http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/
ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-135.pdf

感觉M$最近积极了很多，不再是以前那幅半死不活的样子了，和大英图书馆合作，live.com之类的。都是Google的功劳啊。越来越有趣了。

记得第一次看到让光运动变慢的文章是大一的时候，在之江图书馆。Science还是Nature上一副大大的图，一束光在低温(好像是这样)下穿过一条管道的图。四年过去了，世界上终于有人可以做到常温下减慢光的运动... Intel要加油啊，AMD也是，不然会挂的。那就不好玩了。

http://news.zdnet.com/IBM+slows+light,+readies+it+for+networking/2100-9584_22-5928541.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn

IBM slows light, readies it for networkingBy Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: November 2, 2005, 10:39 AM PT

IBM has created a chip that can slow down light, the latest advance in an industrywide effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.

A number of companies and university researchers are currently tinkering with ways to replace the electronic components inside computers, which ferry signals with electrons, with optical technology. Optical equipment ferries data on photons, the smallest measure of light. Photons are far faster. More important, optical equipment generates less heat, curbing the growing problem of heat and power consumption.

The catch, however, is that until recently, creating optical components has been more of an art than a science. The components cost a lot to make and can't be cranked out in the millions like silicon chips. Another factor: Optical parts are typically big, unlike silicon chips, which measure only a few millimeters on a side.

Progress in blending the best of both technologies is advancing rapidly, however. Intel has demonstrated a Raman laser fashioned from silicon. Intel and start-up Luxtera have shown off silicon modulators, which chop up the light from a laser so that it can represent data.

IBM's silicon waveguide, as the name suggests, would channel light pulses created by the laser and modulator.

When the optical conversion might start to occur is a matter of speculation. Luxtera has said it will start to commercially produce products in 2007. The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture. Several components will have to be developed before photos can replace electrons inside computers.

A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1880713,00.asp

M$也忍的住.

Sun Microsystems Inc. Tuesday launched the latest assault on the proprietary Microsoft Word document format by offering a new Sun Grid utility service that will convert Word files into ODF (open document format).

Sun is offering the service so enterprises "will no longer be locked" into a single vendor's proprietary document format," Goguen said.

ODF is an XML-based open standard file format developed by the OASIS Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards]Internet industry standards group.

Sun wants to provide a way to give enterprises an alternative to the widely used Microsoft Word document format because companies "become enslaved to a single vendor if they tied to a single vendor format," he said. "We don't think this is a good situation,"

Conversion to the ODF standard will give enterprises "control over their data" and greater choice in the office productivity applications that they can use, Goguen said.

ODF is supported by Sun's StarOffice and the OpenOffice desktop productivity suites, he noted.

The State of Massachusetts recently announced that it would adopt ODF as a standard for government agencies.

Sun will deliver the document conversion service "for a variety of formats including Word documents," he said. "We want to highlight the Word documents because that is where the majority of data is locked up today," Goguen said.

The service will give companies with older versions of Microsoft Windows the option of shifting to open source desktop application suites rather than upgrade to the latest version of Office, he noted.

Click here to read why the Massachusetts secretary of state is criticizing the Bay State government's plan to shift to the Open Document Format.

"By adopting this oasis standard we believe we are engendering competition in this space," which in turn will drive greater innovation in the industry, Goguen said.

The conversion service also represents a new job for Sun's grid utility, which is a massive array of Sun servers designed to perform compute-intensive data processing tasks.

Sun announced the Grid utility service in early 2005, in which it will give customers on-demand access to grid's processing power at the rate of per CPU hour as well as the Sun Grid storage array.

However, Goguen said he didn't have specific pricing for these new file conversion services until they officially go live.

Customers can expect that Sun will continue to announce additional Sun Grid utility services in the weeks and months ahead, he said.

However, he said the pricing would reflect the same level of simplicity and transparency that Sun expressed in its basic charge for Grid computing services of per CPU hour.

Click here to read why Hal Stern, Sun Microsystems' CTO for software, says that open source is good business.

Any consumer with access to a Web browser and with a credit card account will be able to upload documents to the Sun Grid for conversion to ODF, Goguen said.

Sun also plans to make a text-to-audio conversion service available within the next 30 days.

This service will take any text-based content, including Web site or Weblog content and convert it to an .mp3 file that can be played back as a podcast or as audio content for people with visual impairments.

歌词无敌了哈哈，配上这个貌似不搭嘎的名字，啧啧。

《十一月的肖邦》和以前的专辑明显不一样了，旋律悠扬了许多。这么多人说Jay没有改变，我想是你们没发现改变吧。只能说他的演唱和编曲是在印记太重，即使旋律变了，还是那种调调。没办法，谁让他是周杰伦呢。

上午

本来不打算去公司了，因为没什么事情 - 或者说要做的事情基本上都可以在家里搞定，有点SOHO的感觉。可是老白突然一个电话过来说BOSS没出差+下午要开会云云，弄得老夫一阵风似的冲向527玉古路站瞬间rush到公司。到了公司发现气氛祥和宁静并没有什么大事，找来老白一问他说是Lee说要开会，我说我和Lee不是一个组的他开他的会关我灭事老白云#@$#%$#@^%@#%^嘿嘿我晕倒...

下午

惨遭欺骗之后无心工作，打算把放在姐姐那里的东西搬回家里，不能老占着别人地方你说是吧。527回玉泉用一盒冰激凌换回了我的东西。无奈东西有点多我一个人搞不定遂Call来Vitas。这个小伙子人不错一叫就奔了过来，还换了件新衣服表示对俺们的尊重... 既然人来了我们就搬吧... 两个无比重的箱子就被提着抱着扛着弄到了校门口。当大家都累的半死纷纷表示这样下去必然会牺牲掉的时候，我突然想起其中一个箱子底下是有轮子的，也就是说，只要把另一个箱子放到这个箱子上面然后推着/拖着走就ok了，又快又省力... 无语。

晚上

每天晚上都要去lib平花，今天也不例外。8pm的时候我就到了lib，lib二楼今天不知道干嘛，灯全亮了，照的平花的地方亮堂堂的。昨天把QQ练成了，今天不知道练什么，就随便玩，复习一下special, 复习一下QQ, 练练FSK, 练练前单轮后单轮，练练动作的衔接，挺开心的。可惜突然之间风云突变，下起雨来，可把我吓坏了 - 你知道么，我的前一双88就是在雨里面刷成了一堆废铁+废塑料。赶忙奔到避雨的地方。没有带其它的鞋子，我是直接刷出来的。老夫在思考0.00001秒之后果断的做了决定，把我废了也不能把刷废了，赤脚走回去算了。这时候雨已经停了，遂手脚麻利的脱掉刷赤脚往商贾园走，路上地球一直kiss俺的脚掌kiss的俺好爽~~ 一直走到商贾园俺差点都不想换上新买的拖鞋了。换上拖鞋后往回走发现路已经全干了... 于是我的多余物品列表里面又多了一双拖鞋

昨天照例去lib练习平花。前几天练QQ把左脚练废了，一压外刃就疼的要死，导致很多动作都练不了了，比如庄子同学教的total cross。练习的时候不要太玩命了，真理。 <br />
<br />
于是只好练不压外刃的动作了。发现平花里压外刃的动作远比压内刃的动作多，压内刃么，想不出来有什么动作... UFO算不算? 那已经不是平花了... 于是不练压外刃的动作干脆就变成了不压刃的动作，正好脚上力量不够，就决定练力量了。 <br />
<br />
所有的单轮动作都是力量的动作，这句话一点也没错。前单轮需要脚尖力量，后单轮需要脚跟和关节处的力量，如果力量不够，动作是做不好的。Special是联系小天鹅的铺垫，Special做的好才有可能做出漂亮的天鹅。我的脚尖还是挺有力量的，练习几次以后Special居然就可以做了 <img border=0 src=http://www.yculblog.com/images/emotions/006.gif style="vertical-align: middle"> 先做整个脚掌着地的Special, 然后试着提起脚尖，我就是这么练的。关键在于腰部的转动带动下肢运动。 <br />
<br />
第一次Special过了20个桩以后真是开心, 突然发现双脚尖旋转也能多转好多圈了，哈哈。下回去练小天鹅了。

http://www.blizzard.com/starcraft/sis/

When NASA抯 shuttle mission, STS-96, blasted off last May, Mission Specialist and StarCraft fan, Daniel T. Barry, brought along a copy of StarCraft! The game CD now resides at Blizzard抯 home office after having orbited the Earth 153 times and traveling 3.5 million nautical miles. Thanks, Daniel!

星际无敌，魔兽滚蛋，暗黑去死

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877924,00.asp

Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. will release a Web-based StarOffice desktop suite. Google will soon announce a new operating system.

The truth isn't anything as dramatic, but it does show a company that not only supports open source, but relies on it every day to keep the best-known search engine and allied businesses running.

In a Ziff Davis Internet interview, Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager, said that while he can't "talk about any future products," he also added that, to the best of his knowledge "Google has no plans to release an operating system or an office suite."

"I like the ideas of thin-client office programs, but I can't address products," he added.

That said, though, DiBona added, "We do support and use open-source programs. For example, we hired people to help make OpenOffice.org better."

For instance, Google employees, DiBona said, helped make OpenOffice.org 2.0, load faster.

Rumors of Sun-Google hosted desktop suite quashed. Click here to read more.

Still, while Google has no plans to release end-user open-source programs, it actually already releases open-source code and programs that developers find useful.

DiBona cited Google's release of its AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)-based AJAXSLT as an example.

"It may not be interesting to most people, but AJAX is mellow for developers. It lets them code more flexible user interfaces for Web browsers. We're trying to release more of this kind of code."

Looking ahead, DiBona sees Google releasing "more development tools. We like showing people some of the cool things we do. We want to share more code, but programming tools like our Core Dumper or CPU profiler don't get the hype."

All of Google's current open-source projects can be found at Google Code, the company's software site.

In the future, existing Google programs, like the Google Toolbar, Google Talk and Google Desktop may be made open source.

But, for now, "Google is focusing on releasing underlying technologies and concentrating on lower-level functionality programs," said DiBona.

Still, he said that Google has "a long list of software to open source and we've got to start somewhere."

When? "We have no timelines," replied DiBona.

Within the company itself, "most Google developers use Linux desktops." It's not just the technical staff that is Linux and open-source users and supporters. It comes from the top.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's founders, are both "passionate about open source" according to DiBona.

Google's open-source staff itself is very small. There are only four or five employees tasked to the office according to DiBona. But, that doesn't tell the whole story.

"We leverage our engineers. With so many engineers at Google who are involved in open-source and Linux, many of them use part of their time to work on open-source projects."

A recent example of Google hiring open-source friendly developers is its recent hire of Sean Egan, lead developer for the popular open-source GAIM IM client, to work on Google Talk.

DiBona also expects the open-source staff to grow.

"We're tasked to make more open-source code," said DiBona, who has been with Google since August 2004.

"We like to do this open-source stuff for both our industry and for our users. It makes a level playing field for everyone."

That even includes proprietary programs. For instance, "once Firefox started really competing, Microsoft was forced to make Internet Explorer better for its users," said DiBona.

"Before Firefox, IE was stagnant. Now that Microsoft has competition, they've started to improve it. This kind of competition is good for all of us."

And this kind of improvement by competition doesn't happen just on the PC side, according to DiBona.

"If you look at rise of Apache web server to dominance, you can see how Microsoft has had to make IIS (Internet Information Server) better. You can see why other Web servers have disappeared."

According to NetCraft's September 2005 statistics, Apache has almost 50 million Web servers operating on the Internet, while IIS, a distant number two, has about 14.5 million servers.

Google has also been supporting open source by encouraging students to develop it. The most prominent example of that was its million "Summer of Code."

"It was my thought that through a program like this we could infuse new blood into some long-established projects," said DiBona.

So Google gave more than 400 young programmers a chance to work on open-source projects over the summer of 2005. More than 40 open-source groups received help from the new programmers.

The Apache Software Foundation led the way with 38 projects, followed by KDE with 24 and FreeBSD with 20.

The results were "remarkable and blew pass anything I was expecting. We saw a 93 to 94 percent success rate. They did some amazing work."

To read about Google merging map and local sites, click here.

At this time, there are no hard plans for a summer of code 2006, but DiBona wants to do one. "We're still evaluating everything but I want to do another one with new students."

Indeed, "we had thought about doing a winter of code, but the students are busy with classes."

In the meantime, though, Google has donated 0,000 to a joint open-source technology initiative at Oregon State University and Portland State University.

"Supporting the projects and institutions advancing open-source software and hardware helps ensure the continued success and advancement of open-source technologies.

"The teams at Oregon State and Portland State have done great open-source work in the past and we're excited to back their joint efforts," said DiBona.

"This partnership between Google and important research universities is yet another indicator of the continued evolution and maturity of the Linux and open-source markets," said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's VP of system software research in a statement.

In addition to fostering open-source developers' efforts and releasing code, Google's open-source office, which is under Google engineering department, is "making sure people are using open-source software properly in their code. We also have a training mission to make sure they understand what you can, and can't do, legally with the code according to its license."

So it is that Google, while not producing the kind of headlines that some people wish that it were with its open-source efforts, is nonetheless strongly supporting, producing and using open-source.

装Gentoo中，拿二进制包。再说一遍,Gentoo的精华是portage, 不是编译，鄙视某些土人。

公司在江南大道，就是过了钱塘江大桥一直往前走。研究了两天，发现打车要35块钱左右，乘公车可以k102转315, 直接到公司门口。527反而不爽，下车站离公司有些距离。

所以好多天没写Blog, 哈哈。在学校旁边找到房子住了。

因为假还没放玩，估计会继续乐不思蜀几天，还好俺滴blog没什么人看，不会有民愤。少数几位赏脸的哥们也可以休息几天了，lol

明天爸妈来杭州，号称给我送过冬用品，汗。

是啊，Gaim是很牛，那又怎么样呢。我没有任何看不起Gaim的意思，就像我不可能看不起Linux一样。但是Linux的某些方面实在是让人太过失望。程序员总是太过注重技术，表现在软件上就变成了功能强大界面粗糙，其结果是被商人拿过去做做人机界面改进就变成一个流行产品，如果运气好的话也许这个程序员会被这个公司招过去，然后诞生一则新闻。

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9413

抄几段过来:

"Can you connect to the MSN Messenger network using Free operating systems? Sure you can. There is Gaim, there is Kopete. Are they attractive? No, they aren't. Their interfaces are terrible. Moreover, all you can do with them is write basic IMs. Bye bye overbloated and stupid nudge and Flash sequences. Just the text ma'am. Display picture? Well, it sort of works, but that's all. File transfers? I can swear that you're a lucky guy (girl) when it works. Usually it doesn't, resulting in embarrassing 'Sorry mate, I'm using Linux, you know and, well, could you mail me this picture instead?'. "

"We have OpenOffice.org, we have FireFox. Both are doing well in their respective domains. Why do we keep thinking that Gaim's so '1999-2000' tools are good enough? They aren't and it's my opinion -- and I'd really like it to be false -- that it's a major problem to address in the next few months in order to increase the admission of Free and Open Source software on the desktop. A problem that has to be addressed very, very quickly, before it becomes even worse. "

我想这也许就是Linux在Desktop市场上打不开局面的原因，过于注重服务器市场留下的陋习。当然不是说注重服务器应用不好，不是有句话叫恨铁不成钢么。

受不了了... Ajax已经无法无天了, 我现在才知道原来Yahoo!的下一代邮件系统也是用Ajax来做的。这还不够又冒出来一个基于Ajax的邮件客户端。这种东西有一个好处是跨平台，Linux上也能用，但是需要MySQL做后端。由于Linux的UI让我太失望，基于Web的应用倒是一个很好的方向。

http://www.roundcube.net/images/main_screen.jpg

这个东西貌似只支持IMAP :( 话说回来，基于Web也不仅仅只有Ajax， Flash也很好。Laszlo的Demo里面就有Webmail, 如果把那个改为Client端跑的话，感觉会很不错。不过Linux上Firefox里面要让Flash能正常显示中文有点麻烦。