World: r3wp

RIM finally announced QNX OS for their smartphones too. Their platform 
inlcudes Cascades UI, which should be easy abstraction for developers 
to do some nice stuff:

http://devblog.blackberry.com/2011/10/cascades-blackberry/

yes QNX is cool, some years ago I was looking for a microkernel OS 
and have checked QNX. a stable and fast OS combined with a GUI called 
photon.  

one of the cleanest GUI I have seen so far. perhaps MINIX with something 
like photon will evolve some day for a full server/desktop enviroment.

Not sure if anyone here is following the cold fusion story still, 
but in case you're interested, the 1 MW demo will be on the 28th 
of this month - coincident with another end-of-the-world prediction.

who knows, Rossi might get killed by a big explosion - it's going 
to be interesting any way it pans out

http://gawker.com/steve-jobs/

It's not everyday you see a REBOL job posting. I'm glad to say that 
my company is leading the way. 


http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?IPath=QHKCV0A&ff=21&APath=2.21.0.0.0&job_did=J5H1MP6N914TSD0LJGX

Some perspective on the passing of Jobs and Ritchie:
http://stream.cheatha.de/post/178915020/Image


(Should maybe have been in Humour, but I wasn't sure, if it's funny.) 
:)

http://www.osnews.com/story/25247/Jobs_I_m_Going_to_Destroy_Android_

I can also agree with the following opinion - how could Nokia let 
Elop do that? http://www.osnews.com/story/25250/Nokia_s_N9_Swan_Song_Be_Still_My_Beating_Heart

Simple, because the best platforms always get shot first

This is what Elop just killed - http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/22/nokia-n9-review/
, making Nokia MS OEM, with zero differentiating factor to HTC and 
Samsung WP7 based phones ...

A little above zero, because they negotiated influence in the WP 
development process with MS, but yeah

Roslyn - new way how MS thinks about compilers for the future - http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/microsofts-roslyn-reinventing-the-compiler-we-know-it-176671

Yeah, they've stolen Red already :-)

why the hell did it take so long for that to happen? maybe they'll 
"invent" rebol some day.

It looks like they took Mono's existing compiler-as-a-service concept 
and went with it.

I guess that's one of the benefits of the cross-propagation of ideas 
between MS's .NET group and their community.

Looks like it borrowed from Nemerle as well - the closest thing to 
REBOL with a C-like syntax that you could get back in 2005. I lost 
interest in Nemerle when they started supporting indentation-based 
syntax (that's a real turn-off) and when C# started adopting many 
of its features (such as what MS calls LINQ now). Roslyn is basically 
Mono.Compiler + LINQ.

We're using MS Entity Framework for a project and I must say that 
its the first API/framework from MS which, I think,  makes our job 
factually easier.   i.e.  it doesn't just re-engineer the same concept 
with new syntax.   Its an actual improvement in how a team can organise 
larg'ish project.

the fact that it takes about 30 minutes to implement the general 
concept of entities in REBOL (it took them 2 years within their toolchain 
;-) is a testatment to how good it is IMHO.


i.e.  something which is conceptually friendly to some REBOL idioms 
(in concept, not it actual code) is pretty nice for a change.

The Rossi test was completed yesterday, unfortunately again in secrecy 
and with only sparse data available.

supposedly the reactor worked in self sustaining mode (no input power) 
for 6 hours, putting out around 470kW

One simple test would be to run it for 60 or 600 hours while producing 
the same output. That might convince anyone.

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated 
C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden 
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.


All of the names are different, but the result is the same -- more 
or less.

Rent-a-mac in the cloud for development instead of buying your own: 
http://www.macincloud.com/

Useful, but very expensive

NXP is about to manufacture DIP-packaged ARMs (Cortex-M0):

http://www.nxp.com/news/press-releases/2011/10/nxp-cortex-m0-microcontrollers-in-high-volume-tssop-and-so-packages-target-8-16-bit-applications.html


http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m0/lpc1100l/LPC1114FN28.html

I just located my old soldering iron :-)

Unlimited service in the US, over Wifi by default (Sprint as a fallback), 
$19 per month: http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/republic-wireless-officially-unveils-19month-service-unlimited-everything-no-contracts/

http://www.republicwireless.com/

Looks like a couple of my friends with no phones might have an option 
now :)

UNIX V6 ported to ANSI C:

http://os-blog.com/xv6-unix-v6-ported-to-ansi-c-x86/

Wow, that's cool! Linked.

Unix in less than 9,000 lines of code seems ok efficient.

Interesting how students don't believe that something simple can 
work

In the original write-up they don't mention a disbelief in simplicity, 
but rather a disbelief in the relevance of V6 due to: a) age, b) 
strange programming language, c) strange target hardware.

s/strange/obsolete/g, to stay even closer to the original write-up.

Why would you think it irrelevant if you believe that it works and 
it is the basis of the same systems you still use today?

Prince of Persia released for the Commodore 64

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/17/prince-of-persia-c64

:)

Adobe abandons Flash plugin on mobile devices:


http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5-updated/19226

Prince of Persia released for the Commodore 64

 - Graphics are almost same with Amiga version :) I ordered. it will 
 be fun to finish it on a real C64.

Adobe wants people to create AIR applications (Flash packed in AIR) 
which enables them to use even the native extensions:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/developing-native-extensions-air.html
Native extensions would not be easy to do in browser from security 
reasons I guess. Stupid banners one can do even in Flash6. Also there 
will be demand on HTML5 ads as it's not so easy to block them.

I think here is quite good reading what's going on in Adobe - http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/

Baysick: a Scala DSL implementing basic: http://blog.fogus.me/2009/03/26/baysick-a-scala-dsl-implementing-basic/

Close, but no cigar. ;-)

Common Crawl - now everyone can be Google: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/136-open-source/3320-common-crawl.html

Adobe managers really love HTML5, they are slowly leaving Flex as 
well:


Given our experiences innovating on Flex, we are extremely well positioned 
to positively contribute to the advancement of HTML5 development, 
starting with mobile applications. In fact, many of the engineers 
and product managers who worked on Flex SDK will be moving to work 
on our HTML efforts...

http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html

hope for lithium battery life: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15735478

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo: Tourists in for a 'Magical' Ride

http://www.space.com/13625-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-ride-passenger-experience.html

MIPS Android 4.x tablet for 99 USD, 250mW power consumption at full 
load :-)


http://www.osnews.com/story/25397/MIPS_99_Tablet_is_First_Ice_Cream_Sandwich_Tablet

99 USD, plus another 69 USD to actually get it to the US :(