what lessons have I to teach them. Well, maybe I have none, but then again...
I have been fortunate enough to study a tiny bit of game theory for my computer
-scientifical diploma thesis. Thus I know that the "Best" business isn't the one
+scientific diploma thesis. Thus I know that the "Best" business isn't the one
that maximizes profit and/or income, or social utility or whatnot. In my
opinion, the best business[^1] is the one from which all or most of the agents
can benefit, i.e. extract the most utility, in an otherwise perfectly hostile
environment such as product, labor, financial markets, and so on and so forth.
It is what physicists would call a closed system, or what biologists would call
-an ecosystem, or what game theorists would call a nash equilibrium, possibly
+an ecosystem, or what game theorists would call a Nash equilibrium, possibly
one attained using mixed strategies.
Facebook, for example, has proven itself to not be an ecosystem upon which
In the golden age of the World Wide Web, the phenomenon of tear-jerking[^7] is
however global: you may have forgotten the death of Robin Williams, which also
-occured in early August this year[^8]. There's not much to be said of the
+occurred in early August this year[^8]. There's not much to be said of the
actor[^9], but his death caused a slew of emotional reactions on all the
"online media" channels. This is in itself understandable, since we often
become attached to characters and in some odd way to the actors fitting in
[^9]: I'm really lacking in cinematic education, so I find it hard to have a
well thought out opinion about this. To me, Robin Williams is one of those
really good actors having the bad luck of being cast in a series of utterly
-pointless films, such as Bicentennial Man. Oh, and the main character, potrayed
+pointless films, such as Bicentennial Man. Oh, and the main character, portrayed
by Williams, dies in that movie, and this just goes to show how cold and devoid
of meaning death is, and how we're so very afraid of it. But that's nothing
really new.
what we know as [hyperoperations][2]. Quite isomorphically to natural numbers,
the set of these binary operations goes from "zeration" (what I previously
named "succession", in fact a unary operation), to addition, multiplication,
-exponentation, and then to tetration, pentation, sextation and so on, ad
+exponentiation, and then to tetration, pentation, sextation and so on, ad
infinitum. I propose that we explore them ourselves from a computational
perspective, by defining them mathematically and in Haskell, then attempting to
(intuitively) find some basic general properties, and then, finally, by ranting
For `b = Succ b'`, the induction hypothesis is `Succ a .+ b' = Succ (a .+ b')`:
~~~~ {.haskell}
- Succ a .+ Succ b' = Succ (a .+ Succ b') -- (.+) recusion
+ Succ a .+ Succ b' = Succ (a .+ Succ b') -- (.+) recursion
=> Succ (Succ a .+ b') = Succ (Succ (a .+ b'))
=> Succ a .+ b' = Succ (a .+ b') -- ind.
~~~~
for whatever it is that they believed in. Note that many people were, as
people usually are, unkeen to adhere to these new beliefs, especially due to
the fact that they weren't theirs, but the minorities'. Many people still are
-now, half a century later, despite the strong propaganda occuring in the
+now, half a century later, despite the strong propaganda occurring in the
mass-media.
Since we're discussing communication, this phenomenon was followed by an even
You see, here in uncivilized Romania, we call Gypsies "Gypsies", because that's
who they are, and it is fortunate of them that they are really proud of their
heritage. On the other hand, this indeed has the unfortunate side effect of
-creating an inter-ethnical, maybe even inter-"cultural" clash, but that's only
+creating an inter-ethnic, maybe even inter-"cultural" clash, but that's only
because Gypsies are very resilient to the cultural brainwashing which Western
people like to call "integration".
go.
Finally, based on this train of ideas, I argue that political correctness is
-inheretly harmful, because it paves the way for what I would call a
+inherently harmful, because it paves the way for what I would call a
generalization of the Stockholm syndrome: a harsh reality covered in and by
pretty words, solely for the desire of being less hateful to one another, like
hate is the only problem, and like we don't have the right to hate[^4]. It is,
According to official sources[^5], Eich occupied his rightful place as CEO of
the Mozilla Corporation for exactly one week and three days. Sometime during
this timeframe, voices had discussed a political donation made by Eich for some
-law or another which seeked to invalidate gay marriage rights in some US state
+law or another which sought to invalidate gay marriage rights in some US state
or another, which, I suppose, would lead one to believe that Eich hates gays.
The outcry and political pressure spawned by this was impressive, and while
being gay or pro-gay or anti-gay has nothing to do with his merits as a CEO, he
the false premise of positive discrimination, stating that people born in a
social group or another are somehow indebted to people born in some other
social group, which I suppose goes back to the Christian sophism that we all
-bear Adam and Eve's sins. One such attack is the harassement of Notch[^6] on
+bear Adam and Eve's sins. One such attack is the harassment of Notch[^6] on
[Twitter][5] on the basis that he didn't do enough to help
some-group-or-another in his games. Others include the rantings of artists whom
I otherwise admire[^7], who try to impose that art ["oughta" consider][6] some
matter" to this Brave New World, albeit in a manner which doesn't promote
"positive discrimination" and political attitudes. This goes to show that
modern tribalism considers that it's ok, no, that it's better to be a black gay
-woman, just as long as you're not a brown muslim arab who doesn't speak
+woman, just as long as you're not a brown Muslim Arab who doesn't speak
English.
-And no, it doesn't matter that [you have a Phd][8]. Your political correctness
+And no, it doesn't matter that [you have a PhD][8]. Your political correctness
is a proverbial Auschwitz of minds, and it's killing me.
[^1]: Tried it, didn't work.
because programmers are emotionally broken? Neither do I, and maybe that's
because women have no idea of how programmers are when they decide to become
programmers (or not) and the former would rather avoid it because [they like
-barbie dolls][2], or something equally un-programmer-ly.
+Barbie dolls][2], or something equally un-programmer-ly.
[^4]: For the record, ideologically speaking, the opposite of "the right to
hate" is forcing people to "live in harmony", which is another term for
past, but that's the "fiction" part of science fiction; it's okay, the writers
went full "2001" there and we're all okay with that. Still, I think that if an
advanced humanity living outside of time were able to conceive such a paradox,
-I think that this kind of occurence would have been more common in nature,
+I think that this kind of occurrence would have been more common in nature,
which makes the feasibility of such a phenomenon extremely improbable. But then
again, so are dinosaurs in the center of the Earth.
so much money *in secret* to attempt such a risky mission, when I'm sure there
would be better solutions available. Those that have read Dune are probably
familiar with the actual *science* of ecology, versus the nasty, political,
-almost religious ecologism occuring nowadays: since we assume that humans have
+almost religious ecologism occurring nowadays: since we assume that humans have
a hand in "global warming", then it's conceivable that humans could devise
controlled climate modifications, so that the ecosystem would be properly
regulated. This is in my opinion a much more efficient course of action, given
streamlined that this will never fail (note: for the western world), that is,
until this will blow up straight in our faces. No doubt, this is one of the
main underlying causes of war today and nothing will impede some lunatic from
-commiting genocide in order to "balance the odds". That can only mean that
+committing genocide in order to "balance the odds". That can only mean that
rough times, or rather "dark ages" are coming, and in these dark times people
will be more and more susceptible to irrational arguments.
than two thousand years ago mind. And again, this might be some time after my
children drop dead.
-Of course, this is an unscientifical claim, since I can't verify it. If you're
+Of course, this is an unscientific claim, since I can't verify it. If you're
from the future and reading this, you will however know whether I was right or
not.
Of course, I could spend days chattering about this whole tech yadda: my first
overclocking was a step away from frying a CPU; back in the days when CRTs
were still the best monitors I had a 17-inch EIZO that was perfect for any type
-of graphics processing, from photo editing to modelling, and so on and so
+of graphics processing, from photo editing to modeling, and so on and so
forth. I managed to get my hands on some of the lowest-end hardware and a only
a few pieces that were simply awesome at their time. And that's how I got past
Y2K with my balls clean, same as I'll go past Y2038[^8] and whatever's gonna
It should be clear now for any sane-minded person -- are there any sane persons
in the audience this fine evening? -- that the tolerance, "politeness" and
-political corectness preached and often practiced by all Westerners alike, from
+political correctness preached and often practiced by all Westerners alike, from
the United States to Austria[^1], is based upon a shaky foundation consisting
mainly of double-meanings and hypocrisy. Moreover, elected incompetents choose
to apply the ostrich strategy as far as this issue is concerned, while other no
calling it nowadays.
Indeed the pen, nay, the *word* is mightier than the sword. This alone should
-make civilized folks think twice before supressing the use of words, or worse,
+make civilized folks think twice before suppressing the use of words, or worse,
redefine language to ends that are unhealthy for civilized society. If you
think shutting up when you oughta speak is "being civilized", then you are
undoubtedly in the wrong, as were many others before you[^5].
could go on and on. Some people might feel inclined to compare this to, say,
Twelve Years a Slave, or Django Unchained or whatever Hollywood movies you've
been watching lately. This is not an apt comparison, by any means: the
-language isn't gratuituous, this is just the way Romanians have been talking
+language isn't gratuitous, this is just the way Romanians have been talking
for centuries; the violence isn't gratuitous[^3]; everything from the mud, to
crosses stuck in the ground and the guy saying "aferim!" out loud says
something about how Romanians were, and still are.
PDP-11[^2]. Its current descendants are Unix BSD kernels (FreeBSD, NetBSD,
etc.) and to some degree Linux, which upholds most of the core principles of
Unix, despite being written from scratch. Unix kernels are monolithic in the
-truest sense of the word: they implement core mechanims such as scheduling,
+truest sense of the word: they implement core mechanisms such as scheduling,
inter-process communication and memory management, along with device drivers
and other services such as random number generation entropy pools or file
systems. Their user space interface relies on the POSIX standard[^3], which is
others[^12], all of these so-called "subsystems" running at the same level of
privilege with the actual kernel, where by "level of privilege" we mean both
hardware and software privileges. Although malicious "kernel modules" are a
-rare occurence, given that they can only be loaded by the most privileged user
+rare occurrence, given that they can only be loaded by the most privileged user
in the system, faulty code is a common issue, tractable only palliatively
through the large developer base and cautious testing mechanisms of Linux.
that is why x86 protection modes are designed as so-called "rings": the initial
idea was that some of the OS components would be run in the most privileged
ring, while others would be employed in a less privileged ring. The
-programmer's point of view can pe represented similarly, using the following
+programmer's point of view can be represented similarly, using the following
three layers, with Layer 0 being the most privileged:
* Layer 0, the hardware-specific language -- includes instructions that are
requirement to set up a protocol for access to I/O devices and to allow
services to communicate among themselves and with applications; as far as
experience goes, this approach is expensive in terms of performance, without
-providing portability. However, it has proven its usefuleness in the field of
+providing portability. However, it has proven its usefulness in the field of
virtualization, where an entire operating system is run in Layer 3.
In both scenarios there is a class of software components that do not benefit
such a layer is not to be used for performance-critical tasks that cannot be
handled by the language run-time. The language run-time itself resides in Layer
1 and it validates software-defined policies for services running in Layer 1.5
--- for example providing them with accesss to I/O or ensuring that only valid
+-- for example providing them with access to I/O or ensuring that only valid
byte code gets executed. Thus in a strictly orthodox design, the OS kernel
would consist of only the language run-time, while all other "kernel-level"
components would be developed in Layer 1.5.
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff