Off the Scheme-OSA topic

Yes, I seem to be drifting slowly off the main topic: Scheme-OSA = Scheme + OSA = Scheme + Open Scripting Architecture = Scheme + Applescript. Well, this is still the main goal for my current activities and this blog supposes to reflect it. However, I do get distracted from time to time for variety of reasons. So this post will be all about excuses.

Squeak and Seaside
A week ago I was asked to investigate this: given a XYZ program, which prints its data to a printer, redirect the printer input to a Squeak-based scheduling program UVW, parse and modify the data and then spit it out to the printer - using a similar format to the one used by the original XYZ program. Well, the UVW is not a Command Line Unix program -- it is a GUI universe on its own. You cannot just redirect stdin to UVW, then manipulate the data and finally print the results out to stdout and force UVW to exit. Well, you can do it in principle but there is no easy way to implemented it.
The obvious alternative solution is to embed a HTTP server within UVW - which brought me to Seaside framework -- a nice, several years old technology, combining a Comanche web server with a 'servlet' support, CSS and Ajax.
In my view Seaside has three major selling points: it understands and supports continuations, it completely separates flow control from user interface and it provides remote support for browsing and debugging. The latter means that you can connect to a live Seaside server, inspect and modify data using Squeak-like inspectors embedded in a web page, and browse or modify offending methods using tools, such as Class Hierachy Browser, which look almost identical as standard Squeak tools. When doing those modifications you do not need to kill any session or the server itself - all the operations can be made on the "living organism".
The Seaside's home page offers several demo videos. One such demo was evidently given to a Lisp user group; the Lispers had many technical questions and suggestions, but apparently the Seaside concept was taken seriously by them.
All of this has nothing to do with Scheme in general (with the exception of continuation jargon), and Scheme-OSA in particular. This was just a distraction, but since I was paid for that, I do not complain. Oh, yes, I used to program in Smalltalk, and I have some experience with Squeak.

Presentation of the world's first commercial quantum computer
Few days ago D-wavesys company from British Columbia, Canada announced its first public presentation of a 16-qubit quantum computer, Orion. Some details leading to the presentation are available at Geordie Rose's blog -- a technical person from D-wavesys. To the credit of Dr. Rose, his blog contains permanent links to the blogs of some active quantum physicists, and who are not always overly enthusiastic about the event. But in average the response of the QC community is ambivalent but not damning: "give us more data to analyze the system first". If you want to learn something about Orion read blogs of physicists, watch some U-tube videos produced by participants of the events (Vancouver and San Francisco), but avoid regular press as a plague: too much hype and very little understanding of QC concept.
What does it have to do with Scheme-OSA? Nothing, but it affects the author of this blog somehow. In 2001 I wrote Haskell Simulator of Quantum Computer, which is cited in several Haskell publication produced ever since. There are also several Scheme-based papers on the subject published in recent years. For some reasons I have not followed the topic of Quantum Computing, but I wish I had. Much has happened in the recent years in this field and it took me several days to familiarize myself with major accomplishements of QC.