Sigh.. my last perl program used JSON messages over System V IPC (msgsnd,msgrcv). And here I was feeling proud of it
I know, I know. I have an application in production which uses Python "pickle" over pipes to subprocesses.
Incidentally, it's interesting to speculate what the UNIX/Linux world might have been like if, when a process exited, it was able to return a result list, like the parameter list that goes in. Shell scripts, and "make", might not have been so blind to what the subprogram actually did.
I've been very disappointed in parallel programming support. The C/C++ community has a major blind spot in this area - they think parallelism is an operating system feature, not a language issue. As a result, C and C++ provide no assistance in keeping track of what locks what. Hence race conditions. In Java, the problem was at least thought about, but "synchronized" didn't work out as well as expected. Microsoft Research people have done some good work in this area, and some of it made it into C#, but they have too much legacy to deal with.
At the OS level, in most operating systems, the message passing primitives suck. The usual approach in the UNIX/Linux world is to put marshalling on top of byte streams on top of sockets. Stuff like XML and CORBA, with huge overhead. The situation sucks so bad that people think JSON is a step forward.
What you usually want is a subroutine call; what the OS usually gives you is an I/O operation. There are better and faster message passing primitives (see MsgSend/MsgReceive in QNX), but they've never achieved any traction in the UNIX/Linux world. Nobody uses System V IPC, a mediocre idea from the 1980s. For that matter, there are still applications being written using lock files.
Erlang is one of the few parallel languages actually used to implement large industrial applications.
At one of the protests I went to, one guy stood up to speak and basically said he was glad he had a top secret clearance because it meant he didn't have to have his privacy invaded like this. That's saying something.
It seems strange, but as you get to the higher level clearances, like TS and SCI, as done for the 3-letter agencies, the process becomes quite intrusive, but is reasonably rational and run by competent people. Also, at the higher levels, the security clearance process is entirely independent of the employer. At the higher security levels, where there are real field background checks, employee background information is closely held - it could be used by enemies to find vulnerable employees.
The problem with JPL is that they were doing a by-the-numbers process on a huge number of people using arbitrary criteria, but with the level of intrusiveness of a real clearance investigation. And they were running the process out of their own human resources department.
The real problem with this is that the University is asking the student to download and run software without properly identifying what it does. That's called "badware" by StopBadware, run by the Harvard Law School, Consumers Union, etc. Phrases like "exceeds authorized access" apply. And remember, this is a state school; they face the legal constraints on state actors. For example, the rule that "Most political advocacy is unacceptable" is a blatant First Amendment violation as applied to students. Report that to EULA Watch and the ACLU. The ACLU is already dealing with some other suppression of free speech by the CMU administration, so this probably won't surprise them.
It's not even clear whose Client Security Agent they're talking about. There's one from Cisco, one from Bradford, and one from Microsoft. The description mentions that it turns on Microsoft's automated updating. That means all the latest Microsoft security holes (like the one that makes Firefox execute Microsoft.NET content) are opened up.
Someone compared this to working for a company. It's not. As a student, you're the customer, not an employee. Also, in a corporate setting, if Central IT messes up your desktop machine, Central IT has to fix your desktop machine.
Apple is about profit margin. Apple has enjoyed much higher profit margins than its competitors. That's starting to slip as iPhone and iPod prices come down, and the cheaper competitors get better.
Apple's reaction so far has been to raise iTunes prices. Something better than that will have to be done next.
Think of it as a mobile platform for mostly-output applications.
eBook reader. Web browser. PowerPoint. TV and movies. Maps. Things where input is minimal.
That's the proper positioning for this - as a content delivery platform with a screen big enough to be useful. There's a market for that.
It's an illegal restraint of trade under US antitrust law. It's not "monopoly", which is sell-side, it's "monopsony", which is buy-side.
Farmers classically face monopsony situations. This was much worse when most farm products moved only by rail. When there was only one buyer with a rail loading facility in an area, farmers were really screwed. That's why there are so many farmer's cooperatives in the US, and USDA efforts to control monopsonies. For what it was like before that, see "A Deal In Wheat", from 1903.
Not only are most of those places well known, there are even tours. There's a nostalgic interest in nuclear tourism, visiting the interesting Cold War spots.
There's active work going on with underwater radio. It's really tough to do in salt water. But it's not quite impossible. There's considerable interest in making something that can push data through 100 meters of water depth. Oil industry operations would like to talk to their stuff on the ocean floor.
At longer ranges, there's at least one research project which claims that there's a transmission window in seawater between 1MHz and 10MHz. They hope to get data across 1KM. That will be useful if it works.
ELF works; the US and the USSR both have used it in the 70-85 Hz band. The trouble with ELF is that the wavelengths are so long at 80Hz that you need an antenna the size of a county.
From what I'm told, AM General [amgeneral.com] makes the HumVee, which for the original Hummer, was sold to GM as-is (well, a stripped down version anyhow). GM then painted them, added luxuries and such and then sold them to the public.
There were some engineering changes. For example, the original HMMWV had a top speed of 54MPH.
(The military didn't buy those things to drive them on freeways.)
The civilian version has a completely different transmission so it can go faster.
Here's the full list of differences. A few of the civilian features, like air conditioning, were backported to the HMMWV for ambulance and other enclosed applications.
The H2/H3/H4, of course, are based on ordinary GMC platforms.
Every time I go to some big conference, there's a clusterfuck as someone tries to get their laptop to talk to the projector.
If you lend your machine out for that sort of thing, make very sure that autorun is turned off for all external media. Someone is going to put in a CD or a USB stick that has something on it that will try to autorun.
Incidentally, if you're giving a talk, have everything set up in advance. When the projector turns on, your first slide should be up. Not a Windows desktop. Not a PowerPoint slide tray. Not "New updates are available for your computer." And especially not "Low Battery". That's amateurish. I used to have a housemate who was a roadie for rock groups, a stage rigger, and also did event setup at Stanford. She insisted presentations run like theatrical performances; any prep work takes place out of sight of the audience. If you're in art school, definitely learn to do this right.
There's a market catering to paranoid parents, but it's small. Disney bailed out of cell phones in 2007. Whereify, with a GPS watch and tracking system, gave it up a few years ago. (Whereify watches were for the really paranoid. They couldn't be removed without a signal from central control, and if the band was cut or the device damaged, alarms went off.)
The available devices all need charging or battery replacement. That's one advantage of getting the kid a cell phone. They'll keep it charged themselves.
As for the school, get them to put useful destination signs on their buses. Some schools get sloppy about that.
At the point Apple starts acting as a money transfer agent for third parties, they need to start acting like a financial institution. Either they're a bank, or they're a money transfer company, both of which are regulated.
PayPal eventually had to register as a financial institution in Europe and in some US states. Apple will have to do the same.
A few automated stations around the world that would observe the sky for moving objects automatically and record anything about the unidentified ones...
GEODSS has been operational since the mid-1980s, doing just that. Pairs of 40-inch telescopes automatically scan the sky. The controlling computers have a star atlas and know what's supposed to be where. Everything else gets reported. They can even detect a completely black object if it occults a star.
Some of the GEODSS sites have lasers to illuminate satellites. One telescope is used to aim the laser beam, while the other takes a picture.
This is useful for finding satellites and near-earth asteroids. But there are only three GEODSS sites (there were once seven, but budgets have been cut), they only operate at night, they're all in remote high-altitude locations with low cloud cover, and the telescopes only have a 2 degree field of view. So they're not likely to pick up aircraft-like targets. GEODSS is for finding stuff in orbit and beyond.
AutoCAD, the program that wiped drafting boards off the face of the earth. There was CAD before AutoCAD, but it required very expensive hardware, and was usually sold with a special purpose workstation.
During the 1980s, AutoCAD drove the graphics card market and the plotter market, and created the tablet market.
Drafting is an incredibly laborious process. Making changes to a drawing was a huge pain. (The previous big breakthrough was the electric eraser.) AutoCAD provided a huge productivity improvement, far more than a word processor vs. a typewriter.
I've never had much of a desire to own stuff. But I've never owned a broadcast TV in my whole life.
I have a DVD player and a large flat-screen display, but no antenna or cable connection. Watching 20 minutes of commercials per hour is bad for you. Hours a day of "consume, consume, consume" has to have an effect.
The "hoarding" mentality may come from overdosing on advertising.
Almost everything we have now existed in 1959, although more expensive and clunkier. Jet aircraft, nuclear power, rockets, transistors, computers, television, car mobile phones, solar cells, freeways, plastics, antibiotics, mass produced cars, shopping malls, and home appliances were all in existence by 1959. DNA had been figured out. Even e-mail and computer networks were starting to work. None of those things existed in 1909.
What we have today are mostly improvements on those technologies.
What didn't we get that was expected? Lots of things. A new source of energy. Strong AI. Antigravity. General purpose robots. Workable space travel.
If you look at 50 year intervals since 1759, there's been less fundamental change in the last 50 years than in any of the previous five periods.
This is a real problem, because we're stuck with a set of technologies that rely on depleting resources that won't last another 50 years.
You have to realize that in most cases of homelessness, there are other factors. What I mean is that the situation isn't one of "Person lost their job, exhausted their savings, and was thrown out on the street." That is extremely rare.
Not as rare as it used to be. As of a few years ago, about half of homeless people in SF were on drugs. Now, the shelter operators report people in suits showing up. People are running out their savings and their friends' patience.
Simply having made a bad career choice can break you now. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Wire wrapping isn't that big a deal. I still have a wire wrap gun, although I haven't used it in years. You buy precut, wire in different standard lengths, and it comes with the right amount of insulation pre-stripped at each end. You have a wire list (A-15 to C-42, etc., and you just follow the wire list. It's usual
to sort the wire list by length, so that you do the longest wires first. It's time-consuming, but not difficult. Far easier than ordinary hand-wiring.
Fully automatic wire wrap machines go back to the 1960s. That's how IBM mainframes were built. "Semi-automatic" wire wrap machines are still around; the human does all the work, and the machine checks them. If the wire wrap gun is in the wrong place, it won't wrap.
I have a Model 15 Teletype, a 1930 design built in 1944, not only working, but printing RSS news feeds. The Reuters RSS feed gives me a nice news report. Each time Reuters posts a new story, the Teletype motor turns on, the big machine prints the story, and it shuts down again.
I also set it up so that I can send text messages from the Teletype keyboard. All upper case, of course.
These machines are incredibly overdesigned, which is why they still work after 65 years. Unless they've been physically damaged, it's not that hard to get one running again. Mine just required thorough cleaning and oiling (over 500 oiling points), a new ribbon, and a roll of paper. I had to build a level-converting interface for the thing; it needs a 60mA current loop with 120VDC powering it. So I designed a small PC board for that.
A standard PC serial port will talk to it, at 45.45 baud, 5 bits, 1.5 stop bits, no parity. Which Windows will happily do. (Linux won't; the Linux scheme for selecting baud rates uses a fixed list of baud rates left over from the PDP-11 era. There are driver-level hacks to get around this, but the stock serial driver won't do it.) I wrote a Python program to handle the Teletype's Baudot issues and machine control, and to poll RSS feeds, printing each new story exactly once. It also does NOAA weather reports.
I've tried various RSS feeds. Reuters has the cleanest ones for this purpose. Each story comes with a heading and a brief, coherent summary. Most of the other RSS news feeds either just have the headlines, or truncate each story arbitrarily, ending it with "...". Reuters adds about one new story per hour, on average. It just printed "OBAMA TO NAME WHITE HOUSE CYBERSECURITY CZAR". (This is an upper-case-only machine, remember.)
Once I build a transparent case for the machine, I'm going to loan it to the Exploratorium or the Computer Museum. It will be set up to print news, and maybe incoming text messages so kids can text to it.
Suggest some good RSS feeds for demo purposes. Reuters has about one story per hour. A feed that produces something every 5-10 minutes would be useful.
I'm surprised that Japan doesn't have a more aggressive fusion program. Japan has almost no oil, little coal, and small natural gas reserves. Japan imports over 97% of its energy. If anybody needs fusion, it's Japan. Japan is a participant in ITER, but that's not enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh .. my last perl program used JSON messages over System V IPC (msgsnd,msgrcv). And here I was feeling proud of it
I know, I know. I have an application in production which uses Python "pickle" over pipes to subprocesses.
Incidentally, it's interesting to speculate what the UNIX/Linux world might have been like if, when a process exited, it was able to return a result list, like the parameter list that goes in. Shell scripts, and "make", might not have been so blind to what the subprogram actually did.
I've been very disappointed in parallel programming support. The C/C++ community has a major blind spot in this area - they think parallelism is an operating system feature, not a language issue. As a result, C and C++ provide no assistance in keeping track of what locks what. Hence race conditions. In Java, the problem was at least thought about, but "synchronized" didn't work out as well as expected. Microsoft Research people have done some good work in this area, and some of it made it into C#, but they have too much legacy to deal with.
At the OS level, in most operating systems, the message passing primitives suck. The usual approach in the UNIX/Linux world is to put marshalling on top of byte streams on top of sockets. Stuff like XML and CORBA, with huge overhead. The situation sucks so bad that people think JSON is a step forward.
What you usually want is a subroutine call; what the OS usually gives you is an I/O operation. There are better and faster message passing primitives (see MsgSend/MsgReceive in QNX), but they've never achieved any traction in the UNIX/Linux world. Nobody uses System V IPC, a mediocre idea from the 1980s. For that matter, there are still applications being written using lock files.
Erlang is one of the few parallel languages actually used to implement large industrial applications.
At one of the protests I went to, one guy stood up to speak and basically said he was glad he had a top secret clearance because it meant he didn't have to have his privacy invaded like this. That's saying something.
It seems strange, but as you get to the higher level clearances, like TS and SCI, as done for the 3-letter agencies, the process becomes quite intrusive, but is reasonably rational and run by competent people. Also, at the higher levels, the security clearance process is entirely independent of the employer. At the higher security levels, where there are real field background checks, employee background information is closely held - it could be used by enemies to find vulnerable employees.
The problem with JPL is that they were doing a by-the-numbers process on a huge number of people using arbitrary criteria, but with the level of intrusiveness of a real clearance investigation. And they were running the process out of their own human resources department.
The real problem with this is that the University is asking the student to download and run software without properly identifying what it does. That's called "badware" by StopBadware, run by the Harvard Law School, Consumers Union, etc. Phrases like "exceeds authorized access" apply. And remember, this is a state school; they face the legal constraints on state actors. For example, the rule that "Most political advocacy is unacceptable" is a blatant First Amendment violation as applied to students. Report that to EULA Watch and the ACLU. The ACLU is already dealing with some other suppression of free speech by the CMU administration, so this probably won't surprise them.
It's not even clear whose Client Security Agent they're talking about. There's one from Cisco, one from Bradford, and one from Microsoft. The description mentions that it turns on Microsoft's automated updating. That means all the latest Microsoft security holes (like the one that makes Firefox execute Microsoft .NET content) are opened up.
Someone compared this to working for a company. It's not. As a student, you're the customer, not an employee. Also, in a corporate setting, if Central IT messes up your desktop machine, Central IT has to fix your desktop machine.
Microsoft won't move out of the US. Companies threaten to move if they don't get a tax break all the time, but few of them do.
Apple is about profit margin. Apple has enjoyed much higher profit margins than its competitors. That's starting to slip as iPhone and iPod prices come down, and the cheaper competitors get better.
Apple's reaction so far has been to raise iTunes prices. Something better than that will have to be done next.
Think of it as a mobile platform for mostly-output applications. eBook reader. Web browser. PowerPoint. TV and movies. Maps. Things where input is minimal.
That's the proper positioning for this - as a content delivery platform with a screen big enough to be useful. There's a market for that.
It's an illegal restraint of trade under US antitrust law. It's not "monopoly", which is sell-side, it's "monopsony", which is buy-side.
Farmers classically face monopsony situations. This was much worse when most farm products moved only by rail. When there was only one buyer with a rail loading facility in an area, farmers were really screwed. That's why there are so many farmer's cooperatives in the US, and USDA efforts to control monopsonies. For what it was like before that, see "A Deal In Wheat", from 1903.
Not only are most of those places well known, there are even tours. There's a nostalgic interest in nuclear tourism, visiting the interesting Cold War spots.
There's active work going on with underwater radio. It's really tough to do in salt water. But it's not quite impossible. There's considerable interest in making something that can push data through 100 meters of water depth. Oil industry operations would like to talk to their stuff on the ocean floor.
At longer ranges, there's at least one research project which claims that there's a transmission window in seawater between 1MHz and 10MHz. They hope to get data across 1KM. That will be useful if it works.
ELF works; the US and the USSR both have used it in the 70-85 Hz band. The trouble with ELF is that the wavelengths are so long at 80Hz that you need an antenna the size of a county.
From what I'm told, AM General [amgeneral.com] makes the HumVee, which for the original Hummer, was sold to GM as-is (well, a stripped down version anyhow). GM then painted them, added luxuries and such and then sold them to the public.
There were some engineering changes. For example, the original HMMWV had a top speed of 54MPH. (The military didn't buy those things to drive them on freeways.) The civilian version has a completely different transmission so it can go faster. Here's the full list of differences. A few of the civilian features, like air conditioning, were backported to the HMMWV for ambulance and other enclosed applications.
The H2/H3/H4, of course, are based on ordinary GMC platforms.
Every time I go to some big conference, there's a clusterfuck as someone tries to get their laptop to talk to the projector.
If you lend your machine out for that sort of thing, make very sure that autorun is turned off for all external media. Someone is going to put in a CD or a USB stick that has something on it that will try to autorun.
Incidentally, if you're giving a talk, have everything set up in advance. When the projector turns on, your first slide should be up. Not a Windows desktop. Not a PowerPoint slide tray. Not "New updates are available for your computer." And especially not "Low Battery". That's amateurish. I used to have a housemate who was a roadie for rock groups, a stage rigger, and also did event setup at Stanford. She insisted presentations run like theatrical performances; any prep work takes place out of sight of the audience. If you're in art school, definitely learn to do this right.
That just gets you a cached version of a page with a link to the actual article. The actual article is more useful.
How is Apple supporting in-game transactions for Apps any different than Amazon allowing you to buy books for a Kindle
Amazon is licensed as a money transfer agent in states that require it. So Amazon is, in fact, regulated by banking authorities.
Just get the kid a cell phone, already.
There's a market catering to paranoid parents, but it's small. Disney bailed out of cell phones in 2007. Whereify, with a GPS watch and tracking system, gave it up a few years ago. (Whereify watches were for the really paranoid. They couldn't be removed without a signal from central control, and if the band was cut or the device damaged, alarms went off.)
The available devices all need charging or battery replacement. That's one advantage of getting the kid a cell phone. They'll keep it charged themselves.
As for the school, get them to put useful destination signs on their buses. Some schools get sloppy about that.
At the point Apple starts acting as a money transfer agent for third parties, they need to start acting like a financial institution. Either they're a bank, or they're a money transfer company, both of which are regulated.
PayPal eventually had to register as a financial institution in Europe and in some US states. Apple will have to do the same.
A few automated stations around the world that would observe the sky for moving objects automatically and record anything about the unidentified ones ...
GEODSS has been operational since the mid-1980s, doing just that. Pairs of 40-inch telescopes automatically scan the sky. The controlling computers have a star atlas and know what's supposed to be where. Everything else gets reported. They can even detect a completely black object if it occults a star.
Some of the GEODSS sites have lasers to illuminate satellites. One telescope is used to aim the laser beam, while the other takes a picture.
This is useful for finding satellites and near-earth asteroids. But there are only three GEODSS sites (there were once seven, but budgets have been cut), they only operate at night, they're all in remote high-altitude locations with low cloud cover, and the telescopes only have a 2 degree field of view. So they're not likely to pick up aircraft-like targets. GEODSS is for finding stuff in orbit and beyond.
AutoCAD, the program that wiped drafting boards off the face of the earth. There was CAD before AutoCAD, but it required very expensive hardware, and was usually sold with a special purpose workstation.
During the 1980s, AutoCAD drove the graphics card market and the plotter market, and created the tablet market.
Drafting is an incredibly laborious process. Making changes to a drawing was a huge pain. (The previous big breakthrough was the electric eraser.) AutoCAD provided a huge productivity improvement, far more than a word processor vs. a typewriter.
I've never had much of a desire to own stuff. But I've never owned a broadcast TV in my whole life. I have a DVD player and a large flat-screen display, but no antenna or cable connection. Watching 20 minutes of commercials per hour is bad for you. Hours a day of "consume, consume, consume" has to have an effect.
The "hoarding" mentality may come from overdosing on advertising.
It's worth comparing 1909, 1959, and 2009.
Almost everything we have now existed in 1959, although more expensive and clunkier. Jet aircraft, nuclear power, rockets, transistors, computers, television, car mobile phones, solar cells, freeways, plastics, antibiotics, mass produced cars, shopping malls, and home appliances were all in existence by 1959. DNA had been figured out. Even e-mail and computer networks were starting to work. None of those things existed in 1909.
What we have today are mostly improvements on those technologies.
What didn't we get that was expected? Lots of things. A new source of energy. Strong AI. Antigravity. General purpose robots. Workable space travel.
If you look at 50 year intervals since 1759, there's been less fundamental change in the last 50 years than in any of the previous five periods.
This is a real problem, because we're stuck with a set of technologies that rely on depleting resources that won't last another 50 years.
You have to realize that in most cases of homelessness, there are other factors. What I mean is that the situation isn't one of "Person lost their job, exhausted their savings, and was thrown out on the street." That is extremely rare.
Not as rare as it used to be. As of a few years ago, about half of homeless people in SF were on drugs. Now, the shelter operators report people in suits showing up. People are running out their savings and their friends' patience.
Simply having made a bad career choice can break you now. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Someone is coming out with a new paper magazine on electronic gaming? Why? Who will subscribe?
Wire wrapping isn't that big a deal. I still have a wire wrap gun, although I haven't used it in years. You buy precut, wire in different standard lengths, and it comes with the right amount of insulation pre-stripped at each end. You have a wire list (A-15 to C-42, etc., and you just follow the wire list. It's usual to sort the wire list by length, so that you do the longest wires first. It's time-consuming, but not difficult. Far easier than ordinary hand-wiring.
Fully automatic wire wrap machines go back to the 1960s. That's how IBM mainframes were built. "Semi-automatic" wire wrap machines are still around; the human does all the work, and the machine checks them. If the wire wrap gun is in the wrong place, it won't wrap.
I have a Model 15 Teletype, a 1930 design built in 1944, not only working, but printing RSS news feeds. The Reuters RSS feed gives me a nice news report. Each time Reuters posts a new story, the Teletype motor turns on, the big machine prints the story, and it shuts down again.
I also set it up so that I can send text messages from the Teletype keyboard. All upper case, of course.
These machines are incredibly overdesigned, which is why they still work after 65 years. Unless they've been physically damaged, it's not that hard to get one running again. Mine just required thorough cleaning and oiling (over 500 oiling points), a new ribbon, and a roll of paper. I had to build a level-converting interface for the thing; it needs a 60mA current loop with 120VDC powering it. So I designed a small PC board for that.
A standard PC serial port will talk to it, at 45.45 baud, 5 bits, 1.5 stop bits, no parity. Which Windows will happily do. (Linux won't; the Linux scheme for selecting baud rates uses a fixed list of baud rates left over from the PDP-11 era. There are driver-level hacks to get around this, but the stock serial driver won't do it.) I wrote a Python program to handle the Teletype's Baudot issues and machine control, and to poll RSS feeds, printing each new story exactly once. It also does NOAA weather reports.
I've tried various RSS feeds. Reuters has the cleanest ones for this purpose. Each story comes with a heading and a brief, coherent summary. Most of the other RSS news feeds either just have the headlines, or truncate each story arbitrarily, ending it with "...". Reuters adds about one new story per hour, on average. It just printed "OBAMA TO NAME WHITE HOUSE CYBERSECURITY CZAR". (This is an upper-case-only machine, remember.)
Once I build a transparent case for the machine, I'm going to loan it to the Exploratorium or the Computer Museum. It will be set up to print news, and maybe incoming text messages so kids can text to it.
Suggest some good RSS feeds for demo purposes. Reuters has about one story per hour. A feed that produces something every 5-10 minutes would be useful.
I'm surprised that Japan doesn't have a more aggressive fusion program. Japan has almost no oil, little coal, and small natural gas reserves. Japan imports over 97% of its energy. If anybody needs fusion, it's Japan. Japan is a participant in ITER, but that's not enough.