AltME groups: search

for example here in france macs are pretty well implented in university 
because they are simple to manage in hight number. In hoght schools 
you get windows but you get lesser computer to manage (In my hight 
school in 1997 they was only 30 computers equiped with windows with 
a controled acces for the students you can use it only on certain 
days of the weeks durring a gived time. When I ingress to university 
they was 200 macs for every one  to use every time 100 windows pc 
to be used on restricted time and 20 Alphas/linux debian + 10 Sillicon 
graphics 02 with IRIX + 3 data severs (2 sun ultra 1 (X11 sharing) 
 + 1 dec 50 (NFS, mail, web ) + 40 Xteminal box for former computer 
ingeneer  ) MAc and PC was used for office application LINUX/UNIX 
computers was used to form computer ingeneer .This shows pretty well 
I think the world clivage in informatic :)

Yes, it is a very pretty application.  The only complaint that I 
have is that it is slow on my computer (1 Ghz, 512 RAM) Have you 
done anything to optimize it yet?

amacleod: The cost of colour printing at Lulu.com seems to be 7 times 
as much as black & white printing. I guess that's the reason that 
most computer books are printed in black & white.

Server is still slow but it might be my internet connection as another 
computer running at the same location is also super slow....unless 
my bandwidth is getting eaten up with server access...an attack??
I cannot get into the server to check the logs..

Hi RayA and Welcome. 


I am a new to AltMe too. I think you are right about the evolution 
of the web. The Desktop OS has become an application in itself (IMHO). 
It's the focus of so much angst, controversy and complication. (Nailing 
my personal colours to post here: I declare myself a BSD UNIX type. 
I can still install the latest version in much less than 100MB of 
HD space and 32MB ram and 100Mhz CPU. In fact I run it on an old 
Toshiba laptop with that spec and get real work done)


I think, in principle, DOS was my idea of a good OS (I know, I know...) 
It was small, fast a stable. Yes - lockups were common when pushed, 
but I found it was the application that crashed rather than DOS itself. 
Ok. back in the world of the 21st Century, an OS need many many times 
the resources of DOS just to get itself booted. But basically, all 
I want from the OS is to let the applications get on with the job 
in hand.


What attracts me to Rebol is that it is clean and lightweight. Designed 
by a man who I respect as a Computer Scientist. (And, of course, 
the Rebol community, which collectively one might say is a "killer 
app" too). It's very productive and I'm building internal information 
systems with it.  I've got a few ideas to build my own apps outside 
of work, that is an exciting prospect for the future. 


I keep trying other frameworks/languges and over the last six years 
or so I've lost the "Rebol way" and strayed from the one true path! 
I do find myself coming back to Rebol as I run into more library 
conflict/dependency/blot features of some of the other languages 
I used. Maybe I'm getting impatient of complicated technology now 
I'm older. I just get tired of having to search the internet for 
the latest whatever.so.1 lib, or what have you. I'm making a general 
point here BTW - I know there are some very good language implimentations 
out there.


I don't know what the next killer app will be, but I do think there 
is a place for a machine "Powered by REBOL" which boots in a few 
seconds, lets me communicate, write view images, multimedia, code 
my own Rebol apps from a set of built in services, oh and the battery 
lasts for days - not hours!
It would have to display HTML too (legacy web :-))


So there you go, a bit of a rant from an old geezer technologist 
. Now where's me 8" floppies I need to boot that PDP-11?

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not the "best" programmer (hopefully 
I have other strengths ;-) ), but I'm looking for different and better 
ways to solve problems and build applications. Therefore, would a 
programmer with a computer science background with NON procedural 
languages like Lisp or ML be more likely to "grok" and appreciate 
REBOL? Would it make sense to "hire" a young/new programmer out of 
college and get them involved with REBOL early so they have less 
"bad habits" to unlearn? Are any schools teaching their students 
REBOL? I appreciate the help and opinions of the group.

Rebol may become your most useful asset in your toolbox, because 
it's expressiveness and its ease of use, but it will not help you 
understand computer science, precisely because it is so intuitive. 
Anyone trying to grasp the fundamentals of programming will have 
to delve in other languages and paradigms. Also, Rebol didn't spring 
from the void. It is grounded in what Carl knows and he knows a lot. 
I think the link with Lisp is obvious. Parsing comes from the BNF 
grammar. I greatly benefited from studying S-expressions. Look at 
how Lua implements associative arrays (tables), it is very instructive, 
very powerful, they are better than hashes in Rebol, (Carl has expressed 
interest in his blog to revise them). Another thing Lua got right 
is size, it is smaller than Rebol. Lua can be ported more easily, 
it is available on the palm platform for years now. Rebol still promises 
this. Learn Rebol, but don't stop with Rebol.

In the preface to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 
Abelson and Sussman state 

“First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is 
not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather 
that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. 
Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally 
for machines to execute.”

Why did I join this community? The primary reason is to be part of 
a small, smart and passionate group who think differently


That's basically the same reason I joined this community.  Like many 
others here I found REBOL through the Amiga community.  I had access 
to an Amiga 2000 when I was in elementary school and I loved it. 
 When I decided to start programming I played with some Perl, some 
VB, some C and then I signed up to the Amiga Developers List in 2001, 
through which I found this community and I've never looked back...

Since REBOL requires a programmer to 

think differently", in general what type of person, skill set, and/or 
background is required for a person to be a good REBOL programmer?"


  I think that those most likely to really grok REBOL are those that 
  "think outside of the box."  IMHO, anyone CAN be a good REBOL programer, 
  like Gregg says, what you need most is an open mind.  Curiosity does 
  help....  A lot.  There are a number of simple IQ tests that you 
  can give people to determine their ability to "think outside the 
  box."  The way they approach the problem is as important as their 
  ability to solve the problem because this shows you how they will 
  attempt to solve problems they encounter while programming.


Therefore, would a programmer with a computer science background 
with NON procedural languages like Lisp or ML be more likely to 
grok" and appreciate REBOL?"


From what I have seen, they will pick up REBOL a lot quicker than 
those without the background in lisp or a language like Lisp, however 
this doesn't necisarrily mean that they will be able to write the 
best REBOL code...

Would it make sense to 

hire" a young/new programmer out of college and get them involved 
with REBOL early so they have less "bad habits" to unlearn? Are any 
schools teaching their students REBOL?"


There is a group here, "Rebol School", that we have been using to 
discuss the topic of learning/teaching REBOL.  One of the users here, 
DenisMX, I believe has developed, or is at least working on developing 
a REBOL curriculum.

Now having said that...Gregg, Geomol, many many others dish out good 
help...but watch for Gabriele, Ladislav and some others as they seem 
to have a gift for explaining things so a computer would understand 
without ambiguity.

I'm in a catch-22 now...Gregg and John are gurus, they speak human 
and computer...Gabriele and Ladislav are gurus, they speak computer 
and human...Gregg and John are gurus, they speak computer and human...Gabriele 
and Ladislav are gurus, they speak human and computer...  Just like 
REBOL, I know what I want to say but it's deeper than I can express. 
 :)

Here is what Carl has said:

Of course, not to discourage anyone, but we're going to be careful 
and choosy about what becomes part of R3. We've got our standards. 
We still value small, fast, and smart. REBOL is about getting great 
advantage and leverage from a well-designed tool, not about becoming 
yet another bloated and hard-to-manage computer language.

========================================================= 
Perspectives of a newbie! By Steve Thornton (SteveT) 


Hi everyone, just got up and running this morning (think I've found 
a bug in Vista when used on dual-screen Doh!!)


Thanks for everyones very kind comments on my main menu. I'm learning 
masses about Rebol 

(mainly due to hours of reading - and you guy's), I think I will 
be a 'newbie' for quite some time though!


While I love databases and user interface design (yep I literaly 
have sat at customers watching how they work! ;-) I know 'get a life!' 
) I have no formal computer science education so I'm weak on some 
of the theoretical stuff.  We don't all nead to know the theory of 
how search engines etc work, as long as they work!  I look at some 
of the code in the messages on here and think OMG, what a load of 
scientific formulae that is ! :-/ 


I think an overview of some of the 'heavy' stuff would help some 
of us to get the most from Rebol, perhaps some of you 'heavy' guy's/gal's 
could 'volunteer' to post an article on their particular forte. 

One last thing... 


I have a table that holds several bits of [optional] data .. tax 
ref, employer, vat no etc.. and also a flag that the user can set 
as to wether that field is to be displayed. Can I use the following 
structure? Or am I asking for trouble?

Table...

 DETAILS [dRec dRef [dTitle d1] [dTaxref d2] [dVatno d3] [dEmployer 
 d4]]
	
I think I just heard Henrik tutting! :-0

By for now

....My computer took about a second to reformat the test data. Fast 
enough?

What a waste...
Are you sure you understand well the idea behind parsing ?

It's not specific to rebol, Parsing exists in many computer langages, 
At first you have to understand the theory behind...
If not, you will just produce trash code.like that

You know, its kind of funny.  When I saved the document on my computer 
and opened it via wordpad, it opened up just fine.  When I renamed 
it from .r to .txt and then reopened it, wordpad had a lot of funny 
characters in it.  I had to rename it back to .r  reopen the document 
using wordpad and then did a save as .txt.  Now it looks just fine. 
 Must be a unicode thing or something like that!

Graham, Thanks for the reply...I've been working on the house so 
my computer has been down for a few days...anyway:

I have found some utilites to extract images and text but I'm building 
a tool in rebol to coordinate the conversion of pdf's to text and 
extracted images, to edit them, and to upload. I was hopig for a 
rebol solution to incorporate it all into one app. The tool will 
be used by non-tech so I wanted it simple as possible.

How do these extaction utilities work? Are they no parsing out the 
image data?

BTW, Maarten told me that he knows for sure that you can get the 
number of result sets in advance, if he doesn't show up here (he 
can't be much in front of a computer these days), maybe you could 
email him to get more info.

Quick question about computer time,,,
Eastern Time is GMT-5 which my computer clock is set to...
why does rebol give me time with -4:00?
7-Jun-2009/20:24:01-4:00

I just did an update to my server time and my other computer..

I used time.nist.gove for the server and time.windows.com for the 
other computer and they were two minutes apart

Rebol must get the zone from the computer but why is it different?

(I hope this is the right group to post this in.)

I have a problem, when reading a file on another computer thru a 
shared drive. I'm sitting on a Windows client, and the file is on 
a UNIX server. First time I read the file, it's ok. Then if the file 
is updated on the UNIX server, I still get the old version on the 
client.

I've tried the read-thru/update command, but it doesn't solve the 
problem. Maybe read-thru/update doesn't work with shared drives? 
My code looks like this:

read-thru/update %/u/adv71-20/data/invoice.txt

Any ideas?

(It's possible to distribute a sync from the server to the client, 
and then I'll get the new version of the file. But I'll like to be 
able to get the new version from the client.)

Graham: I've done Ethereal monitoring with our test proxy, and after 
the "HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established" reply from the proxy, there's 
a line from my computer (running REBOL) to the proxy with the text 
"Continuation or non-HTTP traffic". After that, the proxy reply with 
a [FIN, ACK]. If that "continuation" holds the information from my 
REBOL application to go to the server in the other end, it may be 
a proxy problem!?

I'm having some problems with the rebol example webserv.r   I've 
installed it on a computer at home and a computer here at work. It 
works fine at home, but here there appears to be problems with the 
path of the script. The log file is places several places (where 
the webserv.r script is located and severel places inside the www 
path), and there are problems accessing rebol scripts inside :[  
]: - apparently also because of problems with the path. Very wierd 
behaviour. Any help appriciated.

I am putting up a new web site. It works fine on my own computer, 
but when I send it to the remote server it fails to load one of the 
jpg files. The jpg is one the server. All the other jpg files load 
fine. Any idea what might be wrong?

Geomol, I wonder if it has something to do with the skill with using 
the computer, how fast something can be looked up, et.c

I recently used Kompozer to build a quick site to fix a friend's 
site that was so bad I figured I could at least spend a few hours 
and take it from a 1 to a 6 (scale one to ten).

There are a few variations of Kompozer.  But Kompozer is the best 
of them.


It still sucks though.  When you do view source it does not put your 
cursor where you expect it to.  It is nightmarish to figure out how 
to edit tables. 
But, over all, if you keep things simple, it works well enough.

mobile browsing expected to outpace desktop access in 3-5 years.

Most of the world lives on their cell phones.


As to JavaScript Frameworks to fix the biggest human fail in computer 
history (that being that we use HTML+JavaScript to build UserInterface), 
having headed the creation of a complete UI system that is delivered 
through the web, I will say the following:


- Find something that handles Tables (grids, lists) well.  Make sure 
it does verything you need.

- Make a list for yourself of widgets you care about, and confirm 
(assume nothing) about the level of detail with which they operate. 
 For example, Imagine 3 radio buttons, on the web they have no default 
state, and some interfaces allow them to operate like checkboxes, 
not radio buttons.  Again, assume nothing!

- Confirm, for yourself, they work on the platforms you care about. 
 Nothing works on everything, even when they claim it.


I did not want to build Quilt, but we still don't know anything that 
comes close other than Tibco's crap, and I'm not sure they even sell 
it anymore. (I recall it was like $100K).

I wrote the program totally pro bono for a client who wants to donate 
a computer that had sensitive information on it to an underpriviledged 
school child, but I want to make sure the data is totally unrecoverable.

I see you couldn't resist bringing your computer ;-)

Oldes, you either have very fast hands or a very fast computer or 
both. I can't get close to your record even using your code. But 
isn't it amazing what be done with just one line of rebol code?

RebTower 0.0.7 has been released.
- All art is now completed.

- Card Builder is included with this release so you can make/modify 
your own cards.

- Added turn pause mode so you can get a better look at the cards 
the computer plays.
Get it at: http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower-0.0.7.zip(657kb)

Coming Friday I will be presenting two talks on Software Freedom 
Day 2010 at the CWI in Amsterdam, the Centre for Mathematics and 
Computer Science, where Python was created:

lol, you guys are right!  If the user can't even make sure the printer 
is on he or she is too dumb to use a computer.

Getting a weird behavior with an encapped app....


It works fine on most computers but on one computer an image in the 
face is not displaying properly...

its as if white space is being added to the right  and bottom sides 
throwing of the layout. 

I tried placing in a box with specific size. THis retains the basic 
layout but the image is squeezed up into a part of the box.
Only a problem on one computer so far ...

I can't play with different images now as the offending computer 
is at work...I'll play with it tomorrow night..
Just wanted to see if it was a common problem..

Thanks

Why only that computer and only when encapped is my question..


The work computer is FDNY property and locked down somewhat so its 
hard to debug if its the computer's issue...

RT should look into how Luxology does it with the 3D modeler, Modo. 
That model is worth copying parts of and is probably possible to 
graft onto RT.

Here's how they do it:


- Create a strong and unique product from scratch using people with 
many years of experience in the business.
- Keep a community forum on the main site.

- Keep a community creation portfolio on the main site. That's important, 
perhaps more than the forum.

- Have a charismatic front person who is daily in touch with the 
community. Creates a weekly podcast that also includes personal content 
and interviews.

- This person is so close in contact with the community that he can 
discuss product pricing and licensing with the community.

- Being a private company, they are free to opine on the policies 
of other companies, and Adobe and Autodesk are often criticized openly 
by Luxology.
- Make it really, really, really, REALLY easy to buy the program.
- Make upgrade paths really, really clear.

- Make the licensing scheme very loose. Don't bind it to a platform, 
but to a computer.

- Create content, tutorials and other items that are purchasable 
for a small amount (10-20 USD or so).

- Paid content is really cleverly done as an extension of the program. 
You can buy "kits" that for example let you easily set up studio 
lighting. This allows people to use the program in ways that were 
not originally intended or would be laborious to build on your own. 
In a sense, the 3D modeler is suddenly not only attracting 3D artists 
but photographers as well. It works similarly to how modules would 
work in R3. I suspect this will be one of their main income sources.

- Keep proprietary tech to yourself and license it to various vendors. 
This seems to be what they are mainly making their money on now.


This model works really well for them and they are growing constantly 
and with a fanbase about as strong and loyal as RTs. Luxology feels 
like a distinctively non-corporate entity, and like more a bunch 
of people having fun. Purely through years of word of mouth they 
got their program visible in one of the featurettes for the Avatar 
movie and on the Apple website demoing the Mac Pro. They even have 
guys from Pixar on the forums and making tutorials. Modo is known 
for being different than other 3D modelers much like in the same 
way that REBOL is different from other programming languages, making 
it fun to use.


In a sense REBOL as a product is not dissimilar to Modo (it's fun 
to use) and with their business model already working, I think it 
could be grafted onto RT's business model.

Hi guys, I have a question. I'm trying to use the Windows SDK with 
Wine on a linux computer. I get the following error message: "***ERROR 
(enter-data.r): File not found: /home/lat/r/sdk-w/mezz.r".  But that 
is the correct path to the file. So what is wrong?

sorry I get a computer crash and I does see that it was yet posted 
to altme

(had to look that up. realize i loose concentration, time to stop 
the computer.)

I can make out someone typing at a computer. :)

Yeah. The either trick saves 20 milliseconds and some memory too, 
on my slow computer.

A computer language theorist might tell you differences between arrays, 
lists and series. I suggest, you take the practical view and look 
at what datatypes, you find in REBOL.

kib, I took a look at the PS documentation, and it has arcs, curves, 
etc. This isn't implemented in the REBOL ps dialect (yet). My dialect 
was just make fast to get some useful postscript out from REBOL.


I have a book on computer graphics, that might deal with the problem, 
you describe. I take a look ...

The book is called "Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics" by Philip 
J. Schneider and David H. Eberly.

Following test takes cca. 30secs on my computer, but REBOL says otherwise:

Pekr as I said, here on this computer, classic rebol is capable of 
updating more than 120 trinagles at full speed (rate: 0) without 
problem. And after 120 triangles I became bored adding more so I 
did not test it :)

nice demo, it's eating almost no CPU on my computer. But if I click 
and move cursor, everything is stoped.

Call of function or continuation? (Sorry if your English doesn't 
include computer-science terms)

this demo is the first stone of the future MSX emulator, but we could 
emulate lot of computer based on Z80 ship.

Marketing Ideas to lawyers
AN ARTICLE FROM SUNDAY'S NEW YORK TIMES WE SHOULD READ CAREFULLY.


Awaiting the Day When Everyone Writes Software

By JASON PONTIN
Published: January 28, 2007

BJARNE STROUSTRUP, the designer of C++, the most influential programming 
language of the last 25 years, has said that “our technological civilization 
depends on software.” True, but most software isn’t much good. Too 
many programs are ugly: inelegant, unreliable and not very useful. 
Software that satisfies and delights is as rare as a phoenix.

Skip to next paragraph

Sergei Remezov/Reuters

Charles Simonyi, chief executive of Intentional Software, in training 
for his trip to the International Space Station, scheduled for April.

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All this does more than frustrate computer users. Bad software is 
terrible for business and the economy. Software failures cost $59.5 
billion a year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
concluded in a 2002 study, and fully 25 percent of commercial software 
projects are abandoned before completion. Of projects that are finished, 
75 percent ship late or over budget.


The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Programmers don’t know what a 
computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with 
machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines 
of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring 
over illustrated manuscripts.


Worse, programs today contain millions of lines of code, and programmers 
are fallible like all other humans: there are, on average, 100 to 
150 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, according to a 1994 study by the 
Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. No 
wonder so much software is so bad: programmers are drowning in ignorance, 
complexity and error.


Charles Simonyi, the chief executive of Intentional Software, a start-up 
in Bellevue, Wash., believes that there is another way. He wants 
to overthrow conventional coding for something he calls “intentional 
programming,” in which programmers would talk to machines as little 
as possible. Instead, they would concentrate on capturing the intentions 
of computer users.


Mr. Simonyi, the former chief architect of Microsoft, is arguably 
the most successful pure programmer in the world, with a personal 
fortune that Forbes magazine estimates at $1 billion. There may be 
richer programmer-billionaires — Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry 
Page of Google come to mind — but they became rich by founding and 
managing technology ventures; Mr. Simonyi rose mainly by writing 
code.


He designed Microsoft’s most successful applications, Word and Excel, 
and he devised the programming method that the company’s software 
developers have used for the last quarter-century. Mr. Simonyi, 58, 
was important before he joined Microsoft in 1981, too. He belongs 
to the fabled generation of supergeeks who invented personal computing 
at Xerox PARC in the 1970s: there, he wrote the first modern application, 
a word processor called Bravo that displayed text on a computer screen 
as it would appear when printed on page.


Even at leisure, Mr. Simonyi, who was born in Hungary and taught 
himself programming by punching machine code on Russian mainframes, 
is a restless, expansive personality. In April, he will become the 
fifth space tourist, paying $20 million to board a Russian Soyuz 
rocket and visit the International Space Station.


Mr. Simonyi says he is not disgusted with big, bloated, buggy programs 
like Word and Excel. But he acknowledges that he is disappointed 
that we have been unable to use “our incredible computational ability” 
to address efficiently “our practical computational problems.”


“Software is truly the bottleneck in the high-tech horn of plenty,” 
he said.


Mr. Simonyi began thinking about a new method for creating software 
in the mid-1990s, while he was still at Microsoft. But his ideas 
were so at odds with .Net, the software environment that Microsoft 
was building then, that he left the company in 2002 to found Intentional 
Software.


“It was impractical, when Microsoft was making tremendous strides 
with .Net, to send somebody out from the same organization who says, 
‘What if you did things in this other, more disruptive way?’ ” he 
said in the January issue of Technology Review.


For once, that overfavored word — “disruptive” — is apt; intentional 
programming is disruptive. It would automate much of software development.


The method begins with the intentions of the people inside an organization 
who know what a program should do. Mr. Simonyi calls these people 
“domain experts,” and he expects them to work with programmers to 
list all the concepts the software must possess.


The concepts are then translated into a higher-level representation 
of the software’s functions called the domain code, using a tool 
called the domain workbench.


At two conferences last fall, Intentional Software amazed software 
developers by demonstrating how the workbench could project the intentions 
of domain experts into a wonderful variety of forms. Using the workbench, 
domain experts and programmers can imagine the program however they 
want: as something akin to a PowerPoint presentation, as a flow chart, 
as a sketch of what they want the actual user screen to look like, 
or in the formal logic that computer scientists love.


Thus, programmers and domain experts can fiddle with whatever projections 
they prefer, editing and re-editing until both parties are happy. 
Only then is the resulting domain code fed to another program called 
a generator that manufactures the actual target code that a computer 
can compile and run. If the software still doesn’t do what its users 
want, the programmers can blithely discard the target code and resume 
working on the domain workbench with the domain experts.


As an idea, intentional programming is similar to the word processor 
that Mr. Simonyi developed at PARC. In the jargon of programming, 
Bravo was Wysiwyg — an acronym, pronounced WIZ-e-wig, for “what you 
see is what you get.” Intentional programming also allows computer 
users to see and change what they are getting.


“Programming is very complicated,” Mr. Simonyi said. “Computer languages 
are really computer-oriented. But we can make it possible for domain 
experts to provide domain information in their own terms which then 
directly contributes to the production of the software.”


Intentional programming has three great advantages: The people who 
design a program are the ones who understand the task that needs 
to be automated; that design can be manipulated simply and directly, 
rather than by rewriting arcane computer code; and human programmers 
do not generate the final software code, thus reducing bugs and other 
errors.


NOT everyone believes in the promise of intentional programming. 
There are three common objections.


The first is theoretical: it is based on the belief that human intention 
cannot, in principle, be captured (or, less metaphysically, that 
computer users don’t know what people want).


The second is practical: to programmers, the intentional method constitutes 
an “abstraction” of the underlying target code. But most programmers 
believe that abstractions “leak” — that is, they fail to perfectly 
represent the thing they are meant to be abstracting, which means 
software developers must sink their hands into the code anyway.


The final objection is cynical: Mr. Simonyi has been working on intentional 
programming for many years; only two companies, bound to silence 
by nondisclosure agreements, acknowledge experimenting with the domain 
workbench and generator. Thus, no one knows if intentional programming 
works.


Sheltered by Mr. Simonyi’s wealth, Intentional Software seems in 
no hurry to release an imperfect product. But it is addressing real 
and pressing problems, and Mr. Simonyi’s approach is thrillingly 
innovative.


If intentional programming does what its inventor says, we may have 
something we have seldom enjoyed as computer users: software that 
makes us glad.


Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, 
a magazine and Web site owned by M.I.T. E-mail: [pontin-:-nytimes-:-com].

not correct logic, computer logic.

you will always need good programmers


We strongly disagree, in fact the time of no need for programmers 
is probably closer than we (programmers) want. 


AI will one day be good enough to solve domain problems.  The architecture 
of computer systems will be self correcting, responsive, and self 
writing one day.


Software will fix itself in response to millions if not billions 
of people reacting to using it, and it will slowly and systematically 
correct itself, improve itself, and even offer new features simply 
for test.  In other words, software will eventually self evolve.

Sometimes it's good to remember that the terms "computer" and "database" 
predate electronics, or even electrical devices.

Reichart, I wouldn't worry too much. What you're talking about require 
true AI, and we're not even close to have that. First we need computer 
technology based on quantum physics, then we need someone to build 
the system. I don't see this happen any time soon.

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft - and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Wernher von Braun (1912- 1977)

on the new computer. microsoft said  no AFAIK.

In contrast, Windows licensing allows you to run in virtual machines 
as long as you own a license for the OS in the VM. This is even the 
case for Vista Home, despite "reports" to the contrary. With Vista 
Ultimate, you can reuse the license of the host in VMs running in 
the same computer.

They removed the "Computer" from Apple ..

except they had a legal name change removing the word computer from 
their name

yes, because of all these non-computer things they are selling :-)

yes Vista DRM is extremely Violent... the fact that it cannot differ 
from H/W and software bugs is a big can of worms... imagine you have 
a faulty memory stick and suddenly, your monitor goes fuzzy, you 
have no clue what is going on...


now image that during a computer assisted surgery.... hum... yess... 
in this regard... Linux is starting to look more like a contender 
in strategic markets.

Reichart;  You rat b#$%&@d you.  (He said with a big smile)  I promised 
the graphic

designer we'd go for a live trial run today.  I've done nothing but 
twiddle with D all

morning.  :)  To be honest, I place C++ at the bottom of my "likey" 
pile, maybe more 

from being pigheaded, than deserved merit.  (I tried to respect Bjarne's 
work.  I and

I can only assume he has a Computer IQ in the very high hundreds.) 

I expected the same from D.  Not so. You rat b@&%$#d.  (Again, with 
a nice big
friendly smile).  I have work to do today.

Jaime; Did you ever try Icon?  http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/

Very high level.  It has that "get 'er done quick", to "holy crap, 
what the....".  Many

angles of Computer Science are covered, and well IMHO.  If you do 
check, make

sure to read The Icon Analyst.  Last issue was June 2001.  Every 
issue has the
holy crap, what the...
, but are very good reads.  The Icon books are all online.

I have a lot of respect for the late Dr. Ralph Griswold.  Unfortunately, 
Icon is far

too brainy for wide spread adoption, but your last thread leads me 
to believe you
may relish it.  (As would most rebols IMHO).

Where I see REBOL, scripting will always be the domain of the computer 
programmer,

but the data model is so close to being the domain of everybody, 
I think we are one
small (yet huge) step away.

Volker;  Thank you.  Your parsing data code made me and REBOL look 
like heroes

today.  :)  Another happy boss, less afraid of his computer.  We 
all win.  Thanks!

It's interesting to watch the evolution of browser technology. Originally 
the only purpose was to view documents with links (hyper-text). That's 
the main purpose of a browser. Then it was changed to do so many 
other things. Think of products outside the computer industry. What 
happens to products, that are changed to do more and other things, 
than was first the goal? Sometimes it may work, sometimes not.

I buy computer related books only very rarely - they are mostly a 
bloat and I often have feeling that you don't get what you expected. 
I am ok with on-line resources most of the time ...

but the fact that its an Abstraction layer which deals with all parts 
of interfacing an abstract thing like a computer to a human is why 
its so compelling... you can forget about sooooo much things and 
just concentrate on DOing stuff.

I have played with a few ASUS computers, they feel like toys.  Know 
anyone that has a good one?


800x600, sorry, NO!


All I want is my current computer, but with LESS stuff:

Fujitsu P7020

24 cm wide
1280x768
1.2 G

It kicks ass, ven gets about 8 hours batt from the two bays.
very small.



What I want is this same computer but even thinner, and with no harddrive 
(just 40Gigs of SD cards).

Other than a few extra buttons I would like to add (like physical 
volume control, and dedicated page buttons) I'm really happy with 
this computer.  It travels around the world with me.

The openmoko interview is listed at the Chaos Computer club germany 
website...  a coinsidence that you mention it btw...

Free computer books:

http://www.onlinecomputerbooks.com/free-xml-books.php

my lcd screen for my computer is dead only after 1 year of use. Syntoma 
when i turn it on the power led indication flash during 5 to 10 minutes 
before the screen lights and became stable. this pumping effect seems 
to be current in the new generation of LCD screen and seems to be 
related to the defective of chimicals condensator next to the alimentation 
block .... having to spend 130 euros  in a new screen only becaue 
two condensators of 0.60 euro are deficient that really piss me off

I used to have a computer store and I quickly noticed that many products 
just look like the products they're supposed to be, but really aren't

[Disclaimer: The above is just an alternative explanation. I haven't 
studied the actual history of floppy disks at all, and I never ran 
a computer store.]

I like safari that's amazing stable and fast  ^___^. I have installed 
opera and firefox on my computer I  never use IE.

well with all those browser on my computer I  will not have any space 
left to install games :P

Since i have safari opera and firefox on my computer  i can tell 
you the chrome is the most acurate it starts immediatly  you don't 
have those 20 seconds of loading  and loading  a daily motion page 
takes you 1 seconde

using crhome i feel like my  computer is totaly new ^^

Wasn't it a bit sluggish?
 Yes, but it is a tinny computer for $300 (the price of a PDA).


It works well enough for travel.  My wife is the one using it, but 
I played with it  a bit.


I live on a laptop that is a bit larger (not much though) The Fujitsu 
P8020, and is Almost 10x the price.

We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in 
four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight 
already installed,
 - that is how fast competition is .....

Adaptive A.I. Inc. launches commercial AGI-based virtual agent for 
call centers

Playa del Rey, California
January 12, 2009


Adaptive A.I. Inc. (a2i2) today released its first commercial product 
based on its artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology under 
development since 2001. It is a virtual call center operator that 
promises to propel speech-based interactive voice response (IVR) 
systems to much higher levels of performance.


Known as the SmartAction™ IVR System, it being sold and supported 
by a2i2’s recently formed commercial subsidiary, the Smart Action 
Company LLC.


The system is based on a2i2’s LiveAGI™ engine. Its integrated language 
processing, reasoning, memory, and knowledge-base capabilities allow 
it to hold smart, productive conversations. The LiveAGI brain manages 
conversation flow, meta-cognitive state (such as mood, degree of 
certainty and surprise), and determines when clarification or live-agent 
assistance is needed. Its built-in intelligence also allows the system 
to be taught new skills and knowledge, instead of these having to 
be custom programmed. Existing skills include email, as well as web 
and database interaction.


To achieve beyond state-of-the-art voice interaction, top of the 
line speech recognition technology is tightly integrated with the 
AGI brain to provide bi-directional benefits: The speech engine is 
dynamically tuned to current conversation context, while the cognitive 
engine analyzes multiple speech hypotheses for the most likely meaning 
and resolves ambiguities.


These innovations combine to provide solutions that significantly 
reduce the number of routine – and frequently boring and poorly handled 
-- calls taken by human agents while improving customer service levels. 
In addition to providing expected IVR capabilities such as 24/7 availability, 
consistent service quality, and the capacity to handle surges in 
call traffic, the SmartAction IVR System offers personalized responses 
by remembering the caller’s preferences, previous calls and other 
relevant data. Applied over multiple calls, callers don’t have to 
answer the same questions every time they call. If a call is interrupted, 
the system can call the customer back and pick up the conversation 
where it left off.


The company offers the SmartAction IVR System both as a hosted service 
and an in-house hardware-software turnkey solution. A web-based chat 
version is also available.


The ultimate purpose of a2i2’s LiveAGI Brain is to enable a major 
transformation of human-computer interfaces for a broad range of 
applications, such as websites, search engines, console and online 
games, virtual worlds, enterprise software, and consumer products. 
The company is currently researching and developing these applications, 
and under certain conditions will consider creating commercial versions 
in the near term.

About Adaptive AI, Inc.


Adaptive A.I. Inc. was founded in 2001 with the mission of researching, 
developing and commercializing far-reaching inventions in artificial 
general intelligence. Its founder, Peter Voss, has an accomplished 
career as an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and scientist. His 
contributions to artificial general intelligence cover the fields 
of cognitive science, philosophy and theory of knowledge, psychology, 
intelligence and learning theory, and computer science.

www.adaptiveai.com    www.SmartAction.com

well, "works like a human", but implemented on a computer

Anyone can produce a great sounding album on their home computer 
now.  And if they can get famous without the record company support, 
they don

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped 
expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now 
come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC’s 
Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans 
were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically 
targeted journalists.
…

The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications 
— faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice claimed. 
“It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the 
country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored 
all communications.

people are not applauding a new great icon put here or there, they 
are applouding a man who did contribute to bringing computer world 
forward.. now I 'm a big fan of Obama too, soon he will sign the 
Kyoto protocol and this will bring a better world to all of us

Noone sane enough would like to install W98 on their laptop :-) There 
is no older windows than W2K, anything older is not Windows, it is 
a mistake in computer era :-)

and we here, what we want is RebolOS on great hardware, that is next 
evolution step in computer era 8)

I like O3D alot. It makes me nostalgic, a 3D simulator right out 
of 1995 with the single digit framerates and all. Every day, new 
and amazing ways to slow down your computer.

I had it without indexes at first , and later added indexes while 
I was trying various things, at 180 records there wasn't any noticable 
change. Well the result doesn't seem so bad to me right now.. if 
it has the same delay with 4000 records it's okey-ish. On my local 
computer which is much better than some small VPS I noticed no delays. 
I just realized that the delay at web-app was 3x bigger than this 
because I have 3 bots and each has it's own "mailbox" ... The solution 
for this situation will be affloading the inserts from the request 
process, for the future when things will need to scale up I will 
try doing this different anyway, that's why I was playing with actor 
like systems anyway

I used sqlite here and there for more real DB work and I never seen 
any critical slownes (extept if you do a typical like inserting 100 
rows each in it's own transaction (without begin commit), in fact 
it seemed always very fast to me ... thats why I suspect all this 
wouldn't show up if I had some better VPS. Also because if fluctuates 
so much I suspect disk on computer vps is on is maybe busy doing 
other stuff so at one moment it is idle and it works faster at another 
it waits for >3 seconds

it's like you have your own computer that you can reinstall stuff 
or OS .. separated from others but it's running on virtualisation 
software so there are many such separate computers per one real computer 
, so it's *cheaper* than paying for having a full server

I tried downloading it once and after tortoise svc started fucking 
up and slowing down my computer, I got fed up, and uninstalled it, 
and rebgui wen't along with it ... hehe

Henrik: I played games on my as cheap as you can get 5 year old single 
core 450 Euro computer just fine, including the newest just released 
games. You don't have to buy a new computer every couple of months, 
you just can't set the graphic settings very high. So in effect, 
when you buy a new computer you are not paying to play new games 
but to play games in better quality. Now after these five years I 
bought another 450 euro computer just two weeks ago, with 4GB RAM, 
4x2,8 Ghz CPU and an Nvidia GT320 with 1GB VRAM, this will work for 
the next 5 years too I believe :)

One of the first computer games, I bought, had 25th anniversary.
Memories of Elite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpN_WXUxWx0

Reichart: I'm playing "IGoWin" from David Fotland which has good 
AI (or my "AI" is not good :) ).

It is not an online game but you can test yourself with computer. 
As I heard it plays dan level. 
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.exe

Ladislav: Yes I thought that it is not dan level. I'm not good on 
Go but I mostly win until 2-4 kyu on IGoWin.

Gabriele: Many Go player says that you should not play with a computer, 
instead, play a human. Or start with a higher handicap.
Its AI is much more difficult than Chess.

Reichart: computer level stars at 25. kyu, so in first a few games 
it is so easy to win. after several games when your rank is under 
10 it is getting a bit difficult. But if you are a good Go player 
it may not be difficult for you (as I'm not a good one, I stuck at 
2. kyu :) )
But it never offered me an upgrade??

Oh and yes, it is mosly for beginners as its dimension is not 19x19.

Reichart: I really want to see to trick :) You can find my email 
address on Altme.

I mostly can guess next moves of the computer, but couldn't find 
a trick to win every game (Well actually I know one, after a game 
finished you can still continue to play, like 2 two players game. 
By that way you can increase your rank.. But this is nothing about 
AI ofcourse.

At the first a few games I can win immediately, but after several 
games (say 10-15 games) then I cannot win easily. After computer 
rank is 2-3 kyu I cannot win at all (as I'm a beginner Go player.)
By the way its help files are also very well to teach the rules.

After computer rank is 2-3 kyu

 the computer rank is never 2 - 3 kyu. The computer "thinks" it is 
 9 kyu, I assume. (but it is not very reliable, either) Anyway, after 
 losing some games the computer "thinks" that you are 2 - 3 kyu (again, 
 not very reliably), and takes for itself some handicap to make the 
 game even.