Silent Image

Yahoo的相册服务就要关闭了， 所有的服务都转向flickr， 但是flickr又不幸被和谐了，直接导致了象我这样购买了flickr Pro服务的人无话可说。

这也是为什么所有我现在space的图片都变成了XX。。。。 

不得不说yahoo的这次关闭服务虽然遗憾，但是相当地道，不仅提供导向自己的flickr还鼓励你象photobucket等几个相册提供商转移。

这种细微的关怀是很难得的

今天开始导出yahoo照片， 也看到了很早很早以前存在这里的一些东西。

2001年， 和江鱼儿他们一起去穿越四姑娘山。海拔大概4000米，那是十一，四姑娘山的温度已经很冷了。

这是某天早上出帐篷的照片， 我记得这是胶片，虽然那个时候我有一个古典的nikon995,但是那时候的俄电池可不能支持那么久

山上越来越大的雪， 我记得那个时候同伴里面有一个叫匪兵乙的jj， 很有意思的人。可是6年之中就毫无联系了

这是当时最喜欢的一张照片，风雪之后阳光穿出阴霾。

有意思的文章

原文版权归美国北加州大学航空工程系教授Larry Silverberg所有，此文为该教授1997年12月12日在北加州教师年会上所作的讲座文稿。

翻译：hidecloud

转载请保留以上信息

说在前面的话

目的: 解释圣诞老人这种神奇的现象

人为因素: 人类需要怎样发展的环境才能解释这种神奇的现象？为什么一群精灵们会投身到这个事业中来？

工程原理: 需要开发出怎样的器材和设备？有哪些工程技术限制需要突破？

科学知识: 哪些科学原理将会被使用？我们现在有能力去理解那些科学原理么？如果我们无法理解那些原理，那么为什么我们无法理解，并且为什么圣诞老人就能理解？

下面将为你阐述圣诞老人为何并且是如何将礼物发送到每个孩子那去的。这个故事基于我们目前所能了解到的最具可能性，最具科学性且符合各种现实的工程常数参量。

北极点之旅

•   几个世纪之前，在挪威的一个小村庄里，犯罪逐渐成为了一件常事（就象圣经中的罪恶之地）。因此圣诞老人和他的追随者踏上了去往北极点的旅途.

•   由于北极地区那寒冷的天气及强烈的风暴，在那生活是一件很困难的事。但正是这些困难让圣诞老人和他的精灵们靠得更近了。

•   他们在地下为自己修建了精妙的住所来抵御这些艰难的环境。并且他们还学会了如何在地下温室里种植食物。

•   这种地下建筑使用了类似于NASA（美国国家航天局）在月球建筑上使用的技术。构建封闭的生态系统用来进行农业生产和高质量的空气循环。

组织结构

•   圣诞老人与精灵们决定将自己的余生都投身到善良的事业中去。于是他们起草了如下的组织法案：

    因为，伟大的北极精灵们是慷慨且聪明的；并且对每个人来说，投身于善良的事业是一件振奋人心的事。

      因此，我们，伟大的北极精灵们，将从今天开始，在每年的圣诞前夜将礼物送到全球每个乖孩子身边。

圣诞老人的科技进步

•   圣诞老人和精灵们至少花了500年不间断的时间来推进自身的社会及科技进步。

•   他们对物理及工程技术的了解早已远远地超越了我们。

•   为了在一夜间将礼物全部送达，在认识到时间可以像橡胶带那样拉伸、空间可以想橘子那样压缩、光线可以弯曲之后，圣诞老人和精灵们肯定会去研究如何创造出更多的”时间”来。（这一切都基于广义相对论）

•   一般认为在他们第一次控制了时间、空间、光之后。他们创造出了”相对论云团”。

•   与圣诞老人对广义相对论将近500年的认识比起来，我们对其的认识还不过百年——并且广义相对论本身还不完整。我们还不能将电磁场与引力联系起来，也没能解决涉及到波粒二象性的问题，更不用说还没验证可以操控时间的奇点和时空扭曲了。

•   相对论云团是一块可操纵其中时间与空间的领域。在云团中的观察者所看到的时间、空间、光与在其外的观察者不同。

•   在相对论云团中，圣诞老人有几个月的时间去输送礼物。在他眼里，世界是静止且寂静的。

•   直到他们回到北极点，并离开相对论云团，对于我们来说只是过去了几分钟而已。

•   这些礼物确实是在一眨眼间就送达了。

倾听孩子们的愿望

•   天线是布置在大雪下面的。天线孔径为24格,数平方英里大小，配以能以毫米级调节的微波接收装置。这些天线接收着从孩子们的想法中发射的电磁波。

•   这些信号被综合起来输送到计算机里，然后根据每个孩子不同的脑波频率再将这些信号分开来。这个过程是由专门的过滤软件平台来完成的。这个平台采用了 FFTs（fast Fourier transforms快速傅立叶变换），自适应性的模式识别算法，在底层应用了人工智能与神经网络。

•   监听用天线综合了以下技术：心电图监视仪、太空望远镜、移动电话。

雪橇

雪橇站是一个地下的作为运作控制中心的地方。那里放置着圣诞老人的中央电脑，当然是采用的光科技。雪橇上也有一个类似的移动电脑。

•   与我们的雪橇不同，圣诞老人的雪橇是一个高度自控的交通设备。在出发前，雪橇首先下载好需要的信息，再启动相对论云团，最后激活发射程序。

•   雪橇的仪表盘是全息的。它显示着航行信息、纳米玩具制造机、孩子们的玩具名单、规划好的导航地图，并且不可手控。这个雪橇还有两个酒杯托架（为蛋酒准备的）。

•   驯鹿们配备了火箭喷射装置来产生推动力。

•   驯鹿都是经过特训的，所以它们能在屋顶上站得很稳。而且它们应该是经过基因工程改造过，以适应在夜晚看清楚东西。但我们认为之所以圣诞老人会选择驯鹿，更大程度上因为它是他在北极圈中的最爱！

进入房间

•   相对论云团不仅仅只能用作交通，它还能将圣诞老人传送进孩子们的房间。

•   雪橇只需改变一下相对论云团的一些参数，就能让圣诞老人从物质的最小缝隙穿梭过去。

•   考虑到时间因素，圣诞老人可能会选择将礼物直接传送进房间里，而不是将自己传送进去。

礼物

•   礼物们都是在圣诞树下通过纳米玩具制造器现场生产出来的。

•   纳米玩具制造器拥有一个储存在雪橇上的玩具信息数据库。数据库里储存有制作玩具的步骤。由雪橇遥控制造器进行操作。

•   纳米玩具制造器的应用避免了去搬运成千上万的玩具（减轻雪橇的有效负载）。同时也简化且自动化了精灵们的玩具制造过程。

•   纳米玩具制造器将制作玩具的原材料放到圣诞树下面，然后加入一种催化剂来启动结晶反应。这个过程有点类似于无机物（如矿石）或雪的结晶过程，同时也和DNA操纵各有机物组成人体器官差不多。

•   这种制造玩具的指令算法有可能起源于对DNA组织材料构成器官这个过程的模仿。

一些数字

•   全球有1亿9100万儿童生活在工业化国家(数据来源：联合国儿童基金会).

•   平均每个家庭2.67个孩子。所以一共有7500万个家庭等待圣诞老人去访问。

•   地球的半径R为3986英里，根据球面面积公式4pR2可算出地球表面积为2亿平方英里。

•   每个家庭间的平均距离为2亿除以7500万再开上一个根号，最后的结果是1.63英里。

•   所以总共的行程将是7500万乘以1.63等于1亿2200万英里。

•   在不考虑相对论的情况下的上限解：假设一辆雪橇在24小时内投送完礼物，那么它的平均速度将是122×106/24=5, 083, 000英里每小时。而光的速度为669,600,000英里每小时。669,600/5,083等于130，所以光速远远大于雪橇速度。因此应该有足够的 时间来完成任务！！

•   更现实一点来考虑这个问题：假设圣诞老人在6个”圣诞”月内完成该任务。那么平均速度将是5,083,000/182.5 = 27,852英里每小时。

•   换句话说，假设圣诞老人拥有一支750辆雪橇的舰队。那么就可以将平均速度降到84英里每小时这个水平——这样对于装备有火箭喷射器的驯鹿来说，应该可以轻易完成了。

总结

•   人为因素: 发展环境是建立在一个思想与技术快速进步的社会上的。

•   物理学: 圣诞老人对相对论的认识已经达到了可以操纵空间及时间的地步。相对论云团被创造出来。

•   工程学: 天线被用来接收孩子孩子们的想法；圣诞老人利用一种高级的配备火箭喷射器的雪橇来在6个”圣诞”月（在我们眼里只是一瞬间）里投递礼物；数据是通过光电脑来处理的；玩具们都是通过类似DNA生产器官的过程来制造的。

•   最后说两句: 一种解释为何圣诞老人能在一夜之间将礼物送达世界各地的理论已经放在这里了。更多的理论应该被发掘出来，因为终将有一个理论会得以实现。                                                                                                                                           

放在文章开头的”说在前面的话”可以在课堂上向你的学生们提出来。当你让他们去想象时，你将会很有很惊喜的收获…

I was traveling most of last week and so was unable to weigh in on the Web 3.0 mini-tempest that occurred when John Markoff published his exploratory piece in the NY Times last Sunday.  The premise of the article is that we are finding new ways to mine human intelligence which can be exploited by building a new layer of "meaning" on top of the accumulating mass of global collective intelligence that is growing by leaps and bounds every day on the Internet.  Collective intelligence of course is one key aspects of Web 2.0, namely an Internet that is continually improved by constant and sustained contact with hundreds of millions of users contributing content.  These users can either contribute explicitly via a conscious act or implicitly by their very interaction with the Web which then leaves behind useful behavioral "tracks" that can be fed back into the system.  In this ways, hundreds of millions of people are adding to what we know every day, even if individuals contributions are often minor.

Markoff's description of Web 3.0 was ostensibly prompted by something I'm seeing as well, well beyond pure play Web mashups we're beginning to witness a number of companies building end-user solutions that can automatically navigate the Internet, weave together tapestries of online information to generate new, useful results. They can even take it a step beyond: dynamically generated situational Web applications that fully interact with the Web ecosystem.  Such applications -- self-assembled by these tools -- can perform useful tasks such as planning vacations, managing personal schedules, or even orchestrating complex, collaborative business processes for example including entire real-world projects.  The vision is stunning and futuristic yet and the rich fabric of the Web today, with hundreds of open APIs and even vaster reservoirs of content and raw data, now opens the door to the possibility.

Background Reading: Take a look at eight end-user mashup platforms available today 

I've written a lot recently about the trend of user generated software, applications developed by end-users that use the openness of the Web 2.0 era to interact with high value Web services.  But already we're beginning to see the emergence of the next step beyond that: applications developed and tasks completed intelligently by software itself.  Tim-Berners Lee himself envisioned this as the coming Semantic Web which he brilliantly espoused in Scientific American a few years back and has been the goal of great many companies ever since, but which has been relatively unsuccessful on a large scale even up until now.  The reasons for this are complex but seem to lie in what we learned from Web 1.0; a priori solutions often aren't the right ones, emergent ones are .

So while many might say that the 1,200+ mashups currently listed in the trend graphs on Programmable Web are mostly NOT user generated, one only has to look at the widespread use of badges and widgets on MySpace and other major social networking sites to see that everyday people are getting more and more comfortable with "turfing" their blogs and spaces with content, code, and feeds from elsewhere on the Web.  So while much of the end-user mashup activity we see today is probably shallow and don't represent sophisticated functionality, the new tools we're seeing every day are getting better and better and allowing users to take it deeper, creating a true mashup ecosystem.

The shortage of developers and application backlogs: Not finding the app you need

Here's an significant fact, if you look at the number of professional software developers out there today, they are dwarfed by the number of end-users with the time and motivation to describe the solutions that they need.  And interestingly, the same population is dwarfed by the potential output of computer systems that can be directed to create the applications or carry out the tasks we need, with minimal continuous attention on our part.

If you only look at the enterprise IT space you will see that users usually have a long list of things for which they'd like software solutions, but can't get satisfied by the traditional purchase or build processes in place in most organizations.  Every CIO out there is painfully aware of this application backlog but hasn't had the tools to address it.  And out on the Web, there's a different problem: Lots of Web sites, but little software that will do the specific things that a users needs to get accomplished.  As Steve Borch says , "sit back, relax, and let your customers create your products."

Like IBM is realizing with their exploration of end-user driven development products like QEDWiki, most of us today are already conducting much, if not most, of our software integration manually, by re-entering or cutting and pasting data endlessly between our applications.  This implies that 1) there's demand but not enough access to software that does exactly what people want and 2) there is a very low level of integration between the dozens of pieces of software that we currently use on a daily basis.

And in fact, there really is at least two ways for Semantic Web technologies (and its myriad offshoots, many of them proprietary) to improve the way that we use the Internet.  The first is in fact to provide that "layer" of meaning; making the underlying intent services and content to be made clear to programs and not just developers.  And the second is to actively exploit that layer; building software or carrying out processes intelligently on the behalf of users. 

Traditional software isn't adaptable enough: Mashups and Semantic Web Apps are a better way to do things on the fly  

Need a piece of software to manage the process of planning a wedding and its long list of attendees, suppliers, and dependencies?  How about something to coordinate the delivery of construction materials to a job site for the least total cost including materials and shipping, just in time and in the correct order as the items on the construction schedule are completed?  The possibilities in the consumer and business worlds both are truly endless and reflect that such software can at long lat perhaps fill The Long Tail of IT software demand , which could never cost effectively serve the thousands of mass customized applications that would potentially make using software a dream instead of the chore that it often becomes due to the fact that processes and not just data is what needs to be managed.

And while this -- and by "this" I mean recombinant, self-assembling software that exploits collective intelligence -- is certainly the cutting edge of software development, many companies are beginning to map out this terrain closely and I encourage you to begin tracking them along with me.  Startups and initiatives such as JackBe, Teqlo, OpenKapow, Itensil and a great many others are either wholly or partially enabling the automation of software creation and process management. Interesting, they are usually not via true Semantic Web technology, but by virtue of open, simple, easy-to-describe-and-consume services of the Web 2.0 generation .

This brings us to my last point.  In a panel earlier this year with Adam Bosworth and other notably Web lumuniaries, I responded to an audience question about the difference between Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web by saying "Web 2.0 is what happened while we were waiting for the Semantic Web." And that highlights an interesting point, that this latest generation of tools appears to be built on simple yet proprietary approaches and not on the open but formal Semantic Web technologies.  Whether this points to underlying issue with the usability of Semantic Web 1.0 is hard to say but RSS 1.0 ran into the same issue.  Thus I call this next generation of approaches the "Pragmatic Semantic Web." But I am a bit concerned about the lack of standards and this will be something to watch as we see if this next generation of online software is truly ready to sprout wings and fly. 

What other Web 3.0/Pragmatic Semantic Web companies or projects do you know about?