Continuing looking at the code which Chrome is built upon, I had a look at V8 the javascript engine that compiles js code to native code.
In particular at cpu-ia32.{h|cc} and cpu-arm.{h|cc}. So the good news here is that v8 is available for ARM on top of x86. It seems that adding PowerPC support is doable. I was looking for a cool project to work on during my free time as I have not been involved in computer stuff outside my work for quite a while now. Just unsure I have the time required to do that. I'm quite puzzled by the lack of ia-64 support too.
So yesterday I bitched about the fact that Chrome, replaced 404 pages with a input box that would let user perform google searches. I did not like the idea , that 404 where replaced by a search box.
Today I downloaded the source of Chrome and had a look inside and found this interesting comment :
// When the frame request first 404's, chrome may replace it with the alternate
// 404 page's contents. It does this using substitute data in the document
// loader, so the original response and url of the request can be preserved.
// We need to avoid replacing the current page, if it has already been
// replaced (otherwise could loop on setting alt-404 page!)
bool is_substitute_data = loader->substituteData().isValid();
// If it's a 404 page, we wait until we get 512 bytes of data before trying
// to load the document. This allows us to put up an alternate 404 page if
// there's short text.
in http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/webkit/glue/webframeloaderclient_impl.cc?view=markup&pathrev=1359 around line 252.
This simply means that if you want to keep your 404 pages they need to be 513 byte in length. If they are 513 Chrome considers that the page contains interesting bits of information for the user and does not replace it with a google crafted page.
So like many people yesterday I've been amused by the announce of Google's chrome browser. I like the way it was done - the comic is a very good idea !!!
Reading the comic was great fun - and very informative - especially on their QA process - each build is tested against the cache content that google maintains, bug can then be ranked based on google's rank page algorithm
I was disappointed that it's win32 only for now, but since mike blogged about the fact he was working on it, I'm reassured. I just hope we will see a PowerPC version - but I'm not holding my breath there. It seems that most of the ex-netscaper working @ google are working on this project. A few things are annoying - like certificate handling - which prevent me to use it for work stuff. Anyhow it's good to see something borrowing one of BeOS concepts of one thread per window and changing it to one process per tab, in beos all applications were snappy because of that. I'm pretty sure that on the long run Chrome is going to rock.
There is one thing I don't like. It's that it transforms 404 into google search pages :-( That is bad I think.
Like last year, I'm only attending the saturdays. Considering the program, I would probably have been interested by a few other session - some of the solar cooking ones and those geared to the BSD family of operating systems. But this year My work schedule was really busy and I was tired most of the week - so I decided to attend a complete day, saturday August the 16th, and spend the day and beginning of the evening there. Unlike Last year, this year I took a laptop with me, and might participate to the wireless scanning contest.
The first speaker was late which was a good thing - this gave me time to find a version of KissMac that would not crash ! The trunk version I had is crashing after a few network are found - and goes into an infinite loop when in the debugger :-(
(gdb) backtrace
#0 0x936636e4 in objc_msgSend ()
#1 0x0002c3eb in -[WaveNet SSID] (self=0xf8378e0, _cmd=0xa5880) at /Users/Ludo/Documents/sources/trunk/Sources/Core/WaveNet.mm:1275
#2 0x0002d523 in -[WaveNet cache] (self=0xf8378e0, _cmd=0x936645f4) at /Users/Ludo/Documents/sources/trunk/Sources/Core/WaveNet.mm:1519
#3 0x000076a2 in -[ScanController tableView:objectValueForTableColumn:row:] (self=0x35de00, _cmd=0x9369e778, aTableView=0x352580, aTableColumn=0x353570, rowIndex=4) at /Users/Ludo/Documents/sources/trunk/Sources/Controller/ScanController.m:283
#4 0x95f87dce in -[NSTableView _dataSourceValueForColumn:row:] ()
#5 0x95f0a100 in -[NSTableView preparedCellAtColumn:row:] ()
#6 0x95f09f64 in -[NSTableView _drawContentsAtRow:column:withCellFrame:] ()
#7 0x95f0949a in -[NSTableView drawRow:clipRect:] ()
#8 0x11007944 in -[ColoredRowTableView drawRow:clipRect:] ()
#9 0x95eae90c in -[NSTableView drawRowIndexes:clipRect:] ()
#10 0x95ead3f0 in -[NSTableView drawRect:] ()
#11 0x110079c9 in -[ColoredRowTableView drawRect:] ()
#12 0x95f3d984 in -[NSView _drawRect:clip:] ()
Looks like the SSID is not set or something. As I did not really have the skill and time to debug it, I'll just hope that the issue is due to a very local network and that I will be able to scan while on the boat.
The program was not what pushed me to attend, nevertheless I did attend a few sessions that where programmed :-)
Workshop Wifi and Latency by Dougal Featherstone
The title of the workshop was not interesting and the presentation of what it meant to be too short. So I did not bother listening too much as people where trying to measure latency in a closed circuit network, where packets travelled on a wire then on wireless network. Two routes where taken and the idea was to measure the time difference it took fro the same packet to reach both destination, after the What time is it presentation from the afternoon I would have invested myself a bit more in the workshop.
I did learn the following though while people where fighting some bash scripts:
bash can do expand on kills ie kill 123{2..7} quite boring because I did not really participate.
Now if bash could do as this korn shell trick, I would switch to bash.
Boat Trip
After the nice boat trip in Leiden, trying to sniff as many network as possible , I must say I did not even try to run KissMac, I did however filed a bug repport about the issue as I can't reproduce it @ home - but both me and Ed would crash around the OCC infrastructures.
IT and Trading by Chris Tazelaar
A nice introduction of what stock trading his, what the economics around it concerning IT are. Where it is going and where that specific branch of the industry is going. He explained many thing using the Tulip mania, an internet like bubble, that happened in Holland 400 years ago. A very good introduction to the next presentation.
Latency and global timestamps by Dougal Featherstone
A nice speech on time, and how to keep computers on time. As trading is a race, you need to make sure that your machines are keeping time precisely.. 'Meten is weten', How to measure , it transmit it and keep the information on the time it is. Very interesting presentation where I learned that using GPS is the best way to keep a clcok in synch, but that other protocols were being developed:
PTP nice protocol being worked on since 2005 (Precision Time Protocol).
IRIG is on the electrical level, ad trying to improve time synching.
A nice speech on time, and how to keep computers on time. As trading is a race, you need to make sure that your machines are keeping time precisely.. 'Meten is weten', How to measure , it transmit it and keep the information on the time it is. Very interesting presentation where I learned that using GPS is the best way to keep a clcok in synch, but that other protocols were being developed:
PTP nice protocol being worked on since 2005 (Precision Time Protocol).
IRIG is on the electrical level, ad trying to improve time synching.
The BBQ was nice but I was a bit in a hurry to go to the Final of the Firework competition in Scheveningen. The BBQ and the boat trip where sponsored by Optiver - and the optiver guys where wearing nice T-shirt , where some code about using GPU's to do financial computation was printed.
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