λѲŦӨΞИ│yotoen

2012 SOTU Analysis

2012-01-26T16:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgfi7wnGZlE

I intentionally left out all the positive points made during the address, why? Because they are nothing more than well-worded talking points until they are actually put into effect and begin having a tangible and beneficial impact on our quality of life. Meanwhile the address is chock full of rote rhetoric and overt omissions that dwarf even the most compelling aspects of the speech. For example:

What about the alleged 1,000,000+ Iraqi civilian deaths?

'Safer at home, and more respected around the world'? I highly doubt that. All evidence indicates that the Iraq war has undermined our image and has done absolutely nothing to make us safer. Many analysts have in fact suggested that the conflict only managed to further destabilize the region and exacerbate anti-American sentiment; ultimately making us far less safe and at great cost.

Bin Laden was clearly and gratuitously assassinated, he could have easily been captured and put on trial - which would have been far more consistent with our revered American values, e.g. the rule of law, due process; additionally it would have revealed all the sordid details regarding the attacks made on 9/11. Is vindictive assassination really the new kind of justice we plan on bringing to our public enemies? If so I can think of a few more names we can add to the hit list, but why stop there?

Like most Americans I'm glad he's dead, but killing him in cold-blood was an act of cowardice not dissimilar to drone strikes that indiscriminately kill civilians, or flying planes into buildings full of civilians. If we're not fighting against terrorism, or for American ideals, then what exactly are we fighting for?

The answer is obvious: oil. The fossil fuel industry controls the entire industrialized world; they make sure that without oil, civilization grinds to a halt: therefore we must acquire and control the world's oil at any cost. For them. We take the risks, they take the profits. Eventually a minuscule portion of those profits find their way into the pockets of lobbyists, politicians and influential people in virtually every industry in the world, even animation studios. The automotive industry is the right hand of the Fossil Fuel industry. As long as the fascination for Fossil Fuel powered vehicles endures, it will be impossible to justify a wholesale transition to alternative energy, they make sure that this dynamic relationship stays strong regardless of the consequences.

"An economy built to last / We've come too far to turn back now." Reinforcing rhetoric designed specifically to deny Americans the opportunity to challenge the past and present criminal behavior of the financial industry. The only way to produce an economy that is built to last is to make profound reforms to the world's financial institutions - most notably the currency system itself. In other words turning back is exactly what we need to do right now. It's also the only viable long-term solution to ensure economic stability.

The first step in exposing the rhetoric is to point out that we haven't 'come far' at all, in fact the opposite is true: since the infamous 1929 Wall Street Crash the financial system has been getting progressively worse not better. Here I prefer to give humanity the benefit of the doubt and place blame not on human nature, nor on the inevitable erosion of protective regulations via inherent market mechanisms (regulations are unable to protect themselves as was proven by the current financial crisis.); no I place the blame squarely on a global currency system that creates money from thin air that instantly becomes debt. Money that has no intrinsic value which is then used to buy and sell all the world's natural wealth.

Real things have real value, value that human beings are explicitly unqualified to determine. Until this problem is solved an 'economy built to last' is an impossibility. Only one thing is clear: we have come too far and we must turn back now before all the world's natural wealth has been irreversibly converted into our worthless and imaginary currency. This process begins when we hold financial institutions and society as a whole accountable for the ultimate fraud that has been committed against nature. What we need now more than anything is to audit the human race.

"American Manufacturing / Trade Enforcement Unit." A pipe-dream that can't possibly co-exist in a globalized economy where nations with diametric standards concerning human rights trade openly on a world market that can't be regulated without a world government. Yet another impotent bureaucracy with finite authority charged with policing international commerce. This is the war on drugs 2.0.

"Domestic Oil and 'natural' Gas Exploration" I honestly can't believe this warrants further comment. *This message brought to you by the Fossil Fuel industry* The EPA has shown that fracking isn't safe to the degree that it destroys the very foundation of the food chain - our fresh water supply. As for domestic oil, there's no need for oil if you transition to alternative energy, therefore every dollar wasted perpetuating the use of fossil fuels is another dollar that could have been invested in an alternative energy future.

In other words there is no investment in a fossil fuel future because it has no future; there is only divestment in alternative energy. So there is no argument whatsoever for domestic oil and gas exploration, just like there is no doubt that Obama is paying lip service to an industry that dictates their inclusion into our political dialog on energy.

"Afghanistan" Might as well just copy and paste the remarks on Iraq with the addition of noting that there is far less to gain. Afghanistan has resisted occupation for over 4000 years, that's because it's a desert wasteland.

"Iran / No options off the table." Warmongering and grandstanding at its finest. Fossil Fuel, Finance, and Military - the three industries that dictate our foreign policy. North Korea has nuclear weapons, so does Pakistan and many other nations that could sell them to our enemies. I'm sure Iran's strategic location in the heart of the world's access to cheap oil has nothing at all to do with our comically exaggerated response.

Further unsubstantiated claims of indispensable American leadership, relevance and continued good standing amidst the "international community". Why is it then that statistics and virtually every respected geopolitical analyst in the world says otherwise? These qualities must be earned over time via exemplary behavior, they cannot merely be claimed or assumed because of a legacy. A cursory examination of our behavior over the last decade makes it more than obvious why our standing in the world and domestic standard of living has experienced a marked decline.

In the post-modern era when even the most sacred ideals of the contemporary West are being put on trial: Democracy, Capitalism, Consumerism, Militarism; can the President of the United States really afford to take such a cavalier attitude towards the most pressing challenges of the 21st century?

They say the new paradigm for colonization is "soft power" - that is of course only out of necessity due to the fact that we no longer have the economic means to project hard power across the globe. Maybe it's time to also recognize that we no longer have the political capital to solve these problems either.

Why do you think the government keeps deadlocking over negligible and routine decisions like the debt ceiling? The answer is pretty obvious when you think about it: we created a system built on dreams. While dreams themselves cost nothing, making them a reality doesn't come cheap; at some point reality interjects and we must confront it.

Perhaps it's "anti-American" to even suggest such a thing, I don't know, what I do know is that for 21st century foreign policy we need soft power, and for 21st century governance we need leaders with the ability to confront an increasingly hard reality. Dreams are nice, they give us hope, but what we need right now is not hope but a reality check followed by swift and articulate mandates reflecting that reality - unfettered from money and ideology.

The question is this: what do we do if our government cannot deliver?

For the Last Time and Other Tales [review]

2012-01-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

Review: For the Last Time and Other Tales by Z.N. Singer

You can get your own reasonably priced copy here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/117462
You can also follow him on twitter @ZNSinger

Full Disclosure: I responded to the author's twitter offer of a free copy in exchange for my review. I am however under no obligation beyond that, and while I don't know Zack Personally, I have followed him on twitter for quite a while.

Please Note: Due to an editing technicality the copy of the book that I received had some minor formatting problems, therefor I will only be reviewing the content (normally I would also comment on the quality of the syntax). I have no doubt that Zack will release an updated, error-free version at some point, since he assured me his syntax is typically impeccable.

First let me say that as the title implies this 'book' is actually a collection of short stories that are not connected in any specific way:

1. For the Last Time
2. The Lord of Thyme
3. The Cooking House
4. Gentle Beast

Normally I don't really enjoy the disjointed nature of compilations, but I'm always willing to relax my judgment a little when the prospect of originality is high. I'm pleased to say that I wasn't disappointed. So in starting off the review I'd like to underline the fact that regardless of the overall quality of the writing itself, I think Zack deserves high marks for creating a handful of highly different, highly original narratives featuring characters, that while sometimes hard to believe, are both diverse and well defined. This at least in my mind is the strongest suite of the collection.

My second accolade goes to the Author's whimsical use of well placed witticisms, especially evident in the second story. I'm not a huge fan of spamming puns for comedic effect, but having read a great deal of Piers Anthony in my time I at least know when it's being done well. Still the simple fact is that I was caught off guard and laughed out loud several times. Normally this wouldn't be very notable, but laughing while reading is a rare occurrence for me, so I tend to remember it.

I was both pleased and repelled by the juxtaposition of the first two stories; we are thrown full-force into the gritty and violent (if not mildly melodramatic) world of Zack's intriguing alt-canon vampire mythology. Out of all the narratives I found For the Last Time to be the least compelling, mainly because I've read dozens of Vampire Hunter D books in addition to being forced to sit through the entire seven season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by my girlfriend; so the tried and true formula of 'vampire hunter' vs. 'vampire+minions' is all but undead to me. Luckily Zack did a masterful job of adding a dramatic finishing twist that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't see coming. Solid if not somewhat overblown characterization, but then again that is what we have come to expect from tragedy laced vampire epics.

No sooner have we become accustomed to darkness, despair and abject fatalism than Zack pulls a gut-wrenching 180; the second story is about as upbeat and non-sequitur as you might hope to find in today's rote, nihilistic fantasy landscape. In a word I found it refreshing, albeit absurdly so. The Lord of Thyme is a straight-forward lyrical romp that posts no tricks and pulls no punches - the characters are lovable, dependable, and ultimately self-fulfilling. We know without even having to guess that this story is supposed to be funny, and thankfully it is. It's also ridiculous. You've been warned ;).

Ahh, The Cooking House, I absolutely loved this story, and I think you can tell just by the way it is written that the author really poured his heart into it, the prose literally comes alive. Not to disparage any of the other stories, but this one really shines. While the narrative itself seems to stumble along at first, it's really just building a formidable scope of great emotional and chronological depth that quickly and adeptly sets a table of delectable spiritual treats for the human soul. This can best be described as one of those mythical 'heart warming' tales full of wholesome, gentle goodness, a genuine "fairy tale". Along with being well written, it's also well paced; acquiring a rare old-world bouquet you just can't shake. My only complaint is that I didn't get seconds.

The last story nicely completes the four-part fantasy equation with a somewhat sappy romantic yarn (a genre I normally avoid like the plague), replete with its 'happily ever after'. At this point it becomes impossible to ignore the sneaking suspicion that the author has drawn a little inspiration from the Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast; I mention this not to find fault but merely to make an allusion. Regardless, all the stories stand on their own, and Gentle Beast is no exception. As stated previously the star attraction of the compilation is Zack's imagination.

Predictability is always a double-edged sword, on one hand it ruins the surprise, on the other it has a comforting effect. I tried to bridle my innate cynicism while absorbing what was clearly a fairytale romance from page one. While the general thrust of the story was a foregone conclusion the process actually proved fairly unpredictable and kept me interested; after reading the other three stories however, I found myself a little confused by the relative simplicity of the last. More specifically, the collection as a whole lulled me into a state of constantly expecting a more convoluted narrative. If anything I view this as a compliment to the author, who quite clearly is capable of creating and telling complex and engrossing stories. But as they say: sometimes simple is best. And sometimes happy endings really do come true.

So in summary, based on the diversity, general writing quality and original interpretations of timeless themes, 'For the Last Time' is totally worth reading; you'll experience almost the full spectrum of fantasy in this collection of light novellas. Although if you're not big on Fairy Tales, Vampire Horror, Absurdest Comedy, or Fantasy Romance as genre fiction then it's probably not for you.

My one comment to the author about the structure of the compilation is to file the short addendums all at the end of the book. While placement after the relevant story is sensible, it also disturbs the otherwise unhindered reading flow from story to story. Basically, while informative they seem out of place and interrupt the immersion.

The Last Planet

2011-11-21T13:44:00.001-08:00

It had become impossible to imagine how many years had transpired, not that it mattered much. Since the human race had finally embarked for deep space the species had become hopelessly fragmented. Billions of cultures on billions of worlds; only one feature unified them now, they were all about to become homeless.

Even though the universe was apparently infinite, the colonies were so voracious for natural resources that they had ultimately been reduced to a state of perpetual planet-hopping. In the early days of the galactic gold-rush it would take millenia for a single colony to strip an entire planet of its resources, leaving behind nothing but a cratered husk that would quickly crumbled away into space dust. Then as in all things, people became increasingly efficient at "planet-top removal". Millenia became centuries, centuries became decades, and now it took less than a single year to completely expunge a living, breathing planet.

This had not presented itself as a problem until recently. Ironically even though the human race had transcended the foundational laws of physics and broken the light-speed barrier allowing for an unprecedented rate of expansion; it was a far more pressing problem of elementary physics that hindered their progress now.

How to slow down?

Yes, that was the interminable question that plagued our collective consciousness today, spread as it were across distances far too vast for our feeble sapient minds to comprehend. How to slow down? Our expansion had become so rapid, so efficient, that it had finally outpaced itself. We simply could not find enough habitable worlds to sustain our growth. Naturally countless solutions had been proposed, from creating artificial solar systems to terraforming every rock in the known universe. Yet, even as the most brilliant minds struggled with the logistics of setting these schemes in motion, the clock was ticking.

Suddenly before anyone had even time to realize, the clock had stopped. The entire combined galactic convoy of humanity hovered around what immediately came to be christened "the last planet". No, it was not the last planet, far from it; there were innumerable worlds in the galaxy. Rather, this planet was merely the next in line for consumption. The only problem was that it was a very long line. So long was the line that it extended back beyond infinity, circumnavigating the boundless void of space and time, until at long last it had managed to catch up to itself, manifesting as an immovable object.

As the various consumption ships converged on the solitary opalescent sphere like dull primordial sharks circling a bleeding whale, more numerous than the stars themselves, the great engine of destruction came to a grinding halt, the very quanta of the vacuum became still. In that instant the universe itself stopped breathing and froze forever.

And so it remains to this day, like an insect locked in amber. Looking closely we can still see the spectacle at the center, those innumerable foreboding specks clouding the faintly glimmering core like ravenous gnats, once sparkling like stars, now gone preternaturally dark, all except for one. That startling pearl of wisdom unheeded in their midst, the last planet...

The Jobs Crisis

2011-08-31T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is an OP/ED about the current US employment crisis. The premise is that while the political system is fixated on an understandable yet incorrect "America needs jobs" mantra, the reality is that the US and many other countries are transitioning into a post-jobs world.

The most important things to note:

Jobs in general are a socioeconomic invention, they are not a necessity assuming that water, food and shelter can be provided effectively for "free". These are the "essential" and "core" jobs. Although clearly with complex urban environments there are many other considerations like sanitation, electricity, health, education, etc.

It is possible that some day our technology and infrastructure may provide these essential services with so little effort that it becomes uneconomical to create more jobs to do work that doesn't really need to be done. This is the essence of the "post-jobs" world, and I believe we are transitioning into it right now.

A "post-jobs" world does not mean a world without jobs. It means a world where the majority of people do not need to work merely to survive. Furthermore it means a world where there are too many people to employ. It's crucial to understand that this is a ratio and not a state. There will always be people "working", they may even work for other people and think of this work as a "job", but they will be in the minority.

This assumption is based on a few key factors:

Job availability is decreasing while the US workforce is steadily increasing.
The world has finite resources, jobs are also finite. As resources are depleted jobs are also depleted. Meanwhile people continue to reproduce creating further demand for "jobs". This is clearly unsustainable.

American workers simply can't compete with globalized labor.
The first world standard of living is not economical in the third world, as labor shifts to the third world the first world lifestyle becomes uneconomical. This means less money, less consumption and less "jobs".

Over time human workers in general can't compete with labor saving technology.
Industrial efficiency at providing the necessities for life is constantly marginalizing the "essential" workforce. For example only 2-3% of the US workforce is agriculture. Compare that to the 70-80% of the last century.

And lastly, there simply aren't enough useful things for everyone to do.
Seven billion people and growing. Even if we manufacture new jobs there is redundancy, even if we manufacture demand there is surplus. You can't defy the laws of physics.

The reason this is a transition rather than a widely acknowledged phenomenon is because of several conflicting forces that resist the trends mentioned above:

There are still countless "core" jobs that need to be done.
A combination of archaic 20th century infrastructure and sociopolitical dogma makes the transition to a jobless society extremely challenging.

Globalization is logistically slow.
While seemingly inevitable and accelerating the process of shuffling corporations around the world is highly complex and time consuming.

The adoption of labor saving technology takes an initial investment.
Ironically this is the primary reason for jobs to exist, so that they may eventually establish technology and infrastructure that effectively makes them obsolete.

Governments and people struggle to maintain the status quo.
It's natural to resist change and disruption, it's also very difficult to recognize and acknowledge when fundamental social and economic models stop working.

Although all these factors are minor when compared to the lack of vision in democratic society and its leadership. For a transition to a post-jobs future to be successful two things are necessary: first the nation and the current administration need to recognize and acknowledge that it is not faced with an employment crisis, but rather an ideological crisis. Second, people need to want and believe in a better future for the entire -globalized- human race, one where both local and national interests are eclipsed by the greater needs of the planet as a whole.

If you can't compete, the only other option is cooperation. America doesn't need "jobs", it needs vision.

Second Life Mesh IP Tutorial Answers

2011-08-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

Part of the new policy with mesh rollout comes in the form of this ridiculous and patronizing "Intellectual Property" tutorial. Since I was already participating in the mesh beta I was actually forced to take this asinine "tutorial" twice. Unforgivable. And fuck everything about this. Following are the correct answers to all the questions, just select the corresponding radio buttons and you're golden.

Second Life Mesh IP Tutorial

Daniel is a very talented artist. He is also a huge movie fan. Daniel made a 3D model that looks just like a character from his favorite movie and wants to use it as an avatar in Second Life. Can Daniel upload his 3D model as a mesh and use it for his Second Life avatar?

01. NO

Maria has created an avatar that closely resembles her favorite movie star. The avatar is composed of several highly detailed meshes and textures that Maria made by using 3D modeling software and other graphic tools. When is it OK for Maria to upload an avatar like this to Second Life?

02. If Maria is the owner of celebrity's intellectual property rights or is authorized by the rights owner.

Using some 3D modeling software, Cathy created a model of a car. It took her weeks to make the model and now she wants to sell copies of the car in Second Life. Cathy uploaded the car as a mesh to Second Life then listed it for sale on the Second Life Marketplace. The text of Cathy's listing says "looks like a Mercedes." Is this OK?

03. NO

David is an avid sports fan and wants to share his enthusiasm with other Second Life Residents. David uploaded a large mesh helmet with his favorite team's logo on it. David decorated the outside of his Second Life home with the helmet. When is it OK for David to use his favorite team's logo in Second Life?

04. He cannot use the logo in Second Life.

Tom purchased a membership to a website that offers creative works, such as 3D models, to its members. The terms of use on the website state that the 3D models cannot be sold "as is" but they can be re-sold if they are added to an original creation. Can Tom upload the 3D models as meshes to Second Life and then sell them "as is" to other builders on the Second Life Marketplace?

05. NO

Jill is a popular fashion designer in Second Life. She has created a line of mesh purses and shoes and wants to call her new brand "N1ke". Is this OK?

06. NO

Darlene sells full permission mesh pillars, archways, and roof tops for other residents to use in their Second Life buildings. Darlene includes a notecard with the items. The notecard states that the items can only be re-sold as part of an original creation and are not to be re-sold as standalone items. Sally purchased the mesh objects from Darlene and wants to resell them. Sally can...

07. Include the mesh objects in the prefab houses that she creates, then sell the houses.

Using some 3d modeling tools Becky created some cute little teddy bears which she later uploaded as meshes to Second Life. The teddy bears, when clicked, play a selection of well known romantic songs that Becky does not have permission to use. Is this OK?

08. NO

Linden Lab removed Barbara's meshes or other Second Life content but did not remove other similar content. This could be because...

09. Linden Lab has not discovered or been notified by a rights owner about similar content.

When uploading mesh or creating other content for Second Life, which of the following is important to do if you want to respect intellectual property rights like copyrights, trademarks, and celebrity rights?

10. All of the above.

You scored 10 correct out of 10 questions for a score of 100 percent.

The Glorious Post-PC Era

2011-08-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the misleading title, the truth is I think "The Post-PC Era" is complete and utter bullshit; and here's why:

No need to sugarcoat it, "tablet" computers are nothing more than a fanatical trend contrived by Apple - a company that sells lifestyle, not computers. In terms of usability, heuristics, functionality or just about any other relevant metric, the tablet form-factor is hyper-niche. Tablets will never replace conventional computers. That being said, nothing will stop people from buying them.

Why? Because Apple has mastered the art of fetishizing consumer hardware. Additionally the only possible utility provided by tablets to the average consumer comes in the form of "apps" (and media vicariously) - Apple isn't really selling tablets at all, they are selling their thriving marketplace where consumers can easily acquire and run countless programs custom tailored to the platform. This was the reason for the success of the iPod, iPhone and now for the iPad.

But does this hold true for other manufacturers? Absolutely not. No other manufacturer has such a comprehensive marketplace to make the otherwise useless tablet form-factor lucrative, no other manufacturer has devoted over a decade to constructing an elaborate corporate facade that effectively fetishizes an entire family of products. Is it really so shocking that other companies are failing where Apple is succeeding?

More importantly, does any of this really matter? Tablets are still an incredibly stupid idea. What kind of market allows for stupid ideas to be turned into a multi-billion dollar industry? A stupid one! What kind of value do you suppose is generated by a culture that prioritizes lifestyle over usability, heuristics, and functionality? Not much. Where do you suppose the tablet market will be in ten years? Probably non-existent.

Meanwhile you have embarrassments like the HP TouchPad fire sale. Stupid companies thinking they can copy something that Apple invented (not the tablet, but the idea that tablets are actually useful and desirable). Stupid consumers who will do anything to own an iPad, even if that means buying an inferior knockoff at closeout prices. People don't buy iPads they buy into the Apple lifestyle.

This is why tablets in general aren't selling, this is why Apple's iPad is unassailable in terms of tablet market share: there is no tablet market! There is only a tablet lifestyle market, and Apple has that cornered.

Recent Reads Executive Summary

2011-06-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Huge thanks go to the absolutely awesome and outstanding Baen Books - without which I would not have read any of these fun books - for free. Hint: you're only one click away from their free library.

Demon Blade by Charles G. McGraw

The story of a powerful wizard who must first learn that he can lose to a powerful demon, and then regain his mojo through the trials and tribulations following a chance encounter with a troublesome princess fallen on hard times. Yeah, you read that right, this is a coming of age story for a wizard! Naturally the sword taken from the book's title is the great mysterious hook that helps to anchor the narrative and keep things moving along.

What I really loved about this book was that it could be referred to as hard-fantasy; light on the mysticism and wishy-washy staples of the typical cliché. The protagonist wizard is a real wizard, like Gandalf, not some impotent codger with a dinky willow wand. There is also some scientific rational involved, magic burns calories. Also my pet peeve, the ending wasn't rushed and it didn't suck, although admittedly I saw the big twist coming a mile away. Exceptional characterization throughout.

Fire in the Mist by Holly Lisle

The story of a young shepherdess who also happens to be the most powerful (yet unknown) sorceress in generations. Unfortunately with power comes great responsibility, or alternately great tragedy. When the protagonist's home and life is all but ended by plague her grief unleashes an ancient evil. Conveniently the witches who compel her to join their enclave just happen to live in the very city where that evil was born. A city where men and women live on opposite sides of a magical yet not ideological divide. As people start to go missing, as harbingers of doom once again walk among the living, it's time for unconventional thinking to unite the sexes and save the world!

To be honest I started out loving this book, the characterization was excellent, and personally I like nothing more than stories with a strong female protagonist. It managed to keep up the pace for awhile, but then seemed to get hopelessly mired in sexual politics and interpersonal relationships at some point. The result was an awkward mixture of light-hearted fantasy fluff underpinned with disturbing horror elements. Truly a plausible mixture given the scenario, but a combination that just didn't translate well as a fantasy novel. Likewise the ending just seemed far too realistic and underwhelming for the genre.

Mother of Demons by Eric Flint

The story of a group of human colonists attempting to survive on a somewhat hostile alien world. Or is this really the story of a world full of sentient cephalopods who are about to have their entire way of life transformed by "demons" from beyond? To know the future, you first must know the past, and that is essentially the premise here - he or she who holds the secrets of history is like a god to a world full of ignorant savages.

This book was great mainly because the author did such a masterful job making it seem like he was telling a story about a fascinating alien culture and civilization, from their point of view; really at the core it was a far more familiar story about human colonization told in a very unique and refreshing way. The one thing I didn't like was all the foreshadowing - specifically foreshadowing about things that were to happen after the book ended. I found the prospect of those events and upheavals more interesting than what ultimately amounted to an account of primitive tribal warfare laced with Messianic mysticism.

Sympathy for the Devil by Holly Lisle

The story of a pure-hearted nurse who pleads with god to give hell's legions a second chance, resulting in humorous results! All hell breaks loose, well, a fair portion anyway is beset on a small town in the United States. Human souls are in season, but who will bring home the bacon and who will come home empty handed?

I did actually find myself laughing out loud more than once while reading this book, the humor is far from high-brow, but funny in a way that catches you off-guard. The author does an amazing job walking the tightrope of religious satire over a pit of delicious irreverence. My favorite thing was how unpredictable the story was in general, this is exceptionally rare for me, but I really had no idea what was going to happen next most of the time. While inevitable I found the ending to be the worst part of the novel, mainly due to the implausibility of the lightning romance, fairytale ending. That being said I really enjoyed this book, love the genre, too damn short!

The Forlorn by Dave Freer

The story of a boy learning how to become a man and a spoiled princess learning how to become a human being; both ending up embroiled in the conniving generational drama of a megalomaniacal starship officer and his small band of loyal, die-hard mercenaries. Oh, and the borg.

Don't let the glib description fool you, this is actually a pretty good book with lots of depth and layering, the story is well told, albeit a mite convoluted. The characterization was without a doubt its strong suit, the technical side was a bit more lax yet still believable. Its greatest weakness was the ending which suffered greatly thanks to the sappy consummation of the charming love-hate relationship between the two protagonists; although it was really the rushed and somewhat technically confusing annihilation of the three century old antagonist that left me saying 'wat'.

The Sea Hag by David Drake

The story of a hapless prince who must run away from home to escape a life debt waged by his fisherman father before he was born. A cannon classical coming of age story, the narrative follows the prince as he forges through the jungle with his sagacious and invaluable octopodidae robot companion; learning self-sufficiency and how to be a noble knight. Challenges are encountered, culminating in the discovery of a idyllic human settlement with a terrible secret and a beautiful princess. The protagonist must survive both treachery and formidable monsters before he can return home - a champion! Luckily he has a few magical aces up his sleeve, although ultimately it's his good fortune and stubborn determination that allows him to prevail.

The writing was fair, if not overly simple. It's hard to write a classic fantasy novel in the contemporary market, when everything has been done to death, David manages to pull it off however, albeit a bit inelegantly. The focus of the story is the protagonist's character development, sadly he is not very complex or ambitious, so it tends to backfire a little. Still there is a degree of stolid charm in the sincere directness that is so rare in modern storytelling. The ending is a little rushed but none-the-less satisfying.

Wizard's Bane by Rick Cook

The story of a socially hapless yet technically skilled computer programmer transplanted to a backwood yet magically endowed world by an alien wizard. Therein he must overcome the dual challenges of adapting to life in a medieval society embroiled in a global civil war between wizards, while attempting to win the heart of a young "hedge-witch" who treats him like a loathsome parasite.

Refreshingly well written, especially the period dialog which was top-notch, unfortunately the characters and their development left something to be desired. By far the worst aspect being the especially unrealistic romantic reversal at the end of the book. In short it ended too quickly. The protagonist was not very convincing as a believable programmer, tending towards inconsistent behavior, lack of strategy.

Resonance by Chris Dolley

The story of a strange young man who appears to be the sole sailor set adrift in a stormy sea of parallel universes. Shifting from one mildly different reality to the next the hapless and terminally passive protagonist rolls with the punches, until a strange girl (doesn't fall from the sky) with telepathic powers starts to pop up repeatedly with dire warnings and eventually revelations. Meanwhile an evil corporation central to the instability of space-time plots his downfall, or something along those lines. Eventually everything gets sorted out thanks to a confusing yet cool strategy dreamed up by the protagonist who finally manages to man up.

The thing I liked the least about this book was how irritating and unlikable the protagonist seemed to be. He managed to be both inherently vague and distinctly pathetic at the same time. That being said the underlying premise was really intriguing. Got to give the author props first for attempting such a difficult narrative, and second for actually pulling it off relatively well. I loved the counterpoint of the disruptive girl to his bumbling OCD idiocy, this was played to maximum effect. Good end.

bitcoin speculation

2011-06-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

If you don't know what bitcoin is, please read the wiki. The results of my limited research thus far:

20,999,999.9769 whole bitcoins possible, maximum ~2.1 quadrillion sub-divisions. Only ~300 billion pennies minted since 1787.

Each #bitcoin can be subdivided into 100 million pieces. If the smallest = 1¢ then 1btc would = 1 million dollars, optimally.

Therefore it can be concluded that the optimal #bitcoin economy would have a net value of 21 trillion dollars. Just 1/3 of the global GDP!

So it seems obvious that bitcoins will never replace "real" money, & that at best could account for just 1/3 of global commerce.

Factual information was obtained from various bitcoin related forums (and other sources), I then took these numbers and applied my own calculations which were loosely based on relative economic theory. Thanks go to Google and WolframAlpha for making the math easy.

I would append to my original post a few questions along with what answers I have managed to extract from the forums and other various sources:

At what point will bitcoin reach the optimal value of approximately $1M? Will this be a steady increase in value or exponential? What factors are essential to motivating this change? As of writing the latest price for a single bitcoin is $22.89 USD. The market evaluation seems to be accelerating.

At what point will bitcoin discovery peak? 85% by 2020 according to the forums, at which point it becomes time-uneconomical to discover more.

At what point will it end? As of writing 6.46M bitcoins have already been found (Since February 4, 2009), that leaves 14.54M available for discovery. Since it becomes exponentially harder to discover them over time it will take twice as long to find the next 6 million (~ 6 years).

However this decline may be offset by advancements in computing technology. In fact it's not outside the realm of possibility that computational capacity will overtake the computational difficulty of discovery before all bitcoins are found. In theory this may also undermine the bitcoin economy by making coin discovery too easy.

According to the forums, all coins will be found by 2030 or shortly thereafter.

If you found this post informative, please feel free to send a small contribution to:
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Computer Revolution

2011-05-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is essentially a rant about computers. For those of us living in modern times the computer alternates between being best friend and worst enemy. Friend because it provides the most power ever conceived in terms of productivity and entertainment. Enemy because the management of data, operating systems, networking, hardware and software in general are/is the most colossal fucking nightmare ever imagined. For the average computer user all these inconceivable problems can be reduced to a simple binary: Yes it's working. No it's not working. For power users there is simply no limit to the spectrum of horrors made possible thanks to computers.

I still remember my first computer, the kind where programs ran on pancake sized floppy disks, and everything had to be configured via the command prompt. How far we've come and yet not at all. In terms of usability and reliability we've merely exchanged one form of chaos for another. The computer today is in many ways even harder to use and even less reliable than computers twenty years ago.

At the time very few people imagined how things would evolve, the idea of terabyte hard drives, multi-core processors, disposable flash memory, were barely even fantasies. And yet, just like the specter of the flying car, there were plenty of enthusiast authored wish-lists that dared to dream big, even by today's standards. Modular architecture, holographic memory, optical processors, mesh networking, virtual reality.

Futures however always seem to have a tendency to slide towards dystopia. The very industries that arise to revolutionize the world invariably turn their back on the ideals of innovation and progress, they become the very institutions that stifle and hobble advancement of the art. Money is to blame, or more accurately the concept that profitability is ultimately more important than creativity.

As the technology "ecosystem" achieves the rough consistency of an intellectual septic tank, counter-cultures emerge. Briefly they rise to power, gaining market share and consequently affluence, until inevitably they too are seduced by money and thereafter rapidly corrupted by commercialization. Although none of this is really important, it's the collateral damage that kills the soul.

While all the overpaid lawyers, architects, engineers, and programmers are busy churning out the next iteration of TheBestThingEver5000, real people are having to deal with it on a daily basis. Perhaps you start to see where I'm going with this? There is a profound lack of sincerity in the process at this stage. TheBestThingEver5000 is not really the best thing ever, it's really just TheBestThingEver4000 with a fresh coat of paint.

There are no "million dollar ideas" ideas are never the result of money, that's backwards and stagnant. Ideas catch on because they transcend commerce they exist regardless of the economy, money is made after the fact, and arbitrarily at that. But once again, none of this matters if you can trick people into paying for something that is both priceless and worthless at the same time.

When you strip away all the bullshit you're left with a striking revelation: the computer revolution peaked in early 2000. Power and capacity continue to increase yet all the real advances that were promised by ideas have not come to fruition. Some might argue that things like SSDs (Solid State Drives) are a sign that the revolution is still alive and well, but look at them from a technological standpoint. SSDs are a reset. You pay as much for a high capacity SSD as you would a standard disk drive five years ago. Naturally the technology is new therefore costly, but taking trends into consideration, by the time SSDs reach competitive levels with conventional disk drives a newer, higher capacity storage device will need to exist in order to maintain current trends. So what really is the SSD then? Just another branch off a tree that flowered over ten years ago.

The parallel continues with processors. What are multi-core processors really? Basically they are a way of saying "we can't make a better processor, so we're just going to put more of the best we have on a single chip." This is the ultimate farce, and yet the global computer industry and consumers have bought it hook, line and sinker. The same is true for video cards, gimmicks like SLI and Crossfire attempt to fill the gap left by failed attempts to maintain the exponential performance curve.

Operating systems are probably the most salient example by far, abortions like Vista and its successful yet technologically negligible successor "Windows 7" have done absolutely nothing to advance the platform, providing little more than improved visuals that were available with Linux five years prior. Many professionals and hobbyists alike still use XP, and for good reason, it's easier to use than 7.

In reality there's only one truly meaningful metric that can be applied to the modern computer in terms of revolutionary advancement: cost. A system that would have cost $100,000 ten years ago can now be economically built for under $1000. That truly is revolutionary. Yet now the market stagnates, and it has little to do with "tablet" computers, or smart phone adoption.

I built my last PC in April of 2009. A four-core 3 GHz processor, eight GB of RAM, a 64 GB SSD for the OS, and approximately one TB of net disk space distributed over four 250 GB drives, and lastly a video card with 2 GB of RAM. It wasn't bleeding edge but it was higher end. The truly shocking thing was that despite the fact that all the hardware was an entire generation above and beyond my last system build was that I didn't notice a significant boost in performance. If anything I noticed a decrease in performance, the SSD was first gen and horrible at handling concurrency, basically running two programs at once was like trying to force two camels through a keyhole. The multi-core processor was fucking useless, even with four cores multitasking was less than optimal, 90% of the time only 1/4 of all four cores was in use. Multi-threaded applications? What? Yes there are a few, yet poorly implemented, I noticed little improvement over my five-year old single core system.

Two years later one of my hard drives finally started to fail. In its defense, this was my "workhorse" drive, every fast and continually active. Naturally it didn't just die, instead it decided to limp along with all the grace of a three-legged thoroughbred, attempting to recover files was like mailing an encyclopedia to someone in India... one page at a time. All my programs were on this drive, no data just applications. In one fell swoop I went from being almost unimaginably empowered and productive to being unable to do anything. I began thinking over this experience, deeply.

The standard procedure is to recover what you can and then reinstall the rest. If only it were that easy. Programs nowadays, they need to be activated, they associate themselves with hardware and software configurations, all to prevent piracy (which of course they don't). In short it's a fucking nightmare of tracking down serial numbers in emails, uninstalling, reinstalling... it can take days. Some things can't even be reinstalled. Then there are all the customizations and configurations, plugins, etc. There's no way to reliably back all this up, it's spread all over the place, and it changes constantly.

When everything is said and done the modern digital workspace is more like a human brain than a computer, having a drive fail can be like having a serious stroke, there is just no way to recover; your only option is to adapt and relearn. The computer revolution I envision is one where this problem has been solved. A workspace is established wherein failure is always reversible. Not just data, not just programs, but everything is always recoverable.

Probably the most important digital assets today are links - all those invisible associations between hardware, software and "files" that allow complex and thereby valuable patterns to emerge via the user's orchestration. This is ironically one of the least appreciated and protected aspects of computers. In fact industry behavior even goes backwards into the realm of engineering an expedited self-destruction. Things like DRM (digital rights management), product activation, centralization of links via registries, segmentation / fragmentation of data, arbitrary placement of profiles / attributes, hidden directories, protected directories... the list just goes on forever. It's literally like taking a working brain and filling it with mousetraps; the game "minesweeper" is also an apt analogy.

So in conclusion I'd like to provide a few suggestions for the next computer revolution: I say start with the Operating System, I know it sounds backwards, but hardware for the time being is adequate, the biggest bottleneck is actually the OS - not the way it functions, but the way it fails. In terms of the most important aspect of the OS it is of course integrity of the links as described above. Additionally this requires data attached to the system to be automatically managed in two ways: firstly pooled and secondly mirrored. In terms of hardware, redundancy should be built right in - alternately less volatile technologies are used for storage. Regardless it's essential that data sources are capable of being seamlessly combined while maintaining the integrity of their contents; even in the event of failure.

Licensing and copy protection based on association is not really compatible with fluid hardware / software /data management. Hopefully this is something system architects will realize at some point. Likewise the "cloud" as in cloud computing is not really compatible either, clearly it has many applications, but monoculture and rigid centralization, while compelling in theory, are highly vulnerable to catastrophic failure and will never provide the kind of open and intellectually diverse environment that fosters revolutionary advancements in computer technology.

My second suggestion is to greatly improve the modularity of both hardware and software. In the current model programs often make changes to the operating system or place additional files in specific locations which they require to run. This is really the worst possible scenario in terms of establishing a sustainable system, not to mention highly inelegant. Modular programs never modify or interfere with the operating system. But what about extensibility? What of it? If the OS and programs are modular there is never a need for cross pollination; modules can be added or removed at will. This insures the integrity of both while maintaining a well organized structure overall. Modular hardware follows the same pattern. Furthermore these two sets of modular components should be combined so that each hardware module contains an embedded software module that both identifies and enables it when interfacing with other modules.

I think after writing all this that it's clear that the next computer revolution cannot occur in the current environment; mainly because all the most (theoretically) revolutionary advancements are in direct conflict with the faulty business models that have been built up over decades in the hardware and software industries. I say faulty despite their apparent success because they are short-term models that have already proven to be peaking. Long-term thinking requires dramatic shifts in architecture, not incremental "upgrades". Being revolutionary means taking risks while maintaining the status quo means reliable profitability into the foreseeable future, yet that future comes a little bit closer every day. But who knows, perhaps there are still some visionaries out there willing to kick-start the next computer revolution!

Mississippi

2011-05-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

Partially wondering if blogger is fully operational again, partially wanting to write a little something, something. As usual a lot has been going through my head lately, all very abstract and metaphysical.

I was thinking most recently about the flooding in Mississippi; entire towns dubbed "sacrificial" are being submerged in a bid to save even more vulnerable areas. A few weeks ago I was walking, having a very salient train of thought and became temporarily obsessed with the phrase "homogeneity is weakness", this was further appended with the stipulation "unless you can predict all contingencies, in which case diversity it weakness." The obvious problem being that we can't see into the future. How is this connected to MI?

The areas around rivers are meant to flood, it's part of the whole ecological system, it is in fact necessary for life to exist in and around rivers, the only thing that doesn't belong there is human beings. Specifically people who live a lifestyle that is homogeneous with non-wetland areas. The problem is not really with the people themselves but rather with their wholesale disrespect for history, ecology, geography, etc. Although the worst possible offense is simply refusing to observe the obvious: their lifestyle is incompatible with their environment.

I make this important distinction because there is nothing inherently wrong or stupid about living near a river, people have been doing it for a very long time. What is wrong is thinking that you can ignore the river and live as though you were hundreds of miles away. Specifically in traditional suburban housing, dependent on land-bound transportation. The reason people live like this is because their infrastructure is homogeneous and therefore weak. If you get close enough to the river you will find a percentage of houses that are up on stilts, this is an illustration of intelligence, respect and most importantly diversity.

Imagine if all the houses were built this way, imagine entire towns and cities built above flood zones. Ignoring for the moment that a far more elegant solution would simply be to live somewhere else. Ignoring the monumental cost of elevating everything. Accepting that roads are no longer practical. The very nature and culture of the region begins to change, it can no longer be considered a typical state because it is no longer homogeneous. This is all on some level a rational response, unfortunately the people have been robbed of their rational thanks to the homogeneity of modern living.

The interstate system for example, it must go everywhere. Corporations and franchises upon which communities depend for their frivolities as well as their necessities are template based, they cannot adapt to such a dramatic change, they themselves depend on incidental yet non-negotiable nuances in infrastructure. Something as mundane as a loading bay for trucks suddenly becomes an insurmountable obstacle. Naturally all of these crucial subtleties are the ultimate expression of societal weakness, expressly because we never really give them much thought.

Sometimes it seems like our level of interest is inversely proportional to the importance of any given topic. And really who could blame us? Infrastructure is fucking boring. Also there is this tendency to show solidarity through ignorance, and form sweeping general social agreements about things like best practices. This sounds good until you realize that "best practices" means "bullshit". Bullshit being anything that is made up without any form of science, objectivity or critical thinking being involved. Things like: rivers are useful for shipping tons of crap and making lots of money, therefore we should build cities as close to them as possible, even if it means building them below sea level.

Obviously it's well worth the risk of exchanging countless generations of get-rich-quick schemes for intermittent you-just-lost-everything natural disasters. Right? Let's get this straight, it's obvious that entire towns are going to flood, it's not just inevitable, it's seasonal. Furthermore it's been proven countless times that typical urban infrastructure is incapable of functioning during these disasters. And yet the response is always the same: panic while everything is washed away and then rebuild after. Naturally we rebuild in exactly the same place in exactly the same way, ensuring that the next flood will result in exactly the same scenario. Meanwhile the ecosystem is gradually yet inexorably degraded; ground and water alike are inundated with untold quantities of newly released industrial toxins, wetlands dry and die, it's labeled a disaster but really it's a catastrophe.

But not just for the ecology. What remains of the human culture must rebuild under the constant shadow of the knowledge that they are gambling with their lives and all it takes is one failing levee to end it all. No, this isn't a sacrifice, it's a suicide attempt. How this travesty became a national best practice is beyond even my ability to comprehend. If you live in Mississippi and you're near the river, do yourself a favor, no, do us all a favor; please just stop. Stop gambling with your life, stop destroying the environment. Just get out of there, move somewhere else. You can always visit.

VNC & Jolicloud 1.2 (a.k.a. Joli OS)

2011-03-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

This tutorial assumes that you already have VNC server running on another computer. It also assumes that you've used VNC before and therefore have a basic understanding of how it works.

Jolicloud does not have a 'native' VNC viewer so it's necessary to install one via the Synaptic Package Manager. From the dashboard click on the "Local Settings" icon, then from there click on the "Other Settings" icon. This will give you access to the core of the operating system.

Under the "System" heading click on the "Synaptic Package Manager" icon; you will need to type in your password to access it. Type "VNC" into the "Quick Search" box. At the very top of the list you will see "xvnc4viewer" click on the small check box next to the text, this will bring up a small contextual menu, select "Mark for Installation". Lastly click on the "Apply" button at the top of the page, this will install the 'package'.

Once this process is complete you will be left wondering what to do next since there is no easy way to launch the program via the GUI. Yeah, Jolicloud is not set up to make it easy to run 'apps' that are not officially sanctioned by their developers, but don't fret, it's actually pretty easy.

Open the terminal by holding down "Alt" and then pressing the "F1" key. Now all you have to do is type "xvnc4viewer" and hit enter. You will then be prompted to enter in the name/address of the server you want to view, then the password for that server (assuming a connection was established).

That's basically all there is to it.

Dimensions of Design

2011-03-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

1D (Egocentric Design, X)

>90% Can do well. This is the most general class of design, sometimes called "innate design sense", almost everyone has it, mainly because it's necessary for basic survival. Due to its prevalence its utility is fairly limited, although ironically it is responsible for the vast majority of so-called "real world" design choices that constitute our day-to-day living and working environment.

The important thing to note is that 1D Design is all about the self, improving the personal space, never taking more into consideration than what is defined by the scope of our individual likes and dislikes. It may be a simple and decisive world, but it's also a very capricious and uncaring world wherein the lowest common denominator often sets the table for everyone else.

2D (Traditional Design, X, Y)

50% Can do well. Also called "classical design", when people hear the word design, most will think of this class, which can be easily characterized by Print Media, both on and off the page / screen. It's also possible to stretch the definition to arts & crafts, textures and surfaces in general. Obviously design has been around for a long time, the only difference is that at least in the west it wasn't fully institutionalized until the 19th century. Effectively design started to become a branch of science.

3D (Modern Design, X, Y, Z)

20% Can do well. This is a bit tricky to grasp because it implies (and rightly so) that up until the advent of CAD and robotic mass production 3D design could not be considered fully mature. Before this point in time works in the third dimension were Art with design influences and not Design with art influences. The digital revolution changed this forever.

Aesthetics basically learned to take a back seat in relation to utility. Unfortunately this migration was a tad overzealous and as is rather painfully self-evident today the majority of modern designs place so much importance on utility that they have become ugly or even destructive in relation to our biological sensibilities.

4D (Post-Modern Design, X, Y, Z & Throughout time)

5-10% Can do well. While the old world is supposed to have died sometime around the turn of the new millennium it is still alive and well thanks to the durability of modern materials. Incidentally this is part of the problem; as we've discovered recently, making things that last forever is not necessarily a good idea, likewise making things that are disposable is even worse.

Hence Post-Modern Design, also known as "green", "renewable", or ecologically conscious, take your pick. The core premise behind this school of thought is that design can no longer be considered a finite science, there are naturally other considerations outside of the immediate dimensionality of an object. Products are designed with a life-cycle in mind, the ugly side of this (that nobody really likes to talk about) is Planned Obsolescence.

HD (Holistic Design, X, Y, Z, Time & in relation to everything else)

<1% Can do well. This is the nascent field of design via multidisciplinary science, who's time has come. Design must be entirely reimagined from square one. "Post-post-modern", alternatively "Futuristic", these are two terms that could also be used to describe holistic design. The key concept behind this school is that we have learned from 4D that design is not finite, but above and beyond this we have proven through science that it is impossible to fully disassociate objects from their context: context must be considered an integral, but more importantly a non optional part of the design process!

This may sound self-evident but until recently the idea that all designers had to follow a set of universal rules was considered sacrilegious, yet that is exactly the future we are facing.

It's no longer possible (in good conscience) to make things that merely fulfill a function in relation to a human world and a human friendly time scale, it becomes necessary to look beyond humanity, beyond time. Truly great design is said to be "timeless", that is merely an accidental occurrence of holistic design; I say accidental because in previous eras it was beyond science to orchestrate instances of timeless design.

The trick to achieving a holistic design sense requires two components: first it requires an abnormally high level of consciousness, that is the seed. Second, it requires a truly profound pool of scientific information from which to draw conclusions.

Etc.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that every dimension of design is dependent on the awareness of the individual, typically the greater the awareness the greater the design.

Disclaimer: all statistics in this post were pulled directly out of my ass and are probably inaccurate. I do have a lifetime of experience and pretty good intuition, but obviously you need real research to validate these numbers. The problem is, design itself is so generalized that it would take a lifetime of research to support what would in all likelihood prove mathematically unreliable.

Quintessential RPG

2011-02-23T23:09:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to do this for a long time. Basically I've played a few RPGs in my day (digital rather than analogue), and what I've noticed is that many game developers fail on a fundamental level to include the core elements of the genre. By "core" what I really mean is the essential qualities that allow RPGs to actually 'work' and remain fun for as long as you play. In addition to the core elements I'm going to include a list of extra qualities that make RPGs even better without compromising the genre or detracting from the essential attributes that are required to make a successful RPG.

My opinion is that without these core elements an RPG will more-or-less be a failure and quickly devolve into a grind rather than remaining fun. Furthermore, including these core elements will almost guarantee success, if not greatness.

Contrary to popular opinion, having a "story" around which all gameplay elements are consequently derived is not only unnecessary, it frequently backfires, resulting in a plethora of pointless and arbitrary restrictions that drag the game down. In RPGs mechanics is everything, in essence all RPGs are merely glorified, graphically represented mathematics. You can have the most amazing visuals ever, if the math is bad you're just wasting your time.

Boundaries

How many times while playing an RPG have you gotten hung up on some shrubbery, blocked by a ribbon-thin brook, stumped by a wayward pebble or hung up on a knee-high picket fence? Suspending the initial idiocy of a legendary warrior or mage being unable to navigate a negligible obstacle, what is really wrong with this picture?

Bad boundaries. There's really nothing wrong (stupid maybe, but not wrong) about forcing players to run through a logical maze of natural obstacles. What's wrong is that the boundaries between navigable and unnavigable space are not clearly defined. It should always be obvious where you can and cannot go.

Ideally if there are boundaries in an RPG they are clearly defined, additionally they are logical to the extent that they do not violate common-sense. For example, if your character is wielding a half-ton war hammer that can pulverize a full grown horse with one swing, he/she should probably be able to dispense with a pesky picket fence. Unless he/she has rabies it really shouldn't be too difficult to step over a bubbling brook, or even wade through a river.

The best way to solve this problem of consistency is to apply physics and physical rules to gameplay. Gone are the days of treating level design like arranging the pins in a Pachinko machine. If you want an impenetrable forest you'd better make it tedious to cut down. A good rule of thumb is: don't give the player powerful tools and then prevent them from using them. Design the environment to encourage creativity rather than to subvert it.

Cooperative

Originally RPG's started out as social games that friends would play together, at what point did this degenerate into a solitary activity? Why do single player RPGs even exist? So you want to play by yourself? That's fine, it should always be an option. However it's far more important to make it easy for friends to play together!

Think of it this way, thousands of hours go into game design, especially with RPGs, a lot of this time is devoted to creating massive, diverse environments and a literal arsenal of semi-randomly generated items: weapons, armor, accessories, loot. Then there are additional systems layered on top of these items that allow for customization, crafting, etc. All of that complexity designed to maximize the individuality of just one player. It's a huge waste of effort!

Since there's only one main character you might as well just stick with one default setup, since there's nothing to compare it to and the player is just following a linear story anyway it won't make the game any less immersive. Naturally this is just an example intended to point out that RPGs are ideally suited for more than one player, in fact it's practically a crime to put so much work into a game and then make it single player.

Above and beyond mere multiplayer it's essential that players can work together cooperatively, I think PvP adds realism and I've nothing against it personally, but coop play is the one thing that a good RPG simply can't live without. MMOs are neat, but LAN is just as important. Regardless the best option is always to give the players plenty of options so that they can choose the playing style they enjoy the most.

One thing I will directly object to is modes of play that attempt to create opposing armies comprised entirely of players. I've experience this, it's horrible, players always exploit every weakness in the game to its absolute maximum, utterly ruining the overall experience. I believe the best play mode is one that unites the players together against many different AI (computer controlled) opponents; and also allows them to form flexible alliances with the AI given certain circumstances.

Controls

I still remember the first time I played an RPG that was totally ruined by the control system. Every action required a complex combination of keystrokes and mouse gestures, I stopped playing after about 15 minutes and never looked back. Most MMOs have tried to solve this problem by going to the opposite extreme: players select a target and then an action, the game does all the rest.

Ideally the player has access to two different control modes: the first mode is full control - the player controls their character at all times, all actions are initiated in realtime. This mode is ideal for action oriented players with good hand-eye coordination; it's also wonderful because it lets you exploit your skills to their utmost potential. The downside is that it requires a great deal of concentration and focus.

The second mode is indirect control (basically the MMO model) - the player is limited to performing various actions in sequence. First they move their character until they reach a target, then they select a target, lastly they activate one or more skills which then effect the target. This mode is ideal for players who favor strategy, it doesn't require any skill or rely on hand-eye coordination. Once the action is initiated the player can basically walk away from the game until the sequence has played out.

There's really no reason that both of these modes can't be used in the same RPG, this way action and strategy can work together optimally.

Perspective

Third person vs. First person, Isometric vs. Mouselook, it's a no-brainer; let the player choose. Once again, game designers have this stupid, stubborn preconception that every RPG has to subscribe to a specific school of thought. But think about it, every RPG is more-or-less the same; a player-character has to navigate a 3D (or simulated 3D) environment. Why should perspective be a deal breaker?

The truth is, game designers mostly limit perspective because they suck at making environments. Basically the message a fixed perspective sends out is: even though the environment is 3D it only looks good or accurate from a specific perspective. Given that it's 3D it should in fact look equally good from any angle. A lot of designers will also use the excuse that a free perspective allows the player to see parts of the environment that are outside the predetermined path the player is meant to follow! Or in first person the player is too close and will see how bad it looks up close. Yeah, those are not really problems, those are messages telling you that you need to do a better job on environment design and execution.

Navigation

This is totally essential, every RPG must have a reliable compass and a map of some kind that shows two things, the extent of the 'universe' you're in at any given moment and where you are in it. A lot of extra bells and whistles can be added beyond this: a 'radar' type player marker that shows the direction you're facing and the extent of your vision. Markers for towns, objectives, resources, etc. The ability to set custom markers, a.k.a. waypoints (essential IMO). The map and compass should always be linked in such a way that while playing it is easy to head towards your active waypoint without having to constantly check your map for directions.

The so called "fog of war" is common, I think it makes a lot of sense because otherwise it's very difficult to tell where you've been and where you need to go. A map that doesn't let you move while you're looking at it is crap. A map that doesn't show layered details e.g. the internal structure of caves, buildings, etc. is crap. A map that doesn't clearly define impassible obstructions is crap. A map that doesn't clearly highlight passages or portals joining region to region is, yeah you guessed it, crap!

Contiguity

One thing you should never see while playing an RPG is a loading screen. No matter how large or diverse the game world is, there should always be a system built into the game that utilizes LOD and loads content in a well managed and piecemeal fashion. Once again this problem is best solved by mimicking the way things work in the real world.

Ideally the game world is mapped to the surface of an actual sphere, even if it only takes up a small percentage of the whole, this method has countless advantages over the conventional method that uses a flat or otherwise isolated region. Naturally this requires better underlying technology, but it also makes it much easier to solve much harder problems long-term.

With a spherical world realtime lighting cycles and weather patterns are far easier to implement. Basic procedural terrain creates a foundation for the environment design. Vast distances are much easier to simulate, likewise traversing them. The spherical model forces game designers to think in real-world terms, this imparts more realism and makes the game more immersive. Continents, islands and oceans are actually relational rather than discreet; the game world is greatly expanded without imposing the need for more detail in key areas. The list goes on and on.

Random

More diversity is better. This applies to both gear and story. Scripted events are great, but it's also critical that things can happen randomly that aren't directly related to the main quest. Similarly with gear there is a distinct threshold between quality vs. quantity; you can recognize it immediately when you find yet another "Dagger of Agony +2", obviously there are only so many possible (read viable) combinations, the key is in introducing the right level of randomness, thus achieving the perfect balance between frequency of redundant drops and frequency of unique drops.

Personally I favor an almost exclusively procedural approach to item, event and opponent generation. The only downside to this method is that it is absolutely the most challenging type of game design and development hands down. While traditional game design is more-or-less straightforward, procedural design is totally open ended (at least in relation). But maybe most importantly it forces designers to give up a great deal of control over how the game evolves, sometimes with disastrous effects.

Unconventional

Adding machine guns into a fantasy RPG. Lots of developers consider this kind of thing taboo or offbeat, but gamers know the truth, it makes RPGs a lot more fun; and as numerous titles have shown it's entirely possible to have swords, spells, guns and flamethrowers all in the same RPG. Personally I think developers should take this to the next level and include as many weapons and types as possible.. after all it's the loot drops that comprises the majority of the payback for putting in countless hours of playtime.

Beam weapons, chainsaws, crowbars, nukes, musical instruments, bath toys, bowling balls, there really is no limit to what can be added to an RPG for all sorts of humorous and utilitarian effects. Naturally this adds a pretty substantial creative burden onto both the designers and the developers, once again there's a perfect balance in there somewhere between utility and diversity.

Ecosystem

Enemies should attack enemies. In most RPGs there are at least three different groups that vie for supremacy, almost categorically the player is the exclusive target of them all. While not entirely irrational, it's not exactly realistic. Ideally the game world is comprised of several overlapping ecosystems, each faction or species has its own hierarchy, its own friends and enemies. The player is just one more actor that participates in the unfolding drama. Situations should always arise where the player's primary enemy is fighting the player's secondary enemy.

Naturally this sword can cut both ways, as at times the player will find himself/herself up against more than one type of enemy. Then again at times the player will realize they are fighting side-by-side with a lesser enemy to defeat a greater enemy to them both. Essentially the whole point of this is to dispel the absurd notion that the player is always one man/woman against the whole world. This kind of oversimplification is what makes so many RPGs shallow and repetitive grinds.

Customization

This one is a total no-brainer. Take your pick, the best aspect of almost any RPG released in the last 20 years is the ability to take randomly dropped items and modify them using in-game tools. Beyond even RPGs there is a whole generation of modern games that revolve around crafting. The concept is relatively simple: within the game world there are natural resources that can be harvested, then using some kind of mystical catalyst and hard won "recipes" these resources are combined and transmuted into usable items. Weapons, armor, dyes, magical trinkets, whatever, the important thing is that you made them and they can be used to accomplish goals in the game.

This is an element that no good RPG is complete without, even with all the other qualifications met, items that can't be modified kill off about half the game's replay value. The holy grail of RGPs is the ability to make entirely custom items, it's probably impractical but worth mentioning. The closest any RPG has ever come to successfully fulfilling this qualification is the ability to combine several specific components into a relatively randomized item of a specific type. Even so, there are only so many possible combinations. Imagine if the number of combinations was unlimited! Now that would be something else.

Realistic Violence

In the end there area really two types of RPG, there is the type that exists purely to milk the player for money, most MMOs fall into this category and can be characterized by combat that primarily consists of the player repeatedly attacking an enemy without apparently doing any damage (aside from the occasional spray of spritely blood).

This effect is further highlighted by the fact that it is usually paired with increasingly flashy and dramatic looking spells and weapons. Analyzing this trend on a psychological level one can only assume that game designers are in fact symbolically projecting their own impotence onto the player character. It seems that the more imposing and heroic the character, the more intimidating and destructive looking the weapons, the more idiotic the player must look flailing away.

In reality this is just a sign of low production quality, the game developers and designers are lazy and can't be troubled with coding characters to reflect the damage they are absorbing in a believable and visual way. There is also the problem of pacing which in turn requires more attention to design and sophisticated code.

Realistically if you were to strike a small monster with a giant sword it would probably be seriously injured or killed in a single blow. MMOs however are based on game mechanics that required the player to spend minutes or even hours hacking, slashing, shooting, and casting until an enemy finally succumbs to the numerical damage. If every enemy could be killed realistically in just a few hits, either the attacks would have to be far less powerful or the opponents would have to be a lot more robust for the pacing to not degenerate into pure action.

The other type of RPG takes all this into account and put a lot of time and energy into balancing all the game mechanics with believable action and effects. Typically this type of gameplay is considered an "Action RPG". Ideally spells and weapons do believable damage in proportion to their visual presence. Just to give a few examples:

Swords actually cut and maim monsters, dismemberment is not out of the question, each consecutive cut causes the monster to bleed more. Things like decapitation kill instantly, if arms are cut off weapons may be dropped, if legs, the monster may fall over or lose mobility.

Arrows stick in the target and stay there, over time the monster may look like a pincushion. An arrow though the eye isn't just a critical hit, it can blind or kill an enemy instantly. Hitting key areas can have a similar effect to dismemberment, loss of mobility, dropping of weapons, massive blood loss, etc.

Spells do real, lasting damage. Lighting a monster on fire will eventually kill it, over time it will grow gradually blacker as it burns, all the while becoming less effective at attacking. This is basically true for all elemental attacks, and becomes increasingly effective as their power increases. If a meteor shower hits, meteors can kill monsters instantly. A lightning strike can likewise kill instantly.

If monsters are able to survive an unreasonable amount of damage it must be explained in a believable way, for example a house sized turtle may in fact be able to survive a small meteor shower due to an absurdly thick shell. Naturally it's always acceptable for the various monsters to employ magic or special items in order to mitigate the effects of various attacks that would normally be lethal, but this is only okay if the player also has access to the same options.

Fair Play

This is listed farther down the page, but in reality it's one of the most important elements of a good RPG. The nice thing is that it can be summed up fairly easily: fair play is just the basic concept that no matter what the player is up against, the opposition will never be able to do things that are beyond the player's potential within the context of the game. In other words there are no exclusive abilities, spells or items.

This doesn't mean that the player automatically has access to everything, it just means that nothing is off limits. The absolute worst possible violation of fair play is when the player is put up against a vastly superior enemy without any chance for preparation. The best way around this is to always let the player decide when they want to confront an opponent, or if random encounters are unavoidable, make sure that the player is never ambushed to the degree that they have no chance whatsoever of survival.

Addendum

That's all for now, if I think of anything else I'll be sure to add it! Comments with suggestions of things to add are also appreciated.

Witch's Wish Magic Hierarchy of the Five Elements

2011-02-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find this info anywhere on the net, and since it's kind of essential for winning the duels and progressing through the game I thought I'd transcribe it here. The system is surprisingly similar to the recent PC release Magicka. Pretty fun game.

The Five Elements:

Fire, Water, Earth, Thunder, and Wind.

The Hierarchy:

Fire beats Wind
Water beats Fire
Earth beats Water
Thunder beats Earth
Wind beats Thunder

Fire beats Wind beats Thunder beats Earth beats Water beats Fire

The Three Levels of Power:

There are three levels of power for each element: weak (lvl 1), medium (lvl 2) & strong (lvl 3). e.g. normally wind cannot win against fire, but strong wind can win against weak fire. So even if you use the wrong type of magic, if it's a higher level you can still win. (this is almost verbatim from the game).

Although the real trick to winning is mastering the stylus since as others have pointed out the margin for error is actually quite low. Have fun!

Overproductivity

2011-02-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: regardless of what I write, it's clear that civilization is on a set course, at best individuals have influence to the extent that their ideas inspire others to modify their behavior in ways that are inscrutable to statistics and analysts alike. In a sense, we are all passive observers to the majority of our own lives, not because we are incapable of effecting change, but because said change is unmeasurable. Even if it were, there would be no way to efficiently shape collective behavior on a scale significant enough to magnify the effective influence of any given individual. The closest we have ever come is Cable Television, a technology that is quickly becoming obsolete thanks to the internet.

So this post was inspired by an article I just read on Citiwire.net, an article I never would have read if not for this tweet by Storm Cunningham.

Such is the obscure pathway by which ideas trespass from one mind to another, with each fence hopped a new colloquy of potentially random information hitchhikes from field to field, like burs tangled in the thick, scraggly coat of the subconscious.

After reading the article twice I felt the need to comment, a more or less petulant emotional gesture. What would the world be like without cities? Is it even possible to imagine in the 21st century? The fact is, they're not going anywhere anytime soon. The more you question the human edifice the more you question human nature, human beings. In the end everything psychological is stripped away and all that's left is a piteous naked caricature like one of those obscene political cartoons that makes you chuckle shamefully at some great inconceivable tragedy, on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

I would just like to point out that it's a bit ridiculous to laud all the statistically obvious benefits of cities without taking into account the similarly obvious fact that it's because of cities that the lion's share of ecological problems have been made possible.

Taking cities out of the equation would change human history, probably reverting the world to a comparative paradise in contrast to the largely ravished and perhaps irreparably degraded place it has become thanks to "advances" that would not have been possible without the catalytic power of the city.

Suggesting that perhaps cities are only great in relation to a world where cities are a foregone conclusion, in which case they should probably be reexamined in relation to the greater context; evaluated fairly in terms of all the problems they've caused due to their "productive" power.

Since most technology originating in cities has never been fully evaluated in terms of ecological impact over centuries it's really impossible to say if cities themselves by extension are 'good' or 'bad'. Given that the ecosystem seems to be approaching cataclysm at relatively unparalleled speed, I would have to side with the urban detractors.

So that's a prologue of sorts. Equally ridiculous debasing cities when short of a global nuclear holocaust, at least their steel and concrete skeletons will project from the landscape for centuries to come. But why stop there? This exchange started me thinking, deeper. An idea i'd been developing for months, the sneaking suspicion that maybe we're moving too far too fast. You can debate cities 'til you die, it won't change anything. But maybe that's a hint. But that's just praxis, synthesis.

I started thinking, what's the real problem here? It's not cities, it's not human nature, no, it's not even what I started thinking later on, that we don't learn collectively from our collective mistakes. Nope. It's just that we're overproductive - simple as that. The key to learning is time, and when you progress so fast that time is compressed to the point of being routinely underappreciated; yes, that's when the shit hits the fan.

Every edifice of civilization is like part of the wall of a giant funnel: natural resources, expectations, lives, everything is being funneled towards the singularity (no not that singularity, the bad kind). It looks like progress, but in reality it's just an engine that allows us all to make bigger mistakes with greater frequency. There I said it: our entire way of modern living is a self-destructive lie. p.s. it's too late to change and there's nothing we can do about it, lol! Just like those classy political cartoons this realization should actually be funny.

Meanwhile we might as well enjoy our unparalleled property and access to information. It's true that never in recorded history has life been so good for so many (proportionally speaking). All we have is this time together, we won't see the distant future and there's no way to go back to the distant past. This is it. Really a pretty Zen way of looking at the big picture. If there was any advice that could be given, it would be: try to slow down a little, try to help others slow down too, because it's not a race against time, time is our ally, time is our partner in learning and experiencing life. Let's make smaller mistakes with less frequency.

As for productivity, who are we trying to please? We're the only ones on this planet who care about us. Maybe it's time we started doing a better job?

Universal Forum Project

2011-02-16T22:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you may already know I bought a Nintendo DS Lite recently; I immediately modded it with a flashcart and started using it for web browsing. Now this is pretty esoteric, but I will give a few of the relevant details:

First there are several browsers for DS including the one that comes with DSOrganize, OKIWI, Bunjalloo, DSHobro, and lastly the "official" Nintendo DS Browser (from 2006). Unfortunately in order to use the Opera browser you also need a "Memory Expansion Pak" which effectively ads 8 MB of RAM and fits in the DS GBA slot.

As you might imagine the web browsing experience on the DS is far from ideal, basically it is like getting into a time machine and traveling back to the year 2000, remember dial-up, remember Netscape? Yeah that's pretty much what it's like. The only real difference is that a modern website (even with images disabled) will fill up your 8 MB of RAM in about five minutes - that is if the page will even load.

This experience has provided me an entirely new and refreshing view of web design and information architecture. I've come to realize that Google is right - Fast is better than slow. Yeah, it's an idiotic catchphrase that seems so obvious that it's a foregone conclusion. Duh, of course fast is better than slow, and what kind of idiot would argue otherwise?

The problem is that most developers / designers do take fast for granted. Everything is so fast with modern computing that it's only a matter of time before we either get lazy / sloppy with optimization or succumb to the temptation of adding so many bells and whistles that we hit the legacy threshold without even realizing it.

What is the legacy threshold? Well it's basically the point at which a legacy device can no longer reliably process a web page or service. I'm sure you're familiar with the term Web 2.0 - it's a somewhat ambiguous term but essentially it means a richer and more interactive web; which is great right? Yes and no. It's great because the web must evolve to meet our growing expectations, but it's also bad because it means that several generations of internet enabled devices will suddenly find themselves excommunicated from a huge chunk of the web.

Now there are certain exceptions, for example a lot of modern sites are offering an alternative: the mobile web. This is a "lite" scaled down version of the site optimized for mobile devices. Often the mobile version of a site will kick in automatically when it detects that it is being accessed by a mobile device. This is great, but there are still limitations, evolving web technology inevitably means that compatibility will be broken with many legacy devices. Ultimately however this is a design choice! There is really no reason for a site to ostracize users, it is exceptionally easy to provide access to legacy devices that automatically forwards information to next-generation architecture.

A good example of this would be web-forms. With the old web a web form is basically a text box that you type into and then hit a "submit" button in order to send the text to the server. The new web features smarter, more interactive web forms that may send the text you type to the server in realtime or provide advanced inline formatting options, and drag-n-drop functionality. Unfortunately there is no way for older devices to utilize this kind of technology. Most will not even have the necessary code-base in order to interpret these functions, or if they do, they may not have enough memory to process them efficiently.

At this point the site will either stop working or notify the user that they are using an outdated browser. Obviously if you can't upgrade your browser the site is effectively off limits. While understandable, there is really no reason for this to be the case. In the ideal scenario the site presents the user with the option of using legacy technology. Although in reality this layer is actually more advanced than the Web 2.0 infrastructure since it is effectively emulating Web 1.0 and then reliably passing the information on to the Web 2.0 - in essence acting as a translator between the two paradigms.

So far very few sites take this approach, which is understandable since the attitude du jour is to phase out legacy devices and technology as quickly as possible in order to keep the product life-cycle as short as possible, thus maximizing profits. Hooray for planned obsolescence!

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post. My recent experience with web browsing via my DS has reminded me of the importance and value of respecting the legacy threshold. For quite some time I found myself fully embracing the Web 2.0 schema, but now I've been give the chance to reconsider that choice. I think I'm seeing Web 2.0 for what it really is: a huge expenditure of time and energy for marginal gains resulting in profound damages to the web as a whole. It doesn't have to be this way, but that's the way it's turning out, mainly thanks to the reasons listed above (developers taking fast for granted, being lazy / sloppy when it comes to keeping the code-base optimized).

So my response to this is as follows: I intend to build my web infrastructure while keeping what I've learned in mind. First generation can be best generation IMO. Things like classic web forms exhibit nearly perfect functionality, there was really never any reason to "upgrade" them. The main reason for this is ironically what the modern web lacks: resource limitations. Limited processing power, memory, and disk space forced first generation developers to optimize to the point of achieving elegance in their design. Now, with virtually all limits removed from developers there is no longer any motivation to refine code and functions to the point of an elegant implementation.

This doesn't just effect software however, hardware suffers from the same conditions of excess. I'd use Apple as one example of experience design that has become highly successful in part because of a conscious effort to buck this trend. Apple forces limits on their technology and refrains from excessive use of available functionality, this results in a design that probably feels more refined and elegant than it actually is. I'd attribute this attitude primarily to the autocratic nature of the company. Steve Jobs isn't valuable to Apple because he has great original ideas for new products, he's invaluable because he resists the temptation to dilute products with countless features that divert energy from the net effectiveness of the design. The result is a very focused and streamlined strategy that produces highly refined products.

Obviously there's a downside to this philosophy as well.. focus invariably means that a lot of functionality will be cut. Flash being excluded from the iPad is a perfect example. There is a point where such exclusions become arbitrary, that is where the struggle for elegance ends and developers just revert to their own biased personal preference; the success of which depends on the validity of their personal judgement. There is definitely an additional art here concerning the balancing act between the two. I would say that in general elegance is objective while judgement is clearly subjective.

You're probably wondering how this all relates to the first part of my post. Well my intent is to develop a posting mechanism using first generation web technology. There is no really any goal, rather it is just an attempt to take some of the best aspects of Web 1.0 and take them to their absolute potential. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Canvas, etc. I think these are all really going in the wrong direction. The infrastructure is becoming more and more complex (literally by the minute), while the ultimate functionality is actually moving backwards.

I'd draw another historical parallel: MTV, initially the network had one goal; play music videos. Over time the network evolved and eventually grew to encompass a plethora of features. Some succeeded, some failed, but the only thing really worth mentioning is that MTV basically stopped playing music videos. In effect the brand no longer had any meaning, MTV had just become another network, virtually indistinguishable from any other aside from the target demographic. In other words, MTV ceased to exist.

I believe the same process is occurring with most of the so-called "Social Networks" - in fact only Twitter seems to have a relative resistance or immunity to the current obsession with maximizing functionality. Why is Twitter so popular? Because of the 140 character limit, it's really not intuitive is it? Why should imposing a restriction on users actually add value to the platform? It's simple really, what people want is not really the same thing as what they need.

This is mainly the result of an almost universal subjective design process; developers guess what people want and then design things that they think people will need. This is backwards, first they should use objective research to determine what people need and then design something that people want to use to fulfill their needs! What people think they want is actually just a side-effect of meeting their needs.

I'll use Facebook as an example: the premise is that people want to profile themselves and then share those profiles with other people. Intuitively it's a solid assumption. In reality what people need is social relationships, this is the actual basis for Facebook's success - it allows people to easily connect and communicate with other people. Since its inception Facebook has "evolved" into a far more complex platform that attempts to fulfill many wants, although it remains viable only because it meets the fundamental social needs of its members. In effect Facebook tries to reverse socialize the web, not only profiling its members, but profiling other entities as well (via "like" buttons), integrating everything into the social web.

The reason Facebook stays on top is not because of the advanced technology that allows it to do all these things, but rather that it manages to make social networking relatively elegant. Once it loses sight of that goal it ceases to exist. Just in the same way that Twitter removing the 140 character limit would cease to be Twitter. To recap: sites remain popular because they fulfill wants via needs, not the other way around.

So I've taken all this theory and decided that I want to try and distill the architecture down even further. My thesis is basically this: what happens when you dispense entirely with the wants and focus exclusively on the needs? My experience with the DS Browser illustrates this perfectly: my need is to perform various functions on the web, this need is subverted due to architecture evolution. In effect the DS personifies my limitations, I have to work within these constraints in order to meet my needs. What I discover while experimenting is that my architecture must be optimized to the point of approaching the perfection event horizon. The result is infrastructure that meets my needs in the most efficient way possible.

My goals are relatively straightforward, previously I've termed the infrastructure / architecture the Universal Forum - this is a hybrid approach to socializing the web. The foundation is first generation, the functionality is capable of interfacing with Web 2.0, but only to the extent that it forwards information (one way basically). Returning information must be transliterated by a Web 2.0 mechanism, and output as Web 1.0. This allows the platform to remain as foundational as possible while preventing isolation.

So what are these "foundational" conditions native to the Universal Forum? They are all based on established social conventions, rather than subjective wants.

Integrity Above all the infratecture strives to maintain its foundational principles, by design it resists modification. Regardless of contextual evolution it refuses to add functionality merely for the sake of modernization. This is both a weakness and a strength, weak because some advancements could conceivably improve performance in the short-term, strong because speed is inherent and will consequently improve over time as contextual processing power increases. Eventually operational cost should reach zero.

Elegance Every aspect of the design from conception to implementation revolves around the optimal balance between efficiency and aesthetics, the fulcrum being the lowest common denominator of contextual limitations (naturally within reason). Energy wasted is the enemy of the Universal Forum. There's no need for friction, entropy is death, and that is all that it is, etc.

Inclusivity (the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on the grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) Although in this case the term more specifically refers to Technological Interoperability. Why not "Interoperability" then? Because that term is passive, the sentiment behind Inclusivity is a proactive intent to accept as many connections as possible.

Identity Users are able to choose a unique identity and use it to identify themselves reliably. While there is no perfect system for ensuring a unique identity on the internet and first generation web technology makes it even more difficult, but it is relatively easy to implement something like a Tripcode to organize information.

Memory The Universal Forum never forgets, but it may in time forgive.

Post will be amended if and when progress is made.

The actual concrete (read pragmatic) qualifications (so far):
1) You can post ASCII text.
2) You can associate your post with an ID.
3) Each post includes a timestamp.

A list of technologies utilized, including to what extent:
HTML - Used to display the forms.
PHP - Used to handle form input and write it to a static page.

Source Code:

The PHP for version 2.0 (don't bother with this, see the vastly superior version 3 farther down the page)

<?php
$forum = "forum.html";
$n = fopen($forum, 'a') or die("fail");
$s = date("<b>y.m.d - H:i:s</b>", time());
fwrite($n, $s);
$s = " - ";
fwrite($n, $s);
$s = $_POST["id"];
fwrite($n, $s);
$s = "<br>";
fwrite($n, $s);
$s = $_POST["x"];
fwrite($n, $s);
$s = "<br><br>";
fwrite($n, $s);
fclose($n);
header("Location: http://yotoen.com/uf/");
?>

Feb 21 Update: the code has been altered drastically, basically I merged the CSS, HTML, and PHP all into one page.. this has several advantages that I won't bother to list, anyhow below is the version 3.0 source:

<?php
echo "<!doctype html><html><head><meta http-equiv='content-type' content='text/html; charset=UTF-8'><title>Universal Forum</title><style>body{margin:1%;padding:1%;font-family:arial;} #button{padding:2%;vertical-align:top;}</style></head><body><span style='float:right;'>get the source code <a href='index.txt'>here</a></span><form action='index.php' method='post'><input type='text' name='x' /><br><textarea rows='6' cols='30' wrap='virtual' name='y'></textarea><input type='submit' value='post' id='button' /><input type='button' onClick='history.go(0)' value='refresh' id='button' /></form></body></html><hr>";
$file = "index.php";
$name = fopen($file, 'a') or die("fail");
if ($_POST["y"]=="")
echo "you must enter something to post<hr>";
else
{
echo "comment posted, please hit refresh<hr>";
$string = date("<b>y.m.d H:i:s", time());
fwrite($name, $string);
$string = " <font color='blue'>";
fwrite($name, $string);
$string = $_POST["x"];
fwrite($name, $string);
$string = "</font></b><br>";
fwrite($name, $string);
$string = $_POST["y"];
fwrite($name, $string);
$string = "<br><br>";
fwrite($name, $string);
fclose($name);
}
?>

The HTML for version 2.0 (since version 3 there is no longer any need for the HTML)

<!doctype html><html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"><title>Universal Forum</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css.css" /></head><body>

<form action="php.php" method="post">
<input type="text" name="id" /><br>
<textarea rows="6" cols="30" wrap="virtual" name="x"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="OK" /></form>

<iframe src="forum.html" width="100%" height="100%"></iframe></body></html>

Post will be amended if and when progress is made.

Dreamtime - Antfarm

2011-02-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

The dream started out.. I was in Hawaii, a seemingly younger version of myself, staying over at my Uncle's condominium, we were in the 'living room' with several other family members including my grandparents and a few of my female cousins. It was like some kind of family reunion, or at least a birthday party or holiday celebration.

I had taken over one of the couches, laying on it full-length, propped up by a couple of cushions, playing some game on my Nintendo DS. My Uncle comes over and makes me move so that he can sit down, he's holding in his hand some kind of custom tablet computer; it almost looks like a 1st generation prototype. The tablet is a lot bulkier and smaller than a conventional tablet, yet it's still too big to fit in your pocket.

He's playing some kind of game on the device, I have prior knowledge of this game somehow; it's something that he programmed himself, a personal project that he's been working on for many years. He pretends to be playing, but once again I know that in reality he's just showing it off, trying to get me interested or to ask questions about it. Ironically enough I am interested. I close and put my DS away so that I can watch him play.

The game is hard to describe but also familiar in many respects. Essentially it is third-person, the focal point is a little avatar that represents a single ant - it is at times photo-realistic and sometimes cartoony looking; sometimes the focus shifts though, to something larger near the ant, or the ant moves 'out of range' or is lost in its surroundings. Most importantly the ant is one of countless small organisms swarming around on the ground, it is sometimes very hard to tell who is who. One thing I remember distinctly is that there are many bright colors in the game, the game 'world' is filled with cheerful tropical scenes, it looks very much like the island we're on IRL.

My Uncle hands me the tablet and I start to try and play, he has already loaded a new character for me. My ant seems to be a newer model, it looks somewhat comical, colorful, and is able to fly. I have to configure the controls and basic settings, I select WASD mode. This means that I have to use a small on-screen keyboard to control the ant. Annoyingly the controls are backwards with the A, S and D keys performing functions besides movement. I explain this to my Uncle while remembering that the tablet has a built-in accelerometer (which I mispronounce several times before saying it right) that controls lateral (and apparently vertical) movement.

Holding down the W key and tilting the tablet allows me to control how the ant moves. Holding it normally means that my ant's wings come out and he starts to fly, I actually have to tilt the tablet away in order to keep him on the ground - although walking is not very much fun because the terrain is rough and he is all but lost visually in the menagerie of insects on the 'ground'. So I fly. Tilting the tablet right or left causes the ant to lean in those directions, effectively changing the flight path.

As I'm flying around the game world I realize that something about it is familiar. I tell my Uncle that it reminds me of some of the games by Shiny, then I cite Messiah (also thinking about Sacrifice and System Shock). He says 'yes' he partially based it on that game. I remark on how I love the fact that he went with such a bright and cheerful environment, noting that so many games take place in dark, depressing dungeons or decaying industrial zones.

For some reason IRL we decide to go on a walk around the island. I take the tablet with me, I'm basically 'playing' the game while walking. We make our way along the headlands down a white, sandy path to a long, yet comparatively thin beach. While descending the incline I tell my Uncle that if he can port this game to iPhone he could probably make a lot of money, or at least IMO. He doesn't seem to care.

We walk around for awhile, I'm not really paying very much attention since I'm absorbed in the game. My girlfriend is also with us and maybe a few other people. I do however start to notice something unusual about my Uncle, it seems like he's not entirely in this reality - or inversely it's like the game world somehow bleeds into ours. He flashes occasionally, ringed by an electric blue corona, as if he just received a powerup or leveled up or something.

Meanwhile I am having lots of trouble with the game. It's very frustrating because the focus is tenuous, you can't just fly along, if you get to close to certain things your ant has a tendency to get 'lost' in which case you lose control and he just disappears, stranding you with a nice view that you can no longer effect. Once this happens you have to restart. It's really almost like the game can read your mind and somehow knows what you're looking at (maybe it has eye tracking?).

We start to head back to the condo, up the same path, we reach the headlands and I'm pretty close to the edge; I'm getting fed up with the game maybe because I happen to notice something strange down below in the water. It's at least 40 meters to the surf, there appears to be some kind of very intense electromagnetic phenomena: basically there is the normal ocean butted up against the cliff, then on top of it there is a huge tube of churning (yet clear) water sticking out. It's kind of like a wave that never broke but instead just made a perfect loop and just kept spinning in place - only it is perpendicular to the shoreline rather than parallel.

I bring this bizarre event to everyone's attention. We are all standing at the edge of the cliff looking down when I realize what it is. "Of course" I shout, "it's an anomaly!" as in an anomaly that manifests in "The Zone" from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. Naturally no one else has any idea what I'm talking about. My Uncle seems unusually preoccupied, I'm worried that he's going to fall off the edge since he just keeps getting closer and closer. Then suddenly without warning or explanation he runs the last couple of steps and dives off!

I shout after him, "No, wait! It's dangerous!" Having some experience with anomalies, usually when you get too close you either get crushed to pulp or otherwise killed. I'm closer to the edge now, looking right over it, still clutching the tablet tightly in my hand. I can see everything. My uncle is swimming underwater, right into the center of the anomaly, I'm really worried now, it looks like he can't get to the surface, is he going to drown? I'm contemplating what actions to take when he starts to swim backward, away from the anomaly.

I'm really relieved when he manages to surface about 10 meters away from the epicenter, but then I notice something new. There is another man swimming out of the anomaly, he looks a bit older, shriveled but strong, with long silver hair matted down his back. He swims right up to my Uncle and they start fighting. For some reason I get this crazy idea in my head that this other man is somehow the 'spirit' of the anomaly, and since my Uncle didn't drown, this man is going to kill him.

Despite being so far away I can clearly see what's happening, the silver-haired guy is grabbing my Uncle from behind, my Uncle has his arms wrapped around the other guy's arms, trying to pull them away, but every time he touches the man something really weird starts to happen. Basically it's like the silver-haired guy is trying to steal my Uncle's identity; when my Uncle touches him, his features start to be pulled away, and then show up on the other guy, like he's stealing my Uncle's soul or something. Despite this, my Uncle seems to decide that he'd better do something, so he really starts to fight back and manages to push the guy away.

At this point I assume he's going to head for shore so I start running down the path, trying to get back to the beach. I can't see what's going on anymore, it's all hidden from view. Well that's not entirely true, I do see a flash of blue light, the halo from before, and I hear my Uncle's voice telling me not to worry, that he's taken care of the situation! That his ants have come into play. I realize his voice is coming from the tablet!

Finally I reach the beach and then round the corner trying to get to the shore facing the anomaly. Everything has changed, first thing I notice is that there are billions of ants, they have formed living bridges over the water, but way above and beyond that; they have taken tons of sand and moved it out onto the water, literally forming a kind of plaza replete with elaborate stonework and architecture. I realize immediately that these ants were somehow controlled by my Uncle and compelled to build these structures.

I start walking out onto one of the ant bridges (it's hard to tell where they end and the 'ground' beings), making my way to the plaza which now surrounds the anomaly. I can see my uncle and the strange silver-haired man standing near the center, facing off. Even though I'm in a rush I can't help but be amazed at my surroundings; the architecture is clearly South-American, there are even mayan codices embedded deep into the arches and columns, it almost looks like a fighting arena. My Uncle flashes again, and I realize that he was never in any danger, he was being protected by some kind of nanotechnology.

Furthermore I realize that the tablet I'm holding is just a GUI for the software version of whatever my Uncle has created. The ants in the game are just a simulation of his nano-ants in the real world, which he is able to control directly using some kind of implant. They had used silicon from the beach to build the plaza. Then I woke up! It was so interesting I just had to write it down. It sure would be cool to be able to control an army of nano-ants capable of constructing almost anything you could imagine.

2011 SOTU Thoughts

2011-01-26T01:15:00.000-08:00

Usually I find the State of the Union Address to be pretty boring, but I always LOVE the endless punditry and analysis that follows. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's much value there, just that I find it highly entertaining to watch a room full of newscasters dissect and debate the meaning and value of every word.

My thoughts, first and foremost the SOTU is just one hour, this should always be put in perspective: there are 8760 hours in every year (600 of which have already passed). This is relevant because we should always keep in the forefront of our minds the simple fact that one hour of oration is worthless without 8759 hours of meaningful action.

The intention of the address is two-fold, first it is meant to inform the population of the general state of affairs, a snapshot of the status quo if you will. Second, it is intended to outline the current administration's overall strategy for the nation. While these are the clearcut objectives of the address, there is a third subsidiary intention, which is to culturally unify the country; by making the administration's masterplan known to the general population, it gives every citizen the chance to 'be on the same page', and effectively forward the national agenda (or at the very least lessen their resistance).

So that is essentially the theory behind the SOTU as I see it. Does it actually work? My opinion is that it probably succeeds to the extent that most Americans who watch & listen are able to get the general drift of the monologue. They are also probably able to retain a general outline in their minds regarding the most salient and consequential talking-points. So it is relatively informative.

The secondary objective of uniting the country culturally is probably less effective, America is highly diverse ethnically, each segment has its own culture and sense of (inter)nationalism. Additionally Americans by definition are highly individualistic, not really a 'nation of followers', but of (aspiring) rebels and revolutionaries. These are both strengths, but ultimately work against bids for cultural unity.

I think the best metaphor for the SOTU is a company staff meeting. In order for it to have any value at all, certain preconditions must apply: 1) the employees must believe in the company's mission and respect the leadership. 2) they must feel that they are valued and will be listened to. 3) possess historical examples proving that their faith is well founded and that the administration is capable of 'getting things done'.

Given the current political climate, I'd say a serious challenge is faced at every turn and that is not even considering the actual state of affairs which differs as much from the political interpretation as 'The Moon is made of green cheese' differs from the cold, hard ball of dust that orbits the earth.

Working in reverse: 3) given the leakiness of the infosphere evidence is continually mounting that undermines our faith and seems to indicate that things are not 'getting done', or are being done in a way that contradicts our widely advertised cultural and national values. 2) it seems more like the powers that be are just pretending to listen and do not put much stock in the population that supports them. 1) perhaps worst of all, many loyalists have become deeply disillusioned due to grave errors in judgement made by their leaders, resulting in many questions that simply go unanswered.

So, what needs to be done in order to restore the faith? Well the way I see it there are two paths that can be taken. One follows the conventional wisdom, as stated above, we should attempt to keep the faith alive by returning integrity and accountability to politics, we should learn how to 'live within our means' once again, and we should educate, innovate and most importantly grow our way out of what is quickly becoming an over-evident decline. That is the official party line.

The alternate path is one that seems outwardly to be totally un-American. We should put our faith to rest once and for all, and replace it with facts. Open up the government, put the bureaucracy to "trial by transparency" (analogous to trial by fire). End the oligarchy by forcing integrity and accountability rather than merely "hoping" it will return with time. This is the new wisdom, it is the people's line. And with it comes great turmoil and the tumultuous uprising of the people and uprooting of the status quo. But when the dust settles, it's a better world and a better way of life.

Personally I take this even farther. I believe the sage words of men like Storm Cunningham who asks "who wants to sustain this mess?", who indeed? Those who profit from it. At what point do we have to ask ourselves: is my shot at the American dream really worth the price being paid by the entire planet? Metrics can be warped and misused, but they never lie. Every year the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the window of opportunity is being inched shut by the profiteers. They believe in competition, more so than any capitalist. Unfortunately it's the unhealthy kind with them at the top forever and everyone else under a bootheel.

In short I believe that the old way of doing things, the old reliable methods have outlived their usefulness. It's time for our nation to wake up, not only to the new economic reality, but to the timeless reality of finite natural resources. We can't grow our way out of every problem, and any administration that claims we can is being purely disingenuous. Frankly I expect my leaders to act more like adults, this means actually taking responsibility (rather than just saying they will), and acknowledging that some problems cannot be solved by politics alone.

Get out of the way

2011-01-21T16:11:00.000-08:00

The following is an outline of a general philosophy that can be most easily be summarized by the sentiment "get out of the way". The premise is fairly straightforward; while consciousness is the most profound and powerful tool at our disposal, it is also paradoxically the greatest obstacle to living in harmony with the countless complex preexisting systems that support life on earth. First and foremost this is a rational and logical assessment; power being proportional to responsibility, this contradictory aspect of the most powerful force in nature is a foregone conclusion. As long as there are at least two human beings in existence there will be two points of view, and two potentially conflicting philosophies.

This is the core of my outline, the purpose of which is to illustrate that unity is the direct result of 'getting out of the way' rather than the contemporary best practice which attempts to synthesize unity through the generational indoctrination of cultural ideals. While it may seem counterintuitive, I base this philosophy not on ideological dogma but rather on the most basic and foundational observation that time and energy are the most precious commodities in the known universe. These two commodities are in fact so profoundly precious that people are routinely unable to comprehend how truly precious they really are. Viewing the day-to-day routines of people living in the modern world from an objective standpoint, the sheer magnitude of time and energy wasted is so vast that it literally overshadows everything we do.

I would even go so far to say that the majority of our conscious actions have themselves become part of this great shadow over the world. And what exactly is this shadow made up of? It is in essence the collective idea that value is relative. It is this one concept that underpins everything that has come to define civilization since its inception. Agriculture is a product of relative value, industry is a product of relative value, markets are a product of relative value, money is a product of relative value, the economy is a product of relative value, war is a product of relative value, even politics are a product of relative value. The idea that one thing is worth more than another, unsubstantiated aside from personal preference.

Absolute value is something that can only be defined in a universe where everything is known, therefore all relative values are little more than imaginary numbers; this is the structure and the fabric of the shadow. Here we have two extremes: absolute value on one hand representing total information awareness (impossible), and relative value on the other representing willful ignorance (self destructive). Neither of these are viable, and yet as long as consciousness is involved these two titanic forces will be constantly struggling for dominance. It is as you would expect, not a problem that can be solved by conventional means.

The only answer that comes to mind is that consciousness is getting in the way, all the time and energy that is wasted, the direct result of attempting to solve an unsolvable problem. Value should not be defined, it can neither be known or unknown. It is a subjective, individual and emotional evaluation constantly subject to change. Therefore it can only be accepted and related to in the same way; not numerically nor through a series of increasingly abstract conversions, but rather directly on an emotional, and instinctual level. The key being that it is not quantified or qualified consciously in relation to other values. Ultimately this is the most sincere way to live, the most elegant and optimized form of what we call consciousness. The least time is wasted, the least energy.

So if things don't work out and the current path the world is on comes to a dead end, keep this in mind, there is always time to get out of the way.

Read Books on your Nintendo DS Lite

2011-01-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

Long story short: I got both my girlfriend and I a Nintendo DS Lite for Christmas, partially with the intent of using mine as an e-reader and MID. It's a bit of a bother to set up since it doesn't natively support this functionality, but once done it's quite handy and fun.

Naturally the first thing you need is a NDS, I chose the "DS Lite" as opposed to the "DSi" or the "DSi XL" variant, and I also decided against waiting for the February release of the greatly anticipated "3DS" all based on the size and projected battery life. You see, after having bought a netbook a couple of years ago I've learned the paramount importance and utility of size and battery life in regard to portable devices. Essentially if you have a portable or mobile device with a short battery life it quickly becomes apparent that it is not really "portable" or "mobile" at all, likewise if it's too big to fit in a backpack or your back pocket you might as well just leave it at home.

The numbers speak for themselves:

DS Lite
Battery Life: 15-19 hours on the lowest brightness setting, and 5-8 hours on the highest.
Dimensions: 133 mm X, 73.9 mm Y, 21.5 mm Z.
Weight: 218 grams.

DSi
Battery Life: 9-14 hours on the lowest brightness setting, and 4-6 hours on the highest.
Dimensions: 137 mm X, 74.9 mm Y, 18.9 mm Z.
Weight: 214 grams.

DSi XL
Battery Life: 13-17 hours on the lowest brightness setting.
Dimensions: 161 mm X, 91.4 mm Y, 21.2 mm Z.
Weight: 314 grams.

3DS
Battery Life: A pathetic 3-5 hours.
Dimensions: 134 mm X, 74 mm Y, 21 mm Z.
Weight: 230 grams.

Once you have a NDS, the next thing you need is what's called a "flashcart" - this is essentially a device that mimics a standard slot 1 game cartridge and allows you to run 3rd party applications on your DS. Since there are dozens of different flashcarts available for the DS it can be hard to determine which one is best suited for your needs. I recommend the Acekard 2i which has a great set of features at a reasonable price.

The next thing you may or may not need (depending on what kind of flashcart you get) is a microSD card. This is basically just generic flash memory that the flashcart uses to store information. Depending on your needs you may need a lot of memory. Since I'm just using my DS for light reading I opted for a 1 GB card. Just for a frame of reference that card can hold about 4000 books + the flashcart firmware (operating system) and a few programs! That being said it doesn't make much sense to buy a low capacity card since the price-point is so logarithmic, might as well get a 4 GB card for a few extra bucks. Once you start to pay over $20 the law of diminishing returns sets in.. not that you'd ever need 32 GB of flash memory for reading e-books on a DS.

Now that you have pretty much everything you need in terms of hardware it's time to get up and running. Assuming you've gone with a standard flashcart you'll probably need to download and install some firmware from the manufacturer's website. Most likely this will be a simple operation of copying some files onto the microSD card. Once that's done you'll want to download an e-reader application which will also be copied onto the SD card.

There are a few e-reader apps, I haven't tried them all, but I did try the two most popular programs:

DSReader
Info: http://www.ds-xtra.com/DSReader
Features: font selection, font legibility and sizing options, bookmarks, slick interface, reverse type. Supports several e-book formats including plain-text files.
Flaws: does not support portrait (facing pages) reading orientation, really stupid!

dslibris
Info: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndslibris/
Features: portrait orientation for reading, font selection (always crashes it for me) and sizing, bookmarks, brightness adjustment, reverse type.
Flaws: Only supports a handful of e-book formats, notably .xht and .epub, does not support plain-text! Is pretty unstable, freezes on occasion.

I recommend the latter mainly because it lets you orient the display like a traditional book which makes reading easier and takes full advantage of the DS's dual screens.

That's about it, you're all set up for reading, all you need are some e-books! If you're like me you probably don't fancy the idea of paying for them, so head on over to Project Gutenberg - it's mildly annoying to navigate the site, but at the same time the process of sifting through their extensive catalog looking for literary gems is pretty fun. Don't forget, if you're using dslibris download all your books in epub format.

It's lame, but dslibris requires you to put all your books in the "BOOK" folder, copy them over and you're basically ready to read.

John Brown Letters

2011-01-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

These letters were passed down through the family, they concern the late radical (and infamous) abolitionist John Brown. Personally I believe in strictly non-violent means of effecting societal change, although we live in an imperfect world and sometimes imperfect solutions become necessary in order to prevent the "greater evil". Certainly America has been no stranger in regards to sacrificing lives to this end.

If not for John Brown it's quite plausible that the Civil Rights movement might have been set back by fifty years or more. Was the movement's acceleration worth the lives that were taken? Herein lies the controversy. Incidentally I think it's worth pointing out that there is more slavery in the world today than at any time in recorded history. If John Brown were alive today, I wonder what he'd have to say about that?

January 12 Edit: Several small corrections were made as to dates and names - all information should now be as correct as possible; and lastly the final letter page was added to the post.

L-01 Direct Download (1.03 MB 1525 x 2000 jpg)
February 11th 1897 - J. B. Parsons to Annie Brown Adams

L-02 Direct Download (1.09 MB 1289 x 2000 jpg)
April 28th Wm H. Duers to Annie Brown Adams

L-03 Direct Download (1.17 MB 1484 x 2000 jpg)
December 6th 1894 - F. G. Logan to Mrs. Annie Brown Adams

L-04 Direct Download (1.04 MB 1590 x 2000 jpg)
March 25th 1897 - W. B. DeGarmo, M.D., to Mrs. Anna Brown Adams

L-05 Direct Download (1.07 MB 1557 x 2000 jpg)
May 15th 1916 - F. B. Sanborn to T. H. Tyndale regarding Sarah Brown

L-06 Direct Download (1.08 MB 1556 x 2000 jpg)
April 24th 1916 - F. B. Sanborn to Sarah Brown

L-07 Direct Download (1.04 MB 1544 x 2000 jpg)
May 5th 1916 - F. B. Sanborn to Annie Brown

L-08 Direct Download (1.13 MB 1480 x 2000 jpg)
January 4th 1896 - Ida B. Wells-Barnett to Anna Brown Adams

L-09 Direct Download (1.19 MB 1544 x 2000 jpg)
July 20th 1897 - Mrs. S. F. Overton to Annie Brown Adams

L-10-A Direct Download (1.12 MB 2000 x 1563 jpg)
January 22nd 1897 - Mrs. T. H. Lyles to Anna Brown Adams

L-10-B Direct Download (1.05 MB 2000 x 1566 jpg)
January 22nd 1897 - Mrs. T. H. Lyles to Anna Brown Adams

L-11-1A Direct Download (570 KB 965 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

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February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-2A Direct Download (557 KB 954 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-2B Direct Download (588 KB 956 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-3A Direct Download (582 KB 959 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-3B Direct Download (569 KB 963 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-4A Direct Download (572 KB 951 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-4B Direct Download (580 KB 956 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-5A Direct Download (586 KB 959 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-5B Direct Download (563 KB 960 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-6A Direct Download (577 KB 957 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-6B Direct Download (597 KB 958 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-7A Direct Download (572 KB 974 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-11-7B Direct Download (557 KB 968 x 1500 jpg)
February 8th 1900 - B. F. Bingham to Annie Brown Adams

L-12 Direct Download (1.15 MB 1539 x 2000 jpg)
January 19th 1897 - Thomas Featherstonhaugh to Annie Brown Adams

L-13-A Direct Download (0.99 MB 1263 x 2000 jpg)
May 10th 1897 - Sister Ruth to Annie

L-13-B Direct Download (1.00 MB 1264 x 2000 jpg)
May 10th 1897 - Sister Ruth to Annie

L-14-A Direct Download (932 KB 1256 x 2000 jpg)
January 22nd 1897 - Henry Adams to Annie Brown Adams

L-14-B Direct Download (936 KB 1262 x 2000 jpg)
January 22nd 1897 - Henry Adams to Annie Brown Adams

Politics vs. People, "Public" vs. "Private"

2010-12-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

It's generally assumed that individuals have a 'right to privacy', while there is no explicit law regarding this condition, it still constitutes one of the foundational ideals of an almost universally accepted bid for civil society in the modern world. This is further evidenced in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12, which states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy...".

Those who argue that Democratic Government should somehow be afforded the same inalienable rights simply do not understand democracy. Which is understandable considering that the same people who support and empower a Representative Democracy are frequently under the mistaken impression that government and by extension governing is something that transpires in a remote and autonomous manner.

This is one example that illustrates the myriad profound psychological disconnects between private individuals and the various public entities who act on their behalf. It's much easier to understand the relationships with a simple linear hierarchy (Human Rights flow from left to right):

The People (private individuals) > Elected Representatives (public employees) > Corporations

The above exemplifies the actual structure of an idealized "Representative Democracy". In reality however, the wealth generated by unbridled ingenuity, made possible by a supportive structure, immediately begins to undermine government at every conceivable level, consequently most democratic systems rapidly devolve into the following:

Corporations > Government > People

Suddenly banks and corporations have inalienable rights that exceed those of people themselves, likewise government shifts from representing the people to repressing them, all in the name of forwarding "interests" i.e. corporate interests; and lastly at the very bottom of the pyramid, private citizens are afforded rights only to the extent that they are complicit.

All this is just to point out that individuals are intended to have rights, not institutions. This goes double for democratic governments (representative or otherwise), wherein the people are not only entitled to interfere in affairs of state — they are obligated to do so! Why? Because they are the government!

Put another way: how can a government function when its most integral officers are unaware of its objectives and methods for achieving them? Even corporations understand this simple logic; how can a CEO run a company when their managers operate in secrecy? Or vice versa, how can managers administrate when the CEO refuses to share crucial strategy? No company can be run this way, no democracy can be run this way! It's fucking obvious!

Still not convinced? Make no mistake, every aspect of government is crucial; if not for being invaluable, for the exact opposite: every aspect of government that is wasteful or misguided does direct harm to itself and to the people it purports to enrich. No system of rule that is not inherently autocratic can afford to ignore this kind of runaway political erosion, because once it goes systemic, you're as good as dead.

And yes, after all that, I was actually trying to address something quite mundane by comparison:

Julian Assange is a private individual, he has human rights. Assuming reciprocity that includes a right to privacy. Public officials on the other hand are employees, our employees. In regards to the business they conduct in our name, business that reflects directly back on us as a people, it is our right to be informed about it. Yes, public officials have personal lives, i.e. private lives to which we are not privy. By definition public servants also have public lives. It's no secret!

Jolicloud 1.1 - Fix Keyring unlock at boot issue

2010-12-19T16:37:00.000-08:00

Ahh linux..

You know the problem, jolicloud boots, but instead of being dropped right at the dashboard like you're supposed to be, an annoying little box pops up asking you to unlock some stupid keyring nonsense. Seriously WTF, amirite?

The fix is easy. From the dashboard click on the "Local Settings" folder.

From within that window click on the "Users" icon. Don't change anything.

Next click on the "Advanced Settings" button, type in your password when prompted.

The window that comes up will have three tabs, click on the middle one "User Privileges".

Check every single box. If you'd rather be more specific, take note when the keyring prompt originally comes up, which 'service' is being referenced, i.e. networking. That will clue you in to which box needs to be checked. The most likely culprit is "Connect to wireless and ethernet networks".

Once you've checked the appropriate boxes, click the "OK" button, lastly the "Close" button on the user settings window, and you're done. No more annoying keyring bullshit, yay!

Jolicloud 1.1 - Disable Tap to Click

2010-12-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

Don't worry, this process is very easy!

Since the advent of 1.1, two new folders have been added to the 'Dashboard', specifically "Local Apps" and "Local Settings", the later is the only one relevant to this post.

Click on it and a window with several 'control panel' type icons will pop up.

Click on the "Mouse" icon (obviously), it will bring up a tight little GUI with 3 tabs.

Click on the "Touchpad" tab if it's not already at the forefront.

Under the "General" heading, uncheck the second check box ("Enable mouse clicks with touchpad").

Lastly, hit the "Close" button, and you're done!

~~First step is to install "gpointing-device-settings"~~

~~To do this open the terminal (Alt+F1).~~

~~Next type: sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings~~

~~It will walk you through the installation process, say yes (Y) to any prompts. Once it has been successfully installed.~~

~~Type: gpointing-device-settings~~

~~If everything went according to plan the program GUI should pop up.~~

~~Ignore the tabs. There is only one 'pull down' menu, by default it's set to "Touchpad on", click on this menu and then select "Touchpad tapping and scrolling off".~~

~~Lastly hit the "OK" button at the bottom and reboot.~~

Disable Google Buzz without deleting your Google Profile

2010-11-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

Problem

Every time you view your archived mail in gmail it's cluttered up with dozens of false positives generated by Google Buzz. For example, every time you tweet via twitter it may be repeated by Buzz and added to your gmail archive, appearing as an email conversation.

Under normal circumstances you might choose to disable Google Buzz because of this annoying and hard to disable "feature". In which case you would go to "Settings" in gmail, click on the "Buzz" tab, and then at the bottom click on the "Disable Google Buzz" link.

The problem with this solution is that it will also delete your Google Profile! Why did Google do this? It seems fairly obvious, they linked Buzz and Google Profile to prevent people from opting out of Google Buzz. Since there is no way to Disable Google Buzz without deleting your Google Profile, and yet there is no rational reason for the two actions to be linked.

Solution

So if you already have a Google Profile and want to keep it, disabling Buzz is out of the question. The next best thing is to redirect those bogus Buzz entries with a filter and send them straight to the trash where they belong. First step is to "Create a filter", it's right at the top of the gmail home page, to the far right of the search box.

Once you've clicked on the link, click inside the "Subject:" field and type "Buzz" if you want to add an additional layer of certainty type "Buzz:" instead (without the quotes obviously). Then click the next button. On the next screen check the "Delete it" checkbox. Next check the "Also apply filter to X conversations below." checkbox. Lastly hit the "Create Filter" button and you're done. All those pesky Buzz messages will go straight to the trash cleaning up your archive; and all future Buzz repeats will be deleted as well.

Effectively what this filter does is remove Buzz entirely from your conversation timeline.

Keep in mind that any message with the word "Buzz" in the subject line will be filtered to the trash. The addition of the colon will significantly reduce the possibility of false positives.

Filemaker: Automatically Replace Double Spaces With Single Spaces

2010-09-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Problem:

Idiots enter data into your database, for whatever reason they hit the space bar twice when once would suffice. Instead of attempting to retrain them in proper syntax, just install an automatic function that auto-corrects this simple mistake after they've input their data.

Solution:

Use an Auto-Enter Calculated Value to take two spaces and reduce them to one space.

Note: I'm using FileMaker 10, this tutorial may not apply to other versions.

A very useful list: FileMaker Functions reference (alphabetical list)

1. File > Manage > Database
2. Select Field
3. Options (button)
4. Calculated Value (check box)
5. Enter in the following function string:

Substitute(Name;" ";" ")

Note "Name" is the name of the field that you are applying the function to.

6. OK (button)
7. Uncheck the "Do not replace existing value for field (if any)" (check box)
8. OK (button)
9. OK (button)

10. That's it you're done!

A couple of things to note: this does not work retroactively, it only works on new data. Second, it only replaces two spaces, so if an odd number of spaces are entered, e.g. 3 or 5 a stray space will be left behind.

Public Education in the United States

2010-09-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Watching "Colin and Alma Powell on ending 'drop-out crisis'" on MSNBC. It's no secret that our public education system has many profound problems and is currently in decline. It's also common knowledge that education is probably the lowest foundational level of any functional modern society; in other words if the education system fails it's not long before the society begins to falter.

Everyone has ideas on how to fix the education system. I've heard it said several times now that America faces a moral crisis, and I think this is probably true. Before public education there is something even more primal and foundational that is required for an individual to succeed in life; and that is the family. Ironically the family itself is something that requires a degree of education before it can function in the modern world.

Historically in the preindustrial world education was far more rudimentary and straightforward, subsistence living virtually guaranteed that you were given a reliable education due to the fact that without one you quickly became an unsustainable drag on the family. This fact of life provided a compelling incentive for the other family members to educate their offspring. Likewise education was fairly simple and could be easily imparted.

Switching back to the modern world, the model is completely different. What we have is a society that cannot function without a certain percentage of individuals who have obtained a high-level education. Furthermore it is not merely a matter of educating each successive generation, rather the previous generation itself must posses an education of equal or greater sophistication; otherwise it is not qualified to educate.

In other words it is possible to lose information and intelligence gained via high-level education if generations are forming faster than knowledge can be imparted. This is a difficult concept to grasp, but it is absolutely crucial in order to understand the depth of the current crisis. Ultimately it amounts to time, it is simply not possible in the modern world to learn enough to maintain the chain in less than a conventional generation.

An example may clarify: say I have a PhD, I then fall in love and have a child, my child then has a child while still in high school. At this point, even if my child manages to obtain a higher education similar to mine, the probability that their child will reach the same level has been greatly reduced. It's not impossible, I'm not saying that, only that it has become significantly harder.

This is also crucial to understanding the current crisis, that when certain aspects of the structure become increasingly more challenging, it effects everything that is supported by that structure, not just the one aspect. Once again we are forced to confront time itself, each additional difficulty is inherited by each successive generation, so not only is the initial impact crippling, it is also cumulative over time.

In the modern world what we have is a towering spectacle of higher education, each individual has climbed upon the back of the previous generation, if the tower is to get any higher the current masterclass must maintain their level, and they must ensure that the successive generation at least starts out with equal or greater opportunity. If those goals are not met the entire structure begins to erode from within.

That is the current state of affairs. My opinion is that what our society achieved was a population of academics who had become so highly educated, so specialized that they were no longer in touch with the fundamental core of a sustainable social order. Essentially they had lost the ability to maintain a family. Once the family structure begins to erode, obtaining a higher education becomes significantly more challenging.

There is also the potential side-effect of this moral shift resulting in dramatic damages to the ecosystem, which in turn tends to degrade genetic integrity. Just one more factor that increases the difficulty faced by each consecutive generation. In one respect it may be possible to look at the decline of our education system as a natural check attempting to restore balance to a system that has lost sight of reality.

Theoretically if a society becomes so over-educated that it is incapable of contemplating the inherent moral dilemmas of human nature, then perhaps it is time to revert to a more rational form of society; one where the family unit once again becomes the foundation of our education system. A feat that would currently be impossible given the multitude of obstacles faced by modern man.

Dress to Dehumanize

2010-09-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

So I was watching this old movie, a post-apocalyptic affair, and it comes to one of those most traditional scenes for the genre; I'm sure you know the one, the protagonist stumbles across a small group of elites who have walled themselves away from the world in remiss. These aristocrats live the good life in a bunker / vault, biding their time while the rest of the known universe continues to struggle by in abject destitution.

Well anyway, in this particular scene the 'hero' is allowed to mingle with the elites, provided he cleans up first. Moments later he's sporting a sport jacket and looks positively transformed, given that his previous appearance was that of a scraggly dumpster maven. This in-and-of itself would not be all that remarkable, no, what is truly notable is that while the protagonist has been ostensibly dressed to kill, his personality has not changed one whit.

In other words the fancy dress seems like nothing more than a decoration that adorns his inherent dignity as a human being. If anything, it feels more like the man has been cheapened by the suit, because in reality his persona seems to be far more noble and absolute than all the pretentious and delusional aristocrats that surround him. As they dine, and dine well, he graciously serves them all champagne from their own stock.

Watching this scene unfold triggered many thoughts, it made me think about modern culture, how things have changed over the last thirty years. As the decades have trundled by, the suit has become something of a status symbol, and a man (or woman) is no longer a man (or woman), he or she is no longer capable of a simple transformation, of taking the suit on or off; the two have become somewhat inseparable.

Rather he (or she) has become the suit, and the human dignity is something that he or she takes on and off. I find this remarkable. You could blame rabid consumerism or the sociopolitical domination of corporate culture, but in the end what you have is yet another symbol that has become so entrenched in human psychology that it has taken over, entered the metaphysical vernacular and become "something more".

Likewise our ever-opportunistic species has taken the liberty of weaponizing the wardrobe. Dress-up culture has become a kind of politicized vanguard utilized ruthlessly as a divisive mechanism that sorts the wheat from the chaff in various social situations. The dignity of mankind is no longer enough, you are required to upgrade your membership, subscribe to the mankind+ package, otherwise face ostracization.

I think this is a shame, and that we are all jeopardized and cheapened by it.

The World Without Us [book]

2010-09-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

Currently reading this book, as part of my self-study series on ecoanthropology.

Page 61 reading about "over-kill", "over-ill" and "over-chill". Paul S. Martin (RIP, seems he just died last week) speculates in his controversial theory that humans eradicated all of north America's megafauna. Other counterclaims have followed including disease and climate change. Each highly-specialized faction assumes that there was one underlying cause behind the mass die-off / disappearance, and that it relates directly to their field of expertise.

This is all too typical of modern academic culture where each politically-minded group becomes convinced that it has the only right answer. In reality it is far more likely that the mass extinction was caused by a combination e.g. convergence of all three malefactors operating in concert for maximum impact.

Observing countless parallels in nature, the rapid decline of any highly-advanced organization is never the result of a single factor, but rather of several factors all of which play complimentary and / or catalytic roles; not only acting independently to undermine the target, but acting collaboratively together as well. In some cases this can increase their individual destructive power by several magnitudes.

This example highlights one of the most profound weaknesses of modern science. There are too many branches of science that are over-specialized, while this drastically improves focus in each specific field, it also creates a multitude of blind spots that represent unknown interactions between specializations. Reality is not broken into convenient branches that can each be understood independently, rather it is a single contiguous mass; shifting seamlessly from physics to biology and all areas inbetween.

Page 69 the author speculates as to the striking differences between Africa and north America regarding megafauna populations, asserting that co-evolution allowed the megafauna to adapt and therefore elude the human element. I believe wrongly, rather it is the scale of the African continent (approximately 3X the size of north America) more than any other factor that allowed the megafauna to endure.

October 29 Edit:

Just finished this book. Overall very thought provoking, although I think the level of speculation regarding the various potential scenarios was a bit taxing at times. Obviously this is just the kind of populist fluff that publishers love to tout as "edutainment", and therefore becomes an essential component of the mass-marketability; for those who are academically minded it is more distracting than insightful.

I found the last couple of chapters particularly irritating as they focused almost exclusively on the legacy of mankind in the space-age. Tempered by the typical 'misty eyed' romanticism that one comes to expect from our numerous and IMO misguided attempts to stroke our collective ego via ostentatious technological feats like firing Mozart into space.

Canon EOS Rebel T2i EF-S 18-55mm IS Kit [notes]

2010-09-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

I own this camera kit. This post contains my notes regarding it.

When shooting "full" HD video (1080p30) the camera imposes two limits: 4GB file size, 00:29:59 duration, whichever comes first (obviously the 4GB comes first since ~00:12:00 of full HD video is ~4GB). After reading several form threads on this issue I've learned that there are at least two possible reasons for these seemingly arbitrary limitations.

1. x86 architecture (e.g. the camera's processor) fundamentally limits maximum file size to 4GB. The alternative explanation is that the FAT32 file system also has a max files size of 4GB.

09/18 Edit: I have confirmed that the DiG!C 4 image processor is 32-bit i.e. x86 rather than x64 and therefore cannot process files larger than 4GB.

2. The EU (European Union) imposes some kind of absurd tax on device manufacturers who produce cameras that can be classified as "Video Cameras". For a camera to fall into this category it must be capable of recording 00:30:00 of video; hence the 00:29:59 limit.

My first attempt to surpass the 4GB limit was to reformat my SDHC card from its native FAT32 to the newer exFAT file system. Theoretically exFAT supports storage capacity up to 64 Zebibytes and has a file size limit of 16 exbibytes. 16 exbibytes = ~16 billion gigabytes. Since my memory card is only 32GB that limit will obviously never be reached.

Despite the fact that the card was now formatted with a file system that supports single files exceeding 4GB, the camera still stubbornly refuses to exceed the 4GB limit.

--

32GB SDHC holds ~4066 (4065 + 1) JPEG images (8-bit depth) at the highest supported resolution (5,184 x 3,456) and quality. 1127 images if RAW (14-bit depth).

--

When shooting in RAW mode, the image files produced are .CR2 (Canon Raw 2). While supported natively in Photoshop CS5, you will need to update "Photoshop Camera Raw" to very 5.7 or later in order to open and edit these files in CS4 and earlier versions of Photoshop. The easiest way to do this is to open Photoshop and then from the help menu select "Updates". Camera Raw can be updated independently of all other Adobe applications that may be part of the creative suite.

Shopify Bug: Featured Image Won't Update

2010-08-17T16:46:00.000-07:00

09/13 Edit: This issue has now been resolved - "We have recently updated our system with the way we handle product images, so you should no longer run into the problem where old images are used in some cases" I have verified that old images are now being updated correctly.

This post outlines a troubling bug in the Shopify eCommerce platform. For many people with small scale shops this will not seem like a huge issue, but for anyone with an inventory of several thousand items it becomes marginally catastrophic.

To give a brief summary of the problem and why it effects sales: the "Featured Image" is the first and primary image that customers see associated with an item. In product listings (e.g. collections) the only image immediately visible is the featured image. So, if your featured image happens to be blank (or in my case a placeholder) it initially appears that the item doesn't have an image. Naturally this looks bad and dramatically lowers the visibility of products.

~~For those who don't know, when using the "Import products by CSV" function of your shop admin, the CSV file~~ ~~requires~~ a field titled "Image Src" - this field contains a URL that points to the product image. If you don't have an image Shopify will not accept the item, this forces you to use a generic placeholder image when importing items via the CSV method.

08/18 Edit: Although I have not verified this, Shopify informs me that "Shopify has no problems accepting blank image src fields. When we come across an image src field which is blank we interpret this to mean the product has no image, so we do not display one." However, when I first started using the platform at the beginning of 2010 this was not case. All items that had a blank image src field failed to import and I was notified in the import confirmation email that "this field cannot be left blank". This was the reason that I had to create placeholder images, at the time it was the only way I could populate the shop since many of the items did not yet have images. Apparently things have changed.

09/07 Edit: I have now verified that blank image fields are no longer rejected. However I would like to point out that for the sake of automation and efficiency it makes sense to have a static URL associated with each item, pointing to an image that can be updated on demand; rather than adding an image URL at a later date.

Fig. 1

Figure 1 shows the initial state of the test case item. As you can see the original image listed in the CSV file is the generic placeholder. At the time this item was created there was no image on file, so it had to be published without an image, more specifically it was published with the placeholder as the featured image.

Fig. 2

Figure 2 shows the actual state of the item as it exists in the local "master" database. As you can see a set of five images was recently added. The small display window on the right renders the contents of the URL listed in the "Image" field; therefore it is always possible to know if an item actually has an image.

Fig. 3

Figure 3 shows the actual contents of the CSV file after it has been exported from the master database. As you can see all five image URLs are correctly listed with the item. As shown in figure 2 we know that the featured image URL correctly points to the actual image of the item - not the placeholder, which has been overwritten by the new image.

Fig. 4

Figure 4 shows the first step of the Product Import process. Note how the CSV file pictured in Figure 3 has been selected. Also note that the "Overwrite existing products" option has been selected from the drop-down menu. In theory this means that all the information associated with the Handle sec1297 will be overwritten - including the images.

Fig. 5

Figure 5 shows the second part of the import process, the CSV file has been parsed, all the information is displaying properly. Note how the summary at the top clearly indicates that "5 Images" will be imported.

Fig. 6

Figure 6 shows the confirmation email sent to me by Shopify shortly after the item was imported. According to the summary everything went without a hitch!

Fig. 7

Figure 7 shows the state of the item after the update. The results speak for themselves. Everything has been updated except for the featured image! Even the other 4 new images have been appended to the item. The description has also been updated.

When customers are browsing items on the site all they see is the generic placeholder image which tells them nothing about the item, this greatly reduces the probability that they will 'clickthrough'. Given the outlined evidence above there is no denying that the Shopify product import system is malfunctioning. The featured image should be overwritten, but it is not.

I've filed a support ticket detailing this issue; it is now over two months old without any sign of resolution aside from this glib notice: "Mike R resolved this discussion on July 05, 2010 @ 01:28 PM.". I reopened it today after discovering that the problem is still in effect. Hopefully I will actually get a response this time!

Google & Verizon are full of shit!

2010-08-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

Google and Verizon weigh in on network neutrality:

"'We both recognise that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly,' the companies said."

→ Bullshit! ←

A network is a network, and the "mobile marketplace" is totally irrelevant in regards to this fact. There is only one difference between a "traditional wireline" and wireless: one uses cables the other uses radio waves.

Both require a monumental investment to establish, maintain and upgrade. If anything, wireless networks are substantially cheaper to deploy and operate because they require minimal physical overhead: just a smattering of radio towers in comparison to millions of miles of copper and fiber cable laid underground and underwater.

Google and Verizon should be ashamed of themselves for spouting such transparent corporate doublespeak.

Save the Internet!

You're Doing It Wrong: Spam Blocking

2010-08-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

So, part of my current job involves email marketing, now personally I am against all forms of email marketing, although I am not against people having their own opinions regarding the value and morality of mass mailing. Our mailing list includes over 50,000 email addresses, every single one of those addresses has been submitted voluntarily by people who actually wanted our "email newsletter".

Furthermore if someone wants to "unsubscribe" it's easy and we remove them immediately from our list; and unlike a lot of companies that rely on automation to manage subscriptions (frequently faulty), our unsubscribe request address is actually monitored by a real human being.

You would be amazed at how often people reply to mass mailings, sometimes they ask questions or make comments, other times they request to be removed in a formal style that automation simply can't handle, address change requests are also common.

For those new to email marketing you may have discovered exactly what kind of game is being played these days in the "industry". Basically there are two types of mass mailing: the expensive reliable kind, and the free unreliable kind. This dichotomy has never been more pronounced, little by little the second option is becoming a non-option; namely because more and more mainstream ISPs are responding to the snowballing avalanche of spam by categorically rejecting all emails that are not explicitly 'registered' or 'certified' in some way.

I'm writing this post right now to state for the record that this the wrong way to deal with this problem. My argument is simple: first, filtering emails does a great deal of economic damage, there is no way small businesses can afford to send out a significant number of emails; forcing them to use registered SMTP servers is nothing short of blackmail. Second, filtering emails does absolutely nothing to address spam, all it does is punish people who can't afford to use mass mailing services.

Let me use my own company as a case study. We send out one mailing per week, assuming that we used a mass mailing service (the standard rate is 1 cent per email), that would cost us $500 per mailing. That's $2000 per month! Realistically can a small business spend 2K/mo sending emails? Possibly, but in reality that's a 2K service fee being charged for something that costs nothing.

One computer sends out 50,000 emails in less than 12 hours, it doesn't cost $500, it costs about 10 cents. That's reality. These mass mailing services are nothing more than an open scam, endorsed by a self-regulated industry that has decided that blocking all "unofficial" emails is a better solution than punishing spammers. But spammers haven't stopped spamming at all, the only difference now is that the email system (once as free and open as the internet itself) has effectively become a global intranet.

Why should this concern you? Because what happens when this mentality spreads (hint: it already has), how long before the internet itself becomes an exclusive 'gated community' only open to those who can buy in? Does that sound crazy? If you answered "yes" then why do you feel differently about email? Because email is different? Because filtering reduces spam? How would you feel if your ISP decided to categorically block all porn sites, only allowing you access to the ones that payed a fee to be listed? Sound familiar? If not, please Google "net neutrality".

While all this is as ominous as it is aggravating, the truth is that there is a far more important reason to oppose this kind of arbitrary censorship: the real crime being committed (some might say omitted) here is that while spam / UCE is an almost universally recognized evil, the people who choose to spam are not being punished. The argument that ISPs and other organizations rely upon is that misdirecting or blocking spam is an effective strategy for eliminating spammers: "if we get good enough at filtering out spam, it will stop working, and the spammers will actually stop sending it."

As noted: this is not well reasoned, spammers will simply adapt, finding new and more insidious ways to spam. More importantly it costs nothing to send spam, therefore even if it 'stops working', by which we mean mostly stops working; it is still cost effective! In other words only absolute 100% spam filtration with 0% false positives will remove the incentive to spam. In no uncertain terms, an unachievable goal.

Meanwhile the people who pay the price are those like the company I work for, we obey the law, we comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, and yet we are the ones being punished for the criminal activity of spammers. Spammers continue to spam, but we are expected to bear the onus of their behavior. It's not fair, and more importantly it's not right. To be honest I think it's downright stupid.

If the system is broken then it needs to be fixed, but this is not the solution. Accountability is the answer, not a gradual strangulation of the SMTP infrastructure.

August 13 Edit:

Just a short addendum I wanted to add concerning an apparently ironic line posted above. My main talking point depends on the fact that spamming costs virtually nothing, which seems to contradict my position that expensive mass mailing services should be opposed. Naturally this point needs some serious clarification, which I believe can be done fairly easily.

I am not really opposed to mass mailing services at all. While the idea of charging for email seems absurd to me, and like a huge step backward for technology in general, I am not against the idea of infrastructure that makes this possible. But that is exactly my point of contention; currently existing email infrastructure is not designed to put a price on communication.

The best solution to spam is obviously to use an alternative to email - a more advanced communication infrastructure that does not allow anonymous members, requires real-world identity verification, and imposes heavy penalties for abuse. Such a system might theoretically put a price on communication, and I am not directly opposed to that.

What I am opposed to is an attempt to take the preexisting email infrastructure which is failing miserably and patch it with horribly misconceived hacks like spam filters, CAPTCHA, whitelists, blacklists, or anything else you can think up. Email infrastructure is horribly designed, it's time to accept that and move on to something better; and that is really the only long-term solution to spam.

My Current Fantasy

2010-08-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

"What could be more powerful than possibility?" - unknown

It was a beautiful day, the clouds and fog had all been blown away, the harsh north wind had died down. It was just me, the world, and a gentle breeze that somehow managed to soften the sensation of an unobscured sun who's rays beat down mercilessly from above. I paused in my walk to stand in front of a newspaper kiosk, just long enough to skim the headlines, I only bothered to read the ones with decent circulation.

"Global Economy Thriving Again"

Well, you can hardly overlook a headline like that! I scanned the fine print.

"Following last month's shocking and totally unexpected turn of events, after the world's wealthiest 3% including both individuals and corporations pledged their resources and support in an effort to repair the emaciated global economy; failed states, small businesses, and people all over the world are now enjoying what can only be described as a 'miraculous recovery'.

Unlike with the onset of the global economic downturn which was frequently misunderstood when not cloaked in the shadows of the shady dealings of everyone from CEOs and high-profile bankers to the corrupt members of government they had in their pockets; there is no doubt or confusion at all regarding the reasons behind the complete recovery. Stated simply, the people who caused the recession finally took responsibility for their actions and made things right."

That was all I could make out through the heavily scuffed Plexiglas of that paper machine, I moved on to the next.

"War On Terror Repudiated"

"Early Monday morning, an international assembly comprised of dozens of media corespondents from every major news network stood entirely silent for over a minute in response to a short press conference given by President Obama. He started off the speech by briefly reminding all the attendees that April was four months ago, and that he was not 'pulling anyone's leg'.

His first somber announcement was that the United States was abandoning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no timetable, no schedule, he had already issued the order to withdraw all troops, unconditionally, effective immediately. In fact they were boarding C-130s at that very minute and would be home in less than 12 hours. There would be a national holiday created to commemorate the simultaneous end of two wars.

His second announcement was the wholesale repudiation of the 'Global War On Terror' - 'It's time to admit as your president and acknowledge as a nation that we can't win against an enemy that has no form or shape beyond the scope of our own fear. The truth is that this war was never about terror, and it was only partially about natural resources, this war was about nothing more than the economics of war itself; trillions of your tax dollars funneled to a handful of multinational corporations. The same corporations who engineered these wars, the same corporations who stand to profit from the oil in Iraq and the Lithium in Afghanistan. Assisted unfortunately I must say by our own corrupt intelligence agencies.

It's time to accept and acknowledge that if we are at war with anyone, we are at war with ourselves; namely our unsustainable way of life; specifically the way in which we maintain it. We can't deny that our prosperity is the result of capitalism and these same corporations, but at what cost?'"

The rest of the page was cut off.

"End Of The Road For Fossil Fuels"

"In a joint announcement the world's five largest oil companies first issued an apology for decades of political intimidation, bribing, subversion, espionage, incalculable environmental catastrophe and outright immoral business practices. Next the giants including Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell agreed that they, along with all the world's fossil fuel corporations, are immediately shutting down the entire industry, and instating measures that will ensure that fossil fuels will no longer be used or extracted from the environment.

The first phase will involve liquidating all existing assets and putting the combined money (estimated in the hundreds of trillions of dollars) into an international endowment for environmental protection and restoration. Executives have admitted that even all the money in the world won't be able to fix the damage caused by fossil fuels over the last 200 years and that it may be thousands of years before many of the long-term effects can be mitigated, but the new alliance is committed to ceasing any further damages as soon as humanly possible.

When asked about how they expected the existing infrastructure to adapt, the commission replied 'we will also be releasing thousands of documents detailing almost two centuries of technological suppression perpetrated by the fossil fuel industry; regarding electric vehicles, generators, engine alternatives, economical solar power, batteries, high-speed rail networks, and many other advances in science that were made over the last two centuries, but never released publicly until now.'"

I reached the bottom fold and had to start on the next column.

"Climate Change Reversed"

"For reasons the are baffling scientists all over the world, it looks as though countless billions in the third world who were previously facing certain annihilation due to fires, floods, famine and drought have had a temporary stay of execution. Mass celebrations broke out around the world as the latest climate data was analyzed, indicating that CO2 levels had dropped dramatically and even the polar icecaps were beginning to reform in some areas."

The person who said "no news is good news" clearly had no idea what they were talking about.

Well, it was time to go to the beach and enjoy the first day of my paid vacation. I was still riding high on the news that that the company I had been with for over ten years wasn't actually going to have to close. In fact now that the economy was back on track, business was booming. I just had the feeling that it was going to be a great year!

It could all happen, if you want it to..

How To Save Second Life

2010-07-20T00:58:00.000-07:00

These are just my notes regarding how to fix second life, after having read the latest blog post by Philip Linden, including a select number of the hundreds of comments posted in response by SL residents.

Note: my personal opinion is that Second Life in its current form is a lost cause, the underlying platform that allows it to exist has become dramatically antiquated since its inception; using Second Life today is analogous to using Netscape in the age of Chrome. Assuming that you are however still interested in lost causes, the following list is probably the definitive guide for those wishing to restore confidence in Second Life as a viable virtual world. (or just skip to the bottom of the page for my preferred recommendation).

1. Address the jira. The jira was a great idea, and yet there are thousands of outstanding 'issues' with thousands of votes that have been overlooked or outright ignored for years. Once again residents have near broken their backs for Linden Lab, spending countless hours of their personal time reporting, ranking and tracking critical flaws in the platform; naturally LL thanked these residents for all their hard work by fixing a handful of negligible bugs while letting the lion's share continue to plague the community and undermine the platform. The first step in meaningful recovery is to freeze and then fix every bug listed on the jira.

2. Once the jira has been exhausted it's time to start making the truly painful modifications to the grid platform that Second Life has been needing now for the last four years. The best place to start is with content creation since that is the single most significant aspect of SL. Prims, sculpties, meshes, etc. these object formats should be considered obsolete and supported via a legacy layer only. There is no need to purge them, the point is simply to establish that they represent a content creation model that is being phased out. The second step is to provide support for importing and exporting a variety of 3D model formats to and from SL. Blender, Google SketchUp, Maya, 3ds Max, and AutoCAD. 3D modeling and animation has already been perfected and there is no way Linden Lab is going to make it any better, they should leave it to the professionals; the benefit being that not only are they adopting the industry standards, but they are also eliminating the overhead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

3. Once object importing and exporting has been implemented it will free up LL to focus exclusively on perfecting the new viewer by streamlining the integration of imported assets with internal functionality, namely: rendering mechanisms, permissions, scripting, physics, chat, voice, and miscellaneous I/O (e.g. inworld web content). Completing this step will effectively modernize Second Life, finally bringing it up to speed with all the technological advances that have been made over the last few years in fields like gaming, social networking and IT. Incidentally it will also pave the way for future improvements by kick-starting a conversion of the platform from a relatively closed and esoteric patchwork of custom mechanisms - to a far more open, modular and extensible system that relies almost exclusively on advancements made by third parties who specialize in each specific area. Ultimately this allows Second Life to combine the best technology from each field, providing the community with the most powerful and professional tools available. It also opens up SL to literally billions of preexisting assets.

So that's the basic roadmap for turning things around. I think it goes without saying that it would take a monumental effort to make even one of these things happen, much less all three. Meanwhile the community will probably implode from the sheer shock of such a profound paradigm shift. But, considering the alternative, it seems pretty clear (at least to me) that Second Life really doesn't have anywhere else to go.

My preferred recommendation is even more extreme: scrap SL in its current form, take the modern IT infrastructure and build an entirely new platform from the bottom up, then just include an emulation layer for running all the old SL content. The problem with this approach is that just like the original SL you run into the problem of having a shelf life of about ten years before your product once again starts to feel distinctly dated. Essentially if it's not inherently extensible (in virtually every respect) then it really isn't sustainable. All the critical problems in SL today can be traced back to a lack of flexibility in the foundational platform. But to be fair, without that inherently flawed platform, this thing we've come to know and love called "Second Life" would never have been possible.

Laughable Presidential Committee Probing BP Spill

2010-07-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

Basically all those with a substantial vested interest in the oil industry are allowed to "testify" (lobby for big oil / endlessly repeat the same compelling yet clearly doublespeak talking points, punctuated by delicious red-blooded nationalism, and faux small-town motherhood and apple pie familiarity!) before a remarkably genial Presidential Committee; espousing the boundless benefits of oil, while outlining the dire and irreversible consequences of a moratorium. Followed by a disproportionately brief open forum that gives the victims of big oil a time-limit to proclaim their all important, yet utterly unaddressed points of view, oh, and more lobbying! link

This spectacular circle-jerk provides us all with the following invaluable insights:

Insisting that there are no alternatives to maintaining a status quo that is indisputably poisoning the entire planet! Naturally we're powerless, aside from doing little, trivial things like drilling oil wells miles underwater!

Pointing out that if we don't destroy the environment with offshore oil drilling, somebody else will! And we won't even get any money out of it!

Unilaterally opposing the moratorium, expressing deep concern over improving safety standards and adopting "best practices" without actually committing to doing anything, or providing a viable roadmap for ensuring such standards and practices are implemented and enforced.

Justifying more drilling by citing the disparity between domestic supply and demand! Because clearly there is just no way we can stop using oil, ever! The solution is obviously to increase consumption!

More importantly, how do we start weaning ourselves off of oil if we never actually start weaning ourselves off of oil?

Citing the profound financial benefits of oil money, specifically proposed (read imaginary) royalties used to restore infrastructure and ecology! (after we destroy it with oil of course).

Honestly what else can you do besides look on and laugh hysterically?

Recent Developments in Second Life

2010-06-19T00:46:00.000-07:00

Note: this is more for my personal amusement than anything else. If you are a hardcore second "lifer" with vested assets inworld, I recommend you read one of the other, far more 'serious business' posts written by seasoned professionals like Ari Blackthorne or sororNishi.

On the other hand.. I'm no stranger to SL, my avatar is about 5 years old now, which makes me pretty ancient in SL terms. Suffice it to say, I've been around the virtual block. Recently I've noticed a lot of my contacts writing lengthy, passionate posts about everything that's been happening in Second Life, specifically the controversy surrounding "Viewer 2" and the consequent sacking of dozens of "Lindens", and then most recently the economic aftershocks that have cast doubt on the stability of the LindeX (Second Life's virtual currency exchange).

This isn't a "the sky is falling" post, nor is it a "everyone calm the fuck down" post; this is a "forest for the trees" post.

Right now there are two types of SL citizens weighing in on the situation: those who haven't used SL long enough to understand what they're talking about, and those who have been using SL for so long that they can't see the forest for the trees. Incidentally there should be a third type of citizen, for example vocal peeps like Opensource Obscure, who have crucial insight into the technical aspects of the platform. Unfortunately I have yet to meet anyone who has become enmeshed enough in the infrastructure to grasp it without becoming simultaneously engulfed by the syntactic minutiae that blinds them to the bigger picture.

And what is that bigger picture? Put succinctly the "Grid" platform that powers Second Life is not capable of taking the company (Linden Lab) into the future. That alone however is not the problem.

This is: the Second Life community is its greatest asset, or so I've heard. It's also what I believe. But, the community is also Second Life's greatest weakness. Do you know why? It's because the community has created everything of value in Second Life, but all that value is built on a foundation that simply isn't futureproof. If you want to get technical about it, 95% of the marketable assets in SL amount to ad hoc hacks cobbled together by overzealous trailblazers and innovators who forced the gird to perform miracles as fantastical as they are unsupported.

Sure you could blame LL, they made some bad choices, but ultimately the real pillory of consequence rests squarely on the shoulders of the community itself. Yes that's right, the legion of impatient content creators who bent every rule imaginable until Second Life became the beautiful twisted wreckage that you see today. I've always argued in the past that LL should have listened better, they should have added features and tools that reflected the desires of the community, but I was wrong. All they should have done was made better rules and then aggressively enforced them.

So the real question is, how does all that 'between the lines' content translate in light of the necessity of an evolving platform? The answer: it doesn't. So, poor saps like M Linden are left between a rock and a hard place; do they consign themselves to a lifetime of tacking piecemeal half-assed enhancements onto an already rickety infrastructure that is about as flexible as it is user friendly? Or do they build a better mousetrap, thereby breaking 95% of everything the community has worked so hard for over the last several years? It's a lose/lose situation, there is no good solution.

It's pretty obvious which path LL is going to take, and how the community will respond; in fact we're seeing a little foreshadowing right now. I've spent a lot of time in SL, I've built a lot of things and broken a lot of rules in the process. If all that disappears, I'll be fine with that; creativity is something that comes from within, the 'tangible' expression is mutable, transient, mysterious. Just think of how few people can say they've lived more than one life, even fewer leave one behind to live another. That's the kind of learning experience that only comes along once in a lifetime.

We take it for granted that this kind of opportunity is around every corner in the modern world. The important thing is that we're the community, we're the life force of Second Life, and if we so choose, we can move on to other worlds, and breath life into them too.

June 21 Update:

Check out Philip Linden's SL7B (Second Life's 7th Birthday) Speech. I found his remarks to be curiously contradicting on several key points. The executive summary: he says that Linden Lab is more-or-less intentionally retarding SL's rampant growth (via ~~mass layoffs~~ restructuring) for the sake of preserving overall system integrity. Although he also admits that SL has not actually been growing much over the last year.

He goes on to say that LL has no intention of abandoning the current paradigm (breaking things), while simultaneously implying that SL should organically evolve into a more ubiquitous platform. Personally I really don't see how that is possible; you can't have a community that thrives on esoterica suddenly appeal to a broader audience.. without fundamentally transforming that community into something else.

Impact List

2010-06-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Just a few ideas that I've been meaning to jot down, ideas that could have a significant beneficial impact on civilization if implemented. These have all probably been proposed by many different people at different times.

Category: Technology > Computer > Hardware & Software

Most of you will be familiar with the necessity of "drivers" for hardware. Typically when you buy a new piece of hardware whether it be a video card an optical mouse or a flash drive; you won't be able to use the device until the appropriate driver for the device is installed on your operating system. Windows has provided a nice little hack / workaround for this problem by coming pre-installed with thousands of generic drivers that are capable of running the most common devices. The problem with this method is that it does not cover all the devices that for one reason or another require custom drivers. Manufacturers of these devices often ship their product with a disk that includes them, or less frequently they only include documentation that directs the user to a site where they can download the most recent drivers.

The solution to this problem is nothing short of a paradigm shift in how devices should be designed to work and interoperate with different platforms. My proposal is that instead of drivers being a separate aspect of the product, they should be integrated directly into the hardware. Technically the industry already has a method for achieving this, it's called firmware. Although traditionally firmware is hardware specific and only designed to enable the base functionality of the device. My proposal is that firmware should be expanding in three ways. First it should be redefined as a component that allows both base functionality and interoperability. Second it should be made more robust and malleable so that it can be easily and reliably modified. Third it should be standardized in an open and comprehensive way so that the industry and the developers have access.

How does this work? It's simple really, manufactures should be required to equipt their hardware with a small flash memory chip that combines firmware and drivers into a single flexible and extensible architecture. This way when new products are released they come equipt with the drivers required to let them be utilized by your computer. Ideally when you plug in a new device, the first thing that happens is that your operating system scans this chip and installs the appropriate drivers automatically. This totally eliminates the need for installing drivers from a disk or download. It also guarantees that the exact driver needed will be installed. But most importantly it cuts the cord between hardware and software by ensuring that the hardware will always be able to immediately negotiate and interface with the host! Gone will be the days of having to hunt down archaic driver disks or search exhaustively through file forums looking for the right driver.

But that's not all! Remember this new form of firmware is designed to be extensible! All new hardware should ship with an integrated utility that allows the device to connect to the manufacturer's driver database, identifying itself, downloading the latest driver, and installing it directly to the onboard "firmware" chip; and then updating the operating system. Now when you plug the device into another computer, not only is it fully interoperable, it also has the most recent version of the driver! Yet there are still more advantages to this innovation: limited memory space forces developers to code efficient, light-weight drivers.

YouTube Video Looper App

2010-05-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

Today was my first time coding in PHP, I was amazed at how easy it was to learn, in less than half an hour I was working on some pretty advanced functionality. As a result I wrote this nifty little app that lets you input the video ID of the YouTube video of your choice (as long as it allows embedding), and loop it infinitely / indefinitely at the press of a button. Blow you can see a screen shot of how the interface looks in Google Chrome:

It should look and work the same in all webkit based browsers. Here is a link to the actual app / page if you want to try it out yourself. I also included a fair amount of HTML5 and CSS3 just to doll it up in the visual appearance department. I'd love some feedback on this little project, if you have the time please leave a comment below, suggestions are always appreciated.

As noted in an earlier blog post, looping youtube videos is something that I find fairly useful. Although it clearly has numerous applications, I personally find it pleasurable to play a looping audio-centric video at low volume in one tab while simultaneously watching a long and informative video in my primary tab. I find that it spices up all manner of taciturn and otherwise melancholic presentations, e.g. C-SPAN senate hearings, Google Talks, etc. Often with humorous effects (I'll leave what I mean by that up to your imagination, dear reader).

May 22 Edit: I think it's worth noting that when I originally had this idea several months ago, I first did a Google search to see if anyone had already done it. At the time nothing came up. Now after having done this stupid project I find that there are dozens of youtube video looping services online, a few even have an entire domain devoted to them 0_o see:

www.endlessyoutube.com/
www.loopyoutubevideos.com/

etc. Yeah they're a lot cooler than my little PHP script.. but whatever, mine looks better :/

Current thoughts

2010-05-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

Current thoughts, many of which were inspired by my reading of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline, and the consequent research into a multitude of tangential topics..

Science is intuitive once you understand it, but not necessarily before. Our most effective means of understanding and relating to the world, the scientific method, repeating cause-and-effect experiments until relationships become clear; effectively giving us all a degree of control over reality. Works best for simple systems with minimal dynamics, as dynamics increase it becomes increasingly difficult to predict, interpret and control complex systems.

Politics, the most intriguing thing, when you mix politics with science quite frequently the political system is all but ignored. That is unless you consider the broader invisible politics of the "hive mind" to be part of the more inclusive "politics" that we consider "government". Science results in technology, technology that is then adopted by the public, quickly it proliferates, no one is in control of this process, it just happens. What does this process say about our culture? When science strives for control, yet the essence of this struggle is ultimately a surrender; the more control we think we have, the less we actually do? Or is it more like a parabola: as our level of control increases exponentially so does our departure from our comprehension of the consequences, in proportion.

This is all very ironic, paradoxical and confusing because politics is ultimately responsible for making all the truly meaningful choices that effect civilization. Those entities that ignore politics, or pretend that it is irrelevant, ultimately will fail (but fail at what exactly? fail at failure? equating to success?). In the end this process seems to point to the futility and grand irony of ego. Although to add an additional layer of irony, having ego or not having ego does not in the end seem to make much of a difference since politics itself is not under its own control. Those with ego are merely isolating themselves further within a fabric of cause-and-effect that is entirely blind to an individual sense of self-importance.

In essence politics controls itself indirectly, specifically by reflection. Policy is made, effects are caused, the causes result in feedback that ultimately forces policy to be changed. Looking at the deeper structures and motivations; the initial policy is a fantasy that has no basis in reality, it is an idea concocted by people who think that things should be a certain way. Once this policy is introduced into the real world, it is either accepted or rejected by reality. It would be much simpler to remove ego from the equation, find out what reality requires first and then create policy accordingly. Thus eliminating an entire superfluous step.

Accountability, responsibility, the choices that effect the lives of the many are always in the hands of the few. The best thing we could ever do would be to ensure that these few are compelled and obligated to deliberate excessively over their choices. This holds true at every level, at every scale. Ironically and often tragically the "few" are no more or less qualified or informed than any random person to make these profound choices. In many cases the only difference is that the "few" are considerably more biased than a random individual. This is to say they are not actually "people" but rather representatives of many potentially conflicting self-interests, all which stand to benefit (however illusory or short-lived this benefit may be) from influencing and controlling the representative.

Short-term prosperity often leads to long-term poverty. This concept is also applicable to science, many times a scientific advancement will result in apparent technological benefit, in fact for a select number of people and for a specific length of time it does result in a considerable benefit. But then, perhaps decades or in some instances even centuries later the net result of that improvement is a horrible and catastrophic turn of events (e.g. climate change). Raising the question, perhaps more control is not better control?

But it's also worth noting that the idea of "benefit" is rather abstract; do we really know what constitutes as a benefit? That would imply objectivity, which we don't really have the luxury of claiming. In the modern world "benefit" might be defined as anything that temporarily improves our state of mind. Like a drug. On the other hand, a truly objective definition would read more like: benefit is anything that permanently improves our wellbeing (a good or satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness, and prosperity). Permanency however is something very hard to come by in this world. So it's only natural that we often settle for the cheap high of transient improvement instead (memento mori).

Progress, or romanticism vs. pragmatism. The most annoying thing about self-proclaimed progressives is the implied suggestion that moving in one particular directly is in fact "progress", what if you're moving backwards? Hindsight is 20/20. Isn't learning far more important than the illusion of progress? Chronically individual progressives have been forced to reconcile the fact that what they thought at the time was progress, turned out to be the opposite. And yet progressives as a cult(ure) refuse to acknowledge this as a systemic failing of their philosophy. The idea of progress itself is endlessly romanticized and fetishized, in much the same way as unsustainable economic growth was during the 20th century.

Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs? The problem with progress is that the entire process is like a house of cards: progress is the foundation of progress, it's self-referential, it's circular reasoning at its finest. If the fundamental idea that progress is absolute is wrong the entire fantasy collapses. The mistake here I believe is inferring that science, technology and progress are interchangeable, analogous. Science is fundamentally objective and pragmatic, while technology and the progress it brings is subjective, conceptual, and fundamentally unproven. Yes, it amounts to faith, faith in the promise of progress—the idea that it really is going to benefit us long-term.

If we were to de-fetishize progress, to remove all the passion, zeal, and fanaticism, distill it down until only the pure science remained, perhaps then we'd have something that actually made sense. Although the painful and politically unacceptable trade-off there is that true progress happens at a dramatically slower rate. Progressives would argue that it grinds to a halt, but what they really mean is that they would grind to a halt.

Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand [book]

2010-05-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading this book, I'm about 142 pages in. I have to say right up front, it's been a very long time since reading anything provoked such an unusual reaction from me; and to be entirely honest there are times while I'm reading that I just have to scratch my head and wonder if this guy is trolling. The most notable thing about Whole Earth Discipline is that it immediately tricks you into thinking that it's written by an environmentalist, while in fact it's clearly written by a staunch humanist.

Before saying anything more specific about the book itself, I'd like to focus on what this fundamental philosophical confrontation means to me. Ultimately when you consider the state of the world today, in regard to humanity vs. the ecosystem, there is really not a lot of maneuverability. Soon there will be seven billion people living on this planet, each of those human beings will possess the right, and the will to live; each of them will require a certain quantity and quality of natural resources. This is unavoidable.

Humanists believe that the preservation of the human race and its values is paramount. Environmentalists believe that the ecosystem is more important than humanity. On one hand you have a perfectly logical viewpoint, we're all human, so it only makes sense that we prioritize ourselves above everything else. On the other hand it's undeniable that without the ecosystem we'd all be dead. In one sense, and in my own personal view, being an environmentalist is actually just being a smarter humanist.

Bringing a third philosophy into the mix: realism, we are also confronted with the unforgiving reality that regardless of our individual views towards our species, the way we sustain our modern civilization is not compatible with the real world. No matter what stopgap solutions are employed, our collective way of life is edging us all closer and seemingly inevitably towards extinction. In the long-run, it doesn't matter if we build millions of new nuclear reactors, or convert our entire agricultural system to genetically modified organisms; the result will still be the same.

Although having said this, realism is a double-edged sword. No more can we admit this to ourselves than we can accept the fact that it doesn't change anything at all. Life still goes on, we have to live with the choices that we make. Which conveniently leads me right into the essence of my overall response to this book. How do we really want the next chapter in our saga to read? I view this exactly as I would if I were asked the question what does it mean to be human? — I think this is the very thing that we should all be asking ourselves right now.

Whatever comes, I think we should 'embrace' what we are as a species, even if that thing happens to be a monster. While the human race has always exhibited signs of a profound and troubling Schizophrenia, I try to single out the instances of elegance, finesse and lucidity. For no other reason than that's how I'd like to live. From a political perspective the prospect of our future survival has morphed into something analogous to crash-landing a 747, no matter what, it's not going to be particularly pretty. But I do believe that there are ways to go down that are far more desirable than flying directly into the nearest mountain.

Even a 747 has a certain modicum of latitude, it's up to the pilot(s) to make the best of a bad situation. Although I have little to no control over the situation myself as a passenger, I would at least like to make a few suggestions. Whole Earth Discipline seems to me like a particular person sitting next to me at the window seat in this proverbial plane. Perhaps we start to discuss the situation as the plane is going down, admittedly this amiable man has a better view than I, but I can't say that I care much for his point of view.

May 11 Edit:

The paradox of technological ambivalence

Agriculture is "technology", nuclear power is "technology", GE (genetic engineering) is "technology". Are these examples of technology inherently "good" or "bad"? Furthermore is there a fundamental difference between them, that is to say, can they be evaluated objectively as being positive or negative in relation to the wellbeing of our species?

Virtually all "progressive" humanistic arguments are based on the assumption that the solution to every problem is a technological one. For example: food crisis? Use genetic engineering to make more food. Energy crisis? Use nuclear reactors to make more power. But if you examine the root cause of the problems that these technologies propose to address, they are themselves the result of technology.

Why do we need more food? Because technology allows us to create populations that are unable to support themselves. Why do we need more energy? Because technology increases and compounds our consumption. So my question is this: if technology is both the problem and the solution, how do we determine which technologies are making our lives worse, and which are making them better?

More importantly for those progressives who seem to have a technological answer for everything, how do you know that your "solution" won't just be another problem that in turn requires yet another technological fix? And if you don't know, then why are you so obsessed with advocating the very thing that caused the initial problem?

In his book Stewart Brand makes the admission that agriculture is one of the most ecologically destructive technologies ever utilized by mankind; and yet this is the prelude to his proposal on utilizing genetic engineering to reverse the devastation. Does that really make sense? Is one of these technologies somehow magically superior to the other?

I would suggest that the root problem itself has nothing at all to do with technology and everything to do with a far older force that shaped our destiny long before the first two sticks were rubbed together to make fire: sociopolitics! We don't need more food, and we don't need more energy. What we need is sanity. You can't solve political problems with technology.

I may add more to this post as I read..

5 Things WIRED Must Do to Look Less Like Shills For Apple

2010-05-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

This a joke post, in reference to the May 6 WIRED article "5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less Evil".

#1. Stop making every other article be about Apple.
#2. Stop hyping everything Apple does, no matter how insipid.
#3. Stop pretending you're Gizmodo, you're not!
#4. Stop making stupid lists about Apple to get more attention.
#5. Stop having oral sex with Steve Jobs.

topcitystyle.com spam

2010-05-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

The anonymous cowards who operate topcitystyle.com have been engaged in comment spamming my blog almost every single day for over a month now. Sometimes I get as many as six spam comments in one day. One post has 32 comments, 30 of which are spam promoting topcitystyle.com. Incidentally the messages that contain the links to topcitystyle.com are remarkably inane, see below:

"no shoes no shirt no problem guitar http://topcitystyle.com/?action=products&product_id=945 men fashion magizines [url=http://topcitystyle.com/miss-sixty-women-brand25.html]clothes[/url] elderly active fashion
http://topcitystyle.com/khaki-dark-red-men-color78.html childrens clothes retailers in new york city [url=http://topcitystyle.com/48-sport-size1.html]lauren huxley[/url]"

Every day I delete every one of these spam posts. topcitystyle.com of course does not care about that one bit, since they are doubtlessly engaged in a protracted spamming campaign that utilizes automated "services" to post these fake comments on thousands, if not millions of unrestricted blogs. As noted before, I refuse to implement CAPTCHA.

A few days ago I sent an abuse report to topcitystyle.com's domain registrar internetbs.net, ~~who it seems does not really care if their TOS is being violated on a daily basis.~~ From section 15 (BREACH & REVOCATION) subsection a. clause ii.:

"use of any services, including, without limitation, the Domain registered to you, that is in contradiction of applicable laws or customarily acceptable usage policies of the Internet, including, without limitation, sending unsolicited commercial advertisements (including, without limitation, spamming)"

So yeah, another brilliant case study of why the internet totally sucks. In a scenario where things were actually operating in a fair and effective manner, internetbs.net (perfect name, right? the 'bs' certainly stands for Bull Shit) would investigate my claims, and consequently suspend the topcitystyle.com domain. That's called accountability, otherwise known as the "A" word on the internet.

Addendum: Why am I going after their domain instead of their web host? The answer should be obvious, but surprisingly there are a lot of people who don't understand the internet chain of command. Getting them kicked by their host will accomplish nothing; in 24 hours they'll be on a new host, business as usual. But if their domain gets suspended they are effectively prevented from reaping the rewards of their spam campaign.

~~Not much else to say besides~~ fuck you topcitystyle.com, I hope you get hit by a meteor.

Update 2:25 PM: A live chat log from today:

Marvel [5:21:04 PM]: Hello and Welcome to Internet.bs Corp., your official ICANN domain name Registrar.

Matthew Richards [5:21:04 PM]: I've sent you an abuse report regarding a domain you registered: topcitystyle.com. I have detailed records of spam that I've received and continue to receive on a daily basis. This is against your TOS. I am requesting that some action be taken on this issue. Please respond.

[5:21:42 PM]: Hello?

Marvel [5:22:10 PM]: Please send us an email to abuse@internet.bs

Matthew Richards [5:22:20 PM]: I have, already. I sent two emails.

[5:22:37 PM]: I have not yet received a response.

[5:22:56 PM]: And I just got several more spams today.

Marvel [5:23:06 PM]: Please be a little more patient and you will receive your response

Matthew Richards [5:23:24 PM]: OK. Thank you for responding.

Update 4:53 PM: email response from internet.bs:

Dear Matthew,

thanks for your spam report, our abuse depart. is reviewing it. Please make sure to only use abuse@internet.bs for spam report as we will not handle further requests submitted using a different channel.

We cannot offer an answer for each abuse report we receive, so please do not expect systematically a reply from our services.

Please take in account the following important points:

1) We do not offer hosting service, so it is very unlikely the domain is hosted by us and the most appropriate way to suspend a website is via the hosting company.

2) We do not offer smtp services, so it is very unlikely emails have been sent using our service. The most appropriate way to block spams is to contact the smpt relay provider.

3) We do not generally rely on individual spam reports to suspend a domain as they are subject to alterations and could easily be faked by unscrupulous competitors. Instead we rely on specialized and professional anti-spam organizations such as Spamhaus, so make sure the domain is listed by Spamhaus or an equivalent reliable service before asking for our assistance and we will be more than happy to suspend the domain upon verification.

Regards,
[REDACTED]
Internet.bs Corp.
http://www.internet.bs
http://www.internetbs.net

My reply:

A simple google search for topcitystyle.com makes it plainly obvious that this domain is engaged in a comprehensive spamming campaign: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=topcitystyle.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Just about any result will take you to a random blog (like mine) that shows dozens of topcitystyle.com spam comments posted in the comments section.

Everything you stated is technically true, and I'm happy that you investigate these things thoroughly before taking action. However it's also true that topcitystyle.com is undeniably violating your TOS (however indirectly). If you refuse to hold them accountable, it's the same as condoning their behavior.

All I'd appreciate is your sincere consideration of what I've brought to your attention.

~~Final update~~ 10:34 PM:

Dear Matthew B. Richards,
taking in account your report and after investigation our abuse team has decided to de-activate the domain.

Thanks for your notification.

Regards,
[REDACTED]
Internet.bs Corp.
http://www.internet.bs
http://www.internetbs.net

~~Looks like justice still does occasionally prevail. Thanks go to internet.bs for doing the right thing on this one.~~

June 7 Edit:

Approximately one month later, around 6:00 AM I got another spam comment from.. you guessed it, topcitystyle.com. I immediately filed another abuse report to Internet.bs Crop. See below:

I'm really disappointed, on May 3rd you sent me the following message:

(see above)

Now, one month later I start getting comment spam again from topcitystyle.com - a domain you registered, a domain notorious for spamming thousands of blogs with fake comments filled with links that point directly to that domain.

What kind of faith do you think this inspires in the whole internet system? Basically these spammers have free reign to do whatever they want with impunity. Apparently you can't even shut down one domain, even though the activity it generates is clearly violating your terms of service.

I'm going to post this to my blog, along with the original transcript of all communications between me and your company. If spammers can't be held accountable for their actions, at least you can. I hope you like bad publicity because that post is getting a lot of hits..

I doubt that will get much of a response, considering what's transpired so far. It seems like at most, the domain was suspended for a month. Given that the case for a breach of the TOS was clear, in addition to the large body of 3rd party evidence corroborating my claims and effectively pinning topcitystyle.com as an amoral serial spammer; I would have expected a permanent revocation of the domain. Clearly internet.bs is more interested in collecting paltry domain renewal fees from spammers than it is from protecting the integrity of the internet and enforcing their own TOS.

And their reply:

Dear Matthew,

while we fully understand and respect your legitimate expectations we have to
deal with both you and our customers.

If you feel a domain is still used for spamming, just make sure it is listed
by a prominent anti-spamming association such as Spamhaus and you can be
assured that as long as the domain is listed by them we won't re-activate it
back.

Regards,
[REDACTED]
Internet.bs Corp.
http://www.internet.bs
http://www.internetbs.net

My response:

Copied from the spamhaus 'Generic Questions' FAQ:

Is there a way to report spam to Spamhaus?

No. Spamhaus DNSBLs are not based on spam reported to us (we have our own systems for detecting and identifying spam, proxies, etc.). Please DO NOT forward your spam to any Spamhaus.org address, we can not do anything with spam you send us, except bin it ourselves (we block people who do forward spam to us from connecting to our mail servers again).

Can registrars suspend domains for spam and abuse?

Yes! They need an anti-spam Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) which they can enforce. And most do. Spammers very often use false information in domain registrations. Registrars can also suspend domains for bad "whois" information.

It seems as though you don't fully respect or understand anything.. Next time just say "fuck you" it's much easier to type.

Who knows what will happen next.. Oh wait, I do, the degenerate human trash that operates topcitystyle.com will continue to spam thousands of blogs, and Internet.bs Corp will continue to gladly take their $9/year. Guess who just got added to the premium meteor target list?

June 8 Update:

A new email from our friends at Internet.bs Corp!

Dear Matthew B. Richards,

We have suspended the domain when you initially contacted us but we have unlocked it because our customer contacted us with a perfectly reasonable explanation for the spamming of blog comments. He said he paid a SEO company to promote his domain but he didn't know they are going to promote it that way. He said he ended the contract with the SEO company and asked us to unlock the domain. Based on that information we unlocked the domain.

As [REDACTED] told you, we have to deal with both you and our customer and, if our terms and conditions were violated without his knowledge, there is no reason to keep the domain locked while our customer was a victim of a fraudster himself. If somebody sells you a car and that car is actually a stolen one. Does that make you a thief? I would say you are just a victim of a thief.

Now after your contacted us again, our abuse department made a research and suspended the domain again because they found recent spam comments containing this domain.

Please note that we are against spam and our terms and conditions clearly specifies this. As [REDACTED] told you, we usually rely on the listing of a prominent anti-spamming association to suspend domains that are used for spamming but, if you (or somebody else) provide clear and verifiable evidence of spam, our abuse department performs their own research and suspend the domain if they can indeed verify the spam complaint we receive. Otherwise the domain does not get suspended because the complaint and the sent evidence can actually be "fabricated" by an unscrupulous competitor. So if the evidence cannot be verified from other sources as well we cannot suspend a domain. Imagine you have your blog hacked and somebody would fill a complaint to google about your blog being used for illegal activities. Then google suspend your blog and not accept to activate it back even when you provide evidence it was not you but somebody else that hacked your blog. Would you find that fair? Try to put yourself on our position and you will see there was no other fair way to handle this. By "fair" i mean fair to both you and our customer.

Best regards,
--
[REDACTED]
Internet.bs Corp.
http://www.INTERNET.bs
http://www.internetbs.net

And my response:

Thank you for the update [REDACTED], I will be sure to add this email to my post on the experience in order to make sure that all sides of the discussion are fairly represented. Names will of course be redacted.

I must apologize if I've seemed brash in my previous emails. As you might as well imagine my perspective is quite different than that of a domain registrar. The comment spam feels like a violation, and it's very frustrating as a blogger to have the burden of combating and exposing spammers placed on themselves while the perpetrator is only expected to provide reasonable doubt. Most of the time people don't even bother trying because of this critical imbalance in accountability.

From your reply it seems like you handled the situation appropriately, and I would never expect you to suspend a domain based on circumstantial evidence, and certainly not based on a single email. It would be nice however if registrars were little more aggressive in regards to monitoring the continued operation of domains that had been involved in previous violations.

All your points are well taken. Thanks for your time.

Hopefully this will be the last time I update this post.

Thoughts on Thoughts on Flash

2010-04-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Flash sucks, no one in their right mind would deny this fact. I however found the recent editorial written by Steve Jobs to be mildly ingenuous.

Regarding H.264 "users of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use." Kind of important.

"Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices."

That is assuming that "touch" is the future of human/machine interaction. An idea which is frankly absurd given the current volume of tasks and activities which simply cannot be performed competently with a touch based interface.

"the mobile era is about low power devices"

Firstly the "mobile era" is a fantasy that may never come to fruition. It is true that mobile technology becomes more ubiquitous every day, but that doesn't mean we're moving away from conventional computing. As noted before there are countless things that simply can't be done reliably with a touch type interface.

The whole world shouldn't be turned on its ear simply because Steve Jobs thinks that keyboards and mice are now magically obsolete.

Secondly the "low power" trend is a limitation not an advantage. In an ideal world power consumption is not an overriding constraint that forces developers to limit their vision in order to accommodate arbitrary factors like battery life and process efficiency.

I'm not suggesting that these are irrelevant factors, nor that we should disregard them, merely that they are aspirations rather than qualifications.

Jan 3 Edit:

An interesting aside, it just occurred to me today that all this "low power" rhetoric is (whether it wants to or not) more than it seems. Thinking of everything in terms of power, influence, control; thinking of the last ten to twenty years as the beginning of a movement to democratize technology and to inversely technocratize democracy: low power represents a return the previous era, one where consumers were dependent on corporations for both services and content. True, it's not much different today, but for one exception.

Power. The average personal computer today has the processing power to perform exceedingly complex and meaningful calculations. This in turn empowers the consumer, effectively unlocking levels of individual human potential that was previously unattainable. The new paradigm is all about the "cloud", all about gigantic, inaccessible server farms storing and processing all our information. The power is being redirected, away from the consumer and back to the corporations.

Don't get me wrong, I see the potential for the cloud model. Clearly there are many advantages; distributed computing potentially grants access to even greater power, and universal accessibility is something that we all can appreciate. But, it's never that clear cut in real life, so I'm pointing out what we potentially sacrifice as well. Low power devices on their own are virtually useless. Without access to the cloud, 'low power' is exactly that: low power!

If everything goes to the cloud, there will be no going back. It's unclear if this is the ultimate goal of corporations like Apple and Google, to effectively separate consumers from direct access to powerful technology, or at the very least act as gatekeepers, but regardless it doesn't seem like there's much we can do about it aside from vote with our money. Personally I'd like it to be a choice, and I don't think that we're all best served by low power devices. So please think about what that choice entails and choose wisely.

Why I refuse to use CAPTCHA

2010-04-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know what CAPTCHA is, in short "a challenge question that can only easily be answered by a human, used to prevent access to a system by an automated program; typically a distorted image of letters and numbers that the user has to identify". Even if you'd never heard of CAPTCHA before today you've probably used it many times before, since it is utilized by virtually every top site on the internet. Excepting only a few high-profile malcontents, ~~4chan for example~~ (in July of 2010 4chan began to roll out CAPTCHA on most of its high-traffic boards - the end of an era? Update: Moot writes "It's a well known fact that I loathe CAPTCHA, but at this point it's better than the site being entirely engulfed in spam. We're trying to work a better solution out, but in the interim, this is the best solution. Thanks for understanding.").

Every day I get bogus comment spam on my most popular posts, I remove them all manually. And yes I do have the option to enable CAPTCHA for posts, and if I did it would most certainly prevent all but the most determined spammers. The down-side to CAPTCHA is that it forces people who post legitimate comments to prove that they're human. While this may seem like nothing more than a mild inconvenience to most people, I don't see it that way.

There's no need for preamble, spammers are sociopaths. Think that's too harsh? It's not. In fact if you were to measure the net damage caused by spammers over time, it would easily dwarf the damage caused by far more tangible threats. CAPTCHA is a sociopolitical response to an extreme minority of amoral human individuals that effectively punishes the entire internet. Additionally it wastes millions of hours every year.

This is wrong, not just morally but technologically as well. It's not enough that spammers are merely prevented from spamming, they need to be punished severely. Punishment that is only possible once a crime has been committed. Unfortunately the current architecture of the internet makes punishment nearly impossible, that however does not make CAPTCHA an acceptable solution. It never has been and it never will be.

The only acceptable solution is one that freely allows and yet ruthlessly penalizes abuse, directly and fairly, without involving third parties. If the internet isn't mature or advanced enough to operate according to these principles then it probably shouldn't exist at all.

Until the technology and philosophy catches up I'm not going to compromise by pretending that what spammers do can just be swept under the rug. And I'm certainly not going to enable some shitty, half-baked hack like CAPTCHA to do it for me. Because in the end spam isn't a technological problem, it's a human problem; one that should be solved by humans, not by technology.

HTML5 dynamically generated webpage thumbnails

2010-04-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

Note: The following code/script is not functional, it will not work in any known browser. It is merely a representation of what I think should be possible with HTML5.

First a little commentary on the technology involved: Although I primarily think of HTML as an API, it is probably best described as 'the greatest programming language ever devised'. CSS, JavaScript, flash, php, et al. are nothing more than shitty, supplementary hacks that have attempted to compensate for the glacial pace of HTML innovation (or lack thereof) imposed by the W3C on the internet at large.

While HTML does continue to evolve, it's hard to say if significant improvements are being made, given that the people who ultimately decide how it will function do not seem to understand what it has become, or where it should be going. Ideally HTML is nothing more than a concise reference manual for all these other abstract languages—a network of consistently formatted information interspersed with links to other content and tags that call and control functionality from universal libraries of low-level code.

What I've just described is a mature internet of the future, far from the awkward adolescent abortion we're all familiar with today. Imagine an internet were the following code would just work:

<object="image" function="thumbnail" target="index2.html" format="png" height="90" width="160" border="1px" link="index2.html">

This mythical "thumbnail" function that I've created is nothing more than a reference to low-level code that runs every time the page loads. Do I care what language that code is written in? No, of course not. All I care about is that it accomplishes the functionality I require in the most efficient way possible.

In this example the HTML works in the following way:

The "object" tag tells the browser to render an image on the page, the function tag instructs the browser to access the "thumbnail" function from the universal library, the low-level code transparently loads and renders the target "index2.html" as an inline 90px by 160px png image with a 1px border. If the user clicks on the thumbnail it activates the "link" taking them to that page.

Notice how the syntax is clearly articulated, each element is formatted in exactly the same way, each tag has equal authority and is able to run concurrently, this is built-in parallelism and eliminates the need for multiple nested arguments. This is just one example of how theoretical HTML should be formatted, and how it should work.

Fuckin' Magnets, How Do They Work?

2010-04-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog post is a lyrical line from the ICP (Insane Clown Posse) song off their latest album titled Miracles, as for the content of this post, it's probably not what you think it is.

Note, ~~this is absolute trivia, nothing deep, philosophical or particularly meaningful about it, just~~ something I found particularly amusing.

For whatever reason, this song provoked a huge reaction from the online "social" community, quickly escalating from virtually unknown to ubiquitous pop culture meme overnight. Naturally this popularity came equipt with no shortage of controversy. It seems that these days internet fame is directly proportional the the level of polarization any given piece of content can generate. So it should come as no surprise that lines like:

"Fuckin' Magnets, How Do They Work?" caught the collective attention of the internet hate machine.

Now this is where things get interesting. First I'd like to point out that this line is deceptively simplistic; the initial reaction is something along the lines of: It's obvious how magnets work, and only an idiot would be mystified by the functionality of magnets. Ironically, having this thought makes the person thinking it seem like a bigger idiot than the person who originally asked the question. Why? Because in reality there are two levels of understanding and comprehension when it comes to how magnets work.

1) Magnets generate a magnetic field, though invisible, magnetic fields clearly exist. Through the plainly observable phenomenon of attraction and repulsion it's painfully obvious how magnets "work".

2) What exactly is a magnetic field? The fact is, the scientific method has yet to reveal the exact cause of magnetic fields. In other words, no one really can say how magnets actually work.

Obviously the line in the song was in reference to the second question. A question that is entirely legitimate, and in no way overly simplistic or stupid. In fact, if you could answer it, you'd probably be the smartest living human being on earth.

I find that the typical, superficial response that people have to profound questions is clearly symptomatic of how the average person is unwilling (or unable) to analyze the natural world beyond the most circumstantial level. Which is probably the leading cause of the majority of problems faced by modern civilization.

How do magnets really work? Is a question on the same level as: Why are we fishing yellowfin tuna to extinction? The obvious answer is: Because we're unforgivably stupid and unbelievably greedy. But does that really explain the fundamental cultural malfeasance that results in psychotic—even suicidal levels of greed and stupidity? No it does not.

If we knew the answer to such questions, perhaps our culture wouldn't be so broken. These questions are primal, and probably more significant, and more worth answering, because of it. The reason they seem so painfully obvious is not because they are, but because the average person isn't even capable of comprehending what they imply, much less attempting to fully understand them.

Find email addresses in a Filemaker database

2010-04-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

This addresses a very specific problem, and provides an actual solution that will not require any extra work or complicated scripting. Store the email addresses exactly as they are, and find them literally and easily.

History

Filemaker is hard coded to recognize the "@" symbol as a single wildcard character, therefore when you have an email address e.g. example@example.com Filemaker does not view it as a string of neutral text, but rather as a complex find formula, e.g. example+wildcard+example.com — ironically the wildcard gamut does not include the @ symbol!

Problem

When searching for an email address in a Filemaker database, the result is "no records found", even when the email address IS actually in the database.

Solution

The following list of steps has only been tested with Filemaker 10, it may not be applicable to older versions. Although I'm assuming that as long as you are able to change the Storage indexing language to Unicode it will have the same effect.

File > Mange > Database
1) Select the field you are using to store email addresses.
2) Click on "Options" button.
3) Click on "Storage" tab.
4) Find "Default language" pulldown menu.
5) Pulldown and select "Unicode" (it's at the bottom of the list).
6) Click "OK" button, and you're done!

Now when you do a find for an email address, including the ubiquitous @ symbol, Filemaker will find it. Additionally when importing new records it is now possible to update existing records using the email address as a URI.

There is only one caveat to keep in mind, I have not verified it myself but supposedly changing the character set to Unicode will make the field case sensitive. Just something to keep in mind.

April 2 Edit: The case sensitivity is actually a bit problematic when dealing with large lists. Especially with email addresses, considering that lots of people (inexplicably) feel the need to capitalize parts of their email address, regardless of the fact that SMTP is case insensitive.

There is a relatively easy workaround for this as noted in the original post, namely forcing the field to convert all the characters to lowercase upon entry. The procedure is as follows:

File > Mange > Database

1) Select the field you are using to store email addresses.

2) Click on "Options" button.

3) Click on "Auto-Enter" tab.

4) Find and check "Calculated value" check-box.
5) Find and uncheck "Do not replace existing value for field (if any)" check-box.

6) Click on "Specify" button.

7) Enter the following into the field: Lower ( Email ).

With "Email" being the name of the field you are editing. For example, if your field is titled "Email Address" then your calculation would look like this: Lower ( Email Address ).

Does this cause other problems later on? Possibly, if one is using the email address as a URI for example. I will update this post with anything else I discover as I continue to manage my mailing list.

Solution courtesy of Howard Schlossberg via dbaspot.com

Node subnotebook design draft

2010-03-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Please see the definition for "subnotebook" here, if you are unclear on what the term means. Essentially it is a generalized formfactor for small computers ranging in scale from ultra portable devices like the Nintendo DS to modern netbooks like the Samsung GO.

Seems like forever since I actually designed something.. although perhaps the term "design" is too strong a word for what I do. Also this is more of a documentation than a design, since it was several months ago that I created the first 3D model for the following project.

As always I prefer the objective based design approach for industrial objects. Typically I start with a short list of detailed objectives, which are really more like qualifications that the device must be able to fulfill. Usually these qualifications are sorted from top to bottom, most important to least important.

1) Portability: Must be able to fit easily into a standard pocket, must be light enough to carry easily.

2) Connectivity: Must be able to connect to multiple networks including mesh, native 3G & wifi.

3) Versatility: Must be able to run standard operating systems and applications, support open formats.

4) Sustainability: Must utilize PV, dynamo for energy independence, non-hazardous, recyclable components and full life-cycle planning.

5) Durability: Must be built to last and thoroughly stress-tested.

These are the general qualifications for the device. More specific qualifications continue on a second list.

1) Compact form maximum dimensions: Length 180mm Width 110mm Height 80mm. Expanded form maximum dimensions: Length 180mm Width 220mm Height 40mm. Max weight 400g.

2) Networking should be intelligent and energy efficient. The preference being mesh, the device behaves as an anonymous node, all traffic is encrypted.

3) Android is the current preference, although any OS that supports open standards is acceptable. Key applications include: a full-featured web browser, a note-taking application, an ebook reader & GPS.

4) While some external charging is inevitable, the device should include solar panels on external faces for trickle charging, and a centralized dynamo for full manual charging. This ensures the device is truly portable.

5) A delicate balance is essential, vulnerable / heavy use aspects should be overbuilt, but in such a way that overall portability is not sacrificed.

My draft design of the node uses the following specifications:

Length 160mm Width 100mm (closed) Width 200mm (open) Height 40mm Weight 400g.

Much like the Nintendo DS and its variants, the node uses a dual display. However, unlike the DS, both screens are touch sensitive and much higher resolution.

To be amended.

How to loop a YouTube video indefinitely

2010-03-12T02:45:00.000-08:00

Been looking for a solution to this problem forever, finally got hold of the code today, it's surprisingly simple:

<object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E1WeAbSO33Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E1WeAbSO33Q&autoplay=1&loop=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object>

The above YouTube embed code shows the necessary modification (in green). Essentially you replace whatever code directly follows the unique video ID (in blue) with "&autoplay=1&loop=1" - this instructs the player to autoplay and then loop the video; the result is that it replays indefinitely. See bellow:

We could be living in paradise

2010-03-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

I already tweeted about this video, but I think it's so important and portentous that I feel the need to write a short blog post about it too. If you haven't already, please take the time to watch the following TED presentation. It is about a path to good living, sustainability and ultimately the survival of the human race:

I am left with a deep and profound sadness after watching this talk. My final thought being: humans do not choose hell, rather they are tricked into it. I am not a deeply religious person, but if I were, I think there are few things that could be considered more convincing, or supportive of their being such a thing as Satan, than the way in which civilization invariably takes the worst possible path out of countless possibilities for progress.

Statistically there is no escaping the conclusion that the human race has terrible judgement. That in and of itself is forgivable, what is not forgivable is a general and universal refusal to learn from past mistakes and choose a better future. Regrettably, and for reasons that escape the scholars of every age, our species seems to take pride in learning as slowly as humanly possible — even when the outcome is painfully obvious.

We could be living in paradise. Food for thought.

March 28, 2010 Edit: Please also watch the following documentary "Hope in a Changing Climate", it is even more informative and covers a broader scope of real-world case studies in China, Africa and around the world.

Most importantly this documentary shows with actual physical examples that it is possible to restore ecosystems that have essentially been destroyed by human ignorance. Not only returning them to full health and functionality, but simultaneously mitigating climate change, eliminating drought, famine, poverty, and restoring an environment of thriving biodiversity that is essential for our prosperity and well being.

iPad

2010-03-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

First you should know, I'm no fan of Apple, nor am I a detractor. I appreciate the routine agitation and pressure they impose on an otherwise moribund tech industry, but when it comes to their actual products, I'm not particularly impressed. Even when it comes to visual design (arguably Apple's forté), they are pretty hit-or-miss. Oddly enough some of their most impressive design experiments have been their biggest commercial failures; the G4 Cube comes to mind.

If Apple excels at anything, it is crafting a brilliant and mesmerizing image laced with mystique that becomes larger than life in the eyes of the public and tastes like ambrosia+heroin to the depraved attention whore that is the mainstream media. God only knows why some perfectly normal people find the need to delude themselves into thinking that Apple is the best and most innovative computer company ever to exist; furthermore taking it upon themselves to proselytise their friends and family to the Apple religion (whatever they happen to think that is).

I just watched this video on YouTube, it's the latest Apple iPad commercial (the one run during the Oscars) slowed down and then annotated with carping text comments and silly sound effects. I didn't care for it much, but it did get me thinking. Finally I came to realize what it is exactly that bothers me so much about the iPad. Ironically (at least for me), it has little or nothing to do with the product itself. Technical specifications, capabilities, subscription plans, shiny anodized aluminum shell, none of these really mean anything to me.

What bothers me about the iPad is that it does not represent the culmination of the collective aspirations of technology fanatics (like it pretends to), but rather it represents an arbitrary vision of what the future should be like, according to some people. The iPad attempts to tell me how to think and even feel about how new technology should be made, not from the perspective of the user/consumer, but from the perspective of the creator.

Should technology adapt to suit civilization, or should civilization adapt to suit technology? In our world both are common occurrence, but one is clearly preferable. The iPad is the worst of both. Not only is it supposed to change the world, it's supposed to change us too. Did we even ask for this? It's not even about what that change means, but rather that we supposedly don't have a choice. This is nothing new, the technology "ecosystem" has always been an oligarchy at heart; how else do you get billions of people to all do the same thing? But what if it's the wrong thing?

There's no doubt in my mind that the iPad will fail, and fail hard. Furthermore, things like the HP Slate and all other hapless "tablet" style computers are going to fail even harder. But that's not really the issue; this is the beginning of a traumatic technological identity crisis. The vision of the future that so many futurists have held so dear for so many years is finally going to collide head-on with reality. The reality that technology isn't an oligarchy any longer, it's a meritocracy now, no one can or will tell us how to think or what to expect. "Think different." Maybe thinking like other people isn't always a bad thing?

General Post Formatting Guidelines

2010-03-08T03:45:00.000-08:00

Posthumous edits
Red text in the following format: March 8, 2010 3:32 AM Edit: Details.

Subsections
Bold text without punctuation in the following format:

1) Apples are great

Fruit contains sugar.

If subsections contain further compartmentalization, numbers and letters are to be used:

1) Apples are great

Fruit contains sugar.

1A) Golden delicious

Contains more sugar than most.

Names
Titles will be italicized: The Longest Journey

Quotes
Quote marks will enclose text, gray #4: "The only thing to fear is bad formatting."

Annotations
Editorial remarks are fuchsia: To be honest, this hardly seems necessary.

Code
Snippets and scripts are green #4 Courier: Hello world, is a stupid thing to print.

TO BE AMENDED AS NEEDED

Attention - Through the Wire - 2010 [album review]

2010-03-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

I have a couple reasons for writing this review, the first one being that while at work, some of my coworkers listen to the Sherdog Radio Network pretty much all day every day. For those who don't know, this is a radio show that covers the UFC. I am not a UFC fan, but I do understand it and the appeal.

Not long ago they started to play these ads for the rock band Attention, every show. At first the ads were trying to sell the band's last album, then recently they began to advertise for "Through the Wire" their most recent, actually giving it away for free - literally no strings attached.

Get it here: http://attention.bandcamp.com/ you don't have to register or anything.

Regardless of their actual reasons for giving away their album, it seems like a pretty awesome thing to do, even if their music is total crap (which I'm not saying it is). Radiohead gave away their last album In Rainbows, and I thought it was so great that I rated it for personal listening as the "Best album 2007".

On a much broader philosophical note, I believe that art is something that should strive for commercialization immunity. It may sound naive or trite, but true art is an act of love, and that's something you can't put a price tag on. So ultimately the reason I'm writing a review of Attention's Through the Wire is because they've taken this next step into a bigger and better world, one where art is made freely available. I support that kind of thing.

Obsolete vernacular used in this post:

"Album" What does that word even mean? I know it started with records, but why? How is a vinyl disc in a cardboard sleeve and "album"? Photo album, now that makes sense, audio album, not so much.

"Track" Track, what like a racetrack? And the CD laser is like a little race horse running around the tra... Okay another total failure of semantics. At least it's better than the word "cut", I mean at what point does a song become a piece of meat?

"Band" Band, band, rubber band? A loop of something enclosing a group of musicians? Why not just say group? Once again, makes no sense at all.

Best song on the album? Subjectivity aside I think it'd be hard to pick a track that comes off sounding better than 07 "Ready to Pretend", the triumphant, soaring, yet downtempo and introspective chorus represents everything good I have to say about Attention and postmodern music in general.

Overall it's surprising, that for a self proclaimed "rock" band how sensitive and romantically absorbed most of the songs come across. My first impression is that it is a classic 'breakup album', every song seems to be about the protagonist's response to and journey through the emotional wasteland that follows a single or string of interpersonal relationships that go south. TBH I find this the strength of the album and not a weakness.

The central recurrent theme of a broken heart propels and illuminates each power ballad and postmodern anthem to new highs and lows. The lyrics are at times innovative, in general a good even mix of surprising originality and overly familiar pop/rock clichés. Technically the music and arrangement is above average for generic rock; compositions at times fall into the pattern of sounding like a patchwork of top 40 hits.

Clearly the band is well versed in contemporary rock/pop. However, just when you think you've heard this one before, Attention has the tendency to surprise you with a totally original riff or progression that electrifies an otherwise generic sounding track. It gives me the feeling that Attention is on their way to finding their unique voice and sound, but is not quite there yet. I think if they gave themselves more license to be experimental and take a few more creative risks, they might reach that next level they seem to be aiming for.

As for vocals, this is a tough one. The lead singer has a good if somewhat tenuous voice, I feel like something's missing, a duet with a slightly lower voice might fill in the blanks. Although it's hard to say if the band would actually benefit from a more solidified sound, since the way the vocals seem to be struggling, or being stretched too thin at times does in my opinion add something to the overall sound - enforcing the core themes, and suggesting a vulnerability that is both magnetic and exulting.

So, I give it 5.5 out of 10, definitely worth a listen or two.

Proximity based Informatics

2010-02-11T06:22:00.000-08:00

Working on something new. Since I'm still studying the semantic web, I've been doing a lot of thinking along the lines of how best to categorize information in the most meaningful way. While walking down the street the other day, I had an absolutely crazy idea. I was thinking about triples - more specifically I was analyzing their structure, trying to understand why they work so well. It suddenly occurred to me that triads are fundamentally a representation of volume; they are the smallest possible volumetric unit:

One item is a point.
Two items form a line.
But three items represent a volumetric structure that defines a domain.
Arguably the 4th dimension is of equal importance to the other 3, but let's ignore that for the time being.

Edit: for those who are confused by this statement, concerning volume vs. area. What I mean by my use of the word 'volumetric' is that a set of three coordinates X,Y,Z make it possible to plot or locate an item with certainty in volumetric space. I am not implying that three points create a volumetric object.

Why is this important? Well, what is the ultimate value of information? I would argue that discrete facts are absolutely meaningless. It's only if and when facts become members of a network that they acquire "meaning", a.k.a. relevance. So to answer the original question: Nothing. Information has no ultimate value, rather it is the network that has value. Not exactly news to me, but I was intrigued that I'd arrived at the same conclusion from an entirely different tangent.

So my next thought was: What are networks really? I would argue that networks are defined by the relational proximity of their members. What makes them meaningful are the connections. Networks are in a sense proximity incarnate. I then started thinking, purely as an intellectual exercise, what if all information was categorized and identified by proximity? What if instead of triples we used coordinates to store facts? Coordinates derived from their relational proximity to other facts. Organizing all information in the universe only in relation to other pieces of information!

This method goes way beyond the scope of conventional informatics, perhaps even entering the realm of physics. A network classified in such a way is really just an illustration of entropy, and other fundamental physical laws. Every cause has an effect, and there is really no such thing as discretion, the fact that we don't or can't see everything that happens, doesn't mean that it's not happening. However, we don't need to see everything, we only need to see enough to triangulate!

The larger the network grows, the clearer it becomes in its entirety. Until eventually it becomes possible to predict virtually anything based solely on the connected empirical information. This is nothing less than the actual mechanics of the organic formation of the current body of all human knowledge, including the method by which it grows and is utilized; only in a far less abstract and unconnected (disconnected?) form.

I may add to this post in the future.

Dreamtime - Wolveswood

2010-02-07T16:36:00.000-08:00

I have a recurrent dream, it is about a 200 acre forest that surrounds the house where I grew up. When I was young I used to play in this forest. It is an unusual place, what remains of it anyway, what parts of it have escaped the relentless encroachment of "civilization". I used to imagine that it was analogous to the Old Forest from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. I suppose it's a reflection of my psyche, but there is something deeply symbolic to me about this kind of environment. I can't put my finger on it exactly, I can only speculate and postulate.

The character of this 200 acre wood it somewhat unique, I am not clear on the circumstances, but in essence it is a zombie forest. All the trees are dead or dying, yet they still manage to stand. The overall effect and atmosphere is quite dramatic, eerie. It is also a very old wood, at least 100 years in the modern age, and who knows how many more before. And you can feel it, like walking into an old wardrobe full of molting fur coats from the 19th century. It is an impressive and profound sense of the passage and weight of time. It is trying to crush the last few defiant tendrils of life out of that place, but the trees are simply too tall and thick and old. In death they have managed to transcended time itself.

It is like a graveyard, and they are like tombstones. Amidst all this oppressive death, life goes on. There is always the undergrowth, the kind that grows in dark, rotting holes. Mushrooms abound, lichens, molds, never-ending beards of chartreuse moss. In this forest the trees really do have ears, some as big as dinner plates. There are animals too, but they make themselves scarce, always they are just passing through, and quickly. Because just like you or I, they instinctively sense that there is something very wrong with this place. For me this feeling manifested as a singular idea, that somewhere in the darkest black heart of the wood there lived a monster.

Another purely symbolic construct of my juvenile imagination. This creature, whatever it happened to be, was both the personification of the decay, and its source. Like an ecological vampire, it was killing the forest to sustain its own life. Over the years this lusus naturae took many forms, but never fully solidified or congealed into a concrete form. The closest it ever came was one particular dream where I was being chased through the wood by cyclopean wolves formed from the very shadows. These beasts were a typical mix of ephemeral insubstantiality and tangible destructive power, capable of biting through 40 foot tree trunks as if they were matchwood and then disappearing into black mist.

A pack of these monsters could split and merge as easily as flowing water, shifting seamlessly from a pair of dogs to a single colossal airborne demon that tore through the old growth like a black hurricane. It was only until later on in the dream that I discovered a small cabin containing a magical stone capable of keeping them at bay.

--

The dream I had this morning was quite subtle and mature by comparison, even going so far as to mock me with the inclusion of a lupine motif. It started as these dreams always do, with the wood. I was with a party, there were three or four of us all together. We had just entered the wood, our objective (whatever is was) was on the other side. We only needed to cross through, as quickly as possible. It was not expected to be a treacherous crossing, nor was this the first time for us. It was well known that there was but one obstacle in this particular arena. Situated in the middle of the forest, along one particularly narrow stretch, there was a large woodsman's lodge; in this cabin lived a powerful sorcerer and three witches, one of which was his daughter.

It only took a few minutes to reach the outskirts of the clearing that marked the woodsman's domain. We tried to keep behind the thin line of massive redwoods that rimmed the very edge of a steep incline, but it was no use. Something had changed since the last time we'd come this way, an enchantment had been placed in our path. The cabin had two large windows that faced us, they were placed on the smaller middle section of the lodge that bridged the much larger living space and the more traditional woodsman's cabin located on the opposite end. The central section was clearly the kitchen, we could all see inside although it was a low angle and I could just make out a table and chairs, there was an inviting glow coming from these windows, even in the middle of the day.

Suddenly I realized that dusk had fallen, the spell had taken full effect, we were drawing ever closer to the windows and the imminent danger of the cabin. We were powerless to resist the pull of that enchanting glow, now I could see two figures distinctly, two of the three witches. They looked nothing like I had expected. One was only in her underwear but facing away from the window, the other was wearing an airy white gown; each held in her hand a glowing golden hairbrush. The remarkable thing was that they were not repugnant old crones, but rather strikingly beautiful young women. It was at this moment that something discontinuous caught my attention, nearly snapping me out of my trance.

Three massive black trees that I'd somehow failed to notice until now, growing out behind the woodsman's cabin. Something was very wrong with these trees, their roots were not fully in the ground, in fact it looked as though they had been trying to free themselves from their terrestrial coil. As we moved ever closer to our doom, I could make out the particular shape of the roots, as they were intricately interwoven and split dramatically down the middle. As if sculpted by some twisted horticultural genius they perfectly formed the head of a wolf, jaws open wide, fangs bared, biting into the earth.

The spell reasserting itself I became distracted once again by the spectacle transpiring through the windows. The two witches had drawn closer, we were now on a lower level and able to see directly into the cabin. The witch in underwear sat down cross legged on the floor, the other witch knelt down in front of her, whatever they were doing it felt very ritualistic, possibly threatening, the atmosphere became very tense. Then unexpectedly the two women embraced, and each with her free hand, began to brush her companion's hair, they were both smiling.

I thanked the gods that they were distracted, undoubtedly if they had noticed us, not far away now, we would have all been struck dead in an instant. A pang of terror raced through my body as I noticed through the window, the third witch entering the kitchen from the adjacent room. She walked to the window and looked directly at us. I expected the worst, but she only glared briefly in our direction before disappearing into the other end of the lodge. The back door of the woodsman's cabin opened, the third witch stepped out and beckoned to us. Not that we had any choice.

Once again I was surprised, she was just a young girl, probably twelve or thirteen. As we approached the back porch, still unable to move of our own free will, I overheard one of my companions say "If the sorcerer learns of us we're finished, he killed four men with a summoned gale even after they made it to the other side." We ascended the short staircase up to the porch, the girl appraised us with a highly cynical gaze. "Please just let us go." I pleaded. "We're just passing through. We don't mean any harm." She seemed to consider this before speaking, her face softening somewhat. "I will go to my father and try to convince him to spare your lives." She waved her hand, releasing us from the spell before turning and disappearing back into the house.

"No, wait, please don't tell him that we're here!" I said as loudly as possible without shouting for fear of alerting the other witches, but she ignored me completely, closing the door behind her with a wave of her hand. "We're free!" One of my companions hissed. "Let's get as far away from here as we can!" I nodded, and in moments we were running down the steps and back into the forest, but probably not to safety.

Then I woke up..

Reading: Programming the Semantic Web by O'REILLY [book]

2010-01-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

Introduction: I first became aware of the basic semantic web concept somewhere in late 2007, at the time I was intrigued by the idea, but it seemed, I remember, an idea that was far too immature for world wide adoption. In short the semantic web is "an evolutionary stage of the World Wide Web in which automated software can store, exchange, and use machine-readable information distributed throughout the Web, in turn enabling users to deal with the information with greater efficiency and certainty." quote via wikipeda.

These are mainly my notes, jotted down as I read through the book.

First impressions: As I read the first couple of chapters I am once again reminded that programmers should never be allowed to design anything (not to be taken literally!). Through no fault of their own, they invariably establish syntax for new standards that are derived from preexisting esoteric languages, that quite frankly are horrific design abortions.

The result is new syntax that spawns yet another generation of reinterpreted flaws and clandestine idiosyncrasies, ultimately baring mainstream usability (and by mainstream I really mean it). This is fundamentally a failure to communicate, something that seems profoundly ironic when applied to a set of standards specifically designed to articulate and express meaning.

RDF: As I read further I experience the nagging sensation of a burgeoning genius building and building, only to be stamped down again at the last possible second. URIs for example. A perfectly brilliant idea, only utterly ruined by an idiotic legacy (nostalgia IMO) attachment to http, which incidentally should have gone the way of the dodo sometime in the last decade. Seriously, "http://" that's SEVEN characters! "http://www." is ELEVEN!! Eleven characters that mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside the W3C.. Sure we've been using http and www for years, a lot of people even know what they stand for, but there is nothing utilitarian or meaningful about an essentially random string of characters ("The choice of a colon as separator of the prefix from the rest of the URI was arbitrary." - Tim Berners-Lee). World Wide Web? Hypertext Transfer Protocol? It's not even a proper acronym. Remember, semantic means meaning, semantic is meaning.

Triples: Quotes AND commas? Ever seen a typical triple? Here's an example: ("the sky", "has the color", "blue"). The basic concept once again is brilliant; use a strictly formatted bite-sized 3 piece block of information as a universal basis for all data storage and networking. Then ruin it by adding additional superfluous rules that hopelessly complicate an otherwise elegant and concise structure :/

Underscores "_" are one of the worst typographic inventions of all time and should NEVER be used in syntax, TBH they should be eliminated from the global characters set. Why? Because they disappear when you underline them, e.g. links. Here is an example, these two identical phrases are both links, one uses spaces to separate the words, the other uses underscores:

programmers can't typography - programmers_can't_typography.

If you didn't know, you couldn't tell them apart.

January 24 edit: A few things that I think programmers really get wrong when they are allocating common characters for new 'language' syntax:

1) Pretending that common characters have no inherent semantic value beyond their general classifications, e.g. number vs. letter vs. punctuation. Brackets for example are often chosen arbitrarily "[" angle bracket might be used for one function while "{" curly bracket might be used for another. While the two functions are most likely related in some abstract way, very rarely is any consideration put into the inherent meaning represented by the structural differences between the two brackets.

Hence the sub-type of bracket is applied arbitrarily to each function that requires bracketing as its semantic basis. These are not just random symbols, they have a rich history and a very practical and often specialized application; all too often this arbitrary reassignment completely strips them of their inherent meaning, breaking the intuitive link between visual design and intent. The result is an utterly unintelligible programming language.

2) Spur-of-the-moment references or reductions that are ultimately destined to become common use terms (statistically popular) syntax. Most often these references are made notable through their semantic obscurity. Here are a few examples: "src", "href", "rel", "rev". What do these terms mean? Absolutely nothing unless you already know. They are new opaque words, invented exclusively to represent larger preexisting terms that mean the same thing.

This is a fundamental failing of the language architecture and the infrastructure that interprets it. HREF for example apparently represents "hypertext reference" -- in retrospect it would have made much more sense to use the original term rather than a new word that has no obvious semantic connection to its function. What prevents this? Coders not wanting to type in excessively long strings of text (bad idea anyway since it leads to more errors). Does not scale due to excessive data overhead. Arbitrary limits placed on interpreters, and preexisting syntax that reads as a false positive. Just to name a few.

Clearly it's the overall model that's unsustainable, not the use of natural language. Coders shouldn't have to type anything, that eliminates the majority of errors. Even reference based syntax is not going to scale past a certain point. Arbitrary limits are insane, interpreters are strict to a fault. Preexisting syntax and false positives just prove that your language is a structural failure (surprise, it's not a feature!). On a pure machine level none of this matters -- syntax semantics represent a painful compromise between static binary absolutes and the full-blown subjectivity that is our ever-evolving written language.

Moving on.. I'm beginning to formulate a more holistic analysis of the semantic web. So far I've learned that everything we thought we knew about organizing information was wrong; the last five or six decades spent constructing an informational Tower of Babel was a broken model. So we've gone back to square one, the new model will make diversity and decentralization its foundation -- analogous to covering the earth with trillions of tiny towers, each connected to every other. The only thing connecting the old world to the new being a theoretically universal method of subconscious self-organization.

But once again, it does nothing by itself aside from sit there and look mighty fancy, meaning only emerges when we create queries of equal or greater complexity to the sum of all human knowledge.

TO BE CONTINUED (as I read)

Second Life is chronically misunderstood by mainstream journalism

2010-01-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

pcpro.co.uk poses the question: Whatever happened to Second Life?

What follows in the article is a textbook example of how expectations can define experience, and more specifically when it comes to Second Life how clueless "analysts" love to transcribe their uninformed opinions into four page articles espousing the ultimate pointlessness of virtual worlds. In defense of first impressions; it's hard to write off such accusations, especially when you agree with them yourself.

The idea of living a "second life" in a virtual world is for lack of a better word, pointless. Of course people are entitled to live however they see fit, furthermore it becomes philosophically treacherous to unconditionally condemn a virtual environment that does nothing more than attempt to simulate real life; implying that perhaps real life itself is in fact pointless (which it very well may be). BUT..

What nine out of ten journalists exploring Second Life fail to realize is that there is no predefined user experience. Therefore all conjecture concerning what one can or cannot, should or should not do is simply one point of view, nothing more and nothing less, and should never be confused with the scale and scope of what is possible.

For example, it's possible to use SL exclusively as a collaborative 3D modeling medium for designing, scripting and testing prototypes of various objects, real or imagined. This is a very pragmatic application and can prove very beneficial to the real world. I've also experienced in-world fundraisers that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in real-world money for real-world causes.

The suggestion that the objective of joining SL is to create a literal 'second life' is simply wrong. Once again, it's fairly easy to see why people with no former experience in virtual worlds might get that impression. SL is frequently promoted and even marketed to new users as some kind of lifestyle replacement. Probably because its ultimate goal is to make money for Linden Labs; naturally they try to sell it in such a way that residents are encouraged to invest financially in the virtual economy.

In reality the opposite is true, the real goal of joining SL is whatever you want it to be, keep in mind I'm only speaking from personal experience, but having participated in Second Life for almost five years now, I think I can claim at least a little credibility. Most of the people I've interacted with in-world are not even remotely interested in living a second life, and yes they do have real lives outside of SL.

If I had to make a list of prioritized activities I've witnessed most often it would look something like this:

>> Socialization: Residents love to socialize, using text chat, voice and other methods of non verbal communication to establish relationships, discuss anything and everything. Sure there is occasional roleplaying, cybersex, etc. but that's mainly just for fun and not the norm.

>> Exchange: Communicating naturally leads to sharing. Since you can create virtually anything you can imagine in SL there is never a shortage of new and interesting things being made and exchanged between residents. True, the majority of these creations are low quality, they also frequently do nothing more than mimic real-world artifacts. However it's not unusual to see something equally fantastic and original.

>> Building: The most interesting places to explore are the public sandboxes. These are the areas specifically designated for building. They are always cluttered with residents creating or playing with new things. You just never know what you might see, and it's fascinating to watch someone building something right before your eyes. And if you happen to be the creative type, you can even make something yourself!

>> Exploring: Sadly this is primarily a solitary activity, mainly because SL is so vast. You can literally fly for days over the ever-evolving landscape and never see the same thing twice. There are many semi-official "POI" (point of interest) areas in SL, but to be honest they're all pretty boring in comparison to the normal chaos generated by other residents. Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes the perfect build, and since there are virtually no regulations, there are no limits to what people will attempt to construct.

>> Scene: Ironically the most widely hyped activities are the least interesting. Dance clubs, sex clubs, casinos (yes they still exist), malls, stores, boutiques, city recreations, "mini-games" all of the so called "hot-spots" are actually fairly lame. Naturally these are just the kind of places that new residents are expected to gravitate towards; effectively warping their first impressions of SL, and disillusioning those who depend on the 'guided tour' approach to virtual world orientation.

In reality they're little more than representatives of the predictable sociological pond scum that surfaces in any society; floating to the top of the faux economy and consequently obscuring the deeper and far more meaningful undercurrents that only become apparent after you've rejected the status quo and decided to dive below, and engage Second Life on your own terms. Surprise, just like real life.

Game Log 2009 Retrospective

2010-01-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

Most recently played, in chronological order:

Far Cry 2
Plain awesome, I can't really find anything to criticize, without a doubt one of the greatest FPS to date.

Zeno Clash
Awesome game bursting with originality, so much to love, but felt way too short. My first "brawler".

Fallout 3
Conceptually impressive, but lacked follow-through (ending sucked, spoiler: you die). Also there was very little incentive to complete the countless side quests. All Bethesda / BioWare collaborative RPGs suffer from the same disease; absurdly expansive worlds that are far too bland and homogeneous to bother fully exploring.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
Probably the most beautiful ARPG ever created, yet failed to advance the franchise in any meaningful way.

Red Faction: Guerrilla
My pick for top game of 2009, my review is here.

Saint's Row 2
Even though I tend to despise 'gangster' culture, this game took me by surprise; a phenomenally detailed piece of work. I also love how Volition likes to make insider references to their other games.

Borderlands
Incredibly addictive, but replayability drops to near zero after you "beat" it. Also ~~the DLC is pitiful~~. March 1 2010 Edit: Borderlands features the following DLC:
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (Released Nov. 24th 2009) OK, but much shorter than expected.
Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (Released Jan. 7th 2010) Pretty lame and way too challenging.
The Secret Armory of General Knoxx‎ (Released Feb. 25th 2010) Holy shit! It's like a whole new game. Seriously I think I like this DLC better than the initial release of the game itself.

Mass Effect
Made me rage. Agonizingly typical mainstream sic-fi plotline with rampant colonialist xenophobia, 2D characters, BS physics, tedious multilateral micromanagement.. etc. A triumph of over-bred mediocrity.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Not quite as great as Escape from Butcher Bay, but still an extremely enjoyable.

Defense Grid: The Awakening
Very fun 'tower defense' type game. The UI is unnecessarily clunky, among other things.

Dead Space
So far seems awesome, not at all what I expected. Not big on horror genre, even though I played Doom 3 and all the Quake games. This one stands out though, reads as an "adult" game for a mature audience. Finished it Jan 10; this game really is excellent and fairly original. I kept thinking the whole time how much it reminded me of a modern/reimagined version of System Shock 2, which is really high praise. My one point of criticism would be the general lack of diversity in the 'monsters', since there are only 3 or 4 different types that you encounter routinely.

Indigo Prophecy
Worst control system I've ever experienced, completely ruins the game. May have something to do with it being a console port. Good job David Cage!

Crysis Warhead
Obviously not as extensive as Crysis, but still worth playing. LOL @ the last few cut-scenes (very awkward cinematography), must have switched directors or something.

Will add further details when time allows.

RFC9000

2010-01-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

Status of this Memo
This memo is a proposed Intergalactic Standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice
Made Public Domain as of January 01, 2010

Abstract
This memo contains the specification for a future-proof next-generation "naming" convention that can be used by anyone to uniquely identify all entities in the known universe, regardless of quantity or scale, now and forever.

Rationale and Scope
UUID/GUID (RFC4122) is unnecessarily complex and abstract for an intergalactic naming convention. The ultimate purpose of RFC9000 is to provide one uniform straightforward standard for all identification purposes. Consequently it is designed to replace all currently existent systems and schemes used for identification purposes. Including but not limited to UUID, GUID, URI, URL, URN, IP, SSN, UPC, ISBN, etc.

Specification
ASCII Character set ALPHA limited, letters A-Z (RFC 4234) EXCLUDING lowercase letters, utilized as a base-26 hexavigesimal numeral system.

"Base-26 may be represented using only letters of the Latin alphabet. As there are 26 letters in English, base-26 is also the highest base in which this is possible and hence utilizes every letter. 0 is represented by A, 1 = B, 2 = C ... 24 = Y, 25 = Z. Some examples: 26 = BA, 678 = BAC." via wikipedia.

ABCDEFGHIJ K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
0123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Qualifications
No division, subdivision or subclassification, each name is entirely nonspecific aside from a unique combination of characters and means nothing aside from what it is assigned to. Put another way, names by themselves do not imply any kind of classification.

Names are assigned based on their uniqueness and nothing else.

Names are 13 characters in length. e.g. OYCBILQAEKNPX. That's 2.4 x 10^18 roughly 2 quintillion (2 billion billion) possible combinations (please correct me if I'm wrong, mathematics is not my strong suite).

All names are recorded in a decentralized database, database name is AAAAAAAAAAAAA (A13/0), dial zero for operator ;).

If a single name describes a selection of entities, all unique entities within the group must have assigned names.

Visualization #1

2009-11-27T04:31:00.000-08:00

Before you lies a immense green expanse, like an inverse desert, as far as the eye can see nothing but verdant dunes of grass, as fine as human hair, as short as the bristles of a brush. The gentle sloping acclivities are as subtle and as shapely as the body of a reposing woman, as wide as an ocean.

This veridian vision is only disturbed by the striking violation of a distant black silhouette; although it rises from the festucine apogee of a hill many miles away, it dominates the horizon, like a dramatic rift in the very fabric of space itself. It seems to rise above the world, towering into the stainless cerulean void. For a moment you imagine that the scene is an illusion, you are standing on your head, watching helplessly as subaqueous ink floods outward from a fissure in the earth. As the ink spreads ever downward it diffuses into the heavens, darkening the sky to the very edge of the atmosphere.

Entranced, you begin to move closer. Barefoot the spongy grama beneath your feet seems to propel you forward. With each consecutive step the monumental bole of the shadowy edifice expands in your field of view. The surrounding greenery seems to shrink, becoming little more than two narrow bars of shimmering emerald, flanking the cool darkness.

For the first time you are able to recognize the true nature of the adumbration, for it is atramentous no longer. The perturbationous bark of the giant tree is a rich golden-brown, glowing yet deeply etched with shocking slashes of self-inflicted shade. You realize that at the current scale, you could easily slip inside any of these umbra chasms, disappearing forever. But there is no way to get that close. The protuberant roots that surround the promontory column are each as tall and wide as a train.

Gradually your eyes adjust to the dusk-like depths of the tree's shadow, looking up is an illuminating experience. The tree no longer appears dark at all, but rather radiant, each bough is ringed with countless smaller branches, each in turn festooned with glowing golden leaves. All except for one. A single branch stands out in striking contrast, its bark seems to have gone grey, its leaves look almost white, shriveled and weak. For reasons you cannot identify, this sight is deeply disturbing. This lone branch is like an incarnation of that one diseased and dying thing in your otherwise perfect world.

It does not take you very long to locate the cause of the apparent atrophy. Not far beyond the base of the branch is the beginning of a knotted rope, a fantastical rope. Perhaps this land was once populated by a race of giants, that is the first thought that races through your mind, as you gaze up at the length of crude hemp cable that hangs from the branch, it is easily twice as thick as your body. Although it still appears as little more than a piece of string in comparison to the branch itself.

There is an evident injustice to the situation. It is obvious that the rope was tied around the branch when the tree was still young. In the uncountable number of days that followed, the branch grew in length and girth while the rope remained more or less the same size, becoming ever more constricting as the days passed by; biting ruthlessly into the bark. Whoever had originally tied the rope was long gone. They never would have anticipated that the casual act of tying a rope around a branch could have killed it later on in life.

Just when you are beginning to feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and frustration, you notice something else that you'd missed. There is a second line, running parallel to the rope, but unlike the indolent cord, this wavering strand is.. alive! At first you mistake it for a trickle of water, it glints and shimmers in the light, reflecting trace elements of blue and white. Following it downward, you can clearly make out where it disappears behind one of the large roots not far from your present location.

It takes less than a minute to reach the alcove, and there they are, the last thing you had expected to see. Ants, but unlike anything you'd find in an entomologist's handbook. For one thing they are sky-blue, for another they are as large and lithe as mountain lions. Persistently they march in single-file, in perfect formation, apparently ignorant of the laws of nature, specifically gravity, as they step seamlessly from ground to trunk of tree and ever upward; until they at last appear nothing more than a pale blue line scrawled on the massive bole.

You watch with fascination, fathoming that there must be some meaning to this mysterious and solemn parade. Straining your eyes it becomes possible to make out their ultimate destination. They have just reached the rope, they are swarming on the knot, it is vast, it will take many more to cover it. After watching for several minutes it becomes possible to speculate as to certain details. Although the scene is still very far away, you assume that the bright flashes are their highly-polished bone-white mandibles opening and closing rhythmically. This speculation is confirmed moments later by a steady precipitation of rough fibers drifting down from the upper reaches.

They are chewing through the rope, they are gnawing the knot apart, one strand at a time. Meanwhile the ants are still filing by, there must be thousands. For the first time it occurs to you to look behind, to where all the ants are coming from. The line is long, it winds back down the hill, up and over another, off into the distance where you can just make out the rise of a small inverted funnel. The anthill, they are rising from the depths of the earth.

Returning your gaze to the rope you notice that not only has the knot been entirely concealed under the writhing mass of innumerable ants, the rest of the dangling cable is starting to show signs of their industry as well. The steady shower of fibers has become a veritable downpour, fragments of hemp are piling up around the nearby roots, forming tenuous fluffy dunes. The rope is beginning to unravel, you can see it clearly even from this distance. Long strands are breaking loose, twisting and spiraling outward, the ants miraculously maintaining their footing while continuing to chew and snip and chomp with unbridled ferocity.

There is a swelling, building sensation rising up inside you, a feeling of pure elation. The rope is being unmade, the branch will soon be released, these wondrous ants have come for no other reason. You cannot imagine what motivates them, or even how they knew, but that doesn't really matter. All that matters is the loud echoing snap of strings, as each is methodically severed. The knot has unfolded like a flower, swollen to several times its original size, there can't be much of it left underneath. The rest of the rope has been eroded into a few errant strands, now so slight that they blow carelessly in the light breeze that surrounds the mighty tree.

With one final triumphant crack what's left of the rope falls away, slithering out of sight into the dark chasm between two roots. The branch seems to shudder with relief, almost immediately the leaves appear to flush with the amber vibrancy of their peers, drooping tips curl upwards as if embracing the air. It will of course take time for the branch to fully recover, but it is clearly on the mend. The ants begin their long descent. One by one they return to earth, filing away into the distance, back into the ground, glossy sky-blue bodies trundling out of sight.