In My Holy Opinion

I don’t usually watch the SImpsons on TV, so I didn’t have any high expectations for the movie. I think if you go in expecting it to be like an episode from the show (like the Family Guy movie was) you’ll be blown away: the graphics and animation style are excellent and kind of remind me of the style used in Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Everything is computer-animated, but the cartoon-style drawings are fully preserved and emulated using computer animation.
Everything looks a lot smoother and it’s really easy on the eyes. One thing I don’t like about traditional cartoons is the often jagged character movements and panning. You don’t get any of that in the Simpsons movie, though, it looks great.

The plot was compelling, more so than the average episode and the humor was great too, but it closely resembled the traditional style of the Simpsons. A little over the top, and often very physical.

Worth watching, even if you normally don’t watch the Simpsons.

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It seems to be of great concern to most people not to hold stereotypes against men or women, so for instance women don’t want to be called housewives just for being female. In our society it has become commonplace for women to take on leading roles in politics and business, and are now protected under the law to enjoy the same opportunities as men.
Discrimination clearly exists, however, in many areas of society; in the US, for instance, women are still a minority in politics, and it is a widely held belief that women get paid less than men, even for performing the same job.

Thought experiment: One member of a heterosexual couple is a CEO and the other is a carpenter. Which one is likely the male and which is likely the female?

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From David Seah: Better Living Through New Media

Posted April 23, 2007 at 0306 EDT

“I was feeling very positive on Friday; Never before has my path seemed so clear, with so many things within my grasp. It was thus with great confidence I predicted a landmark productive weekend. The power I felt on Friday, however, began to resemble more a rolling blackout by Saturday, followed by grid failure as I slipped into total couch potato mode. What happened?” [more…]

I’ve been reading your blog for some time now; I think with what you wrote about tonight, David, you’re on to something that has the potential to change your life much more profoundly than you may realize at this time.

I used to me a lot more solitary myself, and have therefore developed skills that I now implicitly use to make money and survive. Even though I’m really excited about what I do, after a while it loses the novelty factor and I decided to explore different things, such as forming closer relationships with other people, both romantic and platonic.

This proved to me much more difficult than I had initially assessed, since I found myself to be innately familiar with technology and interactions with computers or other inanimate devices. But humans, not so much.

I came to this realization again last weekend when I realized that if really put my mind to it, I can be much better at human-human interaction. I can apply some of the same principles I apply with computers: when I sit down at a computer I have this immediate sense of emporement, I feel that I’m in control and that I can do whatever I want without fear of being stopped and without the fear of failing. When it comes to computers, I simply don’t fail.

It’s strange, however, because when I sit down in front of a person and start a conversation, my feelings and attitudes are very different. I feel that the outcome of my interaction is strongly influenced by the other person, which is an element I have absolutely no control over. So I find myself in a situation where I have to submit myself to someone else’s (to me) arbitrary whim, which immediately makes me very uncomfortable. I can’t always use familiar logic to determine what I should do or say to achieve the desired response, since the response will vary from person to person and from situation to situation, even given the exact same input.

This is the primary challenge I face with other people. Over the last few years, I have made it a point to go out of my way to interact with other people, so I force myself out of my comfort zone, otherwise I really would be lonely all the time. This has worked well. Now that I have acquired more advanced skills in interacting with other people (although this still doesn’t feel ‘native’ to me), I often find myself in situations that are completely unforseen. I’m still not used to dealing with the ‘human’ element, which introduces a degree of entropy into the flow of events.

Going back to my first point, I think it is this entropy that may lead you down a path that could change your life in a much more profound way than you may want or predict at this time. When you form closer relationships with other people, you not only make yourself vulnerable to them, you also give up a certain degree of control of your life. Sometimes a great degree, depending on the type of relationship. This, especially with romantic relationships, I have found to be more of a problem for me than making myself vulnerable. Most people aren’t out to specifically wrong you, but most people are out to do what is best for them, and that may not always be what is best for you.

To sum it up, humans are extremely complex. Personally, I recognize that I am well-trained to deal with computers and I do well in situation that are logical and structured in a predictable manner. Often having a close relationship falls outside of the scope of what I’m trained to do and this has often lead to very unforseen, sometimes detrimental, but often exhilarting experiences.

Just my $0.02

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Wikipedia Administrator EssJay claims he’s a tenured professor of theology when he’s really a 24-year old with no teaching experience. Wales says, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

Apparently this report sparked a controversy, and it becomes apparent from the comments about this article on Digg, people are outraged that Wales dare defend such a scumbag of a liar. Well, I beg to differ.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone pretending to have false credentials on Wikipedia. It doesn’t have any *real* bearing on the *actual* validity of the content on Wikipedia. To put it simply, Wikipedia is defined by its thousands of contributors and users. As with any fact, its validity is based on the number of people who subscribe to the information that it embodies. That is the meaning of “credentials”. Someone is considered to have credentials if a University or some other authoritative body, such as the Internet community, endorses this person as credible.

With millions on Wikipedia, the site as a whole has credentials, simply because millions of people believe the information that it presents to be true (regardless of whether or not that corresponds to reality).

HOWEVER, Wikipedia is indeed an equilibrium of information; if some information is introduced that doesn’t correspond closely to reality, according to the millions of users, it is eventually deleted. This ONE GUY, out of MILLIONS, *cannot* tip the balance of this equilibrium, even if what he wrote in his Wikipedia articles is patent nonsense. But that’s not even the issue here! The issue, apparently, is that the information he writes about HIMSELF is patent nonsense. User pages are not part of the encyclopedia (in part for this very reason).

Please consider that Jim Wales lives and breathes Wikipedia; even though he’s a regular person and not a god, and you may disagree with his statements, as the creator of Wikipedia he ought to have at least the same credibility as Wikipedia itself. Whether his statement is productive or not is another matter entirely. Again, this doesn’t have any bearing of the *actual* validity of Wikipedia content either. Only the users do. IMHO

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Ok, COX customer service officially sucks. It happened more than once that our Internet access was suspended without warning due to file sharing. It looks like a few months ago, COX implemented this stupid policy which requires them to shut off Internet access to a customer if someone (i.e. the RIAA) complains about the user sharing a particular file in violation of the file’s copyright protections.

I think this policy is especially moronic because the customer service representatives at COX are completely in the dark about this; the first time our Internet access was suspended, I was sent to an alternate web page (instead of the web site I was trying to access) that was set up by COX, stating the reason my account is suspended, the number I need to call to get it reactivated, as well as the file name of the offending file, and even the MAC address of the computer that was sharing it. So far so good. I called the number on the screen and things were up and running again within minutes (I had to “remove” the offending file). The second time around, however, I didn’t get the screen, instead I got nothing. I checked all the router settings and everything was OK (except that I was assigned a different IP address). I figured there must be something wrong with COX’s routers, so I called customer service and explained what was going on. The rep that I talked to made me go through all this bullshit of course, he wouldn’t help me unless I restarted my router and modem. I hate being treated like a fucking moron by these people. Does this guy really think I didn’t take the time to restart the router before I decided to sit through 15 min of annoying automated phone menus and elevator music? This is insane. But I wasn’t in the mood to argue, so I did what he told me to do. I explained to him several times that the reason things aren’t working is because our account might have been suspended for file sharing (since that happened before). I obviously made sure beforehand that it’s not something on our end that was causing this, so I was certain that it was either that, or their routers were misconfigured. The customer service rep had me do some more bullshit and finally told me that my router was “picking up a bad IP”.

“Yes, I KNOW!” that’s the reason I called, dammit. I was assigned a non-pulic IP address, so basically I was connected to COX’s little private “Internet” that only had one site (or no sites). And, as I had suspected, this was intentional.

Now, get this: after all this, the COX douchebag told me to CALL LINKSYS! WTF! I’ve never heard anything more stupid! As a matter of fact, I’m going to complain to COX tomorrow. I even tried to explain to the guy that the router is ASSIGNED the IP by the COX network. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE ROUTER! I’m not a fucking idiot, I didn’t somehow misconfigure it. Even if I did, he wouldn’t be able to see it, so he wouldn’t “know” that it’s picking up a “bad” IP. My God.

Anyways, enough of my rants. This wasn’t even my original topic. My original topic was that, in spite of all this, COX has really, really fast connections sometimes. I’ve never really experienced anything below 300K / sec max download speed, but the highest it’s ever gone before was 550K, or something close to that. Today (just now), COX has broken new ground with me. Take a look at the above picture. Notice anything unusual?

FUCK YEAH!

My total download speed was 900+K/sec!!! Sustained! (over 15+ min) That’s kiloBYTES, so over 7Mbps (megaBITS per second)! Their advertised max is 6Mbps, and that’s for premium accounts, I have regular. Granted this happened at 2 AM on a Wednesday morning, BUT this is WAY faster than my average connection at my datacenter, or even at work or school. COX officially kicks ass. because of this, I might not complain about the imbeciles who work there. (if they weren’t such dumbfucks, they would probably enforce bandwidth limits a little more, so this can be a good thing….)

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I just realized how much time I spend watching DVDs. With the advent of Netflix and other online DVD rental services, it’s all too easy to get caught up in shows like 24 or Family Guy. I’ve always been consious about how much television I choose to watch: not lastly because I don’t have that much time, to sit and watch shows all day. In addition, television also bores me to tears most of the time; on the rare occasions that I do watch actual TV, I am always befuddled with the incredible stupidity of most commercials and many television shows. A lot of shows are nerve wracking to watch, and impossible to enjoy. So I’ve limited myself to the two shows that I mentioned, as well as “House. Naturally, I hate watching shows on TV, I don’t have that kind of discipline to be there at a certain time. I usually record my shows on the DVR and watch them whenever it’s convenient, usually at 3:00AM or some odd hour like that. It’s obviously easier to just rent the DVD and have it delivered to my door. The picture quality is far superior, and I don’t have to deal with commercials. Plus, I can watch it on my computer, if I want to, as well as save a backup copy for later viewing. I don’t monitor my computer time with as much scrutiny as I monitor my TV-watching. I don’t feel like hanging around on the computer is as much of a waste of time as watching television. And the interactive nature of the computer also keeps me engaged for much, much longer than the television ever could.

So, naturally many are concerned with computer addition, and before the advent of the Internet, a lot of people were also concerned with television addition, but that has been kind of overlooked since video games and the Internet are gaining ground in the entertainment market.

I think that, at least for me, DVDs (and now also Blue-Ray disks) are among the top time-wasters on my list. Unfortunately, I can get pretty much any show that I like on DVD. Even episodes that have just aired, I can download from BitTorrent. Of course this only perpetuates my addiction to this, especially for shows that are designed to be addictive, like 24.

I’m luck though, that I haven’t fallen victim to computer games, which, fortunately for me, don’t really capture my attention as much as other things. If I was into video games, god forbid, I would probably be building up a character in Everquest, Final Fantasy, or World of Warcraft, and then trying to sell it for a profit. I have a lot of friends who I don’t really talk to that much, and a lot has to do with the fact that they’ve escaped into this damn fantasy world. To each their own, I guess.

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You know, I’ve never understood the concept of money. We all know that it is not worth more than the paper it is printed on… plus the ink, and perhaps the labor invested in its production. It has been around long enough, however, that we all put on this elaborate charade, pretending that is is something it’s not. I call bullshit on that. Just because we pretend that money is so precious, doesn’t give it any value whatsoever.

Since money is essentially worthless, it comes as no surprise that throughout history, the concept has gone through various transitions: back in the day, money was used to directly represent stuff, to make trading easier. One coin, for example, would be the same as a chicken, or something stupid like that. It’s a lot easier to move coins around, than chickens, makes sense. Needless to say, each community would have its own currency that was not compatible with other currencies, so it didn’t really make trading between communities any easier. As more and more things were sold, coins would be made of something that had innate value, like gold. So this made it easier to trade all kinds of goods, even among different communities; later, to make it even easier to move around, paper currency was printed, which was representative of a certain amount of gold, but this is where things start to get blurry. The gold, even though it has an ascribed value, is pretty much useless for the average person. Honestly, what is a farmer supposed to do with a brick of gold? Eat it? Does the gold come alive and clean the house? Chickens and maids are useful, gold is not.

Back when everyone was handing their stuff back and forth, in the form of coins, or otherwise, everything was fair and square. Everyone knew exactly how much stuff they had, and how much stuff everyone else has. A chicken was worth just that: a chicken. Everyone needs to eat, so it would pretty much hold the same value to everyone. Granted, there are fatsos who need to eat several chickens in one day, so the value of a chicken to a fatso is less than a normal person. But these differences are relatively minor.

Still with me? Good. Now the more the story goes on, the more stupid it gets: after a while people realized all this, and their solution was to simply get rid of the “gold standard”. What is used instead? Nothing! My econ teacher in high school gave a ridiculous answer to that question: the value of the USD is attained by the faith invested in it by the people. The people, he said, believe in the value of the currency because it has the words “In God We Trust” printed on it (god being me!?); this is obviously nonsense. What about the people who don’t believe in me? They’ll be forever poor? That’s right, if you don’t believe in god, you shall die. Bullshit! Is this a nation of sheep? I think some imbecile came up with this ridiculous idea, and it caught on, it became a buzzword. Kind of like Web 2.0; nobody really knows what it is, but people hear it and use it just to be cool. That’s when things get messed up, like this so-called “economy”, since everyone interprets the concept how they want to interpret it, everyone loses: the discrepancies among the world’s economies, for example, are significant.

Every person in the world, and even some animals, would agree on the value of a chicken, leaving money out of the picture. But one unit of currency means something different to each person, even if they live in the same country.

Chickens and horses and gasoline have real value. Money does not. Or does it? While everyone would agree that paper money has almost no real value, everyone would agree that is is useful. More useful than a chicken of equal value. A chicken is a chicken, but $5 can be anything in that price range! Isn’t that amazing? People, through their collective belief, have created something out of nothing, no matter how stupid it is. If only a handful of people believed in the usefulness of the money everyone has, it would become useless, so if even a part of the population loses faith in their cash, all the cash goes down the proverbial drain, and the shit hits the fan, like in 1929 when the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression. What does this mean? It means that if people can collectively create this, then they can create anything. Does god really exist? If enough people believe in him, yes. Even if there is no actual god with actual “powers”, people trust the cash, which is, according to its own description, backed by god, so is god real? Just as real as the cash. Likewise, if enough people stop believing in god, he will cease to exist, just like the value of money ceased to exist in 1929.

But draw your own conclusions. I have spoken ;-).

Links:

The Mere Thought Of Money Can Make People Selfish: http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/061116_money_matters.html

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