If you can't do it on desktop, you can't do it at all. Mainly because some of us have real work to do.
If the only "usable" implementation is on a hard-to-physically-secure mobile device that uses a tonne of different uncontrolled network access points a day -- that's not really an option now, is it?
I feel you're missing open whisper systems' target audience. If you've seen how regular people use computers, their phone is the most secure device a normal person owns. Not the most secure if you're worried about targeted attack, but the best place to put a dent in cheap dragnet surveillance :)
Actually, I very much wanted to do that, the problem is that there seems to be no Scheme implementation available that offers such a tight and convenient libffi integration. LuaJIT parses preprocessed C header files with very few adjustments. Terra, which links LuaJIT with LLVM, goes the full mile and directly uses libclang to generate interfaces.
If you know a Scheme implementation that does this (including supporting a LLVM back-end in addition to a regular, possibly JIT'ed interpreter), please do not hesitate to mention!
Neither is suitable. Guile has the wrong license, none of these three has bindings for a no-JIT code generator like LLVM.
It's no big deal though. The Scheme -> Lua compiler is small (300 lines) the dialect is better suited for hash tables and the dynamic part is mostly a driver to generate/execute machine code at runtime.
At this point, a switch to Scheme would service purism more than pragmatism. Lua is already a good Scheme VM (has been strongly inspired by Scheme, in fact) so it'll do. At least I hope it will. ;-)
You know, "you are too stupid to be allowed to make your own food," is probably not a good selling point for most people. I'm going to go out on limb and suggest that it's not a good selling point for anyone.
"Soylent fans" who are fans before the actual product has been seen or tested in any significant way might self-identify as people who need to be targeted by the first paragraph of this reply, however.
Me, I'm a Google fan so the Galaxy Tab running Froyo (Android 2.2) is always going to be a winner unless you want to get seriously into iPad synthesizer aps (where it has a huge advantage currently). Ultimately, though, it comes down to deciding what you want it FOR. Games and sound aps? You'll need an iPad. eReading, techy geek stuff, reading news / Google integration? Gotta go with the Android.
If I go for iPad, Should I wait for iPad2. I heard its going to be lot better. BTW, I ll be using tablet for techy geek stuff, reading news and ocassional gaming.
The "LCD tablet" market has a lot of space to play in, in terms of price point. I picked up a Cruz Reader from Borders at deep discount for Christmas; its been an awesome eReader / micro-tablet / news reader. The iPad's not necessarily king of that form factor any more and becomes less so as more Android devices roll out at much deeper price points.
That space is only going to get tighter in the next few years.
So ... why NOT be a dentist website designer, at least part-time? You know the business needs, you know the lingo of both (you're here, anyway) ... It sounds like a job that fills a needed niche! Better sites == more hits due to easier searching; there's a business case.
It is a tough market to operate on since a lot of dentists are busy people and usually their practice is managed by marketing consultants that do their local marketing/business promotion for them. It's not a straight forward "Let's meet and I build you a kick ass website" business.
We have been trying to crack in to this niche for almost two years with our http://patientboost.com/default.html service but it is a damn challenging market.
And while you're at, write some better X-ray and tooth-photo database UI for them. I cringe at the program my dentist plods through every time she takes pictures or X-rays of my teeth.
Its been at the top of my list of software I have basically no interest in working on yet feel like I could do a hell of a lot better at anyway. Of course, I haven't researched what's out there, there may already be much better options available.
Besides being ugly, my main beef is that I have watched her drag photos, one at a time, into their proper slots in my "file" from the incoming area, even though they were already clearly labelled as to what tooth they were pictures of. It's maddening. It's only a minute or two, and she doesn't take pictures every visit, but it's the kind of thing that just screams shoddy workmanship... and opportunity.
I have watched her drag photos, one at a time, into their proper slots in my "file" from the incoming area, even though they were already clearly labelled as to what tooth they were pictures of.
Are you certain that is a software problem? It could well be a user education problem, or a trust issue between dentist and program.
Maybe she's just using an old version. I've seen quite a bit of medical equipment the last couple of months (pregnant wife), in a well-funded academic hospital, and most of that is top notch. The solo practitioners don't have money to upgrade every couple of years.
How does having a better website presence bring the dentist more money? I'm having a hard time answering that in a way a halfway decent VC wouldn't laugh at, and that includes your putative answer, because you don't need a glorious site to be found via search, just a site.
When I needed to get my wisdom teeth removed I googled local dentists and found one that had a decent website with an online contact form. I made my reservation through email. The only reason it isn't more common to do this yet is precisely because most websites are complete garbage. (Flash-only with no contact info is particularly common.)
Having a good website will get you a competitive advantage in the market segment I'm a part of. (And my segment, people who don't want to deal with automated call systems or dead trees of phone numbers is growing every day.)
It really depends on what kind of dentist's ones are. If you are just a run off the mill dentist that takes care of mouth hygiene, then there is little incentive to make better website since you can probably better off doing local neighborhood direct marketing.
However if you are offering Cosmetic Dentistry, each new client can worth thousands of dollars and people will travel from their immediate surrounding to go reach your dentist practice.
"People like myself for twenty years and nothing to sell."