Google have given some more details about their new operating system Chromium. It seems to be a very cutdown Linux running Chrome and is tightly locked down and Google say it will only run web based applications which given its Open source roots is kind of interesting I cant see RMS being to happy about this. Nor will the FLOSS/Linux  community in general be to happy about this.

The Google team that build are pitching this as a second computer – but i don’t think the average user wants to have to learn a second GUI and the associated foibles of another operating system.

This seems to be yet another attempt to make the network computer work. I was a trialist in BT for network computers – at that time it was an interesting toy but was slow and relied on remote servers to run applications. Google seem to think that a limited computer that requires a high speed reliable connection to the Internet will work.

Hmm so Goggles home market is the USA which has difficulty with basic stuff like you know getting a mobile phone network to work (in the middle of San Francesco for example) – having spent a number of years inside the wire in BT and the view there was that  Americas mobile network was considered “in need in some improvement” to use BT speak – on the intranet I can remember  some very cruel (but funny) jokes about how ATT was going to break into the European market with their new Strowger technology.

So Google thinks that using 802.11n is going to be a solution, even if you have a wide spread wifi network. wifi has problems connecting more than a few devices to an access point CISCO quote 10 per AP in their design guides.  So I doubt that a chromium net book in a crowded city is going to be that functional.

The actual launch is around a year away  and it will be interesting to see how it turns out, I suspect that Eric Schmitt who used to be CEO of SUN (one of the original backers of the network computer) has managed to persuade Google to have another try at network computing – and given the number of times this return to a dumb terminal model has failed in the past I suspect it is a quixotic titling at windmills exercise.

You can look at a summary of the launch event here.

Google has just launched a new language GO. Google say is inspired by some issues Google have with existing languages. on the GO site the reason for creating this new language is given as:

Go was born out of frustration with existing languages and environments for systems programming. Programming had become too difficult and the choice of languages was partly to blame. One had to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming; all three were not available in the same mainstream language. Programmers who could were choosing ease over safety and efficiency by moving to dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript rather than C++ or, to a lesser extent, Java.

Go is described as a lightweight systems programming language with built in support for concurrent processes. The developers claim it has the advantages of languages such as PHP with some of the features of a traditional compiled languages (type safety) such as C.

One of the developers is Ken Thompson one of the fathers of UNIX so the development team have form. It certainly feels like that the developers of GO wanted to get away form the tendency of OO programmers at the drop of a hat to spend hours having obtuse byzantine arguments of the doctrinal elements of Java /C++ rather than you know doing some actual work

And given Goggles infrastructure of massive amounts of small servers i can see theme using GO to program new services under the hood – they comment theta they haven’t used GO in a live environment yet – but it will be interesting to see what use people make of GO.

Currently GO only runs on Linux and OSX and its unclear if it has a self hosting compiler yet though it seems to use the Gcc route that a lot of languages seem to use on Linux

The GO language home page is here and the launch announcement is here

Just caught up via iplayer with the BBC 4 program Micro Men about the early days of the Computer industry in particular the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn, with ZX80/81 and Spectrum vs Acorn’s Atom/BBC Micro. At the time I was working with some of the early PC’s PETS and Apples and both I an My office mate lobbied to use the BBC Micro as a cheap (£400) color interface for some of the experiments at BHRA.

Allegedly when a delegation from the PRC came to visit to look at a huge experimental model of the flows around the outfall of a new power station they where more impressed with the BBC that was used as a front end and displayed a heat map – and apparently scoured Bedford looking for a BBC micro to take back with them

ZX80

The BBC Micro

A real blast from the past and reminded me of the old days.

I am a UK based Internet developer looking for a new gig full time or contract. I have  many years experience in web/Internet systems.

• One of the first 5 webmasters and champions of www in BT.
• Took over SEO at my last employer helped grow it to a large team with 25+ clients and 4 team members.
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• Took part in research in ISO9000 / formal methods with BSI.

I’me currently looking for a new Gig so if you have an interesting SEO or Internet role -  Pitch me via mail at morris@hauntingthunder.demon.co.uk mobile: 07984 301472 or via my Linkedin or Facebook profiles.

Just heard via the D6 Generation of an interesting hybrid between computer based games and more traditional figure based games.

Ex illis uses traditional plastic figures as is now more common ala games workshop or rakham, though these figures are snap together and unpainted.

Bastion games say:

Ex illis is a hybrid miniature wargame that offers the best of the two worlds: the convenience of technology that makes video games so popular and the human interaction that is the essence of tabletop gaming. Ex illis is a large deployment wargame where players engage in battle using 70 to 100 high quality plastic figurines on a 36” x 45” squared mat.

The game board is paramount to any tactical thinking and all your device will display is a single square at a time. Ex illis uses iPod Touch, iPhone, netbook or notebook to resolve battle, it replaces dice, measuring tape and thick and expensive rulebooks!

Internet access is required though they unclear if you need a persistant connection or not to play, they showed the game at gencon running on an ipod touch though they say netbook’s and macs can run the software so it looks like a java client.

Its implied they you have to connect to their servers to upload you army at the start of the game but can then disconnect – how this would work when you have a pc/device for each player  peer to peer or you have to have one pc/device as a master they dont say.

Also i’m not sure how this would work at large shows as big convention centers prices for data can best be described as eye gouging. And and hoc wifi networks have a few interesting security problems – I suppose you could set up a small infrastructure wifi network  – but I would imagine that the intersection between wargamers and wireless networking is quite small.

Its an interesting idea but this has been done before I remembe years ago a  similar computer moderated Napoleonic system that ran on Atari ST’s with then than at the time very expensive hard disks.

Just listening to one of Leo Laports Podcasts TWIG (this week in Google) all about Google Search and Cloud based computing. For those of us who work in search and SEO this is going to become a must listen podcast.

Along with Leo the other Main Hosts are Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani. They have done 3 shows so far and its getting into its stride.

One thing they probably need is some one with some heavy duty programming chops when dealing with some of the deeper tetchier aspects of cloud computing (and to mock Twitter when it crashes) they all missed one of the key announcements behind Googles caffeine update which was the announcement of the new Google distributed file system which is the reason that caffeine is so fast when compared to Google classic.

Just found the S2 Trailer for Sanctuary – in the USA its debuting on October 4th lets hope that its gets picked up again by ITV after all now they don’t have Primeval they might promote it to ITV 1 if we are lucky.

And some of the Cast/Crew talking about the difference between S2 and S1.

A company called shapeways has developed an 3d printer that uses steel powder to create complex 3d shapes. Which could be interesting if they can get the price down – this could be a way for wargamers to print the figures they need rather than to buy cast plastic or lead figures.

3D printers have been used to produce 3d models for a while now but up until now they use fairly weak plastic this system uses a steal power which is held in place by a resin – they say:

This is a completely new technique which deposits stainless steel powder in a very thin layer, combining it with a binding material. Printed objects are built up like this, layer by layer, gradually creating the form just as you designed it on the computer screen. When complete, they are infused with bronze and cured in an oven. After cooling, the models can be left in the original steel finish or tumbled to get a great polished look.

If You don’t want to use metal some people are now producing DIY 3D Printers which for around £500 can produce 3D models in plastic and in fact make a copy of its self. The rep-rap team have a design which anyone can make here. this might make make nice way to make one off or hard to find models. They have a video explaing how the rep rap works.

So could this be the end for Games workshop

TWIW is back of haitus – my current plan is to co -host an at43 special when the new AT 43 Boxes.

Well look like the announcement came sooner than we where all expecting it eve though its not a direct take over of Yahoos search engine by Microsoft.

Initially it looks like Bing will become yahoos! search engine whilst  yahoo! will see ads on Bing.

Will be doing longer post at work tomorrow morning after I have a chance to think about it.

Just enjoy this funny commentary on Google “New” OS

Last weeks season3 run of Torchwood stripped across all 5 days was a lot of things but does range some interesting questions about what next.

The new monsters the 456 where properly hide behind the sofa scary and of course the real moral is that humans can be just as monstrous. And people are saying this has the strength of BSG a rarity in British SF.

Having said that at the end RTD has  burnt the franchise to do this – And I don’t see how Jack is going to fit back in to Dr Who unless he really goes dark side and ends up as an antagonist.

And the use yet again of a rebroadcast a signal back at the monsters as a way of defeating them is wearing a bit thin I always thought that RTD’s weakness was his apparent lack of knowledge of the Cannon.

hers how I would have possibly done it.

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Keep Ianto alive at least to ep 5 quiet easy if your off to face down an alien where one threat would be to break its environment cage and let out the poison gas do you not think that Jack would make sure his bf was in a hazmat suit.

You could get a terminally ill child make this one of Iantos nieces or nephews for extra pathos volunteer to go first to test the transport mechanism and get them to take a really big nuke up with them. or track the transport beam and use the particle weapon we saw in the “sycorax invasion”, or you could just pay it out using the child as a resonater.

You could keep Ianto / Gwen as the core of torchwood possibly with Lois and Johnson as new team members.

Id have also fixed some of the more glaring potholes I don’t think alien threats are part of the home office’s job and the America observer just taking over how dos that work – you could have played this out this as the American general playing the good guy and having the evil PM having him dragged out and shot in the gardens of number 10.

Shalamansers blog about the “Pledge” struck a chord with me in wargames terms the “Pledge” is when a wargamer attempts to paint more figures in a year than he/she buys.

Currently MY brought and unpainted score  for 2009 stands at

130 15mm Medieval’s (Free Company) for FOG

2 Uncharted seas starter fleets a total of 20 Ships

1 Hvy Carier plus 8 Fighter Groups @ a civilian Transport for Full Thrust

1 15mm G Carrier

4 Weird WW2 Figures

I should have all the 15mm foot base coated tomorrow.

Had a short 3 day break over the weekend at  Games EXPO 2009 in Birmingham playing in an AT43 Tornament I have done a longer write up over here about that.

An interesting if tiring weekend and a nice change from the insane rush that going to one day events like salute is. I got some new models for my FT Fleet and some starter fleets for Uncharted Seas an fantasy Naval Wargame.

I don’t normally do many political posts but seeing a claim from UKIP that Ian Dale is reporting made me smile. Apparently the Long ballot papers are being folded and this is confusing.

To be brutaly honest if you cant work out to unfold the paper and tick the appropriate box then I suspect that you probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote – or even be allowed out after dark. May be Ukip will use Mr Gumby as there logo the next time around