Vapid Comments Regarding War

I know, I know. Talking about war is depressing and redundant. There are enough talkers and enough wars to last eternity. Yet I watch the progress made by terrorists, which judging by the massive destruction of everything in their wake, is a progressive mass suicide of sorts.

Would you, usually a reasonable person living in peace, risk your children's lives by lobbing hand grenades into your neighbor's yard because he scowled at your dog? Then afterward, during a picnic in your own back yard, would you be surprised to find that it is raining dog manure and pieces of your dog? Would you complain to the police?

Islam and Pravda. What do these two words have in common? One supposedly means "Peace". The other supposedly means "Truth." The share the common trait of hypocrisy. Islam justifies "holy war" and Pravda was merely a mouthpiece of propaganda.

In this country the people I fear the most are the fundamentalist Christians. They literally think they are holier than thou. Now how are those people any different from Islam or the Soviets? Are they any more peaceful? Are they any more truthful?

Being an American and being a scientist, I am hated by some large fraction of the population of Earth. Americans are hated by most of the world for some good reason. And scientists are hated by fundamentalists, but for the wrong reasons. So, if everyone hates me, then it doesn't matter what I say or what I do. So I'll just remain the same. I am never going to be Islamic. I am never going to be Christian. I will always be a scientist and always live in America.

But most of all, I will not be lobbing hand grenades over the fence into my neighbor's property.

Settling in for the Long Haul

At first I thought that this skirmish between Israel and the Jew Haters would last a few days and peter out. No, it is just getting worse. Much like Iraq with the US -- a lot of death and no actual progress.

Israel should move somewhere else, like Montana. Just take the wall and a few relics and move to Montana. The land is cheap, certainly cheaper than a continuous supply of F16i's and precision guided weapons. Canada is also very nice. Easy going folks.

Once the Israelis are moved out, and the hordes of celebrating Jew Haters move in, they can return it to their illiterate medieval lifestyles like they have the rest of the Middle East. But who will be their boogie man then? The US, of course.

More War

Wars. I destest wars. Whether they are necessary or not I can't really say. Israelis certainly have a worse problem of defense than the US in their wars. Our wars are more of an intellectual decision to prevent this or that or "send a message". The Israelis are not sending messages they are destroying their enemy in whatever way works.

The thing about war that bothers me the most is a half-assed war, when neither side really achieves anything concrete. The cause of the conflict remains, and this means it is very like to pop up again. Pulling weeds is like that. If you just mow the dandelions it just scatters the seeds every which way and there will be more the next time.

I'm not going to invoke the name of religion or whether something is holy or not. War can't be holy in the true sense of the word. People claim that their war is holy, or that the other guy is unholy. Whatever. From the point of view of the man in the moon, nobody is more holy than anybody else. Death is just death. Nothing holy about it. Death creates anguish and the desire for payback. Except, as Machiavelli seemed to imply, you make sure the bloke and all his cronies get dead together.

I don't want the Islamists to win. They seem the most medieval. I don't want to live in a world of medieval kings and religious dogmas. But I don't want to be the man with a gun, shooting everything that might threaten me, either. Blowing away people from 8 miles high is not all that manly, but it is antiseptic.

Hypervisors

I like the idea of Hypervisors. They provide a framework for virtual operating systems like XP and MacOS running side by side with a kind of dumb ignorance of each other's existence. An example is the recent marriage touted by Apple users who wistfully viewed the enormous amount of XP software. Constructs like shared objects exist that allow communication between the hypervisor and the virtual machines it creates, such as shared disk files or client-server connections.

Presumably, if a fully OS independent manner of Hypervision is implemented, then all kinds of operating systems could run concurrently, even new ones that haven't been thought of before. This would be a good place for Artificial Intelligence because there can be a kind of "God" Operating System that imposes all the rules and quirks upon the lowly "Beasts" (XP and MacOS) who are God's creations. Many years ago, there were VMs or virtual machines, which multiplexed machine code translations so that say, an IBM360 and a Honeywell Mainframe might be emulated in the same room full of computer equipment. Given a flexible enough VM base language (the microcode), any other machine could be implemented as a higher level instruction set.

Even without VM, there could be just a virtual partition within a native architecture, so that any Intel CPU based operating system could run concurrent with another. At any rate the possibilities are interesting -- if not somehow very expensive in either hardware costs or performance hits.

XP, MacOS, Linux could all run with OP (a whimsical Optical Processor) all at once, to perform many diverse intercommunications and specialized functions that are best done in their separate worlds. The results can stay parallel and only observed at a higher level by humans, or the overall effect could be for each node's strengths and weaknesses supplemented by the others.

Optical Processing (only a theoretical system) can be used recursively as a kind of dream-state in which slightly re-arranged stimulus-response images immediately become seeds of possible "ideas". Trees and arrays of hypervisor objects could perform as temporary trials, flushed when they get hung, or remembered more strongly whenever they stumble upon suitable, even trivial, solutions to complex problems.

Arrays of nodes are easy to construct with data passed though IN and OUT pipes, with the INs being inbranched through guard processes and the OUTs being outbranched by replicator processes. The channels to the pipes can be interspersed with hypervisor "thoughts", or little modifications to the data to give a more global presence to otherwise private interactions between logical nodes, presuming that the hypervisor has access to these pathways. In the human brain, separate neural nodes can be effected by chemical diffusion, i.e. adrenaline, to have such global effects on otherwise private channels.

Evolution Software (which can alter data in little ways and pass on good things and kill bad things) can then optimize the massive amounts of parametric flux.

The beauty of the system would be the manner in which viruses or otherwise malicious code be found as the side effects of failure in the hypervised nodes. Diseased nodes are just killed off, and presumably adjacent nodes would be spared. Viruses might still exist, but their necessary adaptation to heavy kill-offs would make them rare.

Certainly in this manner, at least to a level I'm not sure is all that comfortably shallow, it seems that agents of our own consciousness (and unconsciousness) could successfully be mapped into nodes of a giant hypervisor system. But then, whose mind would be the model? The Good Brain or the A.B. Normal brain.

The XP problem

I finally realized, duh, after determining that NT never supported USB, that even though I got a USB Mouse to work on NT, there are no Linksys USB drivers that will work on NT. I'll have to go another route to be wireless, but it won't be XP. I'll buy a Wireless PCMCIA of some kind.

I am a computer scientist, and, like any computer professional, I have to use computers on a minute to minute basis. I have used nearly every kind of computer since the early days with IBM-360s programming in JCL, BAL and Cobol to PDP-11s, then Z80s, 8085s, Z8000s, VAX, IBM-PCs, Compaqs, to Hpux, AIX, to arrays of SGI Unix boxes multiprocessing fingerprint images in C and C++ to W3.1 to W95 to NT to the modern batch of XP workstations and laptops used for business, communications and scientific purposes with Java and other Internet interface languages -- ad absurdum.

I have designed real-time operating systems for early microprocessors which, though primitive in many ways, still outperformed the offerings of IBM and Microsoft. There weren't many OS's available at that time, especially for the robotics industry. I have always been disappointed in those two companies, even though I appreciate that some personal computer standard was achieved, leading eventually to cheaper, faster computers. I am disappointed because you would expect more from people who took so much of our money. I do not feel sorry for the loss of market share that both of those companies are feeling in today's world, no more than they feel sorry for me as I grow old and "useless".

After this latest adventure to update an almost insignificant IBM computer (Thinkpad 600Es were very popular with marketing guys, once upon a time...) with some kind of useful operating system, from W98 to NT4.0, it seems like I did quite a bit of work for "nothing". At least it seems that way to people who just wonder why I even bothered with a quaint little computer like an old Thinkpad when I already have a much more powerful computer running XP and all the latest and greatest tools. Or why didn't I just get XP and run it on this Thinkpad?

My little computer runs at least twice as fast with NT than with Windows 98, but I'll bet it wouldn't run a bit faster with XP, and probably would be pegged pedal to the metal running XP -- all memory and disk consumed.

I have never liked XP, even though it has more device support than NT. I appreciate the user interface to some degree, but it is only a little better than Windows 3.1. I liked X-Windows and Motif on Unix boxes almost as much, but they are also piggish.

I especially dislike having to pay through the nose for a store-bought XP Professional CD just for the privilege of having Microsoft put SPY software and layer upon layer of sludge on all my machines. Of course, box makers love memory hogs -- they sell more memory and higher speed CPUs that way. But they treat people's time as though it is worth nothing. How many times have you had to reboot your computer for some minor issue? For me, about a million times.

And then there are the viruses and phishing scams, etc.

Why don't I use Macs, you might ask? Because all my customers use PCs and Unix, not Macs. At least that is my own experience. I think Macs are just fine. They are easy to use -- very nice user interfaces and all that. But my jobs always involved something else. Perhaps that will change someday but so far -- no.

Why didn't I use Linux? I actually considered that, but since I'm using this little computer for real work for a real customer who doesn't use Linux, I thought better of it. I may yet go that direction, however, since it avoids the entire Microsoft thing. But Linux and Thinkpads still have sniggly little issues I didn't want to dive into just yet.

Anyway, I use this little Thinkpad to test client-server Web software that spreads over multiple machines on local area networks, making sure that the span of compatibilities ranged from Windows 98's crippled IE5 (now NT4.0's version of crippled IE6) to XP's beta of IE7 to various flavors of Firefox and even (shudder) Netscape, all without a hiccup. And that does work -- I know a lot of the little sticklers to avoid in order to flawlessly operate across all those platforms.

I had this unused copy of NT obtained just before XP was released. I never even opened the box. It is kosher, though, and has a license key, unlike a lot of people who bought machines preloaded with XP. But I am nearly crippled from sore wrists and fingers after the last few days.

The decision to use NT was a tortured one. I didn't want Windows 98 that occupied the Thinkpad in the first place and I considered buying XP for my little "free" machine. It was a refugee from a trash heap anyway. What's another $150 when the machine itself only cost $200 to repair and max out? $350 is a pretty good total price for any laptop.

But Microsoft's plan seems to be -- like light bulb makers -- to make sure their stuff burns out so you have to buy new ones. That wouldn't be so bad if the computers themselves just burned out, instead of the operating systems -- at the direction of marketing people.

This would be fine -- I'd go ahead and pay for new light bulbs and new operating systems. But first of all, for all the work I do, I make almost no money. Old guys like me are not hired anymore. It doesn't matter how smart we are, how much experience we have, or anything like that. In fact, the smarter we are the more afraid the corporate types are of us. The older we are, the higher insurance costs for us, and the harder it is to control us with company propaganda. Been there - done that. I used to hire people myself -- it was a dilemma then and is a greater dilemma now.

So, the time that I spent getting NT4.0 to run on my dumb little Thinkpad has a kind of poetic justice. It cost me time, yes, but it also cost Microsoft one sale of XP Pro. And certainly, when Vista becomes the Pig of the Year, requiring even faster computers and more disk and more memory, I'll probably have to fight the battle again, if my wrists are not completely fused together by then.

Henceforth --

I will not buy Microsoft Network Server software. I use Apache2.0. It runs on XP, on NT, on Unix and who knows what else. Microsoft only runs on XP and soon will only run on Vista when they drop support for XP.

I will not buy Frontpage Web Page software. I use either plain-text editors or a plethora of other tools, like OpenOffice and HTML-Kit, all of which do a fine job for a reasonable price (or free).

I will not buy Microsoft Office software. I use OpenOffice. It runs on NT and XP and Unix, and probably on Macs, too. Let businessmen buy Microsoft Office. Scientists don't have to.

I will always use Gnu language tools whenever possible, unless the companies I work for buy me Visual C++, or whatever, specifically for their projects. The code I write always runs on XP or NT or Whatever-Unix with minimal differences, and certainly I'll always stick with TCP/IP instead of Microsoft .NET nonsense until it is pounded into me like a stake into Dracula's heart.

Cantankerous I may be. But after a lifetime of crappy computer tools, I just don't want to give Microsoft any more money. I've given them half of my life, already. However, even though I use NT and XP, they mostly just run non-Microsoft code anyway. Most of it is just ported Unix tools. Every single tool ever made for Unix, with very few exceptions, is out there as open source code, and runs on everything, Unix, NT, XP, whatever, and probably always will. That is the secret that Microsoft hates people to think about.

Now, I wouldn't be so harsh about buying software if people would pay me a decent wage for writing it. But those days are long gone. I would make more money as a truck driver.

robot brain need robot brain...

AI Hard is becoming a little easier. Shouldn't be long before the GWBush2000 is able to pronounce SHIT with a northern accent.

USB on NT 4.0

I was wrong about NT 4.0 having no USB support. But it took several times trying to find something on Internet that actually worked. It wasn't from Microsoft, that's for sure.

But so far I have only used my Usb optical mouse (from DELL) with it. This is very good news for me, even so, because I might actually get a wireless link to my Thinkpad working after all!

The driver came from Inside Out Networks as far as I can tell, but included other stuff for video cameras and things I didn't need, so I'm not sure really where this originated. All I know is that NT seems less of a nightmare today than it did Saturday, when I began this update process.

Anything to avoid XP!

Why the Monster?

People have asked -- why do I use the picture of the Frankenstein Monster for my mug shot?

It is very simple. It is very realistic, very close to what I really look like.

When I was a child of maybe 10, that was my nickname amongst many of the school kids. I had sort of a wide forehead and similar looking hair.

But I have seen a lot of other blogger's pictures and thought they could benefit from something less awful looking than their actual selves -- perhaps Dracula, the Hulk or Charles Manson.

At least I don't have actual bolts in my neck-- like some people.

Ooh! Setback on the Windows 98 Front

The ongoing saga of Thunk.

A couple months ago or so I refurbished an IBM Thinkpad 600e which had the unfortunate legacy of running Windows 98. I wasn't fond of W98 but put up with it because the old Thunk was practically free, a throw-away from my wife's work.

But then I wondered, now that W98 is no longer supported by Microsoft, should I bother replacing it with something more modern? This is not a 3gigahertz machine, just a 300 megahertz (or slower) Pentium II, and I haven't had good experiences with slow machines using XP.

I happened to have an unused copy of NT (still shrink wrapped) and wondered, "Hmm? Should I try to upgrade to NT?" Boy was that a mistake -- and a blessing in disguise.

Anyway, I backed up everything on Thunk over Ethernet to my XP Battle Cruiser and plunged right in, stuck the CD in the slot and booted NT.

The first problem-- NT doesn't deal with large disks (i.e. >2gig) so it immediately wiped out W98 and screwed up the disk partition. No going back. Next, NT didn't have Thinkpad video drivers so I had to work in 640 x 480 vga mode for most of the day. Then it didn't have Xircom Ethernet drivers for the little PCMIA card.

It doesn't do USB, period, so I can't use my el-cheapo Linksys wireless or my USB mouse.

NT didn't have the right sound drivers. It didn't even have a working Internet Explorer (1.0?) when I did manage to find the right driver for the Ethernet (via the XP machine to a writable CD).

Thunk doesn't even have a floppy disk, only a CD. On top of all that, NT didn't have support from Microsoft either. But I found an old CD with NT service pack 6 and that repaired things a little bit. At least it could ALMOST access www.microsoft.com so long as I pressed OK, OK for every JavaScript error and web security violation.

Fortunately I did have other, modern, working XP systems on a fast Internet. I searched and searched and downloaded dozens of trial versions of stuff until bit by bit and 24 hours later, I finally succeeded in getting a "modern" version of NT running, complete with service pack 6a, 24bit color full resolution, modern Internet Explorer 6.x, Firefox 1.5, and everything. The only thing I am missing now is USB. Fortunately I have a long Ethernet cable and a junk box with old non-USB mice.

The one benefit that Thunk gave me, a machine to sit in the garden and browse Internet with, is gone -- until I can figure out some wireless thing that works with NT on a Thinkpad.

Now, after all this, I still have an "obsolete" operating system on an "obsolete" computer. But you know what? I think NT was one of the most efficient Microsoft operating systems made for 32 bit computing. Even with everything I have running at the same time it only takes about 64 mb of RAM, leaving more than 200 mb still left over. And things run very fast, even on this old Thunker. Not so many layers of Microsoft Crud Code.

So here I am, posting this from Thunk, living its second new life in the blogosphere. I cringe to think that I might have to dump all of this someday anyway and suck the Microsoft weenie, when even XP is no longer supported. By that time I think I'll give up on computers -- or go back to an even earlier life -- Unix -- unless by some miracle MS actually makes decent software.

Boy do my carpal tunnels hate me today.

The Apache Web Server Project - Ongoing

It has been a few weeks since I started this project and it has turned out quite well. The system now consists of an Apache2.0.x Web Server, a Fcx/Tcx Full Text Search Engine Server, an Icx Image Content Search Engine Server, an offline Text File content indexer and an offline Image content indexer. The next things will be related to signals like voice or music. The idea is to have as many simultaneous inputs to the Giant Search Engine Brain which uses a fusion of sensory data to decide what data that associates to it most closely.

July is already HOT, but I'm trying to be cool.

Soon we will celebrate the invention of Gunpowder. Already it has started, because I live very close to Lego Land where there are fireworks every night around this and the Christmas holidays. I watch them from my patio and don't hear the booms for a couple seconds from across the lagoon.

Of course our nations Big Roman Candle, the NASA Space Shuttle, seemed like a dud, but that's just the weather. I'm all for scientific adventures, but the problem with NASA is that science itself has begun to take a back seat to the "pragmatism of politics." This means that things will be done for the nebulous American Spirit of the thing and even the grandeur of working in the greatest of Gods creations, the Entire Universe, if we can only visit the part immediately surrounding the Earth. [I'm glad it finally made it... dt].

When I was a child the phrase "by the year 2000" was a catch phrase for some utopian future when Space Cities would be floating between the planets like giant cruise ships. Now it is just the grim reality of 2006. Things aren't as horrible as they could ever be, but there certainly is no utopia.

We can barely keep the technical means of achieving such goals within our capabilites. During the time since the man on the moon in 1969 there have been computer enhancements that became cheaper and more powerful. Rockets to the moon are less powerful and more expensive, now that we have "political pragmatism," and that means there are no rockets to the moon.

Sure, we claim that in 2065 such and such will be solved and Windows XP will be a forgotten nightmare in the morph of Gasoline Engines. Somehow I doubt that the bad stuff will go away. We still use Gasoline Engines after a hundred years of noisy, polluting clunkers and I imagine that something akin to Windows XP will be around then, with side doors where different annoying interfaces will force themselves upon you.

But 2065 would be a time when I would be 111 years old. I don't think I'll make it that far. But my granddaughter might be alive then. Will the bare necessities of life drain us of our technical curiosity? Will we become like the Egytians with a somewhat stagnant technology for a thousand years?

It might take all the available energy on the planet to allow a minimum survival rate on the Earth. All the energy is not on the Earth. It is out there, like the Sun, which shines billions of times more light into empty space than what hits our little stony planet. We have energy from nuclear fission in the Earth's core. It might not last much longer than a few million more years. It might get really cold here, or it could get unlivably hot from the ever increasing breakdown of life into greenhouse gases that lead to a Venus-like hell.

But that's some other species' problem, not ours. Let the giant sentient wasps a few million years in the future give it a try.

That's all for now.