STUNTS abstraction

A lot of time ago there was a game called S.T.U.N.T.S. which was one of the only two racing games i ever liked (the other being Carmageddon, which was not a racing game at all). And it was cool mostly not for racing but for it was the first time i ever had encountered a level editor. And level editors are coolness.

Anyways, S.T.U.N.T.S. had a strange bug that if you made a square course with slanted curve corners (so that you never had to take your finger out of gas!!!) and used the fastest car available at some point the car would go crazy. It was like the car had become an abstract moving body instead of a car.

the thinking machine

The (misguided) comparisons between brain and computer usually begin by stating that the brain is massively parallel, working into multiple threads of thought at the same time.

But it just isn’t.

The brain is not a massively parallel processor. It does not process more than one symbol-chain at the same time. The brain deals with only one thing at a time, and it can’t even vary this one thing: the brain is always dealing with the person’s immediate circumstance.

why i was hoping for Obama, or trying to see the big picture of our current state of affairs

They had (or are having, those things are hard to pinpoint except for the actual molotovs) over back in Greece “um princípio de quiprocó, um pequeno quebra-quebra entre eles” beginning with the death of a student. If you haven’t checked out BigPicture’s page on that one, you should.

a protester wearing a Nike jacket throwing a stone during the Greek Riots of Dec2009 (REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis)

Now that is the world where this new POTUS is coming up, this one guy who has the hubris of saying himself the harbinger of hope, the herald of change. And you gotta give him at least that: he is smart. Usually, i will prefer the dumbest candidate available for the US, seen that i do think this country has a hand that is too heavy, but not this time. I have heard (read) him called something like a wolf in a lamb’s clothing, and i kind of think he is more like a wolf period, i do not think he stands for “good” politics, nor do i think he will refrain from politics as usual, but i was really hoping he would step up to the so-called most powerful job on earth.

And the reason is just one: i think things are getting hairy.

Microsoft’s approach: it’s all a hack

Computers are not perfect tools. They are not direct embodiments of thought. They are just tools.

While seemingly not a world-shattering conclusion, this tacit assumption might be the basis for many developments in the last few decades of computer history.

In fact, Microsoft’s approach to the development of software (in stark opposition to some competitors) seems to have been to just keep adding features instead of trying for perfection of it’s overarching system structures. In a sense, Microsoft has been “worse is better” since the beginning.