This post brings along a few changes to The Tar Pit.
-Firstly, the site structure has been modified to accomodate year changes. Posts
+Firstly, the site structure has been modified to accommodate year changes. Posts
can now be found in `posts/yxz/id-postname.html` instead of
`posts/id-postname.html`, where `xz` is a two-digit number, starting with year
00 (equivalent to 2013). I doubt that I will ever write more than 365 posts per
much better solutions: for example, no one can know what each person on Earth
is thinking right now. Assuming that they aren't thinking about anything (or
that they aren't thinking *at all*) can be useful in some situations and
-disastruous in others, such as language interpretation, the typical example
+disastrous in others, such as language interpretation, the typical example
here being search engine optimization. Moreover, some models use uncertainty as
a measure for the lack of information, particularly statistical and
-probabilistical models.
+probabilistic models.
So maybe asking whether God exists isn't quite the right question from the
-purest scientifical point of view, since it's now pretty clear that it's not
+purest scientific point of view, since it's now pretty clear that it's not
something one can find out even with state of the art tools. The question
should, I believe, rather be relaxed to "is God really necessary?", or "how
much God should we allow into our lives?". It makes much more sense, as God is
Then again, in our mystical/spiritualistic conception of religion, we've
deprived the concept of God of its worship-related semantics, or it's just that
-we're worshipping our own gods without calling them "God". But this is another
+we're worshiping our own gods without calling them "God". But this is another
story.
default actions. Feel free to suggest a more meaningful combination.
Now Mutt is one step closer to the Gmail interface, while remaining more
-responsive and less memory-consuming, not to mention the CLI/TUI minimalistic
+responsive and less memory-consuming, not to mention the CLI/TUI minimalist
awesomeness.
[^1]: I don't know why anyone would keep more than 50 mails in the inbox, but
then? you might wonder. Let me, for the purpose of enlightening you, enumerate
a couple of them.
-First of all, Romanians like to see themselves as an opressed nation from a
+First of all, Romanians like to see themselves as an oppressed nation from a
historical point of view. They like to believe that the Dacians who inhabited
Romania's geographical space 2000+ years ago were somehow "oppressed" by Romans
after Trajan's Dacian wars, when in fact historical sources show that Dacian
so, as a personal view, Romania is a pretty cool country, although sometimes it
doesn't really seem much of a *country*. Also, I've met Romanians that are
good, honest people and I'm sure I'll meet many more, which gives me the hope
-this nation (also known as "we") has the chance of reedeeming itself, and that
+this nation (also known as "we") has the chance of redeeming itself, and that
is mostly by growing up and out of our stupidity and acknowledging our sorry
past.
In this post I will argue that the so-called "Cloud" computer programs are
inherently unreliable. I will assume that the reader knows what "Cloud
computing" means: essentially a marketing buzzword referring to network-based
-services oferred by a third-party. The term "unreliable" is however not that
+services offered by a third-party. The term "unreliable" is however not that
much of a buzzword, and therefore I will spend a few paragraphs describing
it.
> frequency of failures, or in terms of availability, a probability derived
> from reliability and maintainability.
-The probabilistical approach is interesting: if a thing has a high probability
+The probabilistic approach is interesting: if a thing has a high probability
of failing, then it's unreliable. Availability is more used in practice,
especially for server uptime: if a service works properly 99.9999% of the time
in a year, then it is highly available, or in other words, pretty reliable.
because of physics, but rather because of the sheer stupidity of
developers[^3].
-Now that we've etablished possible definitions of reliability, let's give some
+Now that we've established possible definitions of reliability, let's give some
examples illustrating the unreliability of Cloud services.
## Examples of Cloud unreliability
project. It's been decided that all development files will be hosted on a
private GitHub repository. You're one day before deadline, the clients have
their eyes on you, and you know you're gonna lose lots of dollars if this
-fails. By some weird occurence, GitHub servers fail. Chaos ensues.
+fails. By some weird occurrence, GitHub servers fail. Chaos ensues.
But well, the reader might argue, this could have happened as well on a
privately hosted server. And I will answer aye, indeed, it could have. Only
and the first few years after, without any clear success, so Romania looks
pretty much like a unitary state at the moment.
-Anyway, after almost fifty years of comunism, a lot of the post-89 events came
+Anyway, after almost fifty years of communism, a lot of the post-89 events came
like major blows to the head of the masses. For example, we saw that once
markets opened, most local industries proved to be uncompetitive, so they
became extinct[^1]. Similarly, many banks were nothing more than Ponzi schemes
ago. And I could go on and on with the examples, but I'll stop here.
The thing is that absolutely no one wants to completely destroy Romanians'
-national identity, not even anarchistoid youngers who deserve a good beating
+national identity, not even anarchistoid youngsters who deserve a good beating
for being such hipsters. Surely, the state is bad, politicians are bad, but do
we like Romanian food, nature, pussy and other stuff that them westerners only
wish they had[^3].
The actors are pretty damn good, with the exception of Yelchin (Chekov) and
Pegg (Scotty), who are mostly there for comic relief. I still can't figure out
-why they chose Yelchin, since he speaks an [impecable US English][2]; Pegg's
+why they chose Yelchin, since he speaks an [impeccable US English][2]; Pegg's
got a pretty good personality, but he overdoes it. Pine is good, although he's
no Shatner, while Cho and Saldana are from the small number of actors who seem
-to make absolutely no effort to immitate the ones from the original series.
+to make absolutely no effort to imitate the ones from the original series.
I was pleasantly impressed by Quinto's Spock; he seems to get into it better
than in the previous movie. My favourite was however Benedict Cumberbatch, who
been exhausted decades ago by thinkers.
That being said, there is a clarification to be made: it is clear that humans
-are animals. However, for the purpose of succintness, in this post I will refer
+are animals. However, for the purpose of succinctness, in this post I will refer
to the set of animals as that of animals excepting humans, since human rights
are a whole different story.</em>
environments, dogs and cats are also used as "company" animals, which is kind
of natural, since dogs have developed a good sense of empathy towards humans.
-Simple-minded humans have also developed a monstruous sense of empathy towards
+Simple-minded humans have also developed a monstrous sense of empathy towards
their company animals, most probably due to a lack of purely human emotional
intelligence. Of course, there's nothing wrong with empathizing with other
beings, since that's one of the things that makes humans "superior"; however,
nature of life and it cannot be changed, lest that change brought by
extinction of all life.
-[^3]: Cross-breeding is a kind of genetical engineering, why wouldn't it be?
+[^3]: Cross-breeding is a kind of genetic engineering, why wouldn't it be?
[^4]: Although the "non-civilized" Chinese do eat food made out of dogs, not to
mention the high-quality gloves they can make out of dog skin. Note that if we
-look at it from a purely *democratical* point of view, the Chinese are superior
+look at it from a purely *democratic* point of view, the Chinese are superior
in numbers to all the countries on the globe. Good thing they're not living in
a democracy, eh?
> Then again, in our mystical/spiritualistic conception of religion, we've
> deprived the concept of God of its worship-related semantics, or it's just
-> that we're worshipping our own gods without calling them "God". But this is
+> that we're worshiping our own gods without calling them "God". But this is
> another story.
This idea stems from deep, philosophical questions such as "what is God?" or
-"what is it that we are worshipping?". If we consider for example Christianity,
+"what is it that we are worshiping?". If we consider for example Christianity,
it is intuitively clear that it was the main focus of the cultural and social
life during the fall of the Roman Empire(s) and later during the Dark Ages,
though we might not be able to provide much historical backing on the latter.
back into the box for later consumption[^1]. Religion becomes thus but a box in
this context, but a brick in the wall, but something people turn to in their
time of need. This doesn't apply at all to fundamentalist religions, which are
-very much like Christianity was a millenium ago. It however applies fully to
+very much like Christianity was a millennium ago. It however applies fully to
the Western civilization, the same civilization that in the 20th century
embraced this "box-based" thinking along with something called the pop
culture. This is essentially what I call *post-religion*.
-In other words I define *post-religion* as the worship or religious attachement
+In other words I define *post-religion* as the worship or religious attachment
to things other than an omniscient, supernatural God. Said things come to
define our (sub-)culture and our habits, defining our selves as post-religious
persons.
amongst admirers[^2].
As an exception, some people have been known to die over their favourite X. As
-a common occurence, people gather in groups to worship their X, be it at
+a common occurrence, people gather in groups to worship their X, be it at
conventions, concerts or in smaller gatherings. This is not dissimilar to
Sunday masses, same as christening is not dissimilar to various rites happening
in so-called "fraternities". I don't feel it necessary to expand the example
mathematical matters go as much as on the assumptions on which the comic
relies.
-Scientifical papers on security[^1] idiomatically define a so-called "attacker
+Scientific papers on security[^1] idiomatically define a so-called "attacker
model", from which they derive assumptions about how someone will attempt to
crack some particular computing system, in our case an arbitrary password-based
authentication system. Now that we're done with the boring stuff, it's safe to
class="thumb" src="/uploads/2014/02/grim-fandango-003-thumb.png"
title="A cap'n and his lady... ship... ladyship."/></a></span>
The game goes through four years of Manny's adventure, the same period it takes
-to get to the Ninth Undeworld[^2] by foot. People who have been "good" get a
+to get to the Ninth Underworld[^2] by foot. People who have been "good" get a
ticket to a train called The Number Nine, which takes them directly to the
Ninth Underworld. One of the eligible clients, whom Manny steals from his
pompous workmate Domino Hurley, is Mercedes Colomar, the typical innocent lady.
Thus I strive to read. I read many blogs' daily writings, but I will leave
these for another time, since I feel that they deserve a separate post. I also
read books, short stories, poems or lyrics and also scribblings which are more
-mathematical or scientifical in nature, but nonetheless art. For the sake of
+mathematical or scientific in nature, but nonetheless art. For the sake of
brevity and simplicity, I will focus on the small number of works of fiction
which I have attempted to read in the past ten months or so, some of which I
have finished and some of which I haven't.
will be able to print custom phones, or even better, hire robots to design
their favourite tech junk according to some informal specification.
-I'll admit that I'm sounding like an over-optimistical prick right now. But as
+I'll admit that I'm sounding like an overly-optimistic prick right now. But as
a science and technology enthusiast and a person with an educated view on the
subject, I predict without even the slightest hint of optimism that this will
certainly happen. Mark my words, there's no way around it; it's either this or
[^1]: In fact such a theory could only start from the same set-theoretical
constructs, no matter what other conventions we'd make along the way.
-[^2]: From the italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano, who postulated these
+[^2]: From the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano, who postulated these
axioms.
[^3]: I'll leave the demonstration for $P$ as an exercise for the reader.
energy), although some phenomena may be (possibly) unified under simple,
abstract structures such as categories. But I digress.
-These network-like stuctures repeat themselves at the macroscopic level:
+These network-like structures repeat themselves at the macroscopic level:
biologists like to study the so-called "swarm intelligence" of ant colonies
and bee swarms, observe organizational patterns and how they evolve. This is
no less true for humans: throughout history, we competed and cooperated, we
occupy a segment of the trade route between Europe and Asia known as the Silk
Road. Now, some seafaring Spanish and Portugese explorers were now sure that
the Earth must be round, so they went West hoping that they'd reach Asia if
-they travelled long enough. Much to their surprise, the Indies they reached
+they traveled long enough. Much to their surprise, the Indies they reached
were not the silk-rich Indies they had expected, which is why some of them
decided to slaughter the American natives. But again, I digress.
music, you might find to be noise and vice-versa.
But then we could approach music from an abstract point of view; it, as many
-other (physical or otherwise) phenomena occuring in nature, can be described in
+other (physical or otherwise) phenomena occurring in nature, can be described in
mathematical terms, or, to quote Leibniz:
> The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting
> (spread out in time) as trivial as possible.
The first sentence is indeed true: humans generally find it hard to grasp
-processes, be they of mathematical, algorithmical or some other description. We
+processes, be they of mathematical, algorithmic or some other description. We
reason poorly when it comes to temporal phenomena, despite the (seemingly
paradoxical) fact that we are well suited to handle them unconsciously or
subconsciously, or develop some feedback-based mechanism to approximate a
the smartphone in your pocket, all computers are based on the same principle.
Nothing much has changed from mid 20th century to the present day in terms of
theoretical achievements[^5], all hardware improvements being purely of
-technological nature. Qualitative improvements arised, however, firstly in
+technological nature. Qualitative improvements arose, however, firstly in
terms of computing scalability and secondly in terms of software
sophistication.
"The fractal nature of computing infrastructure" might sound like a rather
pompous formulation. I'm not going to argue, it probably is, but it's also
true: computers, networks by nature, have evolved into networks-of-networks as
-computer networks arised, this evolution giving birth first to local networks,
+computer networks arose, this evolution giving birth first to local networks,
which then extended to a global network which we now know as the Internet. It's
important to understand that the consolidation of our current networking
infrastructure required little in terms of scientific innovation, as they were
adventures? Remember Grim Fandango? Hell, remember Day of the *fucking*
Tentacle? Well, I'll tell you, Broken Age is none of these. The humour is
bland, the scenes make no sense -- and that's okay for a comedy, except,
-y'know, the humour is bland --, the characters are ephemere despite being
+y'know, the humour is bland --, the characters are ephemeral despite being
played by such good actors, but wait, that's not all.
<span class="imgleft"><a href="/uploads/2014/06/broken-age-03.png"> <img
[^3]: I bought the "season pass" as they call it now when they sell an entire
game to you. If there's one thing that makes Broken Age less of an adventure
-than the old ones, it's this whole dubious marketing tacting. Seriously, Tim,
+than the old ones, it's this whole dubious marketing tactic. Seriously, Tim,
this looks like nothing more than a cheap scam to us old farts.
[1]: /posts/y00/01a-grim-fandango.html
lists in Haskell. There exist at least two possible definitions, which I will
explore in the remaining paragraphs.
-## Definining the type of nested lists
+## Defining the type of nested lists
Before defining a nested-list type, which I take the liberty to name `NList`,
I'll start with observing that Haskell's built-in list type can be redefined
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff