The ratio between professionalism and length of definitions

One thing that hit me earlier today, the more you get professional the longer the definitions of the words you don't understand become.
Here's a definition of "archetype" (of course in the CS terminology) just to give you an idea;

Archetype: reusable, formal expression of a distinct, domain level concept such as blood pressure, physical examination, or laborotory results, expressed in the form of constraints on data whose instances conform to some reference model [Beale and Heard].

Here's a longer one of "ontology" :) from wikipedia;

Ontology: In information sciences and engineering, an ontology (instead of Ontology) is claimed to be ‘an explicit specification of conceptualization’, ‘a theory of content’, ‘a theory (a system) of concepts/vocabulary used as building blocks of information processing systems’, ‘a set of agreements about a set of concepts’, or ‘the representation of the semantics of terms and their relationships’. Also, it is interpreted as ‘the class hierarchy in object-oriented paradigm’, ‘a complete schema of the domain concepts’, ‘an entity-relationship schema with subsumption relations between concepts’. Sometimes, one can meet such definitions as ‘conceptual patterns’, ‘concept heterarchies or hierarchies’, ‘a body of conceptualizations’, ‘schemata’, or ‘metadata scheme’, ‘a common set of terms’, ‘a controlled vocabulary of terms’, ‘a representation vocabulary’, or ‘a body of knowledge’.

I really should be reading papers faster. The problem is I don't know many of the concepts described in a paper.
I think I need time...

[When I started blogging, I was pretty determined that I wouldn't be posting CS stuff, but here it is. So that should be another proof that i am a nerd]

work and plans and other things

hello again,

i couldn't write yesterday, i had been busy with my work and all. since i started work, i started to like my courses for better :) if you are a student you can neglect your courses and hang out with your friends but if you are working you can't just say you are not coming to work today. it will make your employer lose money and this will in turn make you lose your job. It's all part of growing up and facing responsibilities i guess... and i don't like it.
Here's my 2 year plan to get out of the loop:
i'll hang on the job i have and work hard
i'll start my masters next semester
i'll quit my job after my masters and take interrail to travel whole of the Europe on a backpack. i estimate that this will cost me around 2000 Euros, buying the ticket and a new digital camera and all other travelling costs.
this is the two years nearly over.
my next whole year will be in Cyprus, doing my mandatory military service.

what i'll do later i really do not know.

we'll see what time shows...

Pentagon + Internet

Can't believe my 3rd post is a political one :P

The subject is about a news article featured on the BBC website.

It is about a document written by Pentagon officials which is regarding internet as "an enemy weapons system". The article states the plans about controlling the free information on the Internet. Another article on yet another website (which is the Alternative Press Review website) states that Mainstream Media is already controlled in the US and the time has come for the control of Internet, in brief. Having watched Fahrenheit 9/11, Lord of War and many documentaries Chomsky appeared on, I think that the plans are realistic. The good side is that I think it will be in the US that most reaction will occur from the minority of intellectuals in the case that this kind of control becomes noticed and known.

Here are some notes about the news article on BBC:

"The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act."

[Now thats weird. They could reach this document thanks to the "Freedom of Information Act". Looks that "they" left a loophole. Let me continue with my excerpt:]

"Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

...

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking."


The last sentences clearly talking about the previous operations. I am not surprised of the misleading, generated news that the military makes up. I guess it is all part of shaping the public opinion in their own way.

OK, enough of the boring stuff. I have two papers waiting to be analysed. So, good night to you all :)

Me, Myself, and I

hi again,

since this is one of my first posts, I figured that I might as well talk a bit about myself.

so here it goes:
I am a Computer Science student at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. So that says a lot about my hobbies, I love anything related with computers. But I also like reading, and taking photos (I own a kodak cx7330 which sucks) and some other stuff that I mainly don't have much time to do... since I started to work a month ago at a software company. But thats just how life is, isn't it... You have time and you do not have money, then ironically you start to have money and this time you don't have time to spend it (has to be one of the paradoxes of life). I also like watching movies (like everyone else) and reading blogs, trying to figure how life is everywhere else (just kidding).

Anyway, that's all for today, since all my blogs will reflect my thoughts, you will learn much about me and my way of thinking, so...

take care!

hello world!

Hello there.
This is my first blog, so be kind :) I will try to publish my thoughts here whenever time permits. I have been thinking about keeping a blog but I never had the courage to publish it before, mainly for the fear of not updating it.

I'm not sure why people publish blogs, must be something to do with self indulgunce. We'll see what will come out of this blog together.

So, till my next post, take care...