Tuesday, June 17, 2003

[7:17 PM] philipd:\>
Good Marketing Technique if I ever heard of one

Stealing Harry Potter

[11:53 AM] philipd:\>
Kerrynation

Media blitz or does Kerry deserve a second-look:
- Kerry is +1 Witty
- Bush Terrorism Expert defects to Kerry

Monday, June 16, 2003

[2:19 PM] philipd:\>
AI idea

I was reading that they were able to get a computer to detect facial expressions and identify emotions on humans. Well, maybe this is the missing link in the AI chain. What they could do is hookup the emotion reader to a subject who interacts with a text-bot. Then, it should read the emotions as the conversations progress, learning and understanding patterns between certain conversaitonal directions or sentences and emotions that are evoked. After the computer is trained to connect conservational bits with emotion, it could then seek to create an emotion in the other person, try to push them toward positive and happy responses. Bam, the artificial counselor. The program could also learn to associate emotion that he should feel as a counselor depending on how the conversation is going. And then his goal should be to improve his emotion (which could be tied, partially, to whether the other person is feeling emotion). Heck, I bet there's some psychological map in two-person scenarios that could be programmed in there.

Eh? eh? what do you think?

[12:25 PM] philipd:\>
Bits of Reality

If you had a DVD of Fight Club and played you'd see that Ed Norton makes a choice to punch Brad Pitt in the famous, "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been a fight" scene. Now, let's say you never played the DVD but just owned the DVD, would it be true that Ed Norton makes a choice in the film and punches Brad Pitt. Surely you'd say, yeah, he does, surely he does, if I play it, it will reveal that indeed, Ed Norton punches Brad Pitt. Now, let's say, all the DVD players in the world were broken, would it be true that in Fight Club, Ed Norton punches Brad Pitt? You have the DVD right here, and if there was a DVD player that could play it, you could play it and show that indeed this were true. But not having the DVD player wouldn't invalidate that fact. So, now, what if you lost your DVD, or that all the DVDs were destroyed. Would it still be true that in Fight Club, Norton punches Pitt? You have no proof, but you know that indeed it is true, in that movie, if it were to be resurrected somehow, would still show the same thing. Is the medium of an event's existence necessary for the event to actually exist? If you just own the DVD but no player, then the story is still encoded IN the bits. And in your memory, it's encoded in your recollection embedded into neural states. But what if everybody forgot, what if that memory was erased, would it still be true if there was no record of its existence?

I'd say the same thing with us, do we have to have a particular "substance" or "real" medium in order to exist? Sure, I can feel and see things, but that's only laden in my mind, and who knows what my mind is. I know my mind exists, but I have no objective understanding of where the real ends and the abstract begins. This is my understanding of how the universe could possibly just be an Abstract Turing Machine or an Abstract Cellular Automata that exists (out of the infinitely possible Turing machines that math can produce) that has, if run for a long time, the feature that sentient beings will evolve and are able to see the states that the turing machine enclosing it produces.

If you can write a program that can look at itself, then I don't see why we couldn't be in a machine and are able to see ourselves. Also, then, I don't see why this machine has to be created by a God Programmer. Why couldn't it be just inherent in the architecture of a particular specification for a Turing Machine. That TM wouldn't have to be created and executed in order for the states that follow from it to exist, right? It's the same as the DVD scenario above. The TM just has to be possible.

[11:32 AM] philipd:\>
Peddling Thoughts

The trumpet's in the living room of the lion's tongue. Inside the pink peddler is trying to sell his soul to the orange biker. Together, they form the dynamic red-orange team, an offshoot of the spiraling shitzu cult that found its home in the incisors. They wonder about the putrid smell and hired a prophet to guess what the various smells meant. In other worsd, the Lion is the God and they are the lemmings awaiting their fate.

Orange Speedo man, call him Carl, talks to the Red Peddler, Jimmy.

"Jimmy, what is it that is so important for you and your peddlings"?

"Carl, you don't understand. You never will understand. Knowledge is power and you have none.

"I seek intuition, I seek feeling, I seek, bikes"

As Carl took his bike and moved around, the lion's tongue was tickled. The incisors opened and closed.

I felt in disorder upon seeing this scene, I wanted to pull the lino's moouth oen to understand why these germs were plaguing him. He wouldn't let me, so I just took my laptop and smacked him in the face. Fortunately, he was drugged up and not in his usuafeeding frenzy, otherwise I would've been bored to death watching him feast on leftover snakes that I had put in a bucket.

I wonder if he has a preference, boredom or death.

I sat back down and I too pondered, why, why must I think? Is there a purpose. Does the Lion think? What would he think if I sat on his back and started to use him as a tool for my amusement, like in an amusement park.

The prison gates of this cell that the Lion was in was kind of haunting, I wished I too was out. I needed a job to get to work. But back to the biker and the pddler.

The Peddrel was watching the sights that would come across his mind, and the biker came back up to him, said, hey, Jimmy, why are you so dreamy?

"Because it helps me understand the universe"

"Why?"

"Always with the why, and the when, and the questions, the questions"

"What is the most vexing question that you have to answer"

"I think, life" Whathat is life for people like you and me. I get bored sometimes man, imagination feels the spaces.

I try to go biking every once and a while, that's my boredom.

"Aren't you just buying time?"

"And what do you call hat you're doing"

"Progress"

Ironically, they were both peddlars, one of knowledge, the ohter of bikes. Both of progress, one of the mind, the other of physical space.

I too, was a peddler of sorts, of drugs for this Lion. I took it upon myself to do a handstand. thought that maybe if I could get my shoes to touch the ceiling, gravity would be reversed.

But, my teacher Mr. Madkins told me something about cost-benefit analysis, and then I had to start thinking about whether it was truly beneficial to reverse gravity.

Beyond the gate was Kelly B. Kelly B be the cutest lionkeeper co-worker that any teenager could dream of.

She liked me, I could tell. There was something about the look in her eyes that said, "I am going to get you"

"Hey Phil, do you want to sleep with me?" .. I imagined her saying.

I decided to be arrogant that day, I hadFrench wine or I saw the Merovingian in the Matrix who reminded me of french. Somehow I felt that arrogance was expedient. I said no, a second time.

"No, no"

"What are you saying no about?"

"I'm frustrated with this lion, it has terrible germs, and I can't clean them"

"Let me help and massage your back" ... I imagined her saying.

She opened the prison walls and sat next to me, thinking, understanding.

I decided I would touch her, but I didn't. Kelly B started to talk, or at least move her mouth open and closed. She had gum in her mouth, pink gum I could tell. She did that thing where she takes the chewed gum, puts it halfway outside of her mouth in between her incisors so somehow someone else could see it.

I didn't think it wsa attractive at all, this extra tongue that was coming out.

"What do you want to do tonight?"

... this I wasn't imagining her saying. I hoped. I responded anyways, but gave a vague response so that if I was wrong, it could look like I was talking to myself.

"Go to the movies."

Apparently I failed in that ambiguous statement.

"Which one?"

Good, she did ask me.

"I want to see, Tiger Eat Cantalopes"

"Wasn't that on Discovery?"

I decided to invoke arrogance again and remained silent.

Silent except for the chewing and the rustling of the Lion.

Water started to seep into the room, it got my feet wet. Kelly kind of was stressed out by it. I fancied that maybe I had somehow changed gravity enough so that a new tide came in. That would've been nice, to change the sea through gravity. I herad the moon does that occasionally.

Bac kto the Peddlers.

"Carl, why are you so gay?"

"Please, none of that derogatory stuff. It's bad enough that the incisor people won't talk to me, and now I have you."

"Aight, I'm just making coversations."

Why wouldn't Kelly B sleep with me.

"What, excuse me, did you say something?"

"Yeah, why is the canopy opening over me?"

"Is that why you think it's getting wet?"

No, I bet you're getting wet.

pause...

good, she didn't hear that.

"Well, I'm going to see the supervisor."

"Yeah, you go do that"

"No need to be so sarcastic Phil."

"Uh, um... OKAY Kelly"

Kelly left and I was all alone with the lion, the water, and the peddlers. I wonder if I could speak with the peddlers.

Sunday, June 15, 2003

[10:38 AM] philipd:\>
Interior vs. Exterior

Can one master life by simply mastering behavior in life? Like, can one live the good life if you infer good simply by the man's actions and not how he feels on the inside?

Like, let's say, I do all the great things that one could claim is in life. I work hard to make money and then donate it all to cure cancer. I have a loving relationship with my wife and family. I give the impression that I am jovial and am a positive force in people's lives by my humor and affable nature. I experience broad facets of life, maybe having grown up in the projects as a kid and then doing expeditionary work in Burma. I've also had my share of, let's say, formative indiscretions, such as licentious craziness in college. I've had balance in my activities in my comforts. I was, let's say, a scrawny teenager nerd but later became a physically fit, and charismatic CEO of a social software company.

Now, then, what if in actuality, inside, I felt that everything I was doing was wrong. I had doubts about my wife the whole time, that I didn't really feel love for my children but just showered them with love because that was what was expected of me. That I went to these random adventures but was truly bored the whole time. In fact, I was bored my whole life. I also, possibly felt that being nice to people was wrong, that instead, personal responsibility was important, or maybe that I should've been murdering mafia members as a free vigilant?

Would I then still have left the good life? Well, one could say, you were being dishonest and living an ungenuine life. Well, what's the harm in that. What if I died and not a single soul knew of the inconsistency between what was inside of me and what was outside of me? What if my wife died, perfectly happy and content in "knowing" that I loved her. How would she know otherwise she's been on the receiving end of soo much affection. What if people were so convinced that in my last year I decided to let the truth come out, and my previous accomplishments were soo overshadowing that people just resigned my recent comments as the results of dementia, Alzheimers, plain old grumpiness, or what if they just never took me seriously. "Now now dear, it's common for people to tell each other they don't love them, it's a natural defense mechanism, that's cute, here, here's your pudding you loving honey bunch."

Would I not have lived the "good life."

Heck, I bet if people saw a small glimmer of doubt, maybe something slightly fake in my appearance, I bet they wouldn't even criticize or ask about it to know whether inside I was feeling the same way. Maybe they'd ask, but what if I lied?

Part of the reason this is interesting is because there was this guy at Stanford who I felt had managed his appearances very well, but deep down had deep misgivings about it. Some people even noticed glimmers of his misgivings, but played along like it never happened. Heck, even I didn't call him out on it. Actually, I did once but he lied to me, or at least I thought he lied to me, and kind of felt maybe it was better if I left him be the way he was. How was I to know that maybe his way was a triumph of his rational over emotional.

According to Sartre and Nietzsche, something MUST have triumphed over something in him, so you can judge his actions as being authentically representing that which he prioritized most internally. To him, being nice and loving was more important than him actually feeling love inside. Is there something wrong with this? Heck, maybe is there something more noble in this because the man chose with his rational thinking to love rather than just went with primitive impulses? Is there more free will and more nobility in the man who is fake for the sake of creating positive forces within the world?

[10:22 AM] philipd:\>
When being a human random number generator, do you employ a little bit of bias to get more authenticity?

I know I do. If somebody told me that I had to generate numbers randomly between 1 and a 100, I'd probably want to include some of the really high numbers and really low numbers, like, I'd probably throw a 2 and 5 in there along with a 91 or a 92. If you throw in a 99, then it looks like you're fishing. The lower numbers don't seem to get the same mal-treatment, if you said 3, that sounds like a reasonable number for a random number generator to create. 1 and 100 are both offlimits, though, as it's too difficult, or rather, too conveninet that a 1 and/or a 100 were generated. Imagine, you start off your random sequence with "1, 100, 50..." people would think something was up. You have to start with a number that has like both an even number and an odd number in the mid-range. Like, 34, or 67. If you start with like, 11, someone will think, "well, is this generator biased toward early numbers." Now, don't start at 50 either, that's too evenly split. As a responsible random number generator, you have to give expected unexpectdeness. Like, start with like 29. Thirties are kind of like, well, this guy is trying to get close to 50 and away from the low numbers. 29 is safe because it's kind of unstable, kind of out there. Oh yeah, back to 1 and a 100. You have to throw in a 1 or a 100 in there eventually (not both). Otherwise, it looks like you're not covering the whole range of random numbers. You also have to put some expected anomolies, like have a 33 followed by another 33 every now and then. Ironically, another thing that could be done is a random number generator that generated like 3 of the same numbers in a row, like "7, 7, 7" because that would be like, "wow, that's as bitchy as a random number generator comes." If you do "7, 7, 7, 7" then they'll think something is broken. They'll probably give it a 5th chance, and if on the 5th try you produce another number, then you'll be safe from the "it's broken principle." Actually, I think there might be a really high number of times someone will retry a random number generator if it kept producing the same number. I think it depends on the context. If you were a CS professor showing off your program and by the 4th try it was the same number, you'd quickly shelve it. If you were a frustrated programmer, you would probably shelve it after the 3rd. But if you found a claimed-to-be legitamite random number generator, you'd probably keept on trying it, at least laughing at maybe having discovered a problem in it. And then, when after the 10th pull it gives you a new number, you'd start cheering for the wit of the generator.

This is a special section of random number generation theory that I think could be mined and tapped by movie directors in the realm of creating suspense from characters who are supposed to have "free will" and therefore the appearance of a random number generator.

[10:10 AM] philipd:\>
Lighting makes all the difference in the world, Morpheus.

UPDATE: and makeup, Agent Smith.

[9:44 AM] philipd:\>
Should governments lie to their people?

There is a lot fuss over the Administration lying about there being WMD in Iraq. Then was this small blip on the radar when it was quoted that Paul Wolfowitz said that the real reason for going to war was to remove troops from Saudi Arabia, but that they settled on the WMD argument because it was more sellable.

I don't think that the whole Iraqi War was based on completely evil intentions... I actually think that there was a genuine motive within the Administration to do good. And the main good was probably removing these troops from Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the benefits of these troop removals is fairly understated.

After 9/11 there was all this talk about "why do they hate us" and then the immediate hatred of those who said things like that. Well, at the top of the reasons why they, as in al-Qaeda, hated us was because there were troops stationed in the Islamic Holy Land. So by removing the troops from Saudi Arabia, America is removing a major motivation for terrorist attacks.

(Troops were there in the first place to monitor Iraq and were a byproduct of the 1st Iraqi War which had international support)

The reason the Administration couldn't be upfront with this objective is for a couple of reasons:
(1) The assumption that Americans couldn't comprehend such a thing
(2) Americans wouldn't support a war to "appease" terrorists
(3) Abroad, America would look like it was appeasing and less like a wild boar whose prerogatives had to be obeyed out of fear.

(1) I think this assumption is at least partially wrong. Americans are a lot smarter than they were 50 or 100 years ago. More people read the newspapers, watch TV, and read the Internet. I think the informed American public could have handled this logic

(2) This has always been tricky. You HAVE to ask "why do they hate us" but they're right, you can't appease terrorists. But heck, what's the difference? If I slap a police officer in the face until he pulls a gun on me, shouldn't I stop giving him reason to hate me out of fear for protecting my life. So in other words, if there is something truly unfair about our foreign policy that makes a terrorist response acceptable, then I think our foreign policy should be changed. On the other hand, if you're too quick with that then you get terrorists lowering the bar as to what is appropriate situations to respond terroristically. Also, according to Machiavelli, in a choice between being feared and being loved, one should choose being feared. In interpersonal relations, I find this specious, but in Realpolitick, I get a feeling it still works. Look at France, we have saved their ass time and time again but they don't and won't owe us anything. Heck, some would say they have belligerence toward us.

(3) Yeah, you don't want to give the impression that America can be pushed around. On the other hand, you don't also don't want to give another terrible impression that America has no credibility and that it can't be trusted with power.

So, it looks like all three points could be valid in both directions. However, with a defense department that wants to expand, with big corporations hungry for oil contracts, and a president determined as any other president to get himself re-elected, you get a selective bias in favor of the position we made.

My end personal feeling is that I think the Iraqi War did more good than harm. An authoritarian, abusive dictator was removed from harm. Troops were removed from Saudi Arabia and therefore we're safer from terrorists who used that as a primary motivation. Our credibility abroad, though, has gone down the tubes. It's hard to tell whether this act was also done to make everybody else in the world stop thinking that they can intervene in America's actions. America is the one that has to worry the most about it's security and so why should other countries try to tell us how to run our business esp. when Iraq is not very deserving other other countries love to begin with.

Now, as for the Administration lying and abusing common sense rights and practices, that I think is not acceptable. I know that it was important to motivate and unite the country, but I think that the Administration is stooping too low by inventing reasons to go to War rather than mining reasons that are already there. So far, we haven't found ANYTHING in there that shows some significant effort for WMD research.

What the heck am I saying. Who cares about this crap anyways. I'm just another nobody blogger spouting my opinions. Oh well, at least I wanted to understand for myself my position in this matter, and maybe the confused might benefit from this analysis. *shrug*

Friday, June 13, 2003

[7:17 PM] philipd:\>
Product Guides and Reviews - Wireless Modems

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