From: thunk <gmkoller@...>
Date: 2010-03-26T18:15:09+09:00
Subject: Re: WhiteBoard Class (for these Boids)



SUMMARY
Everything seems to be just working for me, it has rapidly become
"domain specific" so I don't think it makes any sense to post the
evolved versions, it will only be 10X more confusing :)   One day of
experience with it is not enough to say much more.

The GOAL
for me was to come up with a way for my "disposable" classes to leave
information into some sort of system with minimum overhead, no new
dependencies.  Memory management is not an immediate need concern.
This has done the trick for me for now.

"All about 'Boid'", only semi-serious
Somebody with AI training here wrote that these things "probably
aren't real Boids and I have to agree - at least technically.
However,  since they are useless/meaningless alone, and follow simple
rules, and behave as  a collection - they have reminded me of "Swarms"
months before I read up on official "Swarm Intelligence".  In the last
3 months I have bent everything around them - and even reselected a
domain where I see them as having particular utility.  The term Agent
was used by IBM in a whole other context in the 90's (as in autonomous
negotiating units) and I can't help thinking of Maxwell Smart talking
into his shoe phone :) .

I really I think they are more like "Dorts" - but they are likely to
take on new abilities and who really knows where Ruby can let them
go.

i am getting reports out already but i did't like the way data was
getting shuffled around multiple times for lack of a persistent object
to post to during "flight".  oh no, the aircraft carrier analogy fits
on this too, uncanny, there is some "inflight" communication betw the
"pilots" and the ship.  so far no need between the pilots - that
happins - in a minimalistic, but effective way by organizing multiple
"waves".

BTW a friend sent me a picture of an impossible complex plane
supposedly of Soviet design and I had just read a spiegel article on
the end of WWII "disposable wooden jets" that the Nazi's were hoping
would be a wonder weapon.  The pilot, if he returned at all, only did
so by parachute. It didn't work, overall, but the may have been ahead
of their time if you think about what electronics could have done..

anyway, i could not resist the comparison,  and without further todo I
give my boid clue#18, and here are my speech opening slides for the
talk I don't intend to give:

     Its much more not this:

         http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_iTGXYFIkfkA/SYMLhYAs2yI/AAAAAAAAQT8/qLPt8MuVDw8/s1600-h/Biggest_04.jpg

     than not this:

         http://gunpoint-3d.com/view-Natter.f.html