2014: Epic

Interesting Brave-New-World-esque prophet/evangelist tech fiction. I love this stuff.

Google OS?

Microsoft Loses Key Windows Architect to Google

Intriguing article, about how Mark Lucovsky, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, responsible for a good chunk of Windows NT and architect of their source control system, has jumped the Gates ship and boarded Google. Also, on his blog, Mark makes some intriguing points about shipping software, indicating some key areas where Microsoft fails and Amazon prevails. (Note, however, his recent qualification.)

All I can say is: "Oh baby." They are developing an OS. Everything points to it.

Not a conventional OS, mind you, but a distributed operating system, which is what I've been dreaming of working on. Tools like Novell Netdrive already make it so that it was transparent whether files are located on our own computers or on a separate server. Communication, transmission, and stuff are all managed by a low-level driver. Well, Google is going to throw software into this picture. They are going to make it transparent where your software is located. Running an app on your own computer, and running it on the network will be the same thing. When you log onto your computer, you will actually just be logging onto the network, and all the resources will be delivered to you through that medium (or your local computer--it makes no difference).

Seriously, everything points to this. The Google Compute project already gave them extensive knowledge and experience with massively distributed computing. They've been developing solid, web-based services like mad, so they know how to do that better than anybody else. Basically, they're just going to combine everything they've been working on in this insanely awesome package. They're going to soup up RPC, DCOM, CORBA, SOAP, and all these insane distributed object models, use the best of them, and combine them all in one beautiful, standards-compliant piece of software wizardry. Oh man.

I watched the recent 60 minutes documentary on Google (downloaded it from a Google Video link, of course), and some people were expressing worries that Google was growing too big, too fast, and all their dozens of projects could potentially come crashing down around them. I was wondering the same thing for a time, but now I see what they are doing--all these individual elements are just modules of the Google OS. They've just been working on one gigantic project this whole time. Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Compute, Google Maps, Google Toolbar (check out beta version 3--it's got direct links to Google Maps, plus pretty sweet translation into multiple languages via Google Dictionary), Google Groups, Google News, Orkut, Keyhole, and on and on--it's all gonna be part of Google OS!

I'm just wondering how (whether) they're going to market this to consumers. It will heavily depend on a broadband connection (oh baby, imagine if they developed a VOIP service too!), so a lot of consumers won't be able to use it. But at least in the business setting it could be phenomenal--Sun had better watch their back. And bleeding edge consumers and techies will no doubt be able to try it out. This will be pretty sweet.

Anyway, I think I know what I'll work on after school. The distributed OS market will be just finding its wings as I graduate--the real name of the game then will be optimizing the OS to run on every platform, and in particular, small wireless devices. Our job is going to be customizing the OS code to seamlessly deliver appropriate versions to whatever device a user is on. Also, the theory of grid computing and networking will be heavily drawn on, as every little computer becomes really known as a resource on the network--not just for file storage, but for processing, communication, and all that. Routing will be revolutionized, as millions of paths for packets will emerge in the grid of machines. Metropolitan Area Networks will find their voice. Personal Area Networks, Home Area Networks (HAMs?).... There's still a lot to work to do on in this large sense, not to mention working on applications like image processing and such, which always have a market, no matter the underlying infrastructure or topology.

Anyway, this is pretty exciting stuff. Sign me up.

Chasing Hats Wayback Archive

Thanks to Richard for pointing this out... the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has some great archives of Chasing Hats (my old online magazine of a few years back). I was pleased to see that they have a lot of our images and everything loading, at least in the most recent archives, giving you nearly the complete look and feel. In June of last year, their archive of the Hat was broken, and it looked pretty horrible and loaded really slowly. But this page loads quickly, looks great, and is all-in-all a phenomenal resource...

...until I get the Hat back online more fully. I hope to see to that a little over spring break.

A Pastor, His Wife, and the Church

A good pastor is a phenomenal blessing to any church. Good pastors lead the flock in example, teach them proper doctrine, exhort them when they are straying, and offer wonderful wisdom in every situation. They preach fine sermons on Sundays, throw parties at their houses, get to know everybody in the church, tell people what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear, minister to the wider community, care for the poor and sick, and generally do all things to edify and encourage the body. I'm not sure there can be a better example of such a pastor than Dean Hellekson, my own pastor.

My Pastor. Pastor Hellekson has always had such an earnest faith in God, for as long as I've known him. He never takes the easy path when he is convicted of the truth. He speaks what needs to be spoken to the church, not simply giving them a rote sermon on what they're comfortable with, never letting us give way to supineness and complacency, as if we've already arrived at our full sanctification. Rather, he's always exhorting us to take the next step, to do that next thing to advance the kingdom, to always be reconsidering our goals, visions, and doctrine, that we would always be living earnestly and faithfully for the truth. He is the epitome of hospitality--his house is renowned for being a place and love and joy, that you can run to anytime, anyday, and have a compassionate ear and a gentle mouth to help you through it. He doesn't just fellowshp with the people who agree with him the most, but is always working on maintaining the unity of the Spirit, building relationships with people who he has the least in common with. He is constantly practicing true religion--he has adopted two orphans from Haiti, he always reaches out to lonely elderly folks, in honor, and is always seeking to maintain the antithesis between the church and the worldly, keeping himself unspotted in conduct, thinking, faith, morality, and all areas. His vision and love for the church are simply infections--he wants to see a glorious church, where people don't get bitter and divisive, where we have such doctrinal and liturgical unity that we can focus entirely on doing glorious deeds together to advance God's kingdom, starting schools, orphanages, seminaries, publishing houses, film studios, restaurants, and all aspects of a full-orbed culture.

My Pastor's Wife. My pastor's wife, Antonia, is also a particularly beautiful saint. Again, for as long as I've remembered, I've been impressed by her earnest faith in God, and her desire to be faithful and honorable in all things. She has such a sweet demeanor to her, gentle and kind, with a heart full of compassion for anybody who is struggling, always striving to serve people and build them up. She did whatever she could with whatever she had to make guests feel comfortable, to make them happy, and to help them relax and enjoy God's goodness. She always has had a love for children, a desire to have as many of her own as possible, and a compulsion to raise them well once she adopted her two awesome orphans, Isaiah and Azaleah. She worked herself to the bone in founding Bucers with Pastor Hellekson, pouring all of her love into every decoration, every piece of furniture, every plan. Everything she has been involved with has been beautified and enriched by her presence. She is simply the perfect example of the Proverbs 31 woman, the Titus 2 woman, and any picture of a godly woman. Her name is sung throughout the church at large, and no such praise is so due.

The Fall. Well, back on Monday, October 25th, 2004, Mrs. Hellekson fell off of a horse and into a coma. Just the Sunday before, the Helleksons had virtually the entire church over to their house, in a glorious time of feasting and celebration, and I don't think any person left unencouraged. Mr. Hellekson had preached a sermon on enduring trials, and persevering, realizing that no situation is so horrible that God won't walk us through it, and give us strength in the day of temptation. We all felt as if we had been through some trials, and yet we were pulling through--I knew I at least had a heightened sense of God's goodness throughout the whole day. And then the next day Antonia fell off of the horse, the whole church fell into prayer and mourning.

The Hope. It was really bizarre at first. The whole church over to the hospital, and then to the Helleksons house every evening, bringing wine and food and Psalms. This whole horrible event happened, and yet a deluge of people rained in from all over, as if to celebrate. We all wanted to focus on God's faithfulness, that God would heal Antonia, that God was good in all His plans and works, and that we all, but particularly Dean, needed to trust God in this. We looked at sweet Mrs. Hellekson lying in her hospital bed, and Dean all red-eyed and puffy faced beside her, and family from Florida and Canada all somber and serious, and yet in the midst of all this, there was a profound sense of joy and hope, knowledge that God was working a mysterious work in this situation, and that it would be a glorious testament to his kindness and goodness once everything played out. Out of sorrow would come gladness, and out of feasting, song.

The Impact. This was a remarkable time, bringing many people renewed hope in Christ, and serving as a powerful testimony to the world. Many people just couldn't understand how Christians could love one another so much, and many began expressing a desire for such a community of their own. Many began rethinking the way of their lives, and many who had been separated were restored and made whole. People from all across the country wrote in, called in, flew in, saying they were praying, fasting, hoping. It seemed as if the whole church was being knit together in a common goal, swords were being beaten into plowshares, and all were uniting to support my pastor and his wife.

The Slow Progress. Antonia began getting better initially, but then a doctor pronounced her brain basically dead, pneumonia set in, her lung collapsed, and it seemed like, if anything, she was getting worse. A little more sobriety began to set in, and we all began to consider what this all meant. How would Dean care for his wife, his children, his pastoral duties, and all this? What would happen to the church? How would we go on with our lives with things changed so dramatically? We still were praying in hope that Antonia would be healed, and we still had the fervor. But we began to wonder what we would do in the meantime. What would Dean do, what would all of us do, while we waited for the Great Physician to come in power and heal our sister? As December rolled around, these questions began to weigh on us quite heavily.

To be continued...

Recent Thoughts on Distributed Computing

So since my last post back in September, I changed my mind about what I was talking about. I think the issue is a whole lot more nuanced than I made it out to be--computer centralization is really a beautiful thing, particularly when you consider distributed computing. Think about it--on an average college campus, there are thousands of faculty, staff, and student computers. For the large percentage of each machine's day, it is merely sitting there idly, burning useless CPU cycles, wasting computation time.

In the old mainframe days, the computer was always in used. In batch-based systems, programs were stacked up in a card feeder (glorious days), and as soon as one job was done, the next would begin. In terminal-based systems, it didn't matter whether any given terminal wasn't being used at any given moment. The terminal was a dumb client, with no inherent computational capacity, and so nothing was being wasted. The real computer, the mainframe, was still being used by other terminals as necessary. The full capability of the system, the system as a whole, was being distributed to tasks as necessary--there was no processor cycle or memory byte that was being wasted, unable to be utilized by a process.

In these days, however, we find thousands of machines sitting around idly. Imagine a system where you launch a program, and it sends processing requests across a network to at least some portion of these thousand machines. Your program runs on your machine, and your professor's machine, and a finance department accountant's machine, and so on. When a computer is merely sitting idly, it is able to be used by other programs, and so more net processor time from the system as a whole is able to be used. Programs that used to take a minute on one machine, could run simulataneously on a dozen machines just like it, and cut their processing time by a twelfth. It would be beautiful.

Now this is, of course, a vague sketch. You can't get an entire one-to-one speedup. There's always communication bottlenecks, which you can solve by speeding up the medium, decreasing data sent, compressing, etc., but they are always still there. There are security and privacy concerns: how can you make sure your computer isn't wide open to crackers, identity thiefs, and other bad people? That will have to be addressed. But in an enterprise setting, this would be a beautiful system: you could buy thinner clients, focus money on networking, and in general lower the bottom line.

What this system is not good for, however, is home users. That's mainly who I was addressing in my previous post. Home users have low-power programs that don't need much CPU time, and more real-time applications that wouldn't work as well in a distributed setting. They have more security and privacy paranoia, and probably couldn't stand the thought of just any old person from around the globe running a program on their machine. (However, SETI@home and Google Compute are just two programs that have achieved significant success in the home domain. The concept can still be applied.)

But a distributed OS in a corporate setting, or a more scientific setting, where the workloads are greater and the networks tighter, would probably be great. There's been a lot of work put into this recently with multi-blade Beowulf clusters and so on. I hope to work on designing and programming more of this in the future.

I Think I'll Start Blogging Again

I might be switching to another domain though. (To be selected.) I really want to experiment with different web developing tools. Test various content management systems, commenting systems, and so on in a real-world environment. I want to write my own tools, and not be bottlenecked by the limits of my web host or publishing system (I'm currently using my personal webspace at Seattle Pacific University, and connecting through Blogger (just use the FTP command in blogger with your SPU ID and password)). That should be great.

For me, I really want comments on my blog. And I don't like Blogger commenting. And my own commenting system broke when the SPU administrators upgraded the server. So the domain will be essential for this.

But, until then, I think I'll just start writing again. Jessie Bates IM'ed me out of the blue, and I realized how out of touch I was with all of my friends online. So I will start writing here from time to time, and getting some dialogue going once again.

Integrated Software and Personal Computers

The big trend in software these days is toward integration, combining the features and capabilities of a diverse set of applications into one clean, all-encompassing super-application. Soon you won't need a popup blocker, a spyware blocker, a virus scanner, a firewall, a history scrubber, and all of these diverse applications--they're all being lumped together. Internet Explorer just got a popup blocker and enhanced internet security, and Windows XP received an integrated firewall. Firefox has popup management, efficient internet history control, and assorted other security enhancements. AOL includes spyware protection, antivirus, popup blocking, and firewall assistance in their recent AOL 9.0 SE. And as things progress, it looks like we'll be seeing more and more condensation of features and such.

But is this a good trend, the unification of software? Personally, I find the simplification and combination a little annoying. Generally the individual tools have more features and capabilities than the all-in-one wowser programs. Windows XP's new firewall doesn't have nearly the capability of products like Zone Alarm or Sygate Personal Firewall--it doesn't have the smarts of the good firewalls. AOL's new spyware program is way simpler than Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy. Sure, the interface might be simplified and you don't have to worry about downloading and configuring so many things, but at what cost?

What is a personal computer? Should a computer be entirely user-friendly, pandering to our every wish and doing everything to make us comfortable? Or should computers actually expect a little work from us, and educate us about how to use them properly? I think that a lot of the viruses and spyware programs and identity theft on the web is fostered by the spirit of user-friendliness where computers just work, and nobody has to think about how to use them. If people get addicted to their one-size-fits-all programs, then they won't be able to think clearly about viruses and other threats, and so they will be blown about by whatevery anybody who might know what they're talking about says. AOL will say, "You're computer is now safe!" but then the hapless user will visit a website with some subversive popup that got through AOL's blocker, claiming, "You're computer is wide open to the internet! Download our scanner for FREE to stop the threat!" And the sly little popup will install its little bit of spyware, and the whole system will be circumvented.

Maybe it's just my techie dream that ordinary people would take a little time to understand software instead of falling prey to these one-stop wonder-products. It's just that I've seen people taken advantage of far too often. They see a popup claiming something and they click ok to it, and suddenly they're calling me asking why their computer is running so slowly and delivering loads of popups to their computer. These integrated products try to solve this problem by blocking the popups--but that doesn't do anything to educate the user; it merely gives them a sense of assurance--they can look at they nice bright "Popups are being BLOCKED" sign and congratulate themselves for knowing what they're doing and being savvy computer users for knowing how to block popups. But this is a false sense of assurance--as soon as the latest popup technique is developed that bypasses AOL's system, the glowing no-popups sign will still be lit, and you will still not be any better off. Which of course is solved by regular updates from AOL--we don't want the consumer to actually think about using the software. "It is a personal computer after all."

But if these software products keep simplifying everything like this, the computers will not be the people's. They will be the software company's, the virus programmer's, the computer consultant's.... The person will be a slave to the computer, and to the people who actually understand it. Until software companies and consultants actually begin educating common users, then they will not be helping anything to get better. The personal computer itself was an escape from impersonal computing, the days where computers were in specially cooled rooms maintained by the professionals, and users had to patiently sit by in their little terminals, waiting for problems to be fixed while thanking the big company for letting them use their computer. The PC let us get our own computer in our own home, and control and maintain it ourself. No more time sharing, or using someone else's printer, or sitting in some silly queue... we had our own machine, our own printers, and we let other people sit in our queues.

But what we see today is the return of the computers controlled by professionals--it's just that now we are the ones paying the cooling and maintenance bills. The supercomputers are still not under our control, and to add insult to injury, they are now in our own homes, and we are paying the costs. The computers belong to the virus writers who turn ordinary people's PCs into robots to launch their attacks against Yahoo, Windows Update, or whoever. Our computers belong to the computer consultant who has all of our passwords, and who tries to fit us into his busy schedule--and expects us to pay him to maintain his own computers. Our computers belong to the leviathan software companies who maintain our computers--so long as we pay the bills. We would be just as well off sitting at our old dusty terminals, connecting to the mainframe, because then at least the big company would be paying the costs.

We shouldn't forget the thrill of getting personal computers for the first time. This powerful machine is now ours. Let's study to see how it works, and how we can take care of it and use it well. Let's not get snookered by these mammoth applications that dumb things down instead of lifting you up. It takes a little work to really make a computer your own. The people who want to make it easy, and a matter of three simple clicks, are the ones who are ripping you off. For the reasonable price of $20.00 a month, they will gladly take control of your computer for you. And so my computer becomes their computer, and the PC becomes the IPC. And all because of a little laziness and little underappreciation of what I had. How pathetic.

A9.com

Amazon.com has recently unveiled their own entry into the search engine market, A9.com. It has a lot of things going for it, and I'm tempted to start using it instead of Google. Not least for the unadvertised 1.57% (pi/2) you get off of purchases at Amazon just for signing into and using their search engine.

Actually, to speak accurately, A9.com isn't a real search engine. They are more of a portal of sorts, combining search results from a variety of other sources. For web search results, they show Google's results, but the fun doesn't stop there. For any query, you can seamlessly search Amazon.com, imdb.com, Google Images, and your own personal search history in the same window. You can make notes about assorted websites, bookmark various sites, and it will all be stored online to be accessed at any computer. Also, it records your web browsing and search history if you have their toolbar installed, which can be quite useful for those times when you can't remember what you searched for to find a specific website--for each website, it indicates whether you've visited it, and when.

Anyhoo, I'm pretty impressed with this system. I've always liked Amazon before, but I like them even better now. Check them out, if only to get 1.57% off purchases at Amazon (you'll know you're getting the discount if you see the pi/2 indicator at the top left of Amazon pages).

The Point of Stories

There is this lurking idea that keeps reappearing around me, that is, that stories shouldn't have a point. I see a movie or read a book and I'm analyzing its assorted qualities and what its message is, and somebody stops me and says, "Whoa, maybe you shouldn't be forcing a point on the story. Maybe the story is the point."

But what is that supposed to mean? What is a story without the effects it has on people? Ok, the story is the point... let's run with that.... Should stories make us laugh or cry, or make us long for something or hate something? If the story itself is the point, then shouldn't we just listen with no emotion, or not even listen or tell stories at all, but let the story just exist in our souls, without those pesky emotions to get in the way of its true storyness?

I'm being absurd here, of course, but I'm going somewhere with it. People would say in response to this, "Ok, the story is the point, but what I mean by that is the story with all of its emotional drapings and everything. Just forget about all of those 'messages' or 'points' or 'morals of the story.'" And this is logical, and what they meant when they first said it, but often it seems to just be an empty saying that people repeat to avoid thinking. "What do you think about this story?" "Oh, I don't think anything about it. I just enjoyed it. It's all good. The story is the point." And what is annoying about this is that your question is turned around on you, and suddenly it is as if you yourself didn't properly appreciate the story because you were trying to figure out the underlying moral messages and such. And you bluster that of course stories have points, and the other guy turns back to his leftover popcorn, and so you settle for shallow, ordinary little commentary. "Wasn't that song great?" "Yeah!" "I loved how they threw those two scenes together." "I know!" And on and on, enjoying the story in and of itself, so to speak.

But the problem here is not that some stories don't have a point; it's that some people don't want to find the point. Stories need to be appreciated in many ways. The aesthetic, musical, poetic, emotional appreciation is one good thing that these people can easily have in common. Even people looking for messages in movies don't want some dumb obvious little morality tale--they want mystery and suspense and grandeur. That's just good storytelling. But stories need also to be understood and loved intellectually, spiritually, ethically, and so forth. If you don't look at a movie like Lost in Translation, and ask the questions about what is shows about adultery, or what it can teach us about going on little adventures, then we are left with the shallow, thoughtless, lackluster, parochial appreciation of just the funny parts, the soundtrack, and the filmography. If you don't watch a movie like Being John Malkovich and say, "Wow, that really had a horrendous confusion of gender and sex," then you are left saying monotonous things like, "Just enjoy the story." Ok... that was what I was trying to do, in its most full-orbed sense--it may have a little aesthetic charm and clever plot arrangement, but its horrible take on other issues really ruined the movie for me.

The bottom line is, full appreciation of stories always involves analysis of the ideas expressed in them, because stories always express these ideas--stories always have a point. Sure, you can get too caught up in philosophical problems with a movie, but these philosophical questions need always be dealt with. If you don't consider the questions, the inherent ideas and messages in the movie will actually begin to affect you. You have to point out and understand the error to avoid it. And this itself can produce a great appreciation of the movie. If you just watch the movie to watch the movie, then you can have this lurking doubt in the back of your mind about the philosophy of the movie that you have to keep pushing back, because you're unwilling to think about it. But thinking through the assorted considerations produces richness, and suddenly you can see the whole story, how the aesthetic touches tie in with the moral message, how the plot expressed in the music enhances and enrices the inherent philosophy, and so forth. Even understanding the problems with a movie can help you enjoy its benefits.

But certainly thinking about good movies can help you appreciate them even more as well. Those who can simply enjoy It's a Wonderful Life as a nice, warm Christmas story can only enjoy it at that level, and eventually they may begin to think it cheesy or sentimental. But thinking it through, and understanding the glory of sticking to your own small town and small group of friends, and working through tough times, and seeing the hope in the midst of adversity, can really enhance the story for you, making you see the bells, angels' wings, and carols in a newer and richer light.

So stories have points, and to appreciate them well we need to look for them, and understand them in their whole context. If all people mean by saying "the story is the point" is that we need to understand the aesthetic beauty of stories and not be so closed-minded as to see nothing but morals, then I can heartily say "AMEN!" But if they are being so closed-minded as to see nothing but aesthetics, then I say these people need to begin appreciating the philosophical depth of stories. The story's point is the point.

Lost in Translation

In response to Josh's question about Lost in Translation. At first I was going to argue that this wasn't an adulterous movie, but now I think it is, yet in a different way than most adulterous movies. An adulterous movie is one where sleeping around is portrayed as glorious, and where being unfaithful is portrayed as ok if your spouse is a jerk. But most of these movies pull it off in this way: there is an obvious attraction between two people, and suddenly the director cuts to a nice pillowy scene, with lots of sheets discreetly placed, and shoulders arch as the music intensifies, and all that, and then it moves on to a nice peaceful afterglow scene, and even if they split up and don't get married there is that nice, warm, we'll-always-have-Paris feeling all around. "We had some good times, right?" "Right."

And this stupid stuff is always thrown into the best movies. My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Everything is nice and happy and funny and then WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! we are encouraged to believe that (HAHA!) fornication is warmly comedic as well. Message in a Bottle: Nice sailing action, interesting romantic struggles and twists, and then the soothing music smoothly whispers, "Forget your problems: fornicate." What the heck is up with all this?

But Lost in Translation was a different form of on-screen adultery. The main characters didn't actually sleep together, which was actually rather refreshing. I was expecting that at any moment those laidback, watching-tv-on-the-other-guy's-bed moments would turn into more than just laidback, watching-tv-on-the-other-guy's-bed moments. The suprising thing was that they didn't. All throughout the movie there is that tension, but they don't release it and get rid of it in the way of characters in lots of other movies. Which was intriguing, and less shallow than other movies often are.

However, Lost in Translation was as dangerous as any in its portrayal of adultery. The temptation is to look on these poor lonely souls--one married to a woman who is too busy and efficient to care for him, and the other married to a man who doesn't include her in his life--and think that all is well, and they are laughing together, and clearly being reasonable about their feelings for each other and not letting them get carried away. And to some extent that is legitimate: it's just telling a story about two people who are stuck in bad relationships, and the struggles they go through as a result. And this is real, and is portrayed realistically, so it's telling the story well. But the problem is that the movie doesn't indicate that this really is adultery and it really is bad. In the end, they both are cheered up by the whole encounter, and they both are more understanding and loving to their separate spouses, and so the message seems to be that a little extramarital relationship here and there doesn't really hurt anything, so long as you don't let it get physical, and that it can actually help matters. Which is not right.

I guess it all boils down to how you want to tell stories. One approach is to tell stories just to tell stories. Interpreting and moralizing them kills their poignancy and beauty. Nobody wants to be bashed over the head with silly morals, when they really want a story. And that is a real risk, and a lot of stories are just boring if they have this looming message or point. But at the same time, if you don't interpret the story or suggest what's really going on, it is also lacking. Lost in Translation told its clever little story of culture clash, adultery, and mid-life crisis, but it didn't go anywhere--it ended with a couple quick kisses and some credits. So... what was the whole point? Should there be a point? I think so.