Fracturing society

Someone once said that the basic unit of society used to be the village, then it became the extended family, the nuclear family and finally the individual. Soon, came the prediction, it will be the fragments of the individual. I used to wonder how that could be. How could we fragment ourselves and still be a functioning part of a society. Now I know how: we compartmentalise our lives into work, study, home, friends, alone, sport and so on. No part of our lives intrudes on any other except to the barest degree.

It's sad, in a way. As fragmented individuals, we'll spend more of our time and effort on keeping ourselves fragmented so as not to mix our separate lives together. There will be less time for everyone.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Having no boundaries or privacy is not a solution, though.
PPS - Whether new or old, this idea must be held in balance.

The Babel Fish additional uses and limitations

I had a thought about the Babel Fish from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the other day. My understanding (which doesn't quite match the Wikipedia description) is that it feeds off brainwaves of others and translates them for you. It would, therefore, allow you to understand inarticulate people as well as foreign languages. Someone who is unable to get their thoughts out into words would still be understood. However, I don't think it would work for television the way it is mentioned in passing in one of the books. It would need real people, not just sounds.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's possible that Wikipedia has it right and I'm wrong, though.
PPS - Wouldn't be the first time.

Television's unique properties in an internet age

Even in an internet age, there must be something that television provides that the internet doesn't. The most immediate thing I can think of is that television is localised by default. As the internet swallows up popular entertainment and world news, it's possible that television will move to exclusively local content. You'd get ads and public access shows from your city (or even just your suburb) and very local news. There'd be no need to cover global events, because people will be getting that news from the internet.

In the end, it might even help revitalise a sense of community, although I wouldn't count on that. If television becomes such a niche market, television sets will become less common as a result.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Though we may still have large screens for sharing entertainment.
PPS - Or family-to-family video calls.

Politics and publicity stifles some progress

Popular election and the need for good publicity mean that our politicians strive to do not what is right and best, but what is popular and most visible. Sometimes what is good for us is not pleasant, but the politician who induces some form of pain for the electorate's good will be voted out because people don't like pain.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess such a person would only get the masochist vote.
PPS - Then again, I think their preferences tend only to physical pain.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Your Pet Zombie

Today I draw your attention to Your Pet Zombie, an iPhone for those who couldn't keep their Tamagotchi alive, I suppose. It only costs a dollar and pretty much just involves feeding (but not over-feeding) brains to your zombie.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now if only I had an iPhone.
PPS - Or if only stuff like this was not iPhone-exclusive.

Tension and significance of events

Some days, especially when you're tense, the tiniest thing can set you off when otherwise it would be no big deal. The importance of spilled milk depends on your frame of mind, and it's not always insignificant.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course it's insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
PPS - But your life is not the grand scheme any more than your house is the world.

I need to visualise my thoughts

Sometimes I get the feeling that there are a whole lot of thoughts bubbling in my head just waiting to be linked together, if only I could visualise them better. Like every snippet of conversation or weird observation is part of a puzzle to assemble. It feels like I should be carrying index cards so I can not only write things down but shuffle them around in a satisfying, tactile way. They should be solid card, not thin paper, because that just feels nicer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd be disappointed if I managed this and found nothing as a result.
PPS - That seems unlikely, though, based on the feeling of an idea dancing just out of reach.

Good skeptical questions and personal beliefs

Yesterday I watched a video on "how to ask good skeptical questions". When someone makes a claim, it's a good idea to be able to think about it from a number of angles before swallowing it whole. However, the last of the 10 example questions seemed slightly off to me: "Are personal beliefs driving the claim?"

The problem with that question, as I see it, is that personal beliefs are inseparable from fact interpretation. If you're doing science, you're observing and interpreting facts, and all fact interpretation starts with a set of expectations or a world view. If you think the universe came about a certain way, you will naturally interpret your observations that way. Your observations are empty without interpretation, and your interpretation will always come from your world view. So personal beliefs drive every scientific claim, whether past, present or future.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I enjoy debating this kind of thing.
PPS - But I prefer to do it face to face, not online.

Firing the navigator

My GPS navigator has an unusual affinity for the Inner City Bypass. I believe it was designed that way to avoid driving through the inner city if possible. The problem is that the higher weight given to the ICB also means paths that go near it also get sucked in, as if by gravity. Yesterday morning Deb and I tried to drive to Bowen Hills train station for the Bridge to Brisbane fun run, but the GPS took us on the ICB twice, eventually leaving us at a different, yet workable, location. I was not impressed. I think it's time for a replacement.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's possible that updated maps might fare better.
PPS - And that would be a cheaper option, too.

Why I don't use Steam

Valve's Steam, an online software store, sounds great in principle. I suppose in most ways it is very good: a wide selection of games at good prices, delivered digitally and available to you anywhere your online Steam account is. My one objection is the copy control mechanism, which is both unnecessary and invasive. It "phones home" every time you start a game to check whether you actually have a license to play it. In bricks-and-mortar analogy, it's like having to go back to the store where you purchased a game to ask permission any time you want to play it.

Now, like a lot of DRM, this doesn't get in the way for most people most of the time. Some DRM proponents argue that it's just to "keep the honest people honest", which is as noble a goal as keeping the sky blue. People who are going to copy games are going to do it in spite of DRM, and people who aren't will only notice when it goes wrong and prevents them from playing legitimately. That is to say, DRM's only noticeable effect is keeping the honest people from doing honest things occasionally.

Count me out, for now.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I only buy a few games a year, so it's not like they're losing a lot of business from me.
PPS - If DRM made prices lower by orders of magnitude, I might consider it.

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie Boot Camp

I can't quite tell if this "Zombie Boot Camp" video is serious or some kind of parody, but if it's genuine, it's a video record of training for zombie actors at the Ultimate Horror Maze in Japan's Fuji-Q Highland amusement park. If it's not real, then it's a badly-acted video of boot camp for allegedly real zombies.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't credit the idea that it's a fake, though, or else the make-up is laughable.
PPS - But if real, it has some attempts at humour in it.

The failed promises of the Human Genome Project

I am currently reading a book called Visions by Michio Kaku. It was published in 1998, so its picture of the future is a little off in places. It speaks in particular at great length of the amazing benefits that will come with the completion of the Human Genome Project, whose sequencing phase was finished in 2000.

We will, according to the book, have personal genetic sequencing done by our GP, who will then be able to tell us what diseases and ailments will plague us in old age. Forensic investigators will be able to construct identikit pictures of suspects simply from DNA samples found at crime scenes! We're still waiting for those and other benefits.

The first difficulty in realising these benefits has to be the fact that "junk DNA" is no longer considered non-functional. It makes up the vast majority of our genome (some 98%) and does not code for any proteins. It is still largely a mystery, so it will complicate any genetic studies enormously.

Secondly, the sequence of base pairs of our DNA is not even everything. There's a "meta-genetic code" in the way the DNA is folded which can cause expression or suppression of genes. You can't simply tell what a person looks like from their DNA sequence. You need to know how it was folded and expressed.

I'd say we are still a long way from understanding our own genetic composition, let alone being able to exploit it in the many ways that have been suggested over the years.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Those promises may yet come to pass.
PPS - But it will take much longer than anyone expected, because life is complex.

Image formats need more meta-data

With all the tagging, captioning and other meta-data that goes into digital photos these days, I think it's about time an image format included more detailed meta-data. We have the ability to store some specific meta-data in the JPEG format, but if you've identified the faces in a portrait (say, on Facebook) that information is stored outside the image file itself. If you make a copy, the names don't come along for the ride. If the names were stored inside the file, any copies would still contain that info, and no external database or program would be needed to associate them together.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I know there's a "JPEG 2000" format with different meta-data standards.
PPS - I'm not sure what kinds of meta-data can be stored there.

Bargain-hunting thought for the day

You could get excellent bargains on holiday shopping by "turning your calendar back" a couple of days. That way, you think it's Christmas while everyone else has passed Boxing Day already.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - On the down side, you would have more trouble remembering when shops are closed.
PPS - And it doesn't work for birthdays.

Facebook internal spam

I'm considering ignoring all future on-site notifications on Facebook. Long ago I put limits on the email Facebook can send me, but half of the "notifications" that appear in the bottom right corner of the page now are ads for applications I already use. It seems quite pointless to pay them any mind. The real problem, of course, is that I am now receiving notifications that I consider to be spam from Facebook while I'm on the Facebook site.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess it could be a little worse.
PPS - But not by much.

I do all my own stunts

Tomorrow I have a brief meeting with an acting agency about extras work. I don't know whether I'm supposed to bring anything, but I don't have any of the usual actor's kit like headshots or an acting resume. I don't even know if they'll be asking me questions, giving me a piece to read or just looking me up and down. Whatever happens, it should at least be interesting.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And maybe in a few months I can point out my elbow in the background of a TV commercial!
PPS - Or maybe they'll just tell me "thanks, but no thanks".

Friday Zombie Blogging - Zombie survival RPG

DoubleBear Productions has made an announcement about an upcoming zombie role-playing game set in the present day during a zombie apocalypse. The zombies will apparently be standard slow-type or "classic", but the real danger will be other humans. It is also noted that the game will be "open-ended", presumably meaning that there's not a central story line to be followed. If the game just went on forever without any goal in mind, though, that might get old kind of quickly.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Side-quests would provide a big part of the story for the player, then.
PPS - I guess that would work.

Databases on paper

I wonder about a paper-based wiki sometimes, or paper databases. You need stick-out tabs with labels to make it work, and you need to be able to pick out and re-sort things too. Paper doesn't afford the same kind of explosive freedom as purely digital storage, but sometimes there's a tactile deliciousness to thick card and printed labels. Like your own private library catalogue in an obsolete disk box, resorted according to the week's whims - this time alphabetical, this time by tag. Portable and zero-power when idle. It's one of the things that will remain when the internet melts down under the weight of spam.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - But it can't survive a fire as easily.
PPS - Backups of paper are much harder to produce and store off-site.

Shadow of the Mothaship

Apparently to write well I just need to be reading the right things. Dry computer magazines and straightforward prose doesn't cut it. I need something a bit hysterical and half-spoken, with a tone that energises my brain and gets my thoughts bubbling. Something with descriptive, poetic phrases that make you linger for a second and take it in, not because it's so beautiful but because you're absorbing the subtle imagery, good or bad. Shadow of the Mothaship by Cory Doctorow is like that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I think part of the appeal is the non-standard vocabulary.
PPS - But that trick has to be done well to work properly.

The Sims 3 unpatchable

Since buying a newer, more capable computer, I've installed The Sims 3, because it works much better there than on the older machine. However, the "censor" pixellation is a pain, so we want to remove it. It's not about nudity as such - naked sims are about as titillating as Barbie and Ken dolls - it's just an unsightly smudge on the screen that distracts from the game.

Despite downloading several alleged patches and applying them exactly as described, nothing has worked so far. It could be that EA has modified the game to make the patches ineffective. I understand it, but that makes me twice as frustrated.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Most of the patches seem to replace one file with an apparently identical one.
PPS - If it were different, wouldn't it work?