Re: [fonc] Current topics

2013-01-03 Thread BGB
On 1/3/2013 7:27 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: BGB wrote: Whoa, I think you just invented "nanotech organelles", at least this is the first time I've heard that idea and it seems pretty mind-blowing. What would a cell use a cpu for? mostly so that microbes could be programmed in a manner more li

Re: [fonc] Current topics

2013-01-03 Thread Miles Fidelman
BGB wrote: Whoa, I think you just invented "nanotech organelles", at least this is the first time I've heard that idea and it seems pretty mind-blowing. What would a cell use a cpu for? mostly so that microbes could be programmed in a manner more like larger-scale computers. say, the micro

Re: [fonc] Current topics

2013-01-03 Thread BGB
On 1/3/2013 2:25 AM, Simon Forman wrote: On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:35 PM, BGB wrote: On 1/2/2013 10:31 PM, Simon Forman wrote: On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Alan Kay wrote: The most recent discussions get at a number of important issues whose pernicious snares need to be handled better. I

Re: [fonc] Incentives and Metrics for Infrastructure vs. Functionality

2013-01-03 Thread Marcus G. Daniels
On 1/2/13 1:49 AM, Ondřej Bílka wrote: A better example is that you have c code where at several places is code for inserting element into sorted array and using that array. What should you do. CS course taugth us to use red-black tree there. Right? Well not exactly. When one looks how is this

Re: [fonc] Current topics

2013-01-03 Thread Alan Kay
Hi David I think both of your essays are important, as is the general style of aspiration. The "ingredients of a soup" idea is one of the topics we were supposed to work on in the STEPS project, but it counts as a shortfall: we wound up using our time on other parts. We gesture at it in some o

Re: [fonc] Current topics

2013-01-03 Thread Simon Forman
On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:35 PM, BGB wrote: > On 1/2/2013 10:31 PM, Simon Forman wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Alan Kay wrote: >>> >>> The most recent discussions get at a number of important issues whose >>> pernicious snares need to be handled better. >>> >>> In an analogy to sen