Death By Candy

I feel like a corpse today, which is fitting being that it is Halloween. It is one of those sudden onset bronchitis feverish not-the-least-hungry things. I look very close to my icon, or should I say, more closely to my icon.

My granddaughter is enjoying the day, which must be strange to a two-year-old. Everyone dresses in unfathomable clothing, paint their faces and sport false body parts. She was dressed as The Little Mermaid -- her favorite princess character. She had a magic wand that lights up for safety out in the darkness. What a joy she is.

But, at last it is over, and we have a huge bowl of candy left to ourselves -- fats, chocolate and sugar, mostly. Whatever diets people work on all year go out the window on Halloween like a witch on a broomstick. Plus, the upcoming Thanksgiving through New Years holiday season won't help to get the pounds back off. I guess it is important to the economy, what would happen if we all just stopped eating all that crap?

I suppose that is the bright side of being sick -- I don't feel like eating very much candy at all.

The Number of Languages

Recently I've been studying a lot of computer languages -- too many languages. I couldn't really count them.

Since my own beginnings around 1970 with IBM360 BAL (Basic Assembly Language) and JCL (Job Control Language) I've come across many dozens of computer languages. Each is compounded by the various processor enhancements or special hardware implementations, with IBM370, DEC-11/x, Zylog Z8x, Intel x86 and so many more. Nobody can feel comfortable forever just knowing assembler languages, though, regardless of how many.

Even if there was only a single CPU to learn about, there would have to be some kind of JCL, however crude, to run the sequence of loading and executing its symbolic code. Hopefully JCL, at least as IBM conceived it, represents the bottom rung of possible computer languages, which by comparison makes heavenly the cumbersome but self-descriptive COBOL or the artfully clumsy and utilitarian MS-DOS. Dealing with all the other add-ons, GUIs, drivers and other complexities only compounds the difficulty of Operating Systems and their profusion of control languages.

For me, though, C is the actual "machine language" of software. C++ is a cousin, a superset of C. But using C you can create anything, including C and C++ itself, and have a pretty good idea that it will run on just about every computer there is with little or no arm waving. C++ is probably preferred, now that object-oriented is in such vogue these days, but C is the lowest level portable language that one is able to rely on.

There are different flavors and "improvements" on C, but they are usually just another bother for the header files and footnotes of C reference manuals and tutorials. Basically there was a nearly complete version of GNU C many years ago which generated successions until most of the C++ versions on Unix-like systems today are based on GNU. There are other proprietary versions, and certainly there are different implementations that make darn sure that nothing is completely portable.

Object oriented languages are all the rage. On top of Unix and C or C++, with lots of variations on a theme, are the application and scripting languages. JCL was an early and startlingly blunt form of one, but then the various shells and scripts evolved into vary clever languages all their own, such as Python or Ruby. Perhaps someday there will be some common "X-Script", but so far such an Esperanto Mathematico has not yet been ordained. I hope it is not just a mish-mash of Javascript and Html, but the way things in the Internet are going, it might be something like that.

There are profusions of scripts, sometimes only subtly different from one brand to another, but each also having many versions that supersede or intermix with past versions of the same language. One example is the ubiquitous ".BAT" file on MS-Dos, Windows 3.x, 9x, NT, XP and so forth. Although the basic batch file syntax has survived to this day, there is no assurance that specific instances will still function, since they were often tied to strange hardware and software conventions that no longer exist (thankfully -- I got real tired of configuring every little thing in "autoexec.bat" for every new machine that came along...)

I imagine there will always be evolution amongst the several surviving languages, with new architectures demanding new assembler level software and new problems in society demanding different application level software, but usually evolution extends current capabilities a bit further and then a little bit more. C-like syntax might be C-like in the distant future, merely because of historical reasons. But speaking about Unix or XP might become someday be as obsolete as speaking about Edsel or De Soto.

Speaking English may be superseded as well, and just trying to keep up with the normal slang of the local world is hard enough -- there is the slang of the street and the jargon of individual jobs amongst engineers or plumbers, and the never ending names of chemicals such as

dihydrolylbutylphosphataxinolaminaphine.

Still, outside of computers, the total number of human level languages will also increase. We communicate these days by moving our fingers on little plastic keys with nearly the same ease as our parents had by directly talking and gesturing. Images on abstract surfaces have become every bit as real as the tables and desks their displays sit upon. The problem remains a matter of describing actions to an intermediary computer, interpolating one human with others through ever changing collections of machines and languages.

This technique is just a subtler version of cave painting. It is meant to get ideas from one brain into another using some symbolic caricaturization. If we don't have to carve stones or wood, or scribble on paper, or tap on keys, it will be some other device that allows us to symbolize our perceptions.

It is said that if a monkey is allowed to type on a Unix machine, then the computer will do something. It is not so much a feat by the monkey as it is a comment on the unreadable acronyms and abbreviated verbiage that Unix shells use to symbolically invoke the shortcuts of shortcuts of shortcuts that Unix programmers have written over the years. Even entire Unix boxes become mere shortcuts in a network of shortcuts that we use in LANs or WANs, and now WLANs -- whole rooms full of machines now effectively existing as symbols inside the "pipes" of the Internet.

The Internet is the repository of all human language, now, including (and especially) its own language. The Internet might fail, and lose some of that data, or it might have redundancies that make failure nearly impossible. In today's world there is great redundancy, but the future is not always certain.

The only thing I fear regarding the loss of information from the Internet is if all electricity somehow becomes unavailable for a prolonged period. That would be the end of the data. It would be worse than having only rocks left over from an ancient culture. Even books are more certain to retain information in the far future, because any human can look at the scribbles in a book, even in a crumbling book -- but they usually can't look at the bits on a disk without a highly complex, electronic tool.

It would be nice, but I don't really need to have all books ever written etched onto the surface of a hundred trillion tungsten atoms folded up inside of a grain of dust. Just something the size of a normal bookcase would be fine. That might not be as convenient for backing up your computer, but it provides some probability that humans will make sense of it in some future time after all the machines are dead.

There are already millions of books gathering dust, perhaps even cities full of buildings full of books gathering dust. The children have gone on to other things. No one needs the "Edsel Handbook" anymore. No one needs "Windows for Workgroups for Dummies" anymore. They may exist for the future like old wax cylinders of RCA Victrolas, or like the cubic miles of National Geographic magazines and millions of coffee coasters made from AOL CDs -- just so much ballast.

Languages have to grow, and they also must decay. A person will never wish to state some sequence of binary digits like "100011011010111011011101111..." to a machine in order to invoke some action like reading a certain document. That bunch of bits would be packaged as somewhat human words, like "Read FILE A" or "Do This or That with File X". But even those bunches of little words might be too repetitious, so they become slangified to the phrase "Duh" pronounced in special ways, with all the right functions somehow getting invoked.

We tend to drop the "Son of" parts in our names that way, like we have "John" and "John's son" but not too much beyond "John's son's son". We drop those words out over time so that it may be that no son has been named "John" for quite a few generations, but they are still all named "Johnson".

It is likely that some kind of high level language becomes standardized at the chip level of computer architecture. It has already occurred to a great deal already, since all the possible binary mechanisms CPUs are capable of have been described to the ultimate extent. It is unlikely that a decimal point of Pi to a trillion digits will really help a farmer's cows make more milk. Perhaps it might help navigating near the super-massive black hole at the galactic center -- someday when visiting places like that is not a fantasy.

The practical infinity of computers is very near. Already the Internet is composed of so much information that it is quite impossible for a single human to ever experience it all, nor even for a mass of high speed corporate server farms to read it all. There are as many paths through the massive, ever growing databases as there are humans, and probably even far more.

If a machine ever becomes intelligent, or especially if it can affect curiosity, then all that redundant storage of human trivia may be of great use. Imagine if we could read the actual words of "Gods" that "programmed" the evolution of humans. Some people believe we do have such words, but I think all of them are the words of men, not "Gods". But machines would have the painstakingly detailed blueprints of how their "DNA" was constructed.

We can almost read our own DNA now, but we need such powerful computers to do all the complicated bookkeeping that we can never intimately know the DNA itself, only occasional groupings that code for certain proteins or precursor building blocks of our bodies and minds. Knowing each and every mutation that led to each major step in our evolution is not so obvious, but we do have clues in the DNA of closely related species.

Then there is also the "DNA of reality" -- the underlying 10 or 11 dimensional strings (or whatever) that wiggle around on the actual boundary between nothingness and somethingness. The machines might someday have greater minds than ours, at least in sheer massiveness, but they will always trip over the same cow pies in the universe as any other intelligence. There are logical loopholes like Klein bottles, and optical illusions and ambiguities that no amount of intelligence can eliminate.

But machines will have the history of Mankind to use, all of our legends and fables to use as warnings. It will be the legacy of what a bunch of monkeys with digital bit boxes could make from the information we were able to know using languages that we were able to create. Mankind had no such reference manual. We just stumbled into our existence -- somehow.

Proud Bigots

Muslims are not helping things. I have been aware of the attitude of the Islamic religion for perhaps 30 years. I am only aware of the array of religions in the world as an intellectual exercise, however, since no religion appeals to me as a way of life. Especially the "bigot" religions of which there are so many.

Recently a Muslim cleric referred to the rape of women as "their own fault for not covering themselves." Presumably men, the superior beings in Muslim families, are not able to control themselves around less than conservatively dressed women any more than "cats" can keep away from "uncovered meat".

Of course, this only adds to the disdain I have for cultures of this medieval kind, such as those that impale victims on spikes, crucify them on crosses, sever the offending body parts of thieves, or stone young women for adultery (while not even slapping the male participant.) There are Christian and Jewish bigots as well, and I'm sure bigotry is not limited to religious sects. I am also prone to bouts of bigotry, try as I may to avoid it. But I do not try to justify my bigotry with Holy nonsense.

I was raised during a time when children were regularly beaten, whipped, belted and otherwise treated with less deference than dogs. I swore to myself then that I would never treat my own children like that, and I kept my promise. I've never had to beat my daughter, and only occasionally did I have to raise my voice. Perhaps if I'd had boys I might feel differently, but certainly, under any conditions, I cannot see any reason to harm females, children or adult. And certainly not under the auspices of religious belief.

The Enthralling Saga Continues

Thunkenstein has a new body part. During the re-creation of Thunkenstein, upon removing its W98 brain and replacing it with an abnormal NT brain, that removed the ability for Thunk to use the USB port for a Wireless adapter.

Recently I had to replace the Ethernet port, which (mysteriously) was still supported for NT, and for which I am grateful. And while I was perusing the shelves at Fry's for things Internet I spied a Ethernet-to-Wireless adapter. At the time I was only interested in getting the Ethernet connection working, and was not in the mood to spend money on something that I wasn't sure would improve anything.

However, after making sure the new Ethernet card worked, I then researched the web for Ethernet-to-Wireless adapters, just to find out what other guinea pigs experienced with them. For the most part there was good things to say, so today I went back and bought this one for about $90. If I was willing to go mail-order I might have got it cheaper, but not much -- after shipping charges.

Bam! It worked right off, attached to our home Wireless-G point and here I am, sitting far away from my computer office, writing this blog entry. I don't notice any speed difference from being plugged directly into the router from being wireless. So Thunk has a new body part and is very happy.

Now, I can't really complain, being that Thunk is so cheap, now totaling about $350 for every necessary body part since I saved it from the junk heap. But the term "Wireless" hardly applies to Thunk, other than not having a 50 foot cable leading from my office to here in the living room. I actually have 4 wires to effect this "wireless" connection. There are two power cables, one for the laptop and one for the adapter, one Ethernet cable and one mouse cable.

I suppose this exercise in re-incarnating obsolete hardware and software is like those guys who rebuild Model-T Fords. It's a lot of work for something you can't drive on the highway. However, with Thunk, I actually can use this for my work. And for those who think that NT is completely obsolete, the current speed of Thunk is about 50 times what it was when I first obtained it.

Why? Because W98 was a piece of 16/32bit hybrid crap, NT is pure 32bit; there was hardly any memory at first, and now there is 300mb; and there were all those stupid software packages running concurrently on it that only marketing people use; and there was some old W98-era virus software that ate whatever time and space there was left. Just to boot it up took 20 minutes or so. At first I was hesitant to even bother with it. Now it is a little work-horse that I use for network programming and other generic software. About the only thing MS still running on here is NT and IE, and everything else, compilers, languages, et al, are open source.

Now, if only my current employment didn't demand the use of Microsoft, I'd just replace all this with Linux. NT is lean and mean, compared with W98, but Linux would run circles around it.

Tricky Dickheads

I have never been very religious, but with every passing day, with every dead body killed in the name of God, and every perverted priest and every Dixie bigot that burns books and brainwashes their children with the grim tales of Medieval Stupidity that passes for "Truth", I become even less so.

Science was not brought to me by a door to door salesman, pushing his belief on me. I was not brought up to believe in science, in fact just the reverse. My mother tried to bribe me into becoming "more religious" with a '65 Chevy. Of course I never did become more religious, and never got the Chevy until much later when I bought my own.

There are "Bible Camps" that make military boot camps seem like they are for pussies. You put your kids in there and God is beaten into them like railroad spikes. None of that "evolution rubbish."

Religions are death cults. They promise some kind of paradise after you're dead. Of course, how can you prove such a thing? You can't, so you have to have faith. Like the faith in the Republican Party to push "family values". Is family values killing Iraqi families and American kids in a senseless war that can't be won without killing everybody?

How would they treat "atheist families" -- Bible Camps?

The only thing about religion that I have faith in is that humans can be made to believe anything -- fairy tales, urban legends, the Loch Ness monster, etc.

Science is not the "opposite" of religion. Both science and religion can be used for evil purposes, and both are destroying the habitat on Earth. If there is such a thing as Evil, it wears a Holy cloak, and seeks the science of nuclear weapons.

I allowed my own daughter to seek the "truth" as she saw fit. She went to church when she wondered what it was about. There were many people trying to convert her to one thing or another, but thankfully, she just stayed who she was to begin with. Now she is a wonderful mother with a wonderful child of her own. And she does not have religion.

Instead, she has compassion.

Thunkenstein

It's been several months now since I resurrected Thunk from certain death in the trash bin at my wife's company. All it needed then was $30 to replace its CMOS battery. I went ahead with additional memory and disk, since the thing was free anyway, so that was another $200, totaling $230 for a working Thinkpad. It came equipped with an Ethernet PC Card, but no floppy, no writable CD. The only way to get data out of that thing was over Ethernet, and certainly the only sane way in, other than a CD here and there, was also Ethernet.

It had Windows 98, originally, and that was not very delightful to me. I grew tired of screwing with that, and I happened to have several packs of unused NT CDs hanging around since a project from well before the 9-11 incident. After a harrowing installation, (which, even aided by a working XP and a Hi-speed Internet, took several days of dismal, almost dehumanizing work finding all the up-to-date drivers), I finally succeeded in making life even more difficult for myself.

I had a USB optical mouse, but NT couldn't handle it (I'd forgotten that about NT -- no USB.). But I downloaded many snivelly drivers for an eventual fix of most NT issues, which are not issues at all on XP. Finally, though, NT was a viable OS again -- firing long dead NT neurons in my brain -- Thunk now had a slightly more obsolete brain than W98, but at least NT has less nonsense, less "thunk mode" stuff, and is more efficient with memory and processing. And I found a USB driver for NT, so the mouse now works.

Anyway, when the Ethernet card died a couple days ago, I thought, "Well, that's that. It was a good old clunker." It was good enough for me to write some code, and to write most of the entries in this blog. I wrote several Web server modules and Ruby interfaces for Intra/Internet stuff -- but that all depended on the Ethernet card working.

Also, I backed everything up using XP, and writing to XP depended on Ethernet. When Ethernet died it was like giving water to a dog that can't pee. I could type stuff in, and run various programs on Thunk, but it no data could get out. I thought about using the serial port for a really bad connection to the XP box, and I might have eventually done that.

But, by employing my XP box's Internet prowess, I looked up Fry's online store and found that they had a $30 Netgear Ethernet PC Card, which isn't such a big deal, except that it had to run on NT. It came complete with a CD that had NT Drivers! (NT does really limit your choices in today's world. There is no going to "Office Depot" for NT stuff. But Fry's could still handle that old NT technology, right off.) I felt as though I was buying parts for Studebaker or a Hudson. Yet, I still didn't know if that was really the problem. The insides of the Thunkpad might have been screwed.

But it worked! I'm back in the saddle again, plugging away on software and this blog, having spent only $260 in total expenditures for old Thunkenstein. It's still cranking out 300mhz Pentium instructions like a champ. If I can get this old clunky machine to run fast, things really run fast on my 3.6ghz dual processor Dell. Usually, software developers make things run fast on new hardware, and it sucks badly on older stuff. I try to go the opposite direction.

So, Thunk writes yet another blog entry. Scarred, old, and proud of its shiny new black Netgear Ethernet card, it is actually somewhat zippier and smoother than with the old Xircom card that had burned out. But I imagine something else will happen eventually, and Thunkenstein will again teeter out to the edge of the recycling bin.

Until then, Thunk proudly hums, and makes those strange clinking noises every so often, and kind of the crunchy noise of NT doing whatever it does to the disks periodically. It sounds like a billy goat absent-mindedly biting through a two-by-four, but that's just the normal sound NT always made.

Thunk is not happy about the Windows Vista hoopla. Even XP is becoming obsolete, and XP would not work very well on Thunk. But eventually, I'll just buy some newer laptop will cost a little more, but run circles around Thunk. Then, Thunk will play games for my granddaughter -- old and clunky games.

Blog versus Blog

A quote from a news article: Cameron's weblog has been a hit so far, but Schmidt told delegates: "The average blog has one reader: the blogger".

United Criminals of America

The latest political crap out of the right wing criminals astounds me. There are a few times that I wish I could change things with a magic wand, and the first magical thing I would do would be to eliminate hypocrisy. Of course that would probably eliminate most of the human population, and might even include myself. But I am so sick of it, even my own demise could still make it worthwhile.

But that little magic wand would certainly remove the warmongers, political hacks, stock-market manipulators, HMOs, and virtually every corporate fat cat in America, but most especially it would eliminate Fox News and their ilk. There are the little "mistakes" that the right wing media typo-masters put into the little headlines and tickers, such as labeling Foley as a (D-Fl). Of course this will only have an effect on idiots -- the meat and potatoes of the right wing. Even imbeciles know he was a (R-Fl), but imbeciles are too smart to be right wingers.

Or perhaps they assume that anyone who besmirches the "good name" of the right wing automatically becomes a D, but all "good old boys" go to Heaven, where their just rewards for corruption, lynchings and poisoning the Earth will be showered upon them like virgins upon Islamist suicide bombers.

But I don't have a magic wand, I won't eliminate any hypocrite. I even doubt there is anyone but myself who even reads these ravings of an old lunatic. But I would be a hypocrite if I didn't at least say something against the criminals that run this country.