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> ==== SPARQL ====
> RDF is a directed, labeled graph data format for representing information in the Web. This specification defines the syntax and semantics of the SPARQL query language for RDF. SPARQL can be used to express queries across diverse data sources, whether the data is stored natively as RDF or viewed as RDF via middleware. SPARQL contains capabilities for querying required and optional graph patterns along with their conjunctions and disjunctions. SPARQL also supports extensible value testing and constraining queries by source RDF graph. The results of SPARQL queries can be results sets or RDF graphs.
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SPARQL

RDF is a directed, labeled graph data format for representing information in the Web. This specification defines the syntax and semantics of the SPARQL query language for RDF. SPARQL can be used to express queries across diverse data sources, whether the data is stored natively as RDF or viewed as RDF via middleware. SPARQL contains capabilities for querying required and optional graph patterns along with their conjunctions and disjunctions. SPARQL also supports extensible value testing and constraining queries by source RDF graph. The results of SPARQL queries can be results sets or RDF graphs.


Hash Visualization and Random art

Random Art was developed by Andrej Bauer, and is based on an idea of genetic art by Michael Witbrock and John Mount. Originally Random Art was conceived for automatic generation of artistic images. The basic idea is to use a binary string s as a seed for a random number generator. The randomness is used to construct a random expression which describes a function generating the image, mapping each image pixel to a color value. The pixel coordinates range continuously from - 1 to 1, in both x and y dimensions. For example, to generate a 100 - 100 image, we sample the function at 10000 locations. Random Art is an algorithm such that given a bitstring as input, it will generate a function F : [-1; 1]2 ! [-1; 1]3. The bit-string input is used as a seed for the pseudo-random number generator, and the function is constructed by choosing rules from a grammar depending on the value of the pseudo-random number generator. The function F maps each pixel (x; y) to a RGB value (r,g,b) which is a triple of intensities for the red, green and blue values, respectively. For example, the expression F(x; y) = (x; x; x) produces a horizontal gray grade.

The idea here is to use such technique to visualise the soul of a file…

Read more.


On authorship and style

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money. They think in order to write, and they may be recognised by their spinning out their thoughts to the greatest possible length, and also by the way they work out their thoughts, which are half-true, perverse, forced, and vacillating; then also by their love of evasion, so that they may seem what they are not; and this is why their writing is lacking in definiteness and clearness.

Consequently, it is soon recognised that they write for the sake of filling up the paper, and this is the case sometimes with the best authors; for example, in parts of Lessing’s Dramaturgie, and even in many of Jean Paul’s romances. As soon as this is perceived the book should be thrown away, for time is precious. As a matter of fact, the author is cheating the reader as soon as he writes for the sake of filling up paper; because his pretext for writing is that he has something to impart. Writing for money and preservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature.

Essay by Arthur Schopenauer (1788-1860).


Fluxus

Can Fluxus receive on-the-fly information from a Database and display 3D real-time data-visualization?


Django

I am considering using Django for the development of the web version of Virtual Entity.

Although you can use Django without a database, it comes with an object-relational mapper in which you describe your database layout in Python code.

The data-model syntax offers many rich ways of representing your models.


Jinen

Sea, mountain, grass and trees,
even machine, car, gasoline, computer—
—they do not belong to people.
They are already alive. Even our body is not ours.
We are simply lives facing one another --
so we resonate, rebel, grow angry, cry, laugh, and dance with them.
ALL of them are JINEN.

Jinen is an old Japanese word. Its meaning encompasses ALL that is even larger than nature. In the West, “Man” exists above “Nature,” and maintains and protects it. Above Man, there is “God”. In other words, there is a separation between Nature, Man, and God. Jinen expresses the perception of the universe before such a separation occurred. In ALL things there lives god. God is the “Flow of the River of the Universe” that embraces the sun and moon, and the earth that is the origin of the birthing of all Nature including Man. God lives within man, plants, animals, even in man-made things like houses. Jinen is the word that describes the universe, its’ origin and natural course. All things connect to this river, and are part of the river of Jinen.

Atsushi Takenouchi. Butoh dancer.


SQL Alchemy

I am reading this book:

Rick Copeland. Essential SQLAlchemy. Mapping Python to Databases. O’Reilly.

SQLAlchemy is the Python SQL toolkit and Object Relational Mapper that gives application developers the full power and flexibility of SQL. It provides a full suite of well known enterprise-level persistence patterns, designed for efficient and high-performing database access, adapted into a simple and Pythonic domain language.

Homepage here.

In SQLAlchemy it is possible to “bolt on” persistance to an existing object model by mapping the classes to tables. Using the object mapper pattern (where plain Python objects are mapped to SQL tables via a mapper object, rather then requiring persistent objects to be derived from some Persistable class) achieves much of this separation of concerns.

SQLAlchemy consists of several components, including the database-independent SQL expression language object-relational mapper. In order to enable these components, SQLAlchemy also provides an Engine class, which manages connection pools and SQL dialects, a Metadata class, which manages your table information, and a flexible type system for mapping SQL types to Python types.

SQLAlchemy can map SQL types to Python tpes in a straightforward way. To do this, SQLAlchemy provides a set of TypeEngine-derived classes that convert SQL data to Python data in the sqlalchemy.types module. TypeEngine subclasses are used to define the MetaData for tables.

SQLAlchemy’s SQL expression language provides an API to execute queries and updates against your tables, all from Python, and all in a database-independent way (managed by the SQLAlchemy-provided Dialect). When the query is run, SQLAlchemy will send the query string (with bind parameters) and the actual variables to the database engine. Using SQLAlchemy SQL-generation layer has several advantages over hand-generating SQL strings: Security
Application data (including user generated data) is safely escaped via bind parameters, making SQL injection-style attacks extremely difficult.
Performance
The likehood of re-using a particular query string is increased. This allows the database server in some cases to reuse its execution plan from the first query for the second, increasing performance.
Portability
Although SQL is a standardized language, different databases servers implement different parts of the standard. SQLAlchemy provides a way to write database-independent SQL in Python without tying to a particular database server.

SQLAlchemy’s ORM (Object Relational Mapper) provides a convenient, unobtrusive way to add database persistence to your Python objects without requiring you to design your objects around the database, or the database around the objects. SQLAlchemy uses the data mapper pattern. In this patter you can define your tables in one module, your classes on another, and the mappers between them in yet another module.

SQLAlchemy Philosophy
SQL databases behave less and less like object collections the more size and performance start to matter; object collections behave less and less like tables and rows teh more abstractions start to matter.


A camel can go without drinking

Deleuze’s lesson on ‘Ontology - Ethics’ dates 21/12/1980

When it is suggested to us that, between you and me, between two persons, between a person and an animal, between an animal and a thing, there is ethically, that is ontologically, only a quantitative distinction, what quantity is involved?

When it is suggested to us that what makes the most profound of our singularities is something quantitative, what does that really mean?

Fichte and Schelling developed a very interesting theory of individuation that we can sum up under the name quantitative individuation. If things are individuated quantitatively, we vaguely understand. What quantity? If is a matter of defining people, things, animals, anything by what each one can do.

People, things, animals distinguish themselves by what they each one can do.

People, things, animals distinguish themselves by what they can do, i.e. they can’t do the same thing.

A camel can go without drinking for a long time. It is a passion of the camel. We define things by what they can do, it opens up forms of experimentation. It is a whole exploration of things, it doesn’t have to do with essence. It is necessary to see people as small packets of power [pouvoir].

>From the point of view of an ethics, all that exist, all beings [etants]

are related to a quantitative scale which is that of power [puissance]. This differentiable quantity is power. And if there is no general essence, it is because, at this level of power, everything is singular. We don’t know in advance even though the essence tells us what a set of things is. One fish cannot do what the next fish will. There will thus be an infinite differentiation of the quantity of power according to what exist. Things receive a quantitative distinction because they are related to the scale of power.


The history of someone else’s property

From the pre-history of novelistic discourse

As a result, under careful analysis almost the entire novel breaks down into images of languages that are connected to one another and with the author via their own characteristic dialogic relationships.

Laughter and Polyglossia

The novel contains multiple voices of a given culture

Moreover, in the process of literary creation, languages interanimate each other and objectify precisely that side of one’s own (and of the other’s) language that pertains to its world view, its inner form, the axiologically accentuated system inherent in it. For the creating literary consciousness, existing in a field illuminated by another’s language, it is not the phonetic system of its own language that stands out, nor it is the distinctive features of its own morphology nor its own abstract lexicon - what stands out is precisely that which makes language concrete and which makes its world view ultimately untranslatable, that is, precisely, the style of the language as a totality.

Everything new is born out of the death of something old.

It must not be forgotten that monoglossia is always in essence relative. After all, one’s own language is never a single language: in it there are always survivals of the past and a potential for other-languagedness, that is more or less sharply perceived by the working literary and language consciousness.

Closely connected with the problem of polyglossia and inseparable from it is the problem of internal differentiation, the stratification characteristic of any national language.

The speech diversity within language thus has primary importance

The relation to another’s world was equally complex and ambiguous in the Middle Ages… The boundary lines between someone else’s speech and one’s own speech were flexible, ambiguous, often deliberately distorted and confused. … One of the best authorities on medieval parody, Paul Lehmann, states outright that the history of medieval literature and its Latin literature in particular “is the history of the appropriation, re-working and imitation of some else’s property”.

Latin parody is an intentional bilingual hybrid. The problem of intentional hybrid.

Thus it is that in parody two languages are crossed with each other, as well as two styles, two linguistic points of view, and in the final analysis two speaking subjects. It is true that only one of these languages (the one that is parodied) is present in its own right; the other is present invisibly, as an actualizing background for creating and perceiving. Parody is an intentional hybrid, but usually it is an intra-linguistic one, one that nourishes itself on the stratification of the literary language into generic languages and languages of various specific tendencies.


Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Бахти́н, pronounced [mʲɪxʌˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪʨ bʌxˈtʲin]) (November 17, 1895 – March 7, 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who wrote influential works of literary and rhetorical theory and criticism. His works, dealing with a variety of subjects, have inspired groups of thinkers such as neo-Marxists, structuralists, and semioticians, who have all incorporated Bakhtinian ideas into theories of their own. As a literary theorist, Bakhtin is associated with the Russian Formalists, and his work is often compared with that of Yuri Lotman; in 1963 Roman Jakobson mentioned him as one of the few intelligent critics of Formalism. In the 1920s there was a “Bakhtin school” in Russia, in line with the discourse analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson.

Toward a Philosophy of the Act

1. I both actively and passively participate in Being. 2. My uniqueness is given but it simultaneously exists only to the degree to which I actualize this uniqueness (in other words, it is in the performed act and deed that has yet to be achieved). 3. Because I am actual and irreplaceable I must actualize my uniqueness.

Bakhtin further states: “It is in relation to the whole actual unity that my unique ought arises from my unique place in Being”.According to Bakhtin, the I cannot maintain neutrality toward moral and ethical demands which manifest themselves as one’s voice of consciousness.

It is here also that Bakhtin introduces an architectonic model of the human psyche which consists of three components: “I-for-myself”, “I-for-the-other”, and “other-for-me”. The I-for-myself is an unreliable source of identity, and Bakhtin argues that it is the I-for-the-other through which human beings develop a sense of identity because it serves as an amalgamation of the way in which others view me. Conversely, other-for-me describes the way in which others incorporate my perceptions of them into their own identities. Identity, as Bakhtin describes it here, does not belong merely to the individual, rather it is shared by all.

The Dialogic Imagination: Chronotope, Heteroglossia

The Dialogic Imagination is a compilation of four essays concerning language and the novel: “Epic and Novel”, “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse”, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, and “Discourse in the Novel”. In the nineteenth century the novel as a literary genre became increasingly popular, but for most of its history it has been an area of study often disregarded.

It is through the essays contained within The Dialogic Imagination that Bakhtin introduces the concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism and chronotope, making a significant contribution to the realm of literary scholarship.[18] Bakhtin explains the generation of meaning through the “primacy of context over text” (heteroglossia), the hybrid nature of language (polyglossia) and the relation between utterances (intertextuality). Heteroglossia is “the base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance.”[20][21] To make an utterance means to “appropriate the words of others and populate them with one’s own intention”.

“From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse” is a less traditional essay in which Bakhtin reveals how various different texts from the past have ultimately come together to form the modern novel.


Transclusion

More about Ted Nelson, the ‘Everything is wrong’ man, and the project Xanadu.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//3.06/xanadu.html?topic=&topic_set

here’s a passage concerning transclusion and originals and copies:

Nelson was frequently frustrated by his failure to convince casual questioners of the importance of his transclusion idea. Transclusion functions like the “make alias” command familiar to Macintosh users. An alias works as a fully functioning copy of a file or application, but it is really just a pointer, or virtual copy. Click on the virtual copy, and the original file or application begins to run.

The key to the Xanadu copyright and royalty scheme was that literal copying was forbidden in the Xanadu system. When a user wanted to quote a portion of document, that portion was transcluded. With fee http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//3.06/Xanadu/11.2.html for every reading.

Transclusion was extremely challenging to the programmers, for it meant that there could be no redundancy in the grand Xanadu library. Every text could exist only as an original. Every user in the world would have to have instant access to the same underlying collection of documents.

Miller noted that the current version of Xanadu handled transclusion in an extremely clumsy fashion. It also lacked the ability to keep track of different versions, did not scale well, had no multimedia capabilities, no security features, and performed poorly. The years of work Gregory had devoted to writing code seemed as much a burden as a resource. Miller wondered if it wasn’t time to wipe the slate clean and start again.


Spinoza

I am currently reading the following books from Jan van Eyck library:

From the Axioms:
“I. All things which exist, exist either in themselves or in something else.
V. Things that have nothing in common reciprocally cannot be comprehended reciprocally trough each other, or, the conception of the one does not involve the conception of the other.
VII. The essence of that which can be conceived as not existing does not involve existence.”
From the Porpositions:
“I. A substance is prior in nature to its modifications.
IV. Two or more distinct things are distinguished one from the other either by the difference of the attributes of substances or by the difference of their modifications.
V. There cannot exist in the universe two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.
VI. One substance cannot be produced by another.
VII. Existence appertains to the nature of substance.
VIII. Every substance is necessarily infinite.”

“Spinoza’s theoretical approach is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology, with a single infinite substance, and all beings as the modes of being of this substance.”


Transmutation

Etymology: Middle English transmutacioun, from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French transmutacion, from Latin transmutation-, transmutatio, from transmutare Date: 14th century

: an act or instance of transmuting or being transmuted: as a: the conversion of base metals into gold or silver b: the conversion of one element or nuclide into another either naturally or artificially


Nicola Guarino

Nicola Guarino - Laboratory for Applied Ontology

http://web.cs.mun.ca/~ulf/gloss/cats.html

«The first step in designing a database, a knowledge base, or an object- oriented system is to select an appropriate collection of ontological categories. In database theory, the categories are usually called domains; in AI, they are called types; in O-O systems they are called classes; and in predicate calculus they are called sorts. Whatever they are called, the selection of categories determines everything that can be represented in a computer application or an entire family of applications. Any incompleteness, distortions, or restrictions on the framework of categories must inevitably limit the flexibility and generality of every program and database that uses those categories» [TOC 670]. «The richest source of ontological categories is the vocabulary of natural languages» [TOC 671]. And «philosophers have spent 25 centuries devising, analysing, and debating … categories»


The Invisibility of the Commons

Peter Linebaugh


Everything is wrong

Ted Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the term “hypertext” in 1963 and published it in 1965. He also is credited with first use of the words hypermedia, transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity and teledildonics. The main thrust of his work has been to make computers easily accessible to ordinary people. His motto is:

“most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong”


Non Property System

A Non Property System is an economic system in which there is no concept of property. No individual or group is given superior rights to control any particular resource. Such a system is maintained by agreement within the society to encourage normative behaviors governing resource creation and distribution, conflict resolution, and support and protection of the elderly, infirmed, and children.

This system is unlike socialist systems like communism, where there is group ownership by the state. This system is also different from a barter system, where property rights are central to the idea behind barter and exchange. Under this system, there is no property at all. This system is incompatible with capitalism which is dependent on the idea of property to function.

This system appears is in the futuristic fictional books and short stories by Iain Banks called the Culture series.

Within the division of economic systems from hands-on (egalitarianism, state controlled) to hand-off (private property, individual freedom), this system has characteristics that appear on both ends of the spectrum. Without property, the ideal of individual freedom is paramount, but coupled with traditions of compassion. The Non-property system also has a the distinct characteristic of complete autonomy of society members to form voluntary groups and determine what gets produced.


Random Notes

Micheal Hardt & Toni Negri “Empire” - Chapter 4.1 “Virtualities”

The passage from the virtual through the possible to the real is the fundamental act of creation… Ontology is not an abstract science… Now the new virtualities, the naked life of the present, have the capacity to take control of the processes of machinic metamorphosis.


Modularization of Ontologies:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/old/stuckenschmidt01modularization.html


The metadata element:

http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/metadata.html#MetadataElement


from: http://www.w3.org/2004/04/13-swdd/

Massive Scalability for RDF Storage and Analysis

David Wood and Tom Adams, Tucana Technologies, Inc.

The amount of Internet-accessible metadata is increasing rapidly. Much of this data is being published in the World Wide Web Consortium’s Resource Description Framework (RDF) format. RDF metadata is directly published by Web logs (“blogs”), news sites (in the form of site summaries) and is the native format for metadata held in PDF documents. Similarly, the amount of enterprise metadata is rapidly increasing. Fittingly, several large commercial and government organizations in Europe and the United States have formally adopted RDF as their standard format for metadata interchange.

This increase in real-world metadata requires metadata repositories that are able to scale to enterprise levels, allow metadata to be distributed across many machines and provide different views of information based on security permissions. Modern enterprises also require features such as integration with existing systems and managability via standard protocols.


Creations of the human mind (from the open art license) …

Concept of openess …

Common (out of date) - Social


Metadata

permanent / non-permanent

global / local

Metadata is “data about data”, of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items.

Metadata (sometimes written ‘meta data’) are used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use. In a library, where the data are the content of the titles stocked, metadata about a title would typically include a description of the content, the author, the publication date and the physical location.

Metadata provides context for data.

An item of metadata is itself data and therefore may have its own metadata.

The role played by any particular item of data depends on the context. In any particular context, metadata characterizes the data it describes, not the entity described by that data.

Various definitions:

In the context of the web and the work of the W3C in providing markup technologies of HTML, XML and SGML the concept of metadata has specific context that is perhaps clearer than in other information domains. With markup technologies there is metadata, markup and data content. The metadata describes characteristics about the data, while the markup identifies the specific type of data content and acts as a container for that document instance.

When structured into a hierarchical arrangement, metadata is more properly called an ontology or schema. Both terms describe “what exists” for some purpose or to enable some action.

Usually it is not possible to distinguish between (plain) data and metadata because:

/

Metadata can be classified by:

/

Storage

Metadata can be stored either internally, in the same file as the data, or externally, in a separate file. Metadata that are embedded with content is called embedded metadata. A data repository typically stores the metadata detached from the data. Both ways have advantages and disadvantages:

Moreover, there is the question of data format: storing metadata in a human-readable format such as XML can be useful because users can understand and edit it without specialized tools. On the other hand, these formats are not optimized for storage capacity; it may be useful to store metadata in a binary, non-human-readable format instead to speed up transfer and save memory.

Types

In general, there are two distinct classes of metadata: structural or control metadata and guide metadata.[5] Structural metadata is used to describe the structure of computer systems such as tables, columns and indexes. Guide metadata is used to help humans find specific items and is usually expressed as a set of keywords in a natural language.

Metatadata can be divided into 3 distinct categories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_metadata