Build cool web apps. Fast. Free. Easy.
That’s a the marketing phrase for the new OpenLaszlo release out today. Hey, that’s not a bad tag line, marketing-wise. And let me claim by Dilbertian moment in the sun by boasting that I came up with it!
Really truly, if you care about where web technology is going, you should check out the OpenLaszlo 3.0 release. This is going to be big.
Monday last week I had dinner with Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett and had a swell time. We went to The Elephant Walk, which was quite deluxe even though the waiter was a tad stretched thin, and consequently the promptitude of service was sometimes lacking. I had some kind of spicy tofu thing. Also a really rich and handsome chocolate tartish desert.
I actually felt smart for most of the evening, although somewhat self-conscious about the hole in my mouth where a crown had fallen out a few days before.
This article about the discovery, debugging, and patch of a timing glitch on the Mars Pathfinder caught my fancy.
Its system architecture reminded me of the three-bus architecture of Masscomp “real time unix(TM)” machines, which I came to know intimately “back in the day” (84-86) as a side effect of writing the damn ‘theory of operations’ manuals for it. And anyway, as any of y’all as have read the first page of my Acts of the Apostles knows, I think the discovery-and-debugging of timing glitches is inherently interesting.
Outer space and spacecraft and actual hardware are Gary’s beat around Wetmachine, so here’s my respects, gov’nuh.
By the way, Google came up with an article on the Masscomp architecture but you need an ACM membership to read it so I’m not bothering with it, as my account has expired. If anybody has a Masscomp architecture diagram lying about, kindly post a link.
Dear Wife tells me that our veternarian finally came out and told her she was offended by the name of our dog, whom she’s had as a patient for ten years. Our dog’s name is Rosa Barks. She’s a black lab, and her name is obviously an allusion to Rosa Parks the great American patriot and legendary prime mover in the Civil Rights movement. We named our little puppy Rosa Barks twelve years ago, saying, “she’s a very dignified black lady, and she can sit wherever she wants.”
Obviously we knew this name was a little provocative when we chose it. Some people find it offensive. Our vet is sure that Ms. Parks herself would be offended, and perhaps she would be, given her recent lawsuit against the musical group Outkast over their use of her name in a song title.
Rosa Parks is a great hero of me and my wife; in fact, a copy of the very photo of her that adorns the Wikipedia page has also adorned our living room wall for years. But that does not mean I think she’s a god whose name cannot be taken in vain. And I think “Rosa Barks” is a great name for our pet.
The company I work for, Laszlo Systems, has an opening for a software engineer to work on our Rich Internet Application (open source) platform.
I’ve been at Laszlo for two years and I like it a lot. Not only that, and call me a crack-head dreamer if you want to (go ahead! call me that!), but I really think Laszlo is going to transform the web. If you’re a hot-shot programmer you might want to check this out.
My boss has the details on the job.
By way of Slashdot I come across this marketing professor’s test case of bad prose that he uses against grammar checkers.
Actually I thought his paragraph contained some useful insights that I might profitably use in my unending quest to build the brand loyalty and success and memic mindshare of Wetmachine(tm) home of “One-stop-shopping for all your technoparainoia needs(sm).” I’ve modified the text below accordingly.
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Marketing are bad for brand. Wetmachine is good brand. Wetmachine’s is good brand. Wetmachine’s are good brand. Wetmachines’ are good brand. Finance good for marketing. 4P’s are marketing mix. Wetmachine use marketing mixes for good marketing. Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets make good brand. Gates do good marketing in Wetmachine. Gates build the big brand in Wetmachine. The Gates is leader of big company in Washington. Warren Wetmachine do awesome job in marketing. Wetmachine eat Wetmachine.
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I spoke with Douglas Hofstadter for about an hour yesterday. That was kinda cool. I’m still hoping that he’ll participate in the mashup of my Cheap Complex Devices, but I ain’t going to count on it.
Wetmachine is a bit sclerotic of late (content wise). Maybe it just needs an emitic or whatchacallit, an enema. Or a little more science. In any event, here’s a link to some earlier work I did towards A General Theory of Everything.
Sample quote:
My theory will not account for the chemical or atomic or subatomic: that’s covered elsewhere (See: scientists). Nor will I deal with cosmic stuff, for that’s too big to be of concern to us. Astrophysicists are on some kind of trip, we’ll agree on that, but what it has to do with you and me and the price of dough nuts is a closed question. So that leaves us with the human scale, that where we live, us’ns, and that’s what my theory shall reconcile, just like Milton, only updated.
Maybe that will be enough to scare some of the other wetmachiners in to action. After all, there’s more where that came from.
Grey goo is what happens when little machines convert everything-there-is into manifold copies of themselves.
Now the nice scientists in England — All-the-England-there-is — are hastening the day!
Well, good show old chap, I must say! Just make sure that they’re British self-replicators and once again the sun shall never set (on the British Empire, &c &c, ).
I went to the theatre last night. At the Vineyard Playhouse, Dr. Yukevich did three short dramatic readings — one story by Joyce, one by Poe and one by his own self. This last was a Monty Pythony tale, and the good doctor, whose regular job is emergency room medicine, proved to be something of a John Cleese. The last time I had seen him it was 11:30 PM at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and he was treating my younger daughter for what turned out to be whooping cough.
I’ve been to the playhouse several times over the last year or so (ever since I got ‘volunteered’ to be an usher). I never want to go but always end up enjoying it, and of course ushers get in for free.
Anyway it got me to thinking. About how a story on the printed page is and is not the same thing as the identical story when acted out by a man in a costume. The words are the same, but what was a story has now become a play. It’s the same thing but it isn’t. Similarly, consider in what ways sheet music is the same as the music performed. You see where this is going. . . unless one snaps out of it, one is going to spend the next N hours lost in idle ontological daydreaming.
But while the uproar has swayed much of the public to Johansson's defense at a time when #genAI is increasingly under scrutiny, this may not quite be an open-and-shut case should she decide to sue . Read the breakdown from @M_F_Rose in her latest article:
The release of @OpenAI's new digital assistant "Sky" stirred controversy after actress Scarlett Johansson alleged that the company had infringed on her rights by using a soundalike voice of hers after she'd declined to voice it herself.
Just saw @MargotSusca fantastic interview with @adamconover about the death of local news at the hands of hedge funds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA A theme I have written about *a lot*. Like this blog post from 2018: https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/we-need-to-fix-the-news-media-not-just-social-media-part-i/ This has been a long time in the making.
I wrote yesterday on the terrifying escalation of antisemitism in Canada, citing events just over past week. Now there is more: last night a firebomb attempt at a Vancouver synagogue. Daily antisemitic incidents is who we are now.
https://www.jewishvancouver.com/important-community-updates-may-20-2024
https://x.com/mgeist/status/1796233336203194446
