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January 31, 2006
Oh my gods, please let this not be true.
AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Fear That Kills
The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview.It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.
American Soldiers were raping other American soldiers, and the victims felt they had no recourse save risking death? This is exactly what happens when you condone torture; the basic humanity gets stripped away from those doing the assaulting; the begin to see everyone as merely walking meat. We need to end this...
Posted by Andrew at 01:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Google Linux. For reals yo
Google at work on desktop Linux | The Register
Um, are they nuts?
Posted by Andrew at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Grand idiocy Legal
Imagine you’re a game maker. You have this fabulously complex world, built on fabulously complex code. You decide that your game would be improved by having a character try to get laid. The system you come up with turns out not to be much fun, and so you cut that part of the game...
Now, because that code is so fabulously complex, you don’t cut the code itself, (which might inadvertently damage other parts of the code) you just cut all the links to it. The game is still there, it’s just inaccessible to the player. Well, players are smart. Some of them are desperate for any kind of sexual gratification. And if hacking the game to reestablish those links is what is necessary to get their character (and them) pseudo-laid, well, that’s just what they’ll do. It’s not like porn is available on the internet or anything...
So, hackers hack the game, and make programs that allow others to hack the game. And then some people realize that OMG, this game about cop-killing has consensual sex!, and a higher rating gets slapped onto the game. (All of this leads me to think Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick! What the fuck is wrong with you people? The game is called Grand Theft fucking Auto! Why is this not enough to get your ire up? Why is the inclusion of consensual sex with the non-consensual murder so bad? but no one asks me)
Even that isn’t good enough for the city of Los Angeles: The city is now claiming that the makers of the game “hid” the code, and that by not being forthcoming about the mini-game (game inside the game) they were able to stealthily obtain a more permissive rating than they otherwise would have. Which might be true— were it not completely wrong...
Gamers hacked the program to insert code that the company did not include. This is what allowed teh sex to exist within the game. It is, in fact, illegal for the gamers to do this; but we don’t see anyone going after them. Instead the company is being sued for failing to disclose to anyone that sex was possible in the game...
And what really compounds my annoyance about this whole thing: This article in SCI-Tech magazine which seems to completely misunderstand the nature of gaming and also the nature of journalism. There isn’t even a single line in the article which would be out of place in a DA’s office press-release...
Some day when the boomers are dead, and my generation is the one which writes the news, we will be able to have an honest and realistic look at the roll of games in our culture. Until that day, however, we are going to have to suffer this bullshit...
Posted by Andrew at 01:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
How a president makes the law
If you’ve ever wondered how the president makes a law, or if he can eat a baby, the answer is just
one click away...
Posted by Andrew at 01:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 30, 2006
Ohh! Good line!
Perhaps it’s a bit conventional for me to prefer “8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”, but can you name the author and book?
Also, is it just me, or is #1 a book who’s pages ought never again see either light of either day or florescence?
Which have you read?
Posted by Andrew at 01:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 27, 2006
Risk architecture
A recent study tells us that men who do well on a short quiz tend to enjoy risk more than others. On the other wrist, women who do well tend to enjoy risk less. So, how’d you do?
1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?2) If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?
The test measures not just the ability to solve math problems but the willingness to reflect on and check your answers. (Scores have a 0.44 correlation with math SAT scores, where 1.00 would be exact.) The questions all have intuitive answers — wrong ones.
As it happens, I got all 3 correct. And my taste for risk is low...
(Full article and answers at the NY Times)
Posted by Andrew at 11:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 25, 2006
Another new planet found
New planet discovered in Milky Way | CNET News.com
Posted by Andrew at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2006
The coolest kids on the block
BBspot - Geek Parents Using Cooling Technology Instead of Medicine to Lower Fevers
Posted by Andrew at 02:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 23, 2006
Priorities and politics
The questions of politics, as in economics, concern us with dealing with limitless wants and limited resources. Classically, we want infinite amounts of both Guns and butter. And also classically, our main political parties spend their time arguing over which is more important. The only way to get both (another aircraft carrier and more Pell grants) is to expand the economy...
On a slightly different note, it’s fair to say that most Americans would like, in the abstract, to topple each and every evil regime in the world. That’s what we, as Americans, want. We don’t seem to be willing to give up much butter to get it, though...
Right now, we’re engaged in a debate over the ugly, terrifying Iranian regime. Ought we go into Iran and grant freedom to the Iranians by smashing their theocratic rulers? Adding urgency to this discussion is the terrifying fact that Iran both wants and is capable of building nuclear weapons...
Were this a video game, we could simply go into “editor” mode, give ourselves another million troops, and tromp on in. In real life, however, we are limited to the resources we have on hand. The biggest limitation, in fact, is that we simply don’t have enough soldiers to take and hold Iran...
It isn’t that we can’t take the country. Iran would fall as quickly as Iraq did. What would be difficult is the occupation. See, there are “force multipliers” that can be employed in warfare. Helicopters, tanks, bullet-proof vests, night vision goggles; all these things make a soldier more effective than he would be without them. But occupation is a different beast. It requires soldiers on the ground, mixing with the people, figuring out their problems, and solving them. There are some force multipliers available to police, but not enough. And nothing we have for occupation duty is as effective as the arsenal we have for the invasion...
To solve that problem, we need sheer numbers. Numbers we don’t have. Our army is stretched to the breaking point. Indeed, we have so few soldiers that we are willing to take the worst scorers, the ones most unfit. This is having negative consequences...
Right now, we have major commitments on the Korean peninsula, in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps it is ironic that our current commitments so closely resemble the fault-lines of the cold war, and yet each commitment represents one we have freely chosen. To abandon any of them would lead to bloodbath. Until we can solve the manpower problem, we simply cannot afford to invade Iran...
Posted by Andrew at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2006
Her body, Damnit!
Mr. Soapy makes a good point
here about the rights of fathers:
There's the question of men and choice. Currently, a man who fathers a child does not have an equal say on whether the baby is carried to term or not. There have been arguments floated that offer men a "choice." That "choice" is whether or not to financially support the mother and the child if the mother chooses to keep the child. While I don't think "financial choice" is a good option, I do think abortion right advocates and those who support reproductive choice (like me!) need to be more inclusive when it comes to fathers than they currently are. Using language like "It's a choice between a woman and her doctor" does more to drive men into the anti-choice camp by excluding them from the pregnancy.
Now, as it happens, I respect Mr. Soapy quite a bit. And he is absolute correct about the likely effect of being excluded from the parenting choice has on men. I even tend to think that men have some rights over the disposition of the fetus. Indeed, that fetus has some right over the disposition of itself. However, and this is the critical part, as long as we believe that each woman a thinking and sentient individual, we must also grant her lexical priority* over her body. No matter what or has claims over a woman’s she herself has prior claims over her body...
Lexical priority is the order words are in the dictionary. Each letter of the dictionary has "lexical priority" over the letter after it. SZ _always_ comes before TAA. No matter how many "A"s get added to the T, SZ will always be first...
Posted by Andrew at 10:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 21, 2006
An audience of 2
This one is for people living in my old hometown. If Pombo is your rep, you need to vote against him. Seriously, a trained an untrained monkey would do less damage than this fool. Please take a look...
Update:
What? I just want to make super-dooper sure that there are no italics...
Posted by Andrew at 11:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 19, 2006
Great moments in Theology
But the soft sell can easily seem like subterfuge. I, for one, want to know when a friend hopes I'll become a Christian (just as he should know that I am trying to make him a fan of American Idol).
Posted by Andrew at 04:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We must be winning
Osama is offering a truce...
The thing is, this is a war of competing ideologies. We believe in the individual’s own right to choose. They believe that right to be sharply curtailed by the will of God. Now, if they wish to unilaterally disarm, by all means. I would be more than happy if this were settled the same way we settled the Cold War...
Even if we did that, however, bin Laden and his lieutenants are still responsible for mass murder. We simply can’t give the hunt for them until they have been caught, convicted and executed...
Posted by Andrew at 10:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Future of computing.
See, the thing is: the cell phone is already as compact as it’s going to get. But we want more features from it. Interface becomes the limiting factor. Something like this pen
is the way we’re pretty much going to have to go...
Posted by Andrew at 12:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 18, 2006
Seen on campus
Gods! Is everything about sex to these people?
Posted by Andrew at 07:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Just a day in the life
A Day in the Life of Prime Minister Tony Blair - Google Video
Posted by Andrew at 04:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 17, 2006
The cost of racism
If you believe, as I do, that "all men are created equal", you also believe that so-called "race" is merely a social construct, and utterly meaningless.
This pernicious believe has a high toll; imagine a middle east with neither "Palestinians" nor "Israelis" vying for a "homeland". We’d still find things to fight over (see: the US/Soviet Cold War), but the ethnic conflicts that keep us from understanding our mutual humanity would probably lessen even these conflicts…
We don’t even have to look beyond our own shores, nor look to body counts, to see the high cost of racism. If we understand that the entire country exists along the same bell-curve of potential, and also observe that certain socially-created “races” have markedly lower achievement rates, then we can assume that we as a society are destroying our nation’s potential...
Remember that the world is not Zero Sum. Every job that a "black" person gets is not one that is taken away from a "white" one. A "black" entrepreneur (or "white" one) can create a job for a "white" worker (or "black" one)...
When we create and give meaning to arbitrary distinctions, and artificially debilitate a group based on these distinctions, we allow for fewer entrepreneurs (or skilled laborers of any type) to create as much wealth for the nation as they might. As a result, we are all made poorer off. We cannot want this...
Moreover we create a society in which the best and the brightest of the disadvantaged group will put their efforts into overcoming these artificial divisions. Imagine the brilliant mind of the Reverend Doctor King leading this nation as President, rather than fighting his nation for the chance to be treated like a co-equal citizen. Imagine General Little, rather than the radical Malcolm X. Ambassador Douglass, rather than the exile Fredrick Douglass. Think of every "black" drug dealer as a would-be accountant...
That’s the cost of Racism. It’s far too much to pay...
Posted by Andrew at 05:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 16, 2006
I’m late to the party...
Al Gore on C-Span. (Streaming Real Player video)...
Why is warrantless wiretapping illegal?
And on this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during that period.The FBI privately labeled King the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and tried to blackmail him into committing suicide.
This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted this long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, was instrumental in helping to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.
(from the transcript)
Don’t just know that Bush is scary, know why Bush is scary...
Update:
Gore is passionate, engaged and smart. Why didn’t this guy run against Bush back in 2000?
Posted by Andrew at 07:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Still STL... for now!
ESA And ANU Make Space Propulsion Breakthrough
Ion Engines? That’s what TIE fighters use. Those suck. One thing at a time, I guess....
Posted by Andrew at 06:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
A million whatnow?
As you may have heard by now, it seems that the run away bestseller Million Little Pieces is actually a work of fiction, rather than the autobiography the author claims.
It isn't like we’ve not been hoaxed before, Go Ask Alice being one egregious example. Well, it seems that owing to increased scrutiny over these sorts of fraud, other authors are starting to come clean...
Posted by Andrew at 10:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 10, 2006
Great myths of science!
LiveScience.com: The Most Popular Myths in Science Results
Posted by Andrew at 10:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Um Now what?
Shit. I had someone who was going to move in and cover half the rent. This seems to have fallen through. I have 3 days to come up with US$500 or be evicted....
FUCK FUCK FUCK!
Posted by Andrew at 12:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 08, 2006
American Hero: Dead at 62
Hugh Thompson, 62, Who Saved Civilians at My Lai, Dies - New York Times
Once upon a time some Americans were involved in a very bad thing. We’d sent some of our sons (and daughters) over to a country called Vietnam. Now, this wasn’t bad in and of itself. But during this war some of our soldiers started slaughtering the very civilians they were there to protect. Well, one young man came in the middle of all this. He turned his guns on his own countrymen and placed his life between civilians and “war’s desolation”* He showed outstanding physical and moral courage and deserves remembrance in America’s Pantheon on Heroes. Requiescat in Pace
* This is a line from our National Anthem. The 2nd and 3rd stanzas really are something Americans ought be more familiar with...
Posted by Andrew at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 07, 2006
Save Greedo
Posted by Andrew at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 06, 2006
The Wrong Man
Research In Review at Florida State University
It’s an embarrassing outcome for George Bush because it showed that Gore had gotten more votes. Everybody had thought that the chads were where all the bad ballots were, but it turned out that the ones that were the most decisive were write-in ballots where people would check Gore and write Gore in, and the machine kicked those out. There were 175,000 votes overall that were so-called “spoiled ballots.” About two-thirds of the spoiled ballots were over-votes; many or most of them would have been write-in over-votes, where people had punched and written in a candidate’s name. And nobody looked at this, not even the Florida Supreme Court in the last decision it made requiring a statewide recount. Nobody had thought about it except Judge Terry Lewis, who was overseeing the statewide recount when it was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The write-in over-votes have really not gotten much attention. Those votes are not ambiguous. When you see Gore picked and then Gore written in, there’s not a question in your mind who this person was voting for. When you go through those, they’re unambiguous: Bush got some of those votes, but they were overwhelmingly for Gore. For example, in an analysis of the 2.7 million votes that had been cast in Florida’s eight largest counties, The Washington Post found that Gore’s name was punched on 46,000 of the over-vote ballots it, while Bush’s name was marked on only 17,000.Posted by Andrew at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 04, 2006
The government is a Mob Boss.
Imagine a simple example of prisoners’ dilemma. It’s the standard tool used to introduce game theory, and for good reason.
Let me explain a bit: the idea is that two men (black) and (blue) committed a crime. The DA puts them in separate rooms and tell ‘em to confess. As inducement, he says that if either confesses and the other doesn’t the confessor will get 9 months and the other will get 5 years. If they both confess, they’ll each get 3 years. If neither confesses—he’s got enough evidence to get them 1 year in jail...
The payoffs are shown in the chart below. The black lettering represents (black)’s payoff and the blue represents (blue)’s payoff.
Now, this is a model—a simplified version of reality. As such, there are certain assumptions we are making. Chiefly that each person’s sole concern is spending as little time as possible in prison. Also that the entirety of the world for these guys is represented by what’s in that box...
So, given all that, both guys will confess. And the reason is that no matter what the other person does, each person is better off by confessing. Yet both people confessing gives them 2 more years than if they’d both remained silent. This is a sub-optimal situation...
If both parties could trust the other party to stay silent, they’d both take that option. But since they are both rational actors, they get screwed. What they need is an outside agent who will force them both to keep quiet. Like a mob boss:
Under this scenario, the mob boss will send an assassin after the worthless soul of anyone who confesses. Draconian measures make it possible to reach the optimal solution. Trust is gained. Hobbes smiles knowingly...
Trusting other people is the glue that holds our—or any-- society together. It makes everything from commerce to marriage possible. As rational actors (with imperfect information) we each want as much Utility (this is a word in economist that translates roughly as "happiness") as possible with as little effort as possible. Each of us, therefore, is occasionally in a prisoners’ dilemma with others; our interests are served easily by screwing each other, but optimally when we work together.
For instance, when you step into Best Buy to get a TV you know that if they send you home with a defective unit, you will be compensated for it. They don’t really want to; it’s in their short-term best interest to screw you on it. But they’ll take it back and give you one that works. Or perhaps give you credit towards something else. The point is that you have a reasonable expectation that if you spend your money with them, you’ll have a product that approximates what it is supposed to do...
There are a couple reasons for that. One is that Best Buy has a lot of big, big stores. They want to be around forever. Therefore they are going to do what they can to ensure that people are not unsatisfied with their products and service. Repeated interactions tend to lead to trust...
A great explicit expel of this is found on eBay. When you go there and check out the customer rankings of dealers, and the number of eBay transitions the dealer has had, you are trying to gauge the level of trust you should have for a dealer...
Another reason Best Buy doesn’t screw you: If they do, eventually the government will step in and sue them out of business. The government will act like the Mob Boss, and enforce a process which results in trust...
This isn’t a one sided consumers against Business, try passing a fake bill, bad check or stolen Visa. The government will step right in and restore trust...
One of the government’s primary rolls is to create the trust which facilitates commerce. Thus I find it troubling to hear right-wring rhetoric about the inability of government to regulate commerce. When government doesn’t do this, when the government decides that whatever business wants to do is just fine, when the order of the day is to let it be trust is weakened and each consumer is left to their own devices. To have commerce which functions properly, to have a society which is able to flourish, we need a government empowered to objectively establish ground rules.
Posted by Andrew at 12:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Told 'ya!
Google denies plan to enter dying, low-margin PC biz | The Register
Posted by Andrew at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 03, 2006
Don’t believe a word of it
Google to develop a cut-price PC
Just try to imagine a Google operating system. Every damned application you use would have to be re-written to work on this computer. Even most of Google’s own applications wouldn’t work. All this so they can do... what? I don’t see what creating their own OS and computer brand gets them that being on every computer and desktop doesn’t already do for them. Except piss off Microsoft...
Posted by Andrew at 01:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 02, 2006
New year, fresh Hard Drive.
To celebrate the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, I am Reformatting my Hard drive. If you don’t hear from me for a while, you’ll know why...
Posted by Andrew at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 01, 2006
New Year's Cat pics!
New Year’s? What’s that? There are occasions other than “new slave day”?
Janus found a new toy. Get the Cow!
Posted by Andrew at 11:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack