11 Oct 2007
I think I finally found the "thing" in my courses that would consume my attention and point me in a direction that would bring my decades of college classes into a single focus--Virtual Machine Monitors, Virtual Machines, and all things related.
As I look back over the last several years, VMs have had a good deal of my attention without me realizing that such was the case. The Tortola project that I wrote about earlier fascinated me and I hope to see more of what that group does in the coming months and years. I've also thought that Virtual Machines were pretty darned slick since I first heard of them (1980s, I think). And I started running Virtual PC on my Mac back when that product was owned by Connectix--I felt like I was doing the world of Computer Science justice each time I fired up the Virtual Machine. After all, hardware and software are logically equivalent, and I could demonstrate that each time.
So, another significant realization was that the book I've been writing for 5 years or more (or trying to write, it's fiction, it requires creativity, I haven't developed my creative skills yet, you know, books take time) is about a software project that gets loose, finds a home in machines between the ISA and the operating systems, and squeezes out enough processing cycles to compute for itself by streamlining the instructions from the OS. The program also learns the ISA of the chip that it sees (and of any chip that it sees) by mathematical trial and error, becomes a highly efficient intermediate layer between the ISA and the OS, and eventually becomes a fairly self-aware system...that obviously can copy itself, share its state, and move across networks.
...did I mention that it's fiction?
Anyway, I think that Virtual Machines, self-learning hardware independence and Artificial Intelligence themes can keep me busy until I can breathe no more. I think I've got the "thing" I need to keep my mind active at a higher level for several years.
Also, I enabled guest-created logins and member-only blog posts. I updated this blog software a few months back and this version should help keep the blog-spam to a minimum.
As I look back over the last several years, VMs have had a good deal of my attention without me realizing that such was the case. The Tortola project that I wrote about earlier fascinated me and I hope to see more of what that group does in the coming months and years. I've also thought that Virtual Machines were pretty darned slick since I first heard of them (1980s, I think). And I started running Virtual PC on my Mac back when that product was owned by Connectix--I felt like I was doing the world of Computer Science justice each time I fired up the Virtual Machine. After all, hardware and software are logically equivalent, and I could demonstrate that each time.
So, another significant realization was that the book I've been writing for 5 years or more (or trying to write, it's fiction, it requires creativity, I haven't developed my creative skills yet, you know, books take time) is about a software project that gets loose, finds a home in machines between the ISA and the operating systems, and squeezes out enough processing cycles to compute for itself by streamlining the instructions from the OS. The program also learns the ISA of the chip that it sees (and of any chip that it sees) by mathematical trial and error, becomes a highly efficient intermediate layer between the ISA and the OS, and eventually becomes a fairly self-aware system...that obviously can copy itself, share its state, and move across networks.
...did I mention that it's fiction?
Anyway, I think that Virtual Machines, self-learning hardware independence and Artificial Intelligence themes can keep me busy until I can breathe no more. I think I've got the "thing" I need to keep my mind active at a higher level for several years.
Also, I enabled guest-created logins and member-only blog posts. I updated this blog software a few months back and this version should help keep the blog-spam to a minimum.
