DISQUS

Hey, really great article, thanks for the dedication :D I'll try to reserve some time this weekend for a more thorough read and comprehension.
I got interested to diff-match-patch algorithms upon reading http://www.lshift.net/blog/2009/03/02/evserver-... and trying the real-time collaborative wiki editor based on a diff-match-patch algorithm implemented in javascript by Neil Fraser
links:
http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/
http://cometdemo.lshift.net:8080/

hmm, well I agree, but to put it as an example, when I first do a maths exercise, I end up filling a whole bunch of papers with tries, errors, learnings and middle-steps. If I wanted to keep that "history" for later knowing how to resolve that problem I would prefer to just have 2 or 3 steps from beginning to the solution, not any middle-step. With history I think happens the same: the further a "learned" fact (and if less relevant) is in history, its less necessary to remember it, we need to do some kind of sintesis of past, so we can focus on future. The RoundRobin DataBase is a great example: the further something is in time, the less 'granularity' you have in your memory.

elias

hi !!
well, I think that bacteria couldn't live in the Earth ecosystem. supposing it was hiper-efficient in capturing solar energy, I bet the Earth has seen before such a kind of bacteria, as Evolution has created lots of specimens now disappeared, so my guess is that a bacteria (or organism) MUCH more efficient than its mates in environment, will populate massively thanks to its advantage, then kill its ecosystem, then disappear. My guess is: that has already happened at some point of evolution, but such an organism is not friendly with its ecosystem, because its much more efficient, populates much faster, etc, so it inevitably disappears after all. the point I'm trying to make is there can't be organisms that are much stronger/better/efficient than their ecosystem-mates, because they would overpopulate it. ecosystem is a delicate equilibrium !

I suppose there are two kind of thinkings in front the fear of an engineered-organism delivered to the environment:

-those who think that because it hasn developed with the ecosystem, it will be unable to survive in it, so there's no danger in engineered-organisms delivered to environment.

-those who think that because it has been engineered, it can potentially have a huge advantage in procreating and thus kill its ecosystem.

my guess is that the predating/being-predated or surviving/disappearing is like the function X^3: it has a small 'stable' region around 0 (coexistence), but towards +x it grows super-fast, and towards -x it decreases super-fast (being +y predates the medium, -y the mediu predates the organism. what would be the X ? maybe time ?

this matematical example has just been made up in my head and I dont know if it explains what I mean, I'm trying to suggest that equilibrium seems very difficult, while overpopulating or disappearing sounds as absorving asymptotes.

I'm spanish, pardon my english mistakes (and repeating concepts, I swear I dont repeat as much in spanish :P )

best regards,

Elias