HyperThoughts

HyperThoughts

Last Update: Saturday, January 16, 1999.

(this date refers only to when this particular page was last updated. The hyperlinked thoughts files will be changed and added to from time to time, so check back every now and then and poke around to see if anything new has shown up)
This is an area where I will be updating my thoughts on various topics from time to time. These thoughts will range from computer topics to environmental concerns to various little things that I may have pondered or found amusing, disturbing, or in some way interesting enough to bother thinking about.

For now, I've taken a bunch of scattered notes from various notebooks and files (often from random comments in some of my code) and tried to organize some of it enough to put it here with cross-referencing hyperlinks. Most of this material came about during the development of my thesis, so currently the only topic areas are ``Objects and Type Systems'', and ``Various Computer Thoughts.'' Keep in mind that no matter how much material I make available here, this represents a limited subset of the things I've pondered, so it would probably be best not to make any judgements based on what you see here. Also, these thoughts span many years, so they don't necessarily represent my current views. Whenever possible, I have tried to add dates (as well as sources), but in many cases that information was no longer available. It can usually be safely assumed that anything without a date comes from before 1998.

Most of this writing is all stream-of-consciousness. This means that it may not be particularly well written, or edited, although I've done my best to fix any glaring errors (for those parts that I have re-read, at least). Don't expect any great works of literature here, just a collection of ideas.

There is a lot of older material that will probably never get put up here, even though lots of it is already in electronic form. That's because this whole section was created on January 17, 1999, and on that day I quickly went through a lot of my old notes (electronic, and in paper form), and put up things that I still considered somewhat useful. That doesn't mean all the ideas are current, but just that I threw away anything that seemed to have nothing to offer anymore. From this point forward, though, I'll probably leave the old works lingering.

Before you move on to rummaging through my thoughts, I'd like to make one request:

If you come across any ideas here that you did not previously think of on your own, and you make use of those ideas in any publishable form (literature, computer code, a product, etc), please give me credit for having the idea, and don't just claim it as your own. I'm not asking for any monetary compensation (although I certainly wouldn't mind) but I believe people should be given credit for their ideas whenever possible. A simple note referencing this page with the URL will suffice. I will attempt, whenever possible, to do the same, by putting links to the sources of my ideas if I feel they were largely influenced by others. Thank you in advance for your consideration.


This is a new area, so there's not much here yet!

(although I have a lot of raw material I'm trying to compile to put up here)

Topics

Note:

None of the files contained after this point are in properly formatted HTML. They are just collections of text, with HTML tags added for the sake of hyperlinking. Where appropriate, other HTML features may have been used. No effort was made to add proper formatting to the head and tail of the documents; the goal was to keep them simple and basically textual. They're not pretty, but they're functional. All URL's are subject to change as I reorganize my thoughts, so if you're going to put a link anywhere, it's best to link to this page, and just make a note of what the topic was. Since the individual pages don't have any identifying information, if you save a copy of one please make a note about where it came from.
Frank Barrus / email
people have been here since January 16, 1999