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Discussion of the Essence# programming language, and related issues and technologies. |
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If you want or need an excuse for your beer habit, here ya go:
Drinking every day chases heart disease away in men only: study from PhysOrg.com
Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease among men but women who indulge less frequently enjoy the same benefits, according to a study published Friday in the British Medical Journal.
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New Tools for a Nanotechnology Workshop from PhysOrg.com
Until recently, nanoscale devices could only be crafted through chemical reactions or by pushing components together on a smooth surface. Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have developed and demonstrated practical tools allowing the precise manipulation and assembly of complex, three-dimensional nanomachines.
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Nano World: Invisibility through nano from PhysOrg.com
Invisibility cloaks that bend light might develop using nanotechnology, experts tell UPI's Nano World.
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Scientists Predict How to Detect a Fourth Dimension of Space from PhysOrg.com
Scientists at Duke and Rutgers universities have developed a mathematical framework they say will enable astronomers to test a new five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
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Craig Latta, speaking for the board of the Squeak Foundation, made the following announcement today to the Squeak-Dev mailing list:
Hi all--
Thanks to long-running efforts by folks at Viewpoints Research Institute, Apple Computer and elsewhere, Apple has given Viewpoints permission to make a release of the original public Squeak system using the Apple Public Source License[1].
Squeak 1.1, with an APSL2 license, is available here:
http://squeakland.org/installers/Squeak1.1-APSL.zip
The Squeak Foundation board would like to thank the above groups for making this happen, and everyone else for being so patient!
And now we live in interesting times. This only applies to the original release of Squeak (version 1.1 of 23 September 1996); we now have a choice between APSL2 and the original Squeak License[2] for that release. We need to decide what to do about subsequent code, and code written by third parties. We might choose to rewrite some things so as to create a better licensing situation. We probably want to have a policy whereby contributors agree to grant a particular license to their work explicitly before we can accept it.
How shall we proceed with future releases of Squeak? Let's discuss it.
thanks again,
your Squeak Foundation board
[1] http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/2.0.txt
[2] http://www.squeak.org/SqueakLicense
--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
Joseph Moore has some nice things to say about Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk:
Ah, there it is -- These are Old Dudes! I love Old Dudes! And I really love Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk! I was nurtured, sculpted, and brainwashed by Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk from my very first day as a professional programmer, and they universally "get it". Young whipper-snappers out there, take note: if you ever here some Old Dude say the words "in Smalltalk you could blah blah blah" or "In VisualWorks you could yada yada", spend as much time with this person as possible. You will learn more from them about software development than the Young Dude who only wears black and thinks that the bash shell is "too bloated".
And what does "get it" mean? Maybe I'll get into that some other time (it will be ugly, as this is one are where I am very opinionated), but the important thing is this: these guys don't come from the school of web scripting hackery in vi, they come from the land of building real enterprise applications, where real tool support is appreciated. And at this point in the Ruby IDE game, I'd place my bets on them to produce the first a truly usefully development tool.
Bob Nemec, the new director of STIC, recently made a point in a blog post that echoes a point I made recently on the Squeak-Dev mailing list.
Excerpt from what I said (e-mail sent Wed, 17 May 2006 -0700):
"Those of us `old timers` who went through the learning curve on Smalltalk years ago no longer clearly remember what it was like, nor what the conceptual stumbling blocks were. We have now fully internalized the `Smalltalk way,` and don't really grok why newcomers don't instantly realize why its so superior.
I think our attitude is wrong, even if we're `right.` We absolutely should enable more `traditional` approaches for doing Smalltalk programming. If the Mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the Mountain."
"We had a rare sighting at last night’s meeting: a couple of Smalltalk newbies. One of them, Chris, was very willing to talk about his frustrations in getting into Smalltalk, which he’s been looking at for only a few weeks. He’s a webmaster with an interest in Seaside. In his opinion, the Smalltalk community presents a significant barrier to entry by coming across as arrogant and aloof. It was difficult defending some of his criticisms; in many ways, he was right. I had thought those days were behind us.
He made some very good points. Basically, we don’t provide the baby steps needed to learn our environment. There are virtually no easy to find introduction materials on the web for people poking around with Smalltalk for the first time. The fact that Smalltalk was able to do things 15 years ago that some languages struggle with today is irrelevant to him. He wants to learn, not be preached to."
New laser technique that strips hydrogen from silicon surfaces from PhysOrg.com
A team of researchers have achieved a long-sought scientific goal: using laser light to break specific molecular bonds. The process uses laser light, instead of heat, to strip hydrogen atoms from silicon surfaces, a key step in the manufacture of computer chips and solar cells.
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Selectivity of this kind could provide a way to control the growth of nanoscale structures with an unprecedented degree of precision, and it is this potential that most excites Cohen. "By selectively removing the hydrogen atoms from the ends of nanowires, we should be able to control and direct their growth, which currently is a random process," he said.
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Clocking events at the nanoscale from PhysOrg.com
As scientists and engineers build devices at smaller and smaller scales, grasping the dynamics of how materials behave when they are subjected to electrical signals, sound and other manipulations has proven to be beyond the reach of standard scientific techniques.
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Electric field can align silver nanowires from PhysOrg.com
Scientists have discovered how to align silver nanowires in a controlled manner with an electric field. Their technique offers a possible route to sculpting and writing on nanowires, an ability that will likely have applications in industrial manufacturing.
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