I've been updating my assembly textbook. The biggest change is clearly the introduction of the ebe development environment. It's a fairly crude IDE designed primarily for assembly. It's either part of my effort to make learning assembly language easier or a fairly crude attempt to sell more books. My opinion is that is clearly a bit of both.
I got pretty tired of trying to use gdb in class when I taught assembly language. I felt that debugging was critical for assembly language and gdb was too much trouble. I tried to make some changes to a handful of IDEs to support assembly language better and I did make some improvements, but it was still a bit of an unnatural mess to use.
Ebe is a godsend to assembly language. It makes it much easier to use a debugger and I hope that translates into easier for people to learn to like assembly language. It's the great grand-daddy language of them all and forms the cornerstone of rational debugging.
The problem is that I could include an enormous number of pictures captured from ebe in the book. This would drive up the cost of the printed book. On the other hand it makes the book more valuable and will increase sales - up to some point. So there is a maximization problem. I don't know the relationship of sales to number of pictures, so I can only guess.
The images would look better in color, but the book would lose me money at the current price. There should be a charge difference based on the amount of color toner used, but the charge ignores the actual costs. I diagram with red and blue lines in 500 pages would incur the same charge as full color photographs on each page. That's crazy. Maybe Create Space can cope with a wee bit of negotiation. I doubt that having 50-100 half page or less diagrams with 5-10% filled dots would have much serious effect on printing cost. It certainly wouldn't make much difference with a color laser printer and surely that is cheap enough. Probably book format pages cost under $0.002 per page. That's 2 tenths of a cent per page or 1 dollar for a 500 page book. It really should be possible for Create Space to allow color textbooks to be printed on an actual cost (plus profit) basis. This would increase their sales!
Friday, June 08, 2012
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Retirement
My time at Southern Miss is winding down after 22.5 years. Adding that time to some previous service to the state as a junior high teacher I will have enough time (with unused sick/personal leave) to retire at the end of this Spring semester (2012). It's a rather odd feeling.
I have worked at a handful of jobs over the years: grocery store worker, factory worker (one summer), garbage collector (very limited time), farm laborer (too hard), construction worker (barely), service station worker (fired for being too slow washing cars!), motel clerk (they actually have to be awake at night), high school math teacher (1 summer), junior high math teacher (1.25 years), graduate student, scientific programmer at NASA, partner in Delta Data Systems, Lockheed employee, graduate student, consultant, government expert, and finally college professor. As you might guess it seems like a long time for me to stick with 1 job for 22.5 years. I have done so and have taken the typical abuse with a typical amount of complaints. In addition I have enjoyed the job better than most. There is substantial freedom as a professor, though the current political climate in America is anti-intellectual and professors are considered lazy bums by many folks. I hope that my effort to train others has resulted in benefit to my many students. If so then I have earned my pay.
I am wondering what to do with the rest of my life. Hopefully I won't have to face poverty in retirement, though sometimes this world can be a cruel place. Assuming that we can live off my retirement income, I will try to be creative and keep myself busy with a variety of different projects. I have noticed over the past few years that my energy level seems a little lower than when I was young, so I don't want to spend the best hours of each day toiling at a job. I think I am good for perhaps 4-6 good hours a day now and jobs demand 8+. Many programming jobs requite excessive hours. Of particular note is the cruelly long hours demanded in the game programming industry. It would be fun to create great games, but not 80 hours a week. At my age (currently 59) I wouldn't last long in such a job. I can't predict whether they would fire me before I would tell them to take their job and shove it.
I need to start spending more of my time exercising. I probably need to try for some form of daily exercise. I have a hard time forming exercise habits and need to work on variety. Here's my list: dancing, zumba, walking, cycling, weight training, swimming, gardening and woodworking. The walking and woodworking aren't great aerobic exercises, but walking has been my most successful form of exercise. I have walked to/from my office at Southern perhaps 3-4 times a week for over 22 years. The rest of that list is more theoretical.
Will I get bored and wish I still had my job? I hope not. Will I get bored and take another job? That seems more likely, but I really don't want to promise to work 40 hours a week again. Will I need money? Need is relative and I have lots of needy relatives (just a pun). Seriously, need is relative. I hope I don't decide that I need money.
If I get bored perhaps I will take up a new hobby. I think I would have some fun with electronics. I'll be considering that this summer. I still think this old dog can learn some new tricks.
I have worked at a handful of jobs over the years: grocery store worker, factory worker (one summer), garbage collector (very limited time), farm laborer (too hard), construction worker (barely), service station worker (fired for being too slow washing cars!), motel clerk (they actually have to be awake at night), high school math teacher (1 summer), junior high math teacher (1.25 years), graduate student, scientific programmer at NASA, partner in Delta Data Systems, Lockheed employee, graduate student, consultant, government expert, and finally college professor. As you might guess it seems like a long time for me to stick with 1 job for 22.5 years. I have done so and have taken the typical abuse with a typical amount of complaints. In addition I have enjoyed the job better than most. There is substantial freedom as a professor, though the current political climate in America is anti-intellectual and professors are considered lazy bums by many folks. I hope that my effort to train others has resulted in benefit to my many students. If so then I have earned my pay.
I am wondering what to do with the rest of my life. Hopefully I won't have to face poverty in retirement, though sometimes this world can be a cruel place. Assuming that we can live off my retirement income, I will try to be creative and keep myself busy with a variety of different projects. I have noticed over the past few years that my energy level seems a little lower than when I was young, so I don't want to spend the best hours of each day toiling at a job. I think I am good for perhaps 4-6 good hours a day now and jobs demand 8+. Many programming jobs requite excessive hours. Of particular note is the cruelly long hours demanded in the game programming industry. It would be fun to create great games, but not 80 hours a week. At my age (currently 59) I wouldn't last long in such a job. I can't predict whether they would fire me before I would tell them to take their job and shove it.
I need to start spending more of my time exercising. I probably need to try for some form of daily exercise. I have a hard time forming exercise habits and need to work on variety. Here's my list: dancing, zumba, walking, cycling, weight training, swimming, gardening and woodworking. The walking and woodworking aren't great aerobic exercises, but walking has been my most successful form of exercise. I have walked to/from my office at Southern perhaps 3-4 times a week for over 22 years. The rest of that list is more theoretical.
Will I get bored and wish I still had my job? I hope not. Will I get bored and take another job? That seems more likely, but I really don't want to promise to work 40 hours a week again. Will I need money? Need is relative and I have lots of needy relatives (just a pun). Seriously, need is relative. I hope I don't decide that I need money.
If I get bored perhaps I will take up a new hobby. I think I would have some fun with electronics. I'll be considering that this summer. I still think this old dog can learn some new tricks.
Friday, April 20, 2012
BP Blowout in the Caspian Sea
Now the news is coming out that BP covered up an oil spill in the Caspian Sea in 2008. Guess what! The cause was probably the same cause as the Gulf spill in 2010. Had this problem been reported as it should have, then 11 oil rig workers might still be alive and the damage to the environment might have been avoided.
Is it time for BP to be responsible for its actions? Will the US charge anyone with a crime for covering up the 2008 blowout? I have no faith that our government will do anything about it.
Is it time for BP to be responsible for its actions? Will the US charge anyone with a crime for covering up the 2008 blowout? I have no faith that our government will do anything about it.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Coping with Global Warming
I watched a video on Thorium Molten Salt reactors today and it seemed to me that this is part of the solution to our energy problem and to global warming. I have thought about terraforming the world's deserts and my first thought was to desalinate seawater to water the Sahara. I originally thought that solar power might be the best way to desalinate the water for the Sahara, but now I think thorium is the proper solution.
Thorium reactors are safer and thorium is plentiful, so we have a cheap energy source which will not produce greenhouse gases. Contrasted to conventional nuclear power plants, thorium leaves a solvable waste problem.
So we can build reactors on the African coast and produce clean water for agriculture which can be pumped to the Sahara. Over time the Sahara can be converted into a rich region with agriculture, forests and human habitation. With enough of the Sahara terraformed there will be additional water vapor entering the atmosphere and there will be increased rainfall which will amplify the effect and spread the good fortune.
As the Sahara is converted it seems to me that this increased biomass will help to fight the warming effects of the greenhouse gases. Ultimately we can change the destiny of earth from ecological disaster from global warming into abundance.
Will we conquer our ecological problems or continue to keep our heads stuck in the sand?
Thorium reactors are safer and thorium is plentiful, so we have a cheap energy source which will not produce greenhouse gases. Contrasted to conventional nuclear power plants, thorium leaves a solvable waste problem.
So we can build reactors on the African coast and produce clean water for agriculture which can be pumped to the Sahara. Over time the Sahara can be converted into a rich region with agriculture, forests and human habitation. With enough of the Sahara terraformed there will be additional water vapor entering the atmosphere and there will be increased rainfall which will amplify the effect and spread the good fortune.
As the Sahara is converted it seems to me that this increased biomass will help to fight the warming effects of the greenhouse gases. Ultimately we can change the destiny of earth from ecological disaster from global warming into abundance.
Will we conquer our ecological problems or continue to keep our heads stuck in the sand?
Friday, April 06, 2012
Heaven or Hell - Paradise or Oblivion
I want to recommend that you view the on-line film "Paradise or Oblivion". This video is produced by The Venus Project. The previous links are to the Venus Project main site which embeds the video.
The Venus Project is the brainchild of Jacques Fresco, who is a self-educated designer of a new world. Jacques was born in 1916 and observed the terrible conditions of the Great Depression and was sensible enough to recognize that this tremendous problem was not a result of a natural calamity, but rather the result of a failed economic system. We in the US still have essentially the same economic system and, from time to time, we experience recessions or depressions as a result.
It has been one of my recent thoughts that humankind is on the threshold of a dream. Our advanced technology has been decreasing the real need for people to work. Without going into too many details, we now produce our food by the work of about 1% of the population. Except for distribution systems and the need for money to buy the food, 99% of us could have free food.
Most of our products are being increasingly produced by automation. My prediction is that we could reach a point where practically all our manual labor needs could be served by machines. I view this as humans reaching a point where we could choose to have Heaven on Earth - or we could have Hell on Earth. The title of the Venus Project video is "Paradise or Oblivion" which is a paraphrasing of Heaven or Hell and the concept is the same as my own ideas. Jacques has spent about 75 years pursuing this topic, while I have spent only a few hours. I am convinced that a huge change for the better is possible and the "Paradise or Oblivion" video explains it better and in more detail than I can.
The major concept of the video is to establish a "Resource Based Economy", which means no money. Everything is freely available to everyone. I don't yet see how to make the transition, but the idea has great merit.
Let's consider the automation of the food system. We currently are pretty efficient at food production. There is unfortunately a lot of wasted effort involved in the distribution system. Consider having an automated grocery "store" where you can select what you want and take it home without having people scanning prices and collecting money. This would also be true for all other "stores". You could go to a fast food store and have a machine make you a hamburger and fries for free. This would surely reduce the need for human labor.
The ultimate end of this process of automation is the elimination of the need for humans to work at tedious jobs. It isn't clear that we can eliminate all human labor in the near future, but I think that this is basically possible using robotics.
Let's assume that we achieve tremendous advances in automation and only 10% of the human population is required to work. Probably before then we would have reached a decision point: "Do we choose Heaven or Hell?" If we continue with a capitalist economy will we have 90% unemployment? I believe that the only rational decisions would be to reduce the work week or transform into a resource based economy. Doing so could produce Heaven or Paradise. Doing otherwise will result in more and deeper depressions accompanied by social upheaval, crime, violence and war.
A critical part of planning the future of life on earth is the recognition that humans must design the environment to allow sustainable habitation. We must live in harmony with nature. We must end pollution. We must restrict human population.
The future of Earth demands that human society evolve into a kinder, gentler, more cooperative society. We must learn to cooperate with people of all nations and the prosperity made possible by human ingenuity must be available to all.
The Venus Project is the brainchild of Jacques Fresco, who is a self-educated designer of a new world. Jacques was born in 1916 and observed the terrible conditions of the Great Depression and was sensible enough to recognize that this tremendous problem was not a result of a natural calamity, but rather the result of a failed economic system. We in the US still have essentially the same economic system and, from time to time, we experience recessions or depressions as a result.
It has been one of my recent thoughts that humankind is on the threshold of a dream. Our advanced technology has been decreasing the real need for people to work. Without going into too many details, we now produce our food by the work of about 1% of the population. Except for distribution systems and the need for money to buy the food, 99% of us could have free food.
Most of our products are being increasingly produced by automation. My prediction is that we could reach a point where practically all our manual labor needs could be served by machines. I view this as humans reaching a point where we could choose to have Heaven on Earth - or we could have Hell on Earth. The title of the Venus Project video is "Paradise or Oblivion" which is a paraphrasing of Heaven or Hell and the concept is the same as my own ideas. Jacques has spent about 75 years pursuing this topic, while I have spent only a few hours. I am convinced that a huge change for the better is possible and the "Paradise or Oblivion" video explains it better and in more detail than I can.
The major concept of the video is to establish a "Resource Based Economy", which means no money. Everything is freely available to everyone. I don't yet see how to make the transition, but the idea has great merit.
Let's consider the automation of the food system. We currently are pretty efficient at food production. There is unfortunately a lot of wasted effort involved in the distribution system. Consider having an automated grocery "store" where you can select what you want and take it home without having people scanning prices and collecting money. This would also be true for all other "stores". You could go to a fast food store and have a machine make you a hamburger and fries for free. This would surely reduce the need for human labor.
The ultimate end of this process of automation is the elimination of the need for humans to work at tedious jobs. It isn't clear that we can eliminate all human labor in the near future, but I think that this is basically possible using robotics.
Let's assume that we achieve tremendous advances in automation and only 10% of the human population is required to work. Probably before then we would have reached a decision point: "Do we choose Heaven or Hell?" If we continue with a capitalist economy will we have 90% unemployment? I believe that the only rational decisions would be to reduce the work week or transform into a resource based economy. Doing so could produce Heaven or Paradise. Doing otherwise will result in more and deeper depressions accompanied by social upheaval, crime, violence and war.
A critical part of planning the future of life on earth is the recognition that humans must design the environment to allow sustainable habitation. We must live in harmony with nature. We must end pollution. We must restrict human population.
The future of Earth demands that human society evolve into a kinder, gentler, more cooperative society. We must learn to cooperate with people of all nations and the prosperity made possible by human ingenuity must be available to all.
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