Tag Archive for 'trust_metrics'

numpy documentation

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-10-04
in Python and trust metrics
. 3 Comments

With trustlet, I’m finally getting to a point where we can do cool stuff, evaluating prediction graphs of trust metrics. Now I need to refresh my Python array stuff. Since last time I was using that stuff, in 2004, they have refactored it (once more) and called it numpy. That’s fine. But, in order to read an important part of the documentation you need to pay 39.99 US$. Now, that’s less and less  by the day, but still, it’s very inconvenient, and probably holding back wider acceptation of  Python in the scientific community. Like software, documentation should be free. I might even pay if the author would have chosen to use the Creative Commons ShareAlike NonCommercial Attribution license - but then I would be able to pass on the information to my friends (even they are all over the internet).

I think it would have been a wiser choice to find a job at some institute or company to further the development of numpy and scipy, and its documentation in a freer way. That shouldn’t be too hard these days.

Apparently Paolo and I just started writing a book

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-08-30
in hitchhiking and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

Apparently Paolo and I just started writing a book, about trust metrics, of course. Feel free to write along ;)

It made me think about an article I read about the advantages of hitchhiking to society. Unfortunately I don’t remember much more than some vagueness. I’m not giving up yet, though. I think it was about how random people meeting and sharing - which is what hitchhiking basically is about - will have a very positive effect on society, i.e. increasing the trust of people in other people.

May the PageRank be with me on this quest.

Weak links

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on 2007-08-28
in books, hospitality exchange and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I started reading Barabasi’s “Linked: The New Science of Networks”. It’s inspiring, in many ways. It makes me realize how different my life is, compared to most nodes in the social network of human connections. I have many connections, but compared to most people, most of my links are weak. I met so many people in so many places, mostly for very brief periods - i.e. a ride in their car, staying one night at someone’s home. Or just meeting someone randomly in the street.

Besides these realizations, the book is also giving me more energy to move TrustLet forward. Last month I was a bit pre-occupied with the way CouchSurfing is organized. I hope there will be an announcement, that CS is just a service from now on, and that many occurrences of “participation” and “participate” will be removed from the website. Anyway, there will be a big campaign to attract volunteers and members to BeWelcome in October.