AltME groups: search

I created a FLEX group to move discussion to.

henrik, I agree with paul that   (Me... agreeing with paul, wtf !?!?? 
;-)   


  row [  ]  and  column  [  ]  styles  MUST be part of the default 
  style sheet, other wise every application will be using them but 
  with different names....


 its like if you said, the button style is there but it doesn't have 
 a name.

it has a name

Maxim, I can add them and see how much sense they make. Takes a couple 
of minutes.

what I'm saying is that if difference between toggle button and button 
is just an attribute change,  the 'toggle style should still be in 
the stylesheet... other skins/stylesheets might use a completely 
different internal, but since toggle has been defined globaly, people 
will be using the name toggle in their apps.

(this is a fun discussion. it takes much longer to discuss than it 
takes to fix. :-))

wow an american, a canadian and a european ... all agreeing.... damn, 
I think we've reached a MILESTONE  in R3    ;-D

That is a design flaw.  A programmer should not have to go back and 
look up what a 0 or a 1 refer to when if there were user-friendly 
terms then it could make sense on initial observation.

Henrik - yes, we both thought it might be a bug, but I asked Carl 
and he wants it that way - so I expect no single bit change :-)

Is Twitter a good purchase for Apple?

Isn't this all a bit OT.

twitter already has brand recognition outside of apple, building 
their own brand would get the effort tagged as an Apple thing... 
this way they get a huge PC crowd to market to (pulling and pushing 
info).

I don't know. It seems like it only works properly if you are a group 
of people twittering together. I saw recently that a company had 
built an enterprise version, complete with an app to publish your 
current thoughts among your co-workers. I suppose you shouldn't express 
your opinion of your boss there. :-)

For those that didn't notice, Wolfram Alpha has been online for a 
couple of days:

http://www17.wolframalpha.com/

I don't think it's going to change the world in a hurry.

I've noticed that a lot of people are using it wrong. You can't ask 
a calculator where all the good porn is.

Yesterday I discussed with my mom, whether the Earth's volume really 
is 50 times that of the Moon. Googling that doesn't give a precise 
answer, but typing "volume of the earth divided by the volume of 
the moon" gives an exact answer.

ask it what the volume of a D cup is ...

it's a computational engine ... not a search engine.

well it knows about a lot of stuff, its just a processing system. 
 you get definitive answers for alot of "Who is xxxx" for example.

needs a lot of human input

well, give a sequence from the human genome ... and see what happens

and it really isnt a search engine. it doesn't refer to things, it 
gives them to you directly.

it's basically a really fancy calculator.

for example "what is e"  give a lot of info... it even returns the 
codepoint for 2 encodings, and suggests that e is also part of math 
(with a hot link to it)

ok...here's something I tried...

A comparison between RIMM, AAPL and PALM
http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=RIMM%2C+AAPL%2C+PALM


But, doubt it will be useful...since history shows that we can't 
rely on modelling alone when it comes to the stock market (or any 
market)

From the FAQ:

Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine?

No. It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by 
doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead 
of searching the web and returning links.

Does Wolfram|Alpha get its data from the web?

No. It comes from Wolfram|Alpha's internal knowledge base. Some of 
the data in that knowledge base is derived from official public or 
private websites, but most of it is from more systematic primary 
sources.

Where does Wolfram|Alpha's data come from?

Many different sources, combined and curated by the Wolfram|Alpha 
team. At the bottom of each relevant results page there's a "Source 
information" button, which provides background sources and references.

by using it a bit I realise that its not using very fancy NLP for 
the questions.

It needs to loosen up a bit too:
   largest prime  ===> good answer
   smallest prime ===> confused wolfram

I guess you should compare Wolfram Alpha to Spock in the beginning 
of the fourth Star Trek movie, where he's being tested by a computer. 
"How do you feel?" :-)

The computer that Scotty uses to show transparent aluminum was originally 
going to be an Amiga, but Commodore would only provide a computer 
if they bought it. Apple was willing to loan them the Mac.
 <--- Commodore marketing in action.

Other strange use:

>> hokus-pokus/quote "Hitchhiker"

Ford: [watching the Magrathean recording of Deep Thought] Is that 
it?
Zaphod: No, there's more. They go back.
Arthur: What, seven and a half million years later?
Zaphod: Yeah, they do.

>> hokus-pokus #00113f
== 0.17.63

JavaScript is a strict subset of the R3 semantics, though there's 
hidden stuff that isn't hidden in REBOL, and particular implementations 
can include standard objects that have no analog in REBOL. There's 
no corresponding concept for JavaScript's objects in R2, but the 
R3 map! type is close enough.

On an implementtation level, JavaScript being compiled means that 
code really is code, rather than data for an interpreter. So JS is 
more like a subset of what R3 pretends to be, rather than what it 
is :)

You also need to have a minimum number of people to use it.  In other 
words, you have to sort of buy in all hog from what I understand...

You can get more of a feel for it here.  http://www.attask.com/overview/product-tour/project-management

Future spacecraft can use pulsars as an interstellar GPS with a precision 
of one meter:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23576/

I already pointed to in in Links group. Looks interesting. I thing 
that we might have here some chance with R3. Maybe, as a "killer 
app", we could think of alternative client frond-end for services, 
which have public APIs. That way such clients might be downloaded 
by millions, making REBOL a bit more popular :-)

http://kotaku.com/5274554/molyneuxs-milo-brings-a-virtual-child-to-the-xbox-360?autoplay=true

How it's used.

A new type of harddisk designed to compete with SSD. Very interesting:

http://www.dataslide.com/

Is it a magneto-optical drive ... like we had years ago?

No, it basically a harddrive with a rectangular magnetic plate, and 
instead of one head it has millions sitting in an array in another 
plate above the magnetic plate, placed on a very thin lubricant. 
the thing is that the heads can move up to 250 micrometers back and 
forth above the plate using a piezo actuator. Everything is tightly 
packed together with no loose parts.


There isn't much motion and the frequency of the motion is only about 
800 - 1000 Hz. However the head arrangement allows for massive parallelization 
of read and write ops. Currently only 64 heads can be accessed simultaneously, 
but I suspect this number will go way up. If the drive is idle, no 
power is used as nothing is moving. Due to the low frequency of motion, 
there can be a latency of about 0.5 ms, but the read/write speeds 
far exceed that of SSD. I suspect this frequency is used to avoid 
thermal and power problems.


The difference here from SSD is no need for specialized file systems, 
current manufacturing methods can be used and it uses even less power 
than SSD. It can also freely be scaled and adapted to 1.8", 2.5" 
and 3.5" drives, from what I can see. The durability for writeops 
on the same sector would be same or better than a harddrive.

Of note, about 20 years ago I wrote up a paper to build a camera 
with a 100x100 CCD that could capture huge images by vibrating the 
aperture (which would be small than a standard pin hole).  The speed 
of your CPU would control the time it took, thus faster computers 
= higher ISO values, that simple.


You would also be able to point it at something far away, and tell 
it to focus on that region, thus getting a clear image even at a 
very far distance.


This is still worth building today.  A $10 camera that takes 10Kx10K 
image in about 1 second, not bad.  Through software you could remove 
things that moved as well, for example cars that park over night, 
people walking around, etc.  Over several days you would end up with 
a crystal clear image of anything that was not moving.

Opera Unite: a Web server on the Web browser


With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, 
radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses 
the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all 
of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer 
at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way 
we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.

Opera unite: Has anyone given it a try? This might become some really 
interesting thing.

http://etoileos.com/downloads/


Etoilé now has a VirtualBox image, for those who want to play around 
with it quickly.

A desktop environment on Linux

Is there a way to leverage REBOL here?

So, no way for rebol to use the Gnustep libraries to create a GUI 
?

Graham, well, you could probably build the GUI files using REBOL, 
but that loses another point of GNUstep. It has a pretty powerful 
GUI builder that leverages late bindings in Objective C to build 
most of the functionality of the GUI without writing code.

So far BSD's attempts to get rid of GCC have been more announcement 
than actual. They also announced (separately) that they were going 
to create a BSD'ed C compiler that wasn't LLVM (something starting 
with a p). Don't hold your breath.

hmm... for some reason, youtube videos eat a lot less CPU than they 
did before.

we'd have a perfect world  ;-)

It looks that PHP is more and more bloated. At least for most cases 
I used PHP I just needed a few conditions, includes and connection 
to database with a little bit image and email support. I really don't 
know why I should do "Personal Home Page" with closures, namespaces, 
etc..

They added a goto too -- not always a bad idea, but open to all sorts 
of abuse by poor coders:
http://www.php.net/goto

a double goto ??

Yes, death of kodachrome is terrible. I've just ordered the last 
5 Kodachrome 64 films from the danish Kodak company. I hope, they 
get more before end of year, where it's finito. I plan to take a 
lot of time off to go and take photos with this film in the autumn. 
Next year I may end up selling my film camera and go with digital. 
Nah, probably not. ;-)

it seems a cousin to the glass project, of which glob is already 
very effective, and is a node-based lazy engine for rebol, using 
AGG exclusively.

glob has been showcased 3 years ago in a graphics demo... Its also 
the basis for liquid-paint.r

GLASS will wait for R3, and plugins.   its a decision I took last 
year.  GLASS is also a completely new GUI concept.. its totally different 
in the way you relate to a gui.  


There are still a few technological aspects to the concept that I 
wasn't able to resolve in the architecture itself.  This engine should 
allow non Graphical interface to be applied to any application.

like a Voice driven interface to forms, for example.  but the application 
isn't even aware of this... this is part of the skin itself.

Silverlight 3 available, now with ability to create external/offline 
applications, accelerated GFX and more - http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/03/18/silverlight-3-whats-new-a-guide.aspx

Fresco uses Corba, and there isn't a ReBOL implementation ... well, 
there wasn't when someone last asked on the list in 1999.

Having a Rebol implementation of IIOP seems as though it would be 
very useful.

I think I can help here (I'm about to have another patent awarded 
in fact that touches on this same area).


First, we all have to laugh here that what the patent covers is that 
data is sent in a format that is OPEN and STANDARD.  XML falls under 
this definition.


From the description “Any program or procedure which needs to format 
or understand the document must know all of the special codes and 
be able to correctly separate them from the content. All routines 
which work with the document must have exactly the same model of 
how the embedded codes are formatted or placed. If any operation 
misinterprets the code sequence even slightly, or mistakes content 
for formatting, the document or a part thereof will be reduced to 
meaninglessness. “


In other words guys, this group is suing Microsilly for FINALLY playing 
nice with everyone else.   This is the purist form of irony ever, 
and I love it.


I agree with the judge.   The problem now is...is there prior art? 
 This is 1994.  Permit me to make something clear, they are not claiming 
that showing something like XML is the scope of the patent, even 
WordPerfect would should you something like XML if you asked to “reveal 
codes”, but in fact it was stored internally in some odd format (just 
like word).  The move to storing the data in this standardized way, 
and showing it in the same way, might indeed by unqiue.  The language 
for storing it has to be standard itself, this self referencing part 
is what makes this tricky.

My understanding of it is they had some black beads and some red 
beads mixed in a pile. The "invention" was to separate the red beads 
and the black beads.

... a conspiracy theory? :-)

A conspiracy theory.

can a bike be called "revolutionary" ??

Intertesting idea -- hope it succeeds, and the price drops by an 
order of magnitude!

Max speed is stated as 20KPH -- not a very high speed for a bicycle. 
So hard braking unlikely to be a problem.

Needing to use a backpack (no attachable panniers) will be a drawback 
for commuters / shoppers.

Interesting looking, but their FAQ is a bit off in at least one place: 
 20 KPH (about 12 MPH) might be slow, but it is fast enough for wind 
resistance to become an issue because your entire torso is spread 
sitting up, making it catch much more air.  Also, since sitting up 
gives you a higher center of gravity than leaning forward as on a 
normal bike, it seems less stable to me...


Then again, I rollerblade rather than bike, so I don't know much 
about the Center of Gravity on bikes, but my wind resistance comment 
comes from leaning forward at around 15 MPH and still having issues 
with the wind throwing my balance.

Looks like they'll also be sellng in NZ too.  I wonder if my dog 
would mind if I used a NZ$7000 bike to '"walk" him ...

I guess on the one hand, it's a replacement for scooters - they look 
nimble and the fold-up feature is convenient (no parking!). As a 
cyclist, I appreciate the exercise, but sometimes miss the convenience 
of being lazy - I'd give it a try as a backup, but I think in the 
'States a scooter offers more range, versatility and presence...

This device will be never successful, and is even dangerous. Normally, 
when you drive, you have your hands in front of you, not behind of 
you. When there will be any road-block in front of you, you will 
reflectively put your hands in front of you, to cover your head, 
body, whatever. This is really only a jewelery, not a real bike ....

Having read the FAQ now,  this looks critical:
    <Currently the YikeBike can travel a distance of 9 - 10 Km.>
That's way too short to be of use to many people.

Making it really a urban city transport. How far can the Segway travel?

I am an urban city bicycle commuter.

I'd need a minimum range of 15Km a day.  And I'd want 30km for flexibility.

Also, I suspect the range is dependent on the weather [FAQ says <the 
YikeBike works best in mild climates>] so the actual range would 
be less than the quoted 9-10km for anyone outside of summer conditions. 
That's one of the issues that sunk the Sinclar C5.


Power ..... The FAQ implies it is powered from the electicity mains. 
Average cost EUR0.10 per recharge. Now, if you could set it up as 
a static bike and recharge it by pedalling....

So unless the electric power come from a windmill or similar, it's 
not really green.

It's like the danish "Ellert":
http://www.ellert.info/


I see them a seldom time on the danish roads. They're not a big success.

Well Win-7 is not yet there, so use-on-own-risk but Vista is there. 
That's really a cool one.

Google is doing the continuous improvement model, a good one if you 
can afford to autoupdate without prompting. We can't.

but now you have a professional "sucky application" dev environment 
to make your job easy at it  ;-)

aaaahhh a link just made itself in my head....  novell + mono  <> 
 MS 7 new collaborative mindset... yes...  mono IS .net as an open 
source and actually sanctified by MS as a gift .

a lot can already be done right now... probably the most complicated 
aspect is using some of the structs which many of the windows api 
funcs use.

Graham - no, not complicated. It is about what reboltutorial suggests 
- how can REBOL be successful, if it can't integrate to business 
systems? Scala is becoming popular. I would like to use REBOL at 
my work. So - how do I query Active Directory, to get me listing 
of users? Bzzz ... you can't easily do such stuff with REBOL. REBOL 
is cool, but a bit in an isolation.

Me too .. I'd like to use a lot of stuff that I simply can't

again, SWIG might be the solution here... this whole topic needs 
a lot of research.

a tool which scans entire repositories of C/C++ code and builds bindings 
for various interpreted language... its one of the reasons python 
gets everything first... its totally integrated into SWIG... for 
example, SWIG was used to build the python OpenGL binding.  its just 
a question of getting the .h or the sources.  and then saying... 
I want to use it in [select language].

Kaj, outside circumstances changed the plans. Two of the lead developers 
had to work on another task for a bit, and it took longer than expected. 
This happens. Others have stepped up to pick up some of the slack 
so development proceeds, but the particular parts those two developers 
were working on got put on hold. Those two developers are back now 
so developement on their sections is continuing.

... the next time Carl will write "this is the release date" we will 
answer him that the release date is not important but having a good 
language is.

I'm not interested in having this whole argument all over again. 
I asked a simple question and eventually I got my answer: since a 
few weeks, Core is delayed for another month and View for several 
more months

It is past. It has been surely a mistake but it happened and it is 
past. Now we must move from the incidend and have a positive approach. 
A stalled discussion does not help anyone.

Actually, /Core wasn't going to exist at all, but now something like 
/Core will be released as a public alpha.

GOOD ! More months means we will have a better product !

I know. I want to say this to you: I have even written to Rebol Tech 
asking for a pricing on both SDK/Command and having no answer.

I could have 2 approach: start screaming everywere stating that they 
don't even care to give the users a price or understandig that there 
is something wrong behind the scenes that does need our patience 
waiting to be solved.

A last word as I have flooded this groups of message. Think about 
this situation there are 2 ships, both are sinking; on the first 
ship the passengers start fighting the crew of the sinking , on the 
second the passengers cooperates with the crew to save more lifes 
as possible. Which approach will give the best results ?

Kaj, ths is not the proper group to ask questions about Syllable 
but I do not see a Syllable group here...

And the web site left me with a few questions

I'm downloadng the live version to give it a wirl.

I'm an old Amiga guy and Syllable reminds me a bit of Amiga (from 
the site). I would be interested in joining that group if possible.