X3D and Ontological Space
In an X3D world, the emergent engine is the proximity sensor
because it is a scalar identity of a location and locations
organize the semantic tensor: the objects and methods of the
spaces and the objects they contain.
The location organizes the ontology of the space. The distance
organizes the relationships and force per related set. The
distance is scalar by position and velocity. These values in
a mapped space self-organize by the force per related set as
afforded by the norms of the tensor set, or situation semantic:
a spatio/temporally identified norm.
In an X3D world, events find you.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Growing Up Buttermilk
I grew up in a neighborhood that became a black neighborhood as the 60s social experiment known as Model Cities tore down the ramshackle downtown and moved the blacks that lived there into the better poorer neighborhoods to the north of the city. Slowly but surely, we became the minority living in a minority neighborhood. Some fanciful Hollywood movies attempt to portray the American South during this period, but most concentrate on portrayals of the black side of that experience and many miss the real experience of both sides. It was tough at times but seldom as violent or strained as the movies make it out to be. It was the slow begruding acceptance of each other and the coming to lose our fears and our anger. It was sometimes very funny.
Blacks have a word for a white kid growing up in a black neighborhood: Buttermilk. I grew up Buttermilk. No regrets. I don't think that will be understood by some historical plumbers, but I don't care much. It was a time of stories. Here is one.
While I was in college, my younger brother decided to engage in a horticulture experiment by putting marijuana seeds in my Mother’s wooden flower pot on the front porch of our house. My father made the flower pot for my Mom. Night after night I would come home from class and see it growing there, large and healthy by dint of my Mother’s talented but naïve skills. In such a neighborhood, that shade of green does not go unnoticed but it did go unmolested as my Dad was not someone to trifle with. One night, I decided it was just too risky so at 2AM, I picked up the flower pot and took it into the backyard.
When I came home the next afternoon from class, my Mother greeted me at the door and asked if I knew where her flower was. I hemmed and hawed and finally confessed that it was in the backyard. She asked me why and I told her. She immediately collapsed on the couch in a fit of hysterical laughter. This was not the expected reaction so when she calmed down, I asked why she wasn’t mad. She said she should be but that at that moment my Dad was walking up and down the street asking the neighbors if they knew who had stolen her ‘pot’. I imagine the conversations when he left were quite interesting.
Blacks have a word for a white kid growing up in a black neighborhood: Buttermilk. I grew up Buttermilk. No regrets. I don't think that will be understood by some historical plumbers, but I don't care much. It was a time of stories. Here is one.
While I was in college, my younger brother decided to engage in a horticulture experiment by putting marijuana seeds in my Mother’s wooden flower pot on the front porch of our house. My father made the flower pot for my Mom. Night after night I would come home from class and see it growing there, large and healthy by dint of my Mother’s talented but naïve skills. In such a neighborhood, that shade of green does not go unnoticed but it did go unmolested as my Dad was not someone to trifle with. One night, I decided it was just too risky so at 2AM, I picked up the flower pot and took it into the backyard.
When I came home the next afternoon from class, my Mother greeted me at the door and asked if I knew where her flower was. I hemmed and hawed and finally confessed that it was in the backyard. She asked me why and I told her. She immediately collapsed on the couch in a fit of hysterical laughter. This was not the expected reaction so when she calmed down, I asked why she wasn’t mad. She said she should be but that at that moment my Dad was walking up and down the street asking the neighbors if they knew who had stolen her ‘pot’. I imagine the conversations when he left were quite interesting.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Geishas
Every business has them. The titles vary but the job is the same: they are the donut-dollies of business. They are detailed to ensure that meetings go smoothly, shows are well organized, or lunch with the boss has the right kinds of food depending on who the boss is lunching with. They know who the power players are and who to keep out of the executive suite. Sometimes they are highly paid but most of the times they aren’t. They are overbooked, over promised, underappreciated and if not smart or too young, under something or someone. They are always pretty and ambitious and think that this job that let’s them network at the highest levels of a company ensures them a bright future.
The future?
Geishas are seldom promoted into real management positions of authority even if they are delegated to roles that give them resources to command. The reasons are simple. The geisha by practice is a hostess. Politely handling situations and people is their primary skill set as far as business is concerned. Those years spent in business classes getting advanced degrees don’t mean anything. Like the person skilled in English and editing, those rare gifts outweigh their training and background ensuring they stay in the service industry of business management. In all the time I’ve spent in business, I’ve never seen a geisha promoted to management. That which makes them skilled as hostesses or the perception of their skills cripples them as managers. The aggressive ruthless cunning that must be displayed by the so-called ‘high potential’ candidate is hidden beneath the politeness and allure. Worse, too often, like the donut-dollies in the military, they become the property of the officers.
The good news is a smart geisha learns much from the upper management class about business, and makes friends with their subordinates. If they are really strong, they start their own business and by their own hand become the power player they believe they can be. Yet all too often they remain geishas, and in a job that values their allure, their career begins to wane in their late thirties as age takes away their power. They fight it in the gym, with diets, with makeup, with dresses ten years too young, or with the thousand indignities that accompany submission, but unless they have created a new source of power, they lose.
The aging geisha is the saddest of the sad in a world of values that only knows winners or losers. On the other hand, in a world that prizes the sharp wife, Mom or companion who’s eyes see all, appreciate the gifts of knowledge and fidelity, they can be quite powerful. As in all arts, and the geisha is an artist, the best loss is the loss of desperation that comes when the mirror is not the model. The world is.
Practice and maturity can produce the most sublime works.
The future?
Geishas are seldom promoted into real management positions of authority even if they are delegated to roles that give them resources to command. The reasons are simple. The geisha by practice is a hostess. Politely handling situations and people is their primary skill set as far as business is concerned. Those years spent in business classes getting advanced degrees don’t mean anything. Like the person skilled in English and editing, those rare gifts outweigh their training and background ensuring they stay in the service industry of business management. In all the time I’ve spent in business, I’ve never seen a geisha promoted to management. That which makes them skilled as hostesses or the perception of their skills cripples them as managers. The aggressive ruthless cunning that must be displayed by the so-called ‘high potential’ candidate is hidden beneath the politeness and allure. Worse, too often, like the donut-dollies in the military, they become the property of the officers.
The good news is a smart geisha learns much from the upper management class about business, and makes friends with their subordinates. If they are really strong, they start their own business and by their own hand become the power player they believe they can be. Yet all too often they remain geishas, and in a job that values their allure, their career begins to wane in their late thirties as age takes away their power. They fight it in the gym, with diets, with makeup, with dresses ten years too young, or with the thousand indignities that accompany submission, but unless they have created a new source of power, they lose.
The aging geisha is the saddest of the sad in a world of values that only knows winners or losers. On the other hand, in a world that prizes the sharp wife, Mom or companion who’s eyes see all, appreciate the gifts of knowledge and fidelity, they can be quite powerful. As in all arts, and the geisha is an artist, the best loss is the loss of desperation that comes when the mirror is not the model. The world is.
Practice and maturity can produce the most sublime works.
Monday, April 24, 2006
tensorWorlds
The proximity sensor is the emergent engine of the virtual space.
The difference between a scene and a situation is proximate space in motion.
The intensions of the space are operations of the object mapped to it.
Say, avatars + proximity sensors in motion.
An avatar has types and operations, eg, norms and affordances as some pragmatists would say.
Proximate space vectors are the situation semantic as scalar relationships among proximate spaces in motion limited by the norms and affordances of the objects mapped to that proximate space and proximate spaces within it.
Reciprocity among objects in motion in proximate space coevolves the norms and affordances of objects and the containing space: tensorWorlds. In a tensorWorld, everything is a stream of events in motion.
"Row Row Row Your Boat..."
The difference between a scene and a situation is proximate space in motion.
The intensions of the space are operations of the object mapped to it.
Say, avatars + proximity sensors in motion.
An avatar has types and operations, eg, norms and affordances as some pragmatists would say.
Proximate space vectors are the situation semantic as scalar relationships among proximate spaces in motion limited by the norms and affordances of the objects mapped to that proximate space and proximate spaces within it.
Reciprocity among objects in motion in proximate space coevolves the norms and affordances of objects and the containing space: tensorWorlds. In a tensorWorld, everything is a stream of events in motion.
"Row Row Row Your Boat..."
The XeCond Life of X3D
Hi Rita
It is still too hard to build, but we are clever lads and gals.
As good as it is to build social games, a WikiPedia3D can also be a game.
1. There are only a handful of basic sensor types. As the core GUI, these are semiotic engines. They respond to events and emit signs where those signs are the events in 3D. An avatar pragma + scene events == situation. Situations have semantics. See SemWeb.
Because the avatar is under real time control of the user, it has pragmatics: the rules of intension.
2. Clica (gestures as sensor events) can entertain, attract, repel, restore, whatever. They can also teach.
3. The advantage to a WikiPedia3D is it can use situation semantics to conduct events, therefore, instruct in context.
A buildable world teaches the pragmatics of building.
Online worlds are as good as the personalities of the inhabitants are strong in the media. People build to their tastes so all the world adds is amplification if that is all one does with a world. The games should emerge out of the environment itself because in the virtual world, the environment is an ambient/semiotic server.
The key is to use the sensors to collect data that enables the cultural models to be harvestable by the server itself. It analyzes the models selected, the text descriptions of the world, the behaviors selected by metatypes and feedsback those dynamics to the scene itself as backgrounds, terrain, avatarBots, botHumans, and so on... express that metadata in a common ontological dataset. Standardize it.
Different terms such as virtual ambience or server-ubiquity or sensate world apply. Some just call it virtual reality, a term out of vogue but still applied.
Imagine a server site that instructs in practices because the building tools enable a simple triples engine for declaring semantics, and easy assembly of semantically enabled models where the ontological root is religion... or math.
No magic here. It is an ontology built into a real time 3D rendering so the use of it modifies its rendering.
Affordances are given to conformance with norms but affordances are the means to change the norms. In gamespeak, you get powers for figuring out the puzzles, but the puzzles include the kind of world you build.
I've been around web3D a long time. Vendor worlds are about systems. User worlds are about content because content *is* about people.
The problem of VRML is it was too early; the problem of X3D is that it is VRML.
OTW, this works well and if the authors stick to good authoring techniques, it works acceptably well. Geekdom aside, VRML and X3D are still the HTML of web3D. The bet of X3D is that ownable content is a better investment for the customer. By that I mean, fully ownable down to the syntax. X3D is a bet that standards always achieve that goal better than proprietary systems. Proprietary systems don't have to negotiate with competitors, and that my friend, is the rub.
But the BEST deal for the content builder on the web is still X3D. It is the best bet for your customer too. Why?
OWNING THE CONTENT WHEN YOU ARE DONE.
Let the software vendors debate open source, the profit in it for the content builder and the customer of the content builder is to OWN THE CONTENT.
Ownership is ultimate resale. Ultimate reapplication. Freedom to build an avatar that you can show off on any X3D server operated by ANY X3D company. Your potential set of worlds only gets bigger and bigger and will not go away if a server company folds and friends, LOTS OF THEM HAVE. Think of it as your blog disappearing one day, oopsie...
... but until the freakin' X3D browsers and conforming X3D are interoperable, and the servers are stable, it's just a bet that what you are building works with other 3D worlds, unless of course, you pay competent 3D artists to do their voodoo. Yes, customers build but professionals can build better and get it up faster and keep it up longer. The prize is there for the taking if X3D is adopted by a community of content builders.
<RudeButTheModelIsObvious>
The difference between a call girl and a hooker for the same product is quality.
</RudeButTheModelIsObvious>
It is still too hard to build, but we are clever lads and gals.
As good as it is to build social games, a WikiPedia3D can also be a game.
1. There are only a handful of basic sensor types. As the core GUI, these are semiotic engines. They respond to events and emit signs where those signs are the events in 3D. An avatar pragma + scene events == situation. Situations have semantics. See SemWeb.
Because the avatar is under real time control of the user, it has pragmatics: the rules of intension.
2. Clica (gestures as sensor events) can entertain, attract, repel, restore, whatever. They can also teach.
3. The advantage to a WikiPedia3D is it can use situation semantics to conduct events, therefore, instruct in context.
A buildable world teaches the pragmatics of building.
Online worlds are as good as the personalities of the inhabitants are strong in the media. People build to their tastes so all the world adds is amplification if that is all one does with a world. The games should emerge out of the environment itself because in the virtual world, the environment is an ambient/semiotic server.
The key is to use the sensors to collect data that enables the cultural models to be harvestable by the server itself. It analyzes the models selected, the text descriptions of the world, the behaviors selected by metatypes and feedsback those dynamics to the scene itself as backgrounds, terrain, avatarBots, botHumans, and so on... express that metadata in a common ontological dataset. Standardize it.
Different terms such as virtual ambience or server-ubiquity or sensate world apply. Some just call it virtual reality, a term out of vogue but still applied.
Imagine a server site that instructs in practices because the building tools enable a simple triples engine for declaring semantics, and easy assembly of semantically enabled models where the ontological root is religion... or math.
No magic here. It is an ontology built into a real time 3D rendering so the use of it modifies its rendering.
Affordances are given to conformance with norms but affordances are the means to change the norms. In gamespeak, you get powers for figuring out the puzzles, but the puzzles include the kind of world you build.
I've been around web3D a long time. Vendor worlds are about systems. User worlds are about content because content *is* about people.
The problem of VRML is it was too early; the problem of X3D is that it is VRML.
OTW, this works well and if the authors stick to good authoring techniques, it works acceptably well. Geekdom aside, VRML and X3D are still the HTML of web3D. The bet of X3D is that ownable content is a better investment for the customer. By that I mean, fully ownable down to the syntax. X3D is a bet that standards always achieve that goal better than proprietary systems. Proprietary systems don't have to negotiate with competitors, and that my friend, is the rub.
But the BEST deal for the content builder on the web is still X3D. It is the best bet for your customer too. Why?
OWNING THE CONTENT WHEN YOU ARE DONE.
Let the software vendors debate open source, the profit in it for the content builder and the customer of the content builder is to OWN THE CONTENT.
Ownership is ultimate resale. Ultimate reapplication. Freedom to build an avatar that you can show off on any X3D server operated by ANY X3D company. Your potential set of worlds only gets bigger and bigger and will not go away if a server company folds and friends, LOTS OF THEM HAVE. Think of it as your blog disappearing one day, oopsie...
... but until the freakin' X3D browsers and conforming X3D are interoperable, and the servers are stable, it's just a bet that what you are building works with other 3D worlds, unless of course, you pay competent 3D artists to do their voodoo. Yes, customers build but professionals can build better and get it up faster and keep it up longer. The prize is there for the taking if X3D is adopted by a community of content builders.
<RudeButTheModelIsObvious>
The difference between a call girl and a hooker for the same product is quality.
</RudeButTheModelIsObvious>
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Gesthemane: The Video
For the Easter holiday, I wrote the song blogged earlier. I made the video over the weekend. You can download it here: (approx 6mb).
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/video/Gesthemane.wmv
Windows Movie Maker proves to be a good utility for this kind of work. Now that many churches have big audio-visual systems, there is a ready venue for it, so between the video-enabled iPods, the web in general, and the big systems, this is fun stuff to do.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/video/Gesthemane.wmv
Windows Movie Maker proves to be a good utility for this kind of work. Now that many churches have big audio-visual systems, there is a ready venue for it, so between the video-enabled iPods, the web in general, and the big systems, this is fun stuff to do.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Messages of Mutual Exclusion
For Staff:
Everyone is counting on you.
Good attitudes make good teams.
Teams make sacrifices.
When the team wins, we all win.
Keep up the good work.
For Executives:
Hire proven performers.
Eliminate doubt.
Fresh blood makes fresh ideas.
When stockholders win, options vest.
Keep up the good work.
I'm not disgruntled. I like to think of myself as the last of the original class of "nattering nabobs of negativism".
Everyone is counting on you.
Good attitudes make good teams.
Teams make sacrifices.
When the team wins, we all win.
Keep up the good work.
For Executives:
Hire proven performers.
Eliminate doubt.
Fresh blood makes fresh ideas.
When stockholders win, options vest.
Keep up the good work.
I'm not disgruntled. I like to think of myself as the last of the original class of "nattering nabobs of negativism".
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Gethesemane: A Song
Anyone who knows me or downloads my songs knows I write pop and not for the sanctuary. I was asked to do a solo for Good Friday by our choir mistress. This is the piece.
Gethesemane
The image of Christ praying in the garden is compelling to me because I believe this is when He is the most human. Confronting the hours of betrayal, humiliation, torture and execution, Jesus knows the real nature of original sin: to love life more than Heaven. So he prays to be released, and in this, he understands why He came: to pray for forgiveness for all humanity, Himself included.
Some songs come so easily, it feels as it they are breathed into me and all I did was write them down. This is one of those. If you enjoy it, credit the source and not the emanuensis.
Gethesemane
The image of Christ praying in the garden is compelling to me because I believe this is when He is the most human. Confronting the hours of betrayal, humiliation, torture and execution, Jesus knows the real nature of original sin: to love life more than Heaven. So he prays to be released, and in this, he understands why He came: to pray for forgiveness for all humanity, Himself included.
Some songs come so easily, it feels as it they are breathed into me and all I did was write them down. This is one of those. If you enjoy it, credit the source and not the emanuensis.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Office Affairs
Office affairs are always among parties where at least one is married and not to another party to the affair. Otherwise, they would be office romances and while those can lead to problems or a better life, they don't break covenants so don't fall into all of the problems of the office affair.
The dynamics of office romances or affairs are such that in the beginning, the male is at the greatest risk because he typically initiates and until the female says yes, the male can always be gotten rid of with harassment charges. At the point at which the female says yes and the affair is consummated, the female assumes almost all of the risks. While both may have risks associated with their spouses, those are outcomes outside the office.
The unfair part of the office affair is that when concluded by consent or command, the most severe consequences usually are to the female. The worst that happens to males in the majority of cases is they are reassigned, warned, or can lose a security clearance, but little else economically or socially within the workplace unless the female is pregnant, and then the pregnancy is politely ascribed to the marriage. If all parties remain polite, life goes on.
When exposed, and the majority of office affairs are because these are transparent to colleagues, the female can lose her career and possibly her marriage. The male may lose the marriage but seldom if ever the career. There is something Western here, but it seems the modern opinion is that it is the female who is most at fault for accepting and loses the most trust among her colleagues and that is what devastates the career.
Men who are politically compromised may suffer a setback in upward career momentum, but it is typically short-lived if other skills are valued.
For a female to recover, she typically moves to another company and away from any social connections to the former company, often to a new town to ensure this. If there are spousal objections, the problem becomes much more complicated and often, the deceit, much deeper and difficult to manage. So the risks grow exponentially unless she and her spouse can cope with the infidelity openly or at least in private.
The male may have similar issues but they aren't as severe.
It is not uncommon for the male, having seen that the consequences are few, to engage in multiple office affairs serially or even in parallel. While the risks of parallel affairs are great, the risks for serial affairs are little as long as he can maintain the social arrangements of the marriage. In some networks and cultures, affairs by men are tolerated without approval, with little consequence to the marriage which is viewed socially as an economic and parenting arrangement. The primary mistake the male can make is to subject the spouse to social humiliation by publicly flaunting his other liaisons; so in these cultures, keeping the mistress or office girl at a distance from his social world is considered polite even if having her close at the office is not considered impolite but risky. Because a male gains status from risk taking and managing risk, the office affair can be a plus to his advancement.
This is never true for females.
None of this is fair. Fairness and justice are concepts of legitimacy and there is no framework in which the office affair is considered legitimate. They are part of the fabric of desire that drives the humans at the emotional and sometimes economic levels. That they are unbalanced as to consequences appears to be a cultural problem of perceptions, not a problem of right or morality. If they were right or moral, people wouldn't hide them, make up stories when confronted, or otherwise be 'keeping it on the side'. It is what it is: risky behavior.
How risk is managed and rewarded is the crux. Caveat emptor.
The dynamics of office romances or affairs are such that in the beginning, the male is at the greatest risk because he typically initiates and until the female says yes, the male can always be gotten rid of with harassment charges. At the point at which the female says yes and the affair is consummated, the female assumes almost all of the risks. While both may have risks associated with their spouses, those are outcomes outside the office.
The unfair part of the office affair is that when concluded by consent or command, the most severe consequences usually are to the female. The worst that happens to males in the majority of cases is they are reassigned, warned, or can lose a security clearance, but little else economically or socially within the workplace unless the female is pregnant, and then the pregnancy is politely ascribed to the marriage. If all parties remain polite, life goes on.
When exposed, and the majority of office affairs are because these are transparent to colleagues, the female can lose her career and possibly her marriage. The male may lose the marriage but seldom if ever the career. There is something Western here, but it seems the modern opinion is that it is the female who is most at fault for accepting and loses the most trust among her colleagues and that is what devastates the career.
Men who are politically compromised may suffer a setback in upward career momentum, but it is typically short-lived if other skills are valued.
For a female to recover, she typically moves to another company and away from any social connections to the former company, often to a new town to ensure this. If there are spousal objections, the problem becomes much more complicated and often, the deceit, much deeper and difficult to manage. So the risks grow exponentially unless she and her spouse can cope with the infidelity openly or at least in private.
The male may have similar issues but they aren't as severe.
It is not uncommon for the male, having seen that the consequences are few, to engage in multiple office affairs serially or even in parallel. While the risks of parallel affairs are great, the risks for serial affairs are little as long as he can maintain the social arrangements of the marriage. In some networks and cultures, affairs by men are tolerated without approval, with little consequence to the marriage which is viewed socially as an economic and parenting arrangement. The primary mistake the male can make is to subject the spouse to social humiliation by publicly flaunting his other liaisons; so in these cultures, keeping the mistress or office girl at a distance from his social world is considered polite even if having her close at the office is not considered impolite but risky. Because a male gains status from risk taking and managing risk, the office affair can be a plus to his advancement.
This is never true for females.
None of this is fair. Fairness and justice are concepts of legitimacy and there is no framework in which the office affair is considered legitimate. They are part of the fabric of desire that drives the humans at the emotional and sometimes economic levels. That they are unbalanced as to consequences appears to be a cultural problem of perceptions, not a problem of right or morality. If they were right or moral, people wouldn't hide them, make up stories when confronted, or otherwise be 'keeping it on the side'. It is what it is: risky behavior.
How risk is managed and rewarded is the crux. Caveat emptor.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Gethesemane
Father, take this cup from me
Swap it for a cooling rain
For a dream we share
By the river there
Cover your face from my shame.
Oh Father, take this cup from me
Take back this drink of despair
For the feelings that harden
So far from the garden
Gethesemane here ensnared.
I came to love them, Father
Share their joyfulness and pain
When our deaths were so far away
But now I share their hunger
For the breath of inspiration
Breathed into me, Father, Life!
It ends today.
Father take this cup from me.
Human, have you made me and frail.
Though your face I see,
Will I still be me
Remembering all beyond the pale?
Oh Father, forgive me, this sin I bare
For the love that you have for your child
From the garden of Eden
To the ending of the world
For forgiveness, merciful mild.
Oh Father, forgive.
len bullard 03/13/06
Swap it for a cooling rain
For a dream we share
By the river there
Cover your face from my shame.
Oh Father, take this cup from me
Take back this drink of despair
For the feelings that harden
So far from the garden
Gethesemane here ensnared.
I came to love them, Father
Share their joyfulness and pain
When our deaths were so far away
But now I share their hunger
For the breath of inspiration
Breathed into me, Father, Life!
It ends today.
Father take this cup from me.
Human, have you made me and frail.
Though your face I see,
Will I still be me
Remembering all beyond the pale?
Oh Father, forgive me, this sin I bare
For the love that you have for your child
From the garden of Eden
To the ending of the world
For forgiveness, merciful mild.
Oh Father, forgive.
len bullard 03/13/06
Pirates and Innovation
It's been calculated that money spent on R&D is not correlated to innovation. Believe it or not. If you don't spend any money on R&D, you lose, but if you spend too much, the stockholders lose. Since most management plans are couched in terms of shareholder value, one can pretty much forget pleading for R&D money without a solid short term turnaround return on investment.
So you still need an innovative staff, you still have to manage to get them across technology chasms requiring lots of homework, and you want them to be happy about that?
Children won't learn arithmetic writing numbers on a board. They will count the numbers of toy pirates they have and how many they lost in a sea battle with a friend. Occasionally, they will fill a ship model with firecrackers and gas and blow it up just to watch together and tell their chums.
Keeping the little buggers entertained is 80% of teaching hard lessons. There is no agenda on a playground but the one in a child's heart just before recess.
We can't spend money, but we can have fun.
ARRGGG! MATEY!!
... and they wonder why the development staff is so silly.
So you still need an innovative staff, you still have to manage to get them across technology chasms requiring lots of homework, and you want them to be happy about that?
Children won't learn arithmetic writing numbers on a board. They will count the numbers of toy pirates they have and how many they lost in a sea battle with a friend. Occasionally, they will fill a ship model with firecrackers and gas and blow it up just to watch together and tell their chums.
Keeping the little buggers entertained is 80% of teaching hard lessons. There is no agenda on a playground but the one in a child's heart just before recess.
We can't spend money, but we can have fun.
ARRGGG! MATEY!!
... and they wonder why the development staff is so silly.
Friday, March 10, 2006
XML Was Invented By The Losers: Part II
Point is, XML was a coup, Mike, over fish and bigger fish. ... and it was the right thing to do, implicature and inference. I don't want to reel off the names because that is an assessment based on the sales I saw at the time and who they were selling too. SGML systems were very expensive.
The bigger fish don't always win. It doesn't mean they are evil. Some are being eaten/herded by even bigger fish. But put enough losers on the street and they figure out how to beat the winning fish to the bigger fish. No legacy. Nothing to lose. Everything to win and software requires no more than household costs to develop to prototypes.
Were I The Evil Coyote at the Evil Empire:
Cut the loss leaders off into open source. Spread the risk and cost of development out. As the hardware costs come down, software is a bundled component and it is shipped that way. To reduce costs, reduce non-standard bundling of software and hardware. See Macintosh 1986.
A standard bundling of hardware/software collapses the licensing costs, sales costs and dilutes the threats of patents and patent trolls without removing the competitive edge of quality.
Solve the problems of versioning and identity management. The problems of the second are social in that they are the history of systems like those based on SSN beating against the new web based systems that are quick to grant rights and slow to revoke them.
The application of identity tokens such as Social Security numbers, that is, tokens which are printed and therefore easily lost are insufficient for a digital society. Because the rate of interconnection, relations, and types in the system have increased, the speed and size of damage is fast and hard to undo with current mixed human/machine schedules (eg, what user can contract with the server and what a human has to review/approve). Not relaxing the constraints on registration of transaction where the business logic is adequate to approve a transaction is costly and paranoid.
Portals must integrate notification services based on legitimacy, sensitivity and autonomy.
Identity theft is discovered only when the first collection agency calls. That is too late.
Services to stop all transactions on the lost id are closed on weekends. That is too slow.
Services can be insensitive. That is rude.
This lack of orchestration/choreography/event systems for building implicature and inference from events over data increases costs and reduces reliability. BI systems ARE the next hot emergence zone.
Reliability is a problem of undercertified systems. Undercertified systems require tests and tests must be transparent. Mapping specifications to open testing is still the best means to certify.
This requires all the big fish to put down their guns and see the desktop market equilibrium for what it can be: a cost cutting system that doesn't sacrifice the quality of the product to increase the rate of sales. Make sure this piece is a rock-solid indisputably patent neutral system.
Any time a component rises to commodity status, buy the rights and put it in the standard system. Buy the patents and put them in the public domain. Innovate and standardize by providing profits to the owner from the profits made of selling the system to public domain. Let the market economy do the rest.
Pretty much what The Losers do. Lose the least profitable risks by sharing the costs of the most profitable ones. In that way, economic gains are sustained by social benefits.
Then it's norms and affordances, or culture and rights. With these come national interests. We speak of society as if it were homogenous and that is observably not so. But given the power of nations, culture is where our standard systems and marketplaces interlock, where social benefits and economic gains are made uncertain by the unreliability of those relationships in the human context. Cultural interfaces mean system filters. System filters mean autonomy.
The conflict is here between human and virtual systems.That is the hard problem of the emerging generation of digital systems designers and strategists: to couple social benefits to economic needs through the dimensions of legitimacy, sensitivity and autonomy of the virtual systems with respect to the norms and affordances of the human systems. Where we cannot, we risk the nationalist agenda oscillating against our global conversations. But the rule of autonomy says that we cannot continue simply by system fiat: we must desire this. That is the crucible sensitivity over autonomy in the rights of the human over the virtual, and the virtual over the human, and by representation, human over human.
I have hope.
Last week I received an email from a fan who shares my music with his friends in China. My wife warns me people in China have a thriving business duplicating western music and selling it and might steal mine. I told her, "I hope so."
A bit of memory from my generation: the music of Motown made for peace in an integrating racist Southern America. If there is to be peace, it is to be found in our shared languages, and of these, music speaks to the heart. When we hear this, we listen. Then no one loses.
"Leave gentle fingerprints on the Soul of another for the Angels to read"..- Proverb
The bigger fish don't always win. It doesn't mean they are evil. Some are being eaten/herded by even bigger fish. But put enough losers on the street and they figure out how to beat the winning fish to the bigger fish. No legacy. Nothing to lose. Everything to win and software requires no more than household costs to develop to prototypes.
Were I The Evil Coyote at the Evil Empire:
Cut the loss leaders off into open source. Spread the risk and cost of development out. As the hardware costs come down, software is a bundled component and it is shipped that way. To reduce costs, reduce non-standard bundling of software and hardware. See Macintosh 1986.
A standard bundling of hardware/software collapses the licensing costs, sales costs and dilutes the threats of patents and patent trolls without removing the competitive edge of quality.
Solve the problems of versioning and identity management. The problems of the second are social in that they are the history of systems like those based on SSN beating against the new web based systems that are quick to grant rights and slow to revoke them.
The application of identity tokens such as Social Security numbers, that is, tokens which are printed and therefore easily lost are insufficient for a digital society. Because the rate of interconnection, relations, and types in the system have increased, the speed and size of damage is fast and hard to undo with current mixed human/machine schedules (eg, what user can contract with the server and what a human has to review/approve). Not relaxing the constraints on registration of transaction where the business logic is adequate to approve a transaction is costly and paranoid.
Portals must integrate notification services based on legitimacy, sensitivity and autonomy.
Identity theft is discovered only when the first collection agency calls. That is too late.
Services to stop all transactions on the lost id are closed on weekends. That is too slow.
Services can be insensitive. That is rude.
This lack of orchestration/choreography/event systems for building implicature and inference from events over data increases costs and reduces reliability. BI systems ARE the next hot emergence zone.
Reliability is a problem of undercertified systems. Undercertified systems require tests and tests must be transparent. Mapping specifications to open testing is still the best means to certify.
This requires all the big fish to put down their guns and see the desktop market equilibrium for what it can be: a cost cutting system that doesn't sacrifice the quality of the product to increase the rate of sales. Make sure this piece is a rock-solid indisputably patent neutral system.
Any time a component rises to commodity status, buy the rights and put it in the standard system. Buy the patents and put them in the public domain. Innovate and standardize by providing profits to the owner from the profits made of selling the system to public domain. Let the market economy do the rest.
Pretty much what The Losers do. Lose the least profitable risks by sharing the costs of the most profitable ones. In that way, economic gains are sustained by social benefits.
Then it's norms and affordances, or culture and rights. With these come national interests. We speak of society as if it were homogenous and that is observably not so. But given the power of nations, culture is where our standard systems and marketplaces interlock, where social benefits and economic gains are made uncertain by the unreliability of those relationships in the human context. Cultural interfaces mean system filters. System filters mean autonomy.
The conflict is here between human and virtual systems.That is the hard problem of the emerging generation of digital systems designers and strategists: to couple social benefits to economic needs through the dimensions of legitimacy, sensitivity and autonomy of the virtual systems with respect to the norms and affordances of the human systems. Where we cannot, we risk the nationalist agenda oscillating against our global conversations. But the rule of autonomy says that we cannot continue simply by system fiat: we must desire this. That is the crucible sensitivity over autonomy in the rights of the human over the virtual, and the virtual over the human, and by representation, human over human.
I have hope.
Last week I received an email from a fan who shares my music with his friends in China. My wife warns me people in China have a thriving business duplicating western music and selling it and might steal mine. I told her, "I hope so."
A bit of memory from my generation: the music of Motown made for peace in an integrating racist Southern America. If there is to be peace, it is to be found in our shared languages, and of these, music speaks to the heart. When we hear this, we listen. Then no one loses.
"Leave gentle fingerprints on the Soul of another for the Angels to read"..- Proverb
What Do You Do Here?
What do you do here?
Pick any two.
2. Resume Version: Senior Technical Consultant. The duties are to make sure Process Requests get answered promptly..
2. Email Signature Version:
Wyle E Coyote Society : Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow.
2. Blog Version:
I herd fish for the other predators.
A day without scaring a senior manager is a day without perspiration.
Being bad is easy; being evil takes practice, study, and planning.
2. Podcast Version:
"Speak of the Devil!"
"It's not my turn to be the Devil."
"Oh right.... it's my turn, but I've studied."
2. Zen version:
They ask you to move a mountain but will not buy you equipment or explosives. You notice a stream runs past the base of the mountain, buy a small house, and spend your mornings picking up sand off the bottom of the stream and dropping it back in the water to watch it flow toward the mountain. You grow old but you attain your goal and the water does all the heavy lifting.
Pick any two.
2. Resume Version: Senior Technical Consultant. The duties are to make sure Process Requests get answered promptly..
2. Email Signature Version:
Wyle E Coyote Society : Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow.
2. Blog Version:
I herd fish for the other predators.
A day without scaring a senior manager is a day without perspiration.
Being bad is easy; being evil takes practice, study, and planning.
2. Podcast Version:
"Speak of the Devil!"
"It's not my turn to be the Devil."
"Oh right.... it's my turn, but I've studied."
2. Zen version:
They ask you to move a mountain but will not buy you equipment or explosives. You notice a stream runs past the base of the mountain, buy a small house, and spend your mornings picking up sand off the bottom of the stream and dropping it back in the water to watch it flow toward the mountain. You grow old but you attain your goal and the water does all the heavy lifting.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
XML Was Invented By Losers
Here's something to ponder. Winners may write histories but evolution is determined by the losers.
How many of the XML designers and primary supporters had, owned or worked for companies that were losers in the SGML market or standards fights? Most of them (the exception being James Clark but he was independently wealthy and has his own reasons). XML wasn't the Revenge of the Forty-somethings as it was once described, but the victory of the SGML losers over the SGML winners.
The trick here is pragmatic (as in linguistic pragmatics): the sentence may be true and the implicature false. Implication is in the utterance, not the sentence.
Can you think of cases where the sentence is true? In possibly more cases than we like to admit, losers determine the direction of the next generation. Why? Motivated to change. That's why BigCos are seldom the place to look for progress. The cost of ditching legacy is not something short-term profit project managers want to account for. It's cheaper to offshore the old, delay the new, and melt down the competence capital of the engineering departments. Then you sell the company to your wealthier competitors or even to the offshore companies you have been sending work to. After that, losers take the next steps.
Happy Mind Melting.
What happens as the cost of computer hardware continues to fall? Traditionally, it has been cheaper to replace or upgrade software because hardware changes were orders of magnitude more expensive given a system of some size? If both costs are falling, isn't there a point at which it is cheaper to FexEx the entire system? Is it true that the only future profits for information technologies will be in local customization?
I don't believe any of that, but the implications are fun. Those buying those companies, for example, may win by acquisition and lose by possession of the obligations because the losers in the last round of competition are waiting and weren't loafing while all of the buying and selling was paralyzing the engineers like deers caught in the headlights.
And now that they have lost, they have nothing else to do but work on winning.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Kris Kristofferson
How many of the XML designers and primary supporters had, owned or worked for companies that were losers in the SGML market or standards fights? Most of them (the exception being James Clark but he was independently wealthy and has his own reasons). XML wasn't the Revenge of the Forty-somethings as it was once described, but the victory of the SGML losers over the SGML winners.
The trick here is pragmatic (as in linguistic pragmatics): the sentence may be true and the implicature false. Implication is in the utterance, not the sentence.
Can you think of cases where the sentence is true? In possibly more cases than we like to admit, losers determine the direction of the next generation. Why? Motivated to change. That's why BigCos are seldom the place to look for progress. The cost of ditching legacy is not something short-term profit project managers want to account for. It's cheaper to offshore the old, delay the new, and melt down the competence capital of the engineering departments. Then you sell the company to your wealthier competitors or even to the offshore companies you have been sending work to. After that, losers take the next steps.
Happy Mind Melting.
What happens as the cost of computer hardware continues to fall? Traditionally, it has been cheaper to replace or upgrade software because hardware changes were orders of magnitude more expensive given a system of some size? If both costs are falling, isn't there a point at which it is cheaper to FexEx the entire system? Is it true that the only future profits for information technologies will be in local customization?
I don't believe any of that, but the implications are fun. Those buying those companies, for example, may win by acquisition and lose by possession of the obligations because the losers in the last round of competition are waiting and weren't loafing while all of the buying and selling was paralyzing the engineers like deers caught in the headlights.
And now that they have lost, they have nothing else to do but work on winning.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Kris Kristofferson
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Fishbrains
Ever go to a meeting and while you are trying to work out terms and conditions, your customer or the consultant are regaling you with a story about a neat new box that let's them provide themselves and five strangers within two hundred feet Internet Access over their cellphone?
Has your next door neighbor who has yet to buy a life insurance policy for himself to cover his seven children from his first and second marriage and his new girlfriend's three shown you his 1975 Rolex that he bought at the flea market?
Did your brother in law have a yard sale that included a first edition copy of "Are You Experienced?" while keeping a copy of his Morris Albert album that includes the megahit "Feelings" because that was his song when he was dating you know who before she left him for you don't care?
More often than not, you are dealing with FishBrains. Fish don't stop to think when they swim toward bright and shiny objects in the water that the object may have a hook inside. Fish only care that something is bright and shiny and they'll swallow it.
It is always interesting at any social event to figure out who the FishBrains are and who are sharks pretending to be fish. The clue is that predators steer prey and if they hunt in groups, they steer them toward the other predators by distraction. Remember: bright and shiny. While your lawyer is showing your wife his new Jag, his wife is showing you her new tits. And you're listening? Right.....
I don't know why but in America, more women are eager to demonstrate their Fishbrains. It may be that American men are equally inclined to live in the space between their opposing eyes, but American women are faster. It may be that American men are just slow in general. A Fishbrain prefers Britney Spears to Lisa Loeb and maybe that is why fish survive long winters in cold water frozen to the bottom of lakes. They don't rise to ugly bait. Remember, bright and shiny aren't the same as smart and whiny.
Fishbrains still believe conversion to the metric system is inevitable in America. Why? The French say so. Fishbrains believe the Arabs are causing all of the world's woes because we get so much oil from them. Of course anyone who reads Wired or watches West Wing knows we get most of our oil from Canada. If we dig deep enough, we'll find out Canadian Fishbrains blew up the Iraqui mosque. Cui bono? And it was bright and shiny... "like a Rhinestone Cowboy".
Fishbrains still have their Mood Rings and keep them next to their favorite Pet Rock. They euthanized their last Pet Rock because it pissed on the couch and they know the cat is too smart to do that.
Fishbrains tie yellow ribbons to trees to welcome home veterans in honor of a song about a guy coming home from prison... on a bus.
Fishbrains think the Chronicles of Narnia is a serious philosophical movie, applaud Sean Hannity for his deep grasp of the truth, and laugh when told that NASA surpressed evidence of global warning because they know the Rapture is coming soon so consume.
When George W. Bush says Osama Bin Laden helped him get elected by issuing threats, wiley Fishbrains nod in agreement knowing it was a ruse to get them to vote for Kerry because Bush is bad for Bin Ladin and the terrorists' cause.
Fishbrains tell you that the next generation of the Web is here because they can interact with their best friends who live down the street over the wire by typing messages into a telephone keyboard with a pen.
Fish aren't all bad. Fish make great bait. Fish can be used to hunt other fish. Fish are brain food. In one of the weird results of life seeking higher intelligence, lower lifeforms trying with all their mighty might are just filled with GottaEvolveAnxiety and yes, that is the life force. You can eat that and become smarter. In world of eat or be eaten, timing and position matter.
Fishbrains rule. Why? The more eggs you lay the better the chances of accidental fertilization.
To mix metaphors, as I said to Kurt Cagle, the difference between a bag of helium and a bag of gold is the bag of helium will float away, but if you let go of the string, either will disappear just as fast.
Has your next door neighbor who has yet to buy a life insurance policy for himself to cover his seven children from his first and second marriage and his new girlfriend's three shown you his 1975 Rolex that he bought at the flea market?
Did your brother in law have a yard sale that included a first edition copy of "Are You Experienced?" while keeping a copy of his Morris Albert album that includes the megahit "Feelings" because that was his song when he was dating you know who before she left him for you don't care?
More often than not, you are dealing with FishBrains. Fish don't stop to think when they swim toward bright and shiny objects in the water that the object may have a hook inside. Fish only care that something is bright and shiny and they'll swallow it.
It is always interesting at any social event to figure out who the FishBrains are and who are sharks pretending to be fish. The clue is that predators steer prey and if they hunt in groups, they steer them toward the other predators by distraction. Remember: bright and shiny. While your lawyer is showing your wife his new Jag, his wife is showing you her new tits. And you're listening? Right.....
I don't know why but in America, more women are eager to demonstrate their Fishbrains. It may be that American men are equally inclined to live in the space between their opposing eyes, but American women are faster. It may be that American men are just slow in general. A Fishbrain prefers Britney Spears to Lisa Loeb and maybe that is why fish survive long winters in cold water frozen to the bottom of lakes. They don't rise to ugly bait. Remember, bright and shiny aren't the same as smart and whiny.
Fishbrains still believe conversion to the metric system is inevitable in America. Why? The French say so. Fishbrains believe the Arabs are causing all of the world's woes because we get so much oil from them. Of course anyone who reads Wired or watches West Wing knows we get most of our oil from Canada. If we dig deep enough, we'll find out Canadian Fishbrains blew up the Iraqui mosque. Cui bono? And it was bright and shiny... "like a Rhinestone Cowboy".
Fishbrains still have their Mood Rings and keep them next to their favorite Pet Rock. They euthanized their last Pet Rock because it pissed on the couch and they know the cat is too smart to do that.
Fishbrains tie yellow ribbons to trees to welcome home veterans in honor of a song about a guy coming home from prison... on a bus.
Fishbrains think the Chronicles of Narnia is a serious philosophical movie, applaud Sean Hannity for his deep grasp of the truth, and laugh when told that NASA surpressed evidence of global warning because they know the Rapture is coming soon so consume.
When George W. Bush says Osama Bin Laden helped him get elected by issuing threats, wiley Fishbrains nod in agreement knowing it was a ruse to get them to vote for Kerry because Bush is bad for Bin Ladin and the terrorists' cause.
Fishbrains tell you that the next generation of the Web is here because they can interact with their best friends who live down the street over the wire by typing messages into a telephone keyboard with a pen.
Fish aren't all bad. Fish make great bait. Fish can be used to hunt other fish. Fish are brain food. In one of the weird results of life seeking higher intelligence, lower lifeforms trying with all their mighty might are just filled with GottaEvolveAnxiety and yes, that is the life force. You can eat that and become smarter. In world of eat or be eaten, timing and position matter.
Fishbrains rule. Why? The more eggs you lay the better the chances of accidental fertilization.
To mix metaphors, as I said to Kurt Cagle, the difference between a bag of helium and a bag of gold is the bag of helium will float away, but if you let go of the string, either will disappear just as fast.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Searching for Signal: Part II
Last night I turned the comments on. It only took a few minutes before the first spam message appeared in my inbox from the blog. Gad. The web predators certainly are evolving fast. One wonders. We want to have these participative conversations but as soon as we open up, the opportunists begin to piss in the soup.
I had a long conversation with the owner of a popular 3D chat room. She related an interesting bit. 3D rooms that don't have multi-user chat don't last. She said, "They're lonely places." That implies that many of the experiments in 3D enabling interactive but non-multi-user 3D apps don't have a promising shelf life. When I think of all the failed experiments in search engines, shopping malls and visualization that tried the sex of 3D and flopped, or the 3D cartoons that while fun to watch were really linear 3D and therefore could just as well have been 2D Flash or machinima, evidence builds that what we've always said is more true than ever: the killer apps are always presence apps where people can make contact with each other. Social worlds do better. Not exactly news but once again, we are reminded the users are mammals and mammals are social critters constantly searching for signal. The smart money develops apps to hook them up.
Searching for signal: it's a meme I guess.
Next week, we'll look into combative pragmatics. Being a contrarian, if the pundits and heros are going to proseletyze for Web 2.0 being pragmatically enabled for negotiation, I'll take the other side and discuss how to use pragmatics in combat with the other chimps on the hunt for bangmates and domination of the monkey tree.
I had a long conversation with the owner of a popular 3D chat room. She related an interesting bit. 3D rooms that don't have multi-user chat don't last. She said, "They're lonely places." That implies that many of the experiments in 3D enabling interactive but non-multi-user 3D apps don't have a promising shelf life. When I think of all the failed experiments in search engines, shopping malls and visualization that tried the sex of 3D and flopped, or the 3D cartoons that while fun to watch were really linear 3D and therefore could just as well have been 2D Flash or machinima, evidence builds that what we've always said is more true than ever: the killer apps are always presence apps where people can make contact with each other. Social worlds do better. Not exactly news but once again, we are reminded the users are mammals and mammals are social critters constantly searching for signal. The smart money develops apps to hook them up.
Searching for signal: it's a meme I guess.
Next week, we'll look into combative pragmatics. Being a contrarian, if the pundits and heros are going to proseletyze for Web 2.0 being pragmatically enabled for negotiation, I'll take the other side and discuss how to use pragmatics in combat with the other chimps on the hunt for bangmates and domination of the monkey tree.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Searching For Signal
Queens follow kings. Kings follow danger
Seeking advice from a beckoning stranger.
Truth isn't easily found in your dreams.
It's nothing from nothing whatever it seems.
You crawl to the top. Ambition is calling.
The moment you stand, you're already falling.
Love's not a prize for a victory won.
Love's how you feel when the loving is done.
What taste do you think is more bitter than this:
The lie on your lips or her passionless kiss?
A gift without knowing the reason for giving
Is rotten as flesh when it's no longer living.
Heartless and void, merciless cold
You humbled yourself as the cameras rolled.
Now that its over while sycophants sigh,
You're searching for signal from an ebony sky,
len - 2/21/06
Seeking advice from a beckoning stranger.
Truth isn't easily found in your dreams.
It's nothing from nothing whatever it seems.
You crawl to the top. Ambition is calling.
The moment you stand, you're already falling.
Love's not a prize for a victory won.
Love's how you feel when the loving is done.
What taste do you think is more bitter than this:
The lie on your lips or her passionless kiss?
A gift without knowing the reason for giving
Is rotten as flesh when it's no longer living.
Heartless and void, merciless cold
You humbled yourself as the cameras rolled.
Now that its over while sycophants sigh,
You're searching for signal from an ebony sky,
len - 2/21/06
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Red Neck Valentine
My wife told me not to buy her candy for Valentines Day. So I bought her a two inch thick steak in the shape of a heart for her Valentine. For mine, she will cook it. It must be a good idea. Last time I saw her she was pounding on it with a wooden mallet and repeating my name.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Connecting The Right Dots: The Legal Use of Surveillance
President Bush claims that had the NSA surveillance of American citizens been in place prior to 9/11, the terrorists could have been intercepted. He says we have to be able to 'connect the dots'. He is possibly right.
On the other hand, had a perfectly legal message switch connected the police records systems of South Florida, the same result would have occurred because Mohammed Atta in a perfectly legal traffic stop was subject to a perfectly legal name query that would have returned information sufficient to detain him.
It isn't that we need to connect the dots. That is too simplistic. We need to connect the right dots legally, then I believe we would have all the connections we need.
The Executive Branch of the government is attempting to persuade us that in times of war, laws don't matter. When laws don't matter, we are a government of men, not laws. While I have no evidence that the information gathered by the NSA is or has been used for some purpose other than those claimed, the fact of law is that it is illegal to have done so. If the only reason for breaking the law is 'wouldacoulda', then one that is speculation, and two that is not the only 'woulda coulda' so it is loose speculation. The second coulda is also legal.
Law is sometimes imprecise and in need of rewriting to meet the changing technology and times, but it is not speculative. We are now confronted with evidence both of outing a covert officer and of using the covert systems to commit possible high crimes from the same Executive Branch. The Executive Branch must be held to account for the commission of acts that may on inspection provide evidence of high crimes, If we are to remain a nation of laws, not men, then this evidence must be discovered and deliberated to determine grounds for prosecution if indeed these grounds are supported by the evidence.
... even if the acts were mostly just stupid.
On the other hand, had a perfectly legal message switch connected the police records systems of South Florida, the same result would have occurred because Mohammed Atta in a perfectly legal traffic stop was subject to a perfectly legal name query that would have returned information sufficient to detain him.
It isn't that we need to connect the dots. That is too simplistic. We need to connect the right dots legally, then I believe we would have all the connections we need.
The Executive Branch of the government is attempting to persuade us that in times of war, laws don't matter. When laws don't matter, we are a government of men, not laws. While I have no evidence that the information gathered by the NSA is or has been used for some purpose other than those claimed, the fact of law is that it is illegal to have done so. If the only reason for breaking the law is 'wouldacoulda', then one that is speculation, and two that is not the only 'woulda coulda' so it is loose speculation. The second coulda is also legal.
Law is sometimes imprecise and in need of rewriting to meet the changing technology and times, but it is not speculative. We are now confronted with evidence both of outing a covert officer and of using the covert systems to commit possible high crimes from the same Executive Branch. The Executive Branch must be held to account for the commission of acts that may on inspection provide evidence of high crimes, If we are to remain a nation of laws, not men, then this evidence must be discovered and deliberated to determine grounds for prosecution if indeed these grounds are supported by the evidence.
... even if the acts were mostly just stupid.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Cosmic Evolution
Open source is both politic and software model applied to the business model.
Is it a business model? No. I agree with Tim Bray. It isn't.
IMHO, it is shared values. Not ideology, but values.
I won't enumerate those but for one by example:
Many turtle graphic systems have been developed, but
<canvas/> works because there is one language we all speak:
HTML.
HTML's ubiquity is not based on a business model but on a model of how software should evolve for the betterment of those who use it: by always being there. That was the choice of those that built it. Read their books, read their blogs, read their lists, love their flames, style, mendacity, eagerness to challenge and eagerness to learn and eagerness to explore.
... but most importantly, to share.
For that reason, HTML is the language we all speak.
That did not come of business, it came because of what we wished for and worked for for each other: to communicate across the boundaries, to seek each other out, to want to know the differences, and to discover in all of that those things by which we are the same embracing those we choose as we choose. Freedom to know ourselves and each other isn't a business model. It is yearning for each other.
It is the mammal in you. The human.
The older I get the more I find I only really believe in two things: music and love for these reliably bring us together in yearning. The web is that desire made very large. While governments watch nervously, we have opened up the world to each other.
Cosmic evolution is choosing the means to find each other. That's all. That's enough. But if in all of that you feel an even higher power, know that it is not an uncommon feeling among the humans. If the wisdom of crowds is usually reliable, then it is wise to yearn for each other for it is something we all want to do. And if we feel in that or life in numbers there is a greater power of yearning that touches all, it is possibly true.
Self-directed evolution is cosmic evolution. You choose and become.
As ye olde Hippie bands sang, "Who Do You Love?"
Is it a business model? No. I agree with Tim Bray. It isn't.
IMHO, it is shared values. Not ideology, but values.
I won't enumerate those but for one by example:
Many turtle graphic systems have been developed, but
<canvas/> works because there is one language we all speak:
HTML.
HTML's ubiquity is not based on a business model but on a model of how software should evolve for the betterment of those who use it: by always being there. That was the choice of those that built it. Read their books, read their blogs, read their lists, love their flames, style, mendacity, eagerness to challenge and eagerness to learn and eagerness to explore.
... but most importantly, to share.
For that reason, HTML is the language we all speak.
That did not come of business, it came because of what we wished for and worked for for each other: to communicate across the boundaries, to seek each other out, to want to know the differences, and to discover in all of that those things by which we are the same embracing those we choose as we choose. Freedom to know ourselves and each other isn't a business model. It is yearning for each other.
It is the mammal in you. The human.
The older I get the more I find I only really believe in two things: music and love for these reliably bring us together in yearning. The web is that desire made very large. While governments watch nervously, we have opened up the world to each other.
Cosmic evolution is choosing the means to find each other. That's all. That's enough. But if in all of that you feel an even higher power, know that it is not an uncommon feeling among the humans. If the wisdom of crowds is usually reliable, then it is wise to yearn for each other for it is something we all want to do. And if we feel in that or life in numbers there is a greater power of yearning that touches all, it is possibly true.
Self-directed evolution is cosmic evolution. You choose and become.
As ye olde Hippie bands sang, "Who Do You Love?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)