The STEPS project is setting out to create “Moore’s Law Software”: a high-risk high-reward exploratory research effort to create a large-scope-and-range software system in 3-4 orders of magnitude less code than current practice.

This is new from Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute.

From the archive:

"Thinking" is a higher category than "just" math, science, and the arts. It represents a synthesis of intuitive and analytical approaches to understanding the world and dealing with it.

STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming

Decius wrote:
HD-DVD or BlueRay?

I'll probably buy a bluray player in the form of a ps3 this summer. I'll consider buying a standalone dual-format player when they become available (winter?). My prediction is that dual-format players will end the format war; consumers don't want to bet on one or the other.

Hopefully, this will be the last generation of fixed-format stuff that has to be set in stone for 20 years and there will be enough network in a few more years that we can just ship the stuff around that way instead of on silly plastic discs.

RE: Survey Question

I have long been intrigued by the question of how do we turn the internet into a lifeline grade infrastructure.
My hope that this will occur soon or even within decades is diminishing.

Are We Slowly Losing Control of the Internet?

Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the "processing key" from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc.

Boing Boing: Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted

Steve Jobs on the future of DRM...

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Hitachi has reached a milestone in tech's continuing arms race, announcing today that it will sell the first 1-terabyte hard drive.

It finally happened.

TECH CHRONICLES / A daily dose of postings from the Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)

When I started interviewing programmers in 1991, I would generally let them use any language they wanted to solve the coding problems I gave them. 99% of the time, they chose C.

Nowadays, they tend to choose Java.

Now, don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with Java as an implementation language.

...

Instead what I'd like to claim is that Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers. It may be a fine language to work in, but that's not today's topic. I would even go so far as to say that the fact that Java is not hard enough is a feature, not a bug, but it does have this one problem.

The Perils of JavaSchools - Joel on Software

Intel was first out of the gate with a quad-core processor, AMD will offer the first native quad-core chip - four processors that are integrated in one piece of silicon. The company today offered a first glimpse at a 4-way, quad-core Opteron processor system during its annual analyst conference.

AMD demonstrates first native quad-core CPU | TG Daily

Vista's fun run-in with CableCARD started earlier this year when we all found out at CES that they had every intention to finally make Windows (specifically Vista Home Premium and Ultimate) work with your CableCARD setup.

Analog video capture is sounding better and better!

Vista unable to stream, convert CableCARD media - Engadget

Wow!

What I want for Christmas