Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Rahul recently pointed me to a nice 1998 review of datamodels in the database world by Stonebraker and Hellerstein: What comes around goes around. This paper is quite insightful, and I believe a good overview of the field, but it falls into the usual traps shared by most database practitioners. This got me started to think about what programming languages and databases have to learn from each other.

You may remember that I am looking for a solution to the SNAIL problem, which will have to be based on epistemic monotonic logic. Well, monotone offers half of the solution, monotonic logic. And that is also the more useful half to me, considering that the instantaneous latency of my SNAIL networks is actually low: when my computers are connected to each other, then the communication latency between them is below a few tenths of seconds at most.

I am glad to announce my latest piece of semi-useful software, CL-Launch, an infrastructure to easily make your Common Lisp software launchable from a Unix command line.

And now, in your XML documents, instead of typing the tedious <apply><sin/><apply><plus/><ci>x</ci><ci>y</ci></apply></apply> that you must type in MathML (at best -- and I didn't invent it, at least not as bad as it ended up), you'll be able to just do the whole thing with <SEX> and type (sin (+ x y)) instead; alternatively you may use <MEX> and type sin(x+y), and similarly you may use <RPN> and type x y + sin. Any of these tags make things much shorter and much more readable than they were in XML. However, SEX, like XML, has this advantage over MEX and RPN that it works well even in absence of a grammar definition (DTD, etc.): you can exchange SEX services with foreigners or be an intermediate in their SEX transactions without having to learn any of their foreign languages; SEX is a universal means of communication!

In a previous post, I told you of a door hack one of my colleagues did, and what social concepts it illustrated. Mind you, when I was younger, I also did my own door hacks. My former clubmates from the Club Informatique of Lycée Louis-le-Grand may remember one that I did long ago, back in High-School. In retrospect, I realize this anecdote too may illustrate a number of interesting social concepts.

I've recently discovered the word captcha. Of course, I already knew the concept. I first faced it on the internet long ago, quite possibly at the time when there were still free SMS services and they tried to limit abuse. Then, I wrote about using them in my article stamps vs spam.

Captchas are an inconvenience, but that's their whole point of them: they are a economic signalling device, by which the solver proves that he cares by accepting a sunk cost. The real problem with captchas is that they can be defeated, thanks to distributed porn-processing. Or maybe not.

Now that I have a newly working Lisp development system running Debian, complete with XEmacs, CLISP, SLIME, SSH and CVS, I have taken time to publish my Common Lisp software in the updated form of asdf packages, ready to be installed with asdf-install. Yup, that packaging software is named ASDF. Not SHRDLU.

The Graphing Calculator Story, that is making rounds in computist blogs, reminds me of the .sig by Alan Schmitt:

The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen.

The world needs more hackers and fewer witch doctors. Now, I wonder how much of the difference in psycho-epistemology is in-born, and how much is acquired... and I admit I am rather pessimistic as to the answer and its consequences.

Here are a few things I'd like to say about dynamic software development, after I've just had the opportunity to test first hand with CTO what I had been studying in theory and through the experiences of other people.

Now is a good time to announce that the software behind Cliki.Tunes.Org, aka CTO, has been noticeably improved.

mood: sleepy

music: Yves Duteil - Lucille et les libellules

OK, je l'avoue, je fais du remplissage de blog en vidant mes vieux brouillons. Ça me permettra peut-être de rattraper mon le sommeil d'hier. D'une pierre trois coups.

Look at these pencils. Pretty, eh? Well, there ain't no picture in the HTML, it's all done with CSS. Ouch. What a waste of bandwidth! :-) (Found via Irate Nate.)

Note that the site has other tips. But I'm sure there are better uses of CSS.

La semaine dernière, j'ai perdu pas mal de temps chez mes parents à faire marcher des ordinateurs. Lecture réservée aux amateurs de solutions hackeuses ayant l'estomac bien accroché.

mood: sleepy

music: Salsa

Said Calvin Coolidge:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

And he's right. Persistence is everything. And though I've long wanted to someday implement Orthogonal Persistence, I admit I have a lot of trouble trying to achieve explicit persistence, or having the right stuff to persist to begin with. Let's improve this year!

I first heard of Clay Shirky through Slashdot, with his article The Case Against Micropayments. But actually, I like all his articles. This guy has a lot of insight, and his approach of problems is definitely of the same kind as for austrian economists: taking information costs into account.

Whether they are in their teens or their thirties years old, I like to watch photos of their naked front and back; and when I can't touch them myself, I enjoy watching the action, or reading the best that was written about it.

Since the Dissident Frogman recently cited him, I think it is the perfect time to point to Eric S. Raymond's blog. ESR is one of the two libertarians with whom I've had a year-long mail-based discussion about guns, back in the days before he's been busy being a famous open-source advocate (you may also see my replies to some of his essays) and back when young brainwashed I sheepishly agreed with french governmental gun control laws.

Well, nowadays, I'm proud to say I'm as strong a proponent of gun control as can be found: but since I'm no more oblivious of the Law of Eristic Escalation, I now know that that means guns under the control of the people, not under the pseudo-"control" of politicians (what a silly anerism!). So, let's repeal governmental prohibitions, regulations, etc., and return the guns to those who will make good use of them, that is, honest law-abiding citizens, instead of leaving them to the legal and illegal mobsters who currently hoard them.

I've once written an article about Microkernels, where I denounce them as being mostly an intellectual fraud.

Someone from the internet (possibly a random student doing homework) sent a mail to me and Jonathan Shapiro asking whether a Kernel was faster than a Microkernel. Here is what I replied.

[Darn, I didn't insist enough on the whole kernel/microkernel issue being irrelevant in the face of the overwhelming issue of the structuration of the higher-level system components. And about the solution being of course no kernel and expressive contracting between components instead. Reminds me of the metaphor of system as society and kernel as government: no one needs a government; everyone needs an expressive market of property rights.]

So many things to say, so little time to blog. I think the bilingual constraint is overkill for me, and I'd rather do most everything in just one language: the overhead of blogging is high enough and doesn't need be tripled by the need to translate everything. I have had so many libertarian ideas to share, computer science ideas to expose, etc. -- I will have to reserve time to do that in my schedule.

I'm currently near Berlin at the Chaos Communication Camp 2003, demonstrating my Lisp Machine in the Hack Center under the DS-GROK-LC flag. It's rare enough being able to see that many diverse rational people at the same place that such an opportunity to feel both commonly sane and uncommonly unique shouldn't be neglected; it gives you hope in mankind, really.

A stand here sells "space waffeln" -- THC-enhanced wafers. I had a try.