Month: September 2002

New code directions

the recent postnuke forks might be a good thing, if the following 2 things materialize.

embedding technology
postnuke: The Embedded PN initiative will allow us all to leverage all the amazing pieces of php code out there in a fast and reliable way, by allowing client applications to work under PostNuke seemingly. This will hopefully become the PN applications server framework.

dynamic api
envolution: This would more or less be a direct replacement for the current hooks(autolinks, wiki, and ratings) but would not replace hooks. It would allow for direct api calls to classes that provide functionality for any module to call if it is turned on by the site administrator. So for instance polls and comments could be loaded dynamically and used within any module as a direct api call. This would allow the site administrator to add polls directly to a news article. This would also allow comments to be used by any module that you want to allow to use them. For instance you could allow comments on your downloads. This is a small example of the functionality this could provide.

guess where those features will end up.

Trusted brains

Another problem for the entertainment companies is what they’re calling the “analog hole.” This recognizes the fact that human beings are not digital, so digital programming has to be converted to a format, known as analog, that we can see and hear.

computers will have the capacity of the human brain by 2020.

The memory capacity of the human brain is ~100T synapse strengths (neurotransmitter concentrations at interneural connections), which we can estimate at ~100TB. In 1998, 128 MB of RAM cost ~$200. The capacity of memory circuits has been doubling every 18 months. Thus by the year 2023, 100TB will cost ~$1000. However, this silicon equivalent will run more than 1b times faster than the human brain. There are techniques for trading off memory for speed, so we can effectively match human memory for $1000 sooner than 2023.

if the MPAA and friends have their way it will have to run on trusted hardware. mind control?

Life Blogging

i have always been reluctant to talk about personal stuff on this weblog. mostly i post what i find interesting, sometimes what i’m working on. maybe it’s time to blog some more 🙂 i found this interview with justin hall.

I would recommend this to anyone — if you see someone who you like through the smoke and noise online, and you can saunter over and stand at a slight distance and watch them to see how they carry themselves, to read their tone of voice, to observe their links and interests. In a way, personal websites are like personal advertisements, or a way to circumvent the matchmaker.

i’m having a bad hangover today, and i’m kinda anxious about the conference. also i’m a bit tired of getting project x off the ground. it takes so much effort to get anything done. it’s definitely a downside of projects where you don’t see your coworkers in the lobby.

there seem to be very few weblogs in zurich, kinda disappointing. although i’m exploring some right now. more later.

.net and community mind share

microsoft is trying something new. asp had the downside that there were zero interesting open source apps beyond “hello world”. apparently, this shall not happen with .net, and several initiatives suggest that.


is a free ASP.net IDE that features wysiwyg web forms, web services support and much more.

mono
mono is making quick progress. a lot of the core libraries have already been implemented.

rotor
rotor is a complete CLI implementation that will help the mono effort.