Memory Hierarchy

Of course mobile phones are the future of computing. Not that they will replace cars like that pointless leader in the Economist said the other week. But they will store, process and carry what their owners will regard as most important and personal information. They will not be passive terminals (like Sun Ray) but they will have enough smarts to deal with information appropriately with varying degrees of trust and security. Only the shortsighted broadcast-oriented mindset would look at them as another content delivery vehicle -- which has been proven wrong by all those phone-cams, text messaging, flashmob, etc. over the many years.

I just wish that phones would carry larger i/o capacity -- current crop of microphone, camera, camcorder, keypad plus tiny screen and radio is too limiting. At the least, it should sport a virtual keyboard (like this one), lots of i/o ports (for printing and fax) and holographic eyeglasses that you can wear. Or instead of those eyeglasses I'll settle for some ways of hooking up with monitors....

Phones will become quite even more important when they can host their own development ie developers can write code for the phones on the phones themselves without hosting SDK on PCs. Who knows what creative people can come up with when they are given the means to create cool stuff on the go anywhere anytime? We may see a bonanza of new software all new and completely unlike their desktop counterparts. Consumers will then seriously demand safe and secure software after the first phone worms created on a commuter train by a bored hacker hijack their phones.

TODO: consider getting a better & more expensive phone (even though it's almost completely useless in the good ole US of A).

TODO #2: read up on mobile phones. Surely folks more clued in with them phones have written lots more coherent stories about their future.

it's been on my todo list for a long time: http://memoryhierarchy.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I am wildly guessing: Longhorn must've been a huge concern for Macromedia. Look at Longhorn: Avalon, Indigo, WinFS. Anybody can see Avalon and Indigo already exist: they are called Flash and Web services sans Microsoft branding. If Avalon (and Indigo) takes off, Flash is going to become Real Networks.

For several years Macromedia has been pushing to extend its Flash from nice presentation device to data delivery system with its data remoting and GUI with its widgets. In some ways Flash is the only viable cross platform GUI toolkit these days. But unfortunately for Macromedia Flash is bound to browser -- there are standalone Flash players but they have made little impact because Flash widgets look alien as a standalone desktop application even though they look great on barren browser surroundings.

Macromedia has come up with two derivatives from Flash: Flex and Central. Flex is still bound to browser. To put simply, it's a replacement for JSP with Javascript and XML. Supposedly JSP developers are to embrace Flex as "better and improved" JSP with Flash remoting and rich interface. But will they?

Laszlo has been making similar Flash-based technology for a few years but still has gained little backing from developers yet. Incidentally, Laszlo supports Flash 6 and up unlike Flex that requires Flash 7 or up.

What about Central? Central is an attempt to break free from browser and gain a new homestead by itself. It's a souped up standalone Flash player with its own application model. Users of Central gain rich UI for interacting with remote data as before and, as a added bonus, carry on even when there is no network -- Macromedia's spin is that Central supports "occasionally connected computing." Apps live inside Central's container (on the top row there are icons of different apps). Another way of describing it would be: it's Groove-"lite".

Still the Central's story is incomplete at best and many following concerns are unanswered:

• As a developer, would you like your application to live in yet another container? (This even discounts thorny issues about per-seat licensing, revenue sharing, etc.)


• Corporate IT wouldn't like yet another desktop application (even worse, it's an application delivery vehicle) as it adds another security, update, maintenance concerns. They'd rather see Flex.


• If a company were to sell their Central apps, what happens to its branding?


• As a consumer and user, I like Central but I don't find it compelling enough because I already get most of its benefits from plane Flash on browser (which I know how to use). Offline operation could be useful but it is unclear how yet (see below).


• Offline operation means local data storage. Does it mean full file system access or partial, managed access? Either way opens a lot of problems.


• Flash widgets are not native widgets and they stick out in Central setting.


• I don't think anybody has made any headway by offering a desktop-on-top-of-desktop ever.


• Unless one Central instance can talk to another remote Central instance, it's not that interesting, is it? I'll be damned if I have to reinstall apps just because I happened to use a different computer than my usual one.


• Suppose browsers start acting like a fully network aware application i.e. they embed servers. Paperairplane and other such efforts are underway. It's quite easy to create a simple HTTP file server (one line of Python) and it won't be too long before browsers would have a built-in servers (Netscape had full CORBA ORB years ago after all). If this happens before Central evolves, what would be the point of Central?

I am sure many of the questions are already answered somewhere in the Macromedia community and would appreciate pointers. Despite my doubts over Flex and Central, I remain a fan of Flash. (Isn't it interesting Flash is what Java applet should've been but never could be?) I hope Flash won't become Real anytime soon!


Flex/Central architecture description: http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=22204

Flash penetration: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Finally I got to play with it. Cute and pretty. But there are only a few dozen applications so far. It doesn't seem to have traction among Flash developers or anybody else? Apps I've been trying are simple and feels lightweight with rich look and feel as expected.

[update: if you haven't read my follow-up here or read langreiter's take on it too.]

Unexpectely some people were playing cricket in the neighborhood park's baseball field. If children play soccer these days, who knows if their children would prefer cricket over baseball?

"Former Symbionese Liberation Army member James Kilgore was sentenced to six years in state prison Monday for the killing of a suburban Sacramento housewife during an April 1975 bank robbery that netted the would-be revolutionaries $15,000." Considering Patty Hearst got 7 years for the bank robbery (she drove a getaway car), isn't 6 years for second degree murder too short? SLA members were not "would-be" revolutionaries but delusional, self-indulgent murderers, who got off all too lightly thanks to their privileged background. Despite their current display of remorse and regret, they did their best to keep themselves hidden and lead quiet, well-off lives, like the ones they robbed from their victims.

from the 'plex.

of course, identification, disambiguation and reconstruction should be rock-solid before reconciliation can happen. data is inert.

Thanks to my much-traveled brother I found that food is just the same everywhere in the country -- that is if you go out to eat, you get just variants of pre-packaged, processed food heated up. I guess then there are two kinds of people out there -- most people who do not know that much of the food being sold in either restaurants or supermarkets are nothing but canned food and others who know that. (Okay there are more: people who can afford non-processed food and those who cannot; also those who care and those who do not.)

today's lesson: hold it lightly, let it do its work.

Googling for programming language gives: python, language research, java, perl, scheme, more perl, ruby, jvm languages, c++, and mysteriously (but also happily) icon.

Austrians were quite happy to see our current governor elected some months back. Now they are upset at him because he went to Israel and denounced Nazism, among other things. Punchline:

"Schwarzenegger's rise and sudden fall from favor once more focuses on (Austria's) determination to instantly claim as one of their own anyone who earns honors and decorations abroad," [...] "But there is no rule without an exception. Adolf Hitler, the man from Braunau, Austria, was, of course, German."