big problem, dealt with  
reasonably in Plan 9's approach via e.g. its 'cpu' command, is that  
each element in that pipeline runs in a completely unique  
environment.  Plan 9 and Inferno get around this by arranging to have  
the invoking shell's entire environment exported to the remote node,  
so that it sees the same filesystem / resource namespace as the  
invoking process.  (Which is pretty weird, but cool, if you think  
about it.)  If necessary the subprocess can then customize that  
namespace, mounting in local resources as appropriate.

No conclusions here, just musing.  Summing up, composition and  
coordination in the distributed case are interesting problems.   
Several approaches:

   - channels (very tight coupling)
   - explicit node-addressed synchronous composition / dispatch /  
coordination (tight coupling)
   - global / local namespace mapping and synchronous RESTful  
interaction (fairly tight coupling)
   - pid-addressed async messaging (semi-tight coupling)
   - async store-and-forward w/ some clever abstract naming and  
routing (moderate coupling)
   - completely content-based dispatch (i.e. Linda and generalizations  
thereof;  very loose coupling)

I'm sure that's far from a complete taxonomy, but it's early am and  
the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet. ;-)

jb


From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Sat Dec 12 09:03:23 2009
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:03:23 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] composition and coordination in the distributed case Re: the
	fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <BBFA61F1-FBE0-4BCC-B5B0-8964F441D750@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
	<36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
	<BBFA61F1-FBE0-4BCC-B5B0-8964F441D750@place.org>
Message-ID: <86A98A67-4ABD-4095-B555-B98359C2CA39@radicalcentrism.org>

Hi Jeff,

On Dec 12, 2009, at 5:47 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:

> No conclusions here, just musing.  Summing up, composition and coordination in the distributed case are interesting problems.  Several approaches:
> 
>  - channels (very tight coupling)
>  - explicit node-addressed synchronous composition / dispatch / coordination (tight coupling)
>  - global / local namespace mapping and synchronous RESTful interaction (fairly tight coupling)
>  - pid-addressed async messaging (semi-tight coupling)
>  - async store-and-forward w/ some clever abstract naming and routing (moderate coupling)
>  - completely content-based dispatch (i.e. Linda and generalizations thereof;  very loose coupling)

Great taxonomy.  Where would you put tools like ssh, Capistrano, and other flavors of remote shell / configuration?

-- Ernie P.

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Sat Dec 12 10:29:08 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:29:08 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <20091212064108.GB23958@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <628718.62688.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Sat, 12/12/09, Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Jeff
> Bone once stated:
> > 
> > ...[snip]...
> > 
> > Random thoughts...
> 
> ? Random thoughts indeed.? 
> 
> ? Here are a few of mine.? ...
> 
>  ...[snip]...
>

Thank you for that, Sean. I can comprehend that. If it's at all related to Bone's Babblings, it helps. I grok assembly language and *nix. I mostly get VAX and AmigaOS. All stuff, or similar to, that I've worked with. My serious developer days are so far behind me that I generally have to infer about 100.3% of what Jeff goes on about. 

Of course maybe that's him, not me....

My affair with assembly language predates VAXen a little bit. I did a lot of development on PDP-11s running RSX (a realtime operating system), Macro-Assembler and DecNet. That combination didn't give you anything quite like QNX but it was sure easy to do interprocess communication both on and between nodes. Initially we were using it to build SCADA systems, process monitoring and some early crude network management for telco networks. But we even built a major order entry system with it. First mechanized order entry system in the world for telco service order entry, tracking and scheduling.

Doesn't seem like much today, but it was sure the cat's ass in '75. We did demos for visitors from telcos in the US and Europe and even a delegation from Japan. We were the first DEC customer in North America with an actual fully-implemented fully-networked non-SCADA production system on DECNet. (Doing networked SCADA systems on DECNet was trivial.)

We were also incredibly naive. We didn't learn until years later that it's impossible to structure and reuse assembly code. So we just did it. I guess our extensive Macro-Assembler code library was just a figment of our imaginations. DEC's Macro made it so easy to use library code that, after we built the first SCADA system, all subsequent ones were more like playing with Lego than programming.

RSX Macro-Assembler had similar capabilities to the ones you described for CallG on VAXen and the message passing on AmigaOS (actually it took a combination of RSX Macro and DECNet to get that). Not quite as simple but one did not have to make a large distinction (mentally) between making function calls and message passing. Back in the day we mostly just refered to it all as interprocess communication (yeah, I know that's gross and inaccurate but it worked for talking about it in such an early un-networked environment as it was.).. didn't much matter what device the "other" process was on, either. 

For communicating with/controlling non-computer devices, when you have to write all your own device drivers it's pretty easy to make them more homogeneous, and appear more like just another process, than if individual vendors do their independent proprietary thing. Which makes treating it as simply function calls or message passing much easier, too.

And, when you also have to roll your own file system, that all makes for a very nice homogeneous environment to play in. So when I first saw technical decriptions of the AmigaOS, it was sort of, What took you so long? Yeah, ours was primitive by comparison but, logically, I saw AmigaOS as evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Sorry about the trip down memory lane. It really is sort of relevant, at least as far as the deja vu component of these discussions go. *nix is still a central and significant, or at least useful, OS today. I am still reasonably functional with it. But that's not where I learned it. In my SCADA development days I also worked with another DEC operating system, RT-11. After becoming fluent with it and RSX, learning *nix -- and CP-M and MS-DOS -- was really just refresher courses. Something old, a little bit new, something borrowed, something.... Well, you get the picture.

Just wanted to thank you for using "language" I could understand and relate to. If it's even fractionally related to what Jeff's rambling on about, it's nice to have confirmation that some of the headaches I've got from reading and inferencing him has not been entirely in vain.

       ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

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From sean at conman.org  Sat Dec 12 13:29:21 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:29:21 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] the fix is in? <rant> lang, os, etc. continued </rant>
In-Reply-To: <BBFA61F1-FBE0-4BCC-B5B0-8964F441D750@place.org>
References: <F1686627-C106-4C94-95EB-38FF4123AF45@place.org>
	<C4C91157-2A0A-4707-BD6C-228BC41873D3@place.org>
	<8E720DA5-92A9-458F-A2AC-7A72741F88A6@place.org>
	<36BC2C9B-DFD8-43AE-82FD-1DCA723F1B16@place.org>
	<BBFA61F1-FBE0-4BCC-B5B0-8964F441D750@place.org>
Message-ID: <20091212212921.GA30394@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> One problem here, with this:  that style of network transparency isn't  
> really network transparent at the level of the individual composition  
> of commands.  For one thing, network transparency is a bit of a canard  
> anyway, cf. Waldo et. al.  Anytime you've got a network of any  
> complexity involved, you've got all kinds of failure modes that you  
> don't have in the purely local case.  W/o making those explicit, your  
> code tends to break in weird ways.  Second thing:  explicit *node*  
> addressing is a bit troublesome, as it requires certain things of the  
> namespace;  either a global name resolver or some significant amount  
> of shared context between nodes.  This induces quite a bit of coupling  
> in the code.  Various languages / systems of course tackle this in  
> different ways;  in the "delay-tolerant networking" limit, it implies  
> async store-and-forward and routing coupled with some clever naming  
> tricks.  In the more usual sense, Erlang's process addressing (rather  
> than e.g. channels) provides a bit looser coupling but still doesn't  
> entirely suffice;  though at least failure is handled explicitly, even  
> if remote PIDs embed the node name.

  Recent problem at work.  Upstream Internet provider burps, we're off the
Internet for about five minutes, then things appear okay.  I was working on
a server at the time and needed (okay, "wanted" is more like it) the
snmptrap daemon to record MIBs numerically instead of the half-assed method
currently being used.  I'll skip over the issues with *that*, but yes, I got
it working and it even survives a reboot (the server in question is 1:
virtual, and 2: my "workstation" so no customers are involved).

  Only now syslog is hanging.

  About the only coupling between snmptrapd and syslogd is the fact that
snmptrapd uses syslog() to log messages (which writes to a local Unix socket
called "/dev/log") and that syslogd reads whatever is sent to "/dev/log" and
does whatever it's programmed to do with the information.

  I'll skip over the several hours I spent tracking the issue down, but the
actual problem was caused by the upstream Internet provider burp earlier in
the evening.  Now, if the coupling between snmptrapd and syslogd is loose,
what could possibly be coupling syslogd and some upstream routers?

  Well ... 

  syslogd [1] on that server is instructed to not only keep a local copy of
the logs, but forward them to another server (on a different network).  The
server is on the 10.10.10.0/24 network [3], the DNS resolver it's using is
on the 192.168.100.0/24 network (but it's still local) and the network the
logs are being sent to is on the 172.18.4.0/24 network (not local---in fact,
it's somewhere else on the Internet).  

  We're in the process of phasing out the 192.168.100.0/24 network and the
only things left running on it are a few nameservers due to legacy issues
(both with out network and several customers).  Apparently, when the
upstream Internet provider burped, they stopped announcing (to the Internet
at large) the 192.168.100.0/24 network.

  So syslogd starts up, and is trying to resolve the host it's supposed to
send data to.  It queries the DNS server (and since it's on the local
network, even though a different IP block, no problem), but the DNS server,
which didn't have the information cached, attempted a lookup, but never saw
the reply.

  I didn't specify the IP address of where to send the syslog information,
because that would be "tight coupling" (or "tighter coupling") over the
server name (I could change the IP address of the server and syslogd would
still find it by name).  But because I used the name over the IP address, a
problem upstream caused a problem locally.

> No conclusions here, just musing.  Summing up, composition and  
> coordination in the distributed case are interesting problems.   
> Several approaches:
> 
>   - channels (very tight coupling)
>   - explicit node-addressed synchronous composition / dispatch /  
> coordination (tight coupling)
>   - global / local namespace mapping and synchronous RESTful  
> interaction (fairly tight coupling)
>   - pid-addressed async messaging (semi-tight coupling)
>   - async store-and-forward w/ some clever abstract naming and  
> routing (moderate coupling)
>   - completely content-based dispatch (i.e. Linda and generalizations  
> thereof;  very loose coupling)

  The problem is to get data from point A to point B.  A direct channel is
easy to set up, and easy to debug, but not flexible in the face of changes. 
As you add levels of indirection, you gain flexibility but at the cost of
configuration and troubleshooting [4] (especially troubleshooting).

  One more work-related story, that I think is related to coupling issues.

  Customer of ours (we're a small webhosting company) wants to redirect a
site from an old domain to a new domain.  No problem.  We use Apache, and
it's as simple as:

<VirtualHost 10.10.10.3:80>
  ServerName	www.example.com
  ServerAlias	example.com
  Redirect	permanent / http://www.example.net/
</VirtualHost>

and boom!  All web requests to example.com get a permentent redirect (which
helps with keeping your Google rank for instance) to the new site.

  Wonderful!

  Except we use a "control panel" [5] which supposedly makes "mangaging" the
webserver "easy".  And when I did the above?  It "broke" the "control
panel".  As in, the "control panel" "dumped core" (which is incredible, when
you consider it's written in PHP [7]).

  You want to know the work around we implemented?

  We set up a server, with Apache, but no "control panel".  The sole purpose
of that server is to basically redirect domains.  We then change the IP
address of the old website to point to this server.

  I am not making this up.

  -spc (So, where's the coupling here?)
  
[1]	It's a custom syslogd I wrote---network processing (and reading from
	"/dev/log" is considered a network read) in C, higher level logic in
	Lua [2], which means I can actually do some extensive filtering of
	syslog messages, more than you get from the stock syslogd.  For
	instance, it creates a one-line summary of five logging messages
	from Postfix and logs the summary.  On my workstation at home, it
	tracks failed SSH connections and if there are more than 6 failed
	attempts, blocks the IP for about an hour.

	Yeah, I could have a process scan the log files in real time, but
	1) the default syslogd only allows on to discriminate on facility
	and logging level; I can discriminate between sending host, program,
	facility and level, 2) why have an extra process hanging around?

[2]	Just because I thought it would be fun.  And a way of embedding Lua
	in a C program.  Yes, I'm wierd that way.

[3]	Not really; I'm munging the IPs for illustrative purposes

[4]	"I'm a troubleshooter.  I see trouble, I shoot it."

[5]	I *loathe* control panels.  You cannot fathom the depths of my hate
	for control panels.  They are the bane of my existance and if I
	could banish them from The Company, I would.

	But I can't.

	So I won't.

	Sigh. [6]

[6]	http://boston.conman.org/2008/01/05.1
	http://boston.conman.org/2009/11/02.1

[7]	The less said about PHP, the better.

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Sun Dec 13 20:48:59 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:48:59 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] One reason to keep an actual alarm clock...
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa00912111624j6eaa0eb6j403f67491ed65913@mail.gmail.com>
References: <FE596401-B8B4-41A7-8858-6015BEADAAC6@place.org>
	<4B22DCCB.5040501@place.org>
	<ab069aa00912111624j6eaa0eb6j403f67491ed65913@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912132048w78a5c93en562d8a823ca60dc8@mail.gmail.com>

Not being a twitter-er, this may already be well-known, but I offer it
only as evidence that setting up the pressure-sensitive bed is by far
the easiest option: http://twitter.com/newlywedsontjob

(Well, secondly only to actually keeping the alarm in another room,
which is what I do).

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

LESS restrain ax scared! Hermaphroditic misgivings COMMAND,
egregiously by-election; COLORANT...