From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-02-11T07:06:53+09:00
Subject: Re: It's a Bird, it's a plane, no! umm, it's Super Boid?


On Feb 10, 2010, at 09:30 , thunk wrote:

> The idea is definitely "commercial".   My original thinking was to keep "the  engine" - where the model is built proprietary, and make pretty much everything else open source.

I have to admit, I'm a lot less interested now. :(

> ...
> The project was conceived for "checking computer components" as they are added into a "builder box" or shopping basket if you will.

And even less so. I don't see how this ties into the idea of having AI flocking algorithms figure stuff out for you.

> The assumption is that all the components are part of a computer system. This came from my hesitation to hit the Buy button with over $2k worth of items sitting in my basket at compUSA (to build a Hackintosh). [...] (BTW I installed linux on it and never tried OSX - but the machine has been rock solid :) fast, quiet, and about 1/2 the price..  they are just PCs)

Um. Macs don't cost $4k unless you're building a monster. A quick look on apple shows that for $4k I can get 8 cores, 8 gigs of ram and 2.5 Tb of disk. OR... I can get a mac mini for $600 or a laptop for 1k. Much less than $2k in both cases. Again, no need for AI here to configure or purchase. :P

Anyhow. I'd love to see what you're doing, but not if it is going to be some proprietary system that I can't play with.  Looks like you took all the swarm stuff down. Pity. Based on the gists you have up on github, I'd say you have a ways to go with ruby before it'll start feeling right (and therefore be accepted by the community)

BTW, how do boids behavior compare to David Gelernter's parallel recipes in Linda?