Eskom. A single word that now inspires hate and remorse in every single South African. Especially those in my industry.

ZAY2K10 Bug

I'm coining it. We have all heard of the Y2K30 bug (which is 10x more lethal than the Y2K strain), but here is a new one. South Africa and the 2010 Soccer World Cup. There are going to be huge infrastructure problems in South Africa when thousands of demanding tourists cross our border. It won't only be a electricity problem, but I can tell you what will causes it all: a power problem.

The Current Government and Situation

The current government is corrupt and completely and utterly unorganised. They resort to giving their top brass multi-million Rand bonuses; when, firstly, they don't deserve those bonuses and secondly, they can't afford those bonuses. They run essential services like they are capitalist ventures: sure they might publicise the telecoms and electricity providers - but certainly, as far as electricity goes, competitors are illegal.

Telecoms were only recently opened to competition, but I might add we have yet to see consumer services from the competitor (which we welcome with open arms). Telkom still reigns supreme and most consumers will most probably be too complacent to switch to the alternative. Hopefully South Africa can do something about its telecoms situation because it is just plain down-right annoying (our Internet services cost a small fortune).

Cellular Ogopolies

There are two cell phone providers in South Africa (essentially), Vodacom and MTN. Both are ripping customers off from sickening heights. When Virgin Mobile came through I switched from Vodacom straight away: but it was just too plain limited - and my girlfriend is on Vodacom (so it works out cheaper, but only slightly).

Given all of this, I must admit that Vodacom is trying pretty damn hard to give their customers good bang-for-buck. I was surprised when they allowed prepaid customers to buy data bundles for as little as R189 (about US$30) for 500mb, while that is a burst of rain for us, our American friends still point and throw stones at us.

Uneducated

Our current political party is dominated by uneducated, immoral or just plain stupid delegates. I am sure if you look up most of them you will see that they have degrees: 'complementary' degrees from our (otherwise hopeless) brown-nosing universities. I sure wish I could get a degree for landing a job, but I don't tow as much power (or as big bonuses) as they do.

Computer Industry

The computer industry is blossoming, world-wide; and in South Africa we are biding our time between power cuts, spending our incomes on bandwidth and taking pills to combat our depressing situation. Wasted money, wasted time - which means wasted money squared.

We are third-world because that is what suits our government.

I'll make my first real post an introduction to Cosmos (which neither stands for something nor does not stand for anything). Cosmos is an open source operating system written in 100% pure home-grown C#. How do we do this?

Il2Cpu

IL2CPU is a compiler that compiles CIL (Common Intermediate Language) to ML (Machine Language). CIL can not be run directly on a CPU (currently, at least): but it is what C# compiles to. ML is what your CPU understands.

To get around the issue of needing ML at some point we inline assembler into C# (but it is strongly typed and all that amazing goodness). We can 'plug' methods in the corlib (.Net base library) and replace object and method implementations (this is a work in progress - a lot more needs to be done on the front of plugs).

Why IL?

So why are bothering to use IL in the first place?

1. Languages that compile directly to ML generally suck (that includes 'hardcore' C/C++), why?
   1. ML is unsafe - write buggy programs (which even the best programmers do) and you are opening security holes: just look at Windows. 
   2. ML is complicated - yes, spend 10 years writing your operating system in C to prove your point.
   3. ML is only faster in academic situations - in very, very, very academic situations. Not to mention that up until now CIL has been benchmarked on an ML operating system.
   4. ML is static - you don't take advantage of MMX/SSE/3DNow automatically.
2. It's a challenge.
3. It's a philosophical leap.
4. It's controversial.
1. Everyone tells us that we can't and throws stones at us. Kinda like the nerd in elementary school who grows up and lands up being their boss.
5. It will be easier in the long run.

What We Are Looking Forward To

We are really looking forward to:

• Strongly typed drivers
• Modular system
• Uber security
• Filesystem abstraction (read WinFS)

Blogging: Finally

After months (or not so much) of searching for a decent blogging service, I came across one: Windows Live + Live Writer.

What I'm Up To

SourceCode

I am a SourceCode developer. Spend most of my time chasing up new technologies and seeing how we can appropriate them for our customers. Most of the time I look at new Microsoft technologies, or I look at old ones and see how we can use them.

I waste my boss's time with new ideas for products.

Cosmos

Cosmos is an open source operating system written in C# (that is, 100% C#) built using the IL2CPU component (that is really seen as a sub-project of Cosmos). We are making good progress and are nearing milestone 1.

What To Expect

Those aforementioned technologies (the ones that don't make it) may just be useful for somebody else. You might be lucky enough to score some sourcecode.

Cosmos, of course, should be a great learning experience for me!