7.9.2009

Opinaattori uusittu

7.9.2009 klo 15:14 | Virtuaalikoneet

Opinaattori käyttöliittymä on pantu täysin uusiksi ja palvelu on heräilemässä taas eloon: http://www.opinaattori.net/

Aiemmin kirjoitettua:

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9.6.2009

Web 3d

9.6.2009 klo 20:25 | Virtuaalikoneet Tulevaisuus

Secon Lifestä povailtiin suuria vielä pari vuotta sitten. Yksi keskeisistä ajatuksista olisi se, että Second Lifestä tulisi "3d internet" perinteisen webin rinnalle. Second Lifen suositota tarkastelemalla lienee kuitenkin selvää että näin ei käynyt eikä tule käymään. Se on ympäristönä yksikertaisesti aivan liian rajoittava kilpaillakseen webin monimuotoisuutta vastaa.

Näyttäisi kuitenkin siltä, että kolmiulotteista webbiä ei tarvitse odottaa enää kovinkaan kauaa. Selainten grafiikan prosessointi kyky kasvaa vauhdilla, ja joskin nykyisten grafiikkakorttien täydelliseen hyödyntämiseen kestänee aikansa, päästään kolmiulotteisesta grafiikasta nauttimaan varmasti jo paljon aiemminkin.

Mitä tämä sitten käytännössä tarkoittaa? Aluksi vain 3d grafiikkaa osana perinteisiä kaksiulotteisia sivuja, mutta lienee vain ajan kysymys kunnes osa webistä muuttuu täysin kolmiulotteiseksi. Ajattele perinteistä webbisivua, jossa on pieni erikoiselta näyttävä graafinen objekti. Kun siirrät hiiresi tuon objektin päälle kursorisi katoaa ja hiiren liikkeet alkaavat ohjaamaan katseesi suuntaa kyseisessä objektissa. Kun painat "w":tä tai ylös osoittavaa nuolta alat liikkumaan tuon objektin sisälle, kunnes lopulta olet kokonaan sen sisällä. Tervetuloa kolmiulotteiseen webbiin.

Siinä missä second life koostuu yhdestä maailmasta, jossa kaikkia ohjaa samat maailmanlait, tulee 3d web koostumaan lukuisista maailmoista, joita yhdistää vain perinteisestä webistä tutu linkit, tai "portaalit", joiden avulla siirrytään maailmasta toiseen. Maailmasta riippuen sinulla voi olla kolmiulotteisella avatarilla jonka muutkin kävijät näkevät tai voit liikkua perinteisen webin tapaan anonyymisti muiden huomaamatta. Liskäksi tekniikka jolla maailma toteutetaan on täysin palvelinkohtainen. Tämä mahdollistaa vapaan kilpailun eri tekniikoiden välillä, joka johtaa huomattavasti nopeampaan kehitykseen, kuin Second Lifen kaltaiset monopolisoidut järjestelmät.

Mitä kaikkea tästä seuraa, on vaikea ennustaa, mutta luulen että juuri sulava liikkuminen 2d ja 3d webin välillä on oleellista. Jossain määrin raja näiden kahden välillä tulee varmasti hämärtymään, mutta perinteisessä webissä on etunsa mm. kirjoitetun tekstin lähteenä, joten ei se varmastikkaan kokonaan koskaan kuole pois. Mutta siinä missä 2d webistä voi jouhevasti siirtyä 3d maailmaan yllä olevan esimerkin tapaan, toimii sama myös päinvastoin. Kolmiulotteiset maailman koostuvat luonnollisesti useista eri objekteista, ja yksi noista objekteista voi olla perinteinen webbiselain. Liiku vain lähelle tuota esinettä ja hups, oletkin taas selaamassa 2d webbiä.

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22.4.2009

Flash Reader

22.4.2009 klo 15:37 | Virtuaalikoneet Aivot

Joidenkin lähteiden mukaan tekstien lukemista voi nopeuttaa vilauttamalla jokaista sanaa hetken kerrallaan, jolloin silmien katse voi pysyä jatkuvasti samassa paikaa. En kuitenkaan ole löytänyt hyviä ohjelmia jotka toteuttaisivat tämän tekniikan, joten ajattelin tehdä sellaisen itse Digitaalisen median tekniikat -kurssin harjoitustyönä:

http://flashreader.opinaattori.net/

Ohjelmaan voisi tehdä useita hienosäätöjä, kuten:

  • jokaiseen sanaan käytettävän ajan laskeminen kyseisen sanan yleisyyden mukaan (tällä hektellä tehdään sanan pituuden mukaan).
  • usean sanan väläyttäminen kerrallaan (normaalisiti lukiessamme silmämme eivät pysähdy erikseen joka sanaan).
  • yhdistäminen tavan netti surfaukseen niin, että klikkaamalla jonkin webbi sivun tekstin alkua sen saisi näytettyä FlashReader -moodissa (vaivalloise copy/paste vaiheen ohittamiseksi).

Mutta jo nykyisellään sen suurin puute, eli se että teksti ei hidastu tai pysähdy automaattisesti kun emme ymmärää jotain lukemastamme (kuten silmämme tekevät normaalia tekstiä luettaessa), lienee nähtävissä. Tosin ainakin sillä voi nopeasti testata lukunopeutensa, koska ohjelma näyttää aina tekstin esitysnopeuden. :) Tekniikka voisi olla myös hyödyllisempi mobiili laitteissa, joiden näytöt on niin pieniä että niissä ei mahdu esittämään pitempiä tekstejä.

ps. en ole testannut ohjelmaa IE:llä, mutta periaatteessa silläkin pitäisi toimia. Jos käytät IE:tä, niin palaute (erityisesti siitä toimiiko nopeuden muuttaminen hiiren rullalla ja tekstin selaaminen etenemispalkista vetämällä) on hyvin tervetullutta.

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17.4.2009

Social money - how does it work

17.4.2009 klo 11:58 | Yhteiskunta In English

In my previous post i dealt with historical background of our current monetary system and the motivation for a new one, and here i'll explain in more detail how would that new system work. Ideas presented here are more or less based on Ripple, with some additions of my own.

When you take a loan from a bank, as unbelievable as it sounds, the bank actually creates most of that money out of thin air. This is called debt based monetary system: with new loans new money is created (causing inflation) and when the loan is payed away, that money gets distinguished (causing deflation). But there is no reason for us to let the bankers create and profit from new money, when we could just as well create it by ourselves.

So when you want to buy a new laptop that's worth 500€, instead of giving them 500€ (originally created by banks), you could give them 500€ of your own IOUs, meaning that you just give a promise to work for the same value or give something of the same value to the seller (or in this system to someone else) in the future. But what if the person who is selling the laptop doesn't know you and thus don't trust you to pay the debt back? No worries. As long as you have a friend, who knows a friend, [ad infinitum], who knows the seller of the laptop, you can give your IOUs to your friend who trusts you, who gives their IOUs to their friend who trusts them, ..., who gives their IOUs to the seller of the laptop. So the seller ends up getting IOUs from a friend he or she trusts and the people in the between only receive same amount of IOUs from a friend as they give their own IOUs to another friend (so for them the result is plus minus zero).

Sounds complicated, but by digitizing the system we can let the computers worry about the complex calculations on finding the right path for the transfers, and all we need to know is that we are giving a promise to pay 500€ back at some time in the future. Which we will do by receiving other peoples IOUs as a compensation for something we have given or done for them.

What this kind of system requires, is for every user to define their friends whom they trust. There could be a default amount of your friends IOUs you will trust to take (like 100€), but optionaly you could also set lower amount for people you trust less and higher amount for people you trust more. And the more people you trust, the more people will trusts you, and thus the better connected to the network you will be to give or receive transfers from people around the world (and with larger amounts of money).

With this basic idea there are many additions that can be made to make the system more user friendly and trustworthy. For example you might always be able to see your friends account balances (= how many other peoples IOUs do they have minus how many of their IOUs other people have) to valuate how trustworthy they actually are. At this point it's good to notice, that unlike in a normal bank account where everyone has a positive account balance, in this system the average user would have an account balance of zero, while half of the people would have a positive balance (people are debited to them) and half of the people would have a negative balance (they are debited to other people).

Alternatively, the system could calculate "trust index" for every user that would be based on current account balance, on other users trust towards this person and also to the usage history. So people who had been using the service for a long time and would have many friends in it would also be more likely to continue using it in the future and thus more likely to pay their debts back, where as people who had just started using it would have a lower "trust index".

This trust index could be used to also allow transfers between people who don't know each others. Let say we have a new business that needs money to get it going. This business couls sell its own lOUs to buy more trustworthy IOUs with a rate of, lets say, 2 untrustworthy IOUs against 1 trustworthy IOU. This way people could invest in the new business, and if it went bankrupt they would lose their money (because the IOUs they received would have become worthless), and if it became profitable they would gain their original investment in double, since the IOUs they received would have become trustworthy.

There are many advantages in creating your own money, but one fundamental question remains: what stops your from scamming people? What stops you from not paying your debts back? The fundamental philosophical difference with social money and traditional money is that social money is not based on laws or the threat of being thrown into jail, but on friends and friendships. If you own money to a friend and never pay it back that inevitably is going to hurt your friendship. So it's the motivation of being a good friend that keeps you working and growing your network of trust to become a valued member of your community.

Update: See also mutual credit currency on wikipedia. The main difference in here is that while most mutual credit currencies are local, doing the same in internet application would allow such a currency to become global for the first time (because of global chains of trust and automatic cancellation of overlapping debts).

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15.4.2009

Social money - grassroots alternative for finance and banking

15.4.2009 klo 12:22 | Yhteiskunta In English

If i wouldn't have any financial worries of my own and could use my time for any cause i choose to, it would be this. Money is a funny thing when you start to think about it, but basically it boils down to solving this puzzle - farmer wants fishes, fisher want wood and woodcutter wanted grains - in a way that every one gets what they desire in a fair amount against their own labor.

One way to solve the problem is to use some common good that everyone appreciates, like seashells, as the medium of exchange. Later precious metals, like silver and gold, became the most common goods used for this purpose, but silver and gold were heavy to carry around so people deposited their gold to goldsmiths (which became bankers) and started using the paper receipts of the deposit as the new money instead of the cumbersome metals.

Naturally, the bankers became greedy and started making more of this new money than they actually had gold in their deposits and once people finally found out they demanded their gold back, which, of course, the banker didn't have enough of. People became angry, but had already gotten used to the easy use of paper money, so the governments emerged to regulate it. But bankers had already amassed enough wealth to practically buy the governments, so they too became corrupt and made a pact with the bankers to keep an appearance of public control through central banks, but to leave the actual right of creating new money to private banks.

And so we enter the modern world of madness, where governments supposedly create their own money, but at the same time are deeply in debt. To whom, one might ask? Indeed, there have been many different monetary systems through out the ages, but there's one thing that seems to be common to almost all of them: as the time passes they alway end up becoming corrupt and controlled by the ruling class to suck up the wealth form the working class.

With internet, there is potential for many changes, and money is no exception. Because there is another way to solve the original puzzle: When farmer wants fish, instead of using seashells he could give IOUs to the fisher, whom then could later use those IOUs to get grains from the farmer or use the farmers IOU to trade with friends of the farmer (whom accept those IOUs).

There are many problems in system like this, like the impracticality of carrying many different peoples IOUs, counterfeiting, and trading between people who are not friends or don't have IOUs of a common friend. But all of these problems can be overcome by digitalizing the system. And because of the "six degrees of separation", anyone in the world could trade with any other person, as long as a link of trusted friends can be found between them.

This would, for the first time in the history, give people the possibility of truly creating their own money and freeing them from the parasites we call finance industry. Of course with this opportunity, would also become responsibility of choosing whose money to trust. But if you chose to accept someones IOUs who wasn't able to pay them back, that would only be your loss, and wouldn't combine into a systemic failure of the whole system, as has happened in the current financial crisis, where governments and banks are frantically creating more money to patch up the original problem of creating too much money.

How exactly would this "social money" work, will be the subject of my next post.

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