[exprla-devel] RE: [XPL] - WorldOS - framework for distributed computing

[reid_spencer <ras...@re...>]

--- In xpl-dev@y..., "Richard Anthony Hein" <935551@i...> wrote:
For security we can use encryption defined by XSLT-like 
transformations to
voice or visual recognition that matches to verification 
transformations
supplied by someone who has your transformation key, and can then 
supply the
correct data to parameters and what not.  A firewall, like a blood 
brain
barrier, does the verification, and so do the individual cells 
(computers),
gates (method calls), and other components.  It could work.

Richard Anthony Hein
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Richard Anthony Hein [mailto:935551@i...]
  Sent: June 16, 2000 6:44 PM
  To: xpl@e...
  Subject: RE: [XPL] - WorldOS - framework for distributed computing



    -----Original Message-----
    From: me@m... [mailto:me@m...]On
Behalf Of Jonathan Burns
    Sent: June 16, 2000 8:07 AM
    To: xpl@e...
    Subject: Re: [XPL] - WorldOS - framework for distributed computing


    Richard Anthony Hein wrote:

        Everyone,There is something called WorldOS that is a 
framework for
distributed computing that could be useful to XPL.  If you read some 
of my
other posts you will know why I like the idea of using such a 
framework. It
includes "a simple TCP server, an XML oriented application server, 
and tools
for peer routing similar to Freenet or Gnutella.  The application 
server
uses a new protocol distinguished by pluggable transports, XML message
content, and asynchronous messaging."It's opensource, so that's good, 
and
it's in the early stages of development, but does function.  So we 
could get
our input in there once we have an architecture for XPL, that would 
make
WorldOS even better for our purposes.  Anyways, take a look at
http://www.worldos.org/worldos/index.php3 to get the details.Richard 
A. Hein

      So happens, I've just stumbled onto WorldOS myself.
      This was just after I'd gained a clue what Gnutella is.

      (Gnutella is a search engine for files. Load a query for some 
file
      by name. The query fans out among all the Gnutella users your 
system
      can find, and all that THEY can find, recursively. With luck, 
download
      access to the file(s) you're after will eventually be passed 
back to
you,
      and show up in a window. Meanwhile, your system is picking up 
its end
      of other users' searches.)

      And Napster, which does the same kind of thing for MP3s music 
files.

      And FreeNet, which gets you onto a web of, shall we say process 
or
user
      identities, allowing exchange of data on an IP-independent 
basis, more
      or less untraceable by the usual TCP/IP methods.

      Furthermore, this is after I have been reading and hearing for 
some
time
      about:

      PunkNet, an architecture like FreeNet.

      Linda, a network OS and language in which "tuples" circulate 
through
      data stores on widely distributed machines, being gathered and
processed
      by some kind of content search.

      Seti@Home.

      The Morris Internet Worm, and others of its kind.

      To cap it off...

      Check out Kurt Cagle's  slideshow  on VBXML. It's couched in 
general
principles,
      but if I have it right, Kurt's vision is of free-floating,
call-'em-by-name
      XML documents, which encapsulate LOCATION and PROTOCOL, so as to
present the
      casual user with a web of data bound to data, leading wherever 
you
want to go
      via search-engine interfacing. No more searching for a site, 
going
there,
      accessing the FTP or whatever, and finally accessing the data 
you want
by name.


      This is looking like a paradigm.


      Now I completely agree, Richard, that we should investigate 
WorldOS -
and maybe
      make common cause with it. See, WorldOS will evidently conduct 
any XML
documents.
      So if we maintain a layer within XPL development which is Pure 
XML -
no processing
      primitives, no COM hooks, no binding to external mechanisms - 
then
WorldOS will
      function as a transparent distributed mechanism for that layer.
Technically, it's
      a potent tool for us.

      But sheesh.

      Is anybody as unnerved as I am, about the implications of "data 
gas"
webs like this,
      especially when people like us are going round, endowing them 
with
full processing
      capability?

      Call me conservative. I spend a lot of time fuming about how 
free
markets have
      diffused the consequences of actions beyond the point where 
anyone can
be imputed
      responsibility for them. Collectively, we've committed 
ourselves to a
world society,
      while disabling the corrective checks and balances that a 
society
needs, against
      the concentration of power.

      The Web is the same, in fast-forward. It's this fast, not 
because of
communication
      speed, but because there's so little power involved in 
publishing and
scanning
      information, that it's relatively harmless. But already, the 
Web is
facing a massive
      contradiction: intellectual propery funds it, but its 
consequence is
the devaluation
      of intellectual property.

      What happens when information is completely dissociated from
authorship?

      When programs are completely dissociated from authorship?

      When worms can be released in perfect anonymity?

      When you can't tell the good worms, like Seti@Home, from the bad
worms, or from
      worms like Napster which sidestep around intellectual propery?

      When there is no such thing as a trusted source?


      Well, that's the New Economy Political Agenda, anyway.

      On a more technical plane, what bemuses me is, how do we find 
things
in a data gas?

      Answer: We refer to them by content rather than location - and 
we use
personal
      or site caches to nail down copies or shortcut addresses. At a 
guess,
if or when
      we go and implement an XPL data gas, we will be using XML tech 
to
implement
      the Universal Resource Access mechanism we need. XPath on 
steroids,
man.

      <spooky>

      I've got this vision, of an ocean of little XML thingies - 
parse trees
on the loose.
      They leaf out in typed nodes. Spotlights sweep across the 
ocean -
people and their
      sundry bots, paying attention, and thereby supplying CPU power 
to the
thingies.

      Thingy awakens. It finds a phone. Good morning switchboard, I'm
looking for stuff
      with these types and content and timestamp and authentication 
(that's
my leaves).
      Oh, you got some - good.

      Instantly, thingy is linked up with others of its kind, making a
temporary Big Thingy.
      And so on recursively. At some point, all the leaves are filled 
in,
down to primitive
      elements, and there's some XPL present, which activates its 
XSLTs, and
the whole Big
      Thingy goes to work - on borrowed CPU power, from a multitude of
sources.

      Presently, Big Thingy has bred a bunch of children, and put 
them on
the phone to
      the people and bots who originally requested whatever services. 
They
get linked
      up with GUI thingies, which deliver the service to the end 
user. End
user satisfied,
      spotlights blink off, thingies go back to sleep. But some 
middlesize
thingies are
      bigger now, or more current. They contain a little bit of 
information
on the
      late transaction, cached away, ready for the next time.


      The whole thing has more than a passing resemblance to brain 
function.

      Furthermore, it has a close structural resemblance to John 
Koza's
Genetic Programming
      paradigm.

      Here again we have parse trees on the loose - Lisp expressions. 
Here
again we
      have the free-floating population. From the population, a 
quantity of
elements
      are selected, and activated. They are programs - feed them to a 
Lisp
interpreter
      (spotlight) and they run. This can be done in parallel. It can 
be done
like Seti@Home.
      It's a data gas.

      The outputs of the programs are collected, and scored. 
Depending on
its score, each
      activated element is given breeding instructions - drop out, or
replicate yourself,
      or split apart, or split and recombine with some other element, 
on a
type-compatible
      basis.

      A new spotlight comes on. In its warm glow, the elements follow 
their
instructions.
      The population is modified. Collectively, it now contains more
elements which are
      fitter, more likely to score high. And it contains many 
elements which
were parts
      of fit individuals, and statistically likely to have 
contributed to
their success.

      It's an evolving data gas.

      </spooky>


      Kltpzyxm!
      Jonathan

      His wit never failed him, and he laughed himself to death
      over a book of the dying words of famous men.

      - Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration.

        [Richard Anthony Hein] Jonathan, this whole concept is like 
the
brain, and like genetics, and it seems likely it's the language we 
need for
artificial intelligence, and a learning, intelligent web.  The brain's
neurons hold data of what we have input into our brain.  Structures of
proteins, various types unlock memories and mix together in octoganal
structures in our dreams, sorting through information, trying to link 
things
together that make sense with other memories, like a super-
defragmentation
process for pure data.

      [Richard Anthony Hein] When a neuron fires, whether it fires or 
not is
an all-or-nothing process; either it reaches a threshold of electrical
charge and fires, or it says at rest.  Only the frequency of the 
firing
varies ... this is like a component that only responsed when called 
by the
correct parameters supplied.  In the neuron the parameters are the
neurotransmitters - keys which unlock protein gateways that are only 
opened
by those keys (although occasionally they are opened by drugs, and so 
on,
which would be like a virus that calls XPL to process data).   
Depending on
the combination of gates opened, which is dependent on the keys used, 
which
activate internal processes in the neuron (XPL program), the 
electrical
charge in the neuron increases or decreases (processes in XPL take 
input and
activate internal data - which can be information calls to another XPL
program - and decide what to return, that activates calls to other 
internal
or external data sources and XPL programs, and finally the return 
value
comes back - send information or not ...), and finally the neuron 
fires.

      It could also apply to Jonathans cpu activation under the 
spotlight
concept - when the right combination of XML is looked at by XPL 
programs
that fits the XPL's filter it 'fires' the XPL which sends a signal to
another cpu that searches through other XPL program filters ... 
millions via
the neural network peer-to-peer WorldOS  - parameters of any self-
describing
media type using Groves of XML, down to each tree and branch and leaf 
and
outputs a ... 'fruit' ... the combination of the media remaining and
presents it to the user.  This process did all the formating using 
XSLT and
other transformations, perhaps using XUL - we shouldn't overlook it, 
but
until it becomes a standard we shouldn't ... perhaps XPL will have to 
do it.

      Also, XLink needs to work as Thomas Poe wrote in another follow 
up.
Each client - which is a cpu needs to be able to create multi-
directional
links throughout it's data gas (maybe Jonathan, it could be likened 
unto
"utility fog" taken from nanotechnology science fiction, and be 
called "data
fog".  Now we need to build the structure and movement - the XPL - 
and like
the neuron, the data, commands, and structure are one.  Each command 
is
data, and data is a structure and a structure is a program.  The cpu
operates on them using parameterized calls with data that is a 
structure and
a command - which was put together by other cpus, calls and 
operations.  If
I have repeated myself, it's because I want everyone to see it.

      When holographic techniques, like the research on tiny cubes 
the size
of a grain of sugar that can store 10,000 web pages, that are 
accessed by
different angles of light (gates) instantly sending a sigal in a yet 
to be
optical computer will allow any kind of media ... to be accessed and 
sorted
by matching the optical pattern (the letter's shapes themselves 
BECOME the
keys to the gates - the commands, the structure, and the data!  Does 
anyone
see the deepness this goes to??  Think about vision, thought!  If you 
take
XML to describe the physical world, XSLT goes over it ... the outward
appearance is different, but it's the same thing ... like apples come 
in
different shapes, syles, and kinds, but they are all apples, but what 
it is
the same because it has the same underlying being ... the XML!  Think
hearing!  Sound described as XML matches media of sound translated by 
XPL
processes calling XSLT to output as sound, or display as sheet music, 
or
combine scales, modes, frequencies and make music!  When a person 
speaks to
a computer, their is a transformation made into XML data - each 
person has
their own 'HXSLT' language to transform it!

      Wow!  Someday when we have nanotechnology that simply senses 
structure
variations we can take those and describe them too in XML.  The robot 
will
sense structural changes and respond using tiny cpus and match them to
learned patterns stored in it's data store within it's neural net.  
This is
artificial intelligence!   Taste and smell would follow.

      This is beyond the scope of XPL.  I think we should talk to 
artificial
intelligence and neural network scientists, and maybe DARPA.  In the
meantime, XPL still has to be designed based on what we have come to, 
if the
vision will become real.

      Do we want it to happen?  Should it happen?

      Richard Anthony Hein





----------------------------------------------------------------------
----



----------------------------------------------------------------------
----
      To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
      xpl-unsubscribe@o...




----------------------------------------------------------------------
------



----------------------------------------------------------------------
------
    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    xpl-unsubscribe@o...
--- End forwarded message ---