Telex
External
Link
Internal
Link
Inventory
Cache
Bootstrapping
This nOde last updated March 22nd, 2005 and is permanently morphing...
(7 Muluk (Water) / 12 Kumk'u - 189/260 - 12.19.12.2.9)
TelexExternal
LinkInternal
LinkInventory
Cache
bootstrap
bootstrap (b¡t´stràp´)
noun
1. A loop
of leather, cloth, or synthetic material that is sewn at the side or the
top rear of a boot to help in pulling the boot on.
2. Computer Science. A subroutine
used to establish the full routine or another routine.
verb, transitive
bootstrapped, bootstrapping,
bootstraps
1. To promote and develop
by use of one's own initiative and work without reliance on outside help:
"We've bootstrapped our way back with aggressive tourism and recruiting
high tech industries" (John Corrigan).
2. Computer Science. To
establish (a program) with a bootstrap.
adjective
1. Undertaken or accomplished
with minimal outside resources or help.
2. Computer Science. Being
or relating to a process
that is self-initiating or self-sustaining.
- idiom.
by one's (own) bootstraps
By one's own efforts.
by Treepeople
off of _Actual Re-Enactment_ on Volcano (1994)
by Liars off of _They Were Wrong So We Drowned_ on Mute (2004)
by Glenn Wilson off of _Groove
Propulsion_ 12" on Compound #005
by Future Sound Of London off of _Life Forms_ CDx2
on Astralwerks (1994)  |
When the bootstrapping process of building better, cheaper,
experimental interactive information
processing systems intersects with the rising curve of electronic capabilities,
and the dropping curve of computational costs, it will become possible for millions,
rather than a thousand or two, to experience the kind of information environment
the ARPA-sponsored
infonauts knew.
 |
In the early 1980s, millions
of people already own personal computers that will become obsolete when
versions a hundred times as fast with a thousand times the memory
capacity come along at half of today's prices.
When tens of millions of
people get their hands on powerful enough devices, and a means for connecting
them, JCR
Licklider still thinks the job will only be in its beginning stages.
Looking toward the day when the "intergalactic
network" he speculated about in the midsixties becomes feasible, he
remains convinced that the predicted boost in human cultural capabilities
will take place, but only after enough people use an early version of the
system to think up a more capable system that everybody can use:
"With a large enough population
involved in improving the system, it will be easier for new ideas to be born
and propagated," he notes, perhaps remembering the years when interactive
computing was considered a daring venture by a bunch of mavericks. The most
significant issue, he still believes, is whether the medium will become truly
universal.
- Howard Rheingold - _Tools
For Thought_
Bootstrapping is the problem of starting a certain system without the system already functioning. It seems just as impossible as "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" which Baron Münchhausen, according to stories, could do. However solutions, accordingly called bootstrapping, exist; they are processes whereby a complex system emerges by starting simply and, bit by bit, developing more complex capabilities on top of the simpler ones.
Bootstrapping describes different things in several domains.
Computing
Bootstrapping is generally a longer term for booting, or the process of starting up any computer.
Bootstrapping can also refer to the development of successively
more complex programming environments. The simplest environment will be, perhaps,
a very basic text editor (e.g. ed) and an assembler program. Using these tools,
one can write a more complex text editor, and a simple compiler for a higher-level
language.
and so on, until one can have a graphical IDE and an extremely high-level programming
language.
Linguistics
Syntactic bootstrapping is the idea that children use syntactic knowledge they have developed to help learn what words mean -- semantics builds on top of syntax.
Biology
The idea of bootstrapping is significant in a number of
fields in the biological sciences. The process by which a fertilised ovum develops
into an embryo, particularly the way in which the nuclear genome is expressed
differently in its various cells as these differentiate, is one example of bootstrapping.
The evolution
of progressively better adapted organs through natural selection in a lineage
of organisms is another. Some biologists, including Graham Cairns-Smith, believe
that the origin of life itself may have been a bootstrap process as one or more
systems of biological information
storage formed the foundation
for successor systems that ultimately supplanted them culminating in the emergence
of our current DNA-based
system.
Electronics
The term bootstrap has a number of meanings in electronics.
In classical analog designs, a bootstrap circuit was an arrangement of components
used to boost the input impedance of a circuit by using a small amount of positive
feedback.
This was often necessary in the early days of bipolar transistors, which inherently
have quite a low input impedance. The need for such arrangements has largely
been alleviated by the use of modern FET designs, except when ultra-high input
impedances are required.
Another meaning is in connection with the booting process of a computer or other complex system, where the underlying electronics must arrange for the orderly startup of the actval CPU and related electronics components. This is done long before the CPU is in a state where it can begin to execute software. Nowadays the bootstrap is coordinated by special integrated circuits that monitor the raw power supply and provide the relevant signals to enable the CPU and other chips accordingly.
Statistics
In statistics bootstrapping is a method for estimating
the sampling distribution of an estimator by resampling with replacement from
the original sample.
TelexExternal
LinkInternal
LinkInventory
Cache 
