Danny's Tech: Where West and East Intersect

G1

2008-10-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

I got my google phone G1 @ T-Mobile.

I'll be posting my impressions as I get used this.

So far, the keyboard is a pain to use, since I'm not used to it,

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Cloud Computing: problems and potential solutions

2008-10-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

Cloud computing is hot enough for Microsoft to get involved. However there are at least 2 big issues with CC: security and vendor lock-in.

To avoid vendor lock-in, one needs to be able to save the data locally which are sent exclusively out to the Cloud. This means that the browser has to be modified to be able to save a copy as well as send it out to Cloud. Also be able to restore it from the saved data to alternate Cloud. Note that this "saved data" can be encrypted and preserved onto yet another Cloud.

To improve security, one way is to encrypt the data at the point of the browser so that the entered data isn't directly sent: Names can be scrambled and sent as "bogus" string. Bigger challenges are numbers and dates. As long as these data belong to one person, then unique offset constant can be used to store data. The problem is with sharing the data among more than one person. One alternative method would be to use unique offset per, say, date field. (For example, birth dates are all offset by 250 days while "entry date" (or due date) is offset by 3 days and these offsets are stored and shared via a different Cloud service [and encrypted as well, of course.]) For numbers, common numbers would need same offsets, unfortunately, or else the math won't add up. (Hmm: maybe a new math is possible? Like, if one is Safesforce.com customer, using predefined algorithm to construct an encrypted processing engine?)

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Hardware DoS attacks

2008-05-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

PDOS (permanent denial of service) attack means that hardware becomes no longer usable, usually attacking the firmware (BIOS).

As hardware becomes more flexible, especially programmable hardware like FPGA or PLA, the risks of PDOS increases. On one hand, FPGA makes it easier to fix hardware even after the product is released. On the other, permanent damage is much easier to accomplish as hardware becomes flexible.

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Parallel Programming: CUDA hope now?

2008-05-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

/. pointed Geek's article "NVIDIA is shaking up the parallel programming world" which tried to point to EETimes. I found:

"Nvidia unleashes Cuda attack on parallel-compute challenge"

Alas, Nvidia isn't the only one working on this problem as evidenced by articles like "Intel expects dev tools to bring success in graphics market" or "Industry, Stanford hope to fix what ails parallel processing".

Parallel programming has been one of the most over promised and under delivered computer science technologies (AI is the other one). And I believe we still have long ways to go, even though multi-core systems are here on our desktops and game consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360 have multi-core CPUs).

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

FBI trying to trap innocent web surfers

2008-03-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a scary "trap" that FBI is doing: FBI posts fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects. (Hat tip: Digg).

It seems that they have a web site setup to capture people who links in, even by accident (an unknown URL sent to you via spam or friends who think it's funny). Then they raid your home and sign you up with child porn charge! What an easy way to make FBI look like "they are doing something" about child pornography, when in fact, all they do is trap mostly innocent people. And until the jury becomes wise to how silly FBI is (no probable cause, no motive and no real proof), many innocent computer users will go to jail or plead guilty to something they didn't do.

It's almost as bad as the age of consent laws used to put boyfriends on a sex offender list. Talk about trapping the innocents. I personally believe that sex before marriage is immoral but that doesn't mean it should be made illegal or, even worse, brand a person for life as a sex offender. (Biblical method is to force a marriage and keep the (virtual) gun to the head of the husband by the surrounding community -- if you have sex then you are forced to be married for life (more fair than being branded a sex offender and never be able to get most normal jobs).)

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Disk Encryption not so reliable

2008-02-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another (potential) security breach with encrypted hard drives: "Disk encryption may not be secure enough, new research finds."

I'm sure they'll try to do one better but there will always be "easy" cracks -- it just takes a dedicated effort in finding the weakest link.

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

XO: One laptop per child gets pwnd

2008-01-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

"Feature: Hacking the XO laptop" has some cool examples on hacking XO. Also points to XO Wiki.

I'm looking forward to seeing it become easy to program, as well.

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

World Wide Computer

2008-01-17T23:10:00.000-08:00

"Q&A: Nicholas Carr on the big switch to utility computing" has some interesting concepts:

WWC: using the web as a programmable computing resource. Unfortunately, there is no universal language to program all those servers.
Computing resources can be treated as electricity: a pool of resource used on demand and pay per usage.

The problem with all this is that you can't guarantee security since the processing is done outside of your control. And this programming is dependent on the service provider.

I believe that the trend should be user centered (User Centered Web or UCW) rather than service provider centered: privacy, liberty and ownership. Property rights in the digital world isn't as clear as I'd like to see but I believe it is possible to gain back the rights of individuals. More on this as I put together my thoughts in a coherent structure....

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Java: not the best language to teach at schools?

2008-01-09T05:20:00.000-08:00

"Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" dogs Java as the one and only programming language to teach but does include it as one of 5 languages recommended languages to learn (C, C++, LISP and Ada are the other 4).

Personally, I'd wish they work on a better programming language(s) to teach the right concepts rather than trying to create a better hi-tech vocational courses based on the most desired languages by employers. It's unfortunate that people get hired based on their specific language skills rather than understanding concepts and ability solve problems. Sigh...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Smartphones war and power to the users

2008-01-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

"The Coming Apple-RIM Battle: Some analysts predict a brawl between iPhones and BlackBerrys; others say the real fight pits the smartphones against open-source handsets"

I'm not sure if open source handsets will have such a big upsurge, yet. The beauty of open source is for others to change the code to fit custom needs which is why we have zillion flavors of Linux distributions. We don't have zillion flavors of Firefox but I hope that will change soon. Nonetheless, to have open source phone (a real one), there needs to be openness to what can go on the phones by the users of the phone (not just programmers). Which means that infrastructures needs to be in place for the phone (OS) to handle change by the users (even if it is simply as changing the widgets like you can on google home page). However, as people get comfortable with changing things, I expect people to start programming, just like how a whole industry of Excel macros have taken off.

How about: Programming by Dummies? PBU (programming by Users)? User programmed? Dummies are in power (DAIP)? I AM IN CONTROL (IAIC)?

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Life of a Programmer

2008-01-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

Zed Shaw's "Rails is a Ghetto" puts together his rants toward Ruby on Rails and his frustration with other programmers -- which is similar to what I've experienced in my career: too many managers and programmers who have little or no clue of what they are working on.

Unfortunately, most companies do get by with such poor understanding of their own product(s). Sad but true: there are many project failures documented at places like the Risks digest while many others that should have failed but have been released as products. I won't name names like Zed but I've seen my share, too.

How can this be improved? Good question and I certainly don't have any good answers today. Sigh.

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtual reality and Real World: Money and politics

2007-12-29T14:58:00.000-08:00

There are many articles out on how the real world has ties to the virtual reality (like ads in Second Life or money going back and forth between virtual and real worlds).

Here's an interesting twist: WoW (War of Warcraft) gamers forming a political march in support of Ron Paul. Some object to reality intruding the fantasy world of online games but as long as real people play these games, reality will always have impacts on virtual worlds. Even if they try to ban explicit political messages (for example), you can't prevent people from getting around such restrictions like forming words via marching band like method with people forming the dots to create letters and words.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization of Embedded Systems

2007-11-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

Press release from Zilog about VirtualLogix caught my attention on how embedded systems are finally getting it. VirtualLogix seems to be an up and coming hypervisor provider. I'm sure there are others, but I haven't looked too hard....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Right Reserved.

Virtualization: Sun and HP

2007-11-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

It seems that Sun has thrown its weight behind Xen: "Sun Bids $2 Billion To Join Virtualization Gold Rush: The company will commit R&D dollars to its Xen-based hypervisor -- xVM -- for generating virtual machines and its Sun xVM Ops Center for managing them."

HP, on the other hand, has their "Virtualization and Power Management Technologies" which isn't clear from news articles what it really is. It seems that most writers (journalists?) do not have a clue what virtualization is all about....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

BIOS to Hypervisor: Pheonix's transformation

2007-11-13T05:40:00.000-08:00

I guess I missed this article: "BIOS maker Phoenix Reinvents Itself As Virtualization Vendor."

Phoenix have been working on HyperCore hypervisor and Linux platform called HyperSpace. Only time will tell but one advantage they have over other hypervisor vendor is that they have huge market presence as BIOS vendor. Probably better than Intel Inside since the BIOS works with all chip vendors.

Overall, my impression is that Phoenix is competing with VMware but the Phoenix CEO is quoted:

"VMware is building 18-wheelers; we're just building a little motor scooter"

We'll see...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Hypervisor is hot: Oracle and Microsoft

2007-11-13T05:31:00.000-08:00

"Oracle takes on VMware, others, with its own hypervisor: Oracle VM introduced at Oracle OpenWorld event" and "Microsoft to offer standalone hypervisor".

Seems that VMware is getting more competition these days. And I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop: IBM, the granddaddy of hypervisors!

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

HD-DVD: for sale at Wal-Mart

2007-10-31T23:34:00.000-07:00

It seems that Wal-Mart is putting out Toshiba's HD-DVD player on fire sale. This Friday (Nov 2), they are going to sell HD-A2 player for $98.87 (cheapest I can find today is for $180). What a deal!

If the next-gen DVD was a toss up until now, HD-DVD may have found the killer-app (or at least the killer distributor) via Wal-Mart. I realize the PS3 provides a discounted Blu-Ray player, but that's still not going to come down below $100. If Toshiba fails with HD-DVD, they really have themselves to blame, since there will be tons of players out in the market place with this sale....

Post Web-2.0

2007-09-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

I saw the article "Gartner touts Web 2.0, scoffs at sequel: Web 3.0 just a marketing ploy, but collaborative tools are here to stay" and thought: well, I've been thinking what's next too.

I don't think the trend is more of Web xyz. Web 1.0 started off as server centered services. And Web 2.0 became more user centered and interactive. So call "social networking" is really giving control to the users of the servers.

I believe the next step is user driven web view. Just as current mashups allows many things to come together in one page (i.e., one server), the next step is giving tools to the users to let the mashups take place at per browser level: I will connect up the web sites I want to see and this "view" I can share with my friends but there may not be a central place to get this "view." This will decentralize the Web perspective and take many views off line (or not easily available by tools like web spiders or search engine "seekers"). In fact, from the web spiders' view, the web will become defragmented and harder to ferret out what's hot or not. Maybe domain name resolution or IP traffic would have to be monitored to see what is really hot since these per user views may be completely private.

I'm starting to look at open source browsers and see what I can use to make steps towards this new world order. I've looked at Webkit (and related Adobe's AIR) but I think I'll stick with Firefox for now. Firefox has its set of problems but seems to be supported by most web sites such that people can use it painlessly. Plus it works on Windows and Linux and even OS X. [Don't expect much progress since I'm busy at work and home, unfortunately.]

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization at home and at work

2007-09-17T23:16:00.000-07:00

"Virtualization homes in on desktops" points out how virtualization can have a place at home, like having a secure partition for online banking applications. They do point out one weakness of virtualization: requirements for lots of memory (each partition need to have independent set of memory, which can add up when you have more than 2 partitions -- there are ways to make the read only memories to be sharable (like same copy of the OS), but it's all easier said than done since current crop of OS wasn't written for virtualization).

And slightly older news: "VMware dangles next-gen virtualization goodies." Ideas for fault-tolerance would be a great usage for virtualiztaion.

So, there are few areas of virtualization which can use some work: Unfortunately, I don't have the energy to give it much thought, these days (you can see that I haven't been posting much recently).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization week: VMware and more

2007-09-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

This week, VMware hosted a conference this week and much news came out. Things that stood out for me:

Hypervisor in the hardware: Companies are now looking to have their hypervisor (virtualization software) be part of the hardware. Unfortunately, IBM already has a leg up on them all since their hypervisor is found in their various PowerPC hardware [and probably any new x86 hardware, if they are still making any more of such servers].
JeOS (Just Enough Operating System): Canonical is releasing JeOS, a virtualization-specific Ubuntu Linux. This is a variation of KVM, but hopefully will be less painful to use than KVM (which requires specialized QEMU). Unfortunately, there are no official info about it (that I can see with Google, this morning).
Virtualization standard container proposed: Partitions (the instance of OS+apps running on the virtual machines) are saved in proprietary formats today, but Xen, VMware and Microsoft are going to standardize with one format. That's good for users of hypervisors, esp. if hypervisors becomes plug and play, or you want to move a partition from one hardware with Xen and another hardware with Viridian. Pretty soon they'll be talking about run-time version management.

Lots of good news coming out for the world of virtualization.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Future of Virtualization

2007-09-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

Now that VMware has gone IPO and XenSource bought by Citrix, virtualization has made it to the financial press. However, the future isn't so clear since there are other players like Microsoft with their Viridian and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (SCVMM07) [which will support Xen and VMware in the future] and smaller companies like Virtual Iron Software.

And don't forget the granddaddy of them all: IBM. They have released at least 2 public versions of their hypervisor: rHype and sHype (via Xen). Since they have been at it for few decades on their mainframes and workstations, you can be sure they have both the depth and the breadth in understanding virtualization.

With all that written, virtualization "out in the wild" is rather a new phenomenon. The x86 virtualization hardware like Intel's Vanderpool and AMD's Pacifica came out in large volume in 2006 and even today people are still trying to figure out what it means and how best to use virtualization.

This is like the web in 1995, when Netscape IPO'd. Internet was around before browsers but the momentum started with Netscape browser in 1994. Microsoft piled on with Internet Explorer, and many others joined the race (like Opera and Apple's Safari). Today, Netscape morphed into Mozilla with Firefox browser. And Google rules the web "world."

So, 12 years from now, it's hard to say what virtualization would look like. I believe that there will be many shakeouts along with new comers to usurp the current front runners. And as with the web winners [of 2007] (like Google, Ebay, Amazon and Myspace), I personally won't place any specific bets on where virtualization will lead to in the future...for now....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

ABC i-caught: presenting internet videos on TV

2007-08-05T06:17:00.001-07:00

I thought that "i-CAUGHT" might have interesting future where TV is blended with internet video. I guess do people care? There are various sites which can promote specific clips like digg, but maybe it doesn't matter since internet will become the main, central information source of our daily lives, I believe. TV will be a side show (freak show?) since it can only present one view and gives little control to the viewer. Internet on the other hand allows users to add comments or frame the context (like writing text and then embedding the video or other quotes in the middle) and eventually mash or manipulate the original video/text (like the way ClearPlay mutes or skips scenes but allow overlays to add or remove elements in the video).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

New Level of Risks: Robotic Warfare

2007-08-04T15:31:00.000-07:00

I read "Navy gears up for unmanned combat aircraft" and thought: as these remote controlled war machines and even autonomous robotic ones get into the battlefield, the next level of warfare is to crack into these machines either through their communications link or even directly into the machines somehow [the weak links are: manufacturing (when it is made), programming at military installation (when it is programmed before release) or while being transported from factory to battlefield].

Unlike the wars of the past (where you can individually bribe or blackmail soldiers but not en mass), it would be possible to "infect" all machines (or most of them) to attack the robotic "masters" (i.e., create essentially an electronic mutiny). A counter measure protection would be to shutdown or self destruct when probes are detected (to prevent mutiny) but then that weakness can be exploited to disable the machines at the get go. And the cop-and-robber chase would continue....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Recycle and get paid

2007-07-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

I read about Second Rotation and sounds like an easy way to get rid of electronic junk. You could ebay and get more money but then think of all the hassle of selling it: you have to place an ad, answer questions, package and ship and then wait until a week or two to make sure they get it and don't complain about it. Otherwise, you may have to refund partial amount or get the whole thing back and re-list it all over again!

Some things like my BeBox, I'll ebay it myself....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Gaming at the next level: share your charactors/model

2007-06-20T19:18:00.001-07:00

There are games today which allow you to play your music. You can also plaster the pictures of your choice onto the character(s) in your game.

Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360 has a new feature called Auction House where you can sell and trade your customized cars.

The next step would be to allow users to model new cars (using 3D tools like blender) along with, say, some web site checker which will certify the model before it can be imported into the game. This way, a true customization can be made possible by users and will enrich the gaming experience. What this allows would be to make all cars user contributed rather than brand name cars. And then remove all brand cars (so they would no longer have to pay for license/copyright fees). This way, it'll force the car makers to pay for the privilege of getting on the game (like they do in Second Life, today).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization Versioning

2007-06-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

We have configuration management for dealing with static items like source code and compiled binaries and even PDF documents.

However, there is, as far as I can tell, no version control for dynamic execution environment. In the days of virtualization (today), it is now possible to selectively specify the exact versions of kernel, dynamic libraries (DDL for Windows people) which are the ideal for a specific version of an application. This way, the application developer can specific the exact versions that will work with a given program. And then the user can mix and match newer or older versions of libraries and appropriate patches to ensure a reliable run-time of the application. The user can also control for variation of libraries for optimum memory usage or run-time performance or run-time stability.

Virtualization Run-Time Configuration Management (VRTCM or virtchim?) is what I have in mind.

Note that this would be a simple control of the various kernel and libraries out there that can be safely linked into a given app.

The next level would allow for virtualization of the kernel/library interfaces so that mismatched interfaces can be made to work dynamically (force incompatible versions to run together, in case one needs a newer/older library which is more secure or more reliable but not supported by the user's application).

Another level of virtualization would be to allow for user defined (for those roll-your-own hackers) patches to run in place of the official binaries available. I suppose those patches available online can be used by others as well. By using virtualized environment, the risks of virus and corruption can be much easier to control and be contained.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Portable Ultrasounds: Media behind the curve

2007-05-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

I saw the AP article on today's edition of our local paper, but here's USAToday's version: "Market grows for portable ultrasound".

As I've proposed before with USB ultrasound, we're still not at home level Ultrasound. If you look at the photo in the above article, it seems you need a specialized machine but I believe the same functionality can be implemented with video game controller (Wii might be really cool) and USB Ultrasound wand. Or better yet, how about Wiimote + Ultrasound "nunchaku" (on Wii, there is a secondary controller, called "nunchaku," which is attached to the main Wiimote and allows for extra controls). This will allow the user to stick the Ultrachaku to the body part in question with one hand and manipulate the image on the screen with the main Wiimote controller with the other hand. Any game player could do this: hmm, a pre-teen ultrasound tech?

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Scratch Programming

2007-05-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

Scratch is yet another programming language for children. See BBC's intro "Free tool offers 'easy' coding".

Here's an interview with someone using both Scratch and Alice: "A Chat with Michelle Venable-Foster"

My older son started Alice, but my younger son has stuck with Stagecast.

Stay tuned since we'll give Scratch a try once things settle down at the web site....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Dragonfly Remote Control

2007-05-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Flytech's dragonfly is very cool. My sons and I have started flying remote control helicopters and this thing caught our eyes, as it was being introduced in a Japanese TV program.

Computer fixed: CPU Repair in Irvine

2007-05-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

I had my Toshiba M4 notebook being repaired at CPU Repair for few weeks. I had a problem with video card where I'd get fuzzy and snowy and even all white display on my computer screen. Since it was under warranty (I bought 3 year extended warranty plus accident guard in case I was dumb enough to break my screen, etc.), it didn't cost me anything other than shipping it (since CPU Repair is too far from where I live and I do not work in or near Orange County). At first the motherboard (MB) had to be replaced (due to bad video chip/card) and was on a waiting list. They were able to put me ahead of the line (since I had mailed it in rather than a walk in) so it got repaired a week earlier than ETA. However, the replacement MB was DOA, so I had to get back in the queue again. Fortunately, they were able to bump me up again (sorry for those who got bumped off) and got my computer back this week (again, about one week earlier than promised).

The good: they replaced my LCD due to bad pixel(s) along with the frame around the LCD and the top half of the frame of the main notebook area (the area around the keyboard) (I broke it when I dropped it on hard floor and fell on the corner and cracked frame: this was fixed via my "accident guard" insurance) as well as my original video card problem.

The bad: They didn't send me any tracking # or call and let me know it was coming back. My screen guard (film) wasn't replaced, so that was another bummer (I don't use the touch screen afterall, so it's no big deal).

Overall, I'm happy with what I got back. They took longer than I wanted but then if the queue is long (as they have claimed) then there's not much I can do about that. So far, I had my MB, LCD, top half of frame, keyboard (soda spell about 1.5 years ago) and my batteries (via recall) were replaced, and I had upgraded the HDD and RAM on my own. The only old components left seem to be the bottom half of the notebook body/frame and my DVD writer/reader.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

HD-DVD key cracked (updated title)

2007-05-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

I had to join in the bandwagon. Esp. when my better peers have done so too :-). Kind of fun to read what happened at digg, as reported by Wired.

Update 5/4. After AACS LA has made rumblings about suing bloggers, I've decided to remove the actual key. Instead, I'll copy what one digger did:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 BD
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 BE
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 BF
[... BANNED ...]
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C2
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C3

so no need to sue me since I'm not publishing anything illegal.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Crackberry on Ice

2007-04-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

Blackberry confesses software bug for email blackout:

Ruling out those causes, the company has "determined that the incident was
triggered by the introduction of a new, noncritical system routine that was
designed to provide better optimization of the system's cache." In computing
terms, a cache is a temporary storage area for that allows data to be served up
quickly.

Those "easy fix" can quickly turn into a meltdown. Never underestimate the power of a software change to completely bring down a system. I remember my (former) boss making a quick, simple patch for our manufacturing folks (he used to maintain the code but was away from it for some time when he did the fix) but didn't thoroughly test it and guess what? It broke the system so bad, there had to be another fix made while holding up a production in the meanwhile. My coworkers and I had a good chuckle over that one...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Tech: Automated and computerized frustrations

2007-04-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

"The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products: Obtrusive behavior, irritating habits, constant nagging--crummy products have bugged you for years. Here are the ones you say have bothered you most." Which has a great list of bad tech products. But my favorite is a section called "14 Surefire Ways to Annoy Users." I could add more to the list but much of that you can read in my older blog entries.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this problem since human factor is more of an art than science.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Drive or Partition Imaging Software

2007-04-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've been using Norton Ghost for a while to do my backups but it turns out that their version 10.0 changes the drive such that I can't back it up like I used to with Drive Image software. I've tried to uninstall and clean out the registry but it made it unusable, so I'm not able to run it at all (and probably have to clear some bits on the HDD).

Googling around, I found:

Free Hard Disk and Partition Imaging and Backup Software

so I'll try PING first and see how that goes...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization Performance Gap

2007-03-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

"Load Testing a Virtual Web Application: Measuring the Performance Impact of
Virtualizing a Web Application Server" shows how bad virtualization impacts the performance of a processor with hyperthreading. Not a trivial problem since the performance drop is rather significant.....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Blogging can hurt hiring chances

2007-03-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

"Skills & Careers: Net reputations ruin job hopes. Blogging and social network bloopers can hurt your employability"

So, one needs to be careful what one posts online. Which is why I don't use my real name (and try not to make any real ties between my email and name with my set of blogs).

I used to have a big online presence many years ago, but then things like google made myself (my past) much more visible, so I went hiding for a few years. And then 2 years ago or so I restarted blogging with my new ID. Who knows? I may come out of hiding if I can't find any jobs (yes I'm looking for a new job again... sigh) and get my own business started....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

C/C++ Teaching Tool

2007-03-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Few weeks ago, I thought about would make a good business and I was inspired by the idea of being more practical (rather than say, Game Development Universe). I thought why not a teaching to learn C (and C++)? This way, it can be packaged and sold to [high school or adult] students who want to master the C (and C++) programming language to help get a real job.

There are plenty of free compilers and web sites, as well as for fee tutorials, books, etc.

What would set my product apart would be to tie a compiler with a simulator so that one can see the effects of one's code on a real simulator. A bidirectional tie would be very cool: changing one's code would show a colored difference on the execution, or changing the binary on the simulator would flag the diff on the original C/C++ code.

Anyway, that was few weeks ago: Today, I was on a phone interview and I was asked about my work with C++ which I haven't done for almost a year and I did very poorly. I've forgotten all kinds of details, and was given the afternoon to regroup and retry but that didn't help (since I today's a workday and I only took 1 hour of lunch break to google). Afterwards, I thought: "man I wish I had this very C++ learning tool."

Also, last week, I had a phone interview where I was asked about few things I never had any real world experience (multi-thread programming). With a simulator + sample code, I would have been few steps ahead -- possibly :-).

I'll have to come up with a cool project name first :-)

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Why Paper is Better

2007-03-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

I'm watching NHK Professional program and what struck me very interesting is to see the CEO of DeNA who brought out her paper organizer. She pointed out that it's very quick to open and no need to wait (for boot time). Here are my thoughts on paper:

No wait: it's always there, ready to be used. No boot and no power up time. And nothing to install (software wise). You just use the paper (or book). However, once it's printed or written, then you can easily start with clean slate and start a fresh (which is easy to do with hardware or HW).
Portable: it is rather small and light. Computer hardware is usually too large, even those micro PC (like OQO). Or on the other hand, with PDA, the screen is too small.
Customizable: it can be folded or even cut to be even smaller. A hardware (PDA or computer) is fixed size. You can add peripherals but not remove the core HW. By tearing out a piece of paper, you can share the information easily, too. With computers, you must use the same hardware (like Palm IR "beaming") or both connected to internet to do email based exchange.
Direct location: a book (like dictionary or Bible) or diary or organizer, you can get a feel for the page you're looking for and find it quickly by knowing the physical position ("muscle memory" at work). With computer, there is no such interface (touch or digitized screen has that potential but I've yet to see such an interface). The closest thing is like the iPod interface where faster turn jumps you further along, but the problem is that it's easy to overshoot with such an interface (much like fast forwarding a video).
Freedom: with paper, you can have outlines and forms and even printed text but you can write (add) as much as you want (depends on the font size) in any location. Computers on the other hand, you can delete and move and edit (with pencil you can edit too but not so easy).

(I may have to go find my old notes on these thoughts and will update when I have time.)

On a related note, there's a youtube of "Introducing the book" which I believe is funny spin on what a book is from our modern perspective (with "tech support" giving a hand).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

JPC: java PC simulator

2007-03-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

"JPC: Computer Virtualization in Java" sounds like a promising project (hat tip to /.). However, I'm not impressed after using the demo: the initial interactivity is good but on Java 1.5 after few seconds of playing the lag between input and output turns pretty much unusable (was playing Invader). There is probably some kind of garbage collection timing problem, I would assume since it hangs for a split second and then the image speeds up to real time and pauses or slows down. Not very useful for me (on 2.13 GHz Pentium M with 2GB of RAM).

I suppose newer 1.6* Java might help but still....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

YouTube of Gaming?

2007-03-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

"Site wants to become YouTube of games" introduces Kongregate, which is yet another game sharing site. Unfortunately, they don't support any tools themselves, just Flash based game. Not what I would call interesting, since I want people to learn how to write great code not just make money...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization Saves Money

2007-03-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

For computer buyers. "Virtualization leads IDC to cut server forecast." It's bad news for chip and computer makers but great news for those who have to buy them. With virtualization, you get more bang for your buck which translates to better usage of existing hardware which means lower capital cost which means companies who provide computer services (web servers, etc.) can pass on the savings to their customers.

Like any technology break throughs, it takes time to see real savings but once it catches on the price change is permanent. I love how technology gets faster, better and cheaper over time....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Desktop Alternatives

2007-03-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

There are two news on desktop alternatives: Mozilla is working (or at least talking about it) on a XUL based desktop. Adobe has released their Apollo desktop environment.

They both sound promising but I doubt if either one will really take off. I'd bet more on XUL since it is open source drive but Adobe has the money to push their stuff.

What they all need is a super great debug environment which I have yet see nor hear out there....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Core Debug

2007-03-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

I was looking through JavaOne conference program and noticed Groovy language and was intrigued by it. But what really got my attention was "Java Platform Performance on Multicore: Better Performance or Bigger Headache?"

AMD is touting their AMD CodeAnalyst™ Performance Analyzer which is proposed as a tool to improve performance of multi-threaded Java program. But based on the above abstract, it seems to be a step closer to using such tools to help debug code.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Real home based business: Y's Staff

2007-03-18T02:27:00.000-07:00

Yuri Tazawa has started a business in Japan, Y's Staff, with about 100 contract employees who, almost all of them, work from home all over Japan. The best intro in English I found is found in "Rising Internet Use Quietly Transforms Way Japanese Live." (it's out of date since this article was written 7 years ago.)

Sounds promising to me but I'll have to read up more on the company to find out if it seems like my ideal.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

PlayFirst

2007-03-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another game SDK: PlayFirst.

The cool part is that they allow you to run on various environment (PC, Mac, web) and support localization to other languages.

I don't like the fact that you have to program in C++.

Oh well....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Kaiser Software falling down.

2007-02-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

LA Times reports "Kaiser has aches, pains going digital: Patients' welfare is at stake in the electronic effort, experts say."

Like any big software project, it's never easy to replace an existing system, be it manual/paper system or software [mainframe] system. Either way, the problem is always with the software people: the architects and business analysts since their understand of the requirements are never complete and always behind the curve plus the programmers learn new things in the process of coding and want to do things better [and should be done so that it will be easier to maintain in the future]. Even something as small as web programming can take an inordinate more time than estimated, as we're finding out with my current work.

Copyright, 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

BlueJ: programming environment

2007-02-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

"BlueJ: Teaching Java" seems like a great way to start programming but it seems to help only the peripheral aspect of programming (not visual programming as I had anticipated).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Software is Hard!

2007-02-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

"Software is Hard" is a good read on how programming is a tough problem that hasn't been solved in the past several decades of computer science.

In one way, it's easy to say, "let's do it ourselves" because we programmers think we can do it better and quicker. This desire for DIY (do-it-yourself) is exasperated by how existing software is never customizable enough. Those which are (and this number is increasing as open source take off), the start up cost of learning and then adopting existing software is non-trivial.

The third party way can be easier in terms of in house effort but the cost is high and in the long term still not pay off. One good example area are the business management software like ERP (enterprise resource management) and CRM (customer relationship management) where consultants can make big money adopting the in house system to third party systems (like SAP). My experience, however, is that such tools are too inflexible to deal with custom needs of a given company and end up largely unused (or the company has to contort their existing process to fit the software and make everyone suffer).

The hard problem of software is capturing the ever changing requirements of users and implement it correctly. Unfortunately, those very requirements change due to the feedback loop process of seeing and using the implementation [and the user not explaining themselves clearly and/or not understanding the requirements themselves].

Working with teams is another issue with no easy answers. Mythical Man-Month by Brooks captures this hardness of working with others. A great team can exists and I have been part of such teams but there is never a perfect team so problems will come up at least once in a while.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Where's the Beef for multicore

2007-01-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

"Where's The Software To Catch Up To Multicore Computing?" Here's a great intro (and summary):

IBM's chief architect for next-generation systems software wonders how far we'll be able to push the software required to take advantage of supercomputer-class machines.

They obviously haven't figured out how to program for multi-processor systems. [Not that I have any better solutions myself...]

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Searching for my stuff on my terms

2007-01-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

I had a discussion with a coworker about file system (folder+files) compared to how we organize our stuff at home: things are scattered throughout the house based on usage: kitchen contains food stuff, living room has media stuff. And I organize by usage: food, the perishable on easy to reach areas, stockpiled food, oldest expiration date is at the forefront. With media, I have sections of videos I've seen before, videos I want to see, and videos I want to see with my sons.

I just saw a NHK special on google, with a lot of focus on search result ranking and how various consulting companies try to game the system. But the fact is, we don't want to organize and search stuff by page rank. I want to find things based on what I find convenient, not what google deems worthy. They've been lucky so far to intersect the user needs (to find things in the wild world of internet) with their search algorithm. Will this continue? They'll keep trying to improve but I don't know if they are going the right direction since I have my needs that they cannot read nor predict. As the web grows and expertise are focused, finding just the right info will become more and more elusive. I find this to be true if I only have simple, common words to find a specific quote or ideas. As long as I stick with special or expert words, it's easy to find things but there are times when common words are only terms I can use and it is just too general. Because google relies on specific spelling, a typo or misspelling is noted (most of the time), but not searched for. Let alone synonyms, homonyms and idioms. These days, singular/plural diffs are being better handled but far from perfect.

How I find stuff on the internet and my hard drive or my family's hard drive or my work area harddrive would be very helpful (across OS partitions, too, for that matter). I want to see and manage the world (local, work & www) in my own terms not what other companies deem best. Give me my freedom! Don't trend on me.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Ebay Scam

2007-01-29T19:03:00.000-08:00

Here's one way an Ebay scam works: how eBay sellers fix auctions. Sigh.

Adventure Author: yet another game programming tool

2007-01-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

It seems there is another game programming system or language: Adventure Author. It seems to be focused on creating adventure games, which is good for story telling games but not so much for non-linear games . And they don't have anything for download (as far as I can tell), so it can't be tried out.

It's hard to compare against other tools like, say, Alice.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Debug on the fly of the whole system

2007-01-18T07:55:00.000-08:00

This morning, I thought that it would be very cool to be able to debug all the pieces of a system at once: the program being debugged and then the interaction with other software including the OS.

Current debugger allows one program to be debugged. But to debug the various components at once isn't possible today. However, if one was to put all those components into a simulator (like QEMU), then it would be possible to debug them all at once, step by step (depending how accurate the simulator is, you can even get cycle accurate debugging in).

Granted, for most people, such a tool is an overkill. But when your program has interaction problems with the OS and you have access to the source (like Linux), it makes perfect sense to figure where the problem. Or if you are writing a new OS API or functions to help out programs, then you really need such function. Or any embedded systems programming. Or multi-threaded programs across several processors.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Micro-Programs and cooperative scheduling

2007-01-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

It used to be that OS used to time share several programs running on a CPU by forcing a context switch over microseconds (or other small time intervals). But the problem with a timed context switch is that there is an overhead of setting and handling an interrupt and then resuming after that interrupt.

What if programs could be compiled into "micro" units (a spin-off of the micro-kernel idea) so that there is no need to interrupt any program: Each micro-program will run at most xyz time units/cycles so that it will let go of the CPU in a fair way. The beauty of this is multi-fold:

OS only does context switch: no need to force a stop and try to recover by restarting the interrupted process
Easier to distribute the program across multiple cores.
Easier to synchronize with other micro-programs -- because a micro-program ends ready to switch (give up its CPU slice), it can be stopped and synchronized with other micro-programs waiting on the same event, etc.
Easier to distribute the micro-program on non-uniform multi-processor systems since each micro-program are self contained.

Obviously the standard code to force timesharing still has to be around to deal with non-conformant programs but the scheduler can be biased to give higher priority to well behaved micro-programs so that there is disincentive(s) for status quo.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

iPhone and GSM alternatives

2007-01-12T17:56:00.000-08:00

"Phone Shows Apple’s Impact on Consumer Products" talks about how 3rd party software won't be allowed (for now :-). I guess they are concerned about apps going loose as noted by Jobs:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

Contrast this with open source GSM phones like: OpenMoko and GreenPhone. I believe that very creative applications will come out of these projects, sooner than later (depending on how much momentum they get)....

On the other hand, LA Times has "In Japan, barely a ripple: Apple's much-anticipated iPhone is 'business as usual' in a country where mobile features already are so advanced." So merely having a "fancy" phone won't be good enough in Japan (esp. with iPhone's 2G or 2.5G features when Japanese phones are doing 3G -- 3rd Generation that is).

Update 7PM: Apple: Calling all iPhone engineers:

Company is looking to hire software and hardware techies to beef up features of its mobile phone.
Apple is putting out a call for engineers to join its ranks in an effort to beef up its iPhone.
The company is looking to add 33 positions to its iPhone ranks

So, looks like they'll be busy building their own apps...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Linux Virturalization info at kernelnewbies

2007-01-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a good starting point for Linux Virtualization at "kernelnewbies" -- their regular info on Kernel hacking is good too but I'm a bit frustrated that there seems to be no direct link from main www URL to virt URL.

Bad programmers make bad programs

2007-01-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

"Author Blames Programmers for Hard-To-Use Software" gets to the point, with why programs are hard to use:

The problem, says consultant David Platt, lies not with the user but with the programmers, who just don't think like the people who use their products.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, since the emphasis is on generating more code. One doesn't get bonus on how clean the implementation is or how little bugs get reported over long term or how easy something is to use or how painless it is to enhance with new features.

Copyright, 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

KVM and beyond: bare metal apps and microapp multi-threading

2007-01-05T04:20:00.000-08:00

Linux KVM (Kernel-based Virtual-Machine) allows Linux to be a hypervisor (or a "super" supervisor or meta-operating system) and control other OS (including multiple copies of Linux).

What KVM (or any hypervisor, like Xen or rHype) allows is for non-OS to run in a partition (the isolated environment). That is, individual applications can be written to run on "bare-metal" or OS-less environment. Or anything in between. The question is how much does the partition handle on its own without a real OS. Either you convert existing libraries to work in bare-metal mode or you make API calls outside of the partition (either through hypervisor calls or IO read/write or virtualized-HW interrupts which are trapped by the hypervisor and passed to another OS-partition or handled directly by the hypervisor (like in the case of KVM)).

This is somewhat like a microkernel, where a small kernel distributes real work outside in the user mode rather than trying to do everything in the supervisor mode. Taking this concept further, a microapp maybe the best way to take advantage of multi-core or multi-threaded system. Be it a game or simulator, it is hard for an application to take advantage of a multi-core system, since an app is usually broken down in terms of large chunks of functionality. As a programmer, it's natural for me to think in one long sequential functionality rather than minimal, small functions stitched together by a microapp "kernel." Yet, until microapps become common, I think it will be very hard to take advantage of multiple cores efficiently. The problem with microapps is with design, debug and maintenance. Debug is challenging enough on a multi-core system, and microapps would only exasperate the complexity. That is, it's easy enough to debug individual microapp but once multiple microapps are running and interacting then the fun begins! I believe that the only way to manage this complexity to have equality complex simulator/debugger.

What those complexities might be will be explored in the future....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization Linux et al.

2007-01-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

"Virtual Linux: An overview of virtualization methods, architectures, and implementations" is a great introduction to virtualization, much better than my attempt.

Copyright, 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Brain-Computer Interface

2006-12-31T08:32:00.000-08:00

I've watched a Japanese show on the latest "Cyborg" special report, where the most interesting part was the advances in non-invasive BCI, where you can connect to a computer without physically wiring in a computer interface (like they did in the Matrix movie). What's scary is that people's muscle "control" can only be read remotely but maybe even controlled remotely.

Fortunately, the essence of language is non-existent. So I'm not concerned about computers reading our thoughts....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Alice programming: start

2006-12-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

A short update: we got the Alice books and have started playing with Alice. Seems like a good tool so far: more powerful than Stagecast that my sons have been programming in. For example, you have control over the body movement of arms & legs and have to program their actions [otherwise, they'll seem like sliding around the screen]. I'll post updates as they spend more time with the tool...

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Customer developed products

2006-12-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

Here's an innovative way to take open source to the next level: let the customer develop your product!

I don't know if it should be all customer driven (esp for software products) but it is an interesting idea...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Ebay Bubble: PS3 vs Wii

2006-12-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

It seems that the PS3 (Playstation 3) bubble prices have popped already at Ebay and are sliding down! I saw some sales which closed at less than $650 which means after fees and sales tax, which means a real loss for the seller.

Wii, on the other hand, still seems to command over $100 of premium on Ebay so the demand is very real still. There was a initial drop in price during Thanksgiving week since so many people bought and sold them on Ebay but since then the prices have averaged above $400 (retails for $250). I must confess that I've sold 2 Wii's myself (grin).

The irony of it all is that I was employed for over 3 years to work on the Cell processor (Playstation 3's core computer chip) -- and I have yet to play on a PS3 let alone buy/own one....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Virtualization All the Way: SoVirt and HaVirt

2006-12-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

Virtualization is too often talked about from a very narrow view: either raw hardware perspective or simplly the software library/drivers [so that you can install a software without disturbing others].

Virtualization is basically where an abstraction allows programmers have one less thing to worry about. Hardware virtualization (I'm thinking "HaVirt" or "HawVirt/HwVirt" is easier to say than HV or HardVirt) where the programmer doesn't have to worry about the underlying hardware. With HaVirt CPU, you can run more than one OS (or multiple copies of the same OS) on a single processor without changing the hardware or rebooting to run each instance of an OS. With virtualized storage, you can mount a drive and not worry how or where the space is mounted (unlike SAN which is managed per set of drives).

In the past (and present), virtual machines tried to virtualize programming languages by making the language independent of the hardware (JavaVM or Smalltalk VM).

In my mind, virtualization happens at the most basic level: input and output should be independent of any OS or hardware. UNIX has some ability with text based programs where IO is can be piped from one program to another. This, however, is conditional on using stdin and stdout "channels" for input and output, respectively. This should not be: I as a programmer shouldn't have to worry where and what my IO are: I get input and I dump output. Be it text or graphics or mouse/tablet movements, I shouldn't have to worry about where I get my stuff and how my output gets handled (by another program or OS). Yes, for text and graphics, I can worry about formatting but not something I should specify in detail since some things like button locations should be up to the user, not the programmer. Just as people have language preference, they should be able to chose what the default dialog box size and location and its button locations and mouse focus [along with specific setting per program types and individual programs -- hierarchy of user preferences]. Same goes for font name, font/background colors, default size, and even spacing (double space, single space, etc.). Look and feel should be dictated by user first and programmers second and override must be done with user permission. [OK, it seems I'm getting sidetracked into more UI issues than programming/virtualization issues.]

And you can argue that processing [the core of any program] should be virtualizable. That is, I as a programmer shouldn't have to worry about the underlying language of the machine I'm programming be it assembly language, pseudo code (VM) or some higher level language. What can this core be is where I'm pondering to see if there is a better way...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Games with real world consequences: lost money

2006-12-14T08:22:00.000-08:00

You hear about violence in games turns people into killers but here's a real life consequence of too much gaming: "Guitar hero? Pitcher hurt playing video game: Tigers’ Zumaya missed three games of ALCS"

It's fun to read about guitarists playing Guitar Hero but a sports player being grounded over a game is funny [maybe not for Tiger fans, but that's a different problem]. How else can we (programmers) gum up the world?

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Future Gaming to Atari Founder

2006-12-05T18:51:00.000-08:00

"Atari Founder Bullish on Social Gaming, Wii" interviews Bushnell and some interesting insight into future of gaming like his number one issue: action gaming like Guitar Hero or DDR (or Wii sports) or eye toys, for that matter. I'm waiting for DDR + Wiimote or DDR + eyetoys combo games myself....

UPL: Proposal for universal programming language

2006-12-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

The problem with programming today is that all languages are so narrowly focused on their task that you end up with all kinds of languages from scripting languages (most programming is scripting be it Excel programming or web programming like PHP or Ruby) to architecture/design languages like UML to database languages like SQL or OQL to data structure languages like XML.

The problem is that computer languages have one level of abstraction and one way of looking through the computer. There is no language today that has both low level syntax and high level syntax. That is, you cannot write assembly code with UML. Nor does the C programming language have the ability to abstract higher level concepts other than creating functions and libraries (the later is OS imposed abstraction, not inherent part of the language per se).

There is one company looking into the matter (started as Microsoft research) and that's Intentional Software. (Actually, I kind of touched on it with "Metaprogramming" but Fowler's "Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?" gives a detailed and better overview.)

How is my UPL better? That's something I'll be exploring over the months ahead!

Visualized Algorithm

2006-11-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

"Improved Sorting Algorithm" page allows you to see visually how various sorting algorithm works. Very cool way to see how something works.

Another take is a 4004 chip sim which simulates the running of a chip on schematics. Not quite what I want: I want to visually see the main components of the computer (registers, cache, memory and core processor elements (like ALU)) and see my program run. Better yet, I want to debug my program and see where things are flowing within my computer!

Open Development instead of Source

2006-11-27T17:49:00.000-08:00

What hit me today is that why limit openness to just the source? Why not requirements, architecture, design, test plan, etc.?

On the other hand, as one of my former bosses pointed out, what makes one company special from others is its unique understanding of the customer requirements. So in that sense, a set of requirements is what makes a company core trade secret.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

C a must for programmers?

2006-11-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

Here's "Ten reasons why every programmer should learn C."

As almost exclusively C programmer, it makes me proud to confirm my 19+ career but it isn't end all language. Easy to code simple stuff but abstractions are hard to do and programs are hard to debug and maintain (thanks to pointers). There is no easy answer.... yet.... (grin)

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Wii's got potential

2006-11-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

I purchased Wii's (one for use and another for ebay) this past weekend and the little I tried seemed to have potential. Some reviewers thinks so, too:

Easy Programming is the vogue

2006-11-14T19:51:00.000-08:00

"Rolling your own applications: Thanks to a handful of startups, building your own software program will soon be as easy as snapping together Legos, Business 2.0 columnist Om Malik reports." It sounded too good to be true and it is: It's about building web based applications.

Unfortunately, it's not what I have in mind: easy to code and easy to see why it works the way it works and easy to see how to improve or fix problems. And it should work on computer as well as on the web (but a web program has limitations, in my opinion).

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

PS3: finally selling in Japan

2006-11-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

"Japanese brave the elements for Sony's PS3: The latest PlayStation goes on sale in Tokyo. "I'll play it all through the weekend. No time for meals," says one gamer."

So after the long wait, it is finally on sale and available (even here in the US: search for Japanese PS3 on ebay).

On a related note, USA Today has 4 recommendations for the new systems:Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 and just wait and see.

Will I buy one? Maybe next year? I'd wait until the prices stabilizes and more games are out and I hope to buy a region free version. We currently have Japanese PS2, Game Cube, US PS1 and various handhelds (GBA, SP, DS lite (2)). We'll probably end up with Wii this year....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Take the Data with You? Why not the tools?

2006-11-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

"WEB 2.0: Google CEO: Take your data and run" seems like a good idea but all wrong.

If it was all personal data, then it makes sense. But as soon as companies get involved, it ain't so simple. What if you have mixture of work and personal stuff in gmail?

But even more importantly, if I go to work, I can't take any data nor written code with me when I quit [I'm sure if was at google, I would be treated the same way]. Which is fair enough.

However, I believe that programming tools that programmers write on their own [or even on company time] should be owned by the programmer not the company. As long as the programming tool does not contain any propriety code/data, it should belong to the programmer since it helps him to be a better programmer. [I kind of like the idea of using emacs for this reason: I can customize it, knowing that I can take those changes with me onto my next job.]

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Alice: Potential Programming

2006-11-08T20:25:00.000-08:00

Last night, I've downloaded their tool and tried few of their demo's and I'm impressed. So much that I've ordered two Alice books: Learning To Program With Alice and Alice: An Introduction to Programming Using Virtual Reality. Will blog more as I [and my sons] try it out...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad All Rights Reserved.

VMX Builder Tutorial

2006-11-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

"VMX Builder: Create virtual machines in minutes" seems like a simple way to build your VM using VMware tools. I don't have Linux up and running quite yet: I've installed Fedora Core 6 but haven't tried internet connection yet wired or wireless. Linux is such a pain when it comes to hardware driver....

OpenMoko: yet another Linux phone

2006-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

"A truly open Linux phone with GPS debuts: Openmoko opens up the airwaves" sounds like a fun product to work on. /. as usual has already torn it apart.

Besides, how to make money is whole different problem I haven't figured out yet...

Update: LinuxDevices has a good article with slides from the presentation.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Programming via Animation: Alice

2006-11-07T19:15:00.000-08:00

"Sims lend a hand to budding programmers: Alice authoring software gets video game makeover" seems very ineresting. The latest version of Alice is 2.0 and 1.5 years old.

I'll try it out [if not my sons, first]....

Open Source means less original code?

2006-11-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

/. has "No More Coding From Scratch?" where open source code [and all other code] are mined to be reused in projects and not much new code would be written.

I don't know about that: as long as technology changes, new code will have to be written esp. since translating from one language to another is non-trivial and even if it was possible, such code is rarely easy to maintain.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Wish for cloth stapler

2006-11-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

I wanted to fix my pants and wished for something as simple as stapler but put cloth together that will withstand washings [not get rusted nor be gooey like glue gun nor be hard like super glue]. I did some search and found mini stitcher which isn't what I'm looking for: I don't need a miniature sewing machine. I want something quick and simple like a stapler [so sewing machine is out, although I may buy one just to get my job done], yet not unlike steel staples.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

i-tired: internet's downsides

2006-11-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

It seems that people are getting burned out: "Social sites becoming too much of a good thing: Many young folks burning out on online sharing" And some people are disappointed that Internet didn't turn out what was promised 10+ years ago: "Pornography, gambling, lies, theft and terrorism: The Internet sucks: Where did we go wrong?"

So the internet isn't the answer too all things and there are negative sides to the Web: what's new? Internet is just another tool which can be used for good or evil. It's all matter of how you use it.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Parakey: Firefox "creator" starts new project

2006-11-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

"The Firefox Kid: Blake Ross helped make Firefox one of the biggest open-source success stories ever. Just wait until you see what he's up to now".

Parakey is intended to be a platform for tools that can manipulate just about anything on your hard drive—e-mail, photos, videos, recipes, calendars. In fact, it looks like a fairly ordinary Web site, which you can edit. You can go online, click through your files and view the contents, even tweak them. You can also check off the stuff you want the rest of the world to be able to see. Others can do so by visiting your Parakey site, just as they would surf anywhere else on the Web. Best of all, the part of Parakey that’s online communicates with the part of Parakey running on your home computer, synchronizing the contents of your Parakey pages with their latest versions on your computer. That means you can do the work of updating your site off-line, too. Friends and relatives—and hackers—do not have direct access to your computer; they’re just visiting a site that reflects only the portion of your stuff that you want them to be able to see.

The article is a good read on what ideas are being put together for Parakey. Sounds to me they are moving in the right direction of making computer easier to use. However, easy to use has been so widely abused that I don't know what to expect until I see it. Interestingly, they're working on yet another language: JUL or Just another User-interface Language.

Meanwhile, I want to create my own language to make programming easier. Unlike JUL or XUL or other user interface oriented languages, I want to focus on easy to program, debug, maintain and test. I hear that Ruby has somewhat of that kind of framework but Ruby is a server side web programming language.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Everlasting Tech Boom?

2006-10-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Fortune has: "This tech boom has legs: For several reasons - especially growing demand in developing countries - tech's run most probably will last many years."

Let's take their two points apart:

"First, everybody wants technology." Just because they want or desire tech, it doesn't mean people can afford to. Not just the developing nation but developed ones too. For example, yours truly would love to buy a new computer [especially one with virtualization hardware built in to play with full virtualization], now that Fedora Core 6 is released with Xen support. Unfortunately, we had to spend a lot of our savings to move and settle down in SoCal. So no tech purchases for a while!

"And second, technology has become radically easier to create." I don't think so. Some things have improved [ipod is a good example: I use it every weekday on my walking commute to/from work] but computers are so hard to use still. Just today, I had to reinstall wifi driver to restore network access to my notebook. What a pain since I had to try to restore system few times to make sure something else didn't go wrong. Probably wasted about one hour of my time. Software is all wrong: not only is it buggy but also hard to use -- I'm not talking about specific GUI but the basics like having to explicitly save files or not having infinite undo/redo.

With the economy tanking, both developing and developed nations will struggle to continue the tech growth. And until things become so easy that people "have to have it" (like the ipods), it won't take off in the way that will continue growing.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

AutoIt: scripting mouse clicks

2006-10-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Autoit sounds like the kind of tool I want to make: independent but works with what's already out there.

However, I don't like the idea of being tied to Windows only [as much as it is the biggest OS share in the world]....

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Debug and Virtualization

2006-10-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

Here is an incomplete thought I've been having over the past few days. When debugging programs which run on both server and client [like browser code and server code], it can be a pain to figure out what's going on where. However, somehow, I think that virtualization can be used to help abstract a layer or two so that debug can take place more independent of OS [of either or both the client and server OSes].

I noticed that when a program displays stuff on browsers, you have at least 3 layers: the code printing, the text handler and pixel handler. This is true with graphical browsers as well as text [lynx] browsers. When you have layers, then opportunities exist for virtualization. How can it be possible is something I'll have to chew on.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Freemium Biz

2006-10-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

"A business model VCs love: Investors are abuzz about 'freemiums' - services that lure users in with a basic product, then charge for more features." So companies like Skype had the "right" thing going for it.

Free and premium services are what they recommend but I don't see why there can't be blurring of the lines. Where a free person can get extra support or extra feature on an on-demand basis rather than once a year/month/lifetime license kind of deal. Or even monthly subscription that can be turned off and on at any time.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Smart Card on CD/DVD

2006-10-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

This invention "Smart-card DVDs" brings me back memories of yours truly trying to patent a similar idea and it was pretty wild since I came up with the idea but almost everyone in the office had improvements which means I had to put their name on the patent [my employer had fixed amount for patent bonus which was divided by the number of inventors so I saw my share of the bonus shrinking with every new member].

Anyway, it turned out someone else already had similar enough idea in the patent pipeline so we gave up on it. Sigh....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Burnt Opportunity: Friendster's story

2006-10-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

"Wallflower at the Web Party" is a great read on how Friendster had the potential for shooting for the moon but stumbled here and there and ended up playing second fiddle. Sad but educational.

10+ Years with Linux

2006-10-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

The article "My first 10 years with Linux" reminds me that I've been using Linux off and on for almost 11 years. I started tinkering with [Slackware] Linux in December '95 and using it at work since then. I heard about it from my coworker in 91 or 92 but didn't get my interest at that time.

Now, I hardly use it these days at home....

Tagging the GUI

2006-10-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

It would be nice if I can "tag" any given GUI with my own comments either to replace or have popup comments. Being able to see alternative languages on a menu time/tool icon would be nice, too [on the fly, not necessarily always enabled]. This feature would be great for those who are almost bilingual or trying to be one.

It would also be nice if I can lookup online of any term I'm not familiar with (like translation dictionary or in the case of Japanese or English, how a kanji/word should be read/pronounced).

And if I can change how it looks [relocate an icon from one place to another, be it an icon or menu layout] that would be very handy.

Tag, lookup and replace.

And if I can turn any given output into an input [results of a search or calculation be feed into an input for further calculation or search], that would be very cool!

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Episodic gaming

2006-10-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

"Changing the way video games are made: Longer titles may become less common as developers adopt a 'Saturday matinee' model."

So gaming is going from 60+ hours of play down to 6 or 7 hours, which is still pretty long for someone like me who don't have all that much time to play games. However, the trend might be refreshing since it'll allow aspiring artists and gamers to create alternative story lines just like game mods allow recasting of an existing game.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Social Networking and Collaboration

2006-10-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

"IBM warms to social networking" points out the problems with collaborative software of the past and the social network phenomenon of today. The focus was on creating documents but today people look for social connections be it news groups or chat sessions or web pages [like myspace or individual blogs].

How to make this into better development tool is something I'm not sure there is an easy answer yet....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Zune and wireless socializing

2006-10-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

I really like the potential of Zune's wireless feature as described by Mike Elgan in "Opinion: Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core" (computerworld). However, as others are pointing out, it's got a lot going against it.

Personally I love the idea of social networking taken to the next level with a portable device. Unlike cell phones and texting devices [like crackberry] or even portable gaming devices [with one-on-one or one-to-many-yet-specific connections], a wireless social networking based on physical closeness while at the same time internet connected to the whole wide world would open up a lot of possibilities. This device will need GPRS or similar always connected network access [UMTS, EDGE, EV-DO, etc], since Wifi isn't as widely available as cell phone based data network. I guess having access to Wifi, bluetooth, wibree, and even IR might help make the device into a network/social hub. But then not all devices need such connectivity: only one hub is needed per given group [and it won't be cheap not only the device price but also power consumption].

Anyway, what does this mean for the future, I'm not sure but could make interesting meeting with friends and even strangers [aka flash mob] with such devices and then interact live with the world wide net.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Starting Business myths

2006-10-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I find: Top ten geek business myths by Ron Garret, very encouraging.

However, I don't have all the right answers to make a complete business plan so I keep simmering with ideas...

Orthogonal Patching and Coding

2006-10-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

"The Third-Party Patching Conundrum" is a pretty cool trend, in my opinion:

The Zero Day Emergency Response Team, or ZERT, stepped out of the shadows a week ago to offer a quick patch for the Microsoft VML vulnerability.

Finally, people are doing things on their own because Microsoft is so slow. It's one thing to have open source software being fixed by anyone, it's something else to have closed source software being fixed by non-authors (ZERT in this case).

Currently, doing such patching requires a lot of reverse engineering work which may not be so legal based on the various onerous shrink wrap agreements. I'd love to see [if not create my own] tools which will help any Joe write such a patch with few clicks here and there. Just as there are script kiddies who crack computers, there should be script patchers or script coders.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Good and Ugly of Ajax

2006-10-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

I found "Thank God Java EE Is Not Like Ajax" to be an interesting subject, esp. the quote form Coach Wei:

Which aspect of Ajax [do] we really want Java EE to be like? The difficulty in developing Ajax code? The difficulty in maintaining Ajax code? The extreme fragile nature of Ajax code? The extremely fragmented nature of Ajax support from different browsers?

Ajax is hot but it's also a pain to deal with [as far as I can tell: I haven't done any real programming but I get enough hearsay to feel the pain].

Google Project management

2006-09-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

slashdot pointed to Stevey's blog on Google SW process. It sounds like a great place to work at. If and whenever I start a company, I'd make sure the work environment would be similar.

One note: Stevey dogs pair programming [actually they do it 5% of the time it seems], but I believe in the value of pair programming: maybe not 100% but more than 5%. But then I've never done XP or pair programming so it's hard to say how it works in the real world...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Mashup Software Engineering

2006-09-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about programmer directed coding (the way things are today, where "professionals" write code for the users) while contrasting with what I wanted to see: user directed programming. Or Computer Assisted User Coding Energy or CAUSE (I didn't know what to put for "E" actually).

And then I thought, why not mashups? There are music and video mashups and I found out this morning that there is web page mashups. Why can't users just take parts of the programs they like and mash them into a new program? For example, take the physics game engine of Burnout, the scifi-ness of Star Wars and online connectedness of second life. [Lame examples, I know but I'm not very creative this morning.]

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure but I think this is the direction I want to see things headed....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Metaprogramming

2006-09-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

I'm not the only person who wants to program in a generic way: DSL or Domain Specific Language is a proposal for metaprogramming without worrying about the details of the target languages. He points to ANTLR parser generator -- i.e., alternative to Lex/Yacc. [Interestingly enough, Microsoft has already released DSL tool kit for Visual Studio.]

I don't think so: I don't want more complexity for the sake of cleanness of implementation [i.e., make it easy for computer to process rather than easier for user to program], the trend with parser generators. I want high order functions easy to use and give me more power to do what I want. Much like what they are trying to do with the next generation GUI's. All in all, programming should be as painless (or approachable) as Excel "programming."

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Composition Tools: music, coding and home redesign

2006-09-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading the Psalms, and thought, wouldn't it be great to have a computer tool that I can create music to any given words? I'd have a palette of generic sounds [scary, intense, action, drama, shattering, etc] with variations [short scary, slow pace scary, etc.] and then ability to change various aspects [pitch, tempo, etc. individually or as a group]. Words can be set to music and changed appropriately, too. And help you create multi-part harmony, polyphony, etc.

It would work something like my free sketch and coding tools. A constraint based tool allowing quick prototyping [be it music, dance choreography, or user interface of a program or game] and computer assisted detailed refinement along with "what if" power of spreadsheets would be the kind of tool I believe would be very useful. Not only educational tool but also practical for professionals.

I guess the next step is to reverse engineer what exists today [computer program, music, or even a video of a dance] by decomposing and allow you to edit and enhance the original program or just copy the good parts and paste to your own creation (with enough smarts to edit the original to avoid copyright violations).

Another interesting tool would be able to take photo of a furniture you want to buy, and place it into your existing home and visualize what it would look like. Or take a picture of your existing home and suck out the furniture, and then take a picture of the new you home you want to buy and see how much will fit physically [if you're going to downsize] or how they would look with existing painting, etc. and use it as a negotiating tool to have the seller change colors, etc. Or send the mashed up image to various remodellers and ask for bids and send back their proposals. As a customer, you can pick a specific designer or ask 2 or more designers to collaborate since you like parts of each designer with suggestions you make mashing up the proposals to your own tastes. [And rather than giving a blank check to the designer, you retain the power of picking and choosing what they do to your own liking, even before they start!]

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.