More Ming fun.... :)

Hi all,

Pondering possibilities further.

Here's an interesting thought.  PHP compiled in CLI mode on a Unix box, 
then put into a "looks for input" loop and backgrounded.

The looking for input loop could be anything (i.e. waits on input from a 
TCP connection), and then generates output appropriately either directly 
to a remote flash object or perhaps locally to a filesystem.

Could be useful.  Tied to a database for data input and hmmm:

  + Periodically updated animated visualisation of data sets (i.e. 
weather, website hits (now THAT would be cool))

  + Visualisations based on extremely complex data (fractal zoom movies 
anyone?) that take a significant amount of time to generate.

Background processing and generation of Flash movies, with output in a 
webserver readable directory, sounds like it'd have many cool uses. 
Especially with an easy way to signal the background process PHP with 
instructions of what to do.

Might be a tie there to:

SRM (http://www.vl-srm.net) also looks useful for PHP, as it allows for 
persistant state keeping (i.e. instructions of what to do next).  (Not 
like sessions!)

***

Distributed flash computing... hmmm.... lets say we get 5 PC's, and give 
them each a sequence of 1,000 frames to render (with appropriate data) 
using Ming + PHP.

As each frame is completed, they use flash remoting technology to send 
the data to a centralised Flash instance running somewhere and it 
assembles them on disk.  Not sure if the existing security mechanism 
would allow that (anyone?).

So, what technology would that take?  A browser and connection to the 
central flash (on the Net).  Lets see, 400+ Million people already have 
that in operation, and it's cross platform.  Usefulness?  Probably 
pretty specialised.  The CPU time saved would have to outway the data 
transfer time to make it work.

;-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift