AltME groups: search

This will make security cameras about 99% better, removing false 
positives, and in fact IDing who someone is.

Intel experiments with Lego and kinect-like 3D object recognition 
- nice for kids to play with :-) 


http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/26/intel-research-projects-bring-legos-to-life-make-groceries-inte/

13 million lines of code


Linux is on the wrong track! The same can be said about OpenOffice. 
I downloaded it the other day for my new Mac, and I just checked, 
it takes up 427 MB of my disc. It simply takes too much time to deal 
with such software, it being maintenance or just figuring out as 
a user how it works.

Still, I'd be shocked if Minix had nearly as many lines of code as 
the equivalent in Linux. Most of Linux's code is device drivers, 
and Minix doesn't have good driver support (though its drivers also 
run in user space, so they're not counted in those 6000 lines).

And Minix only supports a single platform, at the moment.

Minix also doesn't have anything beyond the kernel and drivers. As 
with Linux, you have to put a userland, X11, toolkits and a desktop 
environment on top of it

Linux and Minix tend to run the same amount of code, when you include 
drivers. Minix just runs a lot of that code in user space instead 
of kernel space.

Less is more, because less code is more managable. On the upside, 
Git may never have seen the light of day, if Linux was a nice and 
small kernel.

Rebol Tutorial guy posted interesting link to programming languages 
future panel. He mentioned Crockford (JSON) mentioned REBOL there. 
What is really nice is the second guy from right, author of pleny 
JAVA libraries, describes that the main problem is rishing complexity. 
He says, that if you add functionality, it will only add-up, but 
never shrink. And also - that in future there might be a winner, 
who does it all, not like nowadays, where for web apps you need 3-4 
technologies. I think his description fits REBOL ...


http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Future-of-Programming-Languages

Kaj, describe, please? I'm making a report on Git and would like 
more viewpoints.

Eric Meyer of Microsoft was quoted as saying that Javascript is the 
new virtual machine of the web, and he wants as Crockford says "defects 
into introduced into Javascript to make porting of C# to JS easier" 
which they are strongly resisting.

and people are willing to work very hard.

The video interview is 74 mins though, and I haven't had 74 uninterrupted 
mins of a working brain since I started the video.

And curious that Russia is now the last bastion of democracy with 
Putin asking .. why ina democracy Assange is imprisoned!

And curious that Russia is now the last bastion of democracy with 
Putin asking .. why ina democracy Assange is imprisoned!


Has former Soviet become a better democracy than the 'western' world? 
If so, it only took them 20 years.

and btw the backdoor is found!

it's amazing that the graphics quality is determined by the hardware 
on the remote end - and it seems to be top notch

Cyphre, I asked my friend and he ran it on an intel GMA950 netbook. 
AFAIK, all it does is stream video.

AFAIK OnLive just streams video. However, it refused to work here 
when I tried it (it claimed my network latency was too high and did 
not even let me try it).

It takes 1-2 uninformed politicians to make headlines, so it may 
not be as bad as it seems, but it's seems the desire for categorizing 
and quantifying software through law making won't end any time soon.

I really don't mind that tax in principle, but only if it works to 
compensate musicians, not beaurocrats. And includes the computers 
as well, or at least any device for which the MP3 patents have been 
paid.

why don't they just tax everyone and you can get a tax rebate if 
you can prove you're deaf and blind ?

face it, you're only got one pair of those sense organs, and it doesn't 
seem to be fair to be taxed twice if you own two mp3 players

Or, the french govt could use profiling ... and tax those who fit 
the profile

remove copyright on music .. and get musicians to get a grant from 
general taxation

In the past, everyone here had to pay for a TV license ... and we 
had these vans patrolling the streets trying to pick up unlicensed 
TV sets

yeah and those who can receive TV via internet pay it as well

We have public and private networks, We pay tax because of the public 
ones.

We have that here too and the fee is climbing every year and is the 
same amount for students and billionaires. The rule is that as soon 
as you have a device that can receive radio or TV signals (doesn't 
matter if you can actually watch TV or hear radio), you have to pay. 
Also our internet connections are taxed this way. If you have more 
than a 256 kbit connection, you have to pay.

so cellphones are taxed for tv, radio and internet?

anyone are taxed, even businesses and also if you run an internet 
connection to a bikeshed for a webcam.

Mohammed drawings is really a small problem. There are some things 
we like very much, like having free hospitals. What we don't like 
so much is that the public sector is growing in the wrong way. It's 
adding personnel for doing controls, paperwork, managing silly rules 
and making sure people uphold stupid laws, rather than increasing 
productivity. If it did, it would be OK. It's really about what we 
get for our tax money, and it's not enough. Our government is trying 
to control us into the ground.

We have lost big companies, like Vestas, which was once our pride 
leading windmill manufacturer. Now production facilities are closing 
down, because taxes are so high and wages are skyrocketing to pay 
those taxes. Last year, the interest in investing in factories in 
Denmark reached a history low. Yet taxes are still increasing.

When I see the really bad situation of employment in USA currently 
(and all that people who lost their house). I don't think we are 
in such a bad way.

but Steeve, even if you lose your job you can still watch TV and 
listen to music!

Sure you can, and many are leaving. Particularly the highly educated 
part of the public. Our government has also put a nice system in 
place that prevents highly educated people from settling in the country.

Sweden, cheaper cars and DVDs, more blondes, but otherwise probably 
the same.

And Windows confirms NT and Office for ARM - http://www.osnews.com/story/24210/Microsoft_Announces_Windows_NT_Office_for_ARM

First - Carl compiling R3 library to target CPU - ARM. Then porting/integrating 
the hostkit, and that might be more tricky, see Android group and 
related discussion. OTOH maybe one year ago we would thought AmigaOS 
would be impossible to target ....

How versatile is the underlying graphics engine .. can it do touch 
interfaces?  And surface computing?

I should also note the basic/default gfx engine (agg) we use can 
run on any king of brick that support framebuffer so this part is 
the last to be worried about.

And even if anyone can switch to other gfx engine this is already 
possible at the hostkit level.

I must say that the current hostkit gfx abstraction layer is not 
100% polished yet (but this will happen soon) in terms of 'programmers 
comfort' but it is pretty usable in the A110.

anyway - we need two things - Carl getting back to R3 coding, porting 
a library, and someone skilled doing the port. We don't have skilled 
ppl with free time and will to do so, nor the resources to sponsor 
such a non-business case  imo ...

I wouldn't say this is non-business case. If I had some  money to 
make mini-company I'd pay Carl to make specific libs and do the ports 
on my own to make crossplatform product for all the newly hyped devices. 
Look how for example Unity3d is succesfull with just Wii, iPhone 
support...

And...in worst case even if noone would like to buy such crossplatform 
tools...I'd use them for producing hundreds of  $1 apps on all the 
Apple, Android or whatever stores. I bet there is enough ''iUsers" 
(no offence to anyone here :))  which will buy such apps.

This partial open sourcing of R3 is a failure if the idea was to 
attract a lot more developers.  Fully open source R3 and then people 
can make their own libraries.

(For example I know a guy who is now building own house from money 
he made of some stupid 'touchpad' eye candy app he did in 20hours 
and published on Apple store)

well...back to work and sorry for poluting this channel...

That's the point...and with R3 crosplatform tools I(or any Reboler) 
could generate hundreds of such apps with minimal effort.

I still look into R2 Desktop contest demos, especially to Cyphre's 
:-) There's still some potential for eye-candy, though VID does not 
look professional enough anymore. And some other mobile UIs might 
be also using advanced techniques (not sure about 3D, but some transition 
effects are simply avesome)

Graham - to whom do you want to claim the failure? Carl is not here 
to listen, and even if he would be here, I doubt he would change 
his mind about fully open-sourcing R3, although he might be the only 
one, who is not able to see the benefits ...

If you know there is a big market and you just need really good tool 
why you wouldn't buy it for reasonable price?

Any business plan needs to be checked against the aims and progress 
...

Cyphre - we would buy R3 for a reasonable price. Make a 300 USD SDK 
kit for Android, and I am fine with that.

No..this was just a comparison. Such R3 based tool doesn't need to 
have anything with 3D...it just have to be useful. If you pick just 
a few pltforms/markets that makes it useful and do the ports you 
have very high chance it will save other developers time and they'll 
buy it.

Graham - why not? Have you ever worked with embedded SW? Those kits 
might cost much more. But - if you think it is not viable to extend 
an user base, then you are right. Carl would be better off with fully 
opensourcing R3, while still keeping his hand upon the direction 
of development, and benefiting from getting more new ppl onboard, 
some contractual work for special modules, etc.

It's one of the only open source business plans that works nowadays. 
Pure open source usually generates no income for the creators and 
contributors of a project.

To be fair, with Unity3D the core is open and the outer layers are 
closed. Perhaps REBOL is getting it backwards.

BrianH, there are software companies that provide fully open sourced 
solutions while charging only for training/support, and this business 
model seems to work well. See:
http://www.appcelerator.com
http://www.sencha.com(ExtJs creators)

Agreed, you have to look at the community as a whole, not just a 
single company. In those cases, the closed outer layer is written 
by other companies and the inner core programmers are supported through 
patronage (training/support models are variants on patronage). Most 
open source code is supported either by patronage, by selling closed 
addons, or is just a hobby/charity.

And even charities have to be supported through patronage if they 
want to get large-scale work done.

Guys, products are not going to be developed by keeping on talking 
about them. You have to sit down and do them

As Cyphre says, it all depends on your abilities. So I can understand 
that many people still feel powerless in the R3 situation, but that's 
the wrong way to approach it. You have to determine what you can 
do already and just do it

been there, done that, and no satisfaction

STEEVE +100 but STEEVE clearly RMA don't want to work with us they 
want to start their business  using us as publicity and free testing 
ground ... you can't mixe free and not free that way ... If you do 
a foundation that gather  donations and reparts those donations to 
the main "contributors" according to their contribution then it's 
a totally different situation than what is made actually. First the 
source code produced and paid by the foundation belongs to the foundation. 
They don't belong to an obscure commercial entity ( I'm sure Robert 
cyphre and the other has the best volunty in the world and only good 
intention but the way it's done only  make me believe they want to 
use us to get money on our back one way or another)

but steeve thing is ALL pass by Carl so one way or another if you 
want your work to be merged to the official distribution and shared 
then you have to comply with the expectations of Carl  somehow and 
 have him merging your release to his and vise and versa ...

So R3/GUI will mix paid stuff through bounties made by RMA and free 
stuff made by  benevolant wanting to make the thing goes on

Kaj that's not my way to see that that's all but don't worry i'm 
looking for people to help me do my own project and discuss about 
a forked R3/GUI  you are free to join the discussion... And I won't 
ask you pennies for functionalities :).

but as usual it's shadwolf do your stuff in your corner and shut 
the fuck off  like it was for most of my work...

that's not communautary work... that's not the way a community should 
work you think the guys in blender, gtk+ the gimp etc... work without 
exchanging informations each on their corners and that's how their 
projects goes on? We are not alot so we need to be more focused than 
any other and creating distansions and oposing the gurus to the rest 
of the world isn't the right path. But as yuri said on another forum 
lesson 1 rebol is a bobbistic language, it's the hobby of Carl and 
the hobby of most of us and that's why when it sucks people disapears 
to do other things.

PS3 Hacked Once and For All?
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=94339

Sony sues Geohot and his team over PS3 3.55 jailbreak

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/sony-sues-geohot-and-his-team-over-ps3-3-55-jailbreak-20110112/


Does Sony have a case? Was it ok, when Sony removed the "install 
other OS" feature? Was it legal?

this is a very nice demo about security... Brian should go over this 
whole thing and I'm sure he'll get some ideas into increasing the 
security model in REBOL.

We've not applied any specific intellectual property but instead 
spent time analysing where boot delays are coming from and simply 
optimising them away. The majority of the modifications we make usually 
fall into the category of 'removing things that aren't required', 
'optimising things that are required', or 'taking a new approach 
to solving problems' and are tailored very precisely to the needs 
of the 'product'.

and in the end it's insanely fast booting ...

exactly - I am quite surprised, as Linux are not generally fast in 
boot times, and this is embedded area (Renesas chips).

I like extrem stuffs like that ... It shows that hardware progress 
just servs people to be more lazy in their creation. At a time hardware 
was short and expensive people were spending zillions hours to  optimise 
everything even going on the lower possible assembly level to have 
just and only the necessary. Now in days with  our gigantic powerfull 
processor people stoped to optimise things they pile up to the sky 
things and don't care if it take 30 more times to execute ...

it's a know thing that when your kernel has to scan and locate proper 
drivers to fit your hardware in a driver library and load them as 
module that's the slowest way...

so the basic optimisation people were doing at the begining of linux 
was to adapt the kernel to integrate the specific driver needed for 
your hardware and only them... But this is flexible and doesn't fit 
with the hot plug need introduced by USB port and periphericals.

I use nosplash quiet and fast-boot options for my kernels ... doing 
this I gain 10  seconds in boot sequence.

That's what happens when you boot from ROM and implement a good chunk 
of the functionality in hardware rather than software :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18Z3UnnS_0

It's just getting worse and worse with those quadrocopters...

I found this more impressive... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToACDIXTzo0


But.................. watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k-u0_Y8hK0&feature=related

We need to get this guy to sit down with the programmers of the Quad, 
and teach them how to make use of all aspects of flight.

I managed to build one, which is simple. Sending commands to the 
printer, I had to give up and chose to build postscript files for 
an adobe postscript driver instead and let it handle the rest.

Yes, "a proprietary mobile operating system running on the Linux 
kernel, initially developed by Palm and purchased by Hewlett Packard 
(HP) in 2010."

I'm convinced that HP will succeed to fail with WebOS. Wrong CEO 
and a lot of HP products are mostly crap.

I never liked HP, dunno why :-) I worst thing is, I have no reason 
to hate them :-) But - in big corporate world, I grew-up in IBM land. 
IBM was "frienlie", because of PowerPC = Amiga :-) HP killed Compaq, 
which I liked more. Pity HTC had not enough of money to buy Palm. 
I am not also sure I like the fact that so cool OS as QNX is, is 
owned by RIM. We have BBs here, and I will have one in few months 
too, but BB is being regarded mostly a corporate cell phone.

Oh, and HP printers are forbidden in my home, and PC store, unless 
customer really wants HP :-) We use Canons for ink printers. HP killed 
my trust with 300 MB+ drivers crap

Henrik - yes, IBM is an engineering company even less? :-( They sold 
their PC business to LENOVO. PowerPC is mostly in hands of Freescale 
(Motorola). And I doubt IBM will be contracted once again for the 
next gen consoles (if there will be any such devices in future).

It is interesting watching someone REALLY use a tablet for "work". 
 One of my lawyers has had an iPad for a while.  I have been telling 
him he can use it with Qtask in a really powerful way, and he finally 
took the 3 minutes that was required to make his life easier.  We 
installed http://readdle.com/(I have been talking to the lead programmer 
for about a year now), and signed into Qtask with it.


Now he can see all his matters, download (and they made it about 
x4 faster than Windows), and now mark up docs, save to Qtask through 
WebDAV.

I personally sitll have no use for a tablet, and I have an iPad which 
I'm about to sell because I simply don't use it.


For me to really use a Tablet I want forward/backwards camera,  10+ 
battery life, G3 and G4 wireless,  an OS that allows me to get to 
the files and Flash.  

(in fact, I''m reminded of how much I hate the iPad and my iPhone 
again LOL).

And I think iPad2 will add cams too, or so I remember I read somewhere 
...

What's great about the iPad is that it has shown HP and the others 
that engineering and innovation is important, and one should not 
bet the farm on Microsoft.

The main thing I like about WebOS and WP7 as opposed to Android is 
that they don't copy iOS where it counts: the UI. Both have different 
UI models with real advantages over the iOS/Android model.

Although in Android, home screens are replaceable, which is its advantage 
in that area - some of the more unusual ones are SweeterHome (which 
I use), SlideScreen, *Spark, and Windows Phone (which just attempts 
to copy Windows Phone 7)

So it is official - Nokia partners with Microsoft -no answers to 
what happens to Symbian/MeeGo strategy yet though:


http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-and-microsoft-enter-strategic-alliance-on-windows-phone-b/

There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them. There will 
be challenges. We will overcome them. Success requires speed. We 
will be swift. Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the 
will, the resources and the drive to succeed.""

And everything is about money, remember. If someone would sponsor 
Carl to work fulltime R3, the situation would be different.

We should not also forget the driving force, which Carl once was. 
Even if Carl would release Android compatible dll, it might not be 
enough, if he does not show to the outer world, that R3 development 
is vital. And not updating twitter since November, ditto for blogs, 
R3 Chat (few messages here or there does not hide the facts) speaks 
for itself ...

No missinterpretation - having something in my own hands = I can 
do it myself. BrianH might be right - we can work independently from 
Carl porting Hostkit to any possible system, and that is what imo 
BrianH means - link to Android stuff. But in the end, and for full 
testing, you need R3 core library anyway ....

Start figuring out the mapping between the host API and the Android 
API, etc. Compiling is a few second process at the end. Writing the 
code will take a bit longer.

And stabbing in the dark without being able to test the code written 
with a quick compile is a very much un-fun process, at least for 
me personally.

I've already started the research, bought the phone and such. My 
limiting factors aren't Carl. And I don't do the incremental development 
with frequent compiling style, I do the write it ahead of time style, 
so am not limited yet by not having a lib in hand.