Drones

[glen e. p. ropella]

dsumpter> In honey bee hives all of the drones(males) are thrown out
dsumpter> of the hive around about September and inevitably die. Did
dsumpter> choose to be a drone because Swarm funding ends in
dsumpter> September? [grin]

Well, actually, I only buy into the social insect motif
a little bit, here.  But, in essence, yes.  I've always
enjoyed a low profile in everything I've ever participated
in.  That doesn't seem to be happening, here.  So, I began
to refer to myself as "drone" in the hopes of resubmerging.

There're probably some useful distinctions that can be made
w.r.t. the type of Swarm Hive members.  

Food:      problems to be solved, money, disk space, resources, in
           general

Drone:     person who does whatever he's told by anyone with the
           proper rank

Forager:   person who finds food for the hive

Messenger: person who may not actually do any work with Swarm
           but provides a good communication channel between 
           drones and foragers

Oracle:    person who provides "insight" into the deeper truths

And, I'm sure there might be a specialty or two that I missed.
Right now, I can classify the SFI Hive as follows (mind you, 
since we're undermanned, we have to take on different
roles [grin]):

   Chris:  Forager, Messenger, sometimes-Drone
   Roger:  Oracle, sometimes-Forager, sometimes-Messenger, rarely-Drone
   Glen:   Drone, sometimes-Messenger

Of course, this is just based on my limited insight since I've been
here.  But, I do know that I firmly fit in to the Drone category
with some messaging overtones.  If we had more people, we could
specialize more.

Feel free to correct my categorizations.  (And if you don't like
people categorizing you or categorizing people, then please accept
my sincerest apologies. [grin])

glen

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|glen e. p. ropella (address@hidden) |                                  |
|Hive Drone, SFI Swarm Project         |            Hail Eris!            |
|http://www.trail.com/~gepr/home.html  |                                  |
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