Re: [hackers] Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law and other esoterica
Note to List: I love chewing on this vision thing; it's the way I operate: identifying and evaluating grand principles, assimilating them into my personal philosophy and then seeking to practice that thru my words, actions and affiliations (and perhaps it is the same for everyone; we just choose different styles of worldview) end of waay more information than anyone wanted But, if for some, much of this abstraction is too esoteric for even the project mission list, then perhaps a project philosophy list is in order that can be subscribed to or not? I'm fine with the current arrangement, just want to accommodate those who may not be. Thoughts? Anyway, for those above mentioned of lesser enthusiasm for brain farts delete this messagenow Centralized is simpler. Centralized is easier. Centralized works wonders until it doesn't and then it stands arms akimbo in the way of the future. As in all things, it's a bit of both IMHO. One of the tenets of complex adaptive system theory (and holism before that) is the idea of feedback loops between hierarchal scales of influence. Large/small, global/local, central/distributed. There is always a balance between these poles (though not strict equilibrium in the classic gas law sense, indeed far from it - yes I use a lot of quotes, it's the relativist's curse) but that ratio is dynamic and thus adaptive. Point here is that centralized is good and decentralized is good. But too much of either in a given environment is dangerous to the system's survival. Too much central control and you can't adapt quickly enough to changing conditions (turning the titanic, so to speak); too little and so much unfiltered, uncoordinated local innovation bubbles up that chaos ensues. But how to find' that elusive balance? (the concept of a federal as opposed to a confederal state raises it's head here, but we won't go there...) Fortunately for our heroes, another aspect of above mentioned systems is self-organization. The balance can't be found, but it may be allowed to find itself (and re-find itself perpetually...) by building in robust flexibility; again effectively getting out of the way. And I think that is part of the value of this navel gazing regarding the process; it's the distributed feedback to the central, consensual control. Keeping us honest. So either the media-network intelligence goes in the nodes of the network, or it goes straight to the center of the Dean Media Team mother-ship. To my mind we have successfully maintained enough flexibility and independence, thus far, to realize or immediate goals and beyond; because the original concept fostered that flexibility and the process sustains it. (I especially like the idea of allowing the nodes/indivduals to self-supply moderation) We will most likely continue to do so despite AND because of our campaign partnership. We can happily be in bed with the campaign, I believe, as long as we're not married to it, so to speak. So I remain optimistic and excited. While I'm waxing(waning? whining?) philosophic, I had read about half of Duncan Watts' Six Degrees recently then put it down to attend to other things. I'm going to pick it back up now with project context in mind and see what useful principles might be applicable. The basic small world tenet of highly connected, local networks which are minimally (but optimally) globally connected seems to have some legs here; more on this later... Peace CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] Re: Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law
Giving people and media items a fixed address at one location vastly simplifies the problem of forming these groups and collections. It's much harder to find other users and media items scattered across many different sites than at one central site. (This is why we are building VV!) And it's much harder to coordinate and update a collection containing items scattered across many sites than at one central site. It seems to me this relates to the classic napster vs gnutella achitecture evaluation(?). The selling point of the distrubuted, decentralized nature of gnutella was, in the main, user privacy. Performance though, in my personal experience and from a system logistics point of view, was in napster's corner and I atrribute this to the directory residing on a centralized server. Though the files were distributed, queries were routed thru a central hub as opposed to decentralized nodes and thus the path between users was shortened. Reed's Law argues that our media network must be a Group-Forming Network. To form these groups, we have to link media items and people together and to each other. As i explained in our IRC discussion, this is easy to do if the database is centralized and very complicated otherwise. Simpler from a system wide perspective in the case media, perhaps, but keep in mind that somebody's got to create and maintain the centralized db, associated code and/or the host itself; realistically with the kind of loving care and attention of a commercial venture (on call 24/7) precisely because of the centralized structure. If the central server goes down or lags, the whole thing grinds to a halt till somebody can find the time to troubleshoot and fix it. At least in the abstract(!), a decentralized p2p system could conceivably benefit from the redundancy of the query pathways between content servers, shades of Arpanet, so that DeanSpace labor and resources might be directed towards the 5700 other things that need to be maintained, improved, added... Mind you I emphasize the above term abstract cause I have no idea precisely how such a system might be designed and implemented; gnutella based? Granted, the feasibility of an in place, functional and reliable distributed system may well prove the best argument for the ctralized option in the end. CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Fw: [hackers] Re: Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law; revised
Statement edited for clarity: Granted, the feasibility of an in place, functional and reliable distributed system may well prove the best argument for the centralized option in the end. CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: Fw: [hackers] Re: Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law; revised2
Granted, the feasibility of an in place, functional and reliable distributed system may well prove the best argument for the centralized option in the end. Hi CMR, I'm sorry -- i'm still having trouble figuring out this statement. Did you mean that the *infeasibility* of a distributed system is an argument for a centralized option? Or did you mean that the feasibility of a centralized system is an argument for a centralized option? Or that the feasibility of a distributed system is an argument for a distributed system? apologies; feasibility was implied as feasibility, or lack there of Therefore the daunting prospect of actually designing and implementing a distributed media system that realizes our goals may, in the end, be the best argument against it; and thus for the centralized. I say may be because there may in fact exist opensource code that we could leverage effectively for this task; I'm just ignorant of what's available and of the respective pros/cons.. Cheers CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: Fw: [hackers] Re: Edge-to-Edge Principal / Reed's Law; revised2
A quick note - the decentralized system that is being proposed is NOT peer to peer. At the top, at the aggregator, it functions just the same as the centralized solution: One database, searchable and acessable by all - ie napster. Think I got it; so the aggregator functions like the news feeds(?) except it's remotely querying databases, periodically (or on the fly -pushed?-), The difference is how the metada gets to the central DB. Either it is aggregated from nodes, or required to be centrally submitted to bypass the technical hurdles of aggregation. The killer app aspect, then, is the automation of data directory centralization as opposed to relying on participants to visit and update the central site manually(?) I am under the impression that feasability or technical-hard-ness of building the metadata collection functionality to be decentralized rather than requiring it to be centrally submitted does not nearly outweigh the problems with admining, maintaining, and hosting the central solution. Given the above clarification, it sounds more do-able if the node admins can be educated.. When i get home i will be rifling through some books for quotes to support my claim that Reed's Law and End-to-End principals support the decentraralized design over the centralized design. Interestingly, reed gave a presentation where he illustrated his law (I've got a semantic bone to pick with that term as applied to theories * strict definitional sense*, but I digress..) using the example of online auctions: But the theory is less important than the practice, at least if you're trying to profit from the Internet, so I'll make some predictions based on the likely effects of the Group-Forming Law in 2002: The obvious conclusion is that whoever forms the biggest, most robust communities will win. But the Group-Forming idea can be used to look well beyond the obvious and discriminate among strategies that are all billed as building communities. For instance, Internet auction pioneer Onsale, which buys closeout products and auctions them on its Web site, will see its value rise only in proportion to the number of users. On-line classifieds, which connect buyers to sellers on a peer-to-peer basis, should see a stronger, Metcalfe effect. Ebay, which began as one person's attempt to establish a market for Pez candy dispensers, should get an even more powerful Group-Forming effect because it helps members act in groups as they auction off and bid for products on-line. (Other economics work in favor of Ebay, too. Because the Group-Forming effect will give it enormous volumes of business, it can charge a lower commission on sales. The low fees will attract more users and produce a virtuous circle. Also, because it's Ebay's customers who do the selling, Ebay doesn't face any inventory or product-development issues.) Notice he touts EBay as an example; a centralized system. But it doesn't necessarily follow that a thriving Group-Forming online communty can't be fostered via a distibuted network. Jon Udell apprently thinks just the opposite in evaluting the future of Radio Userland: Both approaches are valid, but there is a middle ground -- more coherent than email, less isolated than Groove -- that needs to be occupied. Radio doesn't yet know how to occupy that middle ground. But it has the tools people need to do the experiment: a distributed scripting engine and object database, Web-services protocols. When Radio's currently-centralized community engine itself becomes distributable (as is planned), I expect to see an explosion of group-forming activity. The spaces thus constituted will express different sets of values, but they'll federate in the way that Reed's Law predicts. see: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2002/03/01/udell.html
Re: [hackers] Draft Deanster Design Doc and other stuff
That last sentence, cast in bronze. Ours is but to choose individually. Whatever your opinion on the Dean campaign and how they interact with us, it's up to individuals to make their choices. This group is an informal association, and I don't think we're going to make a collective decision on whether we're in or out. Further, I don't think we should try to tell one another where their participation should go. Not that anyone's tried this, but I could see it happening in the future. I trust in the divinity of our collective forward momentum. Looks like we're in agreement once again, Josh. The beauty as things have evolved is that there's emerged more and less in components to be involved with, so something for everyone. It's my personal opinion that it's the the persistence of both approaches, in the context of lateral authority, that will allow for complementary as opposed to conflictive purposes and thus overall growth. And it could conceivably increase the chances that the project survives in the event that fickle fortune frowns upon it's central purpose. Cheers CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] Abandoning current theme project
- Original Message - 1) You guys/gals are doing great work. 2) Are you (any of you) open to requests for themes? 3) Are any of you open to mentoring other graphics people who might want to create themes? I'm going to try my hand busting out some themes; I've got drupal installed and configed now on my laptop and just throwing together that Dean logo was such a treat for this right-brain deprived coder, I'm up for more. I started out doing all my own graphics and layout and I rather miss that. I'll get adequately re-aquainted with PS (I last used 5 but got a fresh copy of 7 from work) churn out a test theme or 2; then I'd be totally open to requests; freebird? CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
[hackers] PHP hosting recommendations for DeanSpace?
We're ready to move on this but wanted to get everyone's input on a good php/mysql-friendly hosting outfit; we're looking at eitherhttp://www.neureal.com or http://www.ixwebhosting.com/currently; similar deals; we figure 20 gigs transfer a mon will be plenty; good price/features/reliability/support ratio is the dream Thanks CMR--enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] Browser Detect?
netscape 4 Well, for my public facing sites here, I only worry about NS6 and up (the mozilla versions) and we indicate clearly what browsers we do support on the home pages; browsers are still free and easy to in stall and NS 6 has been out for like a year now or more so, though a site should be made idiot proof, it should not have to be vegetable proof; the user does have some responsibility for their own online experience, IMHO. CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] A Proposition
I'm for the transition to DeanSpace as well.. CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com?
Subject: [hackers] How about deancountry.com? The name is available and I posted on the forum poll as to why I think it would be a good choice. People tend to associate web sites with .com most of all (especially the average web user) and it might be better to go for something with a .com domain. Just my two cents. Sounds like a handle that would appeal more to dubya's crowd to me; as in y'all hippie tree-huggers from vermont ain't country! IMHO CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com?
Neither a4d, h4d (however you expand that), nor dfa are commercial; we don't *belong* in .com -- and there might be legal ramifications. Attorney: But you registered your domain name in the .com region, a region reserved for commercial entities. You dod realize that this was the implication of .com, right Yes, attorneys will do stupid things like that in court. These guys don't seem to have an issue with it: http://www.johnkerry.com/ http://www.democrats.com/ http://www.ndol.com/ CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com?
That some people are morons doesn't make being a moron the right thing to do. we're agreed on the above point; we just disagree on what's right and what strategy's moronic Cheers^2 CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here-- - Original Message - From: Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [hackers] How about deancountry.com? On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:18:45AM -0700, CMR wrote: Attorney: But you registered your domain name in the .com region, a region reserved for commercial entities. You dod realize that this was the implication of .com, right Yes, attorneys will do stupid things like that in court. These guys don't seem to have an issue with it: http://www.johnkerry.com/ http://www.democrats.com/ http://www.ndol.com/ CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here-- That some people are morons doesn't make being a moron the right thing to do. This *is* all about doing the right thing, isn't it? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows -- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
Re: [hackers] node hosting
I've been following this for most of today and I am concerned that this bifurcation is taking too much energy. What I think needs to happen is that the legal issues need to be spelled out for anyone that would want to host a site (regardless of candidate). This information can be used by any interested party to host whatever they want. I don't think that hosting is a problem for the h4d project. But if we have the information that relates to the above then we can help the grass root nodes avoid problems. It would then assist the h4d group in answering these questions from parties interested in using the h4d branded Drupal. If I'm correct, the issue of our hosting turn key solutions was never settled one way or another. Zach revived that topic for discussion with his message this AM. This list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is, at least in part, for discussing issues of project wide scope, both present and future, and discussing project mission. Also, if I am correct, the developers list was created for immediate development issues just so those who didn't want to receive non-directly development related issue related posts don't have to. Whether or not the turn key idea is a waste of energy or not, my offer was to help out if the eventual consensus was that we wanted to offer that feature. I'm fine with it if we decide against that, but I think we ought to be allowed to discuss the merits of the idea, if any, in order to reach that consensus. Thanks CMR --enter gratuitous quotation that implies my profundity here--
