TV the way it should be today

Democracy is an internet television application. It's been out for a while now, gradually building up to a non-beta release. I thought I'd mention it because it embodies nearly everything I think television should be these days.

First, it works on my schedule, not one set by the local broadcast tower. If I want to watch my favourite program at 6am instead of 8pm, that's entirely up to me, and it's a function of the system, not an add-on feature.

Second, it's global. Broadcast television is bound to geographical locations and economic rationalising. If there are only 0.5% of people in any given area as a potential audience for a show, it won't get shown. If you take it globally with the power of the internet, 0.5% of several billion makes tens of millions of viewers. That's an audience any TV executive can get behind.

The one thing it doesn't do is payment for content. I would accept paying one dollar per show to download and watch on my schedule, as long as it's not locked up inconveniently. And as long as it has absolutely no ads. That would be equivalent to buying a DVD of a TV show and finding it's got all the broadcast ads still in it. That's a rant for another time, though.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Democracy has no pay system because they believe in gratis and libre media.
PPS - And that's fine by me.

South Park and Atheists

Atheists net-wide have recently learned a lesson about South Park: sooner or later, they will come for everyone, including you. The recently-aired episode (ending with "to be continued") featured famous evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins in a couple of compromising positions. Boing Boing has the skinny, including a comment from an offended atheist and another who's more easy-going. And that's the lesson: either you're confident in your beliefs and can laugh at them while still holding them true or you're insecure and can only laugh at other people.

That being said, of course, sometimes people say things that you just can't laugh at, no matter how mature or confident you are.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The evidence, in this case, is that the episode was funny.
PPS - I'm eager for the next installment.

Diametrically opposed

It's common enough to find shops advertising Kosher and Halal food for sale. That's relatively easy, because they're rather compatible (as far as I know). I wonder what would happen if another religion rose in popularity and had incompatible food rules. For instance, say this new religion requires all meat to be cooked in milk (not Kosher). What do the stores do then? Have separate Kosher and Anti-Kosher sections?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's the only sensible solution I can think of.
PPS - Unless stores want to specialise in one or the other.

The Sunday Mok - Remember Remember

Sunday - After the morning church service, Deb and I did the weekly grocery shopping. I spent the afternoon playing City of Heroes. I cooked dinner and helped with a drama in the evening church service.
Monday - I took leftovers for lunch and didn't quite finish it all. After dinner with Dad, the weekly bible study was at my place. Only Deb and Mia came besides John. It felt like I spoke more than usual.
Tuesday - I coded the basics of a travel and market experience report for the performance appraisal database at work. I returned to karate after a couple of weeks away, and it was a noticeable drop in performance. I've had a pretty sore back for the rest of the week.
Wednesday - I had to redesign my identity management code to better allow for expansion. It would have been good to get it right the first time. I had dinner at Deb's and just chatted for the remainder of the evening.
Thursday - Dinner at Dad & Beth's, followed by Fun With Dick and Jane on DVD. My blue card unexpectedly arrived in the mail.
Friday - I was able to go back to youth group in the evening because of my blue card renewal. We had to change plans, unfortunately, because it was raining, and I got the job of waiting at the pool to direct people back to the church. It was good to be back.
Saturday - I played City of Heroes in the morning until Deb called. We went out to lunch and did some shopping for the Mexican-themed dinner in the evening. My piñata costume, created by Deb, won me a cactus.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My last cactus died.
PPS - I don't know if I over- or under-watered it.

The Case of the Misplaced Milk and the Upset Cat

Meg the cat woke me at 01:15 this morning for some reason. After taking her downstairs and returning to bed still half-asleep, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. I checked everything I could and rationalised the rest, and finally got back to sleep. This morning the milk (delivered Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) was halfway across the front lawn instead of on the doorstep.

So I guess the only explanation is a ninja milk-botherer stopped by very early in the morning.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm not even sure that the milk had been delivered by that time.
PPS - As far as I know, it could be delivered my magic elves.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Having a late Hallowe'en party? You'll need some decorations. Like a zombie vomiting into a barrel.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Nothing says "Welcome!" like zombie vomit.
PPS - The video is not quite worth the effort.

It's either sad or funny

How to tell if you are over-tired:
1. View this moving picture.
2. If you made any little sad noises such as a drawn-out "aww", it's time for bed.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Apologies to those who have seen this already.
PPS - It makes it worse if you imagine facial expressions.

Out of the loop

I am terrible at keeping in touch with people. Absolutely atrocious. If you are my friend, chances are that I have almost never called you. Some of you will have been lucky enough to receive a spontaneous email. Most of my friends are in the "I see them at parties" category.

I thought I should mention this because it seems, from that point of view, that I neither value nor appreciate my friends. That's completely untrue, but it really doesn't look that way. So here's to all my friends, whether I see you once a week or once a year. May our paths cross much more often. Cheers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Having said all this, hopefully I can work harder at it.
PPS - I miss you all.

Vending iced coffee

I spent a few months in a different office at a tiny desk in a corridor. The main point is that I was buying iced coffee from the vending machine, and they were almost always out of it. I think that was my doing for the most part. I kept hoping they'd stock up with more than three new bottles when they restock tech came by. The week before I left, they'd changed the standard contents of the machine, placing *four* iced coffees there. Good times.
By contrast, the vend-o-matic here contains about nine Ice Breaks and usually three each of Breaka 500mL iced coffee and Breaka Lite.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm trying to cut down.
PPS - Each 500mL Ice Break contains nearly 30 grams of sugar.

DuplicationDuplication

Many of our troubles come from duplication of information and the actions we must go through to do this. We have information in our heads that we must get into the computer for use there, then we have that same information printed out on notices and posters. Speaking to another human is just an attempt to duplicate information from one storage mechanism (a brain) to another. Posting signs is another example of this, with the difference being the intended audience and the medium.

If all humans were networked in a global mind, then there is no need to duplicate information between brains, as we all have access to each other's thoughts and knowledge. It goes beyond that, however, into the elimination of the individual. We become one beast with one mind. Communication is meaningless when it is complete, because complete communication is identity. Two objects that know all of one another are two parts of a larger object. If you and I share one mind, why would we talk?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There may be a higher philosophical principle working here.
PPS - But for a Monday, this hurts my head.

The Sunday Mok - Balance in Motion

Sunday - After the morning church service, I cleaned up the yard while Deb vacuumed my car interior. I cooked dinner and ran the computer for the evening church service, then Deb and I went to her place and chatted for a while, since nobody was going to the Coffee Club.
Monday - I spent the whole week writing identity management code at work. In the evening, I had dinner at Deb's, then bible study at Michelle's. We're studying Paul's letter to the Philippians.
Tuesday - I skipped karate in the evening for a meeting. That will make it a three week break if I go back this week. I'll have some catching up to do.
Wednesday - I had dinner at Deb's again, then following the after-dinner conversation, Deb and I watched DVDs and chatted.
Thursday - Family dinner at Dad & Beth's tonight. They'll be flying out to the United Arab Emirates this week so that Dad can help design a marina. Deb and I watched more DVDs after we got home.
Friday - I bought food for youth group supper and dropped it off, then had to leave again because my blue card hasn't come through yet. Deb and I watched Take the Lead, which was okay. We chatted some more afterwards.
Saturday - I slept about an hour past my alarm and had to rush to the church to babysit during the Marriage Course. I don't know if I did very well, because Caleb ran back to his parents about five times. I slept when I got home, then watched Super Size Me. I got a little more out of it this second time, but not much. I played City of Heroes for a while and Deb played The Sims 2 on my laptop. We went bowling with Murrae and Tracey in the evening, followed by more games.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - We both stayed up too late.
PPS - I have to stop doing that.

Virtual Ubuntu

Yesterday I installed not one but two virtual Ubuntu Linux machines, one at work and one at home. Unfortunately, the one at work wants to download and install 200MB of patches right away, which is a bit much. It won't go unnoticed, is what I'm saying.

For a geek, I'm very late onto the Linux bandwagon. I'm not sure why that might be, but with something as easy as Ubuntu to set up, and VMWare Player to let me do so without potentially obliterating Windows, well, there are no excuses anymore.

I'm aware it's a different environment, so it's going to take some learning. I'll have to figure out how my regular daily activities (at home: games, TV and internet) will work. I did find an article on running City of Heroes in Linux that should be interesting reading. But while I'm running Linux only virtually, that would be an experiment only.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If things go horribly wrong, I'll let you know.
PPS - The bonus of virtual machines in that case: delete the file and you're all cleaned up.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Zombie-themed hot sauce, complete with coffin.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Via Boing Boing.
PPS - I'm guessing that you'd have to pick your dinner guests specially for such an item.

Social Drinker

Meg, cat-in-residence at casa de Borg, has a water bowl of her very own. She ignores it completely and prefers to drink from unwashed dishes, the bathroom basin and sometimes she even licks the collected droplets from the floor of the shower. Her motivation is unclear, but it does seem that her preference for company outweighs her preference for water. Or maybe water is tastier with a hint of soap. I guess we'll be in the dark until she learns to speak and decides to explain to us.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In the meantime, I'm just letting her be.
PPS - It usually seems like the best policy.

Virtual Mess

To me, one of the primary selling points of a virtual or robotic pet would be the zero poop angle. It's a simple fact that robots don't need to poop. Any robot or simulation that does poop has, in my opinion, been either poorly or maliciously designed. Apparently, Nintendogs takes the viewpoint that pooping = realism, and should therefore be included in the set of programmed behaviours. I guess that's fun for some people.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I do not own a DS or Nintendogs.
PPS - For the other programmers out there, yes, I know that should be "pooping == realism".

Copy Stop

A significantly long time ago, technology-wise, Weird Al Yankovic included a copy warning on a video cassette stating that it had been protected with "Patented Copy Stop^TM technology". Among its claimed effects was the loss of function of your player and recorder, fading of household furniture, the death of pets and global weather disturbances. It was all a joke, of course, but Al proved to be a bit of a prophet in that sense. If a system exactly like Copy Stop existed, you know it would have been deployed by now, and you know someone would have tried to circumvent it, probably killing us all in the process. That's humanity for you.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I don't often mean to be cynical.
PPS - The warning has been transcribed here.

Thieving

I'm well aware that my view of the world could be described as "skewed". For instance, the Internet Explorer 7 installer said something along the lines of "To install Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 you must validate your Windows installation. Click here to validate." In my mind, this translated to "You are a dirty rotten thief! To dispute this claim, please click this button." That's the problem with all DRM and call-home procedures on our PCs these days. They assume the worst, and treat everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

I don't think it is in your best interests for Microsoft to call you a thief and make you prove them wrong. The problem is that it's by far the easier path for them. If they tried to gather information about who was pirating Windows and go after them, they'd be spending their own time and money doing so. If they just accuse everyone, they're spending your time.

Individually it wouldn't be that much - say, two minutes. Multiply that over a company of 2000 employees and we have 66 hours wasted just proving to Microsoft that the company is legit. Across a user base of 100 million people, it's 380 years of lost time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That's non-stop, not just working hours.
PPS - Crazy, isn't it?

The Sunday Mok - The crack that split the city in half

Sunday - After the morning church service, I went grocery shopping with Deb. I showed her The Sims 2 and I did some yard work. In the evening, we went to see the Watoto Children's Choir, and I highly recommend them.
Monday - Work. Some bug hunting, some timesheets work. I had dinner at Deb's before bible study which wasn't really a study. Mostly we discussed the minister's recent trip to China.
Tuesday - I got a solid task to focus on at work, which was good. Traffic in the afternoon was awful. A group of us walked past the congestion to catch a different bus home. In the evening, Deb and I played games side by side, her on The Sims 2 and me on City of Heroes. This was only possible because Anthony was away, so his machine was available.
Wednesday - I had dinner at Deb's, then we played the original Sims together for a little while. I left early because I was starting to feel sick.
Thursday - I was pretty hungry all day, which I believe was due to sickness. Deb came over for dinner and we played our games side by side again until Anthony got home. I tried to have an early night.
Friday - I caught an extra-early bus in the hopes of beating the morning rush. No such luck. I had dinner with Deb then helped her prepare for the Marriage Course breakfast on Saturday.
Saturday - I spent the morning watching recorded TV and also ran one quick City of Heroes mission. I spent the afternoon at Deb's doing basically nothing. We did watch Final Fantasy in the evening.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Traffic has generally been worse inbound to the city than outbound.
PPS - The problem on-ramps could be closed for the next six weeks.

Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 has been officially released. It looks pretty slick. The problem is that behind the scenes, we have some bugs carried over from version 6. This was done knowingly because of Microsoft's near-monopoly on the browser market (though their share is slipping). The reasoning went like this: IE6 has some annoying bugs, and website makers created their sites to work around the bugs. That created the situation where the IE6 bugs became the de-facto standards of the web in place of the actual standards. Now IE7 has come along and, in order to work with the horrors left behind on the web by the bugs of its predecessor, IE7 must replicate those same bugs. And that is how Microsoft enshrined broken software as standard practice.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The IE7 installation called me a thief, so I quit.
PPS - I looked at it on a co-worker's PC.

Friday Zombie Blogging

Zombie Prom, a now-regular costume formal where you can get dressed up and look like you're dead at the same time.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Come to think of it, zombies are often in formal wear.
PPS - It comes from being buried in it.