Overanalyzed

The Java Situation

Ignoring for a moment the Oracle/IBM problem, I’d like to take a minute to discuss java.

I’ve been using it now for several years. Back when it was first introduced, and for the past few years I’ve been using it for more enterprise level development, Android apps, and game development.

I went whole-hog. Got eclipse, with the Jigloo plugin for GUI development. Ant to build.
Many of the tools I hate. Ant, for example, is just a very fancy way to make a 3 line makefile into a 50 line XML.

Eclipse is doing very well these days, much more stable/solid than I remember. Bit of a memory pig, but still not even in the same resource-hogging ballpark as visual studio.

Java itself.. Is a little odd. Continue reading The Java Situation…

Education or Ineducation

I’ve been bugged for years over this problem of inventing things that already exist.

For example, I may spend a great deal of time working on a concept, and arrive at an inventive solution, only to discover, when telling someone else about it, that it’s already been invented.

I myself have done that to others, told them their ideas already exist. I know Jeffy’s come up with a few.

After my most recent encounter with this problem, while working with a NAT traversal technique, I became annoyed at my education.

Continue reading Education or Ineducation…

New CPU Instruction

I’m going to propose a new CPU instruction. Purely theoretical for now, but interesting to talk about. At least I hope so.

My new CPU instruction is going to load into EAX the value of EAX from 10 seconds in the future.

Crazy talk, I know. But I’m going to ignore the “you can’t do that!” aspect, because that’s just silly rejectionism. Instead, I’m going to think about how to actually implement the instruction.

Continue reading New CPU Instruction…

Steady-state economy

I’ve been wondering lately about what the steady state of the American dream is. What are the unavoidable outcomes if every player in the game is following that strategy?

Seems to me that there’s a finite number of lawns to mow. There are economies of scale, and it’s well known that when providing a service or doing business, that results in a natural monopoly.

Continue reading Steady-state economy…

On Applications, OSes, and VMs

I’ve lately begun to realize that when a common problem shows up, it’s often the symptom of something else. Such as when customers complain about the amount of rBGH in their food, manufacturers can decide to avoid it, not avoid it, or, and more intelligently, create two products and sell to everyone.

Writing about how my less savvy family members are terrified of anyone touching their computer, for fear of damaging the stuff they use, I got thinking about the problem that their issues are showing exists. Because applications do have that problem.

Continue reading On Applications, OSes, and VMs…

On Security of Operating systems

I was reading about yet another zero day exploit for IE and Windows, on the heels of a security update for same because of an existing unpatched vulnerability that’s been causing pain to many over the past few weeks.

Honestly, you could write the above two lines any time over the past 12 years, and it wouldn’t look out of place.

Continue reading On Security of Operating systems…

Civic Literacy

I took an online civic literacy quiz not too long ago, it asked a lot of mainly trivia questions, but also some very interesting policy and mechanics of government questions.

Seems to me there should have been a few questions on that civic literacy quiz about why it’s good to be a citizen.

I would love to have seen a question “What is The American Dream?”

Continue reading Civic Literacy…

“It just works”

There’s been a lot of talk about “It Just Works” lately, probably due to the renewed popularity of the Mac platforms. I recall quite a few “just works” promises in the past. Plug and Play was supposed to be that. Heck, the very meaning of the phrase is almost identical.

The problem with “It Just Works” is “It Just Doesn’t”.

Continue reading “It just works”…

Active and Reactive programming

Imperative languages like C and java and just about everything else I use are very demanding. You use the languages to say things like “do that”, and it does. Deeply fulfilling for a type A personality, I’m sure.

But it lacks something. Other languages, like lisp, prolog, etc.. have different concepts. I don’t know the computer science term for it, I think it’s “functional”, versus “imperative”, where you define what you want to happen, but not when. I think I can get a handle on it if I think in terms of actions.

Continue reading Active and Reactive programming…

Colors

Purple is an odd concept.

We see it as a combination of red and blue… because we have roughly RGB retinas… but then we see 50%R 50%G as yellow, when there’s a real yellow that just triggers 50%R 50%G.. We can’t see the difference though.

But there’s no frequency of light that corresponds to purple. Makes the color wheels seem a little goofy, honestly. And suddenly bothers me to find purple on manmade rainbows, when real rainbows have indigo and violet, neither of which have any red in them.

EDIT: I recently discovered that the red cones in your eye actually do have a second peak in their response to color. Instead of a nice bell curve centered around red, it tails off more slowly in the high-frequency (green/blue) direction, and has a second, much lower hump above blue. This is why some people may see some purplish colors there, it’s signal confusion.

Continue reading Colors…