Today ought be a special day. For, for the first time in my life, I heard not a handicapped street begger, but a real handicapped street performer near my workplace today.

She was very obviously blind and her face looked weired, imaginably having lost one eye socket - but she was singing. Not singing slow Christian music to beg the guilt of passing Christians, nor was there in her voice the desperate self-pity that, hiding behind the latest popular hits, cried out, "I'm useless, please be the kind person you think you are and give me some money." Instead, her voice was delightfully bright. And so were her songs. The last number I heard her sing was Dancing Queen. Not the most effective kind of material one would use had her best asset been her handicap. And I'm not saying her singing was "uhm okay" - she was good. Someone-should-have-turned-the-disco-lights-on kind of good.

Yes, I was impressed. I loved her dignity. I loved her not trying to sell her handicap, but rather, to have overcome it, and to have found within herself something that was bright enough a gem to offer the world.

Put bluntly, the rest of the lot should be taken off the streets. Selling their self-pity, hoping to elicit the sympathy of some unsuspecting passer by. If their handicap were their greatest marketing asset, then how incomparable the darkness of their hearts must be beside their blindness, how crippled their spirits must be beside their lameness! All the more, it would be a sin to give to them. Cheap charity is but the giver masturbating his own selfish consience, unwilling to pay the full price to set the needy free.

I know, America is doing it. The rich are doing it. But still, the next time someone on the street tries to sell you tissue paper and yet says "please help me out", do them a favour - don't buy it. Buying a packet of tissue paper is never all that you can do for anybody.

As if micro weren't enough - without even realising, were're stepping into the age of the nano. Microcomputers are so last centuary. If you're reading this 20 years from the date of writing, really sorry that I'm using pretty last-decade words here, but today, at the horizon, we're talking about the dawn of quantum-channel-based communications, DNA computing, nanorobotics and genetic therapy.

Yes, so much so that we keep on losing the big picture, the long-term view. Remember, at the dawn of navigation, we used to use stars as our guiding lights. And before we the industrialisation, we used to build everything to last forever. Now, everything has an expiry date. A namespace. A domain. A locale. We forget how the whole system is held together, how one nanosecond flows into the next and how the next flows into eternity. How boats on a stream that lightly knock against each other actually take on individual lives and lifestories after that brief and anonymous encounter on the floating market. Put it bluntly, we seem to have stepped into the age of one-night-stands. Transient, isolated and intense.

My maid (aka domestic helper; just in case "maid" still means unmarried woman where you're coming from) just went off to the airport. It's been a good one year. She came not knowing anything, even innocently tossing some of our plastic covers into the bin, not knowing the difference between plastic covers that keep lenses safe and disposible plastic packaging that come with the food we buy at convenient stores.

It is hard to imagine the depth of the journey that she's gone through in her stay here. So many things we take for granted must have been pretty challenging for her, as much as it is to us if we had to live in a distant and strange land. And even harder to grasp is how her life, after she's gone back, will continue in parallel to ours, even though we may not make contact ever again. How (if I may borrow a term from computing - not that I haven't been doing so :P) massively multi-threaded the real-world is! (Oh yes, and how real-time it is also...)

Ya, it is an exciting world. But how very helpless it also makes me feel everytime I attempt to grasp how the whole tapestry is held together.

古いCDを聞いて、また人生のはかなさを感じた。

「部屋とYシャツと私」という曲だ。「もし私が先立てば　オレも死ぬと云ってね」のところにきたら、また生と死の間に辿り着いた。歩いてきたのが「過去」。足元にあるのが「未来」。そして今はその過去とその未来の間にいる。そういう感じだ。そう感じると、すこし伸ばしたら、過去の景色が見える、僕の中で。昔のまんまのように。その同時、今現実に感じている周りのものは、思い出のように感じてくる。未来から見る思い出のようだ。その一瞬、僕は過去にいるのか、現在にいるのか、それとも、未来にいるのか、わからなくなる。

すごい感じですが、怖い。一瞬の「現在」に、一生が感じられそうな感覚は、とても人間的に限界かな。一人で感じてしまうのは、重荷だ。ここにきたら、誰かに助けられたい。一緒にこの生きるつらさを負って生きたい・・・

If you took an operating system and did a hardware implementation of it, would it mean that the machine runs without an operating system?

Now it is becoming clear. There is no such thing as a software product. Software belongs in the quaternary industry, and you don't talk about produce in this sector. The primary industray talks about primary products, the secondary talks about consumer products. And from the tertiary industry on, we start talking about services - so why are we going back to products?

According to Wikipedia, if that is a source of any authoritativity, the quartanery industry is one that involves intellectual services. Put it in another way - in the secondary industry, you sell people the hammer to hit the nails in. In the tertiary, you charge them money for hitting the nail in. Now in the quartenary industry, you charge them money for telling them, in what manner they ought be hitting the nail in.

That is what it is. Let me now attempt to give a description of what I think software thus is - for the lack of a better word than "software", that is. Given that a user is a person or group of persons that interacts directly with the "software", then, software, perhaps, is a collection of logical steps of basic operations and the configuration that govern how and when these steps are to be invoked, essentially abstracting the know-how that experienced practioners employ while addressing issues, especially in, but not limited to, the problem domain of the user, expressed in a notation that can, directly or otherwise, be intimately employed in conjunction with a hardware device in order to derive a result which may be construed as an expert advice in the user's problem domain, a professional service that in part or in full solves the user's problem, or, a product which production is the user's problem domain.

For those who have problems with long sentences:

software, perhaps, is 
  (a COLLECTION of 
    (logical steps of basic OPERATIONS)
    [and]
    (the CONFIGURATION that govern how and when     
     these steps are to be invoked,)
    [essentially abstracting]
    (the KNOW-HOW 
        (that EXPERIENCED practioners employ          
         while addressing issues, 
            (especially in, but not limited to,             
             the PROBLEM DOMAIN of the user,)
        )
    )
  ) 
  [expressed in]
  (a NOTATION that can, directly or otherwise, )
  [be intimately employed in conjunction with a]
  (hardware DEVICE in order to 
    (DERIVE a result which may be construed as 
      (an EXPERT ADVICE in the user's problem domain,) 
      [or]
      (a PROFESSIONAL SERVICE that in part or in full        
       solves the user's problem,) 
      [or] 
      (a PRODUCT which production is the
       user's problem domain.)
    )
  )

This leads to two differentiating factors between software, and other services in the quartenary industry: firstly, that software needs to be executed on a tangible device, as opposed to programs implemented in organisations that involves strictly the retraining of staff to optimise processes, and secondly, that software may command a depth that can give tangible solutions to problems, even if the problem domain exists in the secondary or primary industry. It also follows that software makes it possible to offer intellectual services in a frame that may be separated from the source of that intelligence by space and time.

Coming back to our opening question. When does software cross the line? I believe that the crux of the matter is in the word "notation". So long as a solution may be expressed in some form of notation that may be used to make hardware derive some kind of useful result, the solution, expressed in the form of a notatian, is software. Which is to say, that digital circuit diagrams are software, but PCB derived from these diagrams, are not. In some sense, I am suggesting that in such cases, we are compiling our software into hardware, not binaries.

Which leads us to conclude that, yes, it runs without an operating system, only because we do not yet have a name for something that behaves like software but is not expressed in some form of notation. I would like very much though, to have a term that can take the clause "expressed in a notation" out of what I think what we currently think software to be. Afterall, in essence, software, really should be the intelligence that can help people solve problems in the absence of an expert. Why should it matter what form it takes?

No, there's no such thing as intelligent hardware, either. Not at least, for me.

Earth = Body

地球ってね、体のようだ。

サラリーマンになった僕はなおさらそんなように思うようになってきた。なぜなら、仕事の日々、よく無理やりして、食事などちゃんとしないで仕事やってたから。いつかからだが抗議して病気になるじゃないかと思ったら、地球もそうだよ。人間の発展の時、地球のことを考えずに、好きなほど環境を汚染する物質を流出する作業を行い、すべては自分の利益だけを見て。地球も、体も、自分の一部のような、もう一人の自分のようなものだ。やさしくしてあげないと、いつかどこかに痛むのは、自分だけだ。

だから、運動、栄養を考えない人は、環境保護の仕事をする権利がないじゃない。

１５歳の少年って、若いですか？

自分にそう聞いてみた。１５歳というのは、この世に来て１５年ですね。１５年は決して短い時間ではない。他人から夫妻へ、そして両親へとの変化すらできる。１５年この世にいたら、１５歳の時の僕らは、すでにこの世界のことがわかるようになったはずだ。この世がぜんぜんわからない宇宙人のような赤ん坊から人間の言葉や生き方がわかるようになったわけだ。

海外へ移住して１５年したら、どれ位海外の文化がわかるでしょうか？１５歳の少年にとってもそういうことじゃん。この世に移住して１５年。もう旅人と考えられないだろう。でもこの時代の少年はなんでなにもわからないようだろうか。

雑談二章

「１」
人生は舞台ならば、その真ん中にたって、もういいんだよ！と叫んで、みんなに言いたい。でもそんなところがないね。聞いてくれるひともいない。疲れたんだ。みんなそうだろう。しかし前へと進まなきゃいけない。もういやでも。こんな人生はいったいなんなんだろうか。

「２」
Strange how thinking habits evolve. Of late, I find myself not thinking of portable code, but moer of protable algorithms. As in, even though it's ANSI C, I still want to make the algorithm implementable in other languages which are not as strong in their language construct. Not that I will actually get to doing that, but it's just the thinking that goes into things. I just want to think, I think.