From: thunk Date: 2010-03-28T10:50:08+09:00 Subject: Re: Boid writeup idea Andrew, Systems are rather like languages. I'm not sure there is any one reserved word/command that makes ruby "better" than another language - but somehow the sum of all the parts turns into something very powerful. I'm not ashamed, rather I'm PROUD that I have had to use Prolog or something to get useful work done. And yes, heads on, "get it done wise" this is an INSANE approach to any one problem, but it also has some general utility. I'm struggling to keep the lines so there is a framework to get pulled out of it BUT that is not as simple as it might seem. What justifies the efforts, to my thinking, and this was a "requirement" from the git-go is this: 1 People experience things anywhere, anytime, anyplace 2. Some people experience exceptional things of exception worth to other people (We are all a big Swarm you know....) ((3 Text is based on language, we don't all share it. We are overwhelmed by blobs of it. They get lost, confused, misunderstood, re- retranslated and eventualy just plain boring. Our CPU based friends have a bigger contribution to make than dynamic tags to point to more of the same.)) 4. In steps a "BOID" - its a crisp, clear, set of basic assertions that can be authored into a basic "form" by a "Expert Session" and you have the "Shell" for something useful. Its a mini-plug-let. Its a class. Its a text file. Its doesn't DO anything - it gets done to, but it makes a small contribution momentarily to something bigger - give me 1000 of these things and you can replace a average WalMart clerk, and an average "department" depth of knowledge wise. (Like I heard myself tell Andrew - it might be in charge of "vacuum cleaners" and the individual Boid might be one of 100 dedicated to the world changing task of calculating the average monthly cost of filters for your house size / family, and number of long hair cats - ) Well Andrew didn't let me finish but he understood. 5. Back to #1! yes these things could get blasted at info on an exchange and so on BUT I think a salient point is getting transliterated out of things here: THE WEB DOES THE TIME/PLACE thing for us, the "most exciting" thing I see about these things is that they can put the Doctor's experience in Israel into a usable FORM (out pops the boid) - and that Boid can get fired! at your Medical Records before your surgery in Boston. Routinely - no midnight calls, no blue lights, just a Right Boid at the right time (but one of millions) making some sort of contribution to the world system. Its a probability thing, like a "Hero pet cat" - there are millions of them sleeping/eating/and pooping all across our country - eventually one of them is going to wake us up before a fire - well, something like that - if we bred smoke sensitive cats that were pre-programmed to jammer when there is smoke - they could be called fuzzy friendly feline Foids or something..... but they'd have a USE and if I have a point in this paragraph that is probably it. And this isn't entirely off the wall because I'm learning from actual experience with really "pumped up patient records / 10 or so health conditions) that about 1/2 my boids DON'T FIRE - and that's at "two passes" - I'm seeing 3-4-5 passes for many problems domains. BTW - I woke up thinking about the best name for this, and I think, unless there are working Boids somewhere that are offended by it, I like the "Boid" name best precisely because they contribute somehow to the confusion that must proceed the "ah ha" moment when it all clicks into place. If really bright guys like Andrew hear a phrase he thinks he knows, no flag goes up, and he thinks "oh another Rinda based sextuples" how boring is that? These little guys are not pretentious - they are working class, pabst drinking, tv watching little worker boids that go to work and get something done. (like their SwarmShepherd - me) I took out TheSwarmShepherd.com/.net to present these things to the world but the service company running linux expert that was going to do this never got going on it so I just keep pounding away at software wondering when/how to plug this into the bigger system that I think it belongs in. and one last BTW - I have picked a domain with really good data for my commercial path - DRUGS - but the OTC / Herbal medicine based ones - the 380 or so officially sanctioned guys, some of which were used by Roman legion doctors, passed to the Arab lands, came back, jumped the ocean and are appearing on the counter at your neighborhood Walgreen's. All of which I find fascinating. I have a 300 page book by Canadian writers, based on German "monograms" the guts of which I've maybe 40% translated into Boidalese. Give me a list of your health issues, and so far I catch all the matching conditions, and list all the contra-indications and give me 50 more boids and I'll list all the adverse effects. They will easily estimate your daily costs and such if/when actual instances of these drugs are plugged into the system - all info readily available on the net. And that's my addition to Andrew's comments - I think he sees uses in domains near and dear to him and he has given himself a few hours to think about it, I've been staying awake nights for months working with it, he might be 100X brighter than I am but I don't think he's had the chance to think out what all makes up the value of the results. the Doctor in Israel thing is highly concocted, but that's a life to get saved and there's is a point in there that nothing like that appears to me to be happening yet. So if all the university stuff is so advanced, then WHY NOT? The technology is just sitting there - it's in your plain Ruby without a single gem to pump it up until this gets connected to the Web. Sorry if I rambled. TheSwarmShepherd, thunk