back again (virtual machines) and even some that have gone come back (centralized computing services). If punch cards come back, I'm retiring to my cave.
1997 called. They want their wishful thinking back.
1985 just called:
"An interpreted language like C? Rediculous.." (php, perl, javascript, java [ok, bytecode, but still]...)
"Emulate the Amiga? Impossible.."
"C++ is pretty cool but there's too much overhead"
"C will never be as fast as pure machine code, you can't write games in C..."
How far back do you want to go?
There was a time when if you had said this room sized computer would fit in the palm of your hand they would have said you were crazy.
Sure, an operating system written in an interpreted (or even an intermediate language like.net or java) language may seem rediculous now, even full blown apps are not as fast.. but it will happen. (and yes I am sure there OS research projects probably written this way now..) It may not be for another 5 or 10 years but it will happen.
The benifits of high level languages (including ones yet invented) are clear. And certainly, there is a time and place and always will be for machine code, c, c++, etc...
You can do that now... if only there were standards for the CPU, OS and application. You won't be able to do it in the future without these standards. Don't tell me about Java, because I've seen enough IE-only Java applets and Windows-only Java applications to know better.
To some extent. You could run a virtualization system (vmware) and get any OS running, even at the same time. And using interpreted code (or bytecode, or some other IM based code like.net) run any software on any of those os's. We're not at the point of running the OS's on any CPU (efficiently, anyway) unless you're talking linux and compiling it...
Yeah we are close.. in fact it occurred to me that virtualization software could become the new Operating Systems of the future, where you then layer the Operating Envirionment (windows, linux, etc) on top, and then the applications on that...
As the overhead of interpreted languages gets smaller (through faster systems, JIT, and other optimizations), its inevitable that eventualy we'll all be using one (unless you are one of the few people who have to program the virtual machines, the JIT compilers, etc).
And this is a good thing, because it means more independance from certain CPU architectures.
Someday, you will be able to use any OS on any CPU and any Application on any OS. This is one step in that direction.
Good luck. I've been asking for years what the Fi in WiFi means. Wireless Fidelity? What the hell does that mean?
That's definately another one. I hate saying WiFi, but these days its what people understand. If you say 802.11 you get a blank stare. If you say wireless, they dont know if you mean cell phone, bluetooth, RC Cars, or what...
Can somebody please come up with a name other than AJAX? I find myself talking about the programming techniques covered by the moniker of "AJAX" (herein after refered to as "BLURG") and wanting to call it something other than "AJAX":
BLURG is not necessarily asynchronous: you may be updating only a small part of the page, but doing it synchronously.
BLURG does not require XML. In fact you could be returning HTML, Javascript, CSV, JSON, etc.
BLURG does not even require the XmlHttpRequest feature and BLURG techniques have been in use far before the existance of this feature.
Can we please come up with a better name for BLURG, one that covers the more general programing techniques involved? Something for us people to use that is NOT just the trendy new thing known as AJAX? Something that we can use that will let others like us know that we have been aware of these techniques even before the term AJAX was coined?
I do use linux but I'm no expert on it. I had no idea about/proc but that does make sense, since linux/unix is all file based, why not? I suppose evolving linux into something like I describe probably wouldnt be that hard consider it is all oriented around files and file systems are already way beyond 32 bit limits (not to mention linux runs already on 64 bit cpus).
So maybe its really just a matter of developing a new layer on top of that, that hides all the dirty details..
The problem is that we're using operating systems that are very old. Think about it. Linux, a "newish" OS is based on 30 year old concepts.
I've long thought that we should do away with the conceptual separation between RAM and disk or other mass storage. We've already come a long way.. the average person has no need to think about cpu registers, or the cache, or even RAM to some extent with the use of swap files. We need to go all the way and just make it all one huge seamless memory space, where each level is just a cache for the one below. Registers "cache" from the Caches (1, 2 and 3 levels), ram is just a cache for the harddrive, and the harddrive ultimately a cache for the net...
Problem is, we haven't had the address space to do this. We've been at 32 bits for some time now, and that's not nearly enough (32 bits nets you 4 gigs max..). With the advent of 64 bit processors, this finaly becomes a possibility. But it's really going to require a massive rethinking of OS's and applications as we know them (though Palm style OS and apps are kind of already there), relagating file systems only to low level usage the average person never sees (do you know the structure of your L2 cache? Or your swap file? Or your database?)...
Then there's the issue of tracking and undoing changes in case you really didnt want to "save"..
Its not going to happen real soon, I dont think. We're still oohing and ahing over how great Unix (created in the 70's) and its derivatives are, while using Windows... I think maybe when my kids have kids, they might tell my grand kids about how they had to "save" files...
Is this really such a modern phenomena? I mean how much has, for instance, the Bible changed from the original text? After translations and interpretations.. or the original Red Riding Hood story...
But if I understand what you are saying, you are talking about a semiconductor that is either transparent or absorbant, not reflective. I need something that can literaly be like a mirror in one state or like glass in the other. Alternately, if it could be reflective in one state like a normal mirror, or reflect at a different predictable direction in the other state. Although I imagine if there were such a material known they would be using it instead of MEMS in DLP devices already.
nope, that wont do it! I need something that can reflect normaly, or be transparent. Although I suppose being able to reflect normaly, or reflect at a slightly different angle, would also work (instead of being transparent). It needs to be pretty precise.
Yeah, I know about MEMS and DLP devices, but I want something solid state.
OK, so this is a solid-state light switch that goes really fast.
I've been wanting to know for some time if there is a material that can switch from transparent to reflective? It would need to be pretty fast (or slow, if you could also slow down the speed of light, which I have read somewhere can be done)
It were wider, and able to accomodate a bunch of devices. For me, this would be:
My PDA, phone, and bluetooth head set. And my wife's PDA and phone. That's five devices. A nice little "dock" by the front door where we could plop all our devices at night and grab them on the way out. Instead of a mess of transformers and a power strip to accomodate them.
Unfortunately as the article mentions, this wouldn't happen until the device makers all supported it. So they'd have to push for that first.
Now, I would happily buy something like this for my laptop alone. Much less anoying than wrapping up my cord every day. Yeah, its a little thing, but still, way convenient. Not to mention my cord is wearing out...
why not shoot for something a little smaller scale than a full blown elevator: Momentum-Exchange Tethers? This would make gettings things into higher orbit or out of orbit much easier, allowing the use of smaller rockets. It could also be used to very easily get things on and off the moon.
Then, a moon based elevator would be the next step...
Sure, this whole CEV and heavy lift rocket for large payloads thing makes sense... 25 years ago.
The only really innovative space ideas are what people like scaled composites are doing (spaceship one and soon two).
Nasa should be doing what only they could do: nuclear (because I dont think any independant company is going to be allowed to do it). A nuclear rocket would be completely reusable, more reliable, safer (especialy on re-entry), and probably cheaper.
Sadly, all the anti-nuclear idiots would probably never let it happen. They can barely contain themselves when we launch a little tiny space probe with a little tiny nuculear engine on it..
Scratch the subject up there.. make it, "People suck"..
I can certainly appreciate the fact that pc hardware varies and writing software that runs perfectly on every conceivable system is incredibly difficult (I am programmer too). But since I've not had any trouble with pretty much anything else (I wont say I've had none, while I can't remember any, I could be forgetting something...) it just didnt seem to me that I should have trouble with this...... But you say it uses a game engine? Does that mean it goes around the OS and does unconventional things? I guess that would explain the problems, as I dont play any games...
Now if they could just find a way to "hack" the program so that it actualy works, that would be nice. It does not work for me or my brother on either of our (completely different) computers.
If MIMO technology uses the fact that radio waves bounce around and can reach the reciever through multiple paths, and thus reconstructs the signal much more accurately, wouldnt it be possible to determine location by the variations in the multiple paths? And thus, a reciever could know which signals are meant only for it? Depending on how close they are and how accurate this stuff is, it could get around the shared bandwidth problem of wireless (not to mention avoiding colisions).
You could also work this into the security, by knowing where the computers were located...
Or am I completely misunderstanding this technology? Or are they already doing this?:)
After the dot com bomb, I lost my cushy job (html, php, mysql) with catered lunches and had to work at a book store for a while.
Eventualy, I got myself in at a mortgage company in orange county, ca. Officialy, I'm "the IT guy" but I'm also developing a web based software (PHP - MySql) which they use (but I have the rights to it). For this they pay me just $36K. I know I could probably get a straight programming job elsewhere for more $ (after years, not since the dot com boom, I am getting calls for job offers).
But, I stay, because my boss is flexible with my hours. I can take wednesday mornings off with my new baby, leave early whenever I need to, etc.
And I can work on my web based software which I am leasing to other mortgage companies (so far, this is netting me another $9k/yr, and that's just one client leasing monthly).
There's something to be said for making less $ but getting flexibility to work on other things. With any luck, in a year, I will be making 10x what I make now..
PS. anybody with some knowledge of the mortgage business and who is a good salesman, in the orange county ca area who wants to make a monthly residual on a software lease, feel free to contact me. We need salesmen and trainers for our software. Or if you are a mortgage company, check out our lead management software. Shameless plug! http://www.imlts.com/
Re:Using Captcha for distributed processing
on
Defeating Captcha
·
· Score: 1
The idea wasn't to use a math problem as a better kind of captcha, but to purposely put it out there to attract the spammers and get them to do work for you. Its meant to be easy for a computer to solve (as opposed to normal captchas that are supposed to be hard for a computer to solve). That way at least you are getting them to do some work for you...
Of course, this is probably a silly idea.
Now, it may work well for email spam -- requireing the sender to solve a problem for you before you will accept the email. I'm pretty sure somebody is doing this already. The thing that would make it cool would be to actualy sell the computing time to somebody who needed the distributed computing power, and thus, you make a little bit of money from all that spam you get...
Slashdot Mirror
IBM is developing memory storage that is essentialy the same as punched cards on a microscopic scale.. http://www.zurich.ibm.com/st/storage/millipede.ht
Hope you cave is well furnished.
1985 just called:
"An interpreted language like C? Rediculous.." (php, perl, javascript, java [ok, bytecode, but still]...)
"Emulate the Amiga? Impossible.."
"C++ is pretty cool but there's too much overhead"
"C will never be as fast as pure machine code, you can't write games in C..."
How far back do you want to go?
There was a time when if you had said this room sized computer would fit in the palm of your hand they would have said you were crazy.
Sure, an operating system written in an interpreted (or even an intermediate language like
The benifits of high level languages (including ones yet invented) are clear. And certainly, there is a time and place and always will be for machine code, c, c++, etc...
To some extent. You could run a virtualization system (vmware) and get any OS running, even at the same time. And using interpreted code (or bytecode, or some other IM based code like
Yeah we are close.. in fact it occurred to me that virtualization software could become the new Operating Systems of the future, where you then layer the Operating Envirionment (windows, linux, etc) on top, and then the applications on that...
As the overhead of interpreted languages gets smaller (through faster systems, JIT, and other optimizations), its inevitable that eventualy we'll all be using one (unless you are one of the few people who have to program the virtual machines, the JIT compilers, etc).
And this is a good thing, because it means more independance from certain CPU architectures.
Someday, you will be able to use any OS on any CPU and any Application on any OS. This is one step in that direction.
Web 2.0: We Are Finaly Understanding The Internet (WAFUTI).
:)
Not quite as cute a name, but, WAFUTI is pronouncable..
Can somebody please come up with a name other than AJAX? I find myself talking about the programming techniques covered by the moniker of "AJAX" (herein after refered to as "BLURG") and wanting to call it something other than "AJAX":
BLURG is not necessarily asynchronous: you may be updating only a small part of the page, but doing it synchronously.
BLURG does not require XML. In fact you could be returning HTML, Javascript, CSV, JSON, etc.
BLURG does not even require the XmlHttpRequest feature and BLURG techniques have been in use far before the existance of this feature.
Can we please come up with a better name for BLURG, one that covers the more general programing techniques involved? Something for us people to use that is NOT just the trendy new thing known as AJAX? Something that we can use that will let others like us know that we have been aware of these techniques even before the term AJAX was coined?
For now I will call it BLURG...
There's this: http://openrico.org/rico/home.page and this: http://script.aculo.us/ which are based on this: http://prototype.conio.net/. Neat stuff and easy to use..
I do use linux but I'm no expert on it. I had no idea about /proc but that does make sense, since linux/unix is all file based, why not? I suppose evolving linux into something like I describe probably wouldnt be that hard consider it is all oriented around files and file systems are already way beyond 32 bit limits (not to mention linux runs already on 64 bit cpus).
So maybe its really just a matter of developing a new layer on top of that, that hides all the dirty details..
The problem is that we're using operating systems that are very old. Think about it. Linux, a "newish" OS is based on 30 year old concepts.
I've long thought that we should do away with the conceptual separation between RAM and disk or other mass storage. We've already come a long way.. the average person has no need to think about cpu registers, or the cache, or even RAM to some extent with the use of swap files. We need to go all the way and just make it all one huge seamless memory space, where each level is just a cache for the one below. Registers "cache" from the Caches (1, 2 and 3 levels), ram is just a cache for the harddrive, and the harddrive ultimately a cache for the net...
Problem is, we haven't had the address space to do this. We've been at 32 bits for some time now, and that's not nearly enough (32 bits nets you 4 gigs max..). With the advent of 64 bit processors, this finaly becomes a possibility. But it's really going to require a massive rethinking of OS's and applications as we know them (though Palm style OS and apps are kind of already there), relagating file systems only to low level usage the average person never sees (do you know the structure of your L2 cache? Or your swap file? Or your database?)...
Then there's the issue of tracking and undoing changes in case you really didnt want to "save"..
Its not going to happen real soon, I dont think. We're still oohing and ahing over how great Unix (created in the 70's) and its derivatives are, while using Windows... I think maybe when my kids have kids, they might tell my grand kids about how they had to "save" files...
Is this really such a modern phenomena? I mean how much has, for instance, the Bible changed from the original text? After translations and interpretations.. or the original Red Riding Hood story...
Interesting, thank you.
But if I understand what you are saying, you are talking about a semiconductor that is either transparent or absorbant, not reflective. I need something that can literaly be like a mirror in one state or like glass in the other. Alternately, if it could be reflective in one state like a normal mirror, or reflect at a different predictable direction in the other state. Although I imagine if there were such a material known they would be using it instead of MEMS in DLP devices already.
nope, that wont do it! I need something that can reflect normaly, or be transparent. Although I suppose being able to reflect normaly, or reflect at a slightly different angle, would also work (instead of being transparent). It needs to be pretty precise.
Yeah, I know about MEMS and DLP devices, but I want something solid state.
This will get you started: Eric Meyer on CSS.
OK, so this is a solid-state light switch that goes really fast.
I've been wanting to know for some time if there is a material that can switch from transparent to reflective? It would need to be pretty fast (or slow, if you could also slow down the speed of light, which I have read somewhere can be done)
Even more importantly, if you flip the page over, do you see a reverse/negative image?
It were wider, and able to accomodate a bunch of devices. For me, this would be:
My PDA, phone, and bluetooth head set. And my wife's PDA and phone. That's five devices. A nice little "dock" by the front door where we could plop all our devices at night and grab them on the way out. Instead of a mess of transformers and a power strip to accomodate them.
Unfortunately as the article mentions, this wouldn't happen until the device makers all supported it. So they'd have to push for that first.
Now, I would happily buy something like this for my laptop alone. Much less anoying than wrapping up my cord every day. Yeah, its a little thing, but still, way convenient. Not to mention my cord is wearing out...
why not shoot for something a little smaller scale than a full blown elevator: Momentum-Exchange Tethers? This would make gettings things into higher orbit or out of orbit much easier, allowing the use of smaller rockets. It could also be used to very easily get things on and off the moon.
Then, a moon based elevator would be the next step...
I'm also looking to buy a new notebook computer, but I dont want to pay for Windows, prefering to run Linux on it with Wine for my windows apps.
I have heard some people have managed to get refunds for the Windows they arent going to use. Anybody got recomendations on how to do this?
Sure, this whole CEV and heavy lift rocket for large payloads thing makes sense... 25 years ago.
The only really innovative space ideas are what people like scaled composites are doing (spaceship one and soon two).
Nasa should be doing what only they could do: nuclear (because I dont think any independant company is going to be allowed to do it). A nuclear rocket would be completely reusable, more reliable, safer (especialy on re-entry), and probably cheaper.
Sadly, all the anti-nuclear idiots would probably never let it happen. They can barely contain themselves when we launch a little tiny space probe with a little tiny nuculear engine on it..
Scratch the subject up there.. make it, "People suck"..
I can certainly appreciate the fact that pc hardware varies and writing software that runs perfectly on every conceivable system is incredibly difficult (I am programmer too). But since I've not had any trouble with pretty much anything else (I wont say I've had none, while I can't remember any, I could be forgetting something...) it just didnt seem to me that I should have trouble with this... ... But you say it uses a game engine? Does that mean it goes around the OS and does unconventional things? I guess that would explain the problems, as I dont play any games...
Now if they could just find a way to "hack" the program so that it actualy works, that would be nice. It does not work for me or my brother on either of our (completely different) computers.
If MIMO technology uses the fact that radio waves bounce around and can reach the reciever through multiple paths, and thus reconstructs the signal much more accurately, wouldnt it be possible to determine location by the variations in the multiple paths? And thus, a reciever could know which signals are meant only for it? Depending on how close they are and how accurate this stuff is, it could get around the shared bandwidth problem of wireless (not to mention avoiding colisions).
:)
You could also work this into the security, by knowing where the computers were located...
Or am I completely misunderstanding this technology? Or are they already doing this?
After the dot com bomb, I lost my cushy job (html, php, mysql) with catered lunches and had to work at a book store for a while.
Eventualy, I got myself in at a mortgage company in orange county, ca. Officialy, I'm "the IT guy" but I'm also developing a web based software (PHP - MySql) which they use (but I have the rights to it). For this they pay me just $36K. I know I could probably get a straight programming job elsewhere for more $ (after years, not since the dot com boom, I am getting calls for job offers).
But, I stay, because my boss is flexible with my hours. I can take wednesday mornings off with my new baby, leave early whenever I need to, etc.
And I can work on my web based software which I am leasing to other mortgage companies (so far, this is netting me another $9k/yr, and that's just one client leasing monthly).
There's something to be said for making less $ but getting flexibility to work on other things. With any luck, in a year, I will be making 10x what I make now..
PS. anybody with some knowledge of the mortgage business and who is a good salesman, in the orange county ca area who wants to make a monthly residual on a software lease, feel free to contact me. We need salesmen and trainers for our software. Or if you are a mortgage company, check out our lead management software. Shameless plug! http://www.imlts.com/
The idea wasn't to use a math problem as a better kind of captcha, but to purposely put it out there to attract the spammers and get them to do work for you. Its meant to be easy for a computer to solve (as opposed to normal captchas that are supposed to be hard for a computer to solve). That way at least you are getting them to do some work for you...
:)
Of course, this is probably a silly idea.
Now, it may work well for email spam -- requireing the sender to solve a problem for you before you will accept the email. I'm pretty sure somebody is doing this already. The thing that would make it cool would be to actualy sell the computing time to somebody who needed the distributed computing power, and thus, you make a little bit of money from all that spam you get...
Just a silly idea...