Since this page is catching a lot of search engines, I guess I should put up an intro blurb...
Welcome. This is a collection of Lion Kimbro's thoughts for about a year now. (Written sometime in 2001.) No, this isn't a silly blog; This is a categorized selection of thoughts, most directed towards some end, rather than a "Oh, I woke up and saw a pretty bird; I'm feeling... grouchy!... today." sort of thing.
Recommended use? Search this doc (Control-F for the internet explorer folk) for the word that interests you. If nothing shows up, wait a couple moments; this file is probably still loading.
Some day I'll divide this up into a bunch of database entries. Until then, you have this enormous flat file.
If you are curious about the thought database itself, search for "ThoughtDB".
OpenSource software continues to do well. It's like MicroPayments. Finally we have PayPal. But there were several attempts earlier to do micropayments. They all failed. It wasn't that micropayments were a bad idea, or that there was something fundamentally wrong with it; it was just that there wasn't enough infrastructure in place to provide for them. They jumped the gun. They saw too far with their intellect, but not far enough with their wallet. It's okay- these were good attempts. They probably seeded the public with much needed, good interest. I think it's the same with OpenSource software. I have a feeling that it's a bit pre-mature right now to say, "OpenSource will take over the world." Actually, that's probably not premature; I think it's true. I think it's obviously true. OpenSource software is a lower energy state. It takes less energy to support it. Naturally, in an almost physical sense, it must be what we move to using. It's just not there yet. We need a lot of groupware and standard methods of working to be done. Studies, analysis, a lot of technology work has to be done before we get there. But get there we will. OpenSource software will be one of the greatest things to have hit the world, along with micropayments. It's like the invention of money.
The Japanese like Linux, too. =^_^= . o O ( Our secret ally. )
Getting the frames for human drawings is really hard work. I think, rather than getting a human subject to draw for me, which requires a lot of synchronization and is time consuming, it might be more useful to lift the designs from the "How to Draw Anime & Manga Characters" book.
I think the reason the neck is frequently mistakenly drawn just immediately beneath the head, rather than back a little, is because we think "Oh, the neck is under the head. I should draw it under the head." Which makes sense, except that the neck is sort of slanted away, generally speaking, from non-straight forward angles.
Mostly trying make sense of the weird landscape we find ourselves in, and, with collaboration and repeatable experiments, figure out how to do some interesting and fun things with it all.
An idea of taking common household chemicals, figuring out how to reduce them to their elementary components, and recombine them in useful ways.
Basically consider urban landscape to be a wasteland environment, and scavange up what we can.
The company is a low energy state configuration of people. In a very real sense! The motivations in our life and what not are manifest through electrochemical reactions within our brains; In a very real sense, a relationship between people, either romantic or economic, is a chemical low-energy state.
How to write a useful, en-livening, warm, comic or other piece of written work: Identify something that you are nervous about, that worries you, or otherwise bothers you. Write a comic showing the situation from a higher perspective. I'm immediately thinking of Fujishima's Ah-Megamisama, in which Keichi is hired by the company on the basis of having dirt under his fingernails. The helps allays our fears about the world, that the job market it incredibly intense, and that people who are better at marketting themselves are the ones who will get the good jobs. We are bombarded with these fears day in and day out, and it sways us to behave in strange ways. These comics are really useful, and life-affirming. Takahashi.
At the end of all great people and things and powers is Name. Trace all the rivers to their source, and you find Name. In the opposite direction, there's nothing. It's like a fire in the middle of a very dark and dangerous jungle. The fire provides warmth and life for even the smallest dwellers of the jungle.
"Everything's Pre-School" - Joseph Laureno, referring to how most good ideas and life comes from a pre-school childlike mentality. Specifically, we were talking about designing games by taking out the lego sets, drawing things on paper, and using dice, rather than building enormous engines and what not, and haggling over interfaces and rendering tools. Make it fun from the beginning when it's easy to build things, and then scale up, and everything should come out all right.
Die hair yellow, just for fun.
Get a laptop to serve as my catch. Make sure I have a wacom with it.
Make it so that when you get a handle to a file, you get much more than that. You also get events and what not from the system. Fro example: Read only toggled on a file? Youg et a message saying so.
Return to Mudd. Study lots. Also study business. You are going to start a school.
Make a kinetic book for the fledging unix prorgammers.
Immediately, here are some things that you can write:
I have a dream of books on all topics, from which it is easy to learn and study. Where people recognize that I have a dream of a study of education driven by the market, rather than the slow and sad progress of conflicting and fad funded psychologies. I have a dream of enlightened public schools where children can persue their interests and are encouraged to make a better world for one another; where they are not talked down to. Where students are not forced to learn something they don't want to (the "UniBomber" provision), where students learn to read and write because they recognize that they want to. These ideas can't be realized because of a myriad of reasons, but they are good ideals, I think.
Make Kinetic Books. Each point should have understanding confirmed by leaving a space for the reader to write in a response, reply, draw a map, whatever. This is not unlike children's aeroplane books. People are active, and thinking/learning(constructing) is an active process!
Ways to improve books:
I had three observations:
I don't know that the "teach them one skill" approach, emphasised by Gerry Sussman and popularized by Philip Greenspun, applies so well towards Chemistry. Very kinetically oriented. Well, I suppose you could say, "You should be able to calculate how much energy it takes to convert an ice cube at 250 K to steam at 400K." Yah, that's reasonable. And the concepts that you learn along the way- they would be tought. LEarning would happen. And the lecture would have focus.
I'm remembering when I was back in the Centenial Towers Apartment, and how I had diagrams on the wall that were quite nice and fun and interesting.
The current Catch is not faring so well- mostly scribbled notes, no order or what not.
The current catch functions very well as a categorization scheme, utilizing the tags and hierarchies, that is, as a collection of data, and it works well as a presentation of the collected data- I can see in 2 dimensions, the various pieces of data and their corrolations to other pieces of data (although there are a few wormholes/links between disparrate pieces). It's definitely been helpful (I noted the key conceptual links between communication and education, and games and governments).
Successes:
But there have also been failures. Putting ideas together still takes too long (though it does work!- a definite improvement over before, when ideas were lost completely). I believe that a technical solution is ideal here. I will lose the nice 2d representation of data- this is *VERY* unfortunate, but I will gain better notes (I can type faster than I can write), they will be easily retrievable. I will lost pictures unless I have a wacom tablet attached to the picture, or scan in images (UG.). This is terrible. I'll probably need to hand scan a few.
Now back to the walls: What to do with my surfaces? Scrawled notes have no sticktivity to my mind. They do not attract my attention, nor are they easily interpreted (hard to read, no pictures, etc.,.). I believe I need to take it all down, and then use it as I used it at the Centennial Towers: As a location for artistic expression, and visual maps of subjects and topics that I am learning. As the collage of learning.
This has three benefits:
The number one loss is that relationships among subjects will not be as apparent as it was before. I'm not sure this will be lost as I convert the Catch to computer notes, though..!
I question the educational values that our colleges are bringing us. They focus on teaching skills, rather than teaching thought.
They are bringing us people who know how to read text, apply it to solve simple problems, and follow the routine. I would call this teaching a skill. It is incredibly useful and important.
But it is not the whole story. When I'm in Chemistry, and they tell us that there are Redox reactions, Acid Base Reactions, and Precipitation Reactions. We're just told that. Well?! Are those all of them? Okay, so we have Comp./Displace/Decomp/Combustion(combustion? doesn't that seem rather non-orthogonal?) in there. Okay- why? What's going on here? Are there ever redox reactions that are also acid-base reactions? (Turns out: Yes). How's this: Maybe redox is transfering electrons, and maybe acid-base is transferring protons, and precipitation is doing neither. Okay, so that's kind of orthogonal; I feel like I've learned something, though I had to do all the thinking- the book gave no indication, and fellow students give the cold shoulder if you pester the teacher with your annoying questions. I cannot get a map of all reactions, or a compendium, or tools of the trade. When I ask about these things, the teacher either doesn't know, or doesn't have the time to teach me. Other students are annoyed by the questions. I'm just trying to make sense of what's going on. I'm astonished that so few others are. Most are begging for equations->grades->survival. <sigh> The system is set up for that.
Is there anyone with a general knowledge of Chemistry, the profession, etc., etc., etc.,..? If so, why aren't these people teaching? Is duplicating quality information too expensive? Too little supply, even though there is a high demand? Or perhaps, there is neither supply, nor demand. That's likely, which is dissapointing to me. (Whit's Principle of Education: Lion, if people asked the kinds of questions you ask, the answers would be in the books...)
Don't you all ever stop healing? Don't you stop healing, when you're healed? With all the healing going on, you'd think that there'd be a healed person or two. Heal-> No sharp constonants in the word.
Goddamnit I hate all these m_'s and LongReallyLongJustSoYouKnow variable names all over the place. I can't tell what the fuck's going on in the flurry of over-non-informative-information..!
Like I really wonder about whether or not begin_vel is a global variable or not, in the midst of a giant engine. Now I have to call it m_BeginVelocity, in order to match the rest of the style.
Oh yeah, we REALLY needed that m_ because... IT MIGHT be a global variable..!
What was once easy to understand and clear is now massive and uncomprehensible..!
RRRRrr!
An interesting way to write a story:
Think about how you wish that you lived.
Write a story about a character living in such an arrangement. What does the character think in respons to various situations? How does the character react to various situations? What are the systems in the characters to handle or react to the situations? How does the character work?
I recall Michael saying something similar to this; Did he say that it was futile to come up with an ideal response to every arrangement? Was it futile because it's a terrible effor in the first place, or due to the uniqueness of all people? Or, perhaps because these are mental ponderings, and simran knows nothing of them.
Ursula Le'Guin said: "Listen". But to what? Should I be listening to my mind, the news, simran, nature, everything, anything, WHAT? Just what should we be listening to? On what channels? Physical, emotional, causal, mental, intutive, the Voice of Love? Or perhaps the patterns of life? What? There are 9 wizards at Rokh, if I recall correctly.
"Shit; I don't know anything anymore..." (Forgot where I heard that, or even if I heard it somewhere.)
If I had to teach someone about how to get hired, I'd show them the mass of resumes that a company receives, say, "Which of these resumes is the company going to pull someone out from, knowing that they want someone who can do XY and Z and be happy doing it?"
I'd be sure to show the numerous shiny looking, but not necessarily interesting, resumes that temp agencies bring us, and discuss the tradeoffs (generally $5,000) that comes with hiring from the agencies.
Then again, the agencies ARE really good about bringing us a lot of candidates. Generally it's easier when looking for a job to hook up with an agency, because you don't have to do a lot of work.
As you are learning stuff, you will want to understand information deeper. This is right and good. If you are in a class though, you are not given time for deep comprehension; the class is pushing you along to give you a broad overview. (This is almost universally true. Deeper thought is almost always possible.) The purpose becomes to give you overview and certain key ideas, not depth and foundation. If you can wing on your own without a teacher and institution, you'll need to meet their grades. (Not to deter from winging on your own; I believe there is a time and place for each, and it's not necessarily what society tells us.) There will be a desire to learn deeply. This can lead to deeper reading. It is important to remember to do homework first, with minimal late-binding comprehension. THEN, after you are done establishing the key ideas that the teacher wanted you to get, you can dive in after deeper questions, and ask the teacher those questions. But get what the teacher wanted you to get FIRST. THEN go after deeper materials.
In an opensource project, you need to seed locations with interest.
It can be far from perfect, and it can be incomplete, It just needs to be seeded. After that, things can/will(?) flower out.
"Life's too important to be taken seriously." - author unknown to Lion
Write an entry about how the catch evolved.
Change name to "Seattle Unix Learning".
Write "Emacs3D": A programmable 3D editing environment, using Lisp or Python.
You could make it so if you typed, "heli", you'd get a helicoptor view. If you type, "persp", you get a perspective view. "worm" for a worm view. Make it so that typing the names of common objects will make them appear.
If you want something to be yellow, you type, "yellow." "green" for green, "blue" for blue, "purple" for purple, etc., etc., etc.,. We'll be getting a lot of bright colers, I guess then..!
It'd be a fun project, to make a pretty goofy 3D editor, but one that would allow you to creatively make all kinds of interesting shapes and things.
Think Slats, Hoops, Tinks, and Chips.
We need to make a database of free sounds; Sounds that are either public domain, or covered by some sort of free license.
Challenges include:
Initially, we should go for things such as footsteps, Doors opening and closing, etc., etc.,.
This can be rolled into the River Of Hope idea.
Later note (May 1st, 2001): Someone's started one: http://www.adelaide.net.au/~xandrews/clangfx/index.html
This takes place in the far future. A professor is teaching some physics to a class of students. He says, "And this is the Slagerforth Equation, from 1959." The class bursts into laughter, and the professor, with a "Oh God, here we go again," look on his face, waits for the juvenile laughter to cease.
Lion, when you write letters to people, have fun with it. Write as if you were writing back from an expedition, or write as if you are in a dungeon or on the high seas. Be dramatic and fanciful and everything.
In a sort of modern day version of the Catholic "If it hurts, It's good for you, if it feels good, It's bad for you," belief, people frequently believe that the sole reason why playing games is fun is because games are a distraction.
I don't think that's the case at all. I can think of plenty of other distracting things that we could do besides playing games. For example, knitting. You could say that the reason people like knitting is because it keeps them "distracted".
Distracted from what? From the basic pains of the world. Whatever you are "supposed" to be doing.
I do think that it is common to use games as a way to distract ourselves from the world, but I don't think it is why games are fun/interesting.
A model that might be useful is the model of chemical bonding. There are lower energy states, where the molecules like to be. You have to apply some sort of external energy to turn the bonds back into Joules (Energy/money), and then you can form something else.
Playing games can be a relatively low energy state; one that the mind prefers. Thus, by looking at games, we can look at the sorts of things that the mind likes- low energy states for minds.
I'm not certain that this is a viable/valid description, but I do feel that it is a good description of *habits* and how they work.
I don't think it's so much that a focus on Progress is the only way to live. Rather, it only takes one culture to believe in progress in order to "spoil the bag". Indeed; I don't understand what's so bad about progress. I mean, if you think it's bad, then you'd like us to PROGRESS to a state of non-progress. I don't get it; maybe a better explanation of what you mean by "progress" would make it a little clearer to me.
One cool thing in StarFlight is that to win the game, you have to make a number of risky decisions.
In the game, you have places that are very safe- you can get lots of supplies, minerals, what not. You could practically live there forever, building up your strength, etc., etc., and what not.
But then you get this clue. This clue that says, "If you go this way, to this place, and look around a bit, you will find something that will change the course of your life." (Or at least, this game, but, the game is so cool, it may as well change your life as well! The author has hidden some goodies for life within this game, which your mind is apt to find..!)
You look that way, and... All you see is DEATH and NOTHINGNESS.
I mean, you look ANY which way, and all you see is your ass getting kicked. In your crew, you have some members of various races, and the people to the south don't like those people. You could get different people, but then the people to the north won't like them either! You look north east, and there's a bunch of robots ready to make mince meat of your ship if you answer one of their questions wrong. Southwest, there are aliens who don't even talk to you, all they want to do is turn you to scrap. To the west are fluxes which will throw you some random place in the universe.
All in all, it's not very pretty.
Until you get this note, and this note says: If you go to some system really really far away, so far you barely have fuel for it, and then if you go there and look around, you might find something cool.
Well, you can stay, build up, and eventually be destroyed by solar flare, ...
Or, you can gear up and undertake... ...what promises to be... ...a very... ...very... ...dangerous... ...Journey.
And that's why StarFlight is so cool. =^_^=
There is this feeling of imminent mortality, There are "safe" places and "very not safe" places, and then clues, like in those games where you follow clue after clue after clue.
And THAT's a hell of a lot of fun..!
It's very Leiji- the Leiji who did Galaxy Express 999 and Star Blazers.
Contrast with the Final Fantasy series- It's just WAY too safe. It's too easy just to stay in one place, build up, build up, build up, etc., etc.,. You're never in any danger; If in doubt, just build up.
Thus, there is no tension to the game. You just stay in one place, gaining strength. You fight monsters, but it's not scary. If they beat you, just buy more potions or something. There's no economy on potions, like there was on Endurium in Star Flight.
Also, in Star Flight, you could go anywhere.
In FF, you're directed to go here first, then there, then there, etc., etc.,.
StarFlight managed to pull off a pretty nifty and involved story amidst the freedom to explore.
Oh, and in Star Flight, you never attain mastery over the world. Resources are finite. You have to choose your flights carefully. There's no point at which you have some much weapons and fuel that you are invincible. (Actually, is this true? I seem to remember doing rather well with 5th Class everything...)
A company appears and says that they will exchange $2 million for souls. For each person that signs a paper saying that they promise their eternal soul, the company will award $2 million dollars. People may buy their souls back for $3 million dollars.
People of all types wonder, "What is the trick?" There are some violent reactions. People line up to sell their souls.
A girl who treaters her ex-boyfriends extremely poorly. (Based on Brandy). When a boy comes to visit, the family informs him at the door, "Oh, oh, we're so happy to see you, and we just want to tell you: Whatever happens, we Love you, and we are sure that you are very nice."
A girl who can freeze time: The world around her.
She has a hard time relating with people some times, and once, she stopped time for a very long time, and was quite dissociated with the world when she finally unfroze it.
She knows quite a lot; she's read many books, and learned many things.
Vehicles are really important to stories. A lot of pride and care goes into vehicles, and it has a lot of symbolic meaning. Just think of the Grinch's sled, with all the lights on it, poking in all directions. Or the Explorer's sled. Or the Edelin. Or a sailors boat.
These vehicles are really important, and people have more pride in their synthetic bodies than their actual bodies..! (Since people had no say in how their body came out, but their vehicle represents their mind.)
The more customized the vehicle is, the better. The more it was built from the ground up, the more meaningful it is.
Indeed, I would be surprised if you couldn't make a complete game solely around the construction of a vehicle.
Leiji Matsumoto used the vehicle this way to now end, what with people merging into their vehicles, and the Queen Emeraldas (a spaceship). He had right vision. =^_^= A vehicle is an extension of a person- an exoskeleton that they wear, that means a lot to them.
Why do people read Mystery Books, Stories..? Why do we like them? What's going on there?
I think that the Western Surat Shabda Yoga paths are good. I think that the Eastern "Thou Shalt Pay Attention Solely To Shabda, Thou Shalt Devote Attention to Naught Else" can be really harmful, and is even western (in the negative sense) in Spirit- in that it is *not* holisitic, and it's a one-size-fits-all sort of deal.
In attaching metaphysics to the Surat Shabda Yoga, I think that Paul Twitchell did a good thing.
I can draw a line: Eastern SSY paths devote entirely to Spirit but in an ungrounded way that does not concede any territory to the mind and the world around it, and Scientology on the right which pays attention almost entirely to thought forms and mental developments, byt pays almost no attention to the Spirit. (When it refers to the spirit, it does so in a very Mental way; It is a mental current, for the most part.)
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has powerful muscles, but no personality.-- Einstein
I think Paul Twitchell did good work in paying attention to the world, but keeping the focus predominantly on the spirit. Give unto Ceaser that which is due Ceaser, Give unto God that which is due God.
On to the essence of the spirit vs. the mind: I think that it is true, as the eastern SSY paths will tell you, that the Shabda will in fact harmonize our lives and make everything bethat we do NOT need the mind in any degree for the Shabda to help us.
But I think that that teaching itself is a Mental form, and that it can be, and has been, abused, as is possible with all other mental forms. I think that mentality has been pushed aside so strongly, that communication along mental lines has been completely hampered, so as to obstruct the natural flow of the spirit..! Dislike the mental regions as the eastern SSY paths do, it is still a valid channel for the Shabda to take. To deny mental validity is just like the monk who hides himself from the world to find God. Any truth found thereof is a LIMITED truth- there is NOT a completion of the circuit of life.
In particular, I had a problem: My life was against the grain of the shabda, and whereas a simple mental realization of metaphysical nature (surely a Paul Twitchellian type of realization) could have alleviated muych pain, and provided inspiration and a return to the shabda, The teaching that we should rely wholey and solely on "pure shabda" has been a NEGATIVE and obstructing one.
The ability to provide new forms of life for ourselves, using the light of the mind, is important and right. There is a natural refreshing process that has to continue, as we cycle through stages in life. Like a snake shedding skin. It is important to observe and flow with. It leads to a more harmonious, healthy life stylee, and is invaluable. The proper flowing of the river is important.
A change in mantra isn't always what the doctor ordered..!
Make a "periodic table" of Energy. It would include work, momentum of light, whatever. The various non-mass aspects of Physics. Properly categorize and place everything.
Practice the names whenever you like, and don't practice the names whenever you don't like.
There's no pressure, there's no hurry.
Simply, if you would like to do the names, do them.
If you would like to, but don't have the time, then wait for a period when you have the time, and then, if you like, say them. They won't go away, they won't dissappear.
The Anatomy of Fantasy (or perhaps) The Anatomy of a Dungeon Crawl
Make a collection of cards. On them are certain key cartoon (.'. mental formed) depictions of fantasy elements.
For example: A Cave. A Sword. A Shield.
No idea what use this would provide, but it would be interesting to have; these icons hold so much meaning for me. (Romantic-era literature and plays as well.)
I believe someone once made an "Encyclopedia of Imaginary Places". This is sort of similar, except it works on the level of charting key mental symbols, rather than detailing the facts of particular implementations.
Hang KamiDana about my office.
Put up some sheets, make it look neat. Since the lights are broken, I guess I'm going to have to go for the mysterious motif. I always liked the romantic plays. I'll have pinks, blues, weird lights, strange and beautiful plant shapes. 't'd be coo'!
Read and buy "Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings), by Miyamoto Musashi. This may very well be the best book on Engineering that I have ever read.
"The Mythical Man Month" is really important too. Read it after you have been programming for a while; it won't make any sense otherwise.
"Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing" is good. Read it.
"The C Programming Language K&R" is how you learn C. Read it. Make sure you are doing the examples. Don't worry about understanding the introduction.
"Design Patterns" is interesting. Beware.
I'm trying to show the uniqueness of the solution to the L shape problem; That there's only one way to put all the L pieces into a 2**Nx2**N shaped board that has had a square removed.
My idea is to count the # of solutions, show that there is only 1, and then give the inductive proof Ron showed me that guarantees a solution, and say, "Since there's only 1 solution to it, and this is a way that always does it, this must give the unique solution."
This puts the focus on showing that the # of ways is solitary.
Can I do it inductively? The problem with induction is that there can always be some crossovers on the edges. Well, perhaps I can't do induction in the "take each block, surround it by four others" sense, but perhaps I can do an inductive proof another way.
If not, why not- will any inductive proof work here? (If not, that simplifies my problem - solving approach to a degree...)
Finish up that guys notes on Organic Chemistry, and then make maps for it. Publish under FDL.
The look over that PhD's lectures on organic chem synthesis. Lots of pretty pictures.
I had a dream. There were 5 levels to this amusement park in the astral plane. I went to the bottom level, because it was easiest. It was the world of sleep. It was very dark. There were two sections: The place where you land down (just remembered a dream I had many nights back, where I was in a city in the middle of a cast desert looking like the surface of mars, but sand colored, not red, and the city was a gigantic maze with little tribes living in it) from the elevator was the "hospital section", roughly rectangular in shape. There, in the back hall, adam and eve (or people dressed like them: kids) greet you and say hello. They challenge you to ask them a question; I asked something about the brotherhood/sisterhood of all peoplekind. After a while, I went to the challenge section: It was a dark garden with paths, but someone had placed string between various posts to make the relatively simple path into a rather complex maze; you just had to go with the fantasy that you aren't supposed to cross a string in order to play the maze. But there was a very real threat: A wind spirit. The wind spirit would chase you (you could see it some time because the wind rippled around and leaves flew up in the air and stuff) and try to strangle you, so you had to go through fast.
At the end of the "maze", there were a bunch of tall palm trees, and then you go on to this dock where there's a de-briefing boat and congradulations. (Remember, this is a sort of amusement park; an etherial strange amusement park, but an amusement park none the less.)
BUT, if you climbed up the palm tree like Joel did, you could see that if you embarked on the boat, and then disembarked on the other side, there were all kinds of goodies (teddy bears and other plushes) - a secret zone..! We were going over there, but on the way, just before you enter a boat, there is a sort of tent, and I saw a (living) plush monkey scurrying about the tent, and I went up and caught it for myself.
Weird Dream.
It recently occured to me how much Mario Brothers is like pinball. The character bounces around like a pinball ball. You can speed him up, slow him down, and when you are doing really well, he is bouncing all around.
I've heard web designers say, "I wish PostScript or PDF were the web format". What?! Are they nuts?!
Here's the problem: People who publish to the web believe that they are a special class of people, and they want to construct a multi-media extravaganza for the people who are visiting their page. The goal is sort of to really impress these people, and, you know, they'll tell their friends, "wOw! I saw this REALLY awesome web page- you gotta check it out!"
So, they jelously guard any control that they can exhibit over their content. They want it to look on their clients browsers exactly like they envisioned it.
WebTV and text browsers be damned- they aren't important! It's all about the multi-media CDROM Wonder! The clever UI!
Bah. What a bunch of balogna.
Make a little fairie that communicates through CORBA to any interested listeners. (I'm supposing that CORBA has this capability...)
It would try and watch traffic over the CORBA bus line and try to assist the programmer in whatever way it can.
First, it would just be relatively static, but after a while, it would evolve to dancing around the screen and what not.
Read Eric S. Raymond Interview
My current model for interest, motivation, getting stuff happening.
I believe that it works like this. "Interest" is like this magical fairy dust. It sort of appears in this act of almost-not-quite mental effort. I would really rather call it an attitude adjustement, or a slight change in how we view things, or a perceptual adjustment. I believe that interest is really important. The way to open the doors to interest is to be absorbed in mystery and/or wonder. But anyways, back to the interest. Interest appears, and it appears like this fairy dust. (include picture here. Interest is *blue*/mental & *white*/spirit. Sort of etheric, probably.) When sufficient interest forms, it starts to gravitate together. Interest is like dust; it has this very very very faint gravitational pull to it. When a bunch of it's together, like a giant glob of Hydrogen (electrically neutral; 1 + 1 -) floating out in space, it collects together. It starts to compound together. The subject of our interests starts to appear in our mind now and then, like a very faint pattern or spider webs. Or like, there's a section of a room that is warm, verses another section of a room that is cold. If we then turn our attention to the interest some more, more and more of this fairy dust appears (probably stemming from the raw force of attention), and enough collects that it can turn into a stable mass. (Draw picture of collection, and place here.) Once it becomes a stable mass, it can start to do things. For example, if it gets large enough, it can make the jump from "distraction" status to habit. (I'm being fecetious about the distraction part; I believe that distractions are, overall, basically, very very good.) When it forms into a habit or an act of some sort, it can start to take on physical energy and mass, as you perform actions and make things. A certain amount of mental and physical rearranging occurs to help accomodate as well; This new mass that you've built in your brain starts to interact with all the other various massese in your brain/mind.
I'm making up a term, "InfoSeek Mode," to describe a state that people get in. In this state, I go looking around for information from various sources, and on myriad topics. Generally, it is a *distracted* state; One in which there is a predominant alternative thread (which I do *not* want to follow), and then several splintering off in all sorts of strange directions. These other directions twist and gnarl.
The end result is an alert and stressed person. You have to constantly have that predominant alternative thread in view, and say, "Uh... No, don't want to go there... No, that' no good at all."
Now, several things can happen here. The #1 people thing will say is, "OH, you 'just' have to do that thing," and then they go on to not practice what they preach. Obviously, that's not the Way. Phil G. & Co. takes a view of looking at the mental obstacle, and rearranging the situation in light of the obstacle. (One thing I really like about Phil G.)
I've said a lot of negative things about our Western society. Western society is great. It's good that we're going places. I don't think that Eastern complacency is at all the ideal state. I just thing that we're being way too Western. As Ursula Le Guin said, we're on a path that is too Yang. "This is Taoism of the Duhhh variety."
Possible causes: A stressful state itself can lead to InfoSeek. (But then is it really InfoSeek? The item of interest is the item that causes stress.) Having a boring task. Having a really difficult task.
It could be just a task that's too difficult. A better ramp-up schedule could be precicely what is needed.
Principles:
This is something that I've just done; I have minimal faith in it: Organizations:
Could it be that the strategy of "It's the Data" that applies to programming (avoid algorithms! dump algorithmic complexity into data complexity!) apply equally to debugging?
By my experience: Yes. An gram of data structure is worth a kilogram of algorithm.
(Ask yourself: How much algorithm circulates about 1 simple data structure?)
Database of Code Meta-information
It might be interesting if there was a program or database layout to assist in debugging. It could give you visual cues and what not.
For example, you could rapidly assemble, "Who all calls this function", have a place to write in pseudo-code descriptions of what those functions did, add various diagrams, etc., etc.,. Perhaps even generate a summary of the decyphering and everything. The program could pick up function signatures for you, and other such stuff.
Functions:
Hyperlinks appear wherever there is a function name. You can hyperlink to it's database entry (if it exists). You can hyperlink to a new database entry (if it doesn't exist). You can hyperlink to it's place in the code.
Actually, I could easily conceive that there should be no code written that does not have an associated database. The associated database would describe how the code functions, include discussion amongst programmers about the code, any ICQ transcripts, etc., etc.,.
Rose from Rational Software
C-web Literate Programming Knuth
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cweb.html
http://www.literateprogramming.com/
When you find out a bug, look for other such instances of the bug; you've probably made it before as well. Seek them all out, and remove them.
This both helps you devote attention to the bug/deficciency, so that you won't make it again, and, it eliminates a bunch of bugs.
I suppose this could apply to life as well.
If things are getting hairy: Write Pseudocode 1st in the form of comments. Then fill it out. Go for as large a scope as you need, until you are reasonably confident that the algorithm will work.
If you are writing a component, write in the following order:
I found a web page that represents my philosophy on software development.
I think a lot of this requirements analysis is, unless you are working on something like the space shuttle, just a formalization of blame distribution- a way that software engineers can say, "Well, see, look here, on page 300, you SAID that we were only supposed to fit these demands here, and NOW you are asking me to do THIS instead...!"
But it *is* good to have an idea where you are going in the end; And that's why I believe that an iterative cycle is good to have from the beginning. That way, you don't run into nasty low level surprises at the end.
Read this visual tutorial on DSSSL..!
I found it from another great page on DSSSL.
I'll divide the schools of thought about learning into two sort of goofy camps:
People are always complaining that "People don't join an Free Software project until it's done..!" What has our world come to! I think that's just stupid pessimism. (That's right- I'm a militant optimist!)
I think, generally, it means: I started a brand spanking new project and people aren't making it the coolest thing in the world!
The best success I had with OpenSource software was when I found someone who was working on a project alone, and helped out a bit. I didn't add much to the project, but I *did* contribute, and it was worthwhile. Even that small bit added a lot to morale and development; he was so happy that someone had added, that he pretty much matched my effort in triplicate..!
So, I guess I would say: If you are complaining about people not helping one another, go help someone!
Someone said, "What moral right does the government have to take my money away from me, and spend it how it pleases?"
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's also one of the hardest questions to answer; Akin to asking, "What is the meaning of 'an'"? We can't answer off the top off our heads, but we know what it is.
We don't have an 'inherent right' written down on any agreement signed by any of us to live here.
The idea of taxation is as old as the idea of dues. Dues, as in "paying your dues." We're all wound together; none of us is an island; and sometimes is profitable for us to put our money together and buy something that none of us could have bought alone.
I am just imagining this cell in my body (a cell that happens to generate power, let's say), saying, "What right does the rest of the body have to take energy from ME?! I didn't ask for that!".
Set up a male-female-female triangle; The two female's represent two images that the mind is switching between. Which will it prefer? How does the mind select an image?
What is the meaning of picking up an image or mask? Why do we select one mask or another?
Shakespeare equation: Show all masks, and someone will champion each one. (Rather than excluding one, promoting one above others. -Not quite the case always: See Tempest, but, academics like this theory, since everyone is at least comfortable with it: "We agree to disagree".)
What do images mean to us? Why do we care so much about pictures? Why do pictures move us so much? Why do we read stories? Why do we care to live life?
I fully accept evolution and science, but I also don't believe that algorithms and data can automagically pop into awareness behind a cloud of semantics and complexity (the scientists version of the God of the Gaps - "awareness is poking around in there just beyond our current comprehension").
That awareness is something unique is obvious to me, and it seems quite reasonable to me that awareness is the source of algorithms and data, rather than the other way around.
So, why did awareness create these images? Why did it leap into them? And while we're here, why do we choose one image over another?
I bought and read "How To Start Your Own Country".
I don't remember if the author mentioned this, but one way to do it is to build a religion, achieve a large number of people, and then go find some place.
The author correctly noticed that- you'd have to get weapons (like SeaLand) to have your own RECOGNIZED country. (Grim as it is.) It just occurs to me that establishing a religion is probably the easiest/cheapest way to aquire the necessary critical mass in mindset and dedication to actually pull of defending your own territory.
I'll have to look at how the Mormons formed themselves easrly on, and what their deal was.
Decisionmaking never satisfies everyone unless all details are visible and FULLY understood, in which case it is hardly decision making, but just going with the obvious.
Work on Adonthell..!
Make it so that programs can register their grammer with a shell. For example, if a program accepts some options, and then a filename, make it so that the shell knows that, and can appropriately provide feedback to the user.
For example, I type ls blarg, but blarg is not a valid input (there is no such file or directory, nor are they valid command line options). The shell can tell me, "I'm expecting a filename," or something like that.
One way to implement this would be to use an ELF section or something that included details about how the program interfaces, or something like that.
"Brilliance Radiates" was a phrase I made up while I was living in downtown Seattle. I still think it's true. Brilliance reveals rather than conceals.
Brin agrees. And Philip Greenspun practices it.
OpenSource software is an example of this. Code accountability, parallel debugging. People hate to be debugged.
Smart people share their ideas, rather than hide them.
But does the communication of ideas necessarily make one brilliant? Adolf Hitler shared *his* ideas, and it was bad for the world. Then again, I could follow an argument that he was brilliant, albeit twisted. Nah. Maybe not.
I still believe that if we are of a genuinely sharing mode of thought, and that we communicate with others, it does great things for our intelligence, perceived and actual.
Is the opposite of a maze a maze? There's the trivial case of, "Well, if the maze has a border, than the opposite of the maze is not a maze because you can walk about the border.
I found a great link on procedural world generation called Algorithms for an Infinite Universe
Apparently there was a (non-Nintendo) game called "Star Fox" with an infinite world. I already mentioned Star Flight, and I believe that there is a game called "Elite" that has an infinite world as well.
There is Thompson's "Predictable Random Numbers" article in Game Programming Gems; I haven't read it; Jim Boer told me about it. Thompson referenced a Gama Sutra article [possibly the one above] in it.
Deer Hunter 2 (Jim Boer again) used some of the ideas. "We were looking for methods to allow huge outdoor areas with minimal storage space."
Jim Boer had the idea of having trees in terrain grow back to full size (or matching the neighbors), so that you can erase deltas after a while.
Imagine being in a real life three dimensional maze, perfectly stale and grey, with a maze of lights (and their wiring cables MAZING around), running in all directions for infinity, and the walls of the maze themselves having groven into them more maze; just really small compared to the maze you find yourself in.
Place this enormous (or infinite..!) maze in space, without any sense of orientation- up down left or right.
Know that all sense of scale is gone; Your location compared to the grand maze is unknowable.
Indeed, the entire universe could be just one gigantic and infinitely detailed maze, with just ONE path from one node to any other node.
Looking at the wall with a microscope yields only smaller and smaller orders of mazes engraved on the walls of the smaller mazes.
That's what it's like searching the mental realms for an answer.
Write a pure fantasy entirely out of scientific material. Make up some new laws, and write about them. Do calculations, perform mathematical tricks, etc.,. A sort of scientists version of The House of Leaves (by Danielewsky).
"Beyond the Stars" is an example of this, though I believe that the author truly believes what he writes. (Read it at iuniverse.com)
But why are scientific-fiction books (to differentiate from science fiction books- space operas and what not) taboo?
I see no reason why the realm of the affairs of humans should be allowed to realms of fictional play, but the affairs of particles and energies shouldn't..!
A great little program would be one that would allow me to keep track of who's court a ball is in.
For example, I'm busy working, and then I think "Geeze, ther's something that needs to be documented." I can either do it myself, or have Miguel do it. Miguel should probably do it, but I have the inclination right now. I'd like to check with him.
I email Miguel, "What do you think? Do you want to doc this, or can I?" The ball is now in Miguel's court.
But, I want to make sure he doesn't drop it. I want to be able to tell the computer, "Make sure that Miguel responds to this email/addresses this issue within 5 days." If he doesn't, it will either tell me, or automatically email him, or whatever.
But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching position, weak in the eyes of their examiners--among these we find the veritable chair a canon of the wars of learning, the unfit in the academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or else, if they are less heroic morally, they will accept the failure as a sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men thereafter.
High tech stuff is always drawn with lines and icons and what not.
I think that is because high tech stuff comes from the environment of the mind, and I think the environment of the mind isn't at all like the physical world around us. I think we're seeing directly, in various fantasy and cartoons, the natural environment of the mind.
I think that the bus architecture is so useful, it may even be worthy of becoming a built in language feature..!
The ability of two objects to open up a communication space between them, and invoke methods on one another, that others can tap and hear as well.
Hooks = Messages = Events
Programming by leaving hooks all over the place. Pick up the hooks where they are needed, and lay them to rest/decay where they are not.
Read some piece of science fiction. What do you like? What do you dislike? What was the plot? What mechanisms did the author use? How did the author make people talk? What elements did the author use to retain interest? Which parts are original, which parts are unoriginal? Are the elements original, or unoriginal, on the whole? Assignment: Use the mechanical elements yourself, as a test , honing of skill.
Light vs. Heavy, Comedic vs. Serious, Deep vs. Shallow, and now Tense vs. Relaxed.
Personally, I'd prefer to write "relaxed"; like Ah My Goddess. (Light, Comedic, Deep, Relaxed.)
Spatially targetted e-mail would be awesome..!
You could have a geographic map of the offices or whatever, click down a position, pull out a radius, and say, "E-mail these people!" It'd be really handy for addressing regional issues: ie "Address all the people w/in 400 feet of the nappiest refridgerator in the world".
Computers should be addressible as computers, spatially. It'd be nice to make some software to handle this kind of thing..!
Kitty (Amber Straub) said it best:
I am planning to get my arse in gear again about making lunches. I feel Im wasting a lot of my time. I used to save a lot of time by remembering to pull something out of the freezer in the mornings, and by already knowing ahead of time what was for dinner and also making lunches the night before. I just need to get organized. Hopefully today I can get some unpacking done once I get home.
Knowing what you are going to do before you do it is a good way of going quickly. As they say in work, (Did Marcellus teach me this? Or was it Billy?) Keep your attention on what comes next; that way you won't be distracted, and you'll know just what to do when the time comes; there will be no dawdling or chance to think, "Now what should I do?"
Start or be involved with a movement to promote and read only FREE books, either in liberty, or gratis. Full 100% distribution, translation, and resell rights must be granted for the works to be accepted. Programs or technical works must be modifiable.
The problem with doing something like this ALONE is the marketting problem: We need to be able to seperate what is of quailty from what is not of quality.
But, this is hard to do as an individual. So, collectively, we must go through free materials, and rate them Yay or Nay.
NEW Works are current, and as they are freely released, they go onto a "shelf" for 6 months, and are rated by and for others.
Number 8-> Symbol for the universe.
lll :ll l:l ::l ll: :l: l:: :::"God, it's funny, you know- EVERY TIME I'm getting a drink, I see FRANK in there, getting a Pepsi or soda or something. I don't think he works very hard..."
Sub-plot, or whatever:
A boy who is really excited about a topic goes to extreme measures to take a class in the subject, only to be terribly dissappointed by a poor teacher.
The boy lambasts the teacher for disinterest, only to find out that the teacher is a volunteer, bearing the burder of the teaching position.
The boy must cope with the situation, but attempts to find a way to resolve the problem anyways.
This is interesting in itself; a dilemma of sorts. But more important to any story, I think, is the character. I believe that the CHARACTER drives the story; we are interested in partaking in mini-universes with other people in them. Who knows why; just for fun. (I'm working on figuring out why.)
Pseudocode should be broken down into smaller pieces of pseudocode. When do you stop breaking down pseudocode? When implementation of the pieces is trivial to you.
From Amber, Jan.2, 2001 (1/2/1):
i think ill write something like this next:
(dig my pseudo code)
if kitty lub lion!
then print lion lubs kitty too!
while lion lubs kitty
then print roaaaar
Make a story with room for H, but leave it out for the prudes. Then, you can make a version of the story "(story name here) 'Extra'" with the H material.
The only desk that I have ever felt comfortable with is the IKEA Jerker workstation.
Here's the entry from their catalog, which is strangely not found anywhere online...
Note the difference in my configuration, and the one in the product display. For some reason, there is a stigma associated with healthy desktop utilization. Monitors should be kept at eye level, and keyboards should be exactly level with 90 degree bent arms, but whenever you look in magazines for anything fitting these descriptions, you are out of luck.
I originally was looking for a carpenter to build me a custom desk like one I saw that a GreaterGood.com staff person had made for themselves, but when I saw the Jerker, I knew I could shape it into what I needed.
Adam Prato has assembled a rather sizable collection of links to the IKEA Jerker workstations.
It would be neat if you had a sort of algebra of complex simulations. For example, you could look at a stream of smoke and say, "Oh, this is a Julian set 13, and it's probably going to turn into a Julian-45, if it doesn't turn into a Julian-59, though it's rather unlikely to turn into a Julian-99."
The Visual Man Pages
Today's Date: Sun Dec 31 18:00:35 PST 2000
Man pages in HTML or something; maybe a diagramming language extension or something; I don't know.
You could establish pullouts from a line; so say, for example, you wanted to document "ls -l". Your visual man page language could support saying, "Here's the string "ls -l"; and now I want a call-out from the "ls" part saying "This is the LiSt command," and now I want a call-out from the "l" part saying "I want the listing in the Long form."
You could do a LOT with just that. Then, you could add in Gifs and JPegs and stuff like that. We really should have a set of visual man pages; no need to be decoding these things in our heads over and over.
Warning: This is pretty vicious... {:(}= <- Not Proud
There are just waaay too many pseudo-intellectuals out there selling their stuff online.
Take Ximix Productions, for instance.
Favorite topics:
A lot of it just gets down to plain complaining. I hate complainers. {;D}=
Pick a random movie, that you haven't seen, from this list, and watch it.
Read and assimilate this excellent report on Free and OpenSource software..! A Battle Plan for Linux..!
What about a Software pyramid scheme?
You write some code, and say that it can be used in propreitary products if each author receives $1.00 (you'll need to use some sort of index to account for inflation) for every licensed use of the code. The code may be used by FREE projects for Free, provided that the code follows the licensing provisions. So whenever anyone ever sells a piece of your code within proprietary software, you (and by extension, Free Software) get a paycheck, paving the way to future development.
Some times I really wonder. Going through Patri's website just a moment ago was one such time.
Visions of my brilliant Mudd friends streamed through my mind, and I thought, "What have I been doing all this time?!"
If it was something like Lanier's website, I could push this sort of thing away,
But this is Patri; my former suitemate..! These are people that were friends in college. Or Inertia Suite, which I keep up with.
In a game based on mazes, be sure that the menu at the beginning takes the shape of navigating a maze. (A tiny (7x7) maze, but still a maze..!)
I can include the infinite maze in infinity by having a "Maze Plane" that connects with the rest of the Infinity universe. If you go through a portal, down a stairway, whatever, you end up in a corrosponding location in the infinite maze plane.
Recall that the infinite maze can be three dimensional; There's no reason we can't procedurally generate a 3-d maze. It just gets a little trick to navigate; that's all...
When you create simulation objects with their own update cycle, be sure to consider adding a "delete me" flag to the objects.
Or perhaps make it so that you make an API call or something, and say, "Delete this object at the end of the rounds.". Or make it so that every object has a bool delete() function call, that is called at the end of each turn. If it replies "true", then it is deleted.
They are probably going to want to delete themselves at some point. The system needs to know that it can delete the object. That way, for an object to self destruct, it just sets its own "self destruct" flag, and then the engine will destroy it.
There should probably be a notification to observers as well that the destruction is occuring, so that they can react accordingly.
Perhaps use this simple targetting system:
What if the targetter forgets about the targetee? It should send, "TARGETTING_OFF" to the targetee, and the targetee destructor component should remove the targeter from it's list.
You can play sounds and animations in response to target on and stuff like that. {;D}= Pretty cool.
Shoot... Augh! One more thing. You have to make sure that targetters exist before you send a message back to them, informing them that you no longer exist... Dammit!
Wed Jan 3 16:01:40 PST 2001
Wouldn't it be interesting if you could see the trails left behind the directory tree by co-workers? Prioritized directory sorting? Wherever people go the most, worn grooves appear over?
I think that'd be fascinating..! What would such a directory tree be like?
As per a simulation, Ithink we'd want intelligent folders, that KNOW when people are entering, looking about, and leaving.
Ahhh... The simulation programming *DREAM*... [But do the folders need their own life tick? Their own update? I don't think so...?]
Thu Jan 4 09:01:59 PST 2001
Here's another thing I would like: A way to get information about a directory. Who owns the directory? (Luckly, this information is built into UNIX.) But more than that: What is the policy for the directory? Who owns the directory? What's their phone number? [how do I look them up?] (Unix: "finger")
How can we design an intelligent file system, and then use it in conjunction with the normal file system? Or is this doomed to be isolated, like SQL? (Although, I understand that the HURD might be able to help me out here..!)
I'm thinking of folders primarily from the view of the desktop, rather than the command line.
I'm also thinking of folders as having autonomous intelligence, rather than just hanging out there on their own.
A good installer shouldn't let you double install. (Though there SHOULD be a "FORCE" option). It should say, "Oh, you're trying to install that? Well, you've already got it installed. Type XYZ to uninstall the old one, or type ABC to freshen the previous to the new.)
Put the story "Lianxiang" (it can be found in "Strange Tales of LiaoZhai") into the space game some how. It's sexy, and it's beautiful. I liked it quite a lot. (Strange Tales of LiaoZhai page 136)
Not all stories are art, nor are all stories communication. Generally, though, they are one of the above, or more commonly, both. But rarely neither. I can't think of a single case.
There's a Japanese movie called "AfterLife" that I've heard is really good.
SEARCHERS! Look for "idea", "catch", as well as "thought"
Get familiar with SQL Databases. Do the Philip Greenspun thing.
These little notes can all go into a computer SQL database, very effectively.
People listed should include:
Quotes listed should include:
For example, Mark Twain is a Writer and Social Commentator. Confucius was a Teacher and a Social Commentator. Neal Stephenson is a Writer and a Social Commentator. Neal Stephenson also wrote the Diamond Age, which I have notes on. Neal Stephenson and Confucius both wrote on similar things.
If you look up a
VoltronWing: Titles are generally not necessary (though once in a blue moon, I make one up); More often than not, I don't have time to apply a full on title; It's enough work just getting the tags in place.
Or, you could NOT go the web-route. Make the thoughts database have a command line interface. Then, have a GTK+ or web cgi program interface to the command line program.
It looks like someone has already acted on the idea I had about creating a thought database! Be sure to follow this one up. =^_^=
Later Note: It's really a way of writing to several blog-ish sites at once, and there's not much interest in making a thought database out of it.
Jesus Christ the Internet is scarry.
I just found a web page, "Virgins of the Sun", created by a guy named "Lion". He has pretty much the same tastes in Anime as I (as far as I can tell), and seems to love the color yellow, and the sun.
Next I'll find out he's a coder, and codes Free Software projects.
Pretty scarry..!
Thu Jan 4 13:24:43 PST 2001
Software that makes it easy to make a PUBLIC DATABASE. Make it so that you can *easily* make a shared public database, complete with clients, servers, distribution of the database(s), and security features.
For example, I could make a public database of all anime characters. All I have to do is think of the database schema and the permissions, and the software is created for me.
To follow up on this project, I would need to...
It doesn't require any inovation to do all of this; It's rather straightforward.
Free Software (Gift) Exchange Registry - FSEX is an idea for helping out people working on Free Software. It's also extendable to comics, and what not.
Any time that you consider storing a NUMBER in a game, consider using a POSITION.
Numbers are good when you have large quantities of possible values, or you are using numerical computation extensively. (Computation beyond addition and subtraction.) Video games: Numbers are also good for showing rapidly increasing scores, simply because it's rather sexy to see the numbers rolling about. But then again, you might find a good way to do that with icons flying about the screen or board.
Positions are good because it is easy to make paths, detours, and have a visual min/max view. You can start playing around with tokens and watching paths, than just writing and erasing numbers. You can "color" positions, affix symbols; It has a simplifying effect.
Consider: If you are on a location with a red marker, you get to do x2 damage.
Vs: If the score is 2,5,15, or 19, you get to do x2 damage.
In the course of time, I have noticed that my mind tends to judge thing based on the instant, rather than logically through time.
It's rather good at identifying that 7 > 3, and 3 > 2, but not at putting these facts together over time, but rather, is good at putting them together instantly.
So, for example, if addressed with 3 and 2, I can immediately say, "3 is larger," or, "method X is better", And if addressed with 7 and 3, I can immediately say, "7 is larger," or "method Y is better". What I cannot easily do is say, "7 > 3 AND 2." That is, it takes effort for me to draw the the data together, and to see it from the big picture.
One thing you could do if you want to trick someone, is to show them the metaphysical equivelent of 2 and 3, and then expouse the virtues of 2, knowing full well the advantages of 3 over 2.
However, you can hold in your hand the *7*, and the person viewing the 2 and 3, unless they take care to hold a 7 in their hands (outside of the metaphor: in their thoughts), will be so happy to have distinguished their 3 from a 2, will be incapable of realizing that there may be a 5, a 7, or a 13, or whatever.
Collecting the data together takes work.
I was thinking of writing an article for FreshMeat along the lines of, "Let's all donate $10.00/week to our favorite OpenSource project, whether it's well known or not. It'll help contributers refocus attention on our hopes, developments, and commitments, and it will help developers realize what they are doing, and more importantly, let them know that the world cares. What you cannot donate in time, you can donate in money." $480/year ($5*4 weeks * 12 months) of Free and Open Software Goodness. (I expect KDE and GNOME would make a lot of money.)
If donations became commonplace in the OS world, we could start to see company donations, and that'd be rather cool, if it happened. Halo Effect.
Interesting link: FairTunes.com. I believe Linus Torvalds has about $150 in there..!
Either a registry of all projects, or projects individually put up paypal hat.
Now go get PayPal accounts!
The highest ranking comment here on Kuro5hin was interesting, and link to a fascinating article, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence. Just look at Japan. If children's exposure to pornography caused them to become violent, all of Japan should be in the midst of a violent turmoil by now.
Add to the list of Freshmeat articles I'd like to write: The Peril of Configure
I have never met anyone who understood how configure, automake, autoconf, autogetn, and whatever else there is, work.
We're using generators. Having generated code that you are supposed to modify is evil because other people can't easily seperate what you added vs. what was already there, and they can't see what you deleted.
Configuration stuff should be based on blank slate files. None of this, "Put a file in each directory" stuff. We want cleanliness, clarity, and understandability, from our configuration scripts.
There's probably whole realms of genetic code floating out there. One person takes a configuration file that looks "about right", and tries to just cobble together something that barely works. Who knows how many bandages are applied on top of bandages on top of bandages. I'm imagining whole worlds of #defines that are completely unnecessary and needless. I can understand that configuration is complicated, but must it be so dirty and misunderstandable?
Include a link to the web site on autoconf, automake, etc. There is a Free Book online about these tools. Also include a link to the contest that existed that was made to reform autoconf and what not.
Rejemy: (9:03 AM) Yes, it's so true! The whole build process is very mysterious - the most you can hope to do is search through it for something that looks familiar and hack that.
http://www.advogato.org/article/138.html
You should be able to ask the compiler what features it supports, ask the system what features it supports, ask the system where it stores files and what the defaults are. Programs that can have multiple configurations or whatever should provide information to any other programs that would be interested. There should *NOT* be any of this running a program in order to see if it supports something. We'd prefer *ASKING* to the violent poking and prodding that configure enjoys.
Programs, tools, need to play nice, and make information available to other programs that may use them.
I thought of these while reading Tan: Autoconf replacement proposal.
You can go and ask a bunch of people for help, and be turned down, or thrown down weird leads, chasing red harings...
Or you can learn it yourself. You may feel like you are wasting time, but 3 hours of research sure beats 2 days of questioning, emailing, annoying, etc., etc.,. Better to teach yourself.
NOTE: Tongue in Cheek.
Insane people (people with wild ideas) talk a lot. It annoys us. We hate it.
Sane people don't talk a lot. They keep to themselves, pretty much. When they talk, the don't say much outside of the ordinary. They pretty much follow the standard way of saying things.
My conclusion is that insane people are just people that talk. As in: If you got a sane person talking, you'd rapidly find that they were insane. And As in: If you got an insane person to shut up, you'd rapidly find that they were quite sane.
Occasionally an insane person has ideas that went through the cycle of beinging ignored, then attacked, and then having their ideas taken as obvious. That kind of person, we call brilliant, if not insane for have insisting on the obvious.
I think we all just need to talk more. Talk as in the two way sense- listen, and say, listen, and say, listen, and say. We talk quickly in our own minds, but talking between people is slow.
I'm done now.
Guess what, Weak Typing Increases Productivity..! Finally I can site an article.
It's nonsense that we "have to have strong type", otherwise your fellow moron programmers will mess everything up. Whatever. I've *NEVER* looked into a list and not known what the type is. I've NEVER had that problem. EVER. LISP has been doing just fine for decades without strong type.
The deep meaning of Encapsulation is this:
Functionality is organized, and each chunk of code, whether the chunk is an "object" or a component or a function or whatever, regardless, each chunk of code does just it's piece of functionality, and nothing else. Very minimalistic.
Here is a well encapsulated ammunition box: When a player or creature touches the ammo box, it replies with, "I provide ammo." Then, the creature or player respond with "I'll take it." (If the thing that touched it was not interested in ammo,the thing that touched has deaf ears to the ammo box.) When the ammo box receives, "I'll take it," it replies with, "Here you go," and turns itself off, or something like that.
Here is a poorly encapsulated ammo box: Something touches the ammo box, and the ammo box checks to see if the thing that touched it was a creature or a monster. If it was, then it tells the creature or monster that they have ammo. What is gained in speed is lost in organization and flexibility. Code that allows creatures to pick up ammo should obey principles of encapsulation and appear in the creature's code, not in the ammo boxe's code. This example "breaks encapsulation" when the ammo box "knows about" things called creatures and players.
Encapsulation is generally bad for performance and good for abstraction.
For example, lets say I have an ammo box. When it's touched,
The two weaker senses of encapsulation follow:
Thus, we have 3 meanings to the word "encapsulation":
(Later note: I was talking with someone and found a 4th differentiation; but I've forgotten what it was...)
Generally, if you read a book about object oriented programming, you'll get the 2nd or the 3rd definitions.
But the deep meaning of the word "Encapsulation" comes from definition 1, and transcends object oriented programming.
Yet another meaning of the word encapsulation: The state of code that has been "Interfaced Off". That is, functionality has been put into a function or an object, and then has been given an interface, so that you don't have to think about how it works.
4 Definitions!
Do "Interface", "Interfaced Off", and "Encapsulation" need entries in the Hacker's Dictionary? I suppose so (They aren't in there today: Wed Jan 17 14:36:54 PST 2001). No. They don't; They are defined, albeit poorly, in computer science literature, and thus don't have a place in the New Hacker's Dictionary.
Later note Mon May 7 17:58:12 PDT 2001: COHESION is the complementary force of COUPLING. Strong Cohesion is the deep meaning of encapsulation. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~redmiles/ics121-SQ99/lecture/seven/tsld014.htm
I was working on code with a linked list, and a count. As you added things to the linked list, you were supposed to increment the count. As you removed things from the linked list, you were supposed to decrement the count. No naming overlap existed between the count and the linked list; you could not tell that they were directly related. If you added to the list w/o changing the count, you got a crash later on. This was an example of poor encapsulation: We want the count to increase whenever you add to the list. Turn the add/remove into a function call. When you want to add an element, call the function. When you want to remove an element, call another function. The function will encapsulate the connected functionality. There will be a strong cohesion. I learned the word "Cohesion" from a book on "Structured Design". Structured Design seems to be the 70's/80's word for what is now called Object Oriented Programming. The name for "programming well" just keeps on turning...
"In this paper, we have shown that the cohesion of a class or an object can be described in terms of classical (module-based) cohesion taxonomies, and similarly for the coupling between classes and objects. There can be no category of cohesion or coupling that is specific to the object-oriented paradigm. Accordingly, it makes little sense to talk about object-oriented cohesion or object-oriented coupling unless it is made clear that what is meant is the application of classical cohesion and coupling to the object-oriented domain.
The results are special cases of a result regarding metrics in general: When inheritance is not involved, the metric is always a classical metric that has been applied to the object-oriented domain. Furthermore, even when inheritance is involved, the metric may still correspond to a classical one. The use of metrics in the object-oriented paradigm is no less vital than in the classical paradigms. Most of the metrics used in conjunction with the object-oriented paradigm are, in fact, classical metrics. There is nothing wrong with this, provided we acknowledge that they are classical; claiming that classical metrics are object-oriented is, at best, a cause of confusion.
-- A classical view of object-oriented cohesion and coupling Aaron B. Binkley And Stephen R. Schach Computer Science Department
Incredible article: Object Oriented Programming Oversold!
It's a big world out there.
What if somebody walked up to your desk and started telling you now to organize your desk's contents? Most would say that this is silly. However, this is almost exactly what is being done with OOP.
Here's another good one, that I particularly agree with:
I am beginning to get the feeling that many people are forgetting how to do good procedural programming and blaming the paradigm for their shrinking knowledge.
OO fans see no problem with reading 1,700 page books about "proper OOP", yet never touch a one-page guide to "proper Procedural/Relational programming" (if they make such a thing anymore).
However, nobody is championing procedural/relational anymore because it is out of style and a risk to career face right now.
There are some clues to how electrons carry heat energy on a web page that a guy named Greg Dries wrote for Sci Network. It seems that an electron can pick up heat energy, and move it elsewhere REALLY FAST. How does an electron pick up heat energy? I still don't know, but at least I know that that's what's going on down there.. (It just seems like an AWEFUL lot of energy for a few electrons to be zipping about..!)
A movie about a guy who is fed up with the Internet and the variety of opinions in the world.
He goes on a single man quest to set the world straight. He collects information, arguments, etc., etc., to become the single most rabid arguer in the world.
During the show, show flip signs of common quotes, sayings, trusms. Ex: Old dogs can't learn new tricks/Never too old to learn, Balance/Carpe Diem, FirstTheyIgnore/ThenTheyMock/ThenViolence/ThenOfCourse, etc., etc.,...
Call it: "Arguments."
March 23, 2001 Later realization: This man is Ted Nelson.
It would be neat to actually see a "thought bubble" appear in a movie. The Wizard of Speed and Time included one.
If you had enough money, it'd be interest to incent students by giving money to the first person to solve a given problem.
How we solve problems.
This is basically what I was teaching my students about how to construct algorithms, and I think it's true for much more than constructing algorithms; I'd very well say it's how we construct ALL our thoughts, and even our lives!
It's like those Wave Patterns that come out when you release electrons one at a time through a dual slit, or whatever. The pieces appear one at a time, but distant from one another. Then they collect together, and a complete focused image appears. This happens for stories, it happens for programming, and I dare say it's probably how the Enlightenment and Realization of The Eternal God will happen as well, whenever God blesses us to meet Him. (I could be wrong; this could be a merely mental conception of the God-realization experience.)
We don't work linearly, and we shouldn't *TRY* to make ourselves work linearly. This very catch (this doc) itself is a nonlinear, but progressive, work in progress.
We should harness our non-linearity, and work with it, rather than trying to cram ourselves into the pants of discipline.
Quaternions are also called Hamilton #s because Rowan Hamilton discovered them. They extend the complex numbers.
Quaternions consist of 4 components:
q = w + xi + yj + zk
They add like vectors. They multiply like polynomials. 1's, i's, j's, and k's interconvert according to the following rules:
Quaternions avoid "Gimbal Lock".
Angle Axis Representation- You give an XYZ unit vector, to describe an axis, and then give an angle that rotates about that axis. One motion, to fit all your rotation needs..! (I read that this causes a rough interpolation? Not sure I understand why...)
Small stories might be pleasurable because they are so limited in scope, like games. There is a closure to them..?
What I like about Philip Greenspun is that he doesn't resort to high-language to weild authority, and prove that he knows what he is talking about.
Rather, he speaks directly from experience.
A lot of times, he gets on people's nerves. He's not very diplomatic to the readers state of mind. This has good aspects, and bad aspects. The good aspects are that he gets his point across clearly and rapidly. The bad aspect is that people who disagree feel insulted.
But they shouldn't disagree. Because he's right. (There's no shame in being wrong.)
Personally, I like his writing style a lot.
He's a smart cookie. Whatever he has that's so special, I wish he'd tell me what it is, and I wish I had it.
What do you think is the place of intellectual gathering places such as universities in the gay-rights movement?
-- Marian Chen, March 17, 1997
Answers
First, I don't think we can take for granted that a university is an intellectual gathering place. We have students who come for a credential so that they can get a job (Business and Economics are the most common majors these days, not English and Philosophy). We have professors who publish in journals that nobody reads just so that they can pad out their vitae and get tenure. We have administrators hiring sub-assistants and milking the students, parents, and destitute PhDs. Not that I'm cynical....
Second, I'm not sure that we can assume that intellectuals will make significant contributions to the gay rights movement. I personally believe that prejudice stems from lack of understanding others' experiences. I can't understand what it is like to be gay from reading a Harvard sociologist's paper. I can only understand it by reading literature. It is the poet, not the professor, who is going to educate me about the reality of being gay. (Remember the famous poet who asked "What's the difference between an ape and a professor of English Literature?" (the professor of English Literature thinks that he can write poetry).)
If we accept that only art can give people an insight into experiences that they haven't personally had then it is Hollywood more than Harvard and the starving Bohemian authors of Greenwich Village more than the complacent tenured faculty who will play a significant role in the gay rights movement.
-- Philip Greenspun, March 18, 1997
Tell Philip Greenspun that I am teaching Fledging Unix Programmers. Tell him that I am currently a computer programmer. That I am attending college. That I want to teach full time. Should I hire on with someone else that teaches (such as RedHat), or should I open a school of my own. I am not a business expert; Should I become one?
It would be cool if, generally, wherever a filename is written to the screen, you could click on it and be taken to the file, local or remote. This requires some meta-information be provided, so that not every word is considered to be a file name.
Publish all my loopy ideas under the title, "BAD": Bizarre Architecture Docs.
Then I can write for FreshMeat without shame.
Characters must visit the world constructor in the Causal Plane. 2 minute trance/psychadelic sequence, Dr. Who music, as approaching the Lord of the Causal Realm. Exchange occurs, and then the characters leave as the universe they saw dissolves.
It's a show, or a story... It is an experiental thing. Treat the story as a story that people listen to, We're not aiming for apparent realism, we're aiming for the realism of experience. A simulation, not just a plot.
Use the Python Imaging Library to make some simple sprite stuff for the class. I think they'd get a kick out of that.
Python Imaging Library for Windows
Chase down interesting stuff and nail it.
I was working on this project, and all the bugs and stuff were bothering me. I didn't like not understanding how the layers below me worked. "Oh, don't go down there; that's not the place you are paid to be." So, I'd sort of meander at the top levels.
Then one day, I grabbed a bug and tracked it down, day and night. (Actually, for about 5 hours.) It was exhilerating. "Too hell with what I'm paid to do, I'm tired of moping. I want to fix this!" I dove in...
Hours later, I came out, having fixed a fairly huge bug, that had been causing several other problems as well..!
I'm wondering if I should devote myself to improving the object architecture, rather than working on GameObjects...
Hmm... I'm going to think about this...
Communicate how we see structures as we program. A boy dreams, and find himself inside a programmers vision of debugging a program. (He's investigating an enormous file tree, or something like that.)
Bushido Blade's fighting system was set apart and defined, more than anything else, by the absence of life bars, of any measured progression towards victory or defeat, or any quantitative indication of who had the advantage. When one of you fell to the ground and stopped moving, you knew who was winning. That was what made the game realistic, individual, and interesting, since one stroke could win the fight, one mistake could lose it, and any disadvantage could be overcome with one desperate attack. --IGN reviewer of KenGo
Great description. {;D}= So great, it looks like they've taken it off the record..!
There is a great article called Flow with Tao which is good because it explains the I AM very clearly. It also unites several practices together, explaining how they are various manifestations of the true light of Mind.
The mind is like a hollow shell. It is empty and lifeless. The author has cleared the mind, and seen it for what it is, the everchanging kalediascope of states of mind that is our world, but I believe that he has confused his life with the mind.
The Eternal Spirit, or the Eternal Tao, is to be focused on next, as it leads outside of the mind, and even outside the center of the mind.
The way to follow the Tao beyond the mind is not through more realization of mind, but through following the Sound current, which appears in meditation.
Here's some more 'I AM' metaphysics.
Re:Remember...
(Score:3, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18, @03:57PM EST
Telemarketer: "Hello Mr. X, let me tell you about this great offer..."
Me: "May I ask your name?"
Telemarketer: "Joe...I have a great dea..."
Me: "May I ask your last name Joe?"
Telemarketer: "I don't see why you'd need that."
Me: "May I remind you that under FCC regulation you are required to state your first and last name upon request?"
Telemarketer: "..I didn't know that...Joe Doe."
Me: "Then I guess I can inform you that it is your employer's responsibility to inform you of FCC regulations, and that if you're going to making these calls, the FCC requires you to know these regulations. If your employer does not inform you of the regulations, they are committing a felony. May I ask your employers name?"
Telemarketer: "Wow... I didn't know that. I work for Credit Card Company X."
Me: "Joe, I asked YOUR employer. You work for a telemarketing firm, not a credit card company."
Telemarketer: "I'm not allowed to tell you that.
Me: "Then I may remind you that under FCC regulation that you MUST state your employer's name as well as your immediate supervisor's name upon request."
Me: "Furthermore, if I request to be added to your 'Do not call' list, you MUST add me to the list. If your employer is not keeping a list, they are subject to fines up to $500,000, and I am entitled to a $500 voucher."
Telemarketer: "Sir, I just called to ask..."
Me: "You never stated your employers name. Please don't commit a felony, Joe."
Telemarketer: "Phone Services X."
Me: "Please add me to your do not call list. If I get a call from Phone Services X within the next 5 years, I will hold you, Joe Doe, and your employer, Phone Services X, responsible. I will contact the FCC and you will be prosecuted."
From Slashdot.
We need a nomic game that works. Here's what I think can be done, to make a working nomic game:
Bootstrap Rule. Use a bootstrap rule at the beginning of the game, that defines a turn to be much more complex, consisting of several rotations amongst several players on a game board. Thus, several (3?) micro-turns happen during one person's mega-turn.
When the micro-turns are complete, then the rule change proceeds, and then the next person's turn comes up.
Several "recommended rule changes" are plausible and may come into play at various points. This is a set of changes that are relatively interchangable, and cause the game to go in a well understood direction.
Original rules are still allowed, and encouraged! Good ones should be well recorded, better thought out, and placed on the Internet to be available for all to see.
Idea that doesn't work: Use purely premade cards. Example: FLUX. It's not so much that it doesn't work, as it is that you aren't really making a game that changes it's own rules. Based on the Flux card set, for example, you could just make a very simple rule set, and throw out the concept of "changing rules"; it's just a multi-state game. There is no addition to the game though; it has definite scope. It is a *finite* game.
I imagine that a great many games can be nomic-ized. You can take a working game, and decompose it into elementary components. For example, Monopoly. We can break it up into several component elements:
With these components, we can start plugging things in, or taking them out.
For example, we could easily have a game in which property cannot be morgaged. We could make it so that it can be sold for 3/4 value.
As the game plays, the component rules are added and removed, and new rules can be generated on the fly.
A few good links on the web:
To build it, you have to refer to it. When in a topic, the first instinct (once you have a sizable database- 6 months) should be to look for everything else you've thought about the subject. If you don't find anything, something needs to go in there.
Negatives: Could start to eat all your time, not be worth it. (Ex: Such as the original catchs- unsorted, messy, on paper, not categorized, etc., etc.,...) Long time to put on the wall...
Positives: Database matures, and starts to pay off beyond the gains from just writing down an idea. Knowledge structures, branches and connects, within itself. It grows, refines, and becomes something of quality.
Beanworld is highly diagrammatic.
BeanWorld is REALLY fascinating; I *LOVE* it. Here's why: * It's Technical. Larry Marder has thought a lot about how information is presented. It's quite intuitive. There are plenty of maps, drawn to make distinctions clear. Callouts are frequently used in diagrams, to sequence time and clearly delineate the speaker. It's incredibly iconic. We see lots of geometries, sequences. Reading the material is like watching the description of a machine. Each diagram is *really* interesting. * It's Aesthetic. * It's Easy. By easy, I mean that it's simple, rather than baroque, but no simpler than it needs to be. * It shows care.
I wrote that before. I'd add to that that it is *transparent*. For example, let's look at the "BlankTank" on page 97 of Book 1. Notice how you can see the blanktank through the chow, and the chow through the blanktank. This is very diagramatic; it let's you see things that you normally wouldn't be able to see. It is true, you are supposed to be able to see through the blanktank, but I think it's indivative of a trend in the work towards transparency.
Lots of a few types of components, composed together.
Two dimensional. Page 55, the bugs. Another halmark of visual clarity. [vision is really two-d.]
I don't know how else to categorize this,...
It seems to me like often times, you can get someone who is really effective and passionate about what they do, and they have some method by which they do things.
If they really pour themselves into their task, and use their method, they say, "This method is great! This method works! Here's how."
Then, everyone says, "Wow, that's a great method," when in fact it was the persons effectiveness and passion and drive and what not. So what we end up with is a lot of, "Look at this great method, as upheld by person A," vs., "Look at this great method, as upheld by person B," and we can't really differentiate between the two, because both seem to work.
What we should probably take a look at is the people, rather than the method.
Or if we want to look at the method, we should look at large groups of people who aren't particularly motivated, trying to get some task done. Set up some tests or something.
But personally, I think it's more fruitful to look at what is going on with person A and person B.
Are they just lucky? I think that they are tapping interest-fuel wells. Interest that pays off because it comes from the heart.
Purpose: The purpose of the program is to show off just how incredibly professional we are, and how deeply we have studied and understood the practices and methodologies of software engineering and development.
Lion's Law of Mental Perfection:
I postulate that minds strive for absolute perfection. I postulate that they strive for everything to be absolutely perfect.
I think that this leads to the "Common Enemy Unites, Enemy Gone Divides" principle.
When there is no common enemy, minds try to perfect what is before them. Since there is a lot of chaos out there, this leads immediately to disagreement. Conflict. No matter how subtle or large a conflict or disagreement is, It is all the same size to a mind; Merely a collection of algebraic symbols clashing about.
When a common enemy appears, the act of perfecting the small scale gives way to the much larger imperfection at hand. When that larger imperfection is cleared away, they work back at perfecting the small neuances.
Minds, effectively or ineffectively, try to establish order.
I do not believe that happiness is to be found in the mind; It is always working at making a finer grade of perfection within the objects of it's affection, and there will not be an end to it, ever.
No painting is ever finished. (But we like to paint; Some Times.)
In a game, you try to fill up a space with a color, or something like that.
Variations: Apply multiple colors with special properties. Mix Conway's Game of Life into the mix.
Paper Computers. I think the web address is www.papercomputer.com, or www.papercomputers.com
Sometimes I'm astonished at the astonishingly and consistantly poor quality of code that comes out of some [unnamed] "great" programmers.
Perhaps the way to write good code is to write bad code. Or rather, to program effectively, is to program poorly and quickly, and hold it all in your noggin.
Or perhaps it's not the quality of code (reads: "Organization", "Clarity", "Consistancy") that matters so much as that you were able to tie together various different parts of the program..?
It would be interesting if code was described in verse. Taking the less is more thing to an extreme; Trying to say the most, carefully choosing words, and seeing what comes out.
The human voice can be the most beautiful, or the most disturbing, thing to touch my ears, and my soul.
Maybe that's why we moved to instruments; Too painful to listen to voice...
It could also be why Elvis is the King.
One day, there was a programmer who caught sight of a bug. She ended up with, in her hand, a memory address. A pointer.
She traced the pointer to it's source, and found another pointer. She followed that one too. She kept on following the pointers to their source.
A year later, she found that the source of the source of the source wasn't even within her process.
She researched operating systems, and followed the pointer in. She kept rooting around, rooting around, for the source of the pointer.
From there, she found that it came from networking code. She followed it in, and found that the address had come from outside her computer.
How had anyone known to throw in a pointer to her system from the outside world?
She tracked down THAT pointer, but it took lots of dumpster diving to do it...
Cheezy ending: Make it so that it was herself that threw the pointer in from another computer. (I AM resolution.)
Good ending: Have her find something cool at the other end. Something not herself.
This may be the funniest thing I have ever read.
Explain our daily world in terms of the natural mental language of the mind: surreality and icons. Mental story icons take the form of the supernatural.
A tower with 5 floors, 1 for every state of awareness.
I vote for Gore. People who think that there's no difference between the 2 parties: Wait till you get a load of the Bush non-presidency... (not-the-president!) Remember: He's a uniter, not a divider!
Philip Greenspun had some excellent things to say about lecturing.
Tomorrow, I'd like my class to be able to tell the difference between pass by value, and pass by pointer. I'd like them to be able to tell when to use one versus another.
My class needs...
At least, that's according to Phil G. (And tracing to the source, Gerry Sussman.) Looks good to me.
There is a fascinating article on CNN.com about the role of the media. It's incredibly straightforward and logical; It's worthy of study.
Look for Mutopia.
You should be able to find Saint-SaensC/094/morceau-de-concert
Excellent music.
Here's a way to make money on Free Software, I think mozilla and other such projects could follow this system. It's not the nicest system in the world, but I think it's economically viable.
The trick is to denature your software.
Denaturing is a practice in Chemistry circles. They denature raw ethanol (alchohol) with benzene (a poison). (Why? I forget; I think it has to do with an alcohol tax.) The way the quantity of benzene to place in the ethanol is determined is by looking at how much it costs to remove benzene.
This is also sort of like the way it works with prime numbers to generate keys. We're using proof that we can't rapidly factor the large numbers into two large primes.
Anyways, what we do is we denature our Free Software with advertising, or other embedded service contracts, such as Easil is doing.
Sure, you could hack in the code and remove the part with the service stuff, but... It'll cost you.
In fact, it may cost you an amount calculated to just not be worth it.
And software is progressive, constantly improving. If you want the most improved version, you're going to have to take it with ads. Sure, they'll be a team of people who will work on importing the features, minus the ads/services, but, by the time they are finished, there will be new features in the main branch.
Distro's will take the latest version.
People may even look unfavorably at those removing the ads- they are sort of biting off the hand that feeds them..!
I wonder if this is a position that could work both for companies, and for Free Software developers:
Company "C" needs Developer "D" just part time. C needs D to do some support engineering, or something like that. C does NOT need D full time, only 3 days a week.
D needs to develop free software, and needs a base of operations and a bit of money to survive. D does not need $100,000/year, only $50,000/year.
C can gain two things by hiring D part time, and allowing D to work on Free Software projects with his/her remaining time:
And of course, D can get:
I wonder if this would be workable; I wonder if there are enough people that would be interested in taking up this sort of offer...
We need an FAQ or a HOWTO on how to get started in OpenSource projects.
(Copied with Permission)
OpenSource is an ideal I believe in and I would like to contribute. I have
spent several months in abortive attempts to find a project where I can be
useful. How do I find a project where I can truly contribute? How do I
start absorbing someone else's system and what size bites can I actually
chew? As a new OpenSource developer with little experience, should I look
at large projects or small projects? How can I be most useful and how can I
learn the most while doing so?
I believe answers to all of the above questions would make good material for
an OpenSource Newbies site. I know I could use some help on finding answers
and if there are more people out there like me, others could as well. I
have rarely or never seen addressed skills like assessing the needs of a
project in development or assessing my own skills set and understanding
where to apply my skills. This would not be rehashed content but new
content covering a gap in current documentation.
Sean Carley
seanacarley@hotmail.com
When writing it, include: "READ MAILING LISTS and LISTENING TO PEOPLE." Figuring out how to get your mail filtered is important. Listening to traffic is critical, as it will allow you to figure out what is going on.
It should take you no more than 5 minutes to get subscribed to an email line, sort it out, and be ready to unsubscribe. The email pipeline is critically important to hearing discussions.
(Note to self: Groupware project w/ website, email, etc., would be really helpful in this respect... "www.projecttalk.org" or something like that...)
Planning. A lot of people want to get into a project, plan a bunch of stuff, and then implement it. While small conversation can be helpful, I've found that the best way to work at it is to just take an incremental piece, work on it yourself, and then return it. Great for small projects. For huge projects, it's a bit different; you have to coordinate a lot.
I'd like to get back to this excellent article on this excellent article analyzing democracy, and the make-up of a successful democracy.
Science 2000 has incredibly good explanations of physics and chemistry. You'd be nuts not to read it..!
Anyone who thinks that humans have long since reached the stopping point in terms of how much people can learn should look at this. This is information being compacted and made accessible. Information as it should be transmitted.
Aside- Actual Power: God, Truth. (Ekonkar, Sat Nam)
Many sources of power, or "ability to cause effect."
Each of these things increases ability to cause effect.
Hmm, this is interesting. This observation lends me believe that gun control is not a good thing, as it removes power from people, and a significant power at that.
On the OPN-Content list, I just saw a solicitation for hardware and bandwidth to help the project, and I saw a guy just volunteer up a P]I[ 500, and some bandwidth. Within 40 minutes. Not bad. Not bad at all.
There are only 80 people on the list at this point in time. But, there is a percent that is dedicated in interest. They may be lurking (such as the guy donating the P]I[- Vidyut Luther), but they are interested.
I'll call this the "Bucky Volunteer Principle": You can rely on skilled hands and funds and hardware to be present. I've avoided calling it the "If you build it, They will come," because I think Bucky was cooler than Field of Dreams.
Addendum: 51 minutes later, another guy had volunteered his HD space and bandwidth. The next day, a few more people volunteered resources.
I am undiplomatic.
I'll tell you if you're wrong.
Even more undiplomatic: I'll tell you if I'm wrong.
Don't tell me I must say, "I think you're wrong." Nonesense. It's obvious that I think you're wrong, I'm the one saying it!
Companies use this "diplomacy" seperation tactic all the time. "We'll treat you formally, but you must treat us formally." Nasty stuff.
You'd might think that the word "Subvert" was the opposite of "Overt". But that's not what the dictionary says.
I find this interesting.
The Philosopher's Apology: Philosophy, Being, and Subversion http://www.ephilosopher.com/120100/columnists/renatus/renatus.htm
The author didn't note that Confucius also said that Knowing what you know, and knowing what you don't know, is at the heart of knowledge.
People aren't machines.
Spin: Governments might like you to think so.
Spin: Companies might like you to think so.
Spin: Scientists say the universe is machinery.
Spin: Religious groups are pandering to your vanity.
I once heard one of my employers saying to a fellow coworker, "At every moment, you should be asking yourself, 'Is what I'm doing helping the company?' And if it's not, you should stop."
And I really question this view. There's this sort of "Man as Machine" myth quality to it, that really just doesn't strike me as right.
Do people in a Free Software project ever raid another project for members?
Like, they get together, and say, "Our project's so much better than that other project, why are they even working on it?" "Maybe they don't know we exist. Maybe they don't care?" "Let's raid 'em!!! LIKE PIRATES!!!"
DDD is a debugger that is very visual. Try it! Aparently, you can graph 2D arrays and stuff..!
IP: Protecting YOU from independent rediscovery!
One of the neat things about visualization is iconography. We need a bunch of icons to be available, but we don't have the time to draw stars, happy faces, computers, and various other symbols over and over again. We need a tool so that you can rapidly collect symbols together and use them and bind them to things.
For example, you could type, "star" and it binds the subject to the symbol of a star. Or, "star+square" to have a star and square superimposed as a symbol. Just things like that, so we can rapidly assemble diagrams and explanations.
Need a .png exporter, so that we can save off to a file real quick like.
Emacs style editing environment is ideal.
Need a way to exchange data between programs as well. Feel free to do the work and see what the issues are..!
A book on visually conveying information: "Visions of Communication" should be the title.
An excellent article on life & software construction workers.
Draws a triangle of business, construction, and design. Almost but not quite perfectly my triangle of development (hand), business (brain), and marketing (face).
I have used what I call a "Catch" for a long time. The catch is a method of getting thoughts from the outside as they come, rather than producing them from the inside on demand. An example of a "Throw" would be thinking, "Hmm, I'd like to write a story right now," and then writing one. And example of a "Catch" would be having a story idea occuring to you one day, writing it down, and then if you ever need a story idea, pulling it out of the catch.
Critical to the "catch" process is that the information be collected and recorded together.
I have been "catching" for about 2 years now, and the process has evolved over time.
The catch has evolved over a period of time.
Make certain that you can easily tag up thoughts in multiple categories. To say that a note can only belong to a single category, or even a finite amount of categories, is extremely limiting and problematic.
Here's an example:
Tags: Story Element Vehicles
Games Vehicles
Thought:
------------------------------------------------
Vehicles are really important to stories. A lot of pride and care goes into vehicles, and it has a lot of symbolic meaning. Just think of the Grinch's sled, with all the lights on it, poking in all directions. Or the Explorer's sled. Or the Edelin. Or a sailors boat.
These vehicles are really important, and people have more pride in their synthetic bodies than their actual bodies..! (Since people had no say in how their body came out, but their vehicle represents their mind.)
The more customized the vehicle is, the better. The more it was built from the ground up, the more meaningful it is.
Indeed, I would be surprised if you couldn't make a complete game solely around the construction of a vehicle.
Leiji Matsumoto used the vehicle this way to now end, what with people merging into their vehicles, and the Queen Emeraldas (a spaceship). He had right vision. =^_^= A vehicle is an extension of a person- an exoskeleton that they wear, that means a lot to them.
------------------------------------------------
That way, the thought will appear in both Vehicles under Story/Element and under Games as well.
Tags themselves have a tree structure, but thoughts can have multiple tags applied. I have one entry with 9 tags:
----------------------------
Priority
Computers Software
Communication Visualization 3D
Computers Programming Editors 3D
Computers Programming Emacs
Art Comics BeanWorld
Art Creativity
Computers Programming Tools
Thought Creativity
----------------------------
(It's about creativity, proposes a tool like emacs for working with 3d, and software in general. Anything with "Priority" is something that I would like to consider implementing one day.)
That way, if I ever get a program such as iThought, I can look at all the tags under "Computers". Underneat there, I will see "Software", "Programming", "Hardware", and whatever else I have put under computers in the past. It will also help when I'm tagging a thought- I'll be able to think, "Well, let's see the categories that this could apply to."
It'd also be nice to be able to say, "Take all the thoughts that I listed under tag X Y Z, and put them under A B C as well."
In the far future, I'd like to be able to link thought databases with other people.
Write about backup policy.
I discovered a review of the ArsDigita boot camp on the web. Rather impressive. I'd like to fly down for a weekend bootcamp.
There is an interesting site centered on the Davos gathering that looks rather interesting. It seems like an earnest attempt to address protesters and what not. It seems that these people are earnestly wrestling with issues.
I'll have to read this later and think about it a bit.
I've worked on too many self-educational projects, with Too Little return to the world-wide community.
For example, I will study something in depth for 2 weeks, finally understand it, but not aid the community in my understanding.
I think what is most beneficial to everyone if I start from Day 1 of learning something, writing down and recording what I have learned.
I have found an excellent guide to XML on the web. It is very clear, straightforward, and includes how to use the C API to start using XML quickly. It's pretty damn basic..! The API is clean.
iThought uses the GNOME XML library; look in xml.c.
Pulling things close. Not only does it make it easier to do a task (and thus break the distraction factor, an n^2 growth), but it also makes it easier to communicate the otherwise long sequence of events (VEEERY EXPENSIVE) to a simple, "type XYZ at the prompt".
For example, I can tell pico, "Type Win-R webcam Enter", But I couldn't possibly tell him how to find the webcam program and execute it. Especially since it is usually an interactive process: I rely on the computer feeding back to me a bunch of names, and I exercise recall to pick which entries store the webcam.
It'd be really cool to have a programming tool that was like an arcade game construction kit.
What this toolkit would give you is all the functionality you need for your standard arcade games.
A game has an objective.
A game generally has a finite number of elements, save in the case of trans-finite games and infinite games (of which there is only one).
Games involve interaction with symbols living in the symbol space. (Unlike communication, which involves throwing symbols through the symbol space.)
I believe that it is dangerous to consider life to be a game. Doing so modifies the perception of other awarenesses to the level of symbols.
The saying "Ideology divides people" has it's origin in this principle. Ideologies have agendas (=objectives: rememeber, they are games), and they demonize people who obstruct the agendas. This is dangerous, and can lead from the realm of thought to the realm of terrible action.
It's a little like judging someone based on their clothes or skin color. It's just the symbol space equivelent. Now, judging includes the idea of mental discrimination, so maybe a different word is needed, to distinguish between treating someone on the basis of their thoughts and treating someone on the basis of their awareness/spirit/soul.
SymbolSpace is a subset of (equal to?) the mental plane.
It is the natural territory of the mind.
Communication consists of throwing symbols across symbol space.
This may be a successful strategy to contributing to open source/free software. Work on a project that is interesting to you, but realize that your project is not bound to one particular incarnation of the project.
Marketting Free Software Projects: Find the people who your projects work makes easier, and tell them about your project. Offer to put your project in place in theirs. Show them what they get by using your tool.
The same goes for free artwork: Make some free artwork, find ALL the free docs on the web where it would be useful or applicable, and try to get it in there. Make the idea popular. Get it out there. If you make it, and nobody ever uses it, you haven't added *anything* to the world.
Everyone needs a best friend who's a scientific genius.
You need a peer who you can call at 10:00pm, and ask a question that stumped your professors, and get a straight answer.
Yeah... I think...
Yeah... Everybody needs that.
You could use the analogy of linking up page #'s after you have finished a book to help explain how a compiler and a linker work together.
The anthropomorphization of elements of programs is completely acceptable and in some cases, preferable.
Strength of metaphor. (Puts us in the code's shoes, so to speak..!) Well understood.
A visor that allows you to see the images flying over electronic lines. It coalleses the images into a picture stream.
It works by looking at electromagnetic signals and scanning for various image formats, and then constructing images.
Couldn't C++ compilers keep track (in Debug information) of the type of class some piece of data (at a given memory address) is..?
That shouldn't be too hard- when data is newed, add an entry in a table that connects memory address to data type. Remove the entry on delete. Simple enough..!
I think the worst enemy we face as environmentalists is our fear of what our best data predicts will happen. It shakes us up when we see the negative reports, and we stumble over ourselves when we try to explain the reports to others. We get in our own way.
Aggressive companies that have stakes have an easy time talking over us, and we have a hard time organizing our message.
I think the best we can do is to try and speak as clearly as possible, and with as much evidence as possible. I believe that if we are well informed, that reason will take it's place, and people will step up to the plate as necessary.
Taken from a piece of an e-mail I wrote to Gary Kussman.
I am extremely interested in intellectual compensation issues, and would really like to talk with someone knowledgable about them. It's generally hard to find people to help me challenge my thoughts on the subject.
I used to believe that copyrights and patents were both absurd, but then I talked with a family friend who owns a business research firm, and I was convinced that patents and copyrights were a necessary evil.
I believe now that *software* patents should be limited to 5 years, and that book and song copyright should be rolled back to 20 years duration. My reasoning is that 20 years should be more than enough time for these artistists to be adequately compensated for their works. Some form of indexing should be performed on various types of expressions, so that we will know how long is necessary to properly compensate authors and distributors.
Kwirk!!! I want to work on this! I want to devote my time to this! This is cool!
An excellent surreal/magical-realism story would be set in a school. (The school is an excellent metaphor for our temporary stay here.)
Adults, children, all sorts of people in class. To a degree, this is just what Takahashi did.
But there's no reason school has to be restricted to kids in a comic.
I wish there were software and social conventions to allow for argument trees to be built.
They would be complete diagrams of arguments, or lines of thought, and might look something like a go board.
Unfortunately, this seems to be how software works:
You develop the code engine or architecture. The engine has potholes.
The potholes are avoided by peripheral teams.
The potholes don't get fixed, but rather, accumulate.
I hate it.
It's okay to use tiny microscopic icon graphics. See this unicorn jelly frame for an example. The icons are fine..! (Funny joke in the middle frame, as well..!)
Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglass Adams
Write a sequel to the Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy game.
Famous People who didn't go to College. Creating Learning Communities.
Some quotes that I liked on Research and Teaching.
A book called "Creating Learning Communities".
I think Object Oriented Programming did far more for the graphics industry than it ever did for the programming industry.
I just realized: I don't have to think up everything I do on my own!
Obviously, but I've rarely thought of distributing thought, outside of the context of the OSS and FreeSoftware world.
I can ask Amber to think about something, and she's glad to do so, and tell me the results..! She's frequently bored at work, and loves to take on something interesting to think about.
Join lots of mailing lists!
Don't join just 1 or 2. Fact is, most projects die due to neglect. So, join zillians of mailing lists. You'll get a better idea of what's going on in the free software and open source worlds, and you'll be able to work on things that have excitement. And if you want to generate a little excitement yourself, you can do that as well..!
Make Kokoro Wish... ...Granted!
Piddle looks like a nice way to generate procedural artwork. {:)}=
I think pico was thinking that *p=x; would mean "The thing that p is pointing to is x," rather than "Copy the value of x into the thing that p is pointing to." I need to make some exercises to reflect this. Mention that 3=x; has no valid meaning.
Another idea of a way to teach pointers: Constructively: Have students invent a language. For example, you should be able to say, "x=5" or "x<-5" or whatever. Then you need to be able to say, "p=x" or "p=y", and then have it print out the value of x or y through p. Say, "Make up a notation that allows you to assign things." Then say, "Now, make up a notation that allows you to assign references." (Explaining what references are.) "How do you say, 'the value that is associated with this key', rather than 'this key itself'?" Link the names of their own invention to the industry names.
Show me someone who's disciplined, and I'll show you a robot.
If I ever teach full time, I would want to keep a for-free section, and be sure to let anyone use the facilities when I wasn't using them for free. For example, if a really hyper-active python enthusiast wanted to teach PYthon, she could use the facilities and computers to teach the class.
It's interesting- Benjamin Crowell wrote Newtonian Physics in a certain way, and there was an observation in Designing Technical Reports "12-271", that recommended writing a similar way.
And since I've been writing Pointer Problems, I've been meeting this dillema, addressed by both.
They both say: People come from a variety of backgrounds. Address these backgrounds in modular chunks.
Ben Crowell had a section that verses you in various skills that people have in various mixtures. You go through this stage where you say, "I know this, I know that, I don't know that, so I need to read section x, I do know that, I know that, and I don't know that. That way, you can just skip the stuff you already know, and go to the parts you don't know.
It also promotes the eventual building of a knowledge map, though I don't know that people are consicously aware of that yet.
In the future, it's quite likely that we will write highly modular pieces of knowledge, with well defined (and even standard..?!) prerequisite modules.
A choose-your-own-adventure for education..!
Designing Technical Reports "12-271" is a rather good guide that I liked.
I also like Kurt Vonnegut's Style, and think his recommendation of having something to say and saying it clearly is well suited for technical works.
I mean what I say: I have something to say. I say what I mean: I say it clearly.
A John Locke page, very brief.
A wonderful page on Newton, Locke, William Blake, and various other historical figures.
"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000
There's a great page on school shootings called http://www.violentkids.com/.
Two MasterPath links, pretty interesting: http://roadrunner.com/~sebasena/ http://www.nmia.com/~kgabriel/ShabdaNet/
Talk to people about the ideas that you have and the ideas that they have. "Brilliance Radiates", is how I have summarised this thought. It doesn't hide itself- "No, they can't have my idea..!"
It occurs to me that a common technique in stories is: Anthropomorphisation.
Anthropomorphise anything, and it suddenly has the drama element glued to it. Anthropomorphise spells, realities, mathematics, economies, machines, whatever. You name it, it can be anthropomorphised.
Actually, there's a piece of Sant Mat that believes that all things can be anthropomorphised, in order to be communicated with (we can only naturally communicate with others at our own level). No joke! Again, recall that God comes through Man so that it can communicate with us at our level. It's not a metaphor in Sant Mat, it's a simple fact of life. Yes, you can probably speak with Gravity.
Anthropomorphization is good for humor in an "Oh, look, isn't it cute, the guys pencil is talking to him..!" way.
The nomeclature for talking about awareness is incredibly difficult. "Psychical" vs. "Physical" is so confusing, verbally. Since I believe much of the confusion comes about, I believe, from not being capable of differentiating what we're talking about, it may be a great thing to assign visual or starkly differentiated terms for these entities. Instead of physical, we talk about the earth. Instead of talking about psychical, we talk about air, and instead of talking about raw awareness, we talk about outer space.
http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell1.htm
I read somewhere beyond this link that B. Russel had many affairs. Near his death, he wasn't sure his sexual lifestyle wasn't too helpful, I understand, I have to find the original material. I'll have to look him up and find more info.
Bertrand Russel is an interesting guy. I like what I briefly read of his psychology. "The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge." Sounds good to me. I also liked that he said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
He talked about awareness rather intelligently. Too bad I can't send him Jaron Lanier's You Can't Argue with a Zombie.
I am certainly not trying to convince zombies that they exist in some special way, that they might have a sense of experience. By now I know better.-- Jaron Lanier
Zombies owe us zagnets a great debt for making their information exist.-- Jaron Lanier
I can think of two consequences of the consciousness debate that matter to me currently. One is that it would be pleasant for non-zombies to have a philosophy that does not require that we ignore our own experience of existence. The other is that zombies have come up with a batch of metaphors that are radiating out in the world at large and are having an effect on politics and culture.-- Jaron Lanier
Some day, I need to write down my understanding of awareness, lest I forget the arguments, and am incapable of reply.
How could an algorithm or data possibly become aware? What is an "Existant" algorithm/data set, vs. a "NonExistant" algorithm/data set..!? How does the "sliding scale of awareness" come from? Who needs this dangler of awareness? Why should there even BE awareness? I can't detect anything that awareness could add to an algorithm/data set; what evolutionary advantage could it be? Why is awareness discrete, rather than shared? Or do you believe that there are actually 23 awarenesses within you? (not to be confused with schizophrenia) How is it that we're even able to talk about awareness, and understand the meaning of the world? How did the information about awareness slip into the computer? If awareness is a dangler, how can we talk about it? (Towards a selection of reality.)
Awareness is the Jewel of Spirituality. Reflect deeply on it, and you will be changed.
Why is it so difficult to have data from one program in one format, and convert it to data in another program..?
For example, I'm working one some code in a C compiler, and I'd like to take each class, and write a description for it in AbiWord. Or, perhaps, I'd like to take the comments immediately preceeding the C source code, and make that the description in AbiWord.
The application that interprets C code is a C compiler. The application that interprets AbiWord files is AbiWord.
So, now we need to get them to talk with one another, and recognize one anothers data.
It probably requires a little more than just tables. In this case, I think the C compiler should offer up tables or "services" to AbiWord.
We have a lot of HOWTO's, we have a lot of tutorials, we have a lot of explanations and newsgroup posts, but what I would really like are problems to work on. Problems that graduallly step up the difficulty.
I'll need to write a FreshMeat article about this.
What is good about kinetic education:
I think it would be best to have frequent kinetic activities in the text.
How to promote kinetic books? I think that actually doing it would do more to promote it than to write papers on it. Sure, if someone has the inclination to write about it, that'd probably be great, but for me, personally, it'll be easier for me to create a bunch of problem sets, than it will be for me to collect the energy and interest in writing about the process.
I think that this is the situation with the Free Books web site, interestingly enough. On the Free Books web site, we started writing a book on how to write free books, but I think everyone got bored. Why write a book on how to write free books, when in fact, we could just write a bunch of Free Books, which would explain the idea perfectly well enough.
Very interesting. Makes for a nice background while working on stuff. At home only, of course.
Who knows, maybe this kind of thing will bring about world peace. =^_^= . o O ( {:)}= )
The engine/GNOME internals team could set themselves up as an agency, and allow people to pay them to program things and put them into the core GNOME distribution.
Companies pay the GNOME internals team to code various features into the default engine/distribution.
The team thinks about how much it would cost their would-be employers to do it on their own (or hire someone else), look at their employers strategic effects, positive and negative ramifications, how much it would cost themselves to do it, and then make a quote. If the employer agrees, the code is written, and shipped in the standard distro.
If you want a feature somewhere, you can do two things:
I suspect programmers could also write, "Here's what we are planning on implementing, and the priority order. Here's what you can pay us to change our priority order." In fact, you could do an e-bay like thing, and have people bid on your coding. People add money to the various items, and that helps
It's sort of like licensing an engine.
Benjamin Crowell posed an interesting challenge question to me: How can we judge the accuracy and precision of a clock?
If you have two clocks side by side, how can you gauge which is the more accurate or precise clock?
I was originally thinking about the spatialization problem- If we can guarantee the spatialization of time is completely accurate, then it's trivial to check that the intervals are equal.
But how can we guarantee something like that?
Another route is to look at the experience of time, sans space. One route would be to say, "I've got rhythym," and just go from there, but there are a lot of people who don't. How about resonance? We could look for resonant frequencies, but then again, they probably have an imperfection, and again, how would we be gauging this clock against another? How do we know that the resonant frequency doesn't fluctuate?
Finally, I came across the following:
The power of a timepiece equals it's predictive power.
I was thinking about how people were using the sun to determine time. But a pendulum is better, because you can predict where the sun will be rather accurately with a pendulum. And Cesium emissions, still better. With Cesium, you can measure things that the pendulum cannot.
If Cesium is inaccurate, a better time-keeper will have to be the thing to show it.
So, in answer, if you have two clocks, and you want to know which is more accurate and precise, try making some predictions with them, and see which can give you better results.
http://www.scrawly.net/journalism/brin.html
David Brin's personal home page: http://www.kithrup.com/brin/v
<A HREF="http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/02.06.97/cover/brin1-9706.html"> - I don't think this one was very in-depth.
<A HREF="http://kspace.com/KM/spot.sys/Brin/pages/piece1.html"></A> A look into the future by Brin. He touches on Privacy-Computers-Freedom, but also NanoTechnology. It's not very focused.
Wired Article on the Transparent Society - An excerpt from the Transparent Society, I believe.
<P> <A HREF="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html">David Brin was right; the cameras are coming.</A> Make sure that we can watch our leaders and police as easily as they can watch us. </P>Here's even more:
Russian movie: Solaris
Joseph wants me to see it. I read some reviews that were pretty interesting; I hope I get to see the 3 hour version.
It looks to be about letting go.
Are nice clean interfaces the key?
Interactivity and iteration, are, I think, important, but since I'm not a hacker, I can't tell you.
Here's a list of links that I had on the Fledging Unix Programmers web page:
WRITE A PLOT TO ADDRESS THIS POV:
View of Self <-> View of World
Surat Shabda Yoga Faith Dying? Light and Sound: Eternal, True Low Self Esteem: Inability to "do anything" (hack GNOME)
Good God, I feel totally overwhelmed. Some days I don't feel like I can code at all. I can't get the names and words to link up with one another. "What *was* I thinking when I wrote that?!" I'll ask myself. "Maybe that whoole approach is wrong." Focus on education, learning. Making something cool. It's so hard. My skills as a programmer; wha-? Do I really contribute anything to the society I belong to? Damn, my head hurts. Argh... Can't leave; must be responsible. What shall I do? Third ete & changing names hurts so much... Michael... Entering a depression. Psychotherapists are goodfballs; Wouldn't talk to one if my life depended on it. All the people I have met who have become psychotherapists are fundamentally messed up. Object Orientation never works, and my architecture is object oriented...
[Who is calling me?!: (206)465-1440]
Post-analysis: Move along; Know that in the future, you'll be able to look back and see the positive and negative aspects. If you write your code to be as clear as possible to you, you are probably doing fine. Development ideology isn't nearly as important as living and coding; you'll have a clear-sight later; it's really not all that important. Bertrand Russel said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
All groupware needs to include e-mail notification of further discussion/annotation.
Finally, a Score 5 that I can truly be proud of.
Communication is The LifeBlood of Free Software
(Score:5, Insightful)
by LionKimbro (lion at speakeasy.org) on Tuesday February 13, @03:19PM EST
(User #200000 Info) http://speakeasy.org/~lion/
Free Software and OpenSource Software wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today were it not for the Internet. The only reason Linux progresses as it has, I believe, is because we've had the Internet. It just wouldn't work with people mailing each other back and forth.
I believe that the next big steps in communication will come through groupware, and that groupware is the #1 thing that we can invest our time and energy in to, to receive maximal payback in the form of OpenSource and Free Software.
It needs to be dirt simple for us to create and destroy projects, set up mailing lists, votes, build databases collaboratively, vote, instant message, chat, etc., etc. When it's fluid, we'll reach a new level of community building and communication, which will redouble our ability to work over the Internet with one another.
We need to be able to easily embed groupware into our standard applications. It needs to be easy for a user to look something up in the documentation, note a minor bug, (spelling error? incompleteness? technical error?) make the adjustement, have the adjustment sent and approved by a moderator, and then applied to the text. All software should be able to easily manage docs like this.
We need to be able to say, "I need help," after looking through the docs, flag our ICQ or IM or whatever as "I am someone who needs help using THIS tool," and someone from the dev mailing list for that tool who has the "I am someone who can help you with THIS tool" flag set put in contact with you. It needs to be seamless, it needs to be easy, and it needs to be ubiquitous.
Another breakthrough will arrive when we can seamlessly communicate with audio-video over the web, between countries, and hold group meetings over the web.
Whenever you want to learn something, someone will be ready to teach you, face to monitor to camera to face.
Again, I think that the best thing you could work on if you want to improve OpenSource and Free Software is GroupWare.
The major changes we've seen coming from Open Source and Free Software are just the tip of the iceberg, and I think it's something that we should all be excited about and proud of.
Bucky Spirit Design Dee Hock Chaord Jaron Lanier I want a world view that doesn't omit my own existance
Integrity Moral Together - Combining Situations Joseph at LithTech - Combining Games and Spirituality (And Getting Bogged in Meetings) What's the big deal about Leaders? Why do we need them? See the zoo that became of Bucky fans: Post-Bucky Gathering- Divided by Plurality. Without leadership and cohesion, it just totally fell apart, and seems to have falled pray to less-than-noble interests. The essence has given way to form, tradition, appearance, and hope of salvation in recollection and ritual... The Question of Cults Integrity Demands That You Do What Is Important To You Embracing potential in all "Exercising the option to think" -- Bucky; Refrains from George Lucas An important element is to encourage growth Bucky was into alternative language, just like L Ron Hubbard - reasoning of both was the same: "Our current language does not accurately represent the world." I myself use a language that would be foreign to others: * Physical Astral Causal Mental Etheric Soul God - datable to 1900 (?) * Simran or "Repetition" of the Names * "Word" and "Name" even have vastly different meanings for me. * "There is only 1 God" is usually taken as "My God is Better/Truer Than Your God"; Exactly the opposite meaning..!
(I do find it kind of odd that Bucky admonishes mathematics for being impenetrable, and then goes on to write a completely impenetrable book on Synergetics..!)
The Surat Shabda Yoga and the Binary Nature of Mind; Mind will change back and forth, now positive, now negative; It cannot reinforce itself; Dependance on Shabda is all there is.
My mind is chewing on what it's been fed; The message seems to be this: Live with Integrity, answer to each moment fully, and without reservation. Do not fear others.
Many companies nowadays are dis-integritating, or dissintegrating, rather than integrating.
I wonder if it would be better for me to live my life at work more integrated, despite conventional wisdoms that you should compartmentalize your life. Hm, I'll try it out. It works both ways: life into work, work into life. Things that don't mix: alchohol and water, religion and government. Things that mix: love and parenting, spirituality and computing. We'll see where life-efforts and work go.
Here's another example: ESR. His life and message are cohesive; He's fine, talking about spirituality, and then talking about computers, and then talking about...
Look at RoleModel SofTware (T is a cross) for an example of a well integrated workplace.
We bring exceptional value to our clients via project, personal, and technical leadership in the development of robust, flexible software assets as we give glory to Jesus Christ our Lord.-RoleModel SofTware mission statement
Each of us takes the cultivation of his Christian character very seriously. The Bible tells us to be diligent in our work, as if we were doing it for God directly (Colossians 3:23-24). All of us believe the Bible is clear about how we are supposed to deal with people, including our customers. We are commanded to be honest with everyone, which includes ourselves and our customers (Matthew 5:37). Part of this is admitting when we are wrong and to doing whatever is necessary to correct the mistake. Honesty and humility are the bedrock of what we do (Micah 6:8). In fact, this is one of the things that attracts our people to XP. It is an honest way to develop software.-- RoleModel SofTware Philosophy
That's pretty intense, and quite admiral. It's quite inspiring. At work, I'd like to talk with Andy about what we can do to help my project go along well.
I like this. This is true. I'm going to watch their project, and see how they do.
Programmers should take a look at their pair programming workplace as well.
Jesus Christ, I think that I actually communicated.
Miguels latest paper, Planning GNOME 2.0, is interesting in itself, but look at how it's written..! It's a collection of short, discrete, modular components allowing for easier writing and revising.
It's a made-for-the-Internet document, not a paper-document-translated-to-the-web document.
Sort of like Scott McCloud's visions for Internet Comics.
It is definitely a fresh approach. I like it; the focus on immediate and practical works. It reminds me of the following story: I recall being at Mudd, and doing a lab. We had a bunch of data, and needed to perform a linear regression. Some students were getting ready to run off to the computer lab to get to the Mathematica programs. Our professor stopped them, and said, "Here, do the calculations in this room." "How?!," the students asked, looking incredulous. The professor said, "Graph your data on the grid in your lab books, and you'll be amazed at how accurate and precise your results are." The students did so, and true to form, we all got good valid results. However, the full value of the lesson didn't hit me until I was in UW and we were required to use Excel to plot our data and perform a linear regression. Remembering my professor's warning, I decided to stay behind (damn the requirements), and work the graph out on my own. I plotted them, did the necessary calculations, and drew up my line. Except, that it was really a curve..! A slight curve, but a curve none the less. When the teacher asked for the equation for the line, I linearized the line. But when we were asked to plot interpolated points, I used my curve. I got far more accurate results than anyone else in the class. The curve actually caused quite a bit of difference in the middle; the line was way off. I laughed nervously when I realized that the whole class, TA included, had been duped into recording meaningless 6 significant figure values that were way off. Absolutely incredible. It's not a matter of humans versus machines (I'm a friggen computer scientist after all), it's a matter of unquestioning reliance on computers on the part of those who should know better. Much better.
Some article, I forget what, that appeared on Kuro5hin, written by someone famous. Someone who wrote the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Modelled our society with the following:
Jonathon Michael Stravinsky, JMS, whatever, the author of Babylon 5, modeled the Membari Social Structure thusly:
Make an Internet Program
We've been thinking too much about the Web, We need to think more about the Internet.
"Design Science" - DSL Design Science License - the guy I talked with about the Lead-Acid Battery - a Bucky fan?
I think that following the trends of peoples preferences in languages may actually be the way to go.
First I realize that peoples language preferences is not rational. It's based by whats advertised in the classified ads. And that's based on some playful programmers whims and fancies. And that's not rational.
Ideally we'd all be using lisp and its already well thought out structures and handling of things. In C, you can write your own efficiently poor version by hand of something that a well developed high level language (LISP, maybe Python; I'm not sure about efficiency in Python) gives you for for free. Sure, there may be the slightest bit of overhead. But, their implementation is rock solid, well tested, and guaranteed not to be exponential when it could be logrithmic..!
At any rate, language acceptance isn't rational.
Who knows why everyone's clamouring over Java. I can't really find a good rational reason to. You want ByteCode? Use LISP. PCode. (Pascal). Big in the 80s. Who cares. You really think OOP is a magic bullet? ("Of course not." Then why do you keep saying it is in different words?) Use LISP with objects. [OOP bigots talk as if they invented the concepts of polymorphism and encapsulation (things you plug into wall sockets) and inheritance (processes inherit from parent processes)... Bah, I'm not going down that ranting line..!]
Intellectual cunning has concentrated on how to divorce money from true life-support wealth; second, cunning has learned how to make money with money by making it scarce.-- Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics
The fact that 99 percent of humanity does not understand nature is the prime reason for humanity's failure to exercise its option to attain universally sustainable physical success on this planet.-- Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics
The best decoding of Buckminster Fuller's "Synergetics" that I have ever seen is called A Fuller Description, by Amy C. Edmondson. Its actually a rather good work, and has excellent explanations. I remember studying spherical packing just a couple weeks ago in Chemistry class (cubic vs. ab vs. abc vs. something-i-forget the name of), and teaching the triangle numbers to Pico just recently.
I found a great applet for seeing electric field lines on the web..!
There's a better one at Caltech. Not quite as simple/aesthetic, but you can do n-charge problems with it.
I think the secret to Science is to ask questions. At least, Proffesor Grumman thought that was a good idea. Good. Because, I have lots of questions.
I hope that the secret to Science isn't to go to college. Because if that's the case, Outlook not so good.
It's kind of silly that we have these mail lists.
A person sends a message to the server. The server copies the message and mails it to a 100 people.
The clients all have to organize everything.
Much smarter to just have a server that people check into. Sure, they can download searchable archives if they want.
One nice thing about receiving the e-mail is that you get notified (generally) when you receive mail while online.
A central server could do something like that for you- send a message to your computer that pulls up the listserve Internet address and a client (i.e. a web browser) to view it.
A friend of mine, Joseph, and I, have been thinking for a long time (1.5 years) about making an "Open Actors" web site. Actually, it would be much bigger than that; it would be a web site for the cataloging of various pieces of game art, all licensed under Free licenses, actors being one of them.
One example of a successful virtual actor is "Tux". He makes appearances in several games. Bill Gates has also made several appearances. I can easily imagine that fantasy or sci-fi story characters could cross genres, and aquire a character, which would then be the virtual actor.
Whenever you are considering doing something in a language that you'll need to look up stuff in a book to do it right, and you are fairly profficient in the language, consider doing whatever you are doing in a different way that doesn't make use of arcane knowledge.
If you don't do the fancy language trick, or whatever, chances are, no one else will have to later- including yourself a few days later.
So don't do tricky C++ stuff that's going to be way out there, like recursive templates or what not!
The purpose is to write understandable code, not confound everyone with your depth of understanding a language that no ones going to use in 10 years..!
It needs to be easy - Dirt simple - To mount a foreign drive over the network. We also need a standard port for saying, "Here's what I have that you can link to your file system, here are the read-only directories, here are the read-write directories, here's your daily limits, click here to mount it to your own file system, enjoy."
It's become very apparent to me that the categorizations hierarchy just doesn't work very well. Consider Groupware: Is it "Computers Groupware"? "Computers Programming Groupware"? "Communication Groupware"?
What we need are two things:
If you search for "Computers", you'll first get those things that directly pull in "Computers", but after all of those, you'll also get "Groupware", "Programming", and a host of other things that are connected to "Computers", in various relevances.
It may happen that a whole pipe-line of Free Software will appear.
I can totally see a completely FREE system here.
The only thing that is not Free is the bandwidth, and with the creation of things like Seattle Wireless
Games, Work, and Collaboration
I have a couple hours available.
I'd like to do something useful with it.
I like the logic problems that computers bring to me. I like to work on things, and get something cool out of it too.
I think a lot of the things that we learn can be learned in little 2 hour snippits, or even just half hour snippits, while we ride a bus, or something like that..!
(Philip Greenspun observed this.)
I realized that one of the reasons that I haven't been playing games in a while is because, well... I'm playing other games, not traditionally recognized as games.n
A neat thing in games is that there's a goal, and there's a challenge, and you gradually learn how to overcome that challenge.
The trick is in making the passage a comfortable experience. If it's uncomfortable, it's called "Work", generally. I think it was MiyaMoto-sama who realized this. He continually stresses making games "comfortable."
If you feel stuck, and like nothing will help you out, then you're not having a comfortable experience. So I think that learning how to do something, learning a certain skill, needs to be assisted, with help, so that when you get stuck, you don't spend a lot of time there getting mad. Rather, you get help, and you get out of the problem situation, and you learn something.
Our whole model of, "Everything must be competitive; That's American capitalism;" I think it's totally wrong. We need to give and accept help. We don't need to become a welfare state; just a little helping out would be a good thing..
Games, Work, and HOW-TOs
(Score:2) by LionKimbro (lion at speakeasy.org) on Monday February 19, @05:18PM EST (User #200000 Info) http://speakeasy.org/~lion/
I recently realized that, with the exception of Final Fantasy 9 (which is more of a story), I haven't played any games in a long time. "What am I doing?" I thought. I then realized that I was playing games, just other types of games: How can I help the Free Software movement, How can I maximize my contribution to society and self, how can I promote, learn about, and work on, groupware. Learning is also another type of game, that I play.
What's common to games? I liked the definition I read on the WorldForge project page: You've got a goal, you've got obstructions, and you try to meet the goal through the obstructions. And, that description matches the games that I play, video-game or otherwise (contributing, learning, etc.,.).
Now the question is: What seperates a game from Work? The description above seems to also describe work rather well. Almost by definition, I hate work, but I love games (Cosmic Encounters, for name-dropping). So what's the difference? For this, I draw on Taoism, that book "Flow" (John Carmak recently referenced it), and Miyamoto-sama, who emphatically repeated at GDC 1999 that the game-playing experience must be "comfortable". Perhaps the only difference between work and a game is that the game is comfortable, whereas the game is, well,... Work. I'm still working on this definition. (Mary Poppins said that with a spoonful of sugar, you just snap, and the job's a game. While I like this idea, I have trouble in the impementation; perhaps I'm just not snapping my fingers correctly. Maybe I need to meditate more.)
Given this description, what are the types of games that I'm interested in playing? Personally, I'm really interested in games that cross-over into the domain of my livelihood, and the livelihood of others around me. I'd like the principle of game-ness to shove out work-ness from my life. I wouldn't fret if work completely disappeared from my life. Computers fit the bill rather well. I've always considered the operation of computers to be something of a game, since I was a wee little one, and I've always had an intuition that it would pay the bills. (That intuition turned out to be right.) But still, there's a lot that's uncomfortable about it. It's just like when you're in the maze, and all the doors are locked, and there isn't a key in sight. You're absolutely stuck. You were slated to finish a programming task in 2 days, and it's taken you 2 WEEKS, and you still don't know how you're going to get out of it. This is an uncomfortable situation, and draws me out of the realm of the game, into the realm of work. Ugh. And I was trying so hard to get out of that realm. Where am I going with all of this? Well, I'm trying to establish the similarities and subtle differences between work and games, and then I'm trying to segue into how I think that we can structure things so that work can become more like a game. My ultimate goal is to get feedback from you, build interest in the subject, and have you send me links and other references to related lines of thought.
So, I've found this neat way of teaching that can make a game out of learning. It gives you immediate positive rewards, it helps out in the world (because you learn a valuable skill), and you don't get stuck with no keys and lots of locked doors, because it has a built in help line, that you can call on and get a quick piece of help.
The way I found I learned from Philip Greenspun. He uses problems and a community system as integral parts of the ArsDigita training program. It works like this: You have a number of problems, in gradually increasing difficulty, that the learner tackles. Lecture is rather secondary to the problem statements themselves. Lecture is useful, in so much as it helps with the problems. The problems are rather UNIX-like in that the goal is to teach the student one thing, and teach it well. Anyways, I've been working on installing the ACS, and it's been going well so far. Whenever I have a problem, I go to the web bulliten board, search for the problem. Most likely someone had it before, and I get the answer there. If not, I write an entry to the list, and within 5-15 minutes, get a reply. (Once I had to wait 6 hours, though...) The reply then goes on to the board, so that others can get the solution as well. In fact, it's like this with most of our online systems, except that the response time isn't as small, you have to sort through google entries, and usually you have to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from mailing lists, etc., etc.,.
Anyways, I've tried out the method of problem guides in the Fledging Unix Programmers class that I teach, and it's had excellent results. Problems show up when the difficulty between problems is too high, so I subdivide those intervals. It works great.
But what I'm really looking for is for other people to do the same thing.. There are a lot of times in my life where I have 2-3 hours spare, and I'd like to play a game in that time. I'd like a good set of 3-5 problems, workable within 2 hours total, that increase my knowledge about the Linux Kernel, PHP, How to use databases, link things up, make a small game, play with networking, etc., whatever. Do you know what I mean? (Please answer.) So what I'd like to have is, not so much HOW-TO's, but PROBLEM-GUIDE's. And support lines consisting of other people who are interested in the subject, and have completed the guides themselves. Well balanced problem guides. That way, I can play games on a daily basis that are comfortable, educational, and most importantly, fun.
"One of the best fundamental principles that anybody ever expressed to me about game design is that games should teach you how to play them."Make a computer game where the rules are changed as you play. The syntax for modifying rules is taught as the game is played.
I got the idea while reading Dogma 2001: A Challenge to Game Designers
Pictures allow you to ease the writing process. First, you make pictures of the land that you are going to describe. Then you describe the pictures. Check your work by making sure that the picture is adequately described. This is much quicker than having to re-vocalize everything and translate it back into images, when you are working on the document.
The world is shape and image, number is just a symbol.
Reincarnation Time!
We need to work in our respective fields, and share our results with one another on this list. We can't write a free book on free books before we have written several free books. In mathematics, you generalize AFTER you have several specifics, not before.
We need smaller, modular guides.
The problem-centric approach.
We need to teach ourselves and each other how to use DocBook.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves a research and sharing group, rather than as a marketting group.
Perhaps we should close off this list, make a new one for those who want to explore this different approach. I think that the connections that we have is valuable. We're all interested in similar things having to do with the propogation of informaiton.
Congrats to David Sweet; I read your article in LinuxJournal, or whatever it was. Ben, you were mentioned in it as well. Congradulations to both of you.
Here's an idea of a way to start delving into GTK+.
Give myself a series of problem guides, that I can roll over onto my students.
Incorporate into them the visualization / ease of doing things that were before only done in text files. HEre's an example of what I was trying to say: Make it so that you can write a FLEX file from within a GUI, using GTK+ to do so.
I'll have to use a set of problem guides to lead the effort.
The problems would ask students to do something similar with a problem of their own, or they could use the FLEX one I did.
Good projects are: "Apply Visualization to XYZ."
Make some gui-enabled programming environment called "Sprawl" in Python. It's a hyper-transparent simulation environment. Everything is transparent both to humans and to programs. Interface query transparency and iterative run-time coding is the name of the game.
It could be quite a bit of fun..!
The coder's prayer:
Dear Great Web,
Please save this soul from unhappily following the links I always do, channel-surfing the web, and disheartedness.
Let me not fall into habit, nor frustration. Please guide me down the straight and narrow, though hidden it may be; The Path of Love and Interest.
Let me aid my fellow coder, and be of use to the world, Amen.
We learn a lot of language in context; I think kids learn almost 100% by context. Why don't we do this when we are learning, say, Japanese, as adults?
Why do we dumb down the language, rather than enriching it?
I think this is the way to go. Read complex difficult streams of dialog, with plenty of comprehensible context and imagery. Focus on key misunderstandings rather than peripheral misunderstandings, and trust that many words will be simply absorbed. That's how the kanji worked for me; I never explicitely learned
One of the most fascinating articles that I have ever read on the music industry. Indeed, quite possibly one of the most fascinating article I have ever read on business..! The Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing for business people. A more cynical approach exists as well. I don't like it.
Good use of time: reading slashdot, or posting a review of a book to the Assayer, or working on some other helpful online project.
Something else, only marginally related (should be reclassified):
Someone will find a way to float load over bandwidth that will absolutely minimize impact on the public. It will cost near-zero to host something that today takes the support of companies, commercial interests. The music will flow free.
Free Software. Should I put things related to it under "Society ContributionOnline", or under "Economics FreeSoftware".
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
"using emacs for just editing files is like having sex just to have babies"--"Faried" (?)
CORBA technologies overview, Carnage4Life
Seats for Sale (License, Rant)
I was watching some engineers in a heated debate. There were two camps engaged in a battle, they were throwing arguments back and forth.
It seemed unproductive, and I called for executive action, but I was informed by the man watching from behind the chatter that this was actually exactly what he wanted. He wanted this battle to happen so that all the strengths and weaknesses would be brought to light, and then he would make a final decision based on that.
I wanted to participate, but I didn't know the territory, or even where I stood. Still, it strikes me that I really wanted to participate. Sort of like Dem vs. Rep. None of us are experts in all these issues, but we all want to argue as if we were.
I found an interesting web page on urban experiments that can be performed with your own home microwave.
The (G)Neuetic Starship.
The Neuetic Starship is a Free Software Project. It is the work of several people, who modify the project in way that others do not necessarily understand. It's goal is to create, with computer software, a portal to another dimension. It's the most insanely difficult piece of software that has ever been written. Some call it madness. Others, brilliance.
It contains odd for-loops, incrementing, decrementing, multiplying, all to sync the code up to the Neutic dimension, and open the portal.
Since we function on a primarily audio-visual level, the starship provides several audio-visual renderings of what is found in the Neu-space. Various tools for traversing and navigating the Neu-space are presented.
Neu-space is grown, and explored. Many new ways of interacting with this sometimes strange, sometimes normal, dimension are created.
Neu-space exploration is a suspension of belief in the physical space.
Huge files full of data, obtained through meta-physical means, constitutes the "raw data" of the program universe.
"Eternal Name xyz" where xyz is "Consulting", or something like that, would be a neat name.
I found a link to something called "Dramatica", I don't have time to read it right now. I am interested because I once had the idea that stories are how we do our infrastructure work- how we see the master plan, even though we play only a part. That they are a master layout, describing the diagrams for human programs. Dramatica seems to be similarly based.
There's a weird story on Free ... well, free anything. It's about a person who has found an equation that can end all human conflict, and gets absorbed into a weird cult intent on keeping the information hidden away.
I don't know what this place is, but it looks interesting..!
It seems that most companies work on this model of, "Employees are static, we cannot change them."
I think that employees are not static, and this may be the reason we have rapid turnover in companies.
Lets try the other extreme.
Employees are made to work within a system. But when you work within yourself, you establish a system around yourself that allows you to follow flow as much as possible without the system getting in the way, only capturing the energy from your vibrations. I'm not speaking pseudo-mysticism, I'm just not writing coherently.
Look at this file for instance. It is a "catch". It catches the results of the vibration of my mind. By vibration, I don't mean some hippyish vibes, think more along the lines of 0K Helium that's still vibrating around, or Brownian motion. My mind constantly goes all over the place, as this document evidences.
However, out of this vibration, this document collects. It takes energy from my vibration, and collects related efforts together, though they are seperated by space and time.
Within a single person, this chaotic motion works rapidly and well. Is there a way to capture the same between multiple people?
The opposite is to not capture the vibration, but to try to force particles to follow a particular motion. It is not a pleasant way of living, working, etc.,.
This goes back to the thread of the Game. What is the difference between Work and Game?
I believe that the Game is a realm comparable to liquid. If work is solid, and pure spirit is a gas, then Game is the realm of a liquid.
What I want to know is how to add heat to a solid in order to produce Game, which will allow me to more easily digest work, and make for a happier life.
Problem statements are one such way of doing this. Robot City did it literally- they actually made a game that you play..!
What if human males layed eggs rather than girls?
We'd have a very strange system.
Southern states would prohibit the teaching of ovals and elipses, the algorithms involved in their calculation kept a mathematical secret, and requiring those that use the algorithm to aquire special permission from their government.
An interesting and insightful article and comments on Kuro5hin.org
Apologies Joe, and whoever wrote this, but I can't stand the thought of this e-mail disappearing from the web. =^_^=
To: joepet@server.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: letter to Joe Petrow
Hello Joe!
I'm from Moscow, Russia. I've visited your page due to Geir
Friedstad's list. For the first time, actually, my attention was caught
by your surname... :) But it really doesn't matter, after I've read
your essay. It has interested me much more! I've noticed that
something, that keeps you a bit away from the most of people around. I
think you know it, and you know that it's not bad at all! I know it myself
and thought a lot upon this subject. From the first sight it may seem
funny - to fall in love with the unreal person like Skuld. But you feel it
rather great then funny! How could it happen? :) So, please, let me
suggest you a discussion on what's happened, for I really know what it's
like on my own!
From the very beginning I'm going to point out your feelings not
being ones of usual "fan-club" hysteria. It's much more in your life. And
the main thing is, that nobody around seems to understand you, the way you
feel it yourself. I know it myself, and I had a long time to try to
discover, what it really is. I want to let you know some of my basic
ideas, just to test how do they match to your ones. Both, you and I know
that it's great anyhow, but may seem like a funny stupidity to the people
around. So who's right here? :)
Just a few words about me. I'm not as young as you are and even a
Ph.D. in computer science, so my social approach seems respectable enough
not to think about such a "stupid" things like japanese animation, that's
meant for "crazy teens" only. But I think... :) It happened to me in 80-s,
when some of the japanese animation films were shown in cinema halls in
Russia (USSR of those days). So I watched the "Little Mermaid", - the
japanese version, which is actually much more early done, according to
Walt Disney's one. If you haven't watched it, try to do it - you'll love
it too! It's done very close to Andersen's tale, and is as tragic as the
original... It impressed me greatly! I wasn't a schoolboy that time, but
I've found myself doing very strange things like watching it so many
times, that made me confused even. Later on I used to "explain" it as just
"lesions on drawing". It's half-true! I really started drawing in japanese
anime style, an I still can do it not bad. But the main reason was my love
to the anime's main hero! I knew, such a kind of things happened to a
schoolboys, watching the movie stars. But my case looked even more stupid.
I was ashamed to tell anybody about it, and I didn't. Years have passed,
and I can say - I still love her! Does it mean I'm stupid? I don't think
so! Now I can say that it's very unusual kind of love, that made me more
wise, more understanding! It made me love people around more, they can
even expect to! Something like this happens to you by now. Lucky you are!
:)
Do you feel that Skuld is REAL? Do you feel she's more real then
some of your friends? Do you feel the world around not too much real? And
if you admit it's real, do you feel it's not "yours" a bit? Do you feel
you were meant to live some other life, you are living now? - Here are
just some "stupid" questions, you might have asked yourself! :) And the
answer was "yes" all the time... But you didn't tell anybody about it,
just not to be thought as crazy. So here is my first thesis: "People,
living in the world, are not exactly the same. They differ greatly, but
the society makes them believe they are the same, just to provide an
illusion of entirety of the World we are living in. But some of them are
too much close to the "edge", to feel it's wrong. They have an advantage
to step "over horizon", but they are taught not to do it... They only
dream of it for the whole of their life. This dream may come as a love to
Skuld, for example...".
Thoughts like this have brought me to some mystical ideas, that were
felt so natural, that made me start doubt about everything I knew of the
World around. I've started reading books by Herman Hesse and Richard Bach,
and I've found enough to understand, I'm not the only one to feel the
World's illusion. It's not a joke, for I felt some of the "crazy" ideas as
quite natural, and just something, I've already known long before... This
period wasn't the most successful in my life. Things went not the best
way, so I had a kind of depression of being "fallen out" of reality. I
even visited psychologists. But the only thing, they were trying to do,
was to prove me that "reality" is real! I was absolutely sure it isn't so,
that made me refuse their "help" ever more. I've found that my feelings of
reality is much more exact ones, they could ever advise me... They could
NEVER "help" me, for being too far from even an understanding of the
subject! I started with psychology myself. I read a lot of books, but the
only thing I've found, was no idea of understanding of what the things
really are! :) I had to do it all by myself, and I did it. The World is
really not entire, and we are really to make a step out of it! If you stop
doubt about it, and just start using it in your everyday life, you'll find
things getting much better, you can even expect to... :)
But what about Skuld, and manga, and japanese anime? Do you want to
know the truth? Here it is: You ARE Skuld a bit! And you recognize that
the whole story is about you a bit! You feel it's yours, but you're
confused a bit. :) You feel her always being a part of your identity -
that made you watch the anime every day. She was doing the things, you
were meant to do! :) Is it bad? No, it's wonderful! You have found out
really the best part of your identity - isn't it nice? But what to do with
the fact of her, being a girl? She's not a girl - she's goddess, and it
makes the difference! She's "forever innocent" and her being a "girl" is a
sign of innocence - nothing more. You hold this sign inside you as well,
and it lets you "grow better" inside. One must get it to understand it! So
I wish you good luck!
I've told you all this just as a subject to think about. Just have a
look upon Geir's page. On one side it's done with the nice sense of humor,
but on the other side Geir's love to goddesses stay evidently clear in
every word written! I've got an idea and I'll send it to Geir. It's about
a kind of questionnaire, added to a guestbook (nice idea is this
guestbook!). I want to suggest to classify what kind of people are
interested it manga. I want to find out how many of them feel it like you
do, for example. I think that "love" to manga is a kind of sign, pointing
out some people who tend to be a magicians a bit! Do you agree with me?
I'm about to finish this letter! I'm sure it will "touch" you
anyhow. If you feel it's too much your own - then please forgive me! But I
suggest you to dare to discuss it. If I'm right, you'll get a chance to be
much more happy in this life! Actually Internet gives, maybe, the unique
chance for reaching for more understanding among the people like you and
me, living all over the world. They are few, but they all come here (to
your page, for example)! Maybe it's high time to say that we really are?
All this is a subject for a discussion, I'm to suggest you!
I'll be really waiting for your reply!
Just like UNIX command line input/ouput pipes, but accessible to a network of users.
For example: ls | node 1045346 to output the current directory contents to node 1045346, which may reside over a network, or node -input 45664 | tail -f to set yourself up as user 45664, and output anything sent from anywhere on the network to node 45664 to the console associated with node 45664.
This way, several mini-IM protocols can be made quickly and easily.
There are two ways to use
node.
In one use, node takes one parameter, the ID of a user that will receive the input to the user program. This use sends data to a node.
In the other use, node is signalled with the parameter "-input", followed by the ID of a user that the computer is authorized to host. The output of the node is directed to standard output. This use of node causes a receiving node to forward input to another program or device.
Either a peer to peer network or a client server network maintains the association between node numbers and hosts.
Peers or clients maintain their own lists of the outputs between nodes and the pipes that accept data from them.
A network messaging system (similar to ICQ and IM) that stores data about what programs you are using, what projects you are working on, what role you have in the projects, what you are interested in talking about, and other information about the user associated with the network messaging system. This shortens the time required to find live assistance with a program or collaboration on a project.
In plain English, something like ICQ/AIM that knows about what you are doing, and what you are interested in, and what projects you are working in. People who are using a piece of (hopefully opensource) software can easily ask for help from other people who are also using the same software (and have expressed that they would be willing to help others), and can spare themselves the humiliation and ridicule that they'd get from going to the IRC room for the program.
There it is. An ICQ system to prevent us from having to go to IRC rooms and looking to see if anyone is interested in helping us out with something..!
I originally posted this to open-ideas.org
Well, more news on the EmbeddedIM. Or am I going to call it an "Intelligent Instant Messaging System"?
I posted the following to JamDev:
I don't know much about the pipework down there, but this is an idea that I think would be incredibly powerful and useful.
I've attached beneath this post the idea as I originally posted it to http://open-ideas.org/
Here's the problem I'm trying to solve: You need help with a program. You RTFM, but for whatever reason, it doens't work. You don't feel like wasting your time. You go onto IRC. You find the channel. If you're lucky, it's full of nice friendly people eager to help. If you just have your run of the mill luck, however, you encounter a hostility like you've never seen before.
There are probably THOUSANDS of people running your particular application, be it the gimp, a dev environment, a computer game, whatever, who could all teach each other. The trick is, they don't all feel like jumping into a chat room. Negotiating a server and chat room and nick is out of the question.
Here's the solution: You make chat programs able to interface with an instant messaging system. When you run a program, it flags you in the IM system as "Active GIMP User", or whatever. When you need help, under the help menu (hey! People'd actually use that thing!) you select "Help From Another User". You are put in contact with someone who has a reasonable amount of skill.
Of course, many people won't want to be bothered, so there should be a way of turning on/off availability broadcasting. You should be able to do this application-specific or user-specific. "I'm available for helping other GIMP users, and Gnumeric users. But not Tetris." Or you can say, "Shut off all Jabber Application signals."
Advancements on the idea will score users by expertese, # questions answered, etc., etc.,.
So there it is. I think this would be the coolest thing since sliced bread.
On demand, interactive help.
I'd have it on all the time. I'd be happy to help people use the software. It would be a great and easy way to volunteer and help out free software without needing to know how to write code.
So, I'd like the Jabber system to be able to handle interests lists, and for programmers to be able to easily integrate with the Jabber system.
Take care, Lion =^_^=
(following, was the post I had put on open-ideas.org.)
In reply, I got this e-mail:
Hi Lion,
I am impressed with this idea for collaboration. You might want to give
help by version number too, or by saying any version. I am working on a
groupware project at http://www.bootstrap.org/ohs2/ with a true industry
vetran, Doug Engelbart. In 1965 he patented the mouse. Your idea is
related as an application that we would want to allow for in our design.
We are finishing the architecture pretty soon and starting some
prototypes.
Do you already have a jabber server running? While automating this
process would be wonderful, a good first step would be to establish this
system manually so at least people already familiar with IM would be
able to use this functionality! A prefix such as
"app-
It also occurs to me that I need to take language into account. Japanese, Spanish, English; If you get someone who can't speak your language, it's not very helpful for either of you.
More things to write up on open-ideas.
RoleModel SofTware is advocating a return to the apprenticeship model of programming. Amen to that!
GOB is a language (compiles to C) that actually meets my accessor reform demands.!!!
Maybe I've been needlessly giving OOP a bad rap. Sure, I hate accessors that have no need because the data model is never going to change.
For example, a type field- not too much going on there! No need for getter's and setters for a "uint32 type". OO bigots want getters and setters "just in case the representation changes." The representation will never change. Never in my life have I seen it change, with exception to the type of the type field changing. And if the type field of the type field did change, you now have to change the type of the getter and setter fields.
I'm clearly against such nonsense. But, it takes a little while for me to determine whether or not something might need accessors or not. Whereas the time to just write it may be less, and the stupid OO bigot programmers will not complain. <sigh>
Ideally, we'd just fix C++ so that all assignment, comparison, and what not, public data would just automatically be the same as a functional interface if one was overridden, but if it wasn't, it would just compile to a normal assignment. That way, you get the best of both worlds.
I have found some other guys website of HTML editing helpers. I'd like to copy the best ideas into my library of HTML commands, and look at the techniques he uses in his code. He's got key bindings..! Kick Ass! I should probably work on popularizing my HTML editing library.
A terrible enemy at the bottom of a deep dungeon. You feel this frosty, negative, cold, whenever the enemy is near. It is revealed to be... ... marketing staff.
A character that uses complexity as a power. For example, when Urd / Skuld meet some enemy, they enter into the mental realms of computation and symbolic replacement; navigating a huge tree of occult symbols and software code.
Not cheezy like the Matrix; Using actual symbols and geometries from mental maps and such.
Throw in a little tetris. {:)}=
IF YOU AGREE that there is an element of awareness that is perenially undefinable, that element is what I am referring to as "Awareness".
Anything that can be defined, I believe that I can program, given enough time. And if there is an element that cannot be defined, I don't think that it can be programmed, intentionally or unintentionally.
Any algorithm that could happen, Could happen equally well without any awareness at all. And reflect on this: What does it mean for it to "Happen", at all..?
You try to talk about awareness these days, and you're pretty much left in the dust...
Movies like A.I. and that Millenium Man (or whatever it was called) movie show that people take it as pretty much for granted that all we are is algorithms and data.
You try to have a rational argument with someone, and all you're given are, "You're just trying to feel good about yourself," or, "You're being unscientific," or, "You believe that way because the church was trying to do xyz or abc, that's why you believe that way."
I have what I feel to be very good and solid reasons for not believing that awareness must be the product of the execution of algorithms or a particular data structure.
If only we could talk about it...
Write a simple converter from some bone-headed simple data format that I could use to all my docs, to HTML, DOCBOOK, and whatever else.
A SPACE FOOD restaurant. Get Joel to be the chef.
If there are restaurants in different places that you can get food at, and they name it after where they get the food, surely there is food served in space, called space food.
Have a database of lectures, with their goals, prereq's, and problems to work on them.
Get a community to work on them, expand them out, like Everything2.
I wonder if I could create a little store based entirely on free books and software. I'd call it, "The Liberated Information Store". Everything would be in the public domain, ready for shipping, available on the cheap, under Free licenses.
Project Gutenberg would be added, but I'd want to ask for their blessings, and keep them fully informed.
All financial information would be publicly available, costs and expendiatures.
I'd probably start with a small selection of books in a smattering of subjects, and then grow them with time.
I could explain the cause, and ship little information sheets along with the books I sold.
Hmmm...!
Build a society devoted to learning and improvement.
Improvement is the natural inclination of mind. It is not against the principles of the Tao to improve. Remember what Ursuala LeGuin said: It's okay to have a destination, just remember that the path of getting there is more important than the end destination.
Start with the Linux education society, and see how it goes. You may be able to make something like the international lex society if things go well.
There are so many ways our society can live without evil. (I don't think our modern dillema is manufactured out of merely good intentions gone awry; I think that thare are actual real terrible intentions out there, and that there are actual real self-blindings going on out there, and that they do a lot of damage.) I really think that if people saw the alternatives, they would choose them. Not all people, but it would manifest a potential in many. It takes time.
A guy here at the Greater Seattle Linux Users Group who taught us how the Linux initialization process works out pointed out that a triple point is a good way to identify elements.
He said triple point would be a better temperature to express than 1 stp boiling point, but I think that's a bit cumbersome... Who wants to keep checking the charts? At least 1 stp, we have an *idea* about where water boils, albeit not very precise or accurate.
Ask for someone to do a tutorial on bash shell scripting.
See about moving my teaching classes to Sunday, so that the Saturday can be compatable with GSLUG. Check with religious people to make sure this is okay with them. (They are probably reserving the morning for church.)
Perhaps I should advertise that Amber can take care of kids. Ask Amber to make sure this is true. (I think she would't mind, and it'd be a good experience for SaKuRa.)
I wonder if I can teach professionally while working for LithTech..? Schedule a training schedule. Then take 3 days off from LithTech when employed. Go out, make $7,000, return... Pay LithTech $1,000..? What is my time worth to LithTech? Maybe $2,000..? I could probably get away with trying it out once, but I could pay LithTech for the remaining time. ...yeeeeeaa..! That'd double my salary for a month. I have to figure out how to take out my taxes, though... That's some business stuff I'll have to read up on. Probably will have to make an official business. If I did this frequently enough, I could make my own
Gary Powell may be attending my free class. I met him in the bus, he's interested in being his own boss. Very individudalist streak to him. I met him on the bus on the way back from a GSLUG meeting. He runs Debian.
red=750nm violet=400nm
Excellent article on motivation and programming @ http://blahblah - oops..! Lost it.
I believe that we should always follow our interest, and modify how we engage that interest in order to account for the short lifespan of interest.
Things that positively motivate:
Things that negatively motivate:
Isn't this all described in the Cathedral and the Bazaar?
The writings on the wall. The future consists of peer 2 peer cooperation among all people.
The industry can keep their copyright materials; Volunteers will make their own and give it away.
I think in the future, people will make comic book characters, and then be able to share them online with each other. And licenses can be created that make it so that if a person makes a character, and someone increases the expression of that character, then their increased expression also belongs to the pool. Anyone can make use of it.
People could say, "I want XYZ character, with a happy expression," and suddenly see a list of object-form graphics that they can drag, scale, and distort into their own comics.
There will be an EXPLOSION of comics, when anyone can make them, even people without artistic skills.
You should be able to drag different eyes onto a face, etc., etc.,.. {;)}=
How to Build a Home X-Ray Machine
Buttons: Good or bad?
It'd be nice for programmers if you could opt to have a relative addressing rather than an absolute addressing, as the result after you finish browsing for a file.
Perhaps just a button that says, "Relative", to change the address to be relative, and then a button that says, "Absolute", to change the address to be absolute.
Here's how I posted it to open-ideas.com
A File Browser User Interface that can optionally be enabled to allow the directory or file located to be expressed as a relative address, rather than an absolute address.
A parameter is added to the API function signature that specifies how the chosen file should be be returned. The parameter can specify absolute, relative, or "optional". Optional would indicate that the user can select relative vs. absolute addressing of the file.
In the case that "optional" was chosen, the user begins in either absolute or relative. A default can be specified with the "optional" parameter. A button in proximity to the resulting filename allows the user to toggle between absolute and relative.
A lot of times, I want to learn something, but all I have is reading material- I don't really have good ideas about how to apply something. Problem sets solve that problem. Also, if the problem sets are used by many people, people who have solved the problems can help people who haven't.
I think the best thing we can do is to try to make ourselves better people, and the best stance we can take in arguments is to go for morality, spirituality, and Love.
What do I mean. I mean, we could try to put out a bunch of fires, argue for a bunch of causes, but the best causes that we can root for are root causes.
We need to improve our characters as integrated people, not in a piecemail fashion. If we go for the roots, the branches and leaves will follow.
I think that the social castration of our youth is only a tad bit less barbaric than our not-so-distant history of genital mutilation.
A game called Light Rains, a pun on "Light Trains". Also could be called "Light Racer" (tribute to BumpRace[r]), Photon Racer, or something along the line of Neutrinos- slightly massive light. Netrino, or NeutRally- a pun on "Neutrally".
In the game, 1-4 players see a tight closeup (like Defender 2000) of a massive schematic-like or electric-board-like playing field, with lots of grid and landmark so that speed can be seen, and to add ambience. Tracks are present in the board, and probably glow a little bit, so that they are differentiable from the background art, which should be slightly dim, but have some kind of ominous TRON pulse.
Four player games split the screen into 4 with a score bar in the middle of the screen, splitting the top two players and the lower two players.
Three player games change one of the player boxes into a place for scores; the score bar is gome.
Two player games split the screen in two either horizontally or vertically, with a score bar in the split.
The game is vector based, with lots of neat particle special effects. Jeff Minter would be proud.
You can play 1:1:1:1, 2:2, 1:1:1, 1:1, or single player.
The background glistens in a crystalline silicon way.
High conductivity regions (gold paths) speed the player up. Superconducting is the highest conductivity regions. Resistor regions slow the player down. These shouldn't just apply to the player, but to any electrical phenomena in the game.
Most paths are copper (and have a copper color). One speed up is silver, another speed up is gold. Highest speed is "SuperConductor", find the name of a good superconductor.
A running Ohm-meter lets you know how fast you are going. Fewer ohms means greater speed. There is a continual +-1% fluctation in speed, allowing players to get a temporary temporal advantage over their mates.
Transistor regions: [semi-conductors] If a player takes a base path (for some bonus), players that follow for the next few seconds gain a speed increase going through the emitter path..! [for a net betterment] (Self balancing game element.)
There are various switching events that can happen, and they play off tit-for-tat situations. They function a little different depending on how many players are playing. For example, suppose there are two paths you can go down. One is disadvantageous, the other advantageous. If only one player goes down the disadvantageous path, though, the other player's passing a specific location cause the disadvantageous path to become advantagesous. Perhaps there are tracks that rotate, allowing a bridge to appear, or something.
"Wave" power- you can reduce your energy to become like a wave, unbounded by the track. This is a good way to make "hops" from track to track. You move slow, and you move out, but you appear on the next closest track (other than the one you started on). Sometimes you can decide to "low-energy", and sometimes you are forced to.
Lines can have "drift". If a speeder races through an area, there is a drift behind the player that other players, if they get into, can go faster. But if a player goes down a drift the wrong way, they go slower..! If a bunch of players go down a path one way, and then one goes back the other way, they have to fight the drift to get back. This makes going back down a bad path that a lot of players went down a bad/hard idea. Perhaps drift should be called "magnetization."
There can be gates. If a player enters and and gate, the player is "stuck" in there. They may back out the way they came in, or wait for another player to come in on a second track, and the two will leave at the same time, on the same track. XOR gates make it so that if a player comes in, another player cannot go through the other track.
Perhaps for team games (2 on 2), there should be positrons and electrons. Positrons and electrongs collide with each other in a flash, effectively restarting each player. If they go through a NOT gate, they flip allegience- positrons become electrons, and electrons become positrons. Not realistic, but interesting. Polarity causes magnetization to have opposite effects.
Bit showers occasionally happen. The entire grid has a bunch of waves appear, which strech out to the nearest wire, and then follow tracks for a while before they eventually die out. While on the tracks, they magnetize it in various directions. If a player rolls over a bit shower drop-turned solid, perhaps something bad/good happens in addition to the magnetization effect.
The game should be very fast paced, rather random, and should require constant attention to the details and manipulations. Mastering a board should take a while. The game should feel something akin to air-traffic-controller (ATC), the popular UNIX game. I think this is one of the coolest game ideas I have ever had, joining the ranks of the recursive circle-hex maze games, and the particle man adventure games.
Make the worlds procedural, so that people don't have unfair advantage. Need to also proceduraly generate cross links between locations.
In a game, you should be able to take teams like this:
Joshua:
64.81.17.143
Technical Contact:
HS1672-ORG
NS1.SPEAKEASY.NET
216.254.0.9
NS2.SPEAKEASY.NET
216.231.41.22
domains@speakeasy.org
Forwarding DNS to 64.81.17.143:
Shabda.net
Shabda.org
NSI:
Make Changes -
shabda.net
shabda.org
to another ISP
WHOIS for Taoriver.net
KLI120
registrant- David Rushton Brock Kimbro
billing/tech - Lion Rushton Brock Kimbro
shabda.net/org
account #5870752
A database of everyone in the world. All my personal contacts. Their phone numbers. Their addresses. Their likes, dislikes, birthday.
People would hate this. People would love this. Everyone would have an opinion, Because Everyone would be in it.
It's easy to implement.
A reputation database.
Perhaps only people who agreed to enter would be entered.
But then those who do not enter are forced into a category: Those who have choosen not to enter. Those who choose to remain in the dark.
An interface app, like the one that that guy made for writing GTK+ objects, that makes it easy to write CORBA programs. You should be able to write a shell script, run this script, and BAM! you get a whole bunch of stuff and a working CORBA program.
We need introspection capabilities, so we can look inside, call functions, get the results, etc.,. A text based interface, that is. We should be able to say, "WhatSignaturesDoesItHave [ID]" and get back a listing of signatures. Then we should be able to say, "Call [function] [arg] [arg] [arg] [arg]", and get back the return values.
There might need to be a special "InterfaceIntrospection" interface in order to be able to do the first. Perhaps a "What is your IDL" message, which returns a string, that is the IDL.
CORBA: an example of over-engineering. Too much, too early. Incremental growth may have made it a lot better. Lesson: Develop Incrementally. Even though you may have a master vision, try breaking it into pieces, and feeding it to the world a piece at a time.
good overview of CORBA: (with pictures!)
We need a general threaded discussion board.
To learn about the HURD (this is March/2001), do the following:
I just realized- I don't think that my OpenSource advocacy is very well integratable with working in a proprietary based company... {:(}=
I will have to reflect on this.
I wonder if our environment is an unspoken part of our life, our integration. Messy/Clean, Decorated/Blank.
How much does it affect us? If it does affect us, it is an invisible affecting, at least to me, because I can't see it.
Put Manga on the walls to decorate it, like I did at the Centennial Towers.
Some weird project that unifies all the aspects of open source software, and strives to find the best methodology(ies) possible for writing software that is open and Free as in liberty.
Possibilities:
You should attach your contact information to everything you send out. At the very least, you should attach a web address which can hook you up to everything else. ICQ and Work# are good for at work.
Voluntary Adjustable Background Tip Jar
You say, "$20.00/month" on tips. You decide how much you want to tip on a given month. Each participating site that you go to gets a share of that tip jar, in direct proportion to the time you spend at that page.
You can also make an extra to a particular site if you want, with a built in tip button of some sort.
Before payments go out at the end of the month, you can adjust them as you like.
I've got a post in mind for the FreeBooks project coming up soon.
Without writing up the whole thing here: I was reading the Cathedral and the Bazaare, and realized that in the FreeBooks group, we were breaking several of the OS "rules". I think we should write small articles, hat are byte sized, rather than writing a complete book. Indeed, that's the state of the book: "Cathedral and the Bazaare"; It's a series of individual articles, that look nice when put together. More on that later.
As for your Andamooka thing; Again, I'd like to reply there in more depth. Currently, I'm reading the Feynman lectures, as well as your physics book. I think I could make a strong case for self-study. I wouldn't be surprised if self-study didn't work for most people. If "most people" are anything like my classmates who never ask questions in class, then I'd say self-study would be worse.
Most students do not naturally gravitate towards what you call "active learning". (I've been calling it "kinetic learning", myself.) A teacher definitely helps with stimulating the active learning process. But you can do active learning as an individual. You just need more than one book to study from, and an inquisitive mind.
As for "plug-and-chug"; You can get around plug-and-chug syndrome by asking questions that gradually increase in difficulty, and that require a deep understanding of the material.
[Lion's Later Addition: You need to make sure that the questions don't just fit the plug-n-chug mode. They need to go beyond- waaay beyond, the plug-n-chug.]
"Super-arguing": Arguing beyond one person, with the assistance of a database.
Conglomerate all large-scale decision making thoughts into a database.
Optionally score it to get people excited/interested in contributing.
This is an implementation of the catch-pattern: Collect and Concentrate information from various sources, located throughout time/space/people. The information appears side by side, and is valueable.
You can graph arguments on a tree, so that progress can be observed and measured.
I need to resolve (or decide not to resolve) Categorization-Catch vs. Thought-Catch, which involves looking at the Thought Top Level Category, and restricting what I'd like it to mean, somewhat.
Or it could just be possible that I need this to be doubly categorized. Very few things in our minds fit neatly into one category vs. another, a mistake that many engineers make, especially those OO bigots who'd like to "inherit the world," so to speak.
When you are programming, the important thing is to get something that works first, and then you can worry about optimizing, and nicification, and all that elegant stuff.
But the most important thing is that you get something out there that works. If you need to do a little planning and thinking ahead before so that you can get your algorithms straight, okay.
But you shouldn't be debating in your head "private" or "protected" or "public" when your goal is to get something out there working. You shouldn't be dealing with anything that doesn't have to do with making it work. Deal with that stuff later if it is necessary.
But in the end, neither you nor they will care very much.
If you want to make it look pretty, do it afterwards.
As Musashi said, "AIM FOR THE HEAD. AIM FOR THE FACE. THE GOAL IS TO KILL YOUR OPPONENT." All the other stuff is just so much stuff.
It just occured to me.
I've seen people play RPGs, where they don't care about the message, they're just more interested in going through the game. Or, they see the message, but don't think about it any further.
I think it's healthy to absorb that message, and mull over it for a while. What do you think?
This is an example of integrating our spiritual life with our "other" lives. I think it's really healthy.
Yet another paper to read: The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. Description of games is about the same as that given by the guy in Worldforge (link?) and that given by L Ron Hubbard.
I think the only thing that can get us through situations like whether or not Global Warning is real or not is facts.
I have some questions:
Is it true that industry based scientists are deeply biased against public findings? What do people in colleges believe? Republican or Democrat colleges? What are the various scientific theories? Were they proven or disproven? How?
We need fact-net.
Fact-net would contain a summary and links to all data, and commentary on that data, and commentary on the commentators.n
People all over could say, "This is an argument why xyz, I think it's true." Someone could say, "It's not; Look at this paper to see why."
With Fact Net, I could actually find out whether it is true or not that companies can buy off scientists and have them research things to slant against them.
I could find out just how confused government scientists are, and how confused university scientists are. (I suspect they aren't.)
But we need facts, and we need understanding, because the babble of voices opinions and papers, UNCOORDINATED, is not doing me any good.
I read FAIR's response to Rush Limbaugh's saying that some mountain is emitting greenhouse gases yearly that dwarf our emissions. I know it's false; the papers are well written and describe everything. I X-referenced with my professor. Bam. It's true. The last time that mountain exploded was many millenia ago. And Cl2, which is not a CFC, is soluble. blahblahblah. So nobody should ever be saying that's true, ever again. But people still continue to say that nonsense. This is the problem of coordinating amongst ourselves.
We have alll this information, but it's spread out in space. It needs to be side-by-side, visible at once, so that our minds can't be the victims of bait-and-switches.
You could even turn it into a game to get posters. Have a score: How many un-accounted for papers are there on each side? {;D}=
We need a graph of papers and counter-papers, arguments and counter-arguments, so that we can make informed decisions.
It would be neat to have a cross between StarFlight and Galaga at times within a Starflight game. For example, imagine that you have all the starflight controls- shields, analysis, communication, armaments, etc., etc, while you're in the midst of this galaga style attack on a planet. The trick is to mesh the controls nicely with the controls that you use during the remainder of the game. But MOTION. Lots of motion. Controls probably must be responsive- hot-key-able.
As you attack the planet, you receive incoming communications. You can do a sensor scan on enemies by utilizing the lock-on/auto-analyze system.
Also, as you are going through the action sequence, it's good to have motivating conversation going on. Pinball games do this a lot nowadays; They flash pieces of news, have quotes, etc., etc., explaining the state of this game universe to you as you play.
Within your local sector of the universe (and you haven't developed the technology to get much further...), another race is present, and is very hostile and controlling towards your race, although for some reason, they aren't killing you.
It turns out that they work for another race (which is controlling them - they kind of have a low self esteem now). Not much is known about this race right now (by the main players respective races). I originally the spemin in mind, when thinking about this evil race.
The players need to rebel agains the evil race, and fetch a map from their base. That map can then be used to find a flux point, which will transport anyone who goes through it into the outside universe.
It seems like employers are indicating that they want people who can solve problems (as per the Competence Without Credentials, Section 3),
If only I could find a way to teach independent thinking. Not much different from teaching problem solving. If I did, my teaching would be called a cult. Meta-thinking's reputation has been demolished by the Cult of Scientology.
Interest can be/is infectuous.
Joseph got me more interested in Kernels, and stuff like.
Ross asked me why I thought it would be good for people to talk straight with one another. We were talking about how employees and employers rip one another off. Employees browse slashdot and work on outside projects, Employers don't pay employees "what they are worth". I suggested that if employees and employers were ripping one another off, then the net result is a fair trade (to which he agreed), and that it might be better just to throw out the charade of ripping one another off, to which Ross said: "What would anyone gain by that?"
Well, I think they'd gain a lot. You get integrity, and you get knowledge.
What's in the way here? Fear. The power of fear over our lives is incredible.
And what do we do to get around this "fear"? We turn into "professionals". We make ourselves faceless.
I really believe that it's all just a huge isolation mechanism. We try to turn ourselves into machines. That's what "professional" is: A machine.
I think that when you try and make a human into a machine, you get inefficiency.
I think that any view of business, economics, psychology, that does not take into account spirituality, is completely dis-integrated, unrealistic, and ultimately, harmful. You don't have to believe in a particular god or force; You just have to have a deep sense of the importance of Life.
There's an interesting SUN paper on the Java Messaging System, which is a bus based (?) message passing system, that looks fairly mature. I Love it! {:)}=
Take a little bit of time every day, 15-60 min, putting your average programmers with your best programmers.
In that time, average programmer does the following things:
In that time, good programmer does the following things:
Here's what the company loses:
Here's what the company gains:
Here's what an average programmer loses:
Here's what an average programmer gets:
The "Just Get Better" approach that my old band teacher advocates and that strict managers advocate just sucks rocks. It doesn't work. Ever. I've never seen it work. Not one case. But I've seen the approach I'm advocating work because I have students of my own, and they profit from it emmensely. If this doesn't seem like a good idea to you, we should go to lunch to talk about it. I really believe in this. I want to do this. I think it just makes good sense.
Be sure to pick a good mentor.
If the program doesn't work, you can always just stop. There's little risk. But I think it will work.
I think metathought, which is strangely taboo in our culture (Whit: "Because we don't necissarily want to know how we work."), can be found in religious notes, since people have a comfort level within their own religion.
For example, check out How Can I Find Satisfaction In My Work. Ok, so strictly speaking, it's not metathought, but it does address deep questions of life. (Note: Start reading at "Know who you're working for," unless you want to read a cheesy Adam and Eve recreation that makes no sense, and points out an absurdity in an old bible story.)
It's not so much what they say that interests me, (they don't mention saving, or any # of techniques that can alleviate having to work some place that you don't want to; they sort of say, "Git used to yer job, even if ya' hate it"), but that it is an analysis of work, and it's present on the web.
One good thing about being on mailing lists is that you realize that there are other people who are thinking the exact same things that you are, and you can all work together well towards the goal. Also, when you actually DO have a new idea, everyone gets it, and it's likely to be implemented.
I used to think a bunch, and thought, "Damn! This is a really good idea! Someone should implement this!" For example, I thought, "Get all the groupware in the world talking to each other, ICQ, IRC, etc., everything all talking to each other, all linked together..." I thought it was original. But when I got on phpgroupware, I saw many people already working hastily at adding the concepts.
The point isn't that we're stupid, The point is that we need to work together in order to take advantage of our collective brilliance. No man is an island, when it comes to Tech.
I'll have to think more deeply on the MegaTokyo thing. Kami-chan is a lot like that guy; me to. First reference to Kami-chan outside of myself! Woo hoo!
Work to be done the website.
Life in the 21st century will be different. Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri was right, on sooo many counts.
Brin said: (paraphrasing) There WILL be databases. Make no doubts about that. The question is whether they will be viable to the public, or private, a secret.
From: Joseph Laurino [mailto:joseph@wxp3d.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 11:59 AM
To: 'Lion Kimbro'
Subject: RE: New Type of Game
Let me know when you can show me the game. It sounds cool.
A reputation database probably exists already and is maintained by some government agency, credit company, massive store chain (do you have a safeway card?), internet web site, etc. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people don't want to be in this database but they are. If the data was open sourced if you will then people will have more control on how they want their database avatar to look and behave in society. Sub-databases actually exist already for newly weds, i think it's called a registry so that people will know what to buy for a wedding gift without having a gift appear twice. It's an interesting project and as society becomes more digital as each new generation is born, I think that open sourcing one's reputation might be thought of as cool. Since Japan is always at the forefront of things regarding society's technological evolution, I would look east and see if this might become fasionable in the future.
Take care,
Joseph
ps. doesn't everyone want to have a home page???
What I emailed someone else:
I need to hash out some ideas;
The only people I know who are interested in talking about them agree with me. I need someone who won't agree.
In short, I need your ideas!
Here's the thing:
Databases of people's reputation are growing, but they are happening secretly/inaccessibly.
A few friends and I believe that, currently, only mega-companies and the police are able to get information on Joe Shmoe. Companies need it so that they can sell stuff to Joe, police need it so that they can arrest him.
Databases are not going to go away, just like technology isn't going away.
A few friends and I who are Internet savvy are thinking about making an open reputation database.
You put your name in, and you have an ID established. Other people can say, "This guy is a no good republican shmuck who wants to destroy the environment. But I like him anyways."
The only way to tag is to be taggable yourself.
Companies could come in and say, "This guy owes me $1,000.00." And of course, people could go up to company reputations and say, "This Nike place here makes people work in sweatshops and prohibits them from unionizing with huge billboards saying "DO NOT TALK WITH TROUBLEMAKERS" and pays them cents a day. Here (...and links...) is a picture."
Now there are two types of people: People who are registered in the database, and people who aren't. Again, we have problems.
But I believe that the database is being created already, in the form of lots of little databases that arecross-references each other.
Would you like the illusion of privacy, or everything out in the open?
Or can you think of a third way?
Talking with Erik. Erik's thoughts appear below.
Do not censor your own thoughts.
If you are talking with someone, release all the thoughts into the open, and sort them out after they get out there. Do this rapidly, and with ease.
Speak your mind.
My job utilizes my background cycles. My background cycles were bought. Like a screen saver. It's pleasant to have something going on in the background.
See if the FledgingUnixProgrammers can't pick off some cosource opensource projects. This would simultaneously strengthen the opensource community, give us some money, and strengthen our resumes.
Categorization is a sub-topic of Organization. Categorization is establishing a naming scheme, but unnamed things and enteties can be organized.
Videos go in the living room so people can browse and borrow. (Sharing information is critical.)
It's critical that we have our informational store immediately on hand. It's SHAMEFUL that we can't rapidly search our web browser bookmarks - absolutely shameful. It also needs to be dirt simple to past a link in based on something that we've seen before.
Here's the use case: I am a slashdot poster. I am replying to an article. I need to cite some paper that I saw a long time ago. [I didn't need to bookmark it; Every page that I have ever seen is logged, and cached for searching. If I want to "increase the score" of something that I have logged, that is the modern day equivelent of the old fashioned bookmarking idea.] I type, "Control-F" for find. A box appears. I type "Bus Components Graphical". The browser searches through the word hashes and finds all the articles that I have ever looked at that include the words. It scores them. If I have ever cited an article before, it'll give +score to the article. It shows a list. I can micro-browse them in a smaller window. I find the article. I click on it's name, and it is cited in the text box that I am writing.
When we can rapidly summon up arguments and papers with ease, it'll be a different world. We'll be on our way to the grand argument tree that I've envisioned.
It'll also be an incredible computer extension of our memory..!
On the whole "web browsers" need to be called "communication assistants" or something like that. Something more... bi-directional.
The Ethics of Free Software by Bertrand Meyer; An insightful look into Free Software ethics. While I dislike his corporate stance, he does have several good points that can strengthen our arguments as Free Software developers.
I find it very silly that he thinks of our public school system as a business first and last. It's friggin' education. And no; Schools should not be software production houses, and hoarding their code, moron. Colleges are for the sharing of ideas and publication of ideas. They are absolutely critical to the free flow of information. Goddamnit; I think he wants an economic value and liscense to be attached to every single idea that can be taught and learned. Jezus; next he'll be wanting us to believe that schools should be licensing the information that they teach students, and that application of the scientific method should be prohibited in order to protect the intellectual property of other researchers.
We need to remember the spirit, not just the letter, of the law. We need to remember that the bad guys in the stories push the letters, and that the letters are an application of security. But the spirit of the law is the true justice, and the one that we should strive for.
We need to remember the spirit, not just the letter, of the law. We need to remember that the bad guys in the stories push the letters, and that the letters are an application of security. But the spirit of the law is the true justice, and the one that we should strive for.
For the bash and introductory tutorial, go through the process of creating a web page. Have several steps that culminate in the production of a complete web page, and being able to manage it, and read the apache logs related to the web page.
I have a new theory.
My theory is this: People are the greatest things that we can invest in.
If you spot someone with talent, even just a little, that is looking for some room to grow, by all means possible, invest in that growth.
I believe that investing in good people with the little scrap left overs that we have will have the greatest return rates possible, and that it will do wonders for both ourselves, for the poepln being invested in, and most importantly, for all living beings and our God.
Online activists should build web pages for people who are going to be arguing points. These web pages should contain on them:
Here's a quote I saw, that I think is a good example of applying this:
It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax on the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of unknown liability lawsuits and vexatious accounting for profits made in good faith.-U.S. Supreme Court, Atlantic Works vs. Brady, 1882 (from the article--not bad btw)
Here's a post deran9ed at hushmail.com wrote:
Companies who abuse legalities like this should be banned from ever obtaining a patent on anything. Well here's some links regarding patents so someone can post something informative:
With billions of dollars in Internet sales at stake, the proliferation of broad e-commerce patents is sowing confusion, uncertainty and a good deal of cynicism among many software developers and business leaders. Some legal experts, such as Robert Merges, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, believe the sheer number of patents now pending on business methods has "pushed the patent system into crisis."Chaotic Internet isn't the word. Congress should enact a law that states all judges must know the fruits and details of a technology based case before trying the case in a court of law. If this was the case (judges knowing and understanding whats going on,) there would be an extremely low amount of mockery of broad laws, and companies would suffer severe penalties for attempting to manipulate the justice system.
Building world murals on paper and posting them on the walls. Like playing a dungeon crawl, but you draw the dungeon. {:)}=
Include instructions on how to do this on the web page. Also include scans from having done this. {:)}=
Related: Symbol Art
You can't just learn Java.
You're going to be programming in some language, post-Java, and you're not going to know what a pointer is. You're not going to know how to malloc and free data. These are essential to being a good programmer. You need the whole spectrum from assembly language to the highest level language. You need to understand how the computer system works from the ground up. If you don't know about how the OS works, then the shell, then the application and GUI, then I think you're prone to reinvent the wheel, and you won't have a clear picture of what's going on. Sure, you'll need some experience with the latest language de jour; but it cannot be a primary focus.
There's a school of thought that says, "You should work on just one project, from initial conception, to careful design, to steady implementation, and then completion followed by a hearty satisfaction." I never went to that school.
I believe that the reality behind Final Fantasy, And all deepest thoughts, Is God. That behind all my feelings, and all my memories, and all my ideas and perspectives, Is an Unvarnished Truth; A True Beingness, An Ocean of Love and Joy that fills our hearts; The essence of Life.
I look for that now.
Here's the text I posted to OpenIdeas.com.
A simple user interface that will forever relieve us of the blinking 12:00's.
Until the day all computer devices are networked and understand the network time protocol (ntp), we need to be able to easily set our clocks on our VCR's, Microwaves, and what not.
Put a little up arrow shaped button above the hours and the minutes, and a little down arrow shaped button beneath the hours and minutes.
If the device's estimation of the current time is indicated on the time display interface, pressing these buttons will change the device's estimation of the current time.
It's real simple. This is a no brainer.
Sure, the buttons look a little ugly, but damn... Not as ugly as a blinking 12:00.
Started by Bill Kendrick.
I have got to set up something like this here.
Bobobot web page: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/bobobot/
I looked at bobobot, a GPL'ed Linux game. It's an awesome game. It's very finely polished. It's beautiful.
And the CODE! The code is immanently readable. It is completely clear. It is well organized. The shocker?
The code is in C.
Not only is it written in C, it's written in very simple C. I looked at it, flabbergasted. "How did they- what the-..?" I looked at my own code. I looked at bobobot.c. I looked at my own code. I looked at bobobot.c.
His was clearly superior. Let's look at some of the odd traits:
Variable names are about 4-7 characters long on average.
Not a single -> or
(*blah). in there.
Pointers were rare, arrays were king.
Not a SINGLE ONE!!!
No linked lists.
No complex finite state machines.
#define everywhere.
It wasn't a bad thing- it felt... Clean.
No mallocs. Anywhere! Ever! Nowhere! They're friggen' not there!!! Completely static! Eight Thousand Six Hundred and Six (8,606) lines of code, and not a single shred of dynamic memory!
Whole would-be-function calls are unrolled, and thus rendered non-existant. Look at this:
/* Reset ups: */
for (i = 0; i < MAX_UPS; i++)
up[i].alive = 0;
/* Reset air bubbles: */
for (i = 0; i < MAX_AIR_BUBBLES; i++)
air_bubble[i].alive = 0;
/* Reset drips: */
for (i = 0; i < MAX_DRIPS; i++)
drip[i].alive = 0;
/* Reset dusts: */
for (i = 0; i < MAX_DUSTS; i++)
dust[i].alive = 0;
This is obviously dying for an inheritance, and a dusts.reset()
call, but then as I look at this, and it's so beautiful in how elegantly
transparent it is.
All of the code reads like this: It's incredibly transparent.
I am not questioning the value of a
religious comittment to opacity and abstraction.
This program read more like the manipulation of a set of easily
understandable tables, than it was the interaction of several opaque
objects.
It is obviously the product of a very different mindset than the the mindset produced by our modern C++ curriculums.
It was very, dare I say it?, Japanese. Less is more. (The author of bonobo.c is an American.)
I converted my code to his style. I even took his spacing around comments, the /* */ versus //, and his two-line enter between major divisions, one-line enter between minor divisions into account.
I had lots of pointers, indirections, what not. I stripped them all out; replaced them with simple arrays.
Pointer indexes replaced by integer indexes.
I feel that my code is much better now. It's also much shorter, and much easier to read.
And now for my conclusions.
We have been brainwashed with Object Oriented Programming in C++ and Java.
We have been led to believe that every project, every function, every object is part of a BIG BIG PROJECT and that we must use NameSpaces, STL, and various other Type Safety methods in order to "Work Professionally."
I believe that we have dup'ed ourselves.
I believe that, right along side the "Large scale Software Developement" class, we need a "Small Software Development" class.
Okay, I'm done. But Damn; What amazing code.
->,
and * only appears in char*.int or void.
From nbs@sonic.net Tue Mar 20 12:51:41 2001
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:09:46 -0800 (PST)
From: William Kendrick
William Kendrick's web page: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/bill/
To find out about software bus architectures, look on the web for "Message Passing Scheme". You will do better.
Ideally, everything would be event driven.
Joseph told me this; He read it somewhere; I forgot where... =^_^=
I have thought about it, and believe that it is true.
If notifications were always delivered as necessary, programming would consist of waiting for the right event, doing the proper thing in response, and notifying others of the event.
The bus system capitalizes on this, by providing forums for communication. Right now I'm implementing a sort of old fashioned way of doing it, with just one forum.
A cool component language would make it EASY to belong to forums, and manage roles in each forum. (Each forum is a bus, registering interests, etc., etc.,.)
I'd like to research such a language.
Hmm; I need to reflect more deeply on event driven vs. polling. But I think that event driven is the way to go. Polling/observation is just a way to watch someone else's code, when you don't have the ability to go over there and change it to provide you with the notification that you need.
I'd like to try putting a bus messaging scheme in the kernel. Message Queue's are ALMOST there, but they have no concept of registering interests, and there's no way for multiple receivers to receive the same message.
Maybe I should email that SubBrahman guy, who implemented Linux SysV IPC, and see what he thinks about the idea.
KOTESHWERRAO S. ADUSUMILLI claims to have implemented a Software Bus.
"Design and Implementation of a Software Messaging bus (based on unicast and multicast), which provides atomic and totally ordered group communication, using socket interface, RPC and IPC using C++"
Did he implement it on Linux? Can I try out the source?
More information and another resume.
There's something that people are calling an "iBus"; It sounds like a software bus. An "information Bus" they were calling it. They should have named it "iBus.com" - GyaHaHAAHaHaAHAaHaA!
The Design and Performance of a Pluggable Protocols Framework for Object Request Broker Middleware - lots of fancy pictures. Probably something about Software busses in here. I've seen the name TAO come up before.
TIB - "The Information Bus"
Unix System Administration - A Survival Course and Author.
How big are things?
I mean, really; I want a sense of it. Do a visualization experiment, like Feynmen did so frequently, but never mentioned the importance of. Take a bunch of objects. Figure out what their spatial arrangement and coloring, if any, is like. And draw it. Make it into a project for the walls.
This would be a fun project, to do with Sa Ku Ra.
I think that companies that want to have responsible practices in the year 2001 should do the following things:
Look to Dee Hock for information on how to build a purpose.
A friendly guide on how to write device drivers.
Just as Scott McCloud made a comic teaching about comics, I would like to make a game, teaching about games..! {:)}=
Thursday 3/22/01 Comics and Games: Separated at Birth? An industry that enjoys popular acceptance and recognition in Japan suffers by comparison in the U.S., where too often creative vision fails to learn how to capture the imagination and participation of its audience. Business issues such as lack of shelf space and mainstream appeal collude with derivative concepts endlessly regurgitating the same old genres. This art form, with few exceptions, lacks a critical self-awareness and analysis of its successes and failures. It is an art form that has the potential to be taken as seriously as its older, more established brethren such as film, music, and literature or, castinto juvenile, disposable pop-culture distractions, like toys. We're talking about comics - perhaps the medium with the closest similarity to computer games. From its freedom tom manipulate space and time to its use of archetype, icon, and audience identification, the lessons learned (or not learned) by the comics industry should be carefully considered by game developers. Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, talks about his experiences deconstructing his own genre- something yet to be done in our field - by discussing issues of design and narrative, where creative issues crossover from comics to game design. Hear Scott's take on the challenges facing the comics industry as it is changed by the forces of commerce and technology - challenges that are frighteningly similar to those facing our own industry.
I think that people do their best work when they are beyond 50 years old.
Look at Buckminster Fuller, Leiji Matsumoto, Doug Engelbart, Miyamoto Musashi.
Musashi's greatest work is "A Book of Five Rings". It is still with us today. It is still profoundly moving us.
When people are 50, they've aquired more skill than any of us. They've raised children, and the children are gone. They're not selfish- they only have 20-30 years ahead of them. They don't have time for selfishness. They know the lay of the land. They have a supreme advantage, and no one to give it to but the world.
Leiji Matsumoto will finish Galaxy Express 999. I believe that when he finishes inking the last cell of the last page of his last book, he will depart this world.
Old age is not a time for settling doww; It's a time for beginning the real work.
"In books, television, and radio, the truth is a slave to a good story, and convincing lies are remembered while dry, factual refutations are forgotten."
Xanadu seems like the argument-graphs that I have thought about. Look, he calls it, "General Schematics". I've used the same word myself to describe how good computer documentation should be.
I agree with just about every idea Ted Nelson has about how computer hyperlinking and document interconnection and groupware would shape society.
It just seems that he made just a few critical mistake:
The Internet has "naturally" brought about what Ted Nelson has failed to force through.
I think we should all honor this mans spirit and insight.
But perhaps Ted Nelson's experience is a hidden lesson in Taoism for us all. Embrace the ephemeral, and, do without doing.
I really like Meta-Thought; I really do. It's fascinating, and useful. Scientology and Ted Nelson hold some really excelent ideas, amidst the nonsense. Those are bad cases. A good case? The Memory Book. The memory techniques in the Memory Book are excellent and non-intrusive. But when meta-thought insists itself above reality, it turns sour very fast. It is important to remember that Love is beyond all Mind, that True Living is greater than Truth.
It'd be neat if we had a project to make a cool new musical instrument.
Something like the MIT Media Lab. We just make up interesting stuff and try to implement it.
The "research" dream.
"I was thinking of becoming an author, and writing some really good books for my society. But then, I realized that (c)opyright lasts only life+70 years. For me, that's 140 years! 140 measly years!!! Jesus Christ, how can I make a return on investment with only 140 years to make it? I'll be broke! I won't settle for anything less than life+100. Sorry, society isn't going to get my books; I'm going to keep pumping gas instead."
Dear Robert,
Well, uh... No.
There are plenty of games available freely on the net;
I'm sure Black & White's out there, and being copied left and right.
(Actually, I know it is; I witnessed a friend of mine copy his version for another friend.)
As far as I can tell, the real weight in the "intellectual property" realm is what people *feel* is just.
When I was in junior high way back when, many of my friends copied computer games.
I didn't. I felt that it was injust- I thought about how developers were paid, yadda yadda yadda.
My friends were copying the games, the dev's weren't being paid, I wouldn't participate.
Realize that I spent 9 months mowing the lawn in order to buy Kings Quest and StarFlight.
I think those total to $60.00 or something like that.
Now, my friends (who also worked for - I'm talking months and months of trash taking and lawn mowing - and bought, a couple games, just like me), were copying games left and right. They did it through BBS'es. The Internet was a ways off for us.
Now that I reflect on it, these friends b
Perhaps tools in the OS, or the shell, or support processes, or something should be shouldering a bit of the brunt of getting systems to work okay.
Here's my problem, that a lot of people can relate to: I'm making a program. But the program has to refer to other resources. All resources are described in a tree. The tree can become dijunct, though, so what was ../../../../ in one spot becomes ../../../../../ in another spot. Should the file system be able to understand that we are referring to that particular file (absolute addressing), but that we are to use relative addressing upon export (relative, because the "root" is different). Should the file system know, "There's going to be our root, and this is absolute relative to that root." Then you get into using environment variables (where are they resolved? does the kernel file system have support/knowledge of them?)
Solutions? Perhaps environment variables that can be "packed" and "unpacked" into the shell, or...? Perhaps files as they are tarred, untarred, should include special characters saying, "Replace me with the root." Perhaps the file systems need to be able to understand that a given inode is the root for addressing of several other inodes, so that we can absolute address off the root, rather than bouncing off it with relative addresses. vi ref.c
We'd like to be able to absolutely address within a project. But we'd like to be able to move the project around easily.
Well, one way of doing it would be to utilize a sym-link. sym-link /lions_new_project to /home/lion/lions_new/project, and absolute address everything according to /lions_new_project. The problem with this... * the root namespace fills up with people's projects... UG. * people need to have root access to use my code... UG.
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Advertisement three:
Iconic pictures of PERSON entering FACTORY icon, and leaving with A+ stamped on circle of PERSON icon. Directions from there pointing to a sea of question marks. Thick arrows show the path. Lone small iconic picture of PERSON with a fluttering dotted line flowing out, going through the words "Fledging Unix Programmers" with a Lion Head looking over it, and then ffluttering out to still more question marks. Fledging Unix Programmers: Because there are no straight lines.
Advertisement four:
Fledging Unix Programmers EVIL School Of Programming. An iconic picture of PERSON to COMPUTER to SAT-DISH to SATELITE to WORLD with Nuke explosion on it.
Possible place to put ad: MegaTokyo. Someone'll see it. And it's a good way to donate to MegaTokyo.
Other ideas: PH33R MY 133t TEACHING SKILLZ!!! 133t HAx0R C3RTIF1CATI0N! Free Sushi with Every Class. "Sure, they offer certification. But DO THEY serve Sushi?!" A Darwin Gross ATOM parody: Icon of PERSON -> Icon of PERSON with COMPUTER -> Icon of PERSON with GLOWING COMPUTER.
MAke sure you have:
The Anti-AMG. Anti-K1 makes a phone call one day and accidently gets... The Mistress of Darkness.
I have an idea for childrens books- Liberated Childrens books.
These are books that you can download and modify. The number one focus here is on the art and comics. People should be able to easily make the characters do different things.
Link this to the idea of having open comic characters.
Investing in a Volunteer effort:
"We're not doing it for the money" is a frequent refrain. I know; I'd like you to accept the money anyways.
People like things done by volunteer. When you volunteer, you do it from your heart. We know that the effort is entirely pure, and a labor of Love.
If you must have a economic motive logical sounding argument: Love, I believe, is what really holds our society together. It's why we even have a society together in the first place.
If you want to know what I really believe: Divine Love is the most important thing that there is. I'm not talking about feminine ewie-gewey dopey love, nor testosterone induced passionate blazing through the fire.
I mean to say, pure, divine, warm, golden, Love.
And I can't think of anything better to do than to continue to listen to Love.
I really just want to see MegaTokyo do well. So let's look at what I have to give: Time? Well, I Love learning to draw in my free time, but frankly my talents are elsewhere. Time would probably be the best gift that I could give, but I can't give it. Money? Ah-hah! The great abstraction of labor. Yes, I have money, and, while I know that it is a lesser gift, I happen to have it available, and I'd love to give it to you.
What will you do with it? Well, if you ever need a new piece of software, or what not, you can use the money to help with that. Or, lets say that you're sick from work, or you need to take some time off. This is the "rainy day" scenario. You might need a little more funds to get by. Now, instead of ditching MT to make money, you can live off our gifts instead, for a time. It helps alleviate the risk that MT might suddenly have to collapse due to some minor world event. Sure, the money couldn't alleviate a major world event, and there's just no ammount of help that can prevent that. But a little event? I'd love to help for that. And finally, you could also buy a few pizzas with the money. Whatever you want! I'm giving it to you. No strings attached.
Let's go back to economic analyst mode. I can give you a small amount of money, and you will/may be able to transform that money into something of incredible value. You think I can just pick up some random cartoon artist off the street and get back MegaTokyo?! Not on your life! Sure, some commercial company could make some rip-off series based on MegaTokyo, but it wouldn't be the same. At all. There are some things that you just can't buy. MegaTokyo is one of them. So, if I can help transform some money into MegaTokyo; And there's no where on the market that that can be done; What an extraordinary deal! Woo Hoo! It's like having a child. Sure, it costs money, but damn- What a deal. (My girlfriend and I are having a daughter; She's due any day now. Our daughter's name? Sakura. {:)}=)
And look, you're a volunteer effort. Everyone knows that volunteers are always more efficient that mercenaries. Look, you've developed a whole new technique. You've started a whole way of doing comics: Pencil only. No penning! NO PENNING! That's as ingenious as the Nihonjin ditching color in exchange for bulk black and white. Sheer genius. (I know, you didn't set out thinking, "I want to do something really ingenious; We can shorten this pipeline from my hand scribbling on paper to people's hearts if we just don't pen; The penning isn't all that important anyways." It probably wasn't a calculated thing. Really nice that you came across it anyways..!) When I volunteered for GDC (I am a game programmer who works at LithTech), the volunteers did a much better job than those who were paid. I've seen this while ushering for the Cabrillo Music Festival, I've seen this while working for schools; It's actually true.
Anyways, that's why I want to give money to MegaTokyo. What a deal! (But I'm not necessarily so interested in giving money to a shirt company. =^_^=)
Making mazes and putting them on the wall.
Cutting snippets out of magazines and making stories.
Goofy things like that.
We need to be able to do this in a peer to peer fashion.
Oh; I need to remember to turn the cool games I made up into programmed computer games.
What is a trap? It's a low energy point surrounded by a wall on either side. Something has to happen to add energy to the system so that you can get out of the trap.
Don't abstract before you absolutely need to.
Follow your interest. There are two primary sources of interest:
Follow True Interest, that based on natural love for it.
This will give you much needed energy in order to be effective.
The alternative is to be truly interested in mercantile feed.
"Save Keys to Open Doors" - The Book of Video Game Koans
The Real Software Crisis - an article that makes an analogy between running a successful orchestra, and running a successful software project. Non-music majors become music majors just for the money. "Born" software programmers vs. "Made" software programmers. Not sure I agree with it; I believe that "Love and Interest" are the magical components. But maybe that's what he's talking about..? Bruce F. Webster wrote it.
Some random slashdotter named "Kristopher Johnson" wrote down these ideas for hiring programmers. I agreed with them, and have paraphrased them here.
A person who is like a modern version of the alchemists and herbalists of the past.
They can take common household items, decompose them into their root parts, tell you what the things are useful for, and then recombine them in interesting ways.
For example, they know how to take an old photocopier apart, collect and use the electronic parts, what the carbon fibres are for, and how to modify them.
A microwave is used to construct ball lightning, plasmas, whatever.
This gives you a form to work within, and it also builds a lot of world for you. You can explore and create at the same time..! You get an "organic" look without having to work for it. All you have to do is mold/reshape the world, and whal-lah, you have a game!
Build Gears and other such toys with ice. Make special molds for them, pour in the water, and then try it out. Remember, ice is a rock.
All of this is a mere prelude and research for a game that I have been planning in my head for years that takes place under the Harvey Mudd sub-basement ("B2"). It begins near the end of the school year, when your recently finished final exam gets blown out of your East dorm room by a flick of the wind. You chase after it, but the wind keeps blowing it on and on, down by the fountain, down through the door, and strangely makes its way towards the little known subbasement, "B2". As you search for it, you catch a brief sight of a kobald which leaps down a hole. You follow it down a long tunnel, which then turns left... You choose your major, you choose your year, and you're off. I've been planning this one for a very, very, very, long time. Evans
Make documentation that is purely schematic, rely on programmers to link names to picture, and use it as a handy reference.
This has actually worked. I'd like to work with it more formally, and over the Internet, to make sure that everything is based on the code and the schematic, without speech between us.
They are useful for learning the lyrics. Often times, it is difficult to keep both the Japanese and the English in the head at the same time, thus impeding learning of the meanings. I have worked on solving this by making a Japanese version, that has the meaning drawn next to it.
You may reproduce, distribute, and modify the images provided that the images, and any derivitive images, are reproduced and distributed under this same agreement.
(I was talking about images/sweet_fantasy_1.png and images/sweet_fantasy_2.png.)
What if a fridge opened you..? (Mua-Hahahaha of a fridge, amidst a bloody mess.)
Write a story that takes place in the modern day, or a tad bit in the future, so I can write about future predictions (OpenSource, Robotics, Linux, etc., etc.,.).
Include in it the thoughts about consumerism, demographicism, the injustice to the homeless, anti-environmentalism, environmental wackos, good holistics and bad, the subtle gradiations everywhere, argument trees, everything in my weird database.
Then place in the story the Eternal Spirit, The River of Light and Sound.
This is where I get to communicate, pictorally, experentially, about the Light and Sound, and everything that I hold sacred. Everything that I believe in, and everything that I believe Life is for. The Divine, Warm, Love, that is the Name.
Except we're not bound to the physical, and I can draw the inner experiences, and how they touch, and give life to, the outer.
It can be the story that I always wish existed. It'd be a great comic.
I need a script, and the ability to draw. Maybe I could convince Scott McCloud to draw it for me. {;D}=
There's an org called "House Agape" that does something similar to what we do, they are part of Geeks in the Streets. (Or, "Are" Geeks in the Streets.)
It'd be neat if my web browser were as extensible as emacs. (Better yet: if it were emacs..! {;D}=) I'd like to hotkey some pages, run scripts over pages, build custom caches from extracting info from pages (at the touch of a key combo), etc., etc.,.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. -- Pico heard that somewhere, and I did to.
My new definition of stupidity: Stupidity is being refuted every which way, in the full light of consciousness, and still not changing your mind. If you had a reason why something might not be a given way, then that might be intelligence. But if there are no more reasons, it's just stupid. This is the true meaning of stupidity, I think now.
This is an excerpt I saw on some Harvard proffesor's web page, that I absolutely agree with and stand by:
The most important prerequisites for this course cannot be taught. To do well in this or any other systems course, develop these habits:
A gentle walk through of various programming lagnuages:
http://www.andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk/andrew/writing/lang.html
I agree with most everything said there.
Brilliant piece on the Chinese Room. Does the author believe that awareness is fundamentally different than data/algorithms? Jaron Lanier thought that we could, by tuning into a reality. I agree with Jaron.
Allright! Finally! I found somebody's MetaThought archive online. =^_^= The Internet is Awesome.
http://www.trans4mind.com/
Fascinating. Found the situation I'm facing: bored -> (involvement) -> excited -> anxious -> (relaxing) -> relaxed -> bored loop in there..!
It seems they've picked up quite a few ideas from sources I'm familiar with, and quite a few from sources that I'm not familiar with. I'll have to think deeply about it.
One problem is that the trans4mind site does not have an integrated set of spiritual values. Maybe this is an advantage (in terms of adoption), but I don't think that it is. It makes it hard to read for me. It's sort of like talking about money. We need it to live, but nobody wants to talk about it, because,... well... Because there's more than a few people who went crazy over it, and a lot of violent stuff happened with respect to it.
Shit, they're scientology based. They don't up and say it on their web pages, but their semantic genetic tree takes them right back. They've made some changes (good ones), but at the core, they're still stuck in this life-as-a-game mode. They focus so much on games, and they don't look at all to Divine Love, except for as this mental/theoretical thing. They make the same basic mistake: Mistaking Mind for Spirit. The Spirit is wholly different than Mind. Remember Kabir said that "Mind and Reason are realms away from the Ocean of Love." It's not about games and obstacles and solving problems, it's about Divine Love, from the very beginning, to the very end. Sure, minds can solve some nifty problems, but they can never hold even a drop of the Ocean of Love. This mind stuff is cute and dandy, but I'll take a traditional preacher with a recognition of the Lord over this stuff any day.
Okay, here's a second one: http://www.braindance.com/
A few more original ideas here. I learned about it through the Assayer. Ben Crowell came up with it.
I had an idea for a game, that I ripped from the Inuit Eskimos.
The idea is that you have your name, your spiritual name, and your work name. [Or something like that; Unfortunately, none of this research into Eskimo names and religion has made it to the Internet, beyond, "Cool Eskimo Baby Names and their meanings,"; This is a real loss to our cultural history. I found the info which I am imperfectly remembering hear in a book I found in an actual library.]
In an RPG, make it so that you can "grow" names. If one of your characters die (and they should, in an appropriately Tamagotchi-Life-Sim-esque way), then their name has a residue of the traits that had/developed while living. So if you give a new character a piece of the name of the old character, the new character gets some of the abilities of the old character. You can rename your characters pretty much infinitely, so that they can "Muster the Courage of Wilderbar", or "Outwit Dragons just like The Seer of Namar." It also develops a persistant spirit to your characters lives, as they develop and recurr.
Characters should die of old age when they are too old.
It would be neat to have a super-adventure game; Sort of like a sim, but where you guide RPG people about the world, measure their progress, etc., etc., etc.,. I tried this once long ago, making an "adventurer tomogotchi". I got stuck in trying to make sure that game-time matched real-world time. (You have to do a lot of propagation work (what if you turn the game off for 2 days- how much sleep and XP did the character get?) that, frankly, wasn't worth it, nor enjoyable.)
Hogwarts starts to close in and shut down after the columbine shooting happens. Someone in journalism writes a story, "I just want to kill everybody," a satirical article meant to show how DRACOnian the school is getting.
Here's a way I've found to make community web sites easily with Python:
...is but a dream.
Communication, both internal, and external, is absolutely critical for all involved in cognitive study. It is absolutely critical for learning.
Communication is how we manipulate our models.
Thought is the manipulation of [generally mental] models.
Communication = Thought
There are slight differences; I need to think this through a little more deeply. But communication between people is a group mind working out it's thoughts.
I'm going to need to think this through a bit more deeply. "I have a thought," and "I have a communication."... Hmm... Very interesting.
When we think, we're generally talking with ourselves, asking ourselves questions, [looking at potential flaws in our models, etc.,.,.]
http://www.cgi-resources.com/ - they have just about everything. =^_^= See their python selection.
Make a program that let's you "playback" your log files at varying speeds. You tell it which cut is the time, and which cut is the page accessed, which cut is the 'previous' page access, lay out some boxes on the screen, say: "This box is this web site, that box is that web site," and then press the "play" button. It plays from the beginning of your logs. It starts in x10 speed, but you can slow it down (hey, look, the site in realtime!), or speed it up.
Advancements would be path drawings that show strength/weakness, and a tool that would use mozilla or something to generate little thumbnail pictures of web sites.
Each user (IP) that enters is given a unique random color, which stays with them for their duration. It fades out and deprecates over the course of 10 minutes log time. It refreshes whenever it goes to a different page.
Implementation: Need a function that takes a web pages name, and then produces a unique canonical key for that web site to be represented by. Need a dict IP->color, curlocation, hitdate. Need a function to go over the IP dictionary and delete out everything older than 10 minutes log time.
I wish that computers were time sensitive. I just got an email, and I don't know which folder it went into! I kind of wish there was a magical pixiedust floating around the directory that the email went in.
To build apps that are time sensitive and actually work for the user, we need a new set of language tools.
The language tools need to make it easy to do the following things:
An evil has been sealed away for 35,465 years, and is now emerging.
Or better yet, in a land that has not known evil for 354,534 years, evil arrives.
How can this be? Why is this?
In a universe, evil appeared and ravaged for a long time. Heros arrived, and channeled in good energy, and fought away the evil. The evil was gone, but resurfaced every now and then. The cycles took the turn of roughly 50 years good, 50 years bad.
A wizard, however, wanted to get rid of all evil. He would not claim enlightenment for himself, until all beings were enlightened.
He wanted to create a new universe, a universe that would be without evil. For this universe to be created, he needed a pure place, a place where he would not be distracted by evil.
He created a universe that was better than the one he lived in, by setting up an anti-evil field with complex wizarding powers, and isolated himself within it.
Then he entered that universe, this purer universe, and within that universe, he set up a place with an anti-evil field, and in there, in that far more refined place, he made yet another universe, which he called "The Pure Land", believing himself to have created the pure land, from which God and His Land could be realized. (The wizard himself was the creator of this land, and he would allow only good/order to be present.)
This universe lasted for some time, except, as all security systems observe... There is an end to everything.
Or better yet, in a land that has not known evil for 354,534 years, evil arrives.135,345 years after the formation of the first universe, the seal was broken by evil hoards with space-age/temporal-universal technology. From their, the second universe was plundered, and they saw the wizard meditating the 3rd universe, the pure land. They invaded the wizards meditation dream state, introducing the evil stories.
The mind knows know perfection, and is colored by what is without.
The residents of the 3rd world, the pure land, were about to encounter evil for the very first time. =^_^=
The story begins there, and consists of a fighting against the evil, but more importantly, ends in the discovery of the True Positive God Worlds, and there meet God Itself, the Worldness Name, the Eternal Word.
I think motion is critical to a good computer game In a menu, there should be icons that dance around. In the game, things shouldn't be merely still, they should hover.
http://xtux.sourceforge.net/index.html
I'd like a game library that's higher level than most of the libraries that we have out there. This library would provide simulation tick, autonomous game elements, etc., etc.,. It's probably better termed a game framework with a library using it.
You could easily build a menu, with floating/gliding menu elements, etc., etc.,. Collision code is the default, it's primarily a 2D game library.
http://www.paulgraham.com/paulgraham/avg.html
An excellent pdf at the destination explains how LISP rocks, and how the author used LISP's awesome instructive power to shine in his industry.
Perhaps he should convince Philip Greenspun to make the ACS run LISP.
95.Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
--Adam J. Perlis, Yale University
People I find interesting. Most, I haven't talked with. These are people I wish I lived near, though.
http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/nodes/I-M-INTRO-ZOOMER-pg.html
This is the Engine for Education website, which is full of very interesting analysis of the learning process. I'd like to study and absorb this.
"The More You Drive, The Less Intelligent You Are"-- Miller, Repo Man
Quotes at http://www.cars-suck.org/stupid.html
"Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedence of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only machines, but all animals as well."-- Energy and Equity
http://downloads.members.tripod.com/kataca/theynee.htm
"THEY NEED TO BE TOGETHER!"
http://www.lightspeedpress.com/issues/15/cover.php A Finder that is online.
I believe that critical to the success of a programmer is frequently reading other people's code.
Instead of reading a novel, download an opensource app, and read their code. Read it either with a sense for detail, or just for a vague idea.
Enjoy looking at the different ways that people lay out their code, their styles, how they attacked various problems, etc., etc.,.
As you do this, you'll find that API documentation makes more and more sense, since you are seeing it being used in various contexts, etc., etc.,.
http://www.openrpg.com is a paper and pencil RPG game assistant, that allows you to play these games over the Internet very easily. Interesting!
Read the code for it..!
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/morrow/article/0,9565,108488,00.html
A balanced view by a journalist on what News is like, how it's made, and how we can all just relax a bit.
Stupid thing I said to Kitty:
"I'll go to bed with you if you sleep with me..!"
There are some things, mostly trifling small details that can be learned faster by trial and error on ones own, than by actual instruction.
Do not teach these things.
fam and imon are tools for watching as file/directory contents change.
It is event driven. imon sits in the kernel, fam is a deamon that forwards information out to those who requested it, out from the kernel.
There should be a standard bus architecture, available everwhere, for fam and imon to operate through.
Ideally, everything would be event driven.
Joseph told me this; He read it somewhere; I forgot where... =^_^=
I have thought about it, and believe that it is true.
If notifications were always delivered as necessary, programming would consist of waiting for the right event, doing the proper thing in response, and notifying others of the event.
The bus system capitalizes on this, by providing forums for communication. Right now I'm implementing a sort of old fashioned way of doing it, with just one forum.
A cool component language would make it EASY to belong to forums, and manage roles in each forum. (Each forum is a bus, registering interests, etc., etc.,.)
I'd like to research such a language.
Hmm; I need to reflect more deeply on event driven vs. polling. But I think that event driven is the way to go. Polling/observation is just a way to watch someone else's code, when you don't have the ability to go over there and change it to provide you with the notification that you need.
Situations where you can't use events, you must poll:
When you might want to use a POLL instead of an event:
Performance. If you emit events, but nobody wants them, you're losing out on performance. Even the check to see if anyone wants the event is a performance hit, though there are ways to minimize the damage. (See bus components architecture notes for optimizations.)
I'd like to try putting a bus messaging scheme in the kernel. Message Queue's are ALMOST there, but they have no concept of registering interests, and there's no way for multiple receivers to receive the same message.
Maybe I should email that SubBrahman guy, who implemented Linux SysV IPC, and see what he thinks about the idea.
KOTESHWERRAO S. ADUSUMILLI claims to have implemented a Software Bus.
"Design and Implementation of a Software Messaging bus (based on unicast and multicast), which provides atomic and totally ordered group communication, using socket interface, RPC and IPC using C++"
Did he implement it on Linux? Can I try out the source?
More information and another resume.
There's something that people are calling an "iBus"; It sounds like a software bus. An "information Bus" they were calling it. They should have named it "iBus.com" - GyaHaHAAHaHaAHAaHaA!
The Design and Performance of a Pluggable Protocols Framework for Object Request Broker Middleware - lots of fancy pictures. Probably something about Software busses in here. I've seen the name TAO come up before.
TIB - "The Information Bus"
Level 1 optimization: Bus registers interests, and only forwards events that people are interested in. This gets you huge performance gainst.
Level 2 optimization: The bus has a way of telling the components to turn on or off emissions, based on whether or not anyone is interested. The component has a function (or variable, or variable flag mask (like bottom half handlers) for even greater optimization. Before the component emits, it checks the variable/flag mask to see if anyone is listening. If yes, the signal emits. Otherwise, it doesn't.
Level 3 optimization: Each component has a notify function call pointer for every event it will emit. If nothing is listening for the event, it's set to 0. (You have to check it for 0/non-zero before making a function call.) If only one thing is listening for the event, it's set to 1. If multiple things are listening for the event, it is set to point to the bus, which will route the call.
Level 4 optimization: (!!!) Optimize the case where multiple things are listening for the event. Have a special type of class that just stores a list of components to call. When multiple components are listening for one event, the class is instantiated and points to the multiple listeners. While the bus maintains the class, the bus
You might even be able to use templated types so that any form of parameters could be hooked up, eliminating the need for "messages" at all... Hell, just use type/void*, and you'll be fine..! For transparency, have a type that includes a string description, or something like IFF.
Optimizations aside for the moment, the most flexible way to deal with tags is to do it like I do right here in this weird file: Multiple categorization, Tag structures.
Think about it: If you did that, you could have a bus component that is listening to all messages of a given category.
Of course, there are a lot of optimizations you can do here, such as tables that give you all the "is-a" relationships between integer hashed strings really fast , or encoding into upper bits the category that something belongs to.
But regardless of how you do it, it'd be awesome. For example, you could stream out all events related to a particular area of functionality. That'd be incredible for debugging.
Unix System Administration - A Survival Course and Author.
How big are things?
I mean, really; I want a sense of it. Do a visualization experiment, like Feynmen did so frequently, but never mentioned the importance of. Take a bunch of objects. Figure out what their spatial arrangement and coloring, if any, is like. And draw it. Make it into a project for the walls.
This would be a fun project, to do with Sa Ku Ra.
I think that companies that want to have responsible practices in the year 2001 should do the following things:
Look to Dee Hock for information on how to build a purpose.
A friendly guide on how to write device drivers.
I think that those who are given a monopoly over a given domain
In the future, when you bump into the same person twice, you'll know it. And, you should be able to know how the people you are with relate to you. You should be able to see the connections, with lines and what not, electronically.
A knit of a 100, 200 people, will be identifiable. Friendships across countries will be easy.
CORBA Objects in Python is an extraordinary paper.
Another strange fact: He used the same image I use for objects... (Page 10) Did Jason Tackaberry get it from the Objective-C manuals as well? Where did he see that before?
Negatives: Shows obvious writing under the influence of OO dogma.
Web Memory
A browser plugin to replace bookmarks: Local indexing of every single page you have ever looked at.
The web browser hashes the words within a web page, and links hash entries to the web page href. This is similar to the hashing that many search engines do. Scores are assigned based on word frequency.
When the user wants to search for something, the user types in the words, and the intersection of hrefs connected to the word hashes are returned to the user, ranked by score.
Scores implicitly increase whenever the user retrieves a previously viewed page, either by visiting the page by the browser incidentally, or by refinding it via the search system (this method adds more points to the score, so that frequently searched for items have a great score).
Users can intentionally increase the scoring of a page. The "Bookmark This" option can be replaced with a "Score this High" option, to make searching memory easier.
The Best Page on Robot Odyssey
Check out the Escape >From Robotropolis book..?!
www.ninenine.com
A "game" that is a simulation of how programmers code, soft of like the Sims.
You see coders wandering around, looking through slashdot, talking with each others and ideas passing through. You can see a mental map of the code, and watch coders learn about it through conversation with one another, and watch coders learn about it through reading code, and watch coders learn about it through reading docs. Some learn faster via different methods. Code can be doc'ed or undoc'ed.
Be sure to have lots of tuning variables, so that people can adjust it to their world view. I think "playing" this simulation/game would be very revealing.
Documentation can be constructed like roads are: Where it's needed, it is made. Where help is needed, a road of documentation follows.
The thing is, in my current company, documentation is determined to a large degree by the doc team. True, programmers write their own docs, but after that, it's all up to the doc team.
The best docs would, like roads, follow where people tread.
Make an online db of linux game programmers that I have had some contact with.
Include Karl Bartel bumprace, Bill Kendrick http://www.lugod.org/presentations/sdl-talk-1/ and -2/ newbreedsoftware, Sam Lantigna (SDL), Kwirk guy.
Also mention projects and what not that they've worked on.
Not quite linux, but Giniko-chan.
Sir-Lancelot: oh, HI, yes yes,
well first of all thank you,
ok what do you do at lithtech?
Lion: I'm a C++ coder; I work on game objects, and peripherals.
Lion: I'm not so much of an artist. {;D}=
Lion: Do you do art?
Sir-Lancelot: 3d annimation and modelling
Lion: {:)}= Very cool. What kinds of things did you want to ask about; the
industry, Lithtech, or ..?
Sir-Lancelot: well mostly the industry, but also lithtech. (is it the same
with monolith?)
Lion: I'm not sure about the specifics of how lithtech and monolith
co-relate. We're right across the street from one another. LithTech does the
engine, Monolith does the games. It use to be the case that they were the
same company. BTW, I can't speak for Monolith or LithTech. I'm just an
engineer working in LithTech who likes to answer peoples questions about the
games industry.
Lion: As for the game industry; Are you interested in how to break in, or..?
Lion: GDC has already passed, but when it comes around, volunteer for it.
Specify that you are interested in volunteering 3 months in advance. It's
*tremendous* fun, and will give you a real good idea for what the industry
is like. Bring resumes. Talk with people. You do much better as a volunteer
than as an attendee, because you get full access to everything, but more
importantly, because you get close bonds with a lot of people who you can
work with.
Lion: Volunteering for GDC is free. You get the equivelent of a $1,500
ticket. You have to pay the airplane and hotel fees, but they try to keep
the hotel fees low by bundling you with others. [Again, this is a good thing
for bonding.]
Lion: Am I telling you what you want to know?
Lion: {;D}=
Lion: I've got to go home in about 4-5 minutes; You can call me up at home,
(http://taoriver.net/ has all my contact information), or we can ICQ
whenever you like. =^_^=
Sir-Lancelot: well i already went to the GDC, met a lot people there, i'm
not in a situation where i can take a resume with me, i still have 3 years
of college to go through, so what i want to know, is, i talked with
annimators and artists, but i want to know how the other side works, the
programmers, what do you guys go through?
Sir-Lancelot: oki, cool, we'll what happens
Lion: I went through 2 years of college at HMC, but failed out (Chemistry
was hard). I worked at a ropes course and programmed in my free time. I saw
a job for a game programmer that required 2 years industry C++ programming
experience, WIN32 programming, and some other stuff. I didn't have all that,
but I had been programming since I was 8, and knew many languages. I didn't
apply though. I hooked up with a recruiter instead, and then THEY hooked me
up with the job. (They were a little bolder than I.) I worked there a year
and a half, and then the game was killed, so I left. Then I worked on ASP
(it's an HTML/web thing), then moved to Seattle. Joined a dot com, but then
escaped with a fellow game-programmer I met there (Joseph Laureno) to
Monolith/Lithtech. I've been here for a year now. That's my story!
I think we only hear the words that we actually understand. For example, someone may say: "The ILTRenderStyles::CreateRenderStyle function returns a pointer to a CRenderStyle instance created by the engine." And we hear: "The blahblahblah function returns a pointer to a blahblah instance created by the engine." Actually, we may not even understand that much, since we got hung up on the ILTRenderStyles::CreateRenderStyle, and thus hear something like: "The blahblahblah blahblah returns a pointer to a blahblahblahblah blahblah blah." ...to account for the hang ups.
It's too bad that it's difficult to, with social grace, say, "I'm sorry, I only got 95% of what you just said." If you really try to understand what people are saying, they look at you funny. They expect a certain amount of "fuzziness" [say, 95%] to be tolerated.
I wonder if this is a viable way of making a story.
Doodle. Draw pictures.
Imbue the doodles with life. Make up a little story for them.
See how it turns out.
Misconceptions in Science, Correcting them
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/nitpik.html
Thought is exceptionally messy.
Organizing thought, growing thought, is a really tricky process.
Everyone has strategies for dealing with the above, otherwise we'd be a complete mess. I believe that "smart" people are people who have developed different different methods of organizing thought.
I believe there are many many ways we organize our thoughts.
I believe that an investigation into how we think would yield useful returns, provided that findings were communicated effectively.
Thought and communication/propagation are intimately connected.
I need section of my webpages where I can move from catch to organized presentation/representation.
I can't sit down and just say, "How should I live my life, starting with square one."
It's probably better that I ask myself: "What do I see before me. What kinds of things could I do better." Work incrementally from there. Seek out the deep problems to be solved in preference to the trivial ones.
Spirituality is the ultimate development possible.
Incremental, when you get stuck. Planning, when you have all the tools and background you need.
It's like pseudocoding. The optimal philosophy of pseudocode is this: Pseudocode to the depth to which you believe that you can implement without pseudocode.
Similarly, my new postulate of design vs. iteration is this: Design if you can, iterate if your design process isn't working.
Maybe I should back modify the pseudocode saying: Code if you can, pseudocode if your coding process isn't working.
Explain something to the student.
Test the student on what was taught.
Did they get the answer correctly? If so, stop.
Ask the student to verbalize their model. Why did they answer the way they did?
If the student can't verbalize their model, I don't know what to do. The student needs to learn how to talk, I guess. (How do you teach something like that? "Pull out all your images, associations, impressions, and then turn them into words", or something like that.
Correct the model. [We're back at the beginnning step.]
Does this method work? If not, why? What method would work better?
As a last resort of categorization, categorize by date. That way, if you need to find something, you can find it by association with the times and context. Otherwise, though, if you can, primarily categorize with more structure. In general, for static facts, dates aren't all that important.
I believe that any understanding of "intelligence" we form is shaped dramatically by social perspective of what "intelligent" behavior is.
I've frequently experienced in my life people calling me "brilliant". Am I really brilliant? How come it seems that I just happen to be brilliant for 2 months, and then I cease to hear about my brilliance from others. [Note here: Brilliance is connected to communication. A person off alone, or living in a tiny community, could never be brilliant.] I think the reality is that when people say/think that someone else is brilliant, it's usually because that person fit some idea of what brilliance is, and that the reality of brilliance itself is either something completely different, or something that doesn't even exist at all.
But, we do notice that there are people who have a better resonance with the world than others. Setting aside for the moment the issues of whether this is a self-marketting issue, or some other form of communication issue, or not, let's look at what I'm going to call a "Reductionist View of Intelligence." Here's what I mean: "Intelligence" is the result of a specific set of emotional responses, experiences, thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions. There are probably many ways to "be intelligent". (I'd say intelligence is more of an act, rather than something that someone has.) If we can find and repeat the necessary [sub]sets within ourselves, I believe that we will "be" intelligent.
(Would you trust Philip Greenspun to fix your car over the mechanic next door?)
Howard Gardner had some interesting thoughts in a similar vein.
Gordon Gallup made up the test if a creature is self aware or not.
You put a red dot on an animals forehead when it's sleeping. When it wakes up, show it a mirror. If it pokes at the red dot curiously, then it's self-aware; It knows there's something wrong with it's image in the mirror.
So, can computers become aware? Sure!
Program a computer with a video monitor. Have it look at itself, store the data. Program it to notice if there is anything different about the image of itself.
Turn the computer off.
Draw a red dot on it.
Turn it back off. Is it telling you that it's noticed something different? GOOD! It's self aware.
And since it's self aware, it must obviously be aware as well!
Jane is a smoker. Smokers are gradually disappearing. .'. Jane is gradually disappearing. Too bad these types of arguments work all the time. People will frequently say, "Sure, computers will become aware. They'll recognize themselves one day, and that will prove that they're aware." Look, I got a program that verifies that the instruction pointer is changing; Whoopdeedoo. Look, I shut it down, I killed it!
"At bottom, it's useful to remember that piracy, in any form, ultimately
screws the creator of the work, not just some faceless corporate publishing
entity."
Dear Robert,
Bull. I don't have to remember that if I don't believe it in the first
place.
I work at a middleware company; we license a game engine. I've worked on a
computer game directly as well.
I really don't worry all that much about unauthorized copying.
If I was a business person, I'd make sure that I had crack protection,
knowing full well that people are going to get around it.
I would never lie awake in bed at night, however, wondering just how I'm
going to make those suckers pay.
"Lack of ethics. Lack of morals. Everyone wants something for free. What's
happened to our civilization? Blah Blah Blah."
Whatever.
I'm offended when I read the messages in GameDevelopers Magazine that are
sent to my friends who read the mag:
It essentially says, "We, the developers, get really mad at you when you
pirate games."
When I was volunteering at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 1999, I
was responsible for helping a panel on copy protection.
The question was asked, "How many of you have ever made an unauthorized
copy of a game for your own enjoyment?"
EVERYONE raised their hands. Everyone laughed.
Okay- these are game developers.
They then went on to explain how it's near impossible to make an
uncrackable game, but you *can* buy 1-2 months of protection; the 1-2 months
where you recoup 30% of your profits.
I've never felt that piracy screws the creator of the work.
In fact, a certain amount of unauthorized copying goes a ways for helping
out the market.
Many people see unauthorized copies, and then go on to buy the discs
themselves.
Most people with unauthorized copies play the games a few times, and then
stop playing; they're really not into it.
I have one friend who's copied 300 games. While the industry records this
as a $50.00 x 300 loss ($15,000 "theft"), he's only actually played about
20% of the games, and of those, he's only really substantially
played/finished about 5. He bought 3 of them.
One could say he's an unpaid marketting spokesman.
I know he's responsible for at least a few copies of Parapa The Rappa'
being sold.
I don't find your rememberance very useful; It sounds like blunt
moralizing.
Sure, there are muggles and repo men out there who are trying to figure
out just how much everyone owes, and just how they're going to make everyone
pay.
Take care,
Lion =^_^=
Legal note: I do not speak for my company.
I do speak for quite a few coworkers, though..!
SplitScreening costs you a little bit because you have to navigate back and forth across the split. If you can, copy the section from one side into the other side, and manipulate it from there. This is also good because usually you are retyping the first anyways, just slightly modified. But it saves you lookup and confusion, even if you aren't needing to copy, to copy.
http://www.lightspeedpress.com/index.php - official web page for Finder
Dear Chris,
Are you aware of any community licenses available for stories?
I'd like something that:
- Allows authors to accept ideas from other people.
(ex: An author can hear a story modification idea from someone, and
incorporate it into his or her story, without being sued by the originator
of the idea.)
- Allows readers to retell the original story in different words.
- Allows readers to create new portions of the original story, or make
parallel universe stories.
- Allows authors to incorporate portions from the readers stories.
- Allows readers to create new images and pictures to go with the story.
- Allows authors to incorporate portions from the readers images.
Yadda-yadda-yadda.
Is there anyone doing any work like this?
Take care,
Lion =^_^=
See notebook #3, March 27,2001 for some notes. (Near the back of the book.)
http://www.mythweb.com/teachers/why/basics.html - good introductory page to the greek myths.
http://wingit.keenspace.com/
http://www.kipster.org/scrubs/index.html
http://demonpooka.keenspace.com/
http://heliophobic.net/cgi-bin/sbc.cgi?d=TODAY
http://members.tripod.com/thatweekly/
http://rydia.net/flipside/home.html
http://members.tripod.com/ElaineFair/
http://damaged.anime.net/
http://faith.rydia.net/
UML and Flowcharting are fine, just the adherents are religious about drawing. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there were $5,000 classes on how to read/write UML..! Some programmers ego's (wanting to have TRUE UML) are pretty expensive things, I guess. These are the guys with the rulebooks when you are playing D&D, constantly bugging the DM to follow the Crit table on page xyz. People need to be creative with scribing and interpretation of visual communication, just as we are creative with scribing and interpretation of aural communication.
Dear Robert,
Well, uh... No.
There are plenty of games available freely on the net;
I'm sure Black & White's out there, and being copied left and right.
(Actually, I know it is; I witnessed a friend of mine copy his version for
another friend.)
As far as I can tell, the real weight in the "intellectual property" realm
is what people *feel* is just.
When I was in junior high way back when, many of my friends copied
computer games.
I didn't. I felt that it was injust- I thought about how developers were
paid, yadda yadda yadda.
My friends were copying the games, the dev's weren't being paid, I
wouldn't participate.
Realize that I spent 9 months mowing the lawn in order to buy Kings Quest
and StarFlight.
I think those total to $60.00 or something like that.
Now, my friends (who also worked for - I'm talking months and months of
trash taking and lawn mowing - and bought, a couple games, just like me),
were copying games left and right. They did it through BBS'es. The Internet
was a ways off for us.
Now that I reflect on it, these friends bought more games than I ever did.
I mean, sure, you could wade around looking for the right crack, but when
you know it's a game you are really going to be digging deep into, you just
go to the store, and buy the game. Actually, these friends to this DAY
*still* buy more games than I do per year, even though they copy a lot.
Anyways, back to my point:
People, for the most part, do what they feel is just.
(re: Napster: People, I believe, justifiably feel cheated by the labels.)
Almost all games are available for free on the Internet. It doesn't take
long to get into the unauthorized distribution channels. And yet people
still buy the games, or at least the games that they feel are worth buying.
So, as for people taking my game and making it freely available on the
Net:
* If it's collectors (the vast majority of "piracy" is done by collectors,
who don't even find the time to *PLAY* their games), children who make
$100/year, someone just trying the game out, or anyone else who either can't
or shouldn't pay the full fee, I'm absolutely fine with it.
* If it's someone who can afford the game, and will be playing it
seriously, they probably *should* pay for the game, and I'd be a bit upset
if they didn't. Definitely not something I'm going to lose sleep over,
though..!
And as for will people pay for it if they can illegally download it:
Yes, they will.
Let's look at a slightly larger market for more evidence:
Microsoft Windows, Office, etc.,.
It's easier to find crack Windows/Office CD's than it is to find AOL CD's!
(I'm exaggerating a little, but the image is appropriate. =^_^=)
Is it the copy protection that keeps average Joe & Sue from copying these?
Nah; There is none!
And yet, Microsoft successfully continues to chug away.
Most people believe that it's a fair deal: They pay their $200 to MS, and
they get a Window and Office suite in return. They understand what they are
paying for, and that it is a fair trade.
$10.00 to listen to Day-Oh? Ya' gotta be kidding me! {;D}=
Everyone knows that song IP laws are terribly unfair, anyways, and that
the music industry, as a whole, is corrupt.
Even if I'm wrong, that's the public perception.
The RIAA and associates haven't done much too gloss their image, except to
try to "educate the public" about just why we need to keep paying for our
cultural artifacts, 170 years after they are brandished on the public, from
the public.
Not good people. No money for them! Bad!
Books: Most people believe in books, and understand the deal.
I haven't seen rampant piracy of books, although we are seeing motions
from publishers to lift books to the lofty standards that records follow.
"Lending books is wrong! Selling used books is wrong!" etc., etc., etc.,.
It's dispicable, and dishonest. If they keep doing that, the public will
hate them too. =^_^= I think they are trying to gradually mold the public to
their way of thinking. "Dammit, we want our 170 years of control, because
dammit if our grandchildren don't derive economic benefit from my
masterpiece I wrote 100 years ago."
Do you realize how little negative impact it would have on books if they
went public domain after 20 years?
Do you realize how rich our society would be?
Imagine, for a moment, that you have unlimited access to all music, books,
and movies that are 20 years old.
You don't have to buy them, you just go online and click.
Most movies, books, music MORE than recoup their costs in the first 5
years. (Most books go out of PRINT after 5 years, NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN!)
Think about how good it would be for our society if everything 20 years
old was available just a search away.
All that music, all those stories.
Is this communism? Nah. People are still getting paid, people are still
working, it's still capitalism.
Sure, "Lion Kimbro and the Science of Visualization" doesn't give me any
more money, but by 20 years, my once best seller (brought me a MILLION
dollars!) is now trickling in at the mere 10,000/year level. The science of
visualization has advanced, people are more interested in the new books. Boo
Hoo, I'm crying over my lost revenue. Think I'll go watch "Bell, Book, and
Candle" for free over the Internet to cheer me up.
Book authors and book publishers, in the end, are not screwing over the
public, they're screwing their grandchildren.
=^_^=
A bit more than you wanted/asked for/deserved, but I'm feeling kinda ranty
today.
Short form: People still for their games, I still have a job to this day,
even though things are copied left and right.
People pay for things when they perceive there is a fair deal involved.
They don't pay for things when they perceive that they're being duped.
Take care,
Lion =^_^=
workplace motivation- where's the research? http://www.aom.pace.edu/amr/motivation.html (academy of management review)
http://forum.swarthmore.edu/~sarah/Discussion.Sessions/biblio.motivation.htm
l
----------
Nolen, S. "Reasons for studying: Motivational orientations and study
strategies."
Nolen describes how students' goals affect the strategies they choose to use
during problem-solving. Students who want to learn for understanding's sake
and students who want to learn to get good grades use different kinds of
strategies in their problem-solving, and the strategies they use influence
their understanding of a problem and their motivation to work on a problem.
Teachers can begin by teaching students strategies which will help them to
understand concepts rather than find a "quick" answer and encouraging
students to concentrate on the learning process rather than the final
outcome.
In Cognition and Instruction , no.5, pp. 269-287, 1988.
Sansone, C. and C. Morgan. "Intrinsic Motivation and Education: Competence
in Context."
This article explains possible ways of using students' interests to maintain
motivation, especially for work students find uninteresting. The authors
explain how students use their own interests in learning and
problem-solving, and describe how interests can help students continue
working on tasks they do enjoy. By becoming more aware of student interest
and providing feedback that supports students in their individual learning
goals, teachers can help to increase students' motivation.
In Motivation and Emotion , v. 16, no. 3, pp. 249-270, 1992.
Schiefele, U. and M. Csikszentmihalyi. "Motivation and Ability as Factors in
Mathematics Experience and Achievement."
Schiefele explains that students' experiences in the math classroom are
linked significantly to interest, and that interest often predicts student
achievement in mathematics. The article suggests that standard mathematics
instruction through lectures and seat work needs to be supplemented with
more active and student-involved activity to increase student interest in
math. Schiefele suggests that teachers can begin to increase their students'
interest in math by incorporating activities such as small group work,
projects, and the use of computers, and by placing problem-solving in real
world contexts.
In Journal for Research in Mathematics Education , v. 26, no. 2, pp.
163-181, March 1995.
http://www.mcrel.org/products/noteworthy/noteworthy/barbaram.asp Students, Teachers, and Motivation
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sf94/full_papers/john son.html - Objecting to Objects by Stephen C. Johnson, Melismatic Software
Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is currently being hyped as the best way to do everything from promoting code reuse to forming lasting relationships with persons of your preferred sexual orientation. This paper tries to demystify the benefits of OOP. We point out that, as with so many previous software engineering fads, the biggest gains in using OOP result from applying principles that are older than, and largely independent of, OOP. Moreover, many of the claimed benefits are either not true or true only by chance, while occasioning some high costs that are rarely discussed. Most seriously, all the hype is preventing progress in tackling problems that are both more important and harder: control of parallel and distributed applications, GUI design and implementation, fault tolerant and real-time programming. OOP has little to offer these areas. Fundamentally, you get good software by thinking about it, designing it well, implementing it carefully, and testing it intelligently, not by mindlessly using an expensive mechanical process. -- Abstract to Objecting to Objects, by Stephen C. Johnson, Melismatic Software
http://www.softpanorama.org/SE/anti_oo.shtml Skeptical View on the Object-Oriented Programming
In the not-so-recent past, headlines proclaimed, "Software ICs Will Revolutionize Computer Programming." Both the popular press and the computer industry believed that object-oriented design and development would reduce programming to assembling standardized "objects," and that the need for programmers would decline as software "technicians" with minimal training would develop the software of the future. -- from Sckeptical View on the Object-Oriented PRogramming
http://www.softpanorama.org/Lang/cpp.shtml - Softpanorama Slightly Skeptical C++ Links C++ as a Multiparadigm Language (or C++ without OO overdose ;-)
"After 20-some years, it's obvious that object-oriented programming is not a panacea. What are your thoughts on the future of the OO paradigm? What other paradigms do you see challenging it? " "Bjarne: Well. It was obvious to me 20-some years ago that OOP wasn't a panacea. That's the reason C++ supports several design and programming styles." "If you like long words, you can say C++ is a "multi-paradigm language," but simply saying "C++ is an OOPL" is inaccurate. I wrote a paper about that "Why C++ isn't just an Object-Oriented Programming Language" (download from my papers page). I presented that paper at OOPSLA - and survived." "In the first edition of "The C++ Programming Language," I didn't use the phrase "object-oriented programming" because I didn't want to feed the hype. One of the problems with OOP is exactly that unscrupulous people have hyped it as a panacea. Overselling something inevitably leads to disappointments."
http://www.womengamers.com/ - VERY interesting web site. Read the articles.
According to these legends, the "Tao of Programming" represented the first attempt to treat the art of programming as an organic whole. As such it was violently opposed by both the academic and business communities, who viewed it as a threat to the established order of things.-- Preface to the Tao of Programming, Geoffrey James, Los Angeles, 1986
Generally, when we write a book, or package something up to be taught, we do it in a generic way. That is, we strip any trace of our personality out of the book, and then we present it to the public.
I wonder, is that the most effective way of teaching on the Internet? Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing was more interesting to me because it presented an integrated human being, not just some dry subject matter. There is a magnetic quality to that integration.
In the Internet era, it's vastly easier to move from subject to subject on the web. Connections between subjects that might not be otherwise seen appear. People who are interested in what person A had to say about subject A will quite likely be interested in what person A had to say about subject B, C, and D as well. In fact, we can have a much more wholesome experience by integrating our world views together. We want to clash world views, and promote the integration of world models. Our ideas should be interconnected. Getting students to interconnect ideas is the holy grail of teaching. All our books are written in a dis-connected fashion, though.
I've found that when I'm at work, if I have the option of emailing someone or going and talking to them, I'd much rather go out and find them. There's something very attractive about human interaction.
There is something called "Category Theory":
Category theory is a general mathematical theory of structures and sytems of structures. It allows us to see, among other things, how structures of different kinds are related to one another as well as the universal components of a family of structures of a given kind. The theory is philosophically relevant in more than one way. For one thing, it is considered by many as being an alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics. Furthermore, it can be thought of as constituting a theory of concepts. Finally, it sheds a new light on many traditional philosophical questions, for instance on the nature of reference and truth.
After an anonymous /. user said that my group diagrams were like "commuting diagrams" and searching for information on commuting diagrams and category theory, I found an interesting page with various diagrams, notes on semiotics, etc., etc.,.
You may be interested in the book Conceptual Mathematics by Lawvere & Schanuel. It's a very gentle introduction to category theory (which is arguably the most abstract branch of mathematics in existence; even pure mathematicians make fun of it as "too abstract"!). The whole philosophy of emphasizing "processes" over "things" is fascinating to me. -- Some Anonymous Slashdotter
I wrote the following email on /.:
I agree; Your right, integration of knowledge is a higher problem. A friend of mine getting his PhD in Physics in Berkeley related a number of papers to me that said that even graduate physicists would resort back to Aristotilian models of the world (forced, natural, and animate motion, but mostly "forced motion") when confronted with problems that didn't match the ones they tackled in books.
But I think people who had a clear grasp through intuition and pictures would be better equipped to tackle the integration challenges.
One of my students came to class, and I asked him, "How's math going?" He replied, "Good, I just did great on a test on the Pythagorean theorem." I said, "Oh really? Did you show the teacher the proof I taught you?" He sort of looked puzzled, and said, "Hunh?" And I said, "Yeah, remember, 'Asquared + Bsquared + 2AB yadda yadda...'?" He said, "That's the Pythagorean Theorem?!"
The thing is, he knew this proof that I had shown him left and right, forward and backwards, inside and out. We'd gone over it several times. But since I didn't call it "The Pythagorean Theorem," he didn't have that link, and hadn't linked it up.
I also asked him, "If you have a spaceship at (5,3), and a missle headed toward it at (1,1), what's the distance between them?" He couldn't answer it. Then I gave him a triangle and asked for the length of the hypoteneus. He could do it. But he wasn't able to integrate the two ideas together until I manually showed him how. I remember having the same difficulties myself, a long time ago.
I think as humans, we're just really bad with our internal communication/thought and crossreferencing. It takes a certain degree of feeling like you have "ownership" of an idea, like you are holding it in your hand, and you are going to weild it like a weapon against all the other ideas and situations in the world. "Knowing how to get the length of a hypoteneus, how can we approach the problem of the distance between two points (positions specified by orthogonal vectors)".
I guess the thing is to make sure to ensure that students build a framework of interconnected ideas. I think the constructivist school of thought is a good idea; I wonder if there is a way to teach this a little more explicitly.
Someone replied with the following awesome link: http://el.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/events/love-too.html
Following that link will take you to a place where Alan Kay describes how it is that we frequently do not think our world through. He gives the example of the seasons: Why are there seasons? 95% of the intelligencia had answers having to do with either the closeness of the Earth to the sun, or the moon.
To a degree, these are theme's on Plato's "You already know the stuff, you just haven't thought it through", but it's amazing just how shallow our internal crossreferencing is. We truely do not think things through. Perhaps we just don't have the time, or the inclination.
Problem Solving Book Recommendations http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/imo/books.html
Shada: Yeah, I remember when he said why he doesnt say "I think" in his
writings. If he is putting it in writing, its obvious he "thinks" that way
Lion: I agree with that policy, as well.
Lion: It's fine in his writings.
It's a little more jarring when he's actually talking with you.
Lion: Not so much that;
Lion: It's just...
Lion: Not all is pleasant within Philip G.
Shada: aaah
Lion: He thinks spirituality is a waste of time. =^_^=
Shada: naughty!
Lion: He lives in the thought plane.
He makes the same mistake that L. Ron Hubbard made:
Investing too much in thought, almost nothing in Spirit.
Lion: These people can appear that they are giving you great things:
* They make everything efficient.
* They maximize pleasure, minimize suffering, not just for themselves, but
for all people.
* They promote science, the arts, and intelligent thinking.
Many people have an internal value system that identifies thought, "The
Universal Mind", etc., etc., with Love/Spirit/The Eternal.
But they are different entities completely.
Phil G. is an example of this.
ftp://ftp.bbn.com/pub/timo/python/Cookie.py
From the Python FAQ:
On Unix, it's very simple, using sendmail. The location of the sendmail
program varies between systems; sometimes it is /usr/lib/sendmail, sometime
/usr/sbin/sendmail. The sendmail manual page will help you out. Here's some
sample code:
SENDMAIL = "/usr/sbin/sendmail" # sendmail location
import os
p = os.popen("%s -t" % SENDMAIL, "w")
p.write("To: cary@ratatosk.org\n")
p.write("Subject: test\n")
p.write("\n") # blank line separating headers from body
p.write("Some text\n")
p.write("some more text\n")
sts = p.close()
if sts != 0:
print "Sendmail exit status", sts
A fascinating article on computer game User Interfaces and what we can learn from them. I always thought that Secret of Mana had one of the coolest UI's in the world. Too bad Legend of Mana's sucked terribly.
There is an excellent article on computers by themselves aren't magical explaining that you can't just pour in technology. You have to look at the culture, the rewards systems, and the way people work to make maximal use of the computer technology. He also argues (and cites reports, though not very formally) that there are enormous gains to be made by not just moving to groupware, but by teaching everyone and organizing everyone in a way that actually uses the software as it was intended to be used.
http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=568313
Researching when this "professionalism" tide came over programming. I believe it's really the product of the cert folk coming over; It's primarily a sales thing.
Professionalism = Responsiveness, being a machine.
Google search for "history of professionalism": (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/) (http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webkeywords/professi onalism.kw.html - medical history of professionalism, very interesting) - (http://www.medlib.iupui.edu/hom/biblio.html another set of books on professionalism)
At best, professionalism is a mark for good in a fallen world. Sort of like the freemasons. At worst, it is a scam, a ritual observance of form before essense. Sort of like the freemasons, when they became evil (and the anti-masonic party formed).
Through the information age (late 70s, 80s and into the 90s) sales people had to develop professionalism. Professional sales people became the order of the day. They were taught how to manipulate and persuade people to buy their products, often with little concern as to whether or not the customer actually needed the product or service in the first place. This was fine when there were maybe 4 or 5 major competitors and the company could gain 15% - 20% market share just by being there. The sales persons job was to sell their product or service to the prospect. There was more international competition than there was previously but the majority still came from domestic companies. -- http://www.futurestrategiesinc.com/Article%202.htm
"Professionalism and Productivity" - two words joined at the hip, it seems.
"haughty professionalism" - another phrase
http://www.cued.org/about/history.html - CUED on professionalism (very interesting)
"When an agency or organization hires someone for an economic development position it has to have confidence that the individual is bringing a commonly understood core set of tools to bear on the problems and issues to be dealt with. There also has to be a process for learning and growing in the profession." - CUED web site
Professionalism doesn't have to mean 'only one philosophy will be accepted', (though it frequently does - look at deliberate brainwashing questions on exam: 'whats the best product [that we sell] to use in situation X')):
Over the last 25 years, there have been four or five distinctive waves in thinking, adaptation and philosophy which have defined, redefined, adjusted and modified economic development. CUED has been the leader through all this and has been an important facilitator in creating partnerships between public and private sources. - CUED web site
I wish I could read "Pillars of Professionalism", a sociological analysis of "professionalism".
Coming up on a search, "resisting professionalism" on google:
http://www.mdpsych.org/benkert25-1.htm Opinion: Resisting the attack on professionalism
http://www.wsba.org/atj/jurisprudence/ethics.htm The Jurisprudence of Ethics: Should Legal Professionalism be in Accordance with Public Justice?
Playing with IT (opposite of professionalism) http://www.itworldcanada.com/cw/displayArticle.cfm?oid=4B0B9B60-3321-11D5-AA 8A00A0CC574E58
When you are working with other people's old decrepit code, take an inventory of their data structures. Look at their data structures, and if you are allowed to, remold them in your own coding style. This will do two things:
There are, of course, cases where you won't want to be changing things to your system- When someone else still owns the code, or when it's part of an API that people depend on. Anywhere where you shouldn't change the code. But if it's old dead wood that's been thrown out or forgotten, it's probably better for the code for a fresh pair of eyes to be working with it.
When you build your concept of the world, especially if it is something that you care about a lot (like programming for me), take detailed notes through time, and cross-reference forwards and backwards. Make sure your thoughts are internally consistant. Our mind works (and reinforces itself) with stories that are spurred by the moment, but that do not necessarily requires consistency and correctness.
Not many people keep notes, but fewer still make a good model based on their notes.
This is really important, to progress actual knowledge in the given field.
"Don't Say Don't"
There are a zillion ways to go wrong, but only a few to go right.
Teach the ways to go right. If you tell someone not to go the wrong way, they may just decide to go on another wrong way.
Advice is generally corrective of a particular system. Be sure that you have the same internal systems as someone else before giving them advice. What works for one person's internal systems may throw another person's internal systems entirely out of whack.
Some of the best programmers in the world are the worst programmers in the world.
(Now I know why I call this weird.html)
Code quality doesn't really seem to matter; I've seen... uh, ... some unnamed systems... With great stature in the world, but underneath, they are a real mess. So I really don't think code quality is important in determining whether a programmer is good or not.
(By code quality, I am talking about neatness, both organization-wise, and caligraphy-wise.)
In fact, I would almost say that code quality had a negative impact on code. I refrain, though, since I've seen great programs that had truly great elegence in implementation as well.
Hmm... Still, I'd much prefer neat and organized for maintainable code, or transferable code, in which case the neat and organized and beautiful code is clearly (as established through experience) more beneficial.
I think that in the initial stages of learning something, theory and what not should be cast to the wind.
When I was trying to learn how to write a DB driven web site, I had enormous difficulty as I tried to learn all the theory, and figure out just what all was needed so that I could become an expert, and then start implementing sophisticated DB backed web sites.
That didn't work. I could get the ACS running, but it took all the energy out of me. And even then, the fundamental questions of how to I organize my tables and what is needed and what are the tradeoffs.... I couldn't even begin to comprehend them.
So I scrapped sophistication, I scrapped perfection, I scrapped everything, and just wrote a simple little site. I had, what 6 tables, and 4 pages.
Now I feel like I have a much better grasp of the basic ideas, and can start to approach the theory with true understanding.
The actions/practice/habits allow the theory to settle, since I now know the core meanings in my hands.
I wonder if I could work with Joseph on a system that worked like this... I'd have to learn how the filesystem interface worked, and how to optimize disk access, but I think it could be done. For the proof-of-concept versions, I wouldn't need to worry about optimizing; all we'd need to do is get it so that the programming API worked, and then show how much simpler it made organizing code/files/etc., etc.,.
Then some heavy guns could come in and optimize the hell out of it... Hmmm... {;D}= It's be awesome! No more file management difficulties! Introspection for all files!
[»] Re: Why use static directories at all?
by Lion Kimbro - Apr 25th 2001 17:05:37
> Clearly, not everybody is going to agree
> on the "best" way to organize the
> directory tree. In fact, I'm sure that
> most people can agree that there is no
> "best" way. The solution: have just one
> big directory, with meta tags associated
> with each file.
That's exactly it. I've done that with my own note taking system,
and it is exactly the right way.
> There could be properties like what
> partiton/disk the file is on, what
> package it belongs to, if it is a
> library, it's mime-type, natural
> language,if it is a game, if it is in
> the effective path(as there wouldn't
> really be one), ecetera, and anything
> else that the user/admin would like to
> associate with the file.
> Then a shell could dynamically create
> a directory structure based on the users
> preferences that could be organized any
> way they liked, either of the two that
> are being decribed here could be
> created.
> This propably won't happen, but it
> would make things alot simpler AND more
> powerful.
We need to also pay attention to security and priveledges, and how files are
copied from one filesystem to another. How would this work? Gatekeepers may
be necessary to tag and translate. I will be thinking about this for a
while, and pushing for this structure, provided I cannot find any flaws with
it.
Brilliant. It's exactly what we need. Any system that is complex avoids
categories like the plague. The files on an average persons UNIX desktop are
definitely *very* complex ("...The mainframe sits like an ancient sage
meditating in the midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end
like a giant ocean of machinery. The software is as multifaceted as a
diamond, and as convoluted as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique,
move through the system like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy
where I am..."), and definitely resist any 1 arbitrary categorization, such
as the file system imposes. Tagging the tree and being able to view it in
different hierarchial schemes would be great. File resources would be so
much easier to manage, and searching would be a piece of cake.
Adding on to that, I'd like to be able to attach a "description" field to any file.
What are the steps we need to be able to approach this description of things? I need to attach introspection to the kernel.
Riding the system on top of a normal system rather than having an integrated approach is, I think, a necessary evil. Or is it? Can I embed it deep inside the structures, so that it is natural? All are things to think about... (Or not- maybe I should just ride the system as a layer on top, and forget the cost, both in initial-energy and time.)
Great Programming is like Great Sex; You can easily stay up all night doing it.
http://www.stretcher.com/
This is an incredible site on how to save money. It's... well, not worth it's weight in gold, since it doesn't weight anything. But it's very valuable. Watch the pennies, and the rest will add up..!
For a while, almost everything in the "Thought" category was also a "MetaThought". But then I realized why: If it is a thoughts database, which it is, and I've categorized something as having to do with thought, well, then, it must be a MetaThought.
So unless I was having a thought about metathought (which is not the same thing as a meta-meta-thought, which would be a meta-thought about a meta-thought, that is to say a thought about a thought about a meta-thought - to decode that one, draw some diagrams with people and their thought clouds), it shouldn't have the title "metathought".
Also, I may want to roll in the "Action" category under thought, it strikes me as those frequently fall into the metathought category (that is, the "thought" category within the thought database).
Too often, I think, we forget what our options are. We take in a very, very, very narrow point of view. I believe that this is because the mind can only focus on one thing at a time.
This is what is called "Think outside of the box", or, "Think different" (Apple's version). I'd call it something like, "Consider your alternatives," or better yet, "Find alternatives."
If it were such a revolutionary idea, why hasn't it taken root all over the place? Why doesn't it work for everyone?
A few theories:
Hmmm... I'll have to reflect on this more...
How's this: Every time we want to do some task, we have an idea of how to do it. It works most of the time; why complain about something that is working well?!! (What you say?!!) It's generally only when we're stuck that it's time to come up with new algorithms for dealing with things, and a reanalysis of our operating parameters.
If a computer problem is getting tough, and it looks like you may be in for the long haul (3+ hours)...
...do yourself a favor. Start tracing through, and at each stage, print out the relevant functions. Step through, printing out functions from the original function call/outermost level, down to the place where you are having your crash/where your error is. Print them all together, send them to the printer one by one, as you step through, then make just one trip to the printer.
Take notes on these pages of what you think is going on. Spatially arrange it correctly. Tape the pieces to the wall, so that you can see them all together. Wall = cheap screen space.
There. At most, this construction project will take 1 hour, and will make your problem solving efforts much easier.
These thoughts are transcribed from my mind. They are an externalization of something that is internal, for later perusal, organization, improvement, collection, rapid retrieval, and so other people can see what I think.
I'd like to take a mental highlighter to my thoughts. Not to an extreme like Ted Nelson. I'd like to take these thoughts that have exteriorized, and say, "This section right here- this is scientific thought about XYZ. This over here- this is a programming practice." I write down only the things that are worthwhile, as a general principle.
Having one db here at work and one db at home is like having my brain split in half. I can only access the half that I am living in, whether at work or at home. Frequently, I think, "Geeze, I know I know this; I know it's in here, I just have an incredibly difficult time accessing it... I'll have to wait until I get (home/to work)." This shows me that there is utility to the Catch.
Anyways, I'd love to be able to just write text, and have in what is automatically called a "context". Then I can say, "Pull out my XYZ subject pen", and highlight the things that I think are worthy of note. Then I pull a different pen, and highlight different things. The most recently used pens stay within easy reach. Of course, the pens are attached to hierarchy, perhaps being nodes with multiple parents (with slightly different intonations, or just being linked by subject).
We say, "They've got too much time on their hands" equally to both rich and poor.
I think it just means, "I think that's a stupid thing to do."
I wish books had information that pertains to the structure of the book at the back of the book, along with links into the book (page numbers).
For example, for the Harry Potter series, I'd love at the back of the book to see a list of all the students (or the students appearing in the book). What page they were introduced on. Which house they are in. What their familiar is. A short summary description or notable acts.
I want lots of maps. Illustrations and diagrams of key events would be nice.
I'd like a short sequence of events, and the times at which they happened.
Yadda yadda yadda. Stuff to make it easy for me to find things that happened, who people are, corrolate data, etc., etc.,.
That would make the reading much more easy and user friendly. =^_^=
The Hogwarts Lexicon is sort of what I'm getting at.
http://sasdocs.ats.ucla.edu/proc/z0086336.htm
A great website on SQL.
I think my web page has a few problems:
Analyzing one of the worlds most effective communicators, Philip Greenspun,'s web page has yielded plenty of fruit so far.
Perhaps I should start unfurling my database into an actual directory structure, and consolidating thoughts there.
I need to look at my old web page once more; it was doing things very well.
I need to speak more frankly in the pages; I feel like the pages are insulting. "Eh; I don't have enough time for you; here you go." I have traded frankness and earnestness for brevity. Is it a good trade? Are they mutually exclusive? No, on both accounts.
Have you thought about posting your stories online for free, under some
sort of license that grants you exclusive publishing rights, but otherwise
allows the story to be copied about and what not?
I've been thinking about this recently:
Whenever a popular movie or book or other form of a story comes out,
there's a hoard of fans who write fan spin-offs, create illustrations, and
what not. Then there is inevitably the double standard that the owner of the
story applies: "Get these vermin off", vs. "These are our customers, and
they are freely marketting our book for us." Artists who are genuinely
interested in the spin-off stories that people create also feel obligated to
*NOT* read their stories, because they may be sued by the spin-off writers
for "stealing their ideas", and thus, as much as they'd like to, will not
read their stories.
I've been wondering: Is there a way to capture the creative energy in a
mutually beneficial way? A community license would be something like the
following:
- Allows authors to accept ideas from other people.
(ex: An author can hear a story modification idea from someone, and
incorporate it into his or her story, without being sued by the originator
of the idea.)
- Allows readers to retell the original story in different words.
- Allows readers to create new portions of the original story, or make
parallel universe stories.
- Allows authors to incorporate portions from the readers stories.
- Allows readers to create new images and pictures to go with the story.
- Allows authors to incorporate portions from the readers images.
Reading the story would signify an understanding of the license.
You could reserve the right to all print publishing of the work for 50
years after it is written, after which anyone could print copies of the
books.**
Community license- yes or no (and how much work will it take to produce
one) aside, these are the questions I would be asking myself:
* How much money do I expect to make from publishing the book?
* Is it reasonable to expect that much money? What is the chance that I
will make that much money?
* Would I derive more personal satisfaction publishing it online for free,
or would I derive more personal satisfaction selling it to a publisher, or
some sort of strange combo: Distribute free online, allow redistribution for
free, but forbid anyone else from publishing in the world.
That said, I'd be happy to pay you $2,000 to place all of the stories into
the public domain***.
I can't afford more than that, but if I could, I'd offer more.
By paying a small amount ($2,000) of money, I can buy one of the coolest
creative works in the world for everybody in the entire world. And when
people drew read the story, if they liked it, they can illustrate the story
how they like.
I'd really like to be able to tell Sakura, and Sakura's children, that the
Oracle's writings are available online just a few clicks away, and that we
can print it on the nanotechnology printer in moments. Actually, there won't
be a need to, since display technology will be such that I'll just be
holding a piece of paper, browse it over to the search engines, type in the
name of your story, and it will appear, crystal clear.
Anyways, please consider these things.
If you are interested in publishing it online under a public license, I
can tell you just how to do it.
Hope this isn't too aggressive, but realize that this is one of my
"causes".
The Assayer: http://www.theassayer.org/
Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.net/
OpenContent: http://www.opencontent.org/
I could say tons more about the subject, but I'm at work and need to get
back to my things.
We can talk about it some other time.
If you sell the story to a publisher, I'll be a little saddened that
humanity has lost a valuable resource for about $10,000, but, there will be
other valuable resources.
I've been thinking about writing some stories for Sakura myself, as she
grows up.
I'd write the strange loopy stories, and publish them on the web.
For kids stories, the art can be more important; I'd put the art on the
web alongside the text.
**(I feel very strongly that 170 years [(c) duration] is grossly unfair and
unnecessary, and steals great cultural wealth from the culture that produced
the author in the first place.) Note that Disney incorporates most of their
work from the *very rich* public domain: Snow White, The Little Mermaid,
Pocahantas, etc.,etc.,. I suppose the publishers guilds would have us
believe that Disney was stealing the very life bread from the descendents of
the original tellers/authors/revisers, a crime for which they should be
severely punished.
***Or better yet, prevent companies from incorporating their work as their
own. Have you noticed how hard it is to get a copy of Shakespeare that you
can USE? Consider this: You are a teacher of an English class. You want to
cover the Tempest. Now you have to tell your students to BUY a copy of
Shakespeare (I'm sure Shakespeare's decendents are, *deservedly*, feeling
ripped off) from the store. You would get a copy yourself and photocopy it,
but that'd be illegal, the school bookstore would be giving you no end of
trouble. Now, why is it so hard to get a copy of Shakespeare without the
(c)opyright? Because every friggen' publisher out there attaches a little
forward, or a commentary, or whatever silly modification they'd like, and
then gets a 170 year copyright on their work. That's why the only way to get
an uncopyrighted Shakespeare is to go to project Gutenberg, which is going
as fast as they can, turning every book they can get their hands on that the
copyright has expired on into digital text. This is why it can be better to
release the story under a license that guarantees that this nonesense won't
go on- that guarantees that if it is republished or changed, that the
republished or changed version must be licensed with the same license (that
grants the freedom to copy/change).
This is a song about one of the only respectable pieces of Object Oriented Programming literature, "Design Patterns". It's pretty sparse, and it's got bells, so it kind of sounds like it could be the theme song to some surrealist kid's show, like Dr. Snuggles or the Teletubbies.-- Tom 7
If you have a mental task that you need to do but aren't interested in, you'll run across a difficulty: You will be constantly distracted by things with even the slightest amount of attention attraction.
Now, remember that I believe that distraction is good, and that focusing can be very dangerous, in that it will glue you to whatever spot it is that you are in, and won't let you have the vision to leave.
That said, here's something that I find to work.
Let's say that you are looking for a web address. The web address is buried in a file. You've lost track of the file, but you know some traits about it. Sounds easy enough to capture the address, right?
Except that every time you start to go looking for it, you get lost in the directory tree. You find some other file. You start reading it, and wonder, "What am I doing in here? What am I looking for? What's going on here?" A minutes or two later, you stop looking, and think, "Just what am I doing here?" (Note: This is NORMAL!) You step out of the problem.
You collect your wits after a minute or two, and think, "What am I looking for? Oh, right; To get that thing, I need this web address. But the web address is in a file- riiiight. I remember now."
So you go back in and get lost again. You get out quicker this time, but you're still at a loss. You fear going back in because you aren't really motivated, and you know how easy it is to get lost. You'd like to use WIN-F ("find file") to find the file, but you don't know it's name... ...you drift into...
...a new land. You are drawing on paper. You know you need an 0x100 by 0x100 texture video. You need to find the bink web page, and you know you've got just the URL you need inside a file... You know that pictures are powerful highbandwidth instruments of the mind, and start drawing this reality on paper to reinforce to yourself just what it is that you are doing. You draw a square with a Lion head inside, 0x100 * 0x100 dimensions drafted about the sides. You draw a sequence of these frames, in the shape of a roll of film. You write, "Bink", and have an arrow that says "Website?" You reflect on the web a bit, and draw a little web. Suddenly, a memory comes back to you: The file that it's in is called something like "binkvideomgr"... Right!
Win-F, "binkvideomgr", and up comes "binkvideomgrimpl.cpp". You found it! Move it into emacs, search for http://, and it's the first thing that comes up.
Searching for the file through your mind was easier than searching for it through the file system. In the future, computers will remember what we've looked at and what is relevant to us, but until then, a bit of thought on the side will be very helpful, and using pictures can help us build the program into ourself that we are going to do in the world. Draw the pictures of your procedure, and then when you've done the things in your mind, it'll establish a groove that will be easier to follow through in the world.
Focus = Habit
If you focus on something, you are making a habit of selectively ignoring/(attending to) various pieces of information in your mind.
How does Focus != Habit? We generally think of Focus as something that you do, and Habit as something that happens to you. Also, Focus is generally considered to be something that is done on demand and short term, though I suspect when you get in a habit of focusing, it quickly becomes something that runs deepers.
Again, it can be dangerous. You can quickly fritter away your life by nailing it to a dead post, using focus.
http://www.onthenet.com.au/~briblack/pyrpg/
I'd like to work on this, both for fun, and to help teach my classes.
Work to do: Interface out the rendering engine for the screen and the map so that users can place them where they want in their interfaces, and use whatever backend Tk, GTK+, that they like. ('PyRPGTK+'..! {;D}=)
Make it so that objects can do stuff in the game on their own. Perhaps even give them a simulation tick. That way, we can make monsters and what not, wandering the halls. Need some graphics, think I can find some. WorldForge may be the place to go, or look at that guys image archive.
Ah! Put a goal in the game, and obstacles, and stuff. {:)}=
Notebook 4, Page 38
http://www.indymagazine.com/interviews/cmcneil.shtml - Interview with Carla Speed McNeil
http://www.workingdesigns.com/ This is the best place for an american otaku to work, the most anime friendly company this side of Japan. They truly understand role playing games, and have produced nothing but gems. They understand the three cultures otaku deal with: Japanese Culture, American Culture, and the Otaku Culture in between. They are the masters of their art, the elite of our kind.
The #1 piece of a company is illusion. Why is illusion so important? Companies are supposed to be sleek money seekers. They are supposed to be ultracompetitive, and thus, resistant to illusion. And yet, time and time again, they fall for things like "post-relational databases", "object-oriented paradigm", and stuff like that. It's not just companies, but society as a whole. Why do we fall for stuff like that? What can we do to prevent it? Is it worth preventing, or is it okay? Is there anything that can be done to correct the system? Is this a terrible system, but the best that we can come up with? (that guy who was in charge of Britain.) Is computer programming doomed to be religion? Are all technical fields doomed to be religion? Are all human fields doomed to be religion? If all human fields are doomed to be religion?
If this is the case, the least we can do is to root ourselves in a people and a repetition that lends itself wholely and entirely to Divine Love.
What we need isn't C with Classes, What we need is C with Lists.
A C with built in notation for both container lists and integrated lists would do wonders for C. Give us some string notation and vector notation as well.
Call it "C+".
It's called C+ with triple meaning:
Wanted: One Programmer.
You must be a programmer. That means that you know how to program machines in about 50 different languages. You must be able to adapt to new languages rapidly. You must be eager to learn new languages. You must know the advantages and disadvantages of various languages.
Pay dependent on experience, brainwashing not required.
http://dbdebunk.com./
Interesting people I will probably never get to meet, and probably haven't even ever emailed.
http://www.videotopia.com/games.htm
See http://www.videotopia.com/ and browse it.
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."- Eugene Jarvis
Excess: Having hoards and hoards of an element. Lots of pixels, lots of enemies, lots of... anything. Good for getting an "overload" feeling in a game.
There's a theory that adding discipline and bondage to our languages will make development much easier. Discipline and Bondage in the form of strong typing, and a permission system.
There are places where BDSM will help in our efforts as human beings. Ex: UNIX File Permission System- extremely helpful. Ex: Kernel Mode vs. User Mode- extremely helpful.
But can code derive the same benefits from BDSM? I don't think so.
First, good programmers don't need it. They pay attention, and can do better without all the clutter necessary for BDSM.
This is generally acknowledged and accepted. It's the bad programmers that worry people. My first response is, "Well, don't work with the bad programmers." But if we can, as economists, we'd like to be able to utilize the bad programmers. Okay, put BDSM into our language, and we can now tolerate the bad programmers. Great theory! Great idea!
Except that the bad programmers don't know how to use the BDSM to their advantage. They make the wrong things public, protected, and private. They make things too type specific, or too general. By nature of being bad programmers, they get it screwed up. So the whole effort towards bondage and discipline didn't really buy you anything.
Sure, if everyone were good programmers, the BDSM would work. Of course, if everyone where good programmers, the BDSM would be unnecessary.
Let's just have plain old vanilla code without the Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism.
Make a game that is like Cosmic Encounters and Perpetual Arena combined.
It plays like perpetual arena.
The player is give 5 cards that describe the character. A hand might look like the following:
Problem: If you build up the character with personality traits, the players will become attached, so it can't be like Perpetual Arena. It needs to be more like Cosmic Encounters.
Each player has a goal card (another reason to stay away from perpetual arena style).
The goal card tells what the player needs to have accomplished by/at the end of the game in order to win.
I need more "hidden" goals, to protect Death and Murder. Ah! But Death and Murder can *pretend* to have other goals.. {;D}=
This would make a GREAT networked game.
The game ends after either a predifined time or # of moves.
Balance analysis: Holy grail characters counter one another. Riches and Treasures counter one another. Thiefs counter all characters. Deaths counter all characters. Life assists all characters save deaths and murder. (LIFE is HARD to play if Death or Murder is present.) Murder counters one character. Protection counters death or murder. (Protection is easy to play.)
http://learninfreedom.org/
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. --Plato (The Republic Book VII, 536)
Do you believe in individuality, or do you believe in homogenaety? If you believe in individuality, your communities will be smaller. If the communities are lucky, they will live close together. Unlucky, the community will be spread out. The Internet is the godsend for the spread out community, and is their life line. More spread out communities do/can exist now because of the Internet. Groupware will lessen their burden, and allow our interests to connect. It is a problem of Cohesion: Getting related elements together is much more efficient.
Schools must be community efforts, I can find no other way about it.
The Tarot For Programmers:
God, this could get pretty cool. You could describe how to cast the Tarot for your next work project... {;D}= That'd be pretty awesome...
You could have 16 cards per set, labeled 0-F.
When you lay out the cards, you don't do the traditional one up, one down, one right, five left, (is that right?) but rather, you lay them out in the slots of an operating system: Memory Management, The Scheduler, The Network, The Virtual File System, and IPC.
JESUS CHRIST! Somebody already thought of it..! http://www.svtarot.com/
I'd guess that 80-90% of programming is plumbing. You have a source of data over... HERE... And you need to get it... over THERE.
Your job is to find out what cabling is stretched across the code, where you can route data, where you have to avoid other data, and a few zipper-like places were you have to have it flow across a few others.
Since the computer world is n-dimensional, rather than 3-dimensional, it's probably going to be helpful to have mathematics as a compass to guide you.
It'd be interesting to look on the web for evidence of the "Try Harder" strategy. Point out it's failings. Show that proponents are frequently marketters.
"Try Harder" is a myth.
Motivation is complex.
Let's study it carefully.
"If I could just concentrate on one thing long enough..." "I must have attention deficit disorder..."
Teens accused with having ADD are quite capable of sustaining concentration when it comes to watching women and playing video games. Hmm, why is that? And yet, when we ask them to do mind bogglingly boring and inane things, they can't seem to keep their attention focused. More drugs! That's what we need: We need ta' Drug Em'!
When you are PLAYING with a new API or a new program, stick to the computer. You need that immediate response and interactivity. You're trying to learn it's interfaces like learning a new language, trying to find the secrets to it's powers. It's critical that you butt up against the computer, and have a reference manual or something on the side. The reference manual isn't primary, it's secondary. Theoretical points that you have to learn to use the API successfully should be learned in the bathroom, on the bus, whatever.
But when you are actually trying to make something to program, and even if you are trying to debug something, you'll do your best programming away from the computer. And since you'd do it best away from the computer, actually get away from the computer. All you'll find on the computer is slashdot. At the slightest twitch of disappointment or frustration, the next thing you know, you'll either be lost in Philip Greenspun's pages, or learning about Havenco and how to make plasma in your microwave. So Stay Back!
Debugging: Print out or write up details about the data structures. Print out trace-throughs and diagram control flow on the wall. Keep data and functions that are related within spatial proximity as much as possible.
Designing: Use lots of paper. Kill trees. Pseudocode up to the point where implementation is trivial for you. (Trivial will be different for all people.) If you don't know how the interface works for something, play with the interface (which brings you to the computer; if you are playing with interface, you won't get lost). If you don't know how to solve a mathematical/computer science problem, research. To approach the computer, write down what you are researching first. Then get to the web browser, and try and learn what you need as fast as possible. If you fall into Slashdot, that's fine, don't worry about it. The moment you remember what you came to do, if you aren't bogged down, go for it! But if you don't make it, don't beat yourself out about it. Just enjoy the flow of new information. (Distraction is VERY important in our lives. Extremely Critical..! Distraction and Intelligence and Creativity and Freedom are Deeply Interconnected.)
There is an interesting paper on something the author calls the twin pattern. It's a way of getting multiple inheritance in a scheme that doesn't give it to you, but I believe it could also be modified to give you multiple interface inheritance (or even multiple inheritance) as well, in something like GTK+.
Twin classes are two classes that are always very tightly coupled. (They would be completely cohesive, except that they are two classes.)
http://www.lojban.org/
http://twistedmatrix.com/page.epy/philosophy.html
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/5/3/14109/20082
http://learninfreedom.org/
http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html
Deal with boring stuff as little as possible. If you have to do something boring often, and you like the other side of the bridge, automate away the bridge..! This is where UNIX comes really in handy; it has hoards of easy to use automation tools..!
Eugene Jarvis said it, and I suspect the others new it as well: Exploring new worlds makes games cool.
Exploring a new way of interacting with tools, things, music, or a new world even.
Mario transports us to a whole new cartoon world of Pipes, Dinosaur people, Stars, Clouds, and Princesses.
In Harry Potter, he gathers the map, and sees a whole new Hogwarts. In Mario, we discover the reverse world, behind the background. Or the new water worlds, or the secret worlds inside the pipes. The feeling that, just behind something... If only you knew the secret... ...lie something utterly amazing, new, and cool. Jeff Mintor made rave world.
Just like we experience when we are playing with code, gradually attaining a mastery, we unlock a whole new world, that both shows us something unbelievably cool, and helping us out otherwise as well.
A spirit world that helps bring love, confidence, and life to our otherwise normal life.
Games are technological shamanism, allow us to experience new realms. The realms of the Emotion, Mind and Spirit, unbounded by physical constraints.
Build worlds, Excavate worlds, Learn worlds, and may your Explorations be fruitful.
A Global ThoughtDatabase... It can be constructed...
Here's what we have to do.
Glade - Part of a book on GNOME..! VERY thorough, rather aggressive project..!
Find people who look like they know what they are doing, and
Make life easier on students and graders by providing paper with the questions already on it. Works for classroom exercises as well.
Education is not received, it is achieved.-- ???
Figure out the issues, on either side, and then make an imaginary story to tell, reveal, share, learn.
Something to try: When learning stuff, just put questions on the web.
Ideally, we could just throw questions out there. People could register their expertise, and respond rapidly. No need for mail and what not, just client and server. A person submits their questions. Another person adds their answers. Answers are logged and stored in a big database of answers. Unanswered questions are automatically flagged as unanswered, and answers are solicited from various people. People tag the nature of their question for proper distribution.
The program that houses the database and searches for answers and what not could be given accounts on various mailing lists, and told how to request answers. It would go to the mailing lists, and say, "I am blahblah. So and so has asked a question: xyzxyzxyz. Answers would be greatly appreciated." Further conversation would be forwarded to the person submitting the request. The person who not need to know where the question was answered..!
Dark vs. Light
Heavy vs. Light
Deep vs. Shallow
Serious vs. Comedic
Aa Megamisama is Light, Deep, and Comedic
Urusei Yatsura is Light, Deep, and Comedic
Nausicaa is Heavy, Deep, and Serious
Tenchi Muyo is Heavy, Shallow, and somewhere between Serious and Comedic
Akira is Heavy, Shallow, and Serious
blahblahblahblahblah more examples. =^_^=
The Harry Potter books get progressively darker, heavier, and seriouser, while maintaing great depth.
The best 3.
Urusei Yatsura
Aa Megamisama
Makurosu7
Particularly bad are such goofy techniques as making everything an object - Seriously, it's nice to have a lock on my front door, but it would be stupid for me to put one between my living room and bedroom.-- Bram Cohen
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/134297043_aloha19m.html
The Aloha Inn reminds me of the backpacker's gardens, but the backpacker's gardens did not mandate saving.
I wonder if this would work for the guy that I keep running into in downtown Seattle?
A database backed website that would ve used to ascertain the validity of various common sayings, in an attempt to get at the truth.
This isn't quite as advanced as the arguments graph, but it's a good idea none the less.
You keep a list of sayings: Old Dogs Can't Learn New Tricks, You're Never Too Old To Learn, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
Include crosslinks between related (similar or opposite, similarly categorized) sayings.
Allow people to vote on the truthfulness of a saying, and to provide reasons/stories/anecdotes for or against the sayings.
Also allow people to link to psychological papers relevant to the sayings.
http://www-class.unl.edu/alec802/class1/sld001.htm
http://powa.org/ - POWA: Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
An ingenious and wonderful collection of web pages on writing.
POWA is really something special. It's done with a lot of heart, is for free, and contributes deeply to the public wealth.
http://www.powa.org/argufrms.htm
POWA has an excellent page on how to write argumentative essays.
Here's an ultra cheezy poem I made up one night.
I want to be a bit In a com-puter I want to race Across the da-ta stream I want to be part Of a streaming video Across the circuit board Of infinity
I kind of like it. I sort of had Urusei Yatsura Movie 3's "Want to be Free" music going through my head as well.
IFF tech specs: http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/aboutiff.htm
AIFF tech specs: http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/aiff.htm
For Size:
For Delimiter:
Ex: On Windows, I was working on a packer. It transformed AIFF sound files into PSX2 VAG sound files and then packed them together. I had an old transformer that I knew worked, and I was greatly modifying it into a new one. I had to make sure it produced the same old packed files from the same old input data. I had to use windiff, but the files I were diffing were several directories away. It was wearisome moving between directories.
Solution? Copy the files from the 2nd directory to the 1st, slightly renamed. Whalah! Easy as pie. {:)}= Much less distracting.
I'll bet for spelling bees, people remember things like, "This word has no repeating letters," or, "This word has 1 repeat," or, "This word has 2 repeats." I'd do something like binary. So you associate with something that can turn into 101, which would mean, "Repeat the first ambiguous letter and the third ambiguous letter."
Make a python module that makes it easy for python processes to talk over a software bus with other python processes.
Keep it dirt simple. If it keeps over a day or two to implement, you're doing it wrong.
Harry Potter books are neat because you can ask questions about things that happen, figure things out, and everything is internally consistent. Indeed, great effort goes into making sure that things are consistent.
People hate movies without internal consistency.
I have never let schooling interfere with my education.-- Mark Twain
Beautiful story by Mark Twain about Lecturing. Preparing for Lecture. Chapter 78 of "Roughing It".
http://marktwain.about.com/library/texts/bl_roughingit_ch078.htm
Realism, Romanticism, and Politics in Mark Twain by William F. Byrne
.Mark Twain plays off romantic idealism with reserved realism. The idealist has backbone, is able to perform actions, has a strong will, but leads people (over which [s]he has influence) into bad situations. The realist is mundane, avoids trouble, bends under the wills of others, isn't necessarily an ethical character, content with charrades, just as long as everyone is okay.
Mark Twain was a utilitarian, and regarded art, fancy and fantasy and destructive towards utilitarian ends.
Now, what does my training in Surat Shabda Yoga say? The best answer that comes to mind to me is not actually from a recognized Surat Shabda Yoga teacher (though I believe he is one): Shinran, disciple of Honen. Shinran says that though a man do great actions with great intent, he may lead millions into misery. And though a man do terrible actions with malicious intent, he may lead millions into happiness. And Guru Nanak says that all things happen by the will of God (interestingly enough, Man the Machine, by Mark Twain, seems to make this concession as well), and that a man is only partially, or not at all, responsible for the results of his or her actions. The Lords of Karma will extract due pay; the Way of God is to do all actions in the Name of God, and to absolve all reward, either positive or negative, to God's plan. Living as closely in harmony as possible with Gods Will, not aligning the will with the emotional or mental castles in the sky, but rather the True Word, the Soul is led to have a backbone and hold ideals, but to live realisticly, and more importantly, Lovingingly. God Loves Every Soul, regardless of what we do.
Love the Lord thy God with all of your Strength, Heart, Mind, and Soul. Love your neighbor as your own self.
Mark Twain (SC) thought that people did actions in accord to their relatively unswayable conscience. (Man the Machine)
Philip Greenspun (and many others) said that people did actions in accord to reward. (Managing Software Engineers- very similar title to SC's paper.)
I have to side with PG. Also, in WW][, lots of people had their conscience change with accord to the German state's nazi conscience. There is a chilling display of this in Osamu Tezuka's "Adolf".
http://www.fabjob.com/video.html
A character who absorbs the player/main character until the character is mesmerized in the symbols and characters. As the mathematician finishes explaining the proof, the character finds him or her self in a different world...
Lost Lost Angels: Angels that got lost, following Satan. That is, they meant to be lost angels, but lost their way on the way.
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm Article from "The Law".
Avedon Carol, Feminists Against Censorship. Author of Nudes, Prudes, and Attitudes: Pornography and Censorship.
A gothic maze. Very tall hedges, short passages. "Ceiling" of hedge maze is made of thorny rose vines.
Inside the maze is a section that is a beautiful, calm, peaceful, fushigi, Japanese garden.
Another section has a square house, with an interior organized like a maze.
In another section, the maze walls are gradually replaced by trees, and the trees give way to a forest, but the whole thing is in the shape of a maze, and is enclosed and part of the grand maze.
Artwork is traditionally very difficult for programmers to get. However, there is a huge talent base out there on the Internet. My play for getting free software games with good art is twofold.
Another advantage of bus architectures: They can get rid of the need to "pipe" data around.
Ex: I have a python program, Infinity 2. In it, I have a pluggable ui module, 'gameui.py'. I have different modules that will work, "gnomeui.py", "gtkui.py", and I'll soon have "curses.py". How do these attach to the program?
Well, the main program, infinity.py, imports the module, which needs to be copied/renamed to "gameui.py". Then, infinity.py accesses gameui.py for all UI information. For example, infinity.py tells gameui.py what the map should look like, and then asks it for user input.
The problem with this is that all access to the UI has to tunnel through infinity.py, which can be... Well, goofy. I think it'd be -
Wait, no; My bad; it's important for the pipeline to work the way it is going. If the segments knew how to talk UI, or the UI knew how to talk segments... <shudder> ...Then you'd have to either turn UI calls into segment speak, or segment calls in UI speak... I'd rather not.
5 Multinational Coprorations:
MP3.com recently bought (June 2001) by UMG (Universal Music Group).
UMG owns 16 "labels":
"Commercial Radio has been eviscerated and left for dead by the rise of Clear Channel Communications in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which lifted media-ownership restrictions." ..?
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/01/29/cover-lewis.shtml
Here is a guess of what ideas are like:
People are thinking about one thing. Something is the "flavor for the day" in the media. Someone is in a trial, and everyone has an opinion on guilty/innocent/whatever.
Issues are brought forward, and given to the public.
YOU, a member of the public, have 10 minutes to make up your mind on how you feel on the issue. You are, hopefully, given some of the arguments on either side. There is very little time, since the issues are always changing, the dynamic always shifting.
You fish around in your experience, reflect on your culture, and make the best decision you can.
If any issue comes forward, there will generally be those who are pro, and those who are con. The split will stabilize and balance, as the undecided pick up the slack for the losing side. The losers will be a little more agressive than the winners, too, and thus will push to pick up the slack as well.
Thus, regardless the issue, about 50% will be pro, and 50% will be con.
They key then, is to choose the issues carefully. If some group wants to do some activity that only has 25% approval, they might be able to prime the public by thrusting a related issue into view. As the public stabilizes to 50/50, or at least "maybe" approval, they can act under it's cover.
I do not know if this is an accurate modeling of the situation or not; This is my struggle to understand how minds work, and how we work as a group.
After/if I understand this, then the best I can do is to uphold the Golden Rule, the basis of ethics, in my actions.
Political Parties do not keep books that contain their previous rulings and reasons like the Judicial system does. They operate more like humans following anecdotes (frequently self contradictory), and very rarely appeal to reason. Political Parties, if they are to be successful, surf the waves of popular opinion.
The Green Party is the closest contemporary party that I can think of to the Judicial system; Ralph Nader did lots of investigation on his own, and keeps a canon of things that he believes are important, and why they are important. It's almost scientific.
Unfortunately (?), the political process does not reward consistancy, but rather, adherance to popular opinion.
Thus, if someone wants to effect (affect?) change, the person will need to surf popular opinion, but persue the truth and enact the truth, as best as he or she can. Thus, politics is inherently duplicious, as the public image must be maintained to preserve power, but the public image cannot be believed, because it is a mere product of our idocyncracies as human beings, rather than a product of reason and care.
Beware of politics who keep too close to the popular opinion, because that politician is interested solely in appealing to the public and securing his or her power; The politician is not interested in effecting positive change.
Political Parties have no center. They are defined by the moment. If you say, "What does this party believe in?" from year to year, you'll get different replies. There are themes, but even the themes change with time.
Side note: Dreams come in packages, and people generally absorb them all or nothing. Example: Philip Greenspun, Miguel De Icaza.
A girl locks herself in her room, waiting to be rescued by her handsome prince.
Little does she know, her prince is entirely fictional.
She is rescued by a fictional character.
Twist: Princess is fictional too? But that's a cop out. =^_^= Real meets fantasy, fantasy comes to aid of the Real.
I'd like to reflect on Type for a moment.
Plurality of Type: A given slice of data can belong to one or more (polymorphic) types.
Divisiblity of Data: It can be aggregate or atomic. If it is aggregate, it can be decomposible or monolithic.
Determination/Creation of Type: At runtime ("dynamic") or compile time ("static").
Visibility/Query of Type: Type can be queried at run time ("dynamic"), or only at compile time ("static"). Note that the visibility of type is different than the determination of type. For example, a compiler could determine/compute the type of a piece of data at compiletime ("static" behavior), and encode the type of the item, so that the type could be determined at runtime ("dynamic" behavior). The compiler might, say, compile in a dictionary of memory addresses to type interpretation, or make the address just before the data's address contain a 4-byte type field. This is a statically compiled type that can be dynamically be determined.
Explication/Assignment of Type: Type can be explicitly or implicitly declared. For example, in Python you say that "x=5", which implicitly says that x is an integer. In C, you say "int x=5;", which explicitly communicates that x is an integer. When you implicitly communicate type, there is not much of a difference; the type of the value is determined by the form of the value, and you must have a monomorphism from form to type.
Understanding is best when it is clear. But what are the signs of clarity?
Symmetry is one such sign. When you understand all the symmetries, and there is nothing that seems to be un-symmetric, you have a clearer understanding.
One symmetry I am having difficulty grasping right now
Another thing like Symmetry? The ability to form an image.
Combine these two; It is no accident that thought takes the form of a snowflake.
Remember that the Chinese character for "understand" is "divide".
To record useful thought, that is, things that people will find useful:
(This is what, I believe, Ted Nelson was implying with the phrase "General Schematics"; The mapping of all human thought.)
Note that if the argument graph is ever written, it will be a supergraph of the general schematic. The general schematic will be the set of correct thoughts, but the argument graph will be a set of thoughts that include incorrect thoughts. The argument graph itself will be a subset of the set of all graphs that all people could ever think.
You could make it so that when you subscribe to a mailing list, that it works like this:
You send a mail, and in the subject, you put tags within []'s. These tags are just like the tags here; you can have multiple trees, hierarchiel but non-exclusive.
People get their
http://www.bohol.ph/book.php?id=1
Take a space suit to the Ren Fair. You have to bring it in secret, maybe in a bunch of friends backpacks or something, so that they won't stop you at the door. Then you go into the maze, put on the space suit, and then run out!
GyAHAAaHaAHAHaHaHAAAAaaa!
Somehow, I suspect that it should have been "Final Fantasy: Kami Within". Since the film was about Kami, and Americans have little understanding of the Japanese conception of Kami, which is basically a form of animism, ("Ooooh! The whole thing makes sense now!") and the native religion of Japan.
I loved this movie. It touched me deeply.
Some said, "Why was it called Final Fantasy?" Not just because it has Cid; The themes of all the FF games are there, in the movie.
Lots of Naam there. =^_^= I was very happy with it.
I almost cried at several points.
I'm in the middle of Infinity2, and suddenly, I hit the drolls.
I just do not want to code a nother line on it.
I just don't want to go there.
So, what's going on?
Something continues to compell me to program; Deep in my heart, despite all of the heartarche it causes me, It continues to call me.
So I'm thinking, "Hmm, well, you've been dying to try out a rigorous testing support framework. You've been complaining 'we don't have time for that nonsense', but hey- if your motivation's fallen out and you don't feel like programming anyways, unless you really screw stuff up and don't make a backup, you absolutely cannot harm anything, now can you? Even if it's inefficient, it's forward movement, and you've not been making any with your zero motivation."
Note to self: Motivation is the root of all action. Remember that, continue to ingrain it in yourself. Motivation is the root of all action. Motivation is the root of all action. Motivation is the root of all action.
Observe Motivation, do not fall for bullying your brain. Stupid, backwards, self destructive. When there is true need, trust that that will be motivation enough; Nobody has to bully their brain when there is a true need- the brain just knows and understands.
A program that helps you find what Confucius would say in various circumstances.
Multiply Categorize them, and then let the reader sift through the categories.
Include original GIF images from confucius.org; I'm sure that they'd approve if you asked.
Ex: Lead through policies, discipline through punishments, and the people may be restrained but without a sense of shame. Lead through virtue, discipline through the rites, and there will be a sense of shame and conscientious improvements.
That would be categorized under the following: Leadership Improvement, Leadership Virtue, Leadership Discipline, Leadership Punishment, Leadership Policy, Individual Improvement, Individual Virtue, Individual Discipline, Individual Conscience Shame,
It's interesting to note that if you just change it from "lead the people" to "lead your mind", it works just as well. I suppose you could imagine leading the voices and personalities within your mind. This is integration.
"Exploring the old and deducing the new makes a teacher."
Individual Teacher, Learning FromOld, Learning Research, Thought Deduction, Progress
http://confucius.org/english/ed0312.htm
In ancestral offerings, their presence should be felt. In sacrificial offerings to the gods, the gods' presence should be felt. Confucius said, "It is as if I had not made the offerings if I do not feel their presence."
http://confucius.org/english/ed0408.htm
To hear the Tao in the morning, You can die without regret in the night. (Master said, Morning Hearing Tao, Night Death What (?))
http://confucius.org/english/ed0412.htm
Confucius said, "Confuct guided by profit is cause for much complaint."
The Master said, "Simple meals, water to drink, bent elbow for pillow: therein is happiness. Riches and position without righteousness are to me as the floating clouds."
Einstein: "A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy."
Confucius said, "My virtue is from heaven. What can Huan T'ui do to me?"
I believe that somewhere in the Bible, Jesus said something like: Your treasure is where your heart is. Store your treasure in heaven, that way it'll never be stolen.
Lun Yu 2:15 (Chapter 2, Verse 15)
The Master said, "To learn without thinking is labour in vain. To think without learning is desolation."
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/BBoard.html
http://www.psych.ukans.edu/faculty/rsnyder/hoperesearch.htm
crsnyder (a t) ukans.edu
Rick Snyder researches hope:
In particular, I define hope as a thinking process in which the person clearly conceptualizes goals, but also perceives that s/he can produce the pathways to these goals and can initiate and sustain movement along those selected pathways.-- C.R. Snyder
I think of "hope" as more of an indicator, rather than a driving element, of successful action. His definition of hope is a little odd too: Imagine someone that is locked inside of a sunken submarine. If they are waiting for someone to rescue them, they are said to be "hope"-ing to get out, right? While they can clearly conceptualize the goal of getting out, [s]he probably don't perceive that [s]he can produce the pathways to these goals and can initiate and sustain movement along those selected pathways.
I would suspect that hope is a product of various things. In general, I would suspect that it is the product of character/integrity, interest/motivation, and some other things that I haven't thought of yet.
Unfortunately, his papers aren't on the web. {:(}=
http://www.igc.org/gadfly/liberal/newspeak.htm
Interestingly, quoted Confucius, who I hadn't recognized as putting propaganda into the spotlight, when he said:
"The Rectification of Names consists in making real relationships and duties and institutiions conform as far as possible to their ideal meanings... When this intellectual reorganization is at last effected, the ideal social order will come as night follows day - a social order where, just as a circle is a circle and a square a square, so every prince is princely [and] every official is faithful... (Confucius, as described by Hu Shih)
Another interesting quote, from Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World Revisited:
"Certain educators... disapproved of the teaching of propaganda analysis on the grounds that it would make adolescents unduly cynical. Nor was it welcomed by the military authorities, who were afraid that recruits might start to analyze the utterances of drill sergeants. And then there were the clergymen and the advertisers. The clergymen were against propaganda analysis as tending to undermine belief and diminish churchgoing; the advertisers objected on the grounds that it might undermine brand loyalty and reduce sales."
Basically, people in power don't want people to question them and analyze their language. Now that I think of it, Socrates was an advocate for propaganda analysis (arguing against Protagorus).
In the Surat Shabda Yoga, the union of the Soul with the Word, the choice of "Name"/"Word" as the primary identifier for the Living Life Force is a sign of awareness of propaganda.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0059%2C012&query=263a
Regarding "Junk Science" and Other Detritus http://www.igc.org/gadfly/pomo/junk.htm
http://www.greens.org/lcurve/QuakerDialogue.htm
http://www.greens.org/lcurve/
Q: Why the width of a football field? Q: If you took a 100 bill from the tall part, and put one on everything that wasn't the tall part, how much would the top part move down? How much would this help the world?
Of course, there's an inherent danger in such concentrated power. The propaganda capabilities alone are frightening.
The 7 Vices of Highly Creative People The Seven Vices of Highly Creative People
Awesome article. {:)}=
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/02/09/sevenvices/
Libertarians are frequently saying, "We'll use boycott and social awareness to correct the problems of the world, not Law."
When do you ever hear of a Libertarian leading a boycott, or working to adjust social awareness for the better?
Teach because it's such a pain to learn from books. When a person can learn interactively with another, it's the most natural and easy things. We have to work at books though. We should all learn, and teach what we have learned. We should be happy and volunteering to teach others, busting at the seams to show others within two hours, what it took us days to learn.
http://www.mathsoft.com/asolve/plouffe/plouffe.html
http://chuhsi.chonnam.ac.kr/english/event/sjy/sjy3.html
http://www.theonion.com/onion3726/video_game_character.html
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?date=2001-07-30
http://www.scheme.com/tspl2d/index.html
http://www.bad-managers.com/rumours/story021.shtml
Log any play that you commit in a new computer programming language. Make a file, and keep notes in it. If it's not too ugly, put it on the Internet for others to see.
Playing with stuff gives you a "positive emotional return". That is, when you are playing, you invest a little positive emotional energy, and get back a larger amount.
I'm coming to think that the development process is:
Play with some elements for no goal but fun, and sculpture. (Losing yourself in creativity- enjoying MAKING things). If it's no fun or too hard or frustrating, either do something simpler, or do something else. If you are not having a good time, don't blame yourself or get mad at yourself (emotional returns less and less), rather, try something else, or simplify/gradiate what you are working on. Trust that construction is inherently fun- it is! If you aren't having a good time, do something simpler, or do something else.
After it has developed a certain amount, you will know your interfaces (or medium). You are now in a position to be able to plan something, and then implement it. Plan down to the level of trivialness - to the level where you can say, "and from then on thus it's trivial and easy for me." Then you can implement that thing. If you have problems with it, you can go back to play, or back to design, or whatever. {:)}=
There are a million ways to go wrong, but only a few ways to go right. So study the ways to go right, and don't pay as much attention to the ways to go wrong.
It can be useful to see some of the more aggregious and common ways to go wrong, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes, but a full on classification of ways to go wrong probably won't get you very much. Why? Because there are a million ways to go wrong, and only a few ways to go right.
This may be what Jesus Christ meant when he said that the way to heaven was straight and narrow, but the way to hell is crooked and broad. It's much easier to go wrong than it is to go right. The same is true in programming. Find people who do it right, and study them, copy them, try to refine or improve on their technique.
Of course, this doesn't mean "don't try to find new ways of doing things", and that you should abandon thought in the name of tradition. Generally, though, students are too eager to find the new undiscovered way. Considering themselves "untainted" by learning, they try new things. One in a million stumbles upon something cool. But generally, it's the cutting edge experts in the field who are really advancing things, really moving things along. These are the people that we should become first, and then advancing the field will come naturally.
http://www.ibissoft.se/oocontr/basu.htm - a woofoo aery faery article on just how, dude, Object Oriented Programming is like, totally Quantum..!
Let me throw rocks at OO programming for a moment.
"In recent months however, a new metaphor has entered our conceptual vocabulary. In the midst of the explosive emergence of new information technologies the seeds of a new organizing principle have been sown and the time has come to explore this principle.
If the challenge is to manage changeability, scalability and competencies of an organization in an environment defined by simultaneous multi-dimensional change then the organizing principle must be closer to the characteristics of organic phenomena than to the austere clarity of an engineering event. It must be closer to the amorphism and differentiation of quantum phenomena than the mechanics of Euclidean geometry, it must be closer to the self-organizing phenomena of Chaos theory than the static building block metaphors of the factory.
Object Orientation is a metaphor describing the newest concepts of organizing information. It portrays information systems as clusters of capabilities which can interact in various ways given varying environmental triggers. The same capability can manifest itself differently and interact with its environment differently depending on the environment within which it is invoked. An object is an encapsulation of some data and behavior that are associated with one another. An object as an encapsulated bundle of potentiality can then be ascribed a set of interactive capabilities depending upon the universal set of usages it can survive in. This information object can then inherit and pass on its attributes from and to other objects.
Without engaging in a long discussion of Object technology let us just use the above description as a sufficient fundament to apply this metaphor to the issue of the organizing principle itself."
- http://www.ibissoft.se/oocontr/basu.htm "Beyond the Matrix: A new principle of organization in the era of multidimentsional change."
"Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is currently being hyped as the best way to do everything from promoting code reuse to forming lasting relationships with persons of your preferred sexual orientation. This paper tries to demystify the benefits of OOP. We point out that, as with so many previous software engineering fads, the biggest gains in using OOP result from applying principles that are older than, and largely independent of, OOP. Moreover, many of the claimed benefits are either not true or true only by chance, while occasioning some high costs that are rarely discussed. Most
seriously, all the hype is preventing progress in tackling problems that are both more important and harder: control of parallel and distributed applications, GUI design and implementation, fault tolerant and real-time programming. OOP has little to offer these areas. Fundamentally, you get good software by thinking about it, designing it well, implementing it carefully, and testing it intelligently, not by mindlessly using an expensive mechanical process." -- Abstract to Objecting to Objects, by Stephen C. Johnson, Melismatic Software
There's a lot of weirdage out there.
Here's another one:
http://www.dis.port.ac.uk/~chandler/OOLectures/database/database.htm
Any time a text has a sentance "the new Object Oriented Paradigm", you can safely ignore the rest of the article.
A game wherein the primary evil is the instator of all things Object Oriented. Written in C.
The thought that was never categorized and placed next to related thoughts... ...never happened.
In class, we need to be typing quicker, getting around the system quicker, creating programs with "main()" quicker, etc., etc.,. Editing faster, what not.
We need a SPEED session.
We need to not just be able to do things and understand how they work, we also need *speed*. Also, we can't handle the context switches from lecture to instruction. Each student needs a computer, logged in, right where they are.
UNIX Python Mail Client with Filters: Pygmy
http://www.dis.port.ac.uk/~chandler/OOLectures/database/database.htm
Chapter 1 is one of the best intros to OOP that I have ever seen. One of the few respectable books in Object Oriented Prorgamming.
http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/objc/objctoc.html
The author actually makes... Arguments! That make sense! The author also makes.. Concessions! The author does not say that OOP will rule the world, or whatever. Unfortunately, we find some naive passages like the following:
Functions are typically tied to particular kinds of data structures devised for a specific program. The interaction between data and function is an unavoidable part of the interface. A function is useful only to those who agree to use the same kind of data structures it accepts as arguments. Because it hides its data, an object doesn't have this problem. This is one of the principal reasons why classes can be reused more easily than functions.
Unfortunately, what we find is that, classes have huge reuse problems, and are not significantly better at encapsulating things away. I could write: "A class is useful only to those who agree to use the same kind of objects it accepts as arguments.".
All in all though, it is exceptionally well written and argued. I consider it a hidden text, since it is not as publicized as the Design Patterns book. Little Known Secret: Objective C is more object oriented than C++. Better Known Secret: The syntax of ObjectiveC is heinous. I can't believe that you can't reorder arguments that you were just forced to name..! Objective C: Because Horizontal is better than Vertical.
A community of crackers worldwide establish enough "weaponry" to build their own country. Their weaponry is cracking capabilities; They will crack and destroy various key sites in the world unless the world respects what the crackers consider to be their home territory, the Internet.
The crackeres take control of DNS infrastructure, and plant key people in major communication and coding decision making.
Have you ever wondered, looking over a city of millions, how extraordinarily few critical apps there are? PHP becomes a standard. This story is an explanation about why. It relies on fuzzy and downright bad thinking, but damn, what an entertaining and fun story it is..!
The crackers control transition to new Internet Protocols, make demands on Intellectual Property laws (which they regulate themselves), and various other things like that. They become a force unto themselves. They print their own money, route their own mail, host their own servers, and even have a military of crackers. Dual Citizenship is legal, and they have citizens all about the world.
One should guard against inculcating a young man {or woman} with the idea that success is the aim of life, for a successful man normally receives from his peers an incomparibly greater portion than the services he has been able to render them deserve. The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving. The most important motive for study at school, at the university, and in life is the pleasure of working and thereby obtaining results which will serve the community. The most important task for our educators is to awaken and encourage these psychological forces in a young man {or woman}. Such a basis alone can lead to the joy of possessing one of the most precious assets in the world - knowledge or artistic skill.
This fits perfectly with my definition of PhilipGreenspun success, vs. true success.
http://guir.berkeley.edu/projects/denim/
Another good thing about reading other people's code is that it keeps your attention on code. It helps reinforce your mind's interest in code and learning to code, and keeps it absorbed in code.
I just realized how odd the sensation of playing an RPG can be.
Generally, when I play, I think, "How can I advance my character?"
I think a better way to play, however, is to think: "How can I enrich this experience for others?"
We play role playing games, but why? To try out different roles and what not, but I think more importantly, to play out scenes from things we like with our friends. We like reading the Hobbit and watching Star Wars and opening these temporary doors to other realms (why? Why? WHY? Is it a search for something missing, or a manifestation of Internal Freedom, or what? I think there's much more than just the standard, "It's an escape [it's a trap]".) Anyways, I think it would be much better to play as a service for others.
What kind of game would people like to play? What would your co-players like? What can you give them in that vein?
How to Find Friends in Internet Age
Go to google.org.
Type in where you live, and what you are interested in.
I typed in, "Seattle Anime Computers".
Follow links to personal pages, and look for meeting places.
I wonder if we could start philes in big city urban areas... Among 50 people with similar interests, they should be able to buy an office or house. Say each paid $10.00/month, that's $500/month. $300 goes to an office, $200/month goes to procurements.
For an anime phile, for instance, $200/month buys, say, 8 anime videos each month, which can form an internal library.
Make fees for lost videos $50.00: Enough to buy back the lost video, and a new video (of the choosing of the person who lost a video- this provides more incentive to cooperate). Make fees for late videos $10.00/week late. Steep fees increase enforcement, and bring in more funds for development.
Ideally, you'd like a place that is accessible to everyone, and always open. How do you make sure that it is always staffed by someone trustworthy? Video surveilance is a cheap way that you can do it. Video cams are always off. If any theft occurs, the person who is responsible for shutting off video is responsible for the theft. Exceptions for running out of disk space, and what not. Video is accessible via the web site. Achives are kept AWAY from the site for security reasons.
Never met, probably never will.
Living in Seattle:
Here's a wild idea: Say you plan on calling a function a lot. It's a relatively complex area, lots of interlinks. You add to this function an argument, a char*. Call it, "WhatTheFuck".
When you call the function, you put information about what you are doing in the WhatTheFuck spot.
Example:
int add( int x, int y, char* what_the_fuck )
{
return x + y;
}
int main()
{
int a;
int b;
a = 5;
b = add( a, 75, "Adding 5 to a for an example." );
return 1;
}
When someone is debugging the "add" function, they can look at the "what_the_fuck" variable to see what the context is for the interaction.
Now, obviously, you'd want to be in a circumstance a tad more complex than an "add" function. But it could be helpful. You'd also be more prone to see things like, "Doing cheezy hack for 565 graphics", which would signal you that something odd is going on, and what to look for. Runtime impact is *pretty* small.
I don't know if this is a good idea or not, it's just an idea. I make no defences for it.
Something I posted to Kuro5hin follows:
I agree that our bodies and brains/minds are machines.
I disagree, however, that human minds are aware. How could they be? Your distinction between hardware machinery and software machinery is naive.
Human minds are machines just like the rest of this universe. Machines are incapable of posessing awareness. They can rotate, associate, categorize, index, and a whole host of activities that people call "consciousness".
None of this is awareness. For any person (other than yourself), you are incapable of determining if there is an awareness within that machine or not. You can only observe as you, and no one else. You cannot prove to another that you are aware.
Many people describe their philosophy as dual: There is mind, and there is matter. My philosophy is tripartite: There is awareness, and then there is mind and matter. Mind and matter are little different from one another, they are both machine, so perhaps I should call my system dual. From the perspective of the mind/matter world view, however, my philosophy is tripartite.
This universe, even our minds within it, are machines passing before the eyes and ears of our awareness.
There is machine, and there is awareness. Never will the two mix.
Jaron Lanier is the only other person I have read that I have had deep agreement on awareness with. He and I have independently come to the same conclusions. Here are Jaron Lanier links and quotes that I have collected:
JK Rowling likes to put little easter eggs in her story. It makes the reader speculate about the past and future in the story. It makes you ask:
It says, "Are you paying attention?"
Games do the same thing with Easter Eggs. If there are easter eggs, people will look really closely, trying to find them. People like finding things.
In stories, people like speculating both into the future and into the past.
Examples from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:
Read Mailing Lists to be a good programmer! Subscribe IMMEDIATELY to mailing lists..!
I think that everyone is very intelligent, they just shunt themselves off. With the exception of people who have actual, real defects in their brains, I think everyone is naturally very intelligent. We get bogged down in watching TV, revenge, comfort, or caught up in myriad various spells. But when we aren't bogged down with those things, and when we are thinking intelligent things, a lot of the time the problem is a reluctance to communicate.
Communication is critical to intelligence.
Taken from an email I sent to Pico:
Start by just glossing over the code. You don't need to understand exactly what is going on at any given moment, just gloss over the code.
Here's an approach to looking at it:
The purpose of the 3 to 5 paragraphs that you mail to me are to tell me what you understand about the code.
One way you might want to format it is like this:
Something like that.
The format doesn't need to be exactly the same, but just something to document what you saw in the code.
Gas Guzzlers Get to Keep On Guzzling: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134297664_suv210.html
I collected these ideas by watching several internet projects. I watched the practices of the successful Internet Projects, and then tried it on my own at work. This is what I have seen to work, and have verified myself.
When you first get req's, it's very much a free association thing. People spit out their ideas for a while. Sometimes people already have their ideas in mind, which have been growing through time, and will just throw them out, other times, people haven't fully thought things through or have conflicting ideas, and will hash them out in an argument [hopefully - the idea is to excite people's brains and get what fizzes or explodes out] on the mailing list.
Encourage this process along. First, invite people to add to whatever it is you are requesting. Talk with some people in person, summarize their ideas, and post them, so that other people can see what is going on. If people see other people doing it, they'll want to participate themselves. They don't want to be the first to post. [That's why it can be good to approach them individually, writing up what they say, and then post it to the list as XYZ said "blahblahblah".] Remember, nobody wants to shop at a store that nobody goes to. Put a human drama into it; People like interacting with other people.
Keep people updated on what others are saying. Write, "Okay, here's what I've heard from y'all- is this right?"
Go fast; keep the energy going, keep the ball rolling.
Credit Contributors; Encourage Contribution..!!
When someone volunteers something, or steps into new territory by asking a good question, reinforce them, and reinforce their question, so that it is more likely to receive response, and further thought, and so that people will feel more comfortable with going out on a limb to get responses.
Computer Programming is very similar to writing.
Computer Program Sculptures: Programs with no purpose but to practice, get a single idea out, or play. Senseless stream of thought coding, in your head, in a notebook, or at a computer.
I wonder if the reason that Phil G wants his coders to learn to write well is so that they can communicate with each other better or so that they can communicate with the machine better! The processes of writing code and writing for others seems almost identical. Play with things to a level where you feel okay with the "API", then design and write something big. =^_^= It'd be interesting to see what JK Rowling has to say about the subject.
Commercial Non-Free games (less abhorant than Non-Commercial Non-Free games..!) could release their game art after, say, 5 years. That would provide a wealth of artwork for Free game programmers..!, and wouldn't endanger the game company the slightest bit. They'd probably want to exhempt trademark figures, but backgrounds, creatures, etc., etc., should be fine..!
http://www.cablingdirectory.com/techinfo/modularinfo/jacksplugs.htm
RJ11 is standard 4 or 6 prong phone jacks.
RJ45 is standard 8 prong jacks that support CAT5 ("category 5") cables.
Tom 7 http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/play/
http://www.conglomerate.org/
You should be able to say, "Show me the things that I worked on on XYZ date."
Applications should be able to "pin" files to the calendar, so that they appear on the calendar or time line.
Also, make it so that the calendar can retain a reference to the file/inode. When the file is deleted from a directory, there is still a hold to it from the calendar.
When the user wants to truly delete it, they can say, "Drop reference" on the calendar item. Perhaps calendar referenced items go away automatically after 1 year, or some other user directed unit of time.
Why is this such a good idea? Because often times, we index the files in our mind by, "The thing I was working on yesterday", or, "The thing I was working on last month."
We don't necessarily want to make a huge directory structure to negotiate them; we'd like to just locate it by date.
This idea is a subset of the file markings by multiple names.
Well, it's very ranty.
In spite of this; it does provide a useful taxonomy. There's stuff in here worth pulling out and extracting from the swamp of sentances suggesting that the authors of books are imperialists, and that games are the true realm of The Free. Personally, I consider games to be traps.
I'd like it if the program that receives mail could announce on a bus line that mail was present, and give some form of link back to the mail that was just sent in.
A taskbar applet (in GNOME, say) could, whenever mail was received, stream the text onto the screen. Maybe the whole file, maybe just the first 100-500 bytes, whatever; It would be user customizable. If the user clicked on the mail, it would take the user to the default mail client, and boot up the mail program.
Best: If the user was at the computer, and if the whole mail was displayed by the applet, the mail would be marked as read. A bus message would say, "MarkMailAsRead", with the mail identifier as a piece of attached data.
MIDI Technical Fanatic's Brainwashing Center
http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html
"Executives Reap All the Benefits While Workers Just Sow" by Mike Cohen. Looks like it's part of the Marion County UU.
Good articles on game design: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/index_designers_notebook.htm
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm
Required:
Not required, but helpful/useful:
Others to classify and possibly add: * Seek out Quality. This is in part a direct response to the postmodernists (sorry, Larry Wall- the world does not think of the same thing you think of when the word 'PostModern' comes up); Seek out quality, and use reductionist thinking (like Feynman advocates) to find out what makes something richer or poorer in quality. Analyze. * Love God. I have to qualify this: Some of my athiest friends are the best theists I know, and some of my theist... aquaintenses... Are.. frankely... death eaters. God is Life. If you call yourself an athiest, just interpret this as Love Life and consider it agreed. The essence of the thing is the only thing worth consideration or focus, do not be concerned with the outermost form. This applies to the word God, it applies to many things, almost everything. (Exception: When you are programming, you need to make sure you get the form of the thing right as well, but that in itself is an essense all in it's own.) * Persue essense before form.
Keep the next thing in mind as you are doing one thing.
That way, your attention will be wholly wrapped up in what you are doing, what needs to be done, and your mind will not go into idle chatter and pull you out of work.
Taking this idea a little further: If you are having trouble doing something- You keep getting distracted, or some other things keep getting in the way, do the following: Imagine yourself doing it in your head. This will allow you to think clearly for a few moments without external distraction. You can build grooves in your mind, "After this happens, I do this." You formulate a little plan in your mind, and do it over 1, 2, or 3 times in your mind. Then, when you do it outside of your head, you will be able to do the action much better, and with much less distraction.
Besides, if you cannot do it in your mind, you certainly can't do it in the world..!
(This was actually, rather romantically, taught to me by a sufi who had me work on some rugs with him when I had free time. Tres cool.)
Quite possibly my favorite Internet article of all time, The Seven Vices of Highly Creative People.
In short (but do read the article...),
I would, personally, exchange debt for illegal drugs, but that's just me.
GREAT PDF on determinants:
http://www.cs.uleth.ca/~holzmann/notes/det.pdf
http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/mantble.html
Mark Twain, various themes:
People Seek Self-Approval. People Are Stupid.
Mark's a little too cynical for me; While he writes to one person (myself), and is making effective argument, he seems to be telling me that convincing individuals is not important. I kind of find it amusing that an aery-fairy new-age woo-foo argument so aptly counters him: "It matters to that one.", the starfish quote. A man is throwing star fish into the sea, and someone says, "Why are you doing that? It doesn't matter," to which the guy replies, "It matters to that one."
As for his insistance that people seek self-approval, it's just another way of saying, "People do what they believe is right." Painting doing what you believe to be right as selfish activity is absurd, and semantic world play. OB-1 Kenobi said the same thing: "Of course, you must do what you believe is right," or something like that, when Luke says something to the effect of, "I can't fight against the empire!" in ep4.
"There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle as real strength." St. Francis de Sales
I saw this on a slashdot sig.
Tom Musgrove made up an excellent system utilizing groupware for the Ximian team.
Ideas I am less excited by:
Mark Twain hated stupidity. I think he hated stupidity, he hated hypocracy, he hated injustice. He didn't just hate them, he took it too a whole new level; he brooded over it. He couldn't forgive humanity, and, therefore, couldn't forgive himself. He cursed the world around him, and hoped that God would curse it as well.
Samual Clemens was a torchered soul.
Forgiveness is a virtue... Lemme do a net search for "Samual Clemens Forgive". Hm.. Hardly anything. Let's try another. "Samual Clemens Forgiveness". I need to try for Mark Twain instead.
Ah: "Forget and forgive. This is not difficult, when properly understood. It means you are to forget inconvenient duties, and forgive yourself for forgetting. In time, by rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy." - Mark Twain
Here's a Jewel, to counter the above's dark spirit.
If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. He would not stoop to ask for any man's compliments, praises, flatteries; and He would be far above exacting them. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards.
He would not be a merchant, a trader. He would not buy these things. He would not sell, or offer to sell, temporary benefits of the joys of eternity for the product called worship. I would have Him as dignified as the better sort of man in this regard.
He would value no love but the love born of kindnesses conferred; not that born of benevolences contracted for. Repentance in a man's heart for a wrong done would cancel and annul that sin; and no verbal prayers for forgiveness be required or desired or expected of that man.
In His Bible there would be no Unforgiveable Sin. He would recognize in Himself the Author and Inventor of Sin and Author and Inventor of the Vehicle and Appliances for its commission; and would place the whole responsibility where it would of right belong: upon Himself, the only Sinner.
He would not be a jealous God--a trait so small that even men despise it in each other.
He would not boast.
He would keep private Hs admirations of Himself; He would regard self-praise as unbecoming the dignity of his position.
He would not have the spirit of vengeance in His heart. Then it would not issue from His lips.
There would not be any hell--except the one we live in from the cradle to the grave.
There would not be any heaven--the kind described in the world's Bibles.
He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when he could have made him happy with the same effort and he would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
Programs should be able to say, ...or,
You could have installer programs that wait for programs of a particular type to be loaded onto the system, and when they are, they boot up and say, "Would you like to install xyz?"
I posted this on NewsForge...
It's obvious to me that awareness is not the product of data and algorithms. A full set of arguments requires days and days of dialog, and a mapping of that dialog, so that arguments are not repeated.
People, for the most part, want to believe that awareness is the direct product of data and algorithms, and are extremely reluctant to view anything else on deeply personal grounds. I've argued this over and over with people about it, but have only once convinced someone that all other viewpoints were bogus. It was hard work, and took years of dialog.
The only person I have ever read who was good at publicly representing my views is Jaron Lanier. Read his article: You Can't Argue With a Zombie. Not his heading line: It is impossible to awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep.
Years ago, I would have responded to your post with arguments about how awareness is fundamentally different than data and algorithms. I do not have that energy today. Some day, I would like to write a very long paper on just what is wrong with the various ideas people have about awareness, and lots of reasoning on why it is absurd to believe that awareness is the product of data and algorithms.
You know you have a thoughtful opponent when they come to the conclusion that awareness does not exist. This is a good sign, because it means that they realize that all the "Awareness comes from XYZ" arguments are bogus. (XYZ is frequently quantum mechanics, parallel computation, or some sort of magical field.)
Some times I speculate that these people really aren't aware. They generally misconstrue these ponderings as personal ad hominum attacks, however.
When I was 11 or 12, I called a Borland technical support engineer. I explained that I was having a problem calling the borland CGI (computer graphics interface) function xor_put. We talked for a while as he asked various details about the program, until he figured out that I was passing a structure, when I should have been passing a pointer. "Do you know what a pointer is?" he asked me, in a similar manner in which I might ask Sakura, "Do you know what an airplane is?" I said no, and he explained it to me, but I didn't quite get it. (I did get the program working, however.) I was determined to figure out what a pointer was, afterwards, though, and thus began a few years journey into figuring out just what a pointer was, and what it was good for. I always like this memory, because it just amuses me to no end that some engineer in a big company that produces computers was answering a support call for a 12 year old who couldn't figure out what a pointer was. I just imagine him laughing with his coworkers about the call nobody would believe he had just answered.
http://hadess.net/
Catalogue of game plots, by S. John Ross:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/plots.htm
http://www.sfpg.com/animation/liteBrite.html#
It strikes me that a common ailment of lots of software is that it is written to grow too fast, and fails under its own weight.
For example, a simple packer, except that all of the classes have Init and Term functions. Why do they have Init and Term functions? Because the class might one day need it's initialization and termination times carefully controlled.
It might, after all!
The problem with this, is that you have a bunch of useless function. It's really confusing- why does it have Init and Term? It would only need those if Init and Term times needed to be controlled. In our simple app, do they need to be controlled? No, of course not. Our little app could have the manager (another problem in itself...) global, for all it cares. We do not need to control the times. The code falsly implies that the times do need to be controlled.
At best, the code is misleading. At worst, terribly confusing, and butt ugly.
This is just like in writing: You don't want sentances that don't contribute to the story. The same thing here: You don't want controls that don't contribute to the program.
jgray@writeme.com invited me to talk with him if I need help getting into the GNOME culture.
I've also corresponded with him before, with regards to The Memory HOW-TO, which unfortunately still does not reference The Memory Book..!
Odd that we've met through two different encounters; I don't know if he has them linked in his mind.
http://www.amiallyourbaseornot.com/?pic=BGFI
Good article by a homosexual christian on God, social mores, the church, religion.
http://www.whosoever.org/v3i4/intelligent.html
Unfortunately, I think he doesn't realize that one of the most important elements of a society, from a sociological standpoint, is exclusion.
Other than that, though, it's a very well written article that I heartily agree with.
http://www.lwsloan.com/contents/main.html
http://www.lwsloan.com/contents/book.htm#chap5
http://www.lwsloan.com/main/home.htm
I would like to subdivide the sections above to point more directly into the book.
Some guys Maze creation program. Why doesn't he give source? Whatever.
http://www.flint.umich.edu/Departments/ITS/crac/maze.form.html
Do parents have any important long-term effects on the development of their child's personality? This article examines the evidence and concludes that the answer is no. A new theory of development is proposed: that socialization is context-specific and that outside-the-home socialization takes place in the peer groups of childhood and adolescence. Intra- and intergroup processes, not dyadic relationships, are responsible for the transmission of culture and for environmental modification of children's personality characteristics. The universality of children's groups explains why development is not derailed by the wide variations in parental behavior found within and between societies.
Where Is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development
http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/contemps/barbauld/poems1773/related_texts/gregory.html
http://www.neonatology.org/classics/cadogan.html
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/phinow2.htm
http://www.linux.com/newsitem.phtml?sid=93&aid=8454
Culture Clash (Linux die hards, devs, etc.,.)
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/987693943/index_html
Me, on the GNOME community
Joshua's MUD:
dune.net 8000
package-oriented programming pop
mega-scale component reuse
Brendan Reville
Local (Seattle) Game Programmer;
Makes interesting games.
Plays with the medium. (Artistic Programming.)
Bauxbatons Cuties {:D}=
http://home.nordnet.fr/~dbino/r9914.html
http://www.angelfire.com/wy/sirius/images/staff.jpg
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/child/book/book.html#III
The Mother's Book, by Mrs. Child
Perhaps you will say, that as your children grow older, they cannot help learning that a rose is a vegetable, the andirons a metal, &c; and you will ask what is the use of teaching it to them a few years earlier than they would naturally take to find it out of themselves. I readily allow that the knowledge itself is of very little consequence to them; but the habits of attention and activity of mind, which you give them, are worth everything. If you take the trouble to observe, you will find those who are the most useful, and of course the most successful, in any department, are those who are in the habit of observing closely, and thinking about what they observe. Why is it that a botanist will see hundreds of plants in a field, which the careless stroller may pass again and again without perceiving? It is because his attention has been fixed upon plants. How is the great novelist enabled to give you such natural pictures of life and manners? A close attention to all the varieties of human character, enables him to represent them as they are. You will find that a smart, notable housewife is always an 'observing woman.' What constitutes the difference between a neat, faithful domestic, and a heedless, sluttish one? One pays attention to what she is about, and the other does not. The slut's hands may be very dirty, but she does not observe it; every time she takes hold of the door, she may leave it covered with black prints, but she does not observe it. One educated to attend to things about her, would immediately see these defects and remedy them. We often hear it said, 'Such a person has good sense, and good feelings; but, somehow or other, he has no faculty.' The 'faculty' that is wanting is nothing more or less than active habits of observation acquired in early life. Those who give their attention exclusively to one thing, become great in that one thing; and will in all probability be careless and unobserving about everything else. This sort of character is not desirable; for if it makes a man greater in one particular branch, it much impairs his general usefulness. In a woman it is peculiarly unfortunate; for, whether she be rich or poor, the sphere allotted her by Providence requires attention to many things.
http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/Reports/GiveMeaFake/stossel.html
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/facfaq.htm
An excellent article on the feminist stance on pornography.
Research attempting to demonstrate a causal link between images and violence has not been able to show such a link. Research on offenders demonstrates that poverty, actual violence, and abuse in the personal lives of offenders - and not media images - are the crucial factors in creating a tendency toward violence and criminal behaviour. Research on serious sex offenders demonstrates that rapists and abusers have been taught repressive messages about sex, masturbation, and pornography, and that anti-pornography activism actually exacerbates the problems that lead to sexual assault and abuse.
They have several links to books and related web sites.
The really funny thing that happened when I looked up "feminists against pornography" was that the number 1 link was to "Feminists against Censorship", while the number 2 link was "Men against Pornography"..!!!
See also: The Harm of Porn: Just Another Excuse to Censor An article by Avedon Carol http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm
A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
Matthew 13:57
http://www.nwlink.com/~pauld/northlake/sermons/Sermons_Schwartz_4-2-00.html THE TEN COMMANDMENTS Carl Schwartz April 2, 2000
When there is true need, people act. When things aren't necessary, people don't.
I believe that this is why education in the USA sucks; Students do not perceive education as necessary. In other countries, people perceive education as necessary, and thus study harder.
If it is necessary that we should educate children, we should teach them why it is necessary.
If it is not necessary, we should not force them to learn at all.
Complementing Necessary Action is Free action. This is action that comes from within, from an internal nature. Traditionally, we view these things as trivial artistic persuits. That is the wrong way to view it.
Acting from impetus and inner form is critical; The study of Tao reveals these things.
Learn mathematics for the following reasons:
While writing LPSView, it occurred to me that maybe I should have put all my global data into groups, structures. That would allow me to explicate the flow of data.
For example, it would allow me to say, with confidence, "Variables ABCD and E go through paths 1,3, and 5. FGH and I go through 2 and 4. The meet in path 6, which uses variables ABEF and G."
Dangers to avoid? What if error reporting needs access to all variables. If you pipe ALL variables to each flow path, you've done *nothing* to help yourself (there is no exclusion), and just bothered your reader by dragging pointers to what are basically global variables all over the place.
One way around that is to keep your data global, but to use the structures in functions to pass information around. That way, if something needs access to ALL data, it has it, but otherwise, you'll use the structures to navigate and manipulate.
Addendum: Wed Sep 5 15:04:00 PDT 2001 I wrote "osdtool"; It used NO global data except for "errs" (an array of type "err"). I don't like it very much, because I'm piping around hoards of information in the parameters. I think that if I do what i thought before- I think that if I make a structure of the common data that's being piped around, it may turn into something positive. BUT, I might be piping MORE than is necessary around... Hmm... BUT, I retain the ability to subdivide as necessary. "When in doubt, pass more. When you can, pass less."
After much internal debate, I've decided that functions can get "too long". Functions are lists of commands.
I was of the view that whenever possible without repeating code, everything should be within one function. (I believe this is called "Temporal Cohesion", meaning that the temporal ordinality is important.)
- Another reason why you might not want to jump to another function is because it is annoying and distracting to relay error conditions back and forth.
The goal was to minimize lookups: If you have code that is only used once, that is, only called in one place, why should the reader of the code have to search through the code to find the implementation?
The answer is:
When the code reads on several levels, attention to small details interrupts the flow of the larger ideas, and they can be lost.
Also, though it may be technically unnecessary to open up new scopes/stack entries for target functions, and to copy variables into those scopes and returning them back, they can be incredibly important for the readers of code, as they explicate where the data goes, and what the data returns.
You can "inline" the functions to have them placed in the original location, but read as if they were distant.
So.
If it happens that your function is long, that may be okay! If the code is all in the same general level of complexity and detail, and along the same theme, that's right and good. Don't start throwing stuff into functions.
But if coherency is beginning to be lost due to dropping into high detail amidst low detail, or if you are starting to lose track of what variables are being used for what when, you can can gain by creating functions to encapsulate some of the data and functionality away, and explicating the flow of data in and out of the functions.
Remember that programming is much about what is not seen, as it is about what is seen.
When you read something, or see something, or when someone says something, consider it deeply. Pay attention.
Do not do, like most of the people I meet, and discard it. When you see a movie that others enjoy, but consider "a mere entertainment flick", look deeply, and reflect on it. What are the assumptions, morals, messages; Why do people like ir or dislike it? What is going on in there?
If you take the trouble to observe, you will find those who are the most useful, and of course the most successful, in any department, are those who are in the habit of observing closely, and thinking about what they observe.-- The Mother's Book, Mrs. Child
Don't say the following things:
Confront each situation as a place to learn something, to see something deeper. There is very little that is truly mundane, and cannot be improved upon.
Just a page I saw; they have a gtk+ based component project. It would be worthwhile to examine the code.
http://freespeech.sourceforge.net/overflow.html
http://www.san.beck.org/EC14-Confucian.html
http://www.carm.org/kjv/
Make sure that foreigners don't have to understand the internal working or data layout of an object.
Every time a foreigner has to remember, lookup, or figure out the internal workings or layout of your object, the foreigner (yourself, in most cases) has to break their stream of concentration in order to consider your stuff.
A certain amount cannot be avoided, but do consider this, and do interface off your code, in all but the most trivial cases.
A good time to NOT make acecssors is for simple things like little variables that do not generate events, and are just some book keeping things. These variables (at least) should be public, so that the user doesn't have to make a bulky API call just to get to a piece of data. The API code is both detrimental to the technical performance of the system, as well as obnoxious to the reader of the code.
Fin De Siecle Social Theory : Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason Says that PoMo is stupid, Modernism isn't done yet. "NeoModernism". http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859840914/ref=cm_mp_etc/102-0535850-9954554
...and, a selection from the site that Phil G pulled:
They were reluctant to get involved, saying that normally everything should be piped through the Greylock employee actually sitting on a portfolio company's board, in this case Chip Hazard, the very person whose lack of engineering experience was contributing to ArsDigita's bleed. Kaiser agreed to meet me, however, after a couple of weeks. We walked around the MIT campus for 30 minutes. When I explained the problems with the product and the financials, Kaiser said "Isn't it possible that this is just your opinion, that Allen and Chip would see it differently?"
Relativism. It was impressive in a way to see Protagoras's sophism alive and well after 2500 years. But the "all points of view are equally valid and supported only by someone's opinion" ignores the fact that it is easy to measure the correctness of business beliefs: some people are losing money and some are making money; some companies are gaining market share while others are losing market share.
(I added the link, the most important section of which is below:)
Protagoras was the author of the famous saying, "Man is the measure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not." This saying puts in a nutshell the whole teaching of Protagoras. Indeed, it contains the essence of the entire thought of the sophists. By "man" he did not mean humankind at large. He meant the individual person. By "measure of all things," he meant the standard of the truth of all things. Each individual person is the standard of what is true to himself. There is no truth except the sensations and impressions of each person. The earlier Greek philosophers made a clear distinction between sense and thought, between perception and reason, and had believed that the truth is to be found, not by the senses, but by reason. The teaching of Protagoras rests on denying this distinction.
Read this Read this on "AntiFoundationalism": http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/gallery/rhetoric/noframes/terms/antifoundation.html
Another source on relativism here: http://www.friesian.com/relative.htm
I quote two paragraphs below:
The first clear statement of relativism comes with the Sophist Protagoras, as quoted by Plato, "The way things appear to me, in that way they exist for me; and the way things appears to you, in that way they exist for you" (Theaetetus 152a). Thus, however I see things, that is actually true -- for me. If you see things differently, then that is true -- for you. There is no separate or objective truth apart from how each individual happens to see things. Consequently, Protagoras says that there is no such thing as falsehood. Unfortunately, this would make Protagoras's own profession meaningless, since his business is to teach people how to persuade others of their own beliefs. It would be strange to tell others that what they believe is true but that they should accept what you say nevertheless. So Protagoras qualified his doctrine: while whatever anyone believes is true, things that some people believe may be better than what others believe.
Plato thought that such a qualification reveals the inconsistency of the whole doctrine. His basic argument against relativism is called the "Turning the Tables" (Peritropé, "turning around") argument, and it goes something like this: "If the way things appear to me, in that way they exist for me, and the way things appears to you, in that way they exist for you, then it appears to me that your whole doctrine is false." Since anything that appears to me is true, then it must be true that Protagoras is wrong [1]. Relativism thus has the strange logical property of not being able to deny the truth of its own contradiction. Indeed, if Protagoras says that there is no falsehood, then he cannot say that the opposite, the contradiction, of his own doctrine is false. Protagoras wants to have it both ways -- that there is no falsehood but that the denial of what he says is false -- and that is typical of relativism. And if we say that relativism simply means that whatever I believe is nobody else's business, then there is no reason why I should tell anybody else what I believe, since it is then none of my business to influence their beliefs.
http://www.pdox.net/~glk/Main_Files/B3-BibleC.txt
I list homosexuality above, because people say that the reason they hate homosexuals is because the Bible says that they are bad. That is not a good reason, because the Bible says a lot of things that are unacceptable today.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/06/27/geeks.pass.time.idg/index.html
http://www.grtbooks.com/confucius.asp?idx=3&sub=5
I'd like a data analysis and diff'ing tool, x-platform, under a free license.
It would make it easy to intelligently analyze data.
How to write it? Just take a data format that you are interested in, and work it so that it can support the visualization of your data..! First on my list,... Map editors... {;D}=
Ultimately, you'd want this to be able to plug into your development package. In GTK, there would probably be a widget, or a bonobo component, or something, to allow for rapid visualization within a program.
Here's an email I sent to Scott McCloud:
Dear Scott McCloud,
I just had an idea I thought you might be interested in.
You could lay out the "panels" of your comic in the shape of a maze:
A-B-C-D-E-F-G-01-02-03-04-05
| | |
06 10-11 19-20
| |
07-09 12-16-17
| | |
08 14-13-15 18-H-I-J-K-L
The cells A-G are the exposition of how the characters came to the
maze, H-L is about what they did after they left the maze, and
01-20, which take the actual (or simplified) form of the maze that
the characters traverse, include the actual dead ends/correct path
that the characters take.
I believe that doing this would give the psychological feeling of
traversing the maze with the characters, the sense of multiple
choice, confusion, and mystery.
It would also be quite visually stunning.
Take care,
With Love,
Lion Kimbro =^_^=
A lot of times in programs, there are things to be maintained, such as counters that need to be incremented automatically.
One of the difficulties is that all of the code for maintaining the counter needs to be splayed all over the place.
Encapsulation helps us a little bit in that the code for Inc/Dec/Reset can be hidden away, but the fact remains: Your counter has to be maintained in the sense that Inc/Dec/Reset calls must appear in the right lists (that is, the right functions, which are essentially just lists of commands). Maintenance of lists must be performed, and the maintenance is prone to errors.
A large number of programming tasks are maintenances of counters, caches, and other things, just like this.
So, it would be nice if we didn't have to perform these maintenances of lists. It'd be nice if the counter could somehow be programmed on it's own, and then be hooked into our program. This is talking about our counter as a component.
At the same time, we don't want to have something as frightening as InterCal's "Come From" statement. (The logical opposite of a "GOTO".)
We'd like to be able to control where something whacky is going to happen, not just for niceness, but to also preserve atomicity between interactions, so we set up an event system. Whenever something interesting can happen, a (message/event) is sent over a (conversational space/bus). Listeners can do what they want, and our counter maintenance pieces will listen for the events that they want to count.
In this way, all code directly related to the counter is in exactly one place.
Unfortunately, I have seen no languages so far that feature built in support for buses and events... Doing busses and events in our current languages is ugly and cumbersome, though it doesn't need to be.
"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."George Bernard Shaw
Link to who he was: http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc18.html
How to Write a Popular Play: http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc18w1.html
For it is the business of Brieux to pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a monstrous confusion to men intelligently conscious of the world and its destinies.How to Write a Popular Play, by George Bernard Shaw
I think that people respect us - and that, to me, is one of the most valuable things someone can give you. I don't think that people really respect the entertainment industry. For the most part, its because they have a tendency to not respect thier audience. They continually betray the faith of the public every single day in so many ways it's abhorrent to me. I watched a thing the other day on how the top 5 media companies in the US literally milk the young population for everything they can. Young people trust them, and when all is said and done, all young people get is a little older and huge credit card debts. And some people wonder why young people are so cynical and full of rage. If your emotions were in the hands of people who were only interested in making as much money off of you as possible, wouldnt you feel pissy too?Piro
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?date=2001-05-21
When I am arguing with other people, there are two possibilities:
For example, Homosexuality: I cannot convince Cheryl that it is okay to be a homosexual. I cannot convince some fruitcakes that Tomoya (and her mom!) are lesbians. If Tomoya were to ask Sakura to lick her (beep!), she would still find reasons.
This is a problem for me because I cannot stand to see such hateful bigotry. Nothing positive is accomplished by arguing with these people, except for perhaps that I may realize that nothing can be accomplished (a positive realization). Can I be friends with a bigot? I believe that it is difficult, but possible. The key to instilling the proper humility within myself necessary for friendship is to realize that it is by no virtue of my own that I have come to see the injustice, that there is no way in which I am naturally superior to another person. The key is to realize that it is God that has given me a realization, and an insight, and that it is up to me to carry it and hold it carefully. To try in vain to convince someone who cannot be convinced is a waste of that gift. Realize that the other person (Cheryl in my case) is a human being, just like myself. While special witness has been given to me by God, that it is not necessarily a gift given to everybody, and that it is fundamentally unjust to condemn another for not having been given something.
Waters: There is still such a thing as subversive. Subversive makes hip people nervous. It's something new that scares you in a good way. I mean, subversive to me is a compliment. Subversive is something that influences people to do something against society that they haven't thought of before.
Subvert means to change something through the foundation.
The foundation of the next generation is the children of the next generation.
The most subversive thing that you can do is to write a book for children filled with Love.
Examples:
http://www.ncac.org/cen_news/cn76harrypotter.html http://books.guardian.co.uk/lrb/articles/0,6109,135352,00.html http://cecounselor.ag.org/cecounselor/200101/0101_14_harrypotter.cfm http://www.gospelcom.net/csi/chs/2000-03/harry_potter.shtml
I will have to think about subversion in terms of the Golden Rule. I am in favor of subversion, however, since I have reaped well the benefits of subversion, being the product of centuries of subversive activities before me. I cannot say that I wouldn't be nearly as tolerent of people of other races, religions, ideology, gender, and sexuality, were I born, say, 300 years ago, and weren't oppressed.
How many people were convinced that black people were okay, through reasoning? How many people were convinced that black people were okay, through subversion? What are the techniques and methods by which black people, and other races, religions, ideologies, sexualities, and genders, have found acceptance?
Research shows that DARE is ineffective, or negative.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n623/a06.html?135
Make a web serving program that allows you to write journal entries on your computer for various video games.
Addendum:
Here's a project that makes nethack scores visible via HTML: http://freshmeat.net/projects/nhscores/
http://www.geocities.com/valthepod/
With #define lists, if you see a # while debugging, it's a simple matter to look at the table and figure out which # it is. With enums, you can't. However, there are compiler/debuggers that do show you the value of the enum in the debugger. On these, enum may be the way to go. Keep in mind that if you print the # (and thus it is beyond the reach of the debugger), you can't decypher it, however. With enums, you can only decode if you have a debugger. (Or a helper function.) Another place where you'll see the #s: in files. Unless you have a custom file examining program, you won't be able to decode.
Computers are the tools of the devil. It is as simple as that. There is no monotheism strong enough that it cannot be shaken by Unix or any Microsoft product. The devil is real. He lives inside C programs.
The OO community annoys me for a few reasons:
* Brainwashing the public.
- Many people going to my classes, in the first few lessons, say,
"Am I going to learn Object-Oriented programming?"
- When I was first learning to program, I bought it hook, line, and
sinker. Raised to believe that education was something that
was copied into your head through authoritative books and lectures,
I didn't stop to think critically about what I was reading.
- Much later, I read Design Patterns.
- It was a full year before I thought it might be a good idea
to critically and deeply read the first half.
* Inane arguments.
- OO programming is a new realm of thinking, a whole new way of
looking at the world...
- Try it, and be amazed!
* Rewriting history; Successfully
- OO bigots claim that the entire world was using functional
languages, and GOTO's were the rule, until OO came along and
cleaned things up.
- I've researched on my own, and found discussion on just the
principles that are the good parts of OO:
- Look for "coupling", "cohesion", structured design.
It's all there: Encapsulation and Polymorphism, just not by those names.
Let's look again at Component-Oriented Programming:
Component-Oriented Programming = Polymorphism + (Really) Late Binding + (Real,Enforced) Encapsulation + Interface Inheritance + Binary Reuse
That is *exactly* what the UNIX command line utilities are and *exactly* why they are so cool and useful. Even though they are decades old, and before the phrase "Object Oriented" ever appeared, they are an embodiment of those elements. (Well, you have to sort of skimp on the "Interface Inheritance"- I'll just say that the interface that they all inherit from is text.)
That's not to say that those tools are perfect- they lack the ability to be bound dynamically between programs, and with non-simple-text-stream interfaces. Which CORBA, [D]COM, etc., provides.
Programs that can publish the commands that they are capable of. The commands can be rebound to any keybinding, form of menu system, peripherals, mouse stroke gestures, whatever. The program provides visualization, and commands that it can perform. The inputing of commands can be bound by entities external to the application, either the OS, or other programs (like trainers).
Mormon Leaders Subvert Democratic Process in Hawai'i
http://www.affirmation.org/subvert.htm
Lately, I've been isolating error handling code. Seperating error collection and display from the main code makes it REAAAAALLY nice and readable. The current way I'm doing it is like this:
All errors go in one .h/.cpp file.
There are two types of errors, simple errors (for one liners, no variability),
and complex errors (which store some info).
You call a function for a given type of error (err_add_cantfindfile( char* ),
for example), and it fills out an error record in an array of errors,
and returns "false". Every error returns false, so that you can
just type "return err_add_cantfindfile( path );" and be done with it.
What I'd like to do is make a function that is called by every single error function. That way, you can just put a breakpoint on that function, and when an error is hit, you've got the cause right there in the call stack. No need to try and remember where the error came from or analyze the output string to figure out the error; just put a breakpoint on the universal error spot, set the code in motion, and you're done..!
Making a class for each error doesn't really work as we would hope; It's just way too much code for each error, with the whole class, public inheritance, private/public: specifiers, constructors, and printing code. The idea that we could put the error reporting and the error construction together is nice, but it just doesn't work very nicely in C++.
Here's the table layout you use:
options[7].types[0] = TYPE_INT | TYPE_FILENAME; might be used to
signify that the first argument of option #8 can be an integer or a filename.
If it was an int, it would automatically be stored in the "Request" in a special
array for integer arguments., and it's type would be stored in a "type" argument.
Of course, if the user typed in, say, a floating point number, it would generate
an error in the scanner, saying, "Hey! This must be an int or a filename."
That way, while you're actually writing the code for this stuff, you don't have
to check type validity and stuff like that. =^_^= WooHoo! Seperate requests lists from the options lists; very frequently, an option may generate three requests, or manipulate other requests. Have the requests store be different than the option types store.
Written later: You can write like this:
It'd be really cool if you could watch MMP's or other games over the network. Also, the game servers would be able to tell the ICQ network (or whatever) that the person is in the game right now, and that the game servers would be willing to forward messages to the player from the ICQ/outer world.
A company has football stadium lights in a dark place (dimensions unascertainable). An ampitheater soundsystem shouts, "Who are you." "Why do you want to work here." The poor fellow talks up into the lights (assuming that's where the cameras are- in fact, the cameras are all around).
"..."
"Sirs?"
"It says here on your resume that you have some Karate experience."
"Uhh.... (oh shit...)... Yes?..."
"They will be tested!"
Martial artists stream out, beat the crap out of the guy, and then fall, soundslessly, back into the shadows, invisible again... They report to the unseen and unheard interrogators.
It'd be nice to see a job application form that has: "HP", "AC", etc, on it, as well as "hand to hand combat" skills and what not. Make a D&D sheet a key part of the application. You have to be able to figure out what it is to apply.
For example, if under languages, it says, "English, Japanese", you did it wrong. You're supposed to put, "Common, Japanese". Because it's called "Common", not "English" in D&D.
I love the idea of testing and stuff like that. Testing by debugging, or testing by giving bad code to users, SUCKS.
http://nunit.sourceforge.net/doc/testinfected/testing.html
Problems with testing:
Advantages:
educational practice report: 5 myths and misconceptions about second language learning: what every teacher needs to unlearn
barry mclaughlin university of california, santa cruz 1992
http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/miscpubs/ncrcdsll/epr5.htm
Myths exposed:
--Myths And Misconceptions About Second Language Learning: What Every Teacher Needs To UnlearnTypically, when pressed, people asserting the superiority of child learners resort to some variant of the "critical period hypothesis." The argument is that children are superior to adults in learning second languages because their brains are more flexible (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). They can learn languages easily because their cortex is more plastic than that of older learners. (The corollary hypothesis is the "frozen brain hypothesis," applied to adult learners.)
The critical period hypothesis has been questioned by many researchers in recent years and is presently quite controversial (Geneses, 1981; Harley, 1989; Newport, 1990). The evidence for the biological basis of the critical period has been challenged and the argument made that differences in the rate of second language acquisition may reflect psychological and social factors, rather then biological ones that favor child learners. For example, children may be more motivated than adults to learn the second language. There is probably more incentive for the child on the playground and in school to communicate in the second language than there is for the adult on the job (where they often can get by with routine phrases and expressions) or with friends (who may speak the individual's first language anyway). It frequently happens that children are placed in more situations where they are forced to speak the second language than are adults.
However, experimental research in which children have been compared to adults in second language learning has consistently demonstrated that adolescents and adults perform better than young children under controlled conditions. Even when the method of teaching appears to favor learning in children, they perform less well than do adolescents and adults (e.g., Asher & Price, 1967). One exception is in the area of pronunciation, although even here some studies show better results for older learners. Similarly, research comparing children and adults learning second languages as immigrants does not support the notion that younger children are more efficient at second language learning (e.g., Snow & Hoefnagel-Hoehle, 1978).
A Child's First Steps in Language Learning
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/McGlothlin-ChildLearn.html
Key Resources & Data w/in:
Also read: http://www.bankstreetcorner.com/read_3.html (interesting, don't have time to categorize)
A huge part of the idea of "Intelligent" behavior is in being able to connect remote ideas and integrate them together. Everything is clear when it's side by side it's partner data, ideas.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//4.12/ffglass.html?person=neal_stephenson&topic_set=wiredpeople
Incredible and fascinating collection of articles written by NealStephenson on the politics, people, and issues around the Internet. Incredibly informative and insightful.
Mama Kathy
http://www.topsecretsi.com/users/zazz/mama.htm
Endo Shusaku http://www.horagai.com/www/xwho/endoShusaku.htm
Movie: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113129
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
"Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people- and this is true whether or not they are well-educated- is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.
"In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all of the experiences you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent, and then, a few years down the road, you will probably give me cause to wish I were several decades younger."
The Diamond Age, page 283 (paperback)
The Master Said, "Learning without Thinking is a Waste; Thinking without Learning is a Disaster."
http://www.fstream.net/~akira/
Jeffrey's Kanji Edict Japanese Translation Web Page
http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict
EXCELLENT list and advice.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Bookshelf/index.shtml
http://www.jwindow.net/OLD/KIDS/LIBRARY/MOMO/
Excellent page; Hiragana for story, well suited for my understanding level. Nice beautiful pictures as well.
There's a lot of CosPlay out there, most of it bad, as people try to get too literal with costumes. Here's a GOOD cosplay, CCS style:
http://www.cosplayangel.com/costumes-sakuramovie.html http://www.cosplayangel.com/images/costumes-sakuramovie-4.jpg http://www.cosplayangel.com/images/costumes-sakuramovie-5.jpg http://www.cosplayangel.com/images/costumes-sakuramovie-1.jpg
Good Costume Play: http://www.cosplayangel.com/costumes.html
Amber referred me this link, she was surfing and forwarded it to me. Yep, she's a cutie!
http://www.voxmachina.com/photox/ http://www.voxmachina.com/photox/zannah-spacecase.jpg
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/electro/electro3.html#two_coil
http://swartzfam.com/aaron/school/2001/04/05/
Hey! Note that they link to ADUni..!
http://swartzfam.com/aaron/school/2001/02/19/
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a360d496e0c97.htm
Nutcase who links evolution and homosexuality by association.
http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-017b.htm
http://64.64.103.140/index.html
Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more that likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it.
But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time and Pond's Extract.
-- Mark Twain, Taming the Bicycle (Part 2)
This is a good (and visual!) page on Capabilities.
Note: ACL = Access Control List, having tables for security.
http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/capabilityIntro/solmodel.html
You shouldn't be able to delete an art file for a game. Requests to have a deleted file should be routed to the games uninstallation capabilities.
I'd write more, but gotta go...
Companies need to have help lines that knowledgable people hook up to depending on expertise. Combine it with the email tickertape idea, and then while people working, other people's please for help scroll down at the top of the screen.
Replies to help are logged and recorded in a DB of Q's and A's.
Knowledge should distribute to the right people, and be shared across groups. You should be able to connect to any group. This would be an incredible aid to projects.
http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/sockets/sockets.html
http://www.python.org/doc/current/ext/ext.html
http://homepages.stmartin.edu/fac_staff/fhashimoto/quotes.htm
http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/tats.html
Every program should be easy to compile. You need a few things; Capabilities and Multiple Categorization.
The resources for your program are all classified under a consistant and singular categorization scheme. This removes the problem of "I can't find xyz" that is so common when you are trying to get something to compile. All resources go under one categorization scheme, and so it doesn't matter where they "are" in the file system, because they can be in five zillion places at once. Just have one standard place for them, and use that as the basis for all your linkages. If you need to carry multiple builds at the same time, use a "ROOT" variable to specify the base for all addressing, and you can copy your files into a new (identically formed) categorization tree.
Better yet, the compiler has it's own mapping concept. You can remap from within the compiler.
Capabilities. You can't delete a file except through the right channels, which automatically gives you notification.
(Note: Perhaps the entire "Categorization" subtree should really be under "Communication LocatingInformation"..?)
The "problem" with our documentation is that we have very heterogeneous formats and topic matter, and it's not well made for one single categorization scheme.
The solution is to multiply categorize the documents, and to make them accessible from one repository.
Every categorization scheme in the world is based on some particular view of what's important and what's not. Multiple categorization schemes that map to the same object set allow people to find their target documents from all perspectives, and to find related documents from their given perspective.
Ex: Someone is going to be looking for *tutorials* first. Another person is going to be looking for *API* documents first. So there should be an entry somewhere under /GNOME/tutorial/... as well as under /GNOME/API/... There are quite a few permutations, but we should do it, so that it's easy to find individual targets, and to intelligently browse the collection.
We shouldn't just use keyword search because it's rather sloppy and returns a lot of misses. We'd like something with a little human intelligence, though a keyword search might provide *suggestions* for how things should be categorized.
http://agdzine.adventuredeveloper.com/nov2000/reg2.htm
When I was in high school, our band teacher got a guy to do this seminar thing over the weekend. Key points:
On the whole, it was a positive experience.
I have heard about and read about EST from others. EST sounds rather scarry to me; They dig into your mental wiring and actually start screwing around down there. They give people unrealistic expectations, focus on desire, and have people make fools of themselves in public. It's like Amway, or a variety of other schemes.
Here's what I wish the situation was like:
I wish that there were "fun houses" (or some other name) where people could go to open up in interesting ways. It would be like the band thing that we did. Attached to all brochures (or what not) would be a "Code of Mental Sanity". It would contain items to the effect of "We will not pressure you at any point. We will not try to change the way you think." etc., etc., etc.,. Basically, it'd be a place to go visit on a weekend, get a different view on things, do things that you normally don't do, meet some new people, explore humanity, see a light show, and most importantly, have some fun. Sort of like a play, crossed with a game, crossed with a Disney theme ride, crossed with being at a party. Maybe it should be called a "games house" or something like that. I think that would be really neat.
Unfortunately, I don't think such a thing will happen for at least a decade. I think people would freak out.
http://www.g-search.or.jp/kenji/english/home.html
Certain categories have a particular form. For example, books: Language: English, Spanish, Japanese, or..? Author: who wrote it? They should have entries in the "People" category. Various facets of things that I care about and want to link together.
Do the following:
Example:
WhiteHead was a mentor for Bertrand Russel.
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.-- The Aims of Education.
Someone told me that WhiteHead believed that everything was aware, perhaps to different degrees. I don't know if this is true or not, but it seems to be true by the following quotation: [MT 147] How do we add content to the notion of bare activity? [We recognize it as living.]
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.-- An Introduction to Mathematics.
I'd like to draw a surreal painting: Cloudy sky, infinite ground. The ground is a flat metallic-like thing, with cubes regularly space over it. A balloon in the sky attached to a string attached to the metallic cubes. One balloon to each of the metallic cubes. The cubes are our individual brain and mind in the world. The world is the metallic surface, the ground. The balloons are awareness, and the sky is the space that awareness lives in.
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the race.Quoted in P Davis and R Hersh The Mathematical Experience (Boston 1981).
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.Quoted in W H Auden and L Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms (New York 1966).
"Whatever be the detail with which you cram your student, the chance of his meeting in after-life exactly that detail is almost infinitesimal; and if he does meet it, he will probably have forgotten what you taught him about it. The really useful training yields a comprehension of a few general principles with a thorough grounding in the way they apply to a variety of concrete details. In subsequent practice the (students) will have forgotten your particular details; but they will remember by an unconscious common sense how to apply principles to immediate circumstances."-- WhiteHead, The Aims of Education
http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~peter/dialogue.htm
A DIALOGUE ON MATHEMATICS AND LITERATURE: PDT and XYZ
Lavender Blue: How to Write and Sell Gay Men's Erotica
This is a really interesting book.
My favorite quote is from Chapter 8:
(In the gay market, however, there are serious drawbacks to thinking of other writers, especially the good ones, as competitors. Only a fraction of literate gay men buys erotica regularly. Although the market is small, it has plenty of room to grow and will grow if more good writers produce better gay erotica. Magazine and book publishers do receive many more manuscripts than they could ever print, but most of the manuscripts are horrible. Editors seldom complain of having to return too many great manuscripts, although the kinder sort of rejection slip seems to imply such a complaint. Not enough good writers are working to keep the magazines full of good stories, as a careful market survey should reveal. Good writers are always happy to see other good writers working in the market. As always, there is plenty of room at the top.)
Generally, we start kids on reading simple stories, and writing with the alphabet. Then we bring them to reading more advanced stories. They start to write simple stories as they begin reading advanced stories.
I think that this may be the most natural way to do it. It matches my experience; I started with simple BASIC games, and grew into more complex BASIC games.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010703/sc/science_materialism_depression_dc_1.html
Film guy, interesting, has a friend in Seattle. I'd be interested in following this guy.
Is he domu13 at yahoo dot com? That email address referred to www.otaku-house.com. Slashdot article: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/08/04/0228234&threshold=5&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=28 "Chris Morris is a total genius"
http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/
http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld021.htm
That Pomo is crap in the natural world is something I fully agree with. Does it apply to the social world?
I don't think so; I believe that there is objectivity in the social world as well. I've observed that people have trajectories, and, that for the most part, we tend to follow them.
In his groupings, http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld020.htm I am in the Functionalism camp: Order and Objectivism. http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld023.htm
However, I have experienced that while there is 1 Reality, people's understanding of it grows with time.
Successful older engineers thus should be looked up to and learned from, and I believe that they should order younger engineers (i.e., "Me").
In this respect, I am Confucian; A perspective not included in his four paradigms.
"PostModernism is the theory that the three blind men were not feeling a single elephant, but rather that they were feeling themselves, and imagined that they were feeling a single elephant." - Me! My best invented quote yet... {;D}=
"His parents enrolled him in a public high school, where he maintained a steady 2.0 average out of a possible 4. The coursework was so stunningly inane, the other children so dull, that Finkle-McGraw developed a poor attitude. He earned som repute as a wrestler and cross-country runner, but never exploited it for sexual favors, which would have been easy enough in the promiscuous climate of the times. He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly." -- The Diamond Age, Page 20
How to write ManPages: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/tech_docs/qref/writing_man_pages.html
I found a weird article: http://www.devtopics.de/distraction.html
Interesting, because it's about distraction and fairly accurate.
Weird because it says things like "Memory is localized in a special form of RNA (called "messanger RNA"...", and that memory is encoded on proteins. It makes hints that our memories encode into our DNA, which is just plain false. Pretty strange idea, if you ask me. =^_^=
http://www.sheldrake.org/articles/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&id=51&ww=1&full=1&view_records=1
Rupert Sheldrake is horrified when his son writes "THE test tube was carefully smelt."
He argues that the active voice is easier and most importantly: More truthful.
He cites prominant scientists who share his opinion.
Not mentioned: The reason they do this is so that the reader pays attention to the science, not the performer of the experiment. I agree with Rupert Sheldrake though; The experimentor is an important part of the experiment, and should be written in the experiment, because how the experiment is conducted is an essential part of the experiment. It matters whether an instrument (and what type of instrument) carries out an experiment, and I believe that applies to humans as well as to equipment.
My personal thoughts: If you must get rid of the "I" or the identity of the person, don't try to twist English around in ways it wasn't made for; Make an imaginary person "X", and talk about what "X" does, as if X were a tool in the experiment.
http://users.erols.com/astronaut/ssl/index.html
Better performance through joining groups, mailing lists, making weekly habit (Piro), etc.,. Also keeps attention on item, issue, skill, whatever.
We humans like to see friendships. We like to read stories about friendships, and people who are friends.
Mencken was sort of like Mark Twain. http://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/mencken.html
http://www.yil.com/exitstrategy/
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
At the Go center, I've been learning very interesting things.
(Study) and (Play&Practice)- Confucius (Learning) and (Thinking).
The Eating Factory. A restaurant with all yoy can eat sushi and anime waitress chix0rs.
http://www.eatingfactory.com/map_e.html
http://www.chadd.org/attention/adults/attnv6n5p22.htm
Further proof that the people talking about ADD are nuts.
Here's a priceless gem:
Higher achieving adults were more likely to try to approach a situation in a positive fashion and to logically analyze it. They were likely to seek help from others, use problem solving to generate possible solutions, think of different ways to deal with the problem, and to step back from the situation and be more objective. They were more likely to review in their mind what they would say or do, to anticipate how things would turn out, to find some personal meaning in the situation, and to anticipate new demands. In addition, they were more likely to talk to a spouse, friend, relative or professional about the problem, and to pray for guidance and strength. Participants who achieved higher levels of academic achievement also used more coping strategies than their less achieving peers did. Interestingly, those who were more academically successful were significantly less likely to use acceptance/ resignation as a coping strategy.-- AD/HD and Issues for Adults: Coping and Compensatory Strategies Used by Adults with Attentional Problems
WHOAH! You mean- people who do well academically are people who don't just give up?
WHOAH! You mean- if we seek help from others, use problem solving, think of different possibilities, and step back from the problem to be more objective- you mean that if we do all of that, we can overcome our ADD?
Well Hot Damn, if I don't have ADD- I have to do just those things to solve my problems as well! In fact, I think that all of the smart people I know have ADD, since I've NEVER seen a smart person solve problems by any other method.
What would a person who wasn't crippled by ADD do- not use problem solving? Would solutions just "magically appear" for them..?
Nuts and Hogwash. More evidence that ADD's either a total scam, or a creative ploy from the medical community to produce people who are begging to learn how to actually think about things.
Jesus, the more I look at this-...
"What do you need in a job to help you feel satisfied in it?"
Mathematics education right now poo-poo's intuition, and promotes rigor instead.
This is not mathematics. Indeed, if we read old mathematical texts, there's none of the mathematical rigor as we know it in the 20th century.
Consider this:
Assume that our mathematical intuition never failed us. Ever. Everything that we intuited, was correct.
Then there would be no need for rigour. Indeed, much of our earlier mathematical thought was without rigour. Mathematicians just wrote, "You can do this, this, manipulate this, and then look! This is the result!" And people would say, "Ah, yes, I'd see it." There'd probably be a few doubters of principles abc and def, but those would be returned with counter arguments. Eventually, reasonable smart people agree, and mathematical exploration continues.
Eventually, though, you reach a false conclusion, and you need to go back and examine the past. You look at the various items, and you say, "Ah, the error was here." You correct that theory, and then you say, "Ah, we assumed GHI, but JKL is the case." Now that proof is more rigourous.
But we're still a far cry from the rigour that is applied today, and even stressed as perhaps the most important element of mathematics. Indeed, it is exhaulted above and beyond intuition!
The memorization of ALGEBRAS is considered to be what mathematics is. Pictures, "Intuitions", are held with scorn and contempt..!
"We'll never be fooled again!", we can almost hear mathematicians cry. "Yes, but you'll never see anything again, either."
It's like the Dwarves ("The Dwarves are for The Dwarves!") at the end of the Narnia chronicles.
The roots of mathematics lie in not RIGOUR, but INTUTION. RIGOUR is just a tool to augment the power of intuition.
Scientology is too hard too talk about.
It has done terrible things, and has had incredible negative influence
on the world.
There are also Honest-To-God good ideas in there, which makes talking
about Scientology incredibly painful.
Here are some links:
"Cult Scientology Kills"
http://www.fuckhubbard.cjb.net/
"Anti-Scientology Links":
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/donalancas/index13.html
"Operation ClamBake"
http://www.xenu.net/
The best record of Scientology I have yet to read is "Bare-Faced
Messiah"; If you read one page, make it this one:
http://home.kvalito.no/~xenu/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm
Bare-Faced Messiah is competely interesting on it's own;
You could make a movie out of it, and it'd be deeply interesting in
it's own right. Particularly interesting is near the end, as he's going
totally nuts.
All the above said and understood, I believe that there are some
valuable things that L. Ron Hubbard understood deeply and profoundly. I
think that LRH understood some interesting concepts that reflect
reality, that are worth uncovering.
http://www.studytechnology.org/special/skipped1.htm
Here's a page that attacks the previous one:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/StudyTech/
Here's a sampling:
"In other words, mass is what can be visualized. But Hubbard's
pronouncement that learning cannot take place without visual aids goes
too far. Must every sentence of every book be accompanied by a
picture? Does a book on political theory, quantum physics, or the
life of Shakespeare require a picture to illustrate each concept?
Certainly not."
No, obviously not. Since 99.999% of what Hubbard wrote was w/o
accompanying pictures, he obviously didn't believe that "Every Sentence
of Every Book Be Accompanied By A Picture". (The author would probably
take this as proof of LRH's dishonesty, or something like that-
Whatever.) That's attacking a straw man- LRH never said that, and never
would say something like that.
Personally, I think that it would be a good thing if books on
political theory, QM, or the life of Shakespeare had pictures and
illustrations for the concepts. I think that, very commonly, those
things get too abstract, and good pictures will help root it in the
world.
Let's look at another criticism:
"There is nothing objectionable in the notion that complex ideas should
be mastered by breaking them down into simpler steps done in a logical
order. But Study Tech turns this sensible advice into rigid dogma,
with a warning that violations can have unpleasant consequences. "If
you have skipped a gradient you may feel a sort of confusion or
reeling" (Learning How to Learn, p. 84.) The illustrations of this
idea on pp. 84-85 show a boy who was trying to build a doghouse
"seeing stars" as if he just got whacked in the head with one of the
boards he was hammering..."
The Study Tech isn't turning it into a "rigid dogma", it's trying to
get people to relate and understand what it's talking about. It's
basically saying, "If you are reading something, and then you feel
confused and reeling, that's a sign that you're reading something too
advanced." I don't know, I have a hard time considering that to be bad
advice. The author is going nuts with this, almost envisioning that
Scientology is creating a threatening situation here: Gradiate or die.
Whatever. I have to side with Scientology on this one.
The anti-Scientology material here is basically doing the following:
1) Show where Scientology had a good idea 'X'.
2) Show how 'X' has been extrapolated to extend to bad idea 'Y'.
3) Show how 'Y' caused scientologists to do bad things A, B, and C.
Imply that teaching idea 'X' is nuts, totally bogus.
What are the basic ideas of "Study Tech"?
* Visualize, so you know what you are talking about.
* If you are reading something and you're not getting it,
try something simpler.
* If you are reading something and you're not getting it,
make sure you understand what all the words means, and how
the concepts all link together.
Okay, I see nothing wrong with those. Indeed, those things would help
a LOT of people read better, rather than calling themselves lazy
bastards who don't know how to think.
I totally understand and agree with the above three; I think they are
good ideas. I have a hard time criticizing those ideas, just because
they can be interpreted wrong, and turned into something bad.
For example: The Word "God". The word is misunderstood, and causes
people to do terrible things to one another- kill each other even. But
to say that "God" is therefore a terrible thing; I cannot agree.
Gah. It's such a complex issue. The Scientologists are clearly nuts.
On the other hand, a few of them are clearly onto something, and if you
get past the propaganda from both sides, you can see what it is and
learn from it. There are times where LRH is very lucid and intelligent
in his writings. He's clearly onto very good ideas at times. But there
are so many followers who didn't get it, and there are so many problems
within LRH himself, especially in his later years leading to his death,
-
It's just a big mess of propaganda now.
Scientology promotes itself as the savior of the human race, and the
Word says that Scientology is a sick ground of evil. It's sort of like
talking about Pedophiles: There's no middle ground. You're either with
them, or against them, and there can be no understanding of subtlety and
complexity.
<Sigh> I hate writing about this topic; it makes me so uncomfortable.
There's no real way to win when expressing your viewpoint, except to say
that you hate it and every idea connected with it. It's a mob mentality
thing.
Scientology and his motivational seminar spawn has cursed meta-thought
for at least another few decades. I don't know that meta-thought will
ever be accepted; before Scientology, it was Aleister Crowley. And there
were probably people before him.
When you are talking about thinking about thinking, you are dealing in
dangerous territories that go deep into our cultural programming.
MetaThought is a taboo area, relagated safely only to the people in the
lab coats (psychologists and the mentally ill), or to the religious.
You're not supposed to talk, or even think, about how you work on a
mental level. It's almost as taboo as sex. <sigh>
I'm sorry, I'm just not comfortable about talking about this.
I don't know how to even begin talking about it.
Mobs are scary.
Look at it this way; this is what it's like.
You believe in Life/Love/God. Except you live in the town of Blarg, in
the country of Marg. This evil warlord took control, and the way he did
it was to convince people that God wanted them to kill a bunch of
people. He used terror and power to manipulate people and used the
authority of God, the Eternal God, as described by the most noble Jesus
Christ, to perpetuate his reign of terror. (Read what Hitler had to say
about symbols and art, incidentally.) So here you are, in this place
that has just thrown off the shakles of the terrible evil warlord, Garm.
His last followers are still being thrown into jails, but they still
have powers in some sectors. Everyone has thrown off all belief in God,
and there's a strong Anti-God movement ("Humanity First", or something
like that) that's taking hold, to prevent a future where God is believed
in, and evil warlords take control.
Now you're that person, and you're trying to talk with a sympathetic
friend about this "God" concept, and why you have some problems with
logical falicies in the Humanity First literature that is decrying the
concept of God as only logically leading to totalitarian evil
dictatoriships.
And that is like the difficulty that I have when I talk about
MetaThought.
Anime is a dream house made of inclusive emotion.
I woke from a dream state in which I was exploring a piece of the causal realms.
Anime dreams of men and women and symbols and their lives passing before our holy eyes, whispering secret intimate words to one another of care and nesting, waiting within our minds for the fruit of seeds to be grown, seeds planted by fervent artists from another country, striving to encode all that is important to them.
More to write- no time though {:(}=
http://www.tower.net.au/~rsb/guides/oobe/oobe.htm
1985 Lucasfilm Ltd. http://members.tripod.de/twh1st/game.htm http://www.crestviewfl.com/~richard/EIDOLONM.TXT (Dr. Josef Agon) http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap10/eidolon.html
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html
http://www.izzy.com/~patri/writing/prose/sermon.html
Put simply, I believe that most things consist of two distinct parts: that which is their basic nature, and the arbitrary conventions of society, and I think it is crucially important to be able to recognize the difference.
You must understand the difference between what is substance and what is style, what is reality and what is convention, which goals are arbitrary and which are important. Otherwise you may work hard to buy a big house, only to realize you have no one to share it with, become president of a company that doesn't do anything you care bout, or go to college and leave with nothing more than a piece of paper.Up...
Reader: Read the whole essay, if you haven't. This guy use to be my suitemate in East Dorm. He's really interesting and has good & truthful things to say.
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/7.html
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/sep01/reviews.asp
Patri also noted the nobility and difficulty of teaching.
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/md4l/gplist.html
I think if I wanted to teach people how to write, I would do it in the following way:
Have each student get a K5 account. For homework, once a week, have students write an article on K5 on a particular subject.
Students and teacher would comb through K5, looking at different pieces of writing, and the students' own writing, and discuss what they like and dislike about different techniques and pieces.
This utilizes each students natural interest, and addresses all three problems posed by Jon D'Errico and June Griffin.
Since students would want their papers to look good, I think they would discover the need for proper grammer and spelling as a matter of course and practical protocol. They would want their arguments to be convincing, and would think about how to properly structure their arguments to that end.
I think it would provide better writers.
There is science that views the world and learns about it.
Then there is technology (technique) that uses what was learned, and applies it to build something.
http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld006.htm also saw the same thing. But I think he should have put Mathematics in observation, and associated it with Computer Science on the technology side.
Also, while I find Physical->(Chemical- omitted by him)->Biological->Social to be a natural progression, with perhaps Social being included, I think that "Thought" is not part of that continuum. Mental techniques live within ourselves, rather than outside ourselves. I would include them as a part of social rather than as a seperate thing. I'm still doubtful about whether Social should be included or not, since it's hardly a science. (We don't have observations for it.) On the matter of scale, it has more to do with number than size, and thus lends towards mathematics.
Another Map: http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld005.htm Quite nice, actually. But ordered a little odd. (Biology between Physics and Chemistry?)
Characteristics of Pseudoscience enumerated.
http://www.dsv.su.se/~janis/fk/fmoh27feb/sld007.htm
Note that these 4 items are an attack, not merely criticism...
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/coachsci/vol35/rushall5.htm
http://www.virginia.edu/~trc/tc.htm
Pictures of chemistry equipment, and what they are.
http://myhome.hananet.net/~criok/english/publication/chlorine/chlorine10.html
Dangers of Chlorine Compounds
If you go buy bleach, you have 5.25% (by weight) NaClO
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/labyforum/Spr00/forum8.html
I envivsion urban environments for learning, playing with, and teaching science.
Poeple who are pseudoscience nut cases might not be that way if they were given real education.
There is a darth of scientific education going outside of the hollows of the university. Even in the university, if you take Chem I and II, you learn nothing more than theory, and practice is just "the theory and practice on writing papers on trivial experiments". For example, students will spend 8-14 hours of struggling to explain and write about how they neutralized an acid. That's putting the cart before the horse, and the form before essence.
I've worked for three companies, all of which have either died, or are about to die. I don't think it's my personal fault, but if it were, that'd be quite something. If that were the case, I think I could sell myself to IBM like this: "Hi, IBM? I'll take down Microsoft if you pay me $100,000/year." Then I could get hired at Microsoft for 50K, and it would fall down in 2 years, given my history of taking down companies.
I'm interested in electronics. Whenever I approach the subject these days, there's always a clash in my mind: Should I be studying Kirchhoff's Laws, reviewing my Electricity & Magnetism, thinking about AC current (and inductance and capacitance), or should I be studying PICO controllers or other microcontrollers?
As far as I can tell, there isn't a very nice staircase of learning. It would be nice if there were a nice program of projects to study electronics with, a sort of "Making Cool Things with Electronics" study course or kit. Unfortunately, the 200 in 1 kit doesn't cut it- they don't explain how anything works. At least, my 1980's kit didn't explain at all. They just give you schematics to wire up, and then say, "See! Isn't that neat? The LED flashes!"
The only alternative to the 200 in 1 kit seems to be either self-study (which is basically the work of building your very own staircase of learning), or to take college courses. It'll take a year before you get beyond Ohm's law. Lab will consist of wiring things and noting, "Yup; It's just like the book said." That won't really be the essence of what Lab is for, though- most of the Lab work consists of making sure that you know how to submit papers to scientific journals. It really isn't until the end of your 2nd year of formal study that you'll actually get to play with electronics.
Given the Mickey Mouse kit, or the College's indoctrination (I say indoctrination because I had a professor who taught us that metals conduct heat because valence electrons carry the heat, even though he didn't know how. Nobody thought this was unusual, given that no one raised their hand. When I asked the prof how in the world electrons could carry heat, he said, "I don't know." Everyone in the world before had told me that heat is manifest in the energy of the motion of molecules, not the racing of electrons.), I prefer self-study. I should say that I'm an Auto-Didact.
More importantly- the "I Am".
I reject "I Am" based paths, because I entered the "I Am" consciousness in 1999. I was convinced that it was the True state of consciousness. I talked with my Master, though, and over time, became convinced that it is not the ultimate state of attainment.
The I Am is the ultimate state of conciousness for the Universal Mind. You could call it Void Realizatio- realization that the universe is nothing but an extension of Mind/Void, and that awareness continually lives within itself in the myriad ever changing forms. Undifferentiated consciousness is all there is.
I think the important questions to ask yourself as an "I Am" practicioner are:
* "How long until I am enlightened? What more needs to be done?"
(Variation on the theme: What experiences do I need until I am enlightened? What's the difference between realization and experience?)
...and...
* "What will/would I do after I enlighten?".
I don't think that the I Am is the ultimate realization, because I've seen states of awareness beyond it. The I Am really tops out at the mind/void, at the top of the creation.
Your counter-argument will be that if I saw something beyond the I Am, that it was just an experience, and thus, a subset of the universal mind. Not really a new argument; In the Anurag Sagar, recorded from Kabir, it says:
"I (Kabir) met the Wise One (Brahma). I told him about the Word (Shabda, it says, but I'll just translate).
He listened with attention and asked many questions about recognizing Sat Purush (The True God).
Then Niranjan (Kal Niranjan, or "Lord of Time") thought, "My eldest son Brahma is leaving me!"
Niranjan resides in the mind within, so he changed Brahma's intellect.
Brahma said: "God is formless and without any qualities and cannot be restricted. He is in the form of light and lives in the void.
The Vedas describe him as the Sat Purush and I accept the Vedas.""
Kabir is basically saying that Brahma didn't accept the Word, because he was absorbed in the formlessness of the I Am/Void/Universal Mind, and wouldn't hear of anything outside of it, because it'd be "just an experience."
I don't tell this to sweep the argument under the rug of historical antiquity, or to appeal to the authority of Kabir, I just want to show that this arguments been around, and not everyone accepts it at it's face value.
The story that Kabir would give you, and the story that I would give you as well, is that God is Love, an Ocean of Love. I can't tell you what Love IS, because it's not a mental substance. (It's not emotional or physical, either.) Put another way: Just because I can't tell you what Awareness is, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
God, for whatever reason (I think it was an accident, but Kabir thinks that Kal (time) sat on his thumb for 20 yuga's to get God's attention, and then asked God for a pocket universe to trap souls in) creates the Void. Souls/Awarenesses/Whatever-You-Want-To-CAll-Us get absorbed in the Mind, and start incarnating in the various myriad mind realms. So, here we are, floating around, making karma for ourselves, trying to generally figure things out. Totally hopeless, since it's the Universal Mind itself that is our prison.
We've got some energy to work with, since we're fundamentally tied into God (the Ocean of Love), but we pour these energies into the Mind (or it's various forms, derivitive off emotion and substance).
We accept that we're trapped in these universes, and the way back to God is through It's Word, a wave of Light and Sound.
Now, this Light and Sound- it is not only the Light and Sound that we see in our day to day lives (which blends naturally with the I Am paths), but also the Light and Sound that comes from within us.
By meditating on the Light and Sound within, we can see the various frequencies of consciousness come alive within us. So we can check out the various universes. We can see the emotional universes, with the flying castles on clouds, the various taoist heavens, yadda yadda. We can see the mental universes, with pure thought and what not. We can even experience the Void realms in their abstractness. But there are universes predicated on Love, they exist higher than the void realms. They are the true home; Upon incarnating there, we become reestablished, and incarnate into the mental realms no more.
When you get to the Void, though, the only thing to do is to re-incarnate.
Love is different than the desire realms, it's different than the mind.
It is distinctly "other"; It's not a root concept, or a foundation. It's a best friend, an ocean, a beingness. It's natural, and requires nothing. It exists harmoneously with the realms of mind- substance, emotion, universes, thoughts, void, but is native to none of them.
It is focused on Divine Love, and Life.
This isn't some sort of devotional thing.
It's subtle to the mind, but enormously different to Awareness.
I suppose another difference between I Am'ers and non-I Am'ers is that I Am'ers don't like to talk about different things. That's because they are rooted in the void, where nothing is
I suppose that's another difference between I Am'ers and non-I Am'ers. I Am'ers equate awareness with mind. (I can easily understand why that works so well for computer programmers: The interpreter for a turing machine is always another turing machine.) I have a stark difference between them: Mind and Soul are completely different.
----
More importantly- the "I Am".
I could easily talk about this all day. I can tell you that, because I've done it before. But, I want to keep this relatively short.
Let me start by quoting Kabir in the Anurag Sagar:
I met the Wise One (Brahma). I told him about the Shabda (Word).
He listened with attention and asked many questions about recognizing Sat Purush (The True God).
Then Niranjan (Kal Niranjan, or "Lord of Time") thought, "My eldest son is leaving me!"
Niranjan resides in the mind within, so he changed Brahma's intellect.
Brahma said: "God is formless and without any qualities and cannot be restricted. He is in the form of light and lives in the void.
The Vedas describe him as the Sat Purush and I accept the Vedas."
So, if you want to read something that is interesting and subversive towards the Indian framework of understanding Gods and their caste system, you can read "Anurag Sagar", transcribed from Kabir. Anurag Sagar means, "The Ocean of Love." At the same time, you'll get an education in Surat Shabda Yoga, or the union of the Awareness with the Word. That passage should indicate to you that this is not merely just another manifestation of the I Am paths, but that it is actually a different thing.
The I Am is the lord of the mind. It is rooted in mind. The highest realization is the realization of the Void, which is the essence of mind. Yes, most of our worlds religions are centered there: The name Jehova means "I Am", and Jehova was famous for saying "I Am that I Am." Incidentally, if you read Mormon literature, and you've experienced the state of mind, and you know what to look for, you'll find evidence of the "I Am" aplenty. Hindu mythology is centered around the I Am. The vast majority of the worlds religions are based in the I Am, and it's interpretation of the world.
Notable exceptions:
* Gnosticism
* Christianity
* Sikhism
* Shabda Yoga
While you can find evidence in Christianity of the I Am (Book of Markus, Revelations, in particular), for the most part, when you read the red letters, he isn't an I Am'er. There is a part where people throw stones at him: "Being a man, you make yourself to be a God." He replied to them with: "Does it not say in the old testimate, Ye Are gods"? (Somehow, the transcriber knew that he spoke the word "Gods" with a lower case, rather than an upper case. I have never seen that G capitalized in a Bible. Unless it was greek, I don't know how the transcriber could even *write* a capital vs. a lower case, much less Jesus actuall *speak* a different capitalization.) Then again, JC is appealing to the old testimate, and his Jewish heritage.
One of the common failings of the mind is that it wants to look at things as follows:
There is A, and there is Not A. A leads down one path, Not A leads down another path. One is desirable, the other is not.
For example, one of my students, Pico, asked me when he was beginning to learn programming: "Which language is best? Teach me that one." (This isn't a personal failing for Pico; This is a common question from someone just beginning to learn about programming.)
I believe this is an important thing to recognize with respect to politics.
People tend to believe that one solution will solve all political and economic problems:
In truth, I believe that each of these has it's place and it's own unique advantages and disadvantages.
They are like hammer & screwdriver; Neither is the solution for all problems.
I imagine that I could create a company called "Clubhouse Software".
Take the students from the Fledging Unix Programmers classes that are interested, and pool our knowledge, expertise, and time together. Market on the Internet, with business cards, and by helping people out in Q&A forums like askme.com. Start small: Field consulting questions, and help with small installations. Work on Free Software projects. Then grow to field larger projects. Cross Train, Cross Train, Cross Train. Clubhouse Software is symbiotic with Fledging Unix Programmers: Projects in Fledging Unix Programmers come out of jobs for ClubHouse Software. Students from Fledging Unix Programmers work to help and grow Clubhouse Software (if they are interested). All money from Clubhouse Software projects is split amongst the people who fielded the contract. If they used the facilities significantly, the facilities (rent & DSL & phone & computers & stuff) receive a share as if they were a person. Initially, for practical purposes, it'd be a dictatorship headed by me. If it ever grew large, we'd cut it into pieces, like Dee Hock did with VISA. Or, we'd do what ArsDigita did.
Pages with info: Staff pages, headed with Confucius' "I don't fret that others won't recognize me; I worry that I won't recognize others." Terminology pages, headed with Rectification of Names. Various pages, all headed with Confucian principles. Lists of projects, what we've done, what we'd like to do. Financing information. Philosophy page- "Accept ins and outs with small virtues. Do not accept ins and outs with large virtues." Describe who we are as a group, what we do, and why we like to live the way we do. Staff page, explain who we are on an individual basis, what we are experts on, what resources are available to us, what we do for a living- even if it's not computer related (NO SHAME THERE), and what we enjoy.
I think this would be a lot of fun. I wouldn't count on it being a success and paying substantial bills, but it would certainly be fun. I can personally pay for the office, and initial computer investment. Joseph could set it us with lots of terminals. I can pay for the telephone. Pico could do basic tasks that need to be done: Book keeping, office sitting, and other things like that. Then we could field calls.
Joseph's good with kernels and OS details; He could field those calls. When I was working at LithTech, he answered kernel questions for our expert network guy..! Vicky's great with Java and Database stuff. Pico doesn't know much yet, but he's very eager and helpful, and could help out with initial office stuff. Amber has excellent HTML design sense; She is respectable and won't whore herself out to blink tags and shockwave, but she also has enough sense not to go with a pure minimalist style as I do, as well. She has impeccible HTML design sense, and loves to work on HTML projects in her free time. I suspect that there are other talents floating about, and have little doubt that we would attract more talent as time went by.
We could give organized presentations at the local GSLUG, and that would bring us more people, and quite possibly some business as well.
I think it's fascinating, and worth the little bit of money that it would cost me. I don't know, or even plan on, it paying itself back to me, but that's not so important; It would only cost about $400-500/month. I just need an office, and some DSL and a phone line. The rest is one-time fees. I can cover that. It will hurt a little, but I can cover that...
Hmm...!
I would submit to you, that you consider something similar with respects to the various isms. Each one is a tool. Each one has unique advantages and disadvant ages. They can all be made to work in sub-domains, with none of them holding th e entirety of government. I believe that the best government would consist of t he best people *skillfully applying* the various tools that governments can use . That none of them is THE TOOL, and more than any programming tool is THE TOOL . I would submit to you to think about this, and to reflect on it deeply. If yo u would like to collect data, I would suggest that you look at the STRENGTHS (u sually provided by proponents), and look at the WEAKNESSES (usually provided by critics) of each of the tools, and apply them in their right domain. Linux pro duction is a Dictatorship; Linus makes all decisions. It wouldn't work as a Pur e Democracy. Yet, the quakers did very well with Pure Democracy (actually, even more: Concensus) and that has proven to work well in issues of small cohabitat ions. Pure democracy may be needed on a larger scale, but with an element of so cialism. Free Markets work wonders for companies, but the laws must restrict th em from unethical behaviors, and negotiations with foreign countries/entities i s a matter into itself, multifasceted. The thing you want to do is to ABSORB CO MPLEXITY, and not reduce to simplistic things such as "Communism solves everyth ing", or "Capitalism solves everything"; because they Do NOt.
Don't short change yourself either. Because if you do that, you're going to stu nt your growth. Your attention gives you energy. You spend that energy. If you spend that energy on silly things just because you're young, you are not invest ing in yourself. You know how powerful a young kid like yourself is? There was an 18 year old kid that I read about on Slashdot who built a nuclear reactor. T he EPA had to come clean up the mess in moon suits. When he was 13, he got into Chemistry. There's a lot of brainwashing that goes on in education. This kid d idn't accept it; He just taught himself the chemistry he needed to know to comp lete various projects. He started creating X-rays and what not with household o tools. Was he a genius? No. He was just working on various projects. Next thing he knew, his back yard was radioactive. Einstein wrote his papers on Special R elativity when he was 23, if I recall correctly. And yet, he's the first to say that he's not abnormally intelligent; he just likes to work on special problem s that others don't. I'm amazed- I got a book published on 1925 called "The Boy Chemist". It tells you how to make all kinds of chemicals. I learned how to ma ke Chlorine Gas (Cl2) using just household bleach and Lemon Juice. (Amazing wha t you can do with Household bleach: Sodium HypoChlorite). It also told how to d o Astronomy, Surveying, Geology, Physics, blah blah blah. How to build your own glassware, how to order the parts, how to make your own alchohol lamp, all sor ts of stuff. It was targetted at *KIDS*. K I D S. We don't see this kind of mat erial anymore, and when I went to the pharmacy/apothecary, they say, "We don't sell chemicals (controlled substances) to the public." I've found some web site s that do, but anyways- You can do A LOT. I don't want you short changing yours elf. Don't think your thought is insignificant. If you think your thought is in significant, I Guarantee you that it WILL be. You need to take your ideas serio usly, and to develop them. Find the best ideas that you can, and then try to re place those with better ones. It's really important. Appreciate the gravity of the situation.
Self-Direction in Adult Learning: Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice.
http://home.twcny.rr.com/hiemstra/sdlindex.html
http://www.newhorizons.org/crfut_csikszent.html
http://www.planetary.org/html/mmp/scien/csikm/csikm70.htm
Yup, he's nuts.
http://www.tcj.com/232/tangent0.html
Sim's essay in Cerebus #186 was surpassed in infamy early in 2001 by a longer, even crazier essay on the "feminist-homosexual axis." The Comics Journal has posted the whole thing on their site, basically as evidence that Sim has flipped his lid. I've counted Dave as a friend in the past, but at this point, I'd have to sadly concur.-- Scott McCloud
Do a dungeon crawl.
Potions: Don't let players know what the potion does. They can sip the potion, but it will only give them som tasete & textural information. Then, a random period of time later, they may or may not be mildly affected by the potion. (ie a healing potion might heal someone a single hit point, half an hour later. - the DM doesn't need to tell the player that he/she has the extra hit point; in a conflict, the player will still be alive at what seems to the player to be 0 hp's. -1 hp (0 actual hp's) will actually kill the player. Upon full healing (night of sleep), everything back to normal.)
If they have scratches and nicks, 1/3 hour later, if they search their bodies for scrapes & knicks, they may notice that 1 is missing, and thus (if they are smart enough & other things haven't been going on) can tell that they have ingested a cure light wounds.
Remember: The game isn't about a battle of wits & second guessing, it's about having fun.
Programming books are in the 0.0-100.0 range of the dewey decimal system. That is; When you are in the library looking for progrmaming books, you're sitting right butt up against books on U.F.O.'s, numerology, astrology, the occult, and the afterlife.
I think there's something there...
--Me!
Your question is psychological (motive), and my motive is complex, like most situations in the world. I will need to use ambiguous terminology, so I'm going to first say what I mean by each term.
Hang on:
A [B]pessimist[/B] will be used to mean someone who always looks at the dark side of things. (an example: "People are evil.")
An [B]optimist[/B] will be used to mean someone who always looks at the light side of things. (an example: "People are good.")
A [B]conformist[/B] is someone who tends to hold opinions because everyone holds them.
A [B]rebel[/B] is someone who tends to hold opinions because everyone holds them. But the rebel holds them in the perceived negative, rather than the perceived affirmative.
A [B]realist[/B] is someone who studies reality. Realists note complexity and subtlety.
A realist is neither pessimist nor optimist, because those positions are not based in reality, but rather in feeling. A realist is neither conformist nor rebel, because those positions are not based in reality, but determined by public opinion.
A [B]cynic[/B] will be used to mean someone who believes that the worst in people is always present. (The original definition tied to Cynic schools will not be used; It has fallen out of use.) I'm not a cynic. (Note that, [I]by this definition[/I], neither was [URL=http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/mantble.html]Mark Twain[/URL]).
An idealist is someone who holds ideals: A sense that there is a way that things [I]should[/I] be.
I generally consider myself to be an idealist, and a realist.
Now, to go back to the morning of September 11th, 2001.
I woke up when my girlfriend called to tell me that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. My girlfriend was saying, "Wow; Think of the odds." She had suspicion that it was a terrorist attack, but behaving as an [I]optimist[/I], she figured that it was just a freak accident.
I'm a realist. As a realist, I study world history, and thus know that a lot of countries have motive not to like the USA. I study sociology and psychology, so I know how people can be motivated to commit terrorist acts, propelled by their conscience. And I also have a sense of just how unlikely it is that two planes will hit the World Trade Center.
So I thought, "Oh, a terrorist attack." I called out to her, "It's probably a terrorist attack; I'm going back to sleep for another hour or two.
My girlfriend is chanting explitives. I'm sleeping. How can this be? Because I confronted the horror of what human beings can do to each other a very long time ago. Even within (especially within!) the "confines" of Conscience.
While Amber was busy reading Daniel Steele, I was reading Adolf (by Osamu Tezuka), Barefoot Gen, The Heart of Darkness, [URL=http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/mantble.html]Man the Machine[/URL]. (I keep linking to Man the Machine, because his essay is particularly relevant immediately; Mark Twain devoted a huge amount of thought to understanding how Conscience works. We all Love Piro and Largo, but that doesn't make them experts on Conscience.)
If you read Adolf, you will see first hand how someone who has Jewish friends and not a trace of anti-semitism can be turned into a murderer, anti-semetic, and a militant supporter of the Nazis. That is, how a Conscience can be changed.
If you read Man the Machine, you will read powerful, undeniable arguments that show how people can- in good Conscience- do absolutely terrible things.
Most people choose not to read these works, because they are uncomfortable to read. But I find that it is far more uncomfortable to live in false comfort; I find ultimate comfort in understanding reality. The idea is that by discerning reality, I can see first hand what paths will lead to comfort, and which will lead to suffering. That way I do not need to rely on false views of the world to make my observations and decide my actions.
In discovering many principles of reality, I built an understanding of just how cruels humans can be. For example: [URL=http://psych.wisc.edu/faculty/pages/croberts/catonpic/topic11/k13-13.gif]The Bystander Affect[/URL]. In New York, a woman was stabbed to death. Hoards of people heard her crying out for help, shreaking, "Oh GOD somebody help me! I'm being STABBED! I'm beeing STABBED!!!" ... And yet nobody helped her. No Body Helped Her. She Died. It was all over the news the next day, and the people felt shame. When they were asked why they didn't help, they said, "Because we thought it was just a lover's quarrel; We didn't want to get involved." Research shows that the greater the number of people present, who are not personally affected, the less responsibility each person feels that they have. If there are enough people around, they feel that they have practically no responsibility to do anything what-so-ever. A man was on the highway, near death, in heavy traffic. It was a very long time before someone FINALLY pulled over, pulled him to the side of the street, and tried to help him out. He was too late though; The man was dead. He could have been saved, but nobody helped in time.
Did all those people's consciences fail? Was there suddenly a widespread epidimic of failed conscience that day? NO. It's just the [I]normal[/I] operation of conscience. Responsibility psychologically "divides" over people.
Is the response of the USA a counter-example to this principle- Or better: Is it a sign of superior USA conscience? No, it's not, because the principle doesn't apply when everyone has a personal stake. The principle is diminished drastically because it was a [I]symbol[/I] that was destroyed, and it affected everyone's psyche: They thought that terrorism was something that we were immune from. We have never been attacked on our homeland, except once on a remote island (Hawaii), and in the distant past when we were still establishing our country and annexing other territories to our own.
Similarly: If it had been a man in a bright Santa Claus suit in the highway, or if it had been a famous singer being attacked in New York, people would quite possibly have reacted quite differently.
Most people view this fact as "horrible" and "surprising". We know this, because it made front page news in New York when Kitty died.
I myself was horrified and surprised to learn about it. But, over time, I came to understand it. Some people might say, "You are desensitized". While it is true that I no longer feel a sharp pain when I think about the bystander effect, I now [I]recognize[/I] it. By recognizing it, I am better equipped to counter it: When I learned about it, I firmly resolved myself to not let it affect me. When I was in a bus tunnel, a man was following a frightened woman. "Stay away from me! Somebody Help Me! Oh God- STAY AWAY FROM ME! Somebody get the Police!" she was shouting. Nobody looked. Nobody even glanced, though there were easily 30 people present. It was bystander effect. I pulled out my cell phone, ran upstairs (to get reception), and called 911. The police came, found the man and the woman, and took care of the situation.
This is not to say I am superior; I am not. I point this out to indicate that learning painful facts about humanity is helpful. It is also to point out that public opinion about what constitutes "Conscience" is frequently wrong.
It also explains why I wasn't in deep convolusions and mesmerized shock on Tuesday morning. It's not that I never experienced shock, it's just that I experienced my shock in steps, over the course of many years, while studying Psychology (incidentally, I'm a CS major), reading Mark Twain, and Osamu Tezuka.
So I said, "They're terrorists, and I've got some sleeping to do before a busy day at the computer figuring out what to do next." I went to sleep.
Amber called from work: They got the Pentagon too. ("A strategic attack?" I thought. "They got both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center...") I went over to the computer, and started looking around. "Hmm... It doesn't look good."
Over time, I began to note that 250 million people in charge of the most powerful nations' weapons (including a nuclear arsonal), with plenty of people with motive to hate it, felt like going to war. Despite not knowing who they were going to war against, they felt like going to war against [I]somebody[/I], and whoever that [I]somebody[/I] was, they wanted to pave their country. Everyone was frightened and terrified.
You may note that I wasn't lost in grief over the deaths of the people in the World Trade Center. While I felt grief, I was not [I]lost[/I] in grief. The number of people that the World Trade Center holds is, I imagine, somewhere around 10,000. [URL=http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005124.html]The death rate from accidents hovers around 40,000-50,000 per year.[/URL] So, we're getting, most likely, considerably less than a years worth of traffic accidents. Much closer to a years worths of deaths due to accidentally falling down (13,000-15,000 deaths a year). Realize that that means that for most of us, this whole thing is relatively abstract, and a couple of degrees of seperation away (entire pop: 6 degrees away), unless you have clumsy friends or relatives. (Granted, [I]somebody[/I] who reads this will know someone who has died by following down [I]just[/I] last year. [I]Somebody[/I] who reads this will know someone who died in New York, though we haven't heard from them yet. Anecdotal evidence will not help much.)
Many people will dispise me for being rational about this, and comparing numbers of deaths. They would say that I am a heartless and disrespectful jerk, a heartless monster- how dare I say these things. There is nothing wrong with these people; They've just been terrified, and here's this guy waxing philosophical. Their Conscience tells them that when something terrible happens, it demands that you be terrified. Exceptions are made for people with training, but I'm just a civilian, so I should fit into the terrified role. That's why you get Largo telling me that I'm sick.
I don't think so.
Personally, I [I]have[/I] met terror. It just came later. I met the terror that everyone experienced on Tuesday morning on Tuesday night, when my otherwise friendly girlfriend starting emailing George Bush to tell him that we should strip-search anyone who looked Muslim at the airport. My moment of terror came when I started piecing things together: 250,000,000 people in the USA, with Nukes, dying to lob them, a ressurgance in racism, people criticising anyone who doesn't think that the terrorists were [I]the greatest monsters of all time[/I], deserving only of having their home country, wherever it be, paved into a new parking lot...
I called my friend, who majored in communications and (I believe) minored in sociology at Stanford. (Personally, I studied Computer Science at [URL=http://www.hmc.edu]Mudd[/URL].) Phil's one of the most knowledgeable people I know about societies. He's studied society since he was born, practically. I wanted his take on things.
He pointed out to me that the 60's revolution happened because the children were raised in an environment of incredible conformity. Where did that conformity come from? During wars, he told me, power centralizes. As part of this, conformity becomes mandatory. We start to see hatred of the Japanese, whereas beforehand there was benevolence. Not just hatred, but [I]mandatory[/I] hatred. That is, if you support a Japanese, you are with them. It's how things like [I]the Constitution itself[/I] gets ignored, such as the [URL=http://www.highlandpark.org/edgewood/Student/Bristow/Japanese%20Internment/internment.htm]blatent disregard[/URL] for the [URL=http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxiv.html]14th amendment ("No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law")[/URL] and people polarise out of fear. ([URL=http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/C/20010914/wxmcnish?hub=homeBN&tf=tgam/realtime/fullstory.html&cf=tgam/realtime/config-neutral&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&slug=wxmcnish&date=20010914&archive=RTGAM&site=Front&ad_page_name=breakingnews]We're seeing signs that we may have another internment again[/URL]. For those who don't agree with internment, btw, one of the justifications for Japanese internment was to keep them safe from their neighbors.)
I don't understand explicitly how centralisation of power causes people to become conformist, but I can implicitly link the two concepts. Phil said that during [I]every[/I] war, this happened. (He noted that he was interested in researching a way to have a culture that could allow diversity in thought and still assemble to a war, but that he was skeptical that there was such a way.)
[URL=http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46852,00.html]The senate just gave police wiretap powers just gave the police and FBI relaxed wiretapping capabilities[/URL], faster than you can write your congressman. [URL=http://www.senate.gov/legislative/vote1071/vote_00279.html]There was not a single "Nay" vote.[/URL]
I don't mention this to make the USA look bad; I do this because I'm seeing warning signs, and it motivates me certain ways.
We talked a while longer, and remembered that World War I began similarly: A single person (Duke Ferdinand?) was murdered. Furious, a country retaliated. Not enough in itself to start a world war, except that they had allies. There were complex economic situations, a m'elange of interests. Allies agreed to help. Oh-hoh! But the defense had allies, and their allies had allies. Everyone was allies with someone else. That is how the death of one man became the beginning of World War I.
Currently, NATO has affirmed article 5 support for the United States. The Taliban originally supported the US decision to punish the terrorists (link unavailable), but now discovering that they will probably be a primary target, [URL=http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/14/afghan.denial/]have decided to ally with the terrorists, whoever they turn out to be[/URL]. Not only that, but they have made a plea to all Muslims to join them.
Hm. It doesn't look good. Phil and I talk quite a bit, but he and I are both weary, and get off the phone. I go through different scenarios in my head, reading world events as best I can as if it were a game of Go...
I find myself arguing with my girlfriend about mailing the president, asking him to strip search all Muslims. "Lion, I don't mind if they put camera's in all of our houses to make us safe- [I]I've[/I] got nothing to hide!"
Mulling all this in my mind, and hearing this, the terror strikes me.
The loss of a years worth of accident victims in a day does not terrify me, because I know of the evil that humans are capable of, and this is not all that terrible in that respect.
The destruction of the entire world, however, terrifies me. Basically, I lost it, and started to cry. I started to cry a LOT. I shouted at Amber: "You don't understand: We are ALL going to DIE."
I don't know if that statement is true or not, but it has now [I]definitely[/I] entered the realm of possibility.
250,000,000 people in the most powerful nation of the world... Convinced of it's righteousness, ready to attack, nuclear weapons becomming a publicly acceptible mode of attack... Everyone's searching for a victim, and we've already got names in an uncannily short amount of time... If only a fifth of the US donates blood, that's going to be about 50,000,000 people giving blood for just ~10,000 people (or roughly 5,000 people donating blood for every injury, assuming 10,000 injured)- so, basically, we're collecting blood for a war... In [I]Canada[/I], people are burning mosques. Muslims are being attacked here, though it's not being widely reported in the US. [URL=http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/C/20010914/wxmcnish?hub=homeBN&tf=tgam/realtime/fullstory.html&cf=tgam/realtime/config-neutral&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&slug=wxmcnish&date=20010914&archive=RTGAM&site=Front&ad_page_name=breakingnews]A man was in a bus, and said to the Arab woman next to her: "If I had a gun with me, I'd shoot you."[/URL]... People are screaming for "justice", and view an attack on some country- either Palestine or the Taliban- as completely justifiable. Some have eaven gone so far as to say that we should nuke the entire middle east. People are drawing maps of the middle east with a giant "Lake USA" in the middle. While it's darkly humerous, it neglects the reality of the relative permanence of nuclear fallout. Oh- yes; Nuclear fallout. In any grand attack, there's going to be neighbors. Even though the neighbors may like us (or at least, pandering to us) now, they may not like it if there is so much as the [I]slightest wind[/I] drifting from Lake Fish-Don't-Exist-In.
It's easy for me to go on and on. Suddenly, Muslims find a change in heart, as their innocent best friends who just happened to be affected by the war are killed, and all on national television, played repeatedly. Allies won't be hard to find, especially with the more dammage. We ally, they ally, we ally, they ally, welcome to World War 3.
It's incredibly likely.
That was when I cried. I didn't cry when 10,000 people died, because I know that in the grand scheme of things, that's basically nothing. And I wasn't horrified that people could do such things, because I already knew. I've studied the mechanics of Conscience, and I know what it's like. I've played more than a few RPG's and action games where it's basically YOU vs. The Great Evil Compound, and it's your job to save the Free World by destring said Great Evil Compound. That's how whatever-organization-it-was-that-did-this viewed it, and they responded as their Conscience demanded of them. It wasn't a smart move, it was a desperate move.
After I cried, and went through strong emotions, I decided to do what I can to prevent terrible things from happening.
Situation Awareness time:
The USA wants to go to war.
Why? Because it's Conscience demands it.
Because it believes it's been attacked by Monsters, and wants to protect itself.
Hmm, I don't have much physical power, but I have studied the mind quite a bit. If I have any power whatsoever, I believe it lies in explaining to people the complexity of the situation, and convincing people that there are alternatives to war.
The most important thing for people in the United States is to realize that the Monsters are actually humans, and that the true Monsters lie within each of us.
This will be difficult, because the United States has revealed itself to be Sociopathic. Another psychology term:
A sociopath (formerly known as a "psychopath", though that term is being used less and less in psychology communities) is someone who sees fault in everything but itself. It makes them hard to reason with. The classic example of a psychopath is the guy who holds up a Quicky Market cashier with a gun, and when the guy doesn't give him money, shoots the cashier. (Note: I believe provisions are taken now so that cashiers always have something to give the perpetrator.) When the perpetrator is caught, and psychologists question him, the sociopath will repeat over and over: "IT's not MY fault I shot him- He made me do it! He MADE me Do it! If he gave me the money, he wouldn't have gotten shot! He Made Me Do It!" That's called sociopathic behavior.
Incidentally, there's an opposite form, though I've forgotten the name. This is someone who believes that everything is THEIR fault. They turn inwards and become VERY depressed. Both are based on serious and dangerous disconnect between a person's sense of their connections to society.
A healthy person is willing to introspect and look both outside and within themselves.
Is the USA sociopathic? Well, currently, given the posts on MegaTokyo, there does seem to be a willingness to look at themselves for fault. Realize that the countries version of connections to society is "Diplomatic Relations", and there are people here questioning our diplomatic relations and policy. However, that's just MegaTokyo. I've looked elsewhere, and seen places where people are all for saving the PERFECT United States of America, and all for destroying anyone else, because, God Damn Them, they made us do it. We hold the guns, and they're stupid to be messing with us.
The ultimate answer to Phil and I's question, and the fate of the world, remains to be seen. Currently, it doesn't look so good: Conformity is on the rise. Note that conformity doesn't require that people all think the same way, merely that they all appear to think the same way, that is, they act the same way. We will see fewer Arabs walking around- that is, there will be less diversity around. People are clutching their bibles now, and gays, lesbians, transgenders, and what-have-you will be under a more watchful eye. After all, there've been some rumblings about the end. It's the millenium, you know? "Of course, we don't believe such things, but..."
If you question the perfect integrity of the US, and the perfect monstrosity of the enemy, you are publicly condemned.
Back to the danger:
I saw/see all these things, and I was/am terrified that we are going to over-attack.
We [I]could[/I] go through a round of sending out secret commandos and seals and what not to go retrieve the bad guys: A ManHunt. But that's not quite what the public wants.
It seems like it all depends on what George Bush wants right now.
I voted with the majority- that is, I voted against him, so I'm not inclined to be too confident in his skills. I don't think he's too confident to respond by doing [I]the right thing[/I], which is to take the path of least damage, and to work on stabilizing situations in the Middle East. As in World War I, there is foreign affairs policy to be worked out.
I think he's going to do [I]the easy thing[/I]: Attack. Attack, Attack, and then Attack some more. And then when he's surprised that opponents are allying, I think he's not going to let things calm down, because he's going to be searching for expediency: "If we kill them all fast enough, everything will resolve itself and we'll just throw foreign aid over there to fix it all." Unfortunately, that's not what will happen: More allies will appear, and the allies of the US will have to consolidate more ("steeling their will"). We will be in WW3.
There are things that [I]you[/I] can do to prevent this.
One: Understand where the people who are "spouting rubbish about the USA" are coming from. We're not saying these things to spout rubbish about the USA. We're saying these things so that people will recognize the complexity of the situation, that the people who destroyed our buildings are [I]not[/I] inhuman, in hopes that people will come to their senses, and cease to believe that war is inevitable.
I hope this explains why we are posting what we are posting.
War is only as inevitable as people believe it is inevitable.
Currently, it is only a possibility.
We [I]can[/I] extridite only the organizations responsibly. We can steal the baddies out from under the noses of the countries that protect them, without bringing those countries to war. It won't be as glamorous as a huge war, and it won't stroke our nuclear egos as a huge war, but it can be done.
If we do go to war, you can try to lessen the enthusiasm for war, by pointing out the things that you see happening, and the connections with the past.
At the very least, or perhaps most, you can do nothing.
That might sound blasphemous, but I don't think so.
You are under no obligation to save the world.
Humans have been getting in and out of wars since forever.
We can, for our own sanity, view it as a painful disease that comes around now and then.
You may not be able to save the world, but you may save your soul.
You can close your eyes, breath deeply, and reflect deeply on the meaning of the word "Love".
Thank you for reading,
With Love,
Lion Kimbro
4'33" commentary
http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm