I wonder - according to recent research healthy people are more expensive for governments! … [Continue reading]
Are you a “Real Aussie”?
Posted on February 5, 2008 Written by
The SMH gave us a good test of our Aussieness a few weeks ago. … [Continue reading]
2007 SAT1 percentiles confirm inadaquacies in UAC process
Posted on February 4, 2008 Written by
The College Board has released the 2007 SAT1 composite percentiles. The percentiles are very close to those of 2006 and my report of the inadaquacies in UAC's conversion of SAT1+AP into a UAI is confirmed. … [Continue reading]
RBDC, Continuation Passing Style, Closures, Lazy Evaluation and Mobile Applets
Posted on February 3, 2008 Written by
It has been recently pointed out to me that the mechanisms underlying Request Based Distributed Computing - RDBC (see primer) are related to Continuation Passing Style CPS, Closures, Lazy Evaluation and Mobile Applets. This is a good insight. Lets … [Continue reading]
Distributed Computing with the Browser
Posted on January 16, 2008 Written by
Recently, Subbu posted an interesting discussion of an xml analysis and presentation application - you can read it here: Distributed Computing with the Browser. This design scenario is a good illustration of the limitations of our current … [Continue reading]
Code Mobility and Session State
Posted on January 16, 2008 Written by
Code mobility as provided for by Request Based Distributed Computing RBDC (see backgrounder) is key for delivering On-Demand computing, Distributed Computing (e.g. SETI@home) and Rich Internet Applications. RBDC enables the mobility of code that … [Continue reading]
HTC and Cloud and Grid Computing
Posted on January 11, 2008 Written by
The HyperText Computing (HTC) paradigm is not a "complete solution" to the challenges and opportunites afforded by Cloud and Grid computing -- however this post argues that the HTC is part of the solution. My angle into this question is via a recent … [Continue reading]
The HTC and Java Remote Method Invocation
Posted on January 10, 2008 Written by
Java Remote Method Invocation JRMI (White Paper) is a distributed computing capability for the Java Platform. Like the HTC it is designed to facilitate "write once run everywhere" and "code mobility". Naturally it does it within the paradigm of Java … [Continue reading]
Request Based Distributed Computing – A rough sketch
Posted on January 7, 2008 Written by
The Hypertext Computing (HTC) paradigm that I have written about in this blog is built on the following observations: There is a fundamental equivalence between http resources and code that if executed would generate the resource It is an … [Continue reading]
Blood Test for Repetitive Stress
Posted on March 8, 2007 Written by
See the story at here … [Continue reading]
Guinness World Records are not interested
Posted on February 27, 2007 Written by
My Underwater Running World Record attempt took a hit today, being rejected by the people at Guinness World Records. They were very polite: Dear Mr Pratten, Thank you for sending us the details of your recent record proposal for 'Underwater … [Continue reading]
Pramati’s Dekoh and The Hypertext Computer
Posted on February 24, 2007 Written by
Pramati announced Dekoh this week. Dekoh is a platform that supports applications that run both on over the network and on the desktop. It embodies some of the ideas of an Hypertext Computer (HTC): Dekoh Desktop is a small footprint download that … [Continue reading]
20m Underwater Running World Record Attempt
Posted on February 21, 2007 Written by
As a young man, I invented the Australian style of underwater running while swimming in the Brunswick River, in Northern NSW. I feel that this new discipline is under appreciated in the world of water sports! Today I submitted the papers to … [Continue reading]
Intel’s Teraflop chip and The Hypertext Computer
Posted on February 17, 2007 Written by
A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflops) has been unveiled by Intel. see the BBC report. This new chip presents a great challenge to the programming community. The proposed HTC may be … [Continue reading]
Structures (or why things don’t fall down)
Posted on December 15, 2006 Written by
J.E. Gordon's book is a great read. Did you know that arches are so popular because they have to break in 4 places before they will fall down? Amazing factoids and insights for the lay person abound in this book. The technical details occasionally … [Continue reading]