AltME groups: search

I understood that the should be a coordination language coordinating 
stuff written in general purpose language. instead of putting coordination 
features in those languages.

Hmm, did i miss a link?

Yes, it seems the benefit of deterministic parallel computation is 
not understood.

If I have 10,000 computations, I might like to send half of them 
to task 1, and the other half to task 2, so they can be processed 
simultaneously by different cpu cores in a multi-core cpu.

Some of those computations may rely on the results of computations 
being performed by the other task, so that means some coordination 
between the tasks is needed occasionally.

hehe, it was you Jaime, who posted link to also following article 
- Why events are a bad idea - http://www.usenix.org/events/hotos03/tech/vonbehren.html

so now - are threads a problem, or events a problem? Where is the 
truth ...?

Basically, he argues are lot that threads and shared memory can not 
work,

suggest alternatives Erlang has, mentions Erlang in one sentence, 
and says a real solution must work with mainstream-languages. The 
last point is a good one. But not in our case, because rebol is as 
non-mainstream as Erlang. So we need no hybrids, and lots of this 
arguments are moot.

This diagrams look to me a lot like some things connected by message-streams.

But i do not know how this MapReduce-library etc. works, maybe i 
miss something cool.

Yet another attempt to be able to pull information out of the morass 
that is the WWW: SPARQL
An SQl-like language for turning RDF data into subsetted XML:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/11/16/introducing-sparql-querying-semantic-web-tutorial.html

If it catches on like RSS has, that'll be another publishing channel 
many websites will need to add.

So they've done it - a Skype-enabled wireless phone:

http://us.accessories.skype.com/direct/skypeusa/itemdetl.jsp?prod=3059

I think the important thing is that it is PC-less.  Or, it 's a portable 
PC inside the phone!

I want to cram a small skype os into this.. 

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/Port-O-Rotary/portable-rotary.htm

The ultimate .. buy this  http://www.sparkfun.com/shop/?shop=1&cart=673098&cat=1&itemid=416&
(for $399)

and add skype so when you're in a hotspot, you use skype, and cellular 
when out of range.

hmm.. messed up altme.. should say " add skype when in a hotspot, 
and cellular when out of range"

It's an RPC architecture, so it sucks a bit

interface is nice, just a bit difficult to place cursor and type 
anything under mozilla :-)

Bit out of my way .. it's at least a 15 min bus ride into town!

I just tried Google Spreadsheets and I'm not too impressed. Granted 
the interface is simple and there is centralized storage, but the 
thing is slow to work in and dragging cells can get a bit messy if 
you accidentally drag outside the sheet area. this could have been 
done so much better in Rebol.

it'd be cool to build a group based spreadsheet that takes advantage 
of AltME filesharing.

I don't know what you plan with AltME filesharing, but I sometimes 
would like a file storage service available centralized that would 
be available for me no matter where I've logged in.

there's not much of an idea in it. I'd just like to see a Rebol version 
of what Google is doing.

maybe it could be done through the viewtop, connect to a rebol/service 
to ask for and store documents. I don't know...

Henrik, how about carrying a usb drive with you?

You could always run a synapse chat server :)

the google way is cool if you have some work you do at home, which 
you want to continue on a netcafe or the library or just a place 
where you won't be for long

Henrik - very strange, really. In our company, USB drives (flash 
drives) are really a boom. We can see problems VERY sporadically, 
if ever. I would definitely refuse to call them unreliable - much 
more reliable than anything else - floppies, cds/dvds

I have seen a few laptops that has broken USB ports due to overused 
of USB drives. I still think it is great though.

pekr, the drives themselves are OK, but the OS'es handle them badly. 
If I under MacOSX store some files on the drive and eject the drive 
as I properly should, the files are just not present on the drive 
according to WinXP, as if the ejection procedure didn't sync files 
to disk. Half the time, they don't work under Linux without hours 
of fiddling and most win98 machines won't handle them at all. Data 
transfer between machines is probably successful about 50% of the 
time.

An internet connection is, for me, a much more reliable way to get 
data onto a machine. It's probably the syncing aspect that makes 
them so unreliable.

Could UNIX commands sync and touch help you? You have them under 
MacOS, and maybe under Windows too with cygwin. A little script could 
run through the dirs and sync or touch (or both) the files.

Cut the crap and move on
 is a good idea.

maybe there is some setting for that, dunno .... Windows denerves 
me sometimes with so called - rought czech translation - delayed 
write was not successfull. Not sure how it happens, but somewhere 
deep in your profile there is a dir for such a feature, and if there 
is some file, you can see annoying messages each time Windows starts.

pekr, I can't just ask a customer to throw away 10 win98 machines 
and go spend thousand of dollars on XP licenses because my little 
pen drive does not work on them. the fact is that I work in too many 
different OS'es that USB drives can work reliably across. had I been 
working in XP alone, there may not have been a problem, but this 
is not the case.

and I've also seen XP machines that flat out refuse to mount USB 
drives. this is a stupid problem.

sorry, I just can't be bothered. fetching what I need off a website 
is way more reliable for me.

the "strange" fact is that the machines are always accessible on 
a LAN, which is why I prefer using the internet to transfer data 
between machines at home and customers.

Hi Henrik, 

I've had some really nice experiences with Qtask. Just upload a zip 
of all the files you might need, and download only those ones you 
actually need in a given situation. Real sweet.

The http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2006/06/unenterprisey-languages-meeting.html
meeting was mildly interesting.  Robert Strandh showed how he reimplemented 
metafont in common lisp with the main aim that he could provide print 
services for his G# music score editor.  This was implemented as 
a DSL, and printing done by converting the DSL to postscript.  Familiar??

The Erlang talk was also interesting .. to learn about a language 
designed for failure .. pity the demo was not well done.  Io - bit 
boring for me.  And Chris Double talked about javascript with continuations, 
and threads.

nice, but really lagging, they should improve blitting a bit ...

so slow, that using it as a rich client environment would denerve 
me after some short period of time :-) Give me plug-in :-)

a good demo of how to code in openlaszlo ... http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/laszlo-in-ten-minutes/

Except fonts - it's a shame, that we cannot use custom embedded fonts 
in Rebol yet:(

reinventing the wheel. The article not mentioning QNX and mentioning 
Windows mobile seems a bit uninformed

There is good reason to build something from scratch.  Lets assume 
there are 10,000 terminals for Toyota dealers.


If you are paying Microsoft about $120 for their software, that alone 
is 1.2 million.  


And windows crashes a lot, requires lots of maintenance, and lots 
of overhead to configure, oh, and is filled with security holes.


Building a simple platform that just does a few things can be well 
worth it.

IIRC there was a BMW that was involved in accident locking its passenger, 
later it was discover that the problem was due to a change on the 
controller OS to windows embedder. So I guess now BMW are using something 
else.

What a pitty is not available in other platforms.

The good part is that you don't need to do any memory management. 
But I think you need to be familiar a bit with the Cocoa API, because 
F-Script wraps it into an smalltalk syntax.

Reichart, the automotive terminals they are talking about in the 
Toyota article will be installed in the dashboard of the cars. That 
means quite a bit more than 10,000 terminals here, and a much smaller 
comparison price.


Pekr, they do mention Windows Automotive OS, which is derived from 
Windows Mobile.

more apt to dash a computer playing solitaire with my car

QNX isn't as much of a player in the Japanese automotive market, 
AFAIK.

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/<--- very interesting 
camera: take a picture, then choose the focus you want in the image.

Steve Dekorte (Io's creator on his visit to Ruby's User Group)


I dropped by the San Francisco Ruby User Group meeting the other 
day. There were about 100 people there and all the presentations 
that I caught were basically non-technical overviews of dotcom sites 
that people were making with Ruby on Rails. Also, there were a ton 
of folks looking to employ Ruby programmers. In contrast, the last 
Python meeting I went to at Stanford was about 20 people and all 
the talks were fairly technical. 

Dynamic languages really seem 
to be taking off. Perhaps they just need to provide solutions (as 
Rails does for quick web programming) instead of merely technology 
for people to see the direct benefits and make the leap. 

Another 
interesting bit, I heard that Ruby's Mongrel webserver uses globally 
locked threads. I'm curious to know don't they use proper continuations 
and asynchronous sockets as Io does (with coroutines and async sockets)?

Great, a guy that basically was "granted" Lotus Notes (he did not 
invent it for you young guys) is now in charge of MS....amazing...fitting..

You want the billion $ idea for digi-cams?


Add a SLIM and BEAUTIFY button that will alter the taken pictures 
in real-time.

Sometimes known as a "lens cover"

Well he did manage to take groove from a good idea into a bloated 
behomoth. I think that's how he got MS attention ;-)

First off, I haven't used a spreadsheet in 10 years, and second.. 
wetpaint.com generates a boring web 1.0 page  (here's the wetpaint 
anime page http://anime.wetpaint.com/
C'mon people.. think out of the box.

Latest framewerks development uses ajax to send a change to the DB.. 
if that change requires authentication, the server <i>pushes</i> 
an authentication widget to the page (no refresh), the user fills 
it out, and carries on. very smooth.

A form of tech...

Will give a try to their widgets ....

I may be missing the trend here, but 'widgets' do look and feel a 
bit gimmicky.  For one, they break the window metaphor -- I guess 
that is why Apple set them apart from the regular Tiger desktop. 
 Are there any widgets that have transformed the online habits of 
anyone here?  (non-rhetorical)

'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving

 -- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uosc-fk062006.php
I think I'm a junkie.

Widgets are good if they are done right. I like the dictionary widget 
for example in Tiger. If I'm watching a movie and someone says a 
word I don't know, I press F12, type the word, get an explanation, 
press F12 again without every pausing the movie or manipulating windows.

The MacOSX Tiger implementation lacks a few things. It can be very 
slow since all widgets need to be prepared with webcontent before 
they can be used. There's no proper threading.

Are there any widgets that have transformed the online habits of 
anyone here?


1) Customizable real-time stock price monitor ... significantly faster 
and more versatile than traditional website equivalents.

2) Broadband usage monitor - aggregates several metrics into a simple 
display.


Widgets that are well-designed focus on solving a specific [informational] 
need. The advantages they have over traditional websites with the 
same content are:

a) Immediacy
b) Conciseness
c) Customizable

Could those examples be better addressed with an appropriately designed 
Reblet?  (I guess I make the reblet/widget distinction as 'reblet' 
= 1. behaving as a traditional application within the OS, in that 
it appears in the taskbar/dock and can be alt/cmd-tabbed to and 2. 
contained within an OS window, opaque though perhaps containing custom 
styling)

Again, not a rhetorical question -- I see both as filling a similar 
space, I think Carl described it as 'disposable applications', easy 
to author, easy to use.  Widgets look good, but break the windows 
metaphor, substituting gimmicky aesthetics for consistent user experience. 
 I'm not sure there is value in the effort to emulate them over 1. 
making it easier to communicate with the services that drive them 
(better XML handlers, more flexible HTTP protocol, I18N, whatever), 
2. making reblets more accessible (within the OS, not the browser), 
3. providing an effortless base for making reblets look and feel 
good (still a chore, despite the capability of the view engine).

On point 3, I know that is a goal of RebGUI, but the project underlines 
that it is not trivial to set up a UI of OS/typical Ajax quality 
out of the box.

my long time experience - since the times of amiga, is, that if it 
catches your eye, you have already won typical user's attention. 
Sadly, but the rest is often "a technical detail". We miss some gfx 
guys here, as Chris is surely pressed for the time. View engine is 
created for non-typical designs, yet we were not successfull in utilising 
it ...

That's what I'm addressing -- it takes over much effort to make a 
good looking reblet UI, compared with say, making a Ajax-based app 
with HTML + CSS (not to say it's easier to provide app logic).

Creating CSS manually is not necessarily a barrier.  I love the control 
it provides.

isn't it because you are a web guy? You know how to do design, you 
have visual editor etc. What would be needed for you to turn it into 
comparatively looking rebol equivalent?

Ajax is a clear combination of four components protocol (http), data/interface 
(html), presentation (css) and behaviour (js).  You can create a 
functional web app with the first two.  Then you can optimise by 
modifying behaviour.  Then (or from the beginning) make it look good 
with CSS.

What is the value of 'fully rich apps', at least for the sake of 
it?  If 'rich' allows for better expression of the problem at hand, 
then that's good.  However, there is a tendency to allow 'rich' to 
define the problem, that's bad.

Ashely, in addition to your list of a b c items, I would say simplicity 
is actually #1.  While immediacy is very important, people seem to 
really want and understand single word descriptions, that go no further.....Weather, 
Stock, Tasks, Music, etc.   Almost no prefs, and almost no buttons...

Btw, before leaving this group, Firebug (for Firefox) goes a long 
way to making JS more transparent...

The battle is shifting beyond Windows and Linux," he says. "Google 
isn't concerned about what executes down on the client machine, whether 
it's Windows or Linux. The action has moved up a level. The real 
innovation in software is not occurring in the context of the 1980s 
and 1990s PC. It's occurring in applications that reside in the broader 
Web. The interesting innovations are going to occur around different 
ways to organize and share and access information."" -- Paul Maritz 
(once 3rd in comand at Microsoft) regarding his new venture.. PI 
 http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/06/23/linux_vista_open_cz_dl_0623linux.html

http://toute.ca/- a system REBOL was born to have (forget the 
continuations, think about the message passing).

I was thinking along the lines of a dialect in R2.

If I reuse the Rugby I/O engine..... I think if we use a few conventions 
for leightwight processes migration might be possible as well...

UniServe's kernel is just a fin layer abstracting REBOL's low-level 
IO. So everything network-related will be above UniServe.

I had a look at Termite's paper, I don't see what's really new there 
?

Imagine a database query you create, capture as continuation and 
distribute as process to whoever wants the last 10 customers.

Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 1 has been released. This milestone for developers 
and testers includes several new features including anti-phishing, 
browser session restore in case of a crash, support for client-side 
session and persistent storage, ability to re-open accidentally closed 
tabs, support for JavaScript 1.7, new Windows installer based on 
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, new microsummaries feature for 
bookmarks, new search plugin manager and better support for previewing 
and subscribing to web feeds.

If we can get a stable and rich gui

http://video.google.de/videosearch?q=hp+labs+google+techtalks


This are two of a series of four (2 more to come in the next 2 weeks 
(if I remember correctly)) talks about capability security. I think 
they're highly educational, interesting and anyway important to widen 
ones view on security issues we face nowadays. Highly recommended. 
:-) (best to download the Google Video player and watch them by downloading 
them)

Maybe it's not so new (as I was a few weeks out of keyboards) but 
I just found that there is new Flash player - http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/features/

i thought it was A**

too vauge.   A??  or  A[MT][DI]

Xray for XCode looks also a bit evil. a very visual way to analyze 
program performance

Not quite a news but IMO quite interesting: lukfil writes "We all 
know of floating point numbers, so much so that we reach for them 
each time we write code that does math. But do we ever stop to think 
what goes on inside that floating point unit and whether we can really 
trust it?"  http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/12335059/article.pl

if you do need to add a bunch of floating point numbers begin with 
the smallest first and work your way up

Or you use Scheme that has a number ladder including bignums. So 
you never lose precision.

if they needed 20 months for a .1 improvement... ;) (just kidding)

http://hight3ch.com/post/airplane-toy-feel-like-a-pilot/

Article on Design Patterns, (starts off with C code examples, but 
soon after turns into a good article, easy to read):
http://newbabe.pobox.com/~mjd/blog/2006/09/11/

IEEE Computer - July 2006, has an article by Bertrand Meyer on componentizing 
the Visitor pattern, and talks about components versus patterns in 
general. Here is a related link: http://se.ethz.ch/research/patterns.html


Coming from VB, which was "object based", not true OO, and succeeded 
largely due to its component-based model, I believe that patterns 
are good, but components are better, and language features are better 
still. That's another reason I think dialects are the way to go.

try the aA button .. it helps a little.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=18121&hed=The+Big+Blue+Marble

I don't know. I use IM, IRC and AltME way more than email. For me, 
email is a rather clunky communications tool. It seems to me that 
for many people, IM requires you to be at the computer all the time, 
which of course it doesn't. I guess it's heritage from the even older 
phone era. :-)

Take a look at this Flapjax stuff. Very interesting, original info 
posted by Jaime in Chat.

writting a letter or an essay is not the same tought process as speaking 
with someone