Work In Progress http://wip.powerblogs.com/ A work in progress en-us 2006-07-30T23:07+00:00 Dell D610 and ACPI S3 sleeping http://wip.powerblogs.com/posts/1154301560.shtml So, it turns out that linux 2.6.17 finally corrected whatever was wrong in the sata driver with acpi S3 sleeping (S3 is suspend-to-ram). I've been using it for a while now,... Chris 2006-07-30T23:07+00:00 So, it turns out that linux 2.6.17 finally corrected whatever was wrong in the sata driver with acpi S3 sleeping (S3 is suspend-to-ram). I've been using it for a while now, and it's been suspending and waking up very reliably so far. That makes everything on my configuration of the D610 working quite well, now. (I do need that startup script to set the BIOS to support the 1440x1050 resolution, but setting that up wasy easy enough after I found it.)

]]> registerfly http://wip.powerblogs.com/posts/1140014480.shtml Registerfly.com is a domain registrar with good services and good prices, but absolutely worthless technical support. I sincerely hope that their tech support staff isn't paid well — they'd be significantly... Chris 2006-02-15T14:02+00:00 Registerfly.com is a domain registrar with good services and good prices, but absolutely worthless technical support. I sincerely hope that their tech support staff isn't paid well — they'd be significantly overpaid at minimum wage.

]]> Dell D610 http://wip.powerblogs.com/posts/1124302626.shtml I recently got a Dell D610 laptop for the purpose of writing. This will actually serve two purposes; the first is that since it's a substantial investment, it's my commitment to... Chris 2005-08-17T18:08+00:00 I recently got a Dell D610 laptop for the purpose of writing. This will actually serve two purposes; the first is that since it's a substantial investment, it's my commitment to writing. I'm actually going to do it. The second purpose is that since my writing is primarily going on here, on the blog, it will let me use the software and get a good feel for how it is to use it — it's often quite easy to tell software which the programmer has used from software which the programmer hasn't used.

Anyhow, I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend linux on the D610. It's not perfect, but the D610 is a nice laptop (comfortable, good performance, long battery life) and while it's not trivial to get linux up, it's actually not bad. The Sarge install was very straight forward (you need to use the 2.4 kernel for some reason). After that, download and compile your own 2.6 kernel (2.6.12.5 as of the writing of this post), patch it with this patch from this page, and then install the kernel. (I actually now find it easiest to build with "make-kpkg kernel_image" and then just dpkg -i the resulting deb. Note: you'll need to edit your grub config and set kopt_2_6=root=/dev/sdaN ro (Where N is your root partition), because in 2.6 SATA drives are scsi drives whereas in 2.4 they're IDE drives. (Incidentally, I just noticed that the guy who wrote that page helpfully provides his kernel image. I'll try to remember to do that too.)

I did have to go to debian unstable to get an xorg package, but after that it was easy. Just use the i810 driver and the 915resolution program (this is explained in the linked page) to enable 1400x1050 as a valid resolution and X works fine from that package. (Note: sometimes after suspending to ram the glidepoint gets jumpy, but so far it seems that suspending again will fix that eventually.)

the intel 2200 wifi card works great, of course; all you have to do is install the ieee80211 driver, then the driver and firmware (note: just unzip the firmware into /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware, and compile both drivers with "make && make install"). I prefer to use wpasupplicant as it's easier to configure preferences for, but waproamd is a bit easier to get going (they're the daemons which scan for available wifi and choose one).

Anyhow, there's not much point in me going on because this isn't detailed enough to be really useful nor high enough level to be interesting, but the long and short of it is that while it's a bunch of work to get a D610 working with linux, it's work and not hair-pulling. I suspect that this D610 will be a lot like the inspiron 9200 — a lot of work for a day or two, followed by a laptop which works well.

(Note: I'm really looking forward to the glorious days when it will be possible to make SATA hard drives spin down.)

Anyhow, if I get the time to write a step-by-step guide, I'll post update this post.

]]> The Semantic Web http://wip.powerblogs.com/posts/1123301915.shtml It occurred to me recently why the "semantic web" (basically a computer-readable meaning-encoding scheme so that people could indicate to the computer what the english that they wrote was about and... Chris 2005-08-06T04:08+00:00 It occurred to me recently why the "semantic web" (basically a computer-readable meaning-encoding scheme so that people could indicate to the computer what the english that they wrote was about and the computer could then facilitate intelligent searching) is inherently doomed to failure: to be really useful, one would have to encode as much information in the semantic web markup as one did in the english — i.e. after writing the document in English, one would then have to go and translate it into semantic web markup. Translating is often nearly as difficult as composition.

Thus any attempt at the semantic web (where the computer-readable semantics are created by humans) will fail either because it's hard enough for most people to write something once — writing literally everything twice is just way too much work. I believe that this is an inherent flaw in semantic management — the correct solution, in any form, has too high a minimum amount of work.

I suspect, too, that it's a pretty steep drop-off from there; if the computer doesn't actually understand what's being said, the usefulness probably plumets. This means that it's likely that text searches like what google provides will probably be the best which is achievable without artifical intelligence (in the sense of something which can understand abstract concepts and abstract relationships).

(Of course, if we ever invent an artifical intelligence, it's hard to imagine why it won't get as bored with being a search engine as human beings would be, but that's a different topic entirely.)

]]> Semicolons and other trivialities http://wip.powerblogs.com/posts/1122577108.shtml Computer languages are very precise because they are designed to allow you to do anything. They differ, in this way, from natural languages, which are designed to communicate about things that... Chris 2005-07-28T18:07+00:00 Computer languages are very precise because they are designed to allow you to do anything. They differ, in this way, from natural languages, which are designed to communicate about things that your audience is familiar with. Natural languages are therefore flexible, because so much of what is being communicated is already known. (One can loosely define natural language as the means of producing in one creature certain mental states (often images) similar to certain mental states in you; thus we rely on most of the mental state already being there, and don't need to explain what a bird is every time we say that we saw one sitting on a telephone poll.)

Computer languages, by contrast, exist to create machines which can do anything (within a somewhat narrow realm of physical possibilities). As a result, they make no assumptions about what you're trying to say, because there are no assumptions possible. Anything you say might be what you mean. It's not that computers are stupid; it's that they're unprejudiced.

Anyhow, computer languages invariably use certain types of markers, just like we use punctuation. In many languages, semicolons denote the end of an instruction. If you omit one, typically this results in an unintelligible program, since (in general) any two instructions can be combined in several ways, and the compiler can't know whether you had meant to combine them or separate them.

Errors like leaving off semicolons or other small things (akin to punctuation) often plague beginning programmers; they go to compile their programs and get a stream of errors and search about bewildered; many of them cursing at the stupidity of the machine.

Having just compiled something where I accidentally left off the semicolons (I very rarely do that any more), it just occurred to me how different it is now. I'm so used to programming that semicolons are natural (this tends to come fairly quickly); compiler errors are just a different sort of thing to me now. They used to be a mystery to decipher. Now they're actually an aid to getting things right. I intuitively know how to say what I mean, and compiler errors aren't problems, they're more like the signposts on trails. I've come to see the program as a thing, not that the compiler creates, but that I create. I can almost see its pieces working together as if they were real.

It really is amazing what human beings can grow used to.

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