Older blog entries for average (starting at number 7)

3 May 2013 (updated 27 May 2013 at 20:40 UTC) »

A proof of the cluelessness of economic and political and even scientific leaders:

1) Cheap energy creates exponential growth because it will be easier to use it than actually do the equivalent labor.
2) Nuclear energy will use the last reserve of energy stored in the universe. Far beyond earth history (like fossil fuel), it goes all the way to the big bang: the energy in the atom. After that, it's GAME OVER
3) Exponential growth will always deplete resources in linear time. (Remember the story about the king, the checkerboard, and the grains of rice?)
4) Conclusion: The only way sustainable future is to make a 180 degree course change and transition from an economy of expansion and growth, to one of collaboration and interconnectedness: the CreativeEconomy.

...an "Economic Sanctuary". Help me code it.

3 May 2013 (updated 3 May 2013 at 23:10 UTC) »

Holy shit, I didn't know the problem mentioned in my April 14th entry was so deep. It's not only OOP that needs factored (a 20 year problem), but the whole frickin' field needs re-invented (a 50 year refactoring).

Seriously, all the HolyWars and LanguageWars all revolve around a subtle, unconscious use of the same lexicon for two entirely separate different domains, one involving abstract LambdaCalculus and the other involving BooleanLogic and TuringMachines -- something tied to actual hardware which has to obey the laws of physics.

See ComputerScienceVersionTwo.

23 Apr 2013 (updated 1 May 2013 at 23:48 UTC) »

Could someone certify me out of this "Observer" oblivion. I've been here since 2000, for chrissake's! And an advocate for F/OSS software since before then. I just left for about 10 years and just got back where apparently I lost even my "Apprentice" status.

Thanks to the three who helped certify me. But it still doesn't seem to change my status.... Confused... :

23 Apr 2013 (updated 28 Apr 2013 at 22:53 UTC) »

I'm proposing the concept of a Kolmogorov Quotient (named after AndreKolmogorov of AlgorithmicInformationTheory fame) as a calculable number that measures the amount that a "programming language" simplifies the complex. That is, the amount of expressivity of a programming language. This idea of "simplification" is a factor of text-wise reduction (fewer characters needed to express a complex concept) and some other less-easy to quantify concept of maintainability. Fleshing out this latter concept, it is clear it has to do with the ease of establishing programmer ''consensus'' for the same task.

It is a quotient so that higher Kolmogorov numbers for a given language implies a reduction in the Complexity of writing the code to solve the problem.

I suggest Python or Ruby has the highest Kolmogorov Quotient. But see KolmogorovQuotient.

14 Apr 2013 (updated 14 Apr 2013 at 03:58 UTC) »

Okay as part of building this idea of a data ecosystem mentioned earlier, I'm realizing that the whole OOP paradigm needs refactored. Starting with AlanKay's definitions for Object Orientation, I invite the community to help me re-evaluate the paradigm.

Kay gives 6 points in defining his vision of his Object Architecture at AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented

I've rebutted them with ObjectOrientedRefactored. I invite others to comment.

14 Apr 2013 (updated 14 Apr 2013 at 03:50 UTC) »

Every internet community site suffers from this common problem once it scales past about a 100 community entries: the problem of information overload and disarray when attempting to combine most recent items with most popular. Either you have the problem of combining both on one page or the problem of how items from recent days become integrated with the list of most popular items.

The PangaiaProject finds that there is no algorithmic solution to this problem. The only way to solve this problem is to add another [visual] dimension.

The Pangaia project takes the approximately 2.3 dimensions of the current WWW and transforms it into a fully crowd-sourced and navigable three dimensional data universe. It will be cool.

VPython or Processing will likely be the language for implementing the pangaia codes and adding a 3-dimensional visual layer to the Internet.

5 Mar 2013 (updated 5 Mar 2013 at 04:54 UTC) »

How to build the next Internet: make it p2p.

The current Internet is mired by its history of monolithic, server-centric computing centers. Most content now is generated by the users and shared in a peer-to-peer fashion. The DNS system isn't equipped to handle this.

Let's upturn the top three layers of the legacy OSI model to put the Session layer at the top where users are switching gears and locations often, make a new, 3d Presentation layer utilizing a unified data model, and rename the Application layer the content-centric layer which will replace DNS and ultimately the OS. Hellyeah.

All this is being done at pangaia.sourceforge.net. It advances the state of the art in computer science and data visualization (as well as being totally rad) and is looking for people to help code a prototype.

A working paper version has been made as proof-of-concept. It's shows how with a few simple rules it will create a very complex, self-organizing system of social information.

30 Jun 2009 (updated 30 Jun 2009 at 04:35 UTC) »

Advogato's trust metric is severely underutilized given the amount of collaborative platforms popping up in webland. What gives?

For all the interest, both academic and pragmatic, it's remarkable how little implementation there is (worth noting is UCSC's wikitrust). The problems do not seem intractible and the problem domain itself is quite fascinating, yet so little to show. Are people just using web site selection to do ranking ("bookmark trust") and leaving it at that? I'm surprised there so little desire for a unified field of discussion and knowledge, it could create a new economy of ideas as well as a marketplace for allocating decision-making authority and governance.

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