11 FEB 2022 by ideonexus
The Pattern of Decentralization-Centralization
There are two categories of true believers, in my mind. There are those who, for example, are building a new decentralized user-empowering financial system. And to them, history teaches us that there will always be new avenues for power to become centralized. In fact, the entire history of the computer industry was radical openness, which led to a lot of innovation, which later led to closing it down.
For example, IBM released the PC specs. Everybody could build a PC. Michael Dell was a col... 1 
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notesLook for where things are being centralized for where to bet on a technology.
01 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
Acquire as little software as you can get by with, and st...
Acquire as little software as you can get by with, and stick with it. That's hardware critic Richard Dalton's advice. It's easy to get so caught up in the constant onrush of improvements and "next generations" in the software market that you wind up forever getting ready to work instead of working. You can buy last year's computer cheap, get last year's software, which runs beautifully on it by now, take the month to get fully running with it, and then turn your back on the market for a coupl...Folksonomies: productivity
Folksonomies: productivity
1 notes
notes25 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
Understanding Creativity Enabled Through Information Tech...
Here’s the question I’ve been asking myself: When technology enables a person to make something that looks professional without having to master any degree of craft, does that increase or decrease the likelihood of creativity? And can educators be lulled into a false impression that they have been developing creativity in students when using technologies that produce brilliantlooking results? Does my Wordle cloud give only the illusion of creativity?
A number of software applications are...Folksonomies: education creativity
Folksonomies: education creativity
1 20 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Reason: A Fictional Software
Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee. 1 notes
notes16 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Argument Against Teacherbots
Computers can do a lot in education. Of course, books and magazines can do a lot in education. Of course, a lot of what computers do well is simply replacing books and magazines. A children's library needs a librarian. It's not a dumpster full of books. Librarians (like teachers) know what children will like and understand at different ages. They can recommend books, and buy books that are popular, so you can look at the spines of books on a bookshelf, pull out a book, and find something inte...Folksonomies: education automation
Folksonomies: education automation
1 notes
notes13 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Freestyle Chess
In fact, the best game of chess in the world right now might be played neither by man nor machine.47 In 2005, the Web site ChessBase.com, hosted a “freestyle” chess tournament: players were free to supplement their own insight with any computer program or programs that they liked, and to solicit advice over the Internet. Although several grandmasters entered the tournament, it was won neither by the strongest human players nor by those using the most highly regarded software, but by a pai... 1 notes
notesSimilar to correspondence chess, where computer programs are allowed to offer suggestions and the players act like coaches directing the moves.
09 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Genes and Their Effect are Cybernetic
The software, the program. is responsible for organizing hardware, the organism. Yet throughout the process, it is the organism in its various stages of development that has to run the program. In other words, the hardware runs the software, whilst at the same time the software is generating the hardware. 1 notes
notesWith the genes programming the biology, and the biology writing the genes.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Guy Steele: Computers are Too Complex to Know it All
I guess to me the biggest change is that nowadays you can't possibly know everything that's going on in the computer. There are things that are absolutely out of your control because it's impossible to know everything about all the software. Back in the '7Os a computer had only 4,000 words of memory. It was possible to do a core dump and inspect every word to see if it was what you expected. It was reasonable to read the source listings of tine operating system and see how that worked. And I ...Folksonomies: programming computer science
Folksonomies: programming computer science
It was once possible to know all aspects of the computer, but the system has grown too large and complex for that now.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Peter Norvig: How Well Does the Program Run When it Isn't...
And think about failure modes—I remember one of the great lessons I got about programming was when I showed up at the airport at Heathrow, and there was a power failure and none of the computers were working. But my plane was on time.
Somehow they had gotten print-outs of all the flights. 1 don't know where—there must have been some computer off-site, i don't know whether they printed them that morning or if they had a procedure of always printing them the night before and sending them ... 1 notes
notesAn important use-case for any software, what's the work-around for when the program isn't running?
