I hear this annoying argument all the time: I live in a cold climate so my {home server, tube amp, idle set-top box, microwave oven display} doesn't waste electricity, it just helps keep my house warm.
I understand that resistive space heaters are popular in the U.S., but in the rest of the world some people like heat pumps better. The heat output from both resistive space heaters and microprocessors or all other electronics is equal to the electrical energy drawn from the grid. The heat output from a heat pump-based device is higher than the electrical energy input, the difference resulting from cooling the outside air. Just like air conditioning in the summer, but in reverse. So there, your inefficient technology is not only helping keep your home warm, it's also wasting electricity that could otherwise be used to heat it more efficiently.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
internet
I'm on a long scientific visit at a scientific institute, I'm accomodated at a student guesthouse that's on the institute's scientific network and am not allowed to use the Internet for anything other than scientific purposes. I'm also not allowed to transfer more than 420MB/day or thereabout. Their leaflet says they'd let me but they can't because their traffic is metered and they're paying by amount of data transferred. I'm not a furious downloader, especially when I know I'm on a limited network. I just want to relax, read Slashdot and stream a news channel at some few 100 kb/s. But I can't because the institute's traffic is metered.
P.S. Oh shit this post is not scientific enough I'll be punished! [hides]
P.S. Oh shit this post is not scientific enough I'll be punished! [hides]
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
power
Are you deeply concerned with pollution, global warming, nuke accidents and all the shit that comes with modern, power-hungry technology? Are you thinking green, feeling green, living green? Caring about the environment? Celebrating Earth Hour by switching off the lights and burning stuff? Or are you just concerned with your electricity bill, netbook battery, or living in Japan where the power grid's flaky after the quake?
Well, then use a goddamn low-power web browser while you surf for pr0n!
Well, then use a goddamn low-power web browser while you surf for pr0n!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
research 2
Look on the fourth page in this pdf, which is published in a scientific journal by someone who's a scientific doctor. Look at Figure 3. Yo dawg, I heard you like screenshots so I put a screenshot in your screenshot so you can copy while you paste!
Monday, August 16, 2010
crisis
There's no economic crisis. If there were, you wouldn't be walking in a bar and having to wait 30 minutes for the waiter to take your order. This can be extrapolated to all levels of society.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
logic
Do you know those 'logic' puzzles where you have to choose which item 'logically follows' in some sequence, or which item 'doesn't belong' in some group? You can do them for fun ('brain training') or they can be administered to you in certain situations such as a job interview. People would normally be employed based on their relevant skills, but it seems some 'progressive' management types think that they should be 'logical' too. That's an idiotic practice and should stop, because:
A. My logic can be different from the author's logic, and that doesn't make it any less correct:
In hindsight, it should have been obvious to me that 25*25 is 625 and that 30*30 is 900, but at the time it was obvious to me that answer A is the only number not divisible by 3. Fuck you, gbrainy!
B. The question text can be ambiguous:
'Frontiers between different sheets' means that where there's a line a sheet ends and another one begins (like with countries, you know, they don't overlap). In that case it's impossible to build that shit because there are non-square 'countries' in it. So it's clear that (a) the question is wrong and (b) the sheets must overlap.
Now there's a question of what the author meant: whether that's how the figure is seen from above or the lines are just paper edges (like sea borders or something where there's no other country there) and maybe the paper is semi-transparent or something. Of course, if that's what's seen from above and the paper is perfectly opaque, you need 5 sheets, but if those are just (possibly hidden) paper edges somewhere you only need 4, which is less than 5. You might say that I'm stoopid and of course paper is not even conceptually transparent. But then why can you see the brain in the background through the sheets? Fuck you, gbrainy!
C. The questions can simply be annoyingly stupid:
Yeah thanks for lecturing me on how P is 5 letters away from K which is 5 letters away from F which is 5 letters away from A! I knew there must have been something like that, but I didn't even bother counting*, because the answer was obvious from comparing the three squares: A-B-C, F-G-H, K-L-M, P-?-R, gee, what letter could that be? There was a similar question with some clocks where they put forward a similarly contorted explanation, while the minute hands on each column were all pointing to the same number. Fuck you, gbrainy.
---
* some of my friends know all the letter indices and ASCII codes so they only need to subtract. They can also read binary T-shirts.
A. My logic can be different from the author's logic, and that doesn't make it any less correct:
In hindsight, it should have been obvious to me that 25*25 is 625 and that 30*30 is 900, but at the time it was obvious to me that answer A is the only number not divisible by 3. Fuck you, gbrainy!
B. The question text can be ambiguous:
'Frontiers between different sheets' means that where there's a line a sheet ends and another one begins (like with countries, you know, they don't overlap). In that case it's impossible to build that shit because there are non-square 'countries' in it. So it's clear that (a) the question is wrong and (b) the sheets must overlap.
Now there's a question of what the author meant: whether that's how the figure is seen from above or the lines are just paper edges (like sea borders or something where there's no other country there) and maybe the paper is semi-transparent or something. Of course, if that's what's seen from above and the paper is perfectly opaque, you need 5 sheets, but if those are just (possibly hidden) paper edges somewhere you only need 4, which is less than 5. You might say that I'm stoopid and of course paper is not even conceptually transparent. But then why can you see the brain in the background through the sheets? Fuck you, gbrainy!
C. The questions can simply be annoyingly stupid:
Yeah thanks for lecturing me on how P is 5 letters away from K which is 5 letters away from F which is 5 letters away from A! I knew there must have been something like that, but I didn't even bother counting*, because the answer was obvious from comparing the three squares: A-B-C, F-G-H, K-L-M, P-?-R, gee, what letter could that be? There was a similar question with some clocks where they put forward a similarly contorted explanation, while the minute hands on each column were all pointing to the same number. Fuck you, gbrainy.
---
* some of my friends know all the letter indices and ASCII codes so they only need to subtract. They can also read binary T-shirts.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
hour
Last night they changed the time again, they stole one hour. 6 months later they're going to add it back again. But unlike the bank, where they pay me interest for the money I give them, the authority that implements daylight savings / time change doesn't. And I want my time back. I know I'll get it back in winter, but I want interest on that. I want 5 minutes officially subtracted from one work day by law. But I'd rather have daylight savings abolished altogether, and here's a few reasons why.
I don't know how it's like in other countries, but here, when they add an hour in autumn the trains actually stop for an hour at 3 am to align to the new time. Imagine that! In spring they supposedly run faster to catch up with the new time. Supposedly.
It's true that my computer's clock adjusts to the time change automatically, but many stand-alone clocks don't, and my mobile phone's clock doesn't. Well guess what, it's exactly those clocks that wake you up in the morning. A few years ago I actually arrived at work one hour late because of fucking daylight savings. As if in the 20-fucking-1st century when we have electricity and efficient lighting there were any relevance of "saving daylight" at 6 in the morning. But back to adjusting the clock. I will now adjust my mobile phone's time. I did it. It took 20 key presses and about half a minute. But even if I could live with this, if for example the state offered me 5 to 10 minutes interest on my borrowed hour, there's still the problem of when to adjust the clocks. Here they officially change it at something like 2 or 3 am, and that's when the computer does it, but most people are asleep at 2 am and need to wake up at something like 6 or 7, so there's the option of setting the alarm one hour earlier or adjusting the time in the evening before going to sleep. But what happens if the phone that implements the alarm clock actually does adjust itself at 3 am without the user knowing? You lose one hour of sleep or arrive at work one hour late. See, daylight savings creates a lot of unnecessary headaches and basically loses people money indirectly. Time is money you know. Its disadvantages outweigh it's advantages which are mostly historic. For goodness's sake Fuck Daylight Savings.
P.S. What if the state interprets my request for interest on time as me having to "pay" for the hour they give me in autumn and take back in spring? That would suck so much.
The other hour that happened recently was of course Earth Hour ("urth our! urth our!") which I explained previously is utter bullshit. People shut off the electric lighting for one hour and light candles and glowsticks instead. Candles emit pollutants into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (which causes, OH MY GOD, global warming!!1), carbon monoxide, ash, et cetera. Candles are energetically inefficient (horribly inefficient), much less efficient than a lightbulb plus coal-fired power plant. It is much more environmentally responsible to use electric lighting than to use candles. It doesn't bring you closer to nature or all that shit when you use candles. Candles are bad for the environment. Use electric lighting, which if supplied by renewable sources, has nearly zero impact. Idiots. Also, a small diesel or compressed-air engine on a lightweight, aerodynamic chassis is more efficient and pollutes less than you riding a bike. You breathe out global-warming-causing carbon dioxide too you know, hippie.
I don't know how it's like in other countries, but here, when they add an hour in autumn the trains actually stop for an hour at 3 am to align to the new time. Imagine that! In spring they supposedly run faster to catch up with the new time. Supposedly.
It's true that my computer's clock adjusts to the time change automatically, but many stand-alone clocks don't, and my mobile phone's clock doesn't. Well guess what, it's exactly those clocks that wake you up in the morning. A few years ago I actually arrived at work one hour late because of fucking daylight savings. As if in the 20-fucking-1st century when we have electricity and efficient lighting there were any relevance of "saving daylight" at 6 in the morning. But back to adjusting the clock. I will now adjust my mobile phone's time. I did it. It took 20 key presses and about half a minute. But even if I could live with this, if for example the state offered me 5 to 10 minutes interest on my borrowed hour, there's still the problem of when to adjust the clocks. Here they officially change it at something like 2 or 3 am, and that's when the computer does it, but most people are asleep at 2 am and need to wake up at something like 6 or 7, so there's the option of setting the alarm one hour earlier or adjusting the time in the evening before going to sleep. But what happens if the phone that implements the alarm clock actually does adjust itself at 3 am without the user knowing? You lose one hour of sleep or arrive at work one hour late. See, daylight savings creates a lot of unnecessary headaches and basically loses people money indirectly. Time is money you know. Its disadvantages outweigh it's advantages which are mostly historic. For goodness's sake Fuck Daylight Savings.
P.S. What if the state interprets my request for interest on time as me having to "pay" for the hour they give me in autumn and take back in spring? That would suck so much.
The other hour that happened recently was of course Earth Hour ("urth our! urth our!") which I explained previously is utter bullshit. People shut off the electric lighting for one hour and light candles and glowsticks instead. Candles emit pollutants into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (which causes, OH MY GOD, global warming!!1), carbon monoxide, ash, et cetera. Candles are energetically inefficient (horribly inefficient), much less efficient than a lightbulb plus coal-fired power plant. It is much more environmentally responsible to use electric lighting than to use candles. It doesn't bring you closer to nature or all that shit when you use candles. Candles are bad for the environment. Use electric lighting, which if supplied by renewable sources, has nearly zero impact. Idiots. Also, a small diesel or compressed-air engine on a lightweight, aerodynamic chassis is more efficient and pollutes less than you riding a bike. You breathe out global-warming-causing carbon dioxide too you know, hippie.
Monday, May 18, 2009
brideparade
I came home this morning looking forward to a good sleep, only to see the news: there's been a "Brides' Parade" in Bucharest! Now I can't really understand how I missed that, given that I crossed about half the city... maybe it was because we were busy spending meaningful time together instead of dressing up and parading... maybe it was because I was too drunk... I don't know. The Brides' Parade featured "past, present and future brides" (basically any woman would qualify) in wedding dresses parading on some street, possibly in a 1900s car. I hate it when "historical cars" run on the road, they're ugly, obsolete and environmentally unfriendly (mwahahaha). But I digress. The fun part was watching a relatively young girl in a wedding dress being interviewed by some reporter: "So, are you married?" "No, no :)" "Are you getting married today?" "No, no! :) No guy will take me! :) Heeeey! Guuuys! Take me! Take me!!!! I'm [fucking] yours!!!!! Take me!!" Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Great for you.
Parade. Feel fine. Waste time. Feel good. Exhibit yourselves. Feel nice. Display your young, succulent flesh on the counter. Feel great. Spend. Feel wonderful. Burn, age, wither away,... death of the soul, indoctrinated in false grace. Be happy.
One six six! The number of the bitch!
One four four! The number of the whore!
Parade. Feel fine. Waste time. Feel good. Exhibit yourselves. Feel nice. Display your young, succulent flesh on the counter. Feel great. Spend. Feel wonderful. Burn, age, wither away,... death of the soul, indoctrinated in false grace. Be happy.
One six six! The number of the bitch!
One four four! The number of the whore!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
urth our
This evening was Earth Hour again. Earth Hour is a rotating, evening-following event lasting approx. one local hour and 24 global hours. People are supposed to turn off their lights as a message towards wasting less energy. Instead, they gather and light candles, which as some including myself point out, is actually very energy-inefficient. Early news reports show people gathering under slogans such as "screw current events" (ro: nu fi la curent), obviously referring to electrical current, and lighting tons of candles. This is incredibly stupid. Electricity is one of the cleanest means to transport energy, and is readily obtained from solar radiation, wind et cetera. Candles release toxic gases into the atmosphere and some are actually made from fossil fuels (paraffin wax). Their luminous efficiency is shit, compared to even the most inefficient incandescent light bulbs and electrical power plants. Way to go dudes, way to go. Now it's actually cool and eco to burn oil derivatives, at least as long as it's diesel which doesn't need electric sparks, because, you know, electricity is satanic and stuff mwahahah \m/.
As a response to critics, the World Wildlife Fund (who came up with Earth Hour) said it's purpose is not to save energy or money, but symbolic. LOL!
Therefore I say: the purpose of hunting is not to kill animals and endanger more species, but symbolic. It's also fun. Not that I endorse it, but I can certainly see how some people find hunting challenging, rewarding, fun. Coincidentally, about 1 hour ago I saw a documentary claiming that the guy whose killing started World War One was a prolific hunter who used to travel the Austrohungarian Empire by train shooting every animal in sight. He supposedly killed about 300 k before being shot to death himself.
Sometimes I just get tired of ranting. Sometimes I just accept the fact that I live in a defective world full of defective people, including myself. For instance, if astronauts can phrase their speeches in such defective ways as to suggest that space smells, what the fuck can I expect from normal people? Please spare me the "it's metaphoric, dude!" explanation -- many people actually don't know that void can't carry sound or smell and many people couldn't care less, sadly. Wordings like "space smells of ozone" and "a whiff of vacuum" do nothing to help that.
After all, why the hell do I expect stuff from astronauts. Astronauts are more like soldiers than like scientists. They get too much hype anyway: Dood, let's off the lights and light them candles and watch the space shuttel land and celebrate urth our!!
Whatever makes you happy, people.
As a response to critics, the World Wildlife Fund (who came up with Earth Hour) said it's purpose is not to save energy or money, but symbolic. LOL!
Therefore I say: the purpose of hunting is not to kill animals and endanger more species, but symbolic. It's also fun. Not that I endorse it, but I can certainly see how some people find hunting challenging, rewarding, fun. Coincidentally, about 1 hour ago I saw a documentary claiming that the guy whose killing started World War One was a prolific hunter who used to travel the Austrohungarian Empire by train shooting every animal in sight. He supposedly killed about 300 k before being shot to death himself.
Sometimes I just get tired of ranting. Sometimes I just accept the fact that I live in a defective world full of defective people, including myself. For instance, if astronauts can phrase their speeches in such defective ways as to suggest that space smells, what the fuck can I expect from normal people? Please spare me the "it's metaphoric, dude!" explanation -- many people actually don't know that void can't carry sound or smell and many people couldn't care less, sadly. Wordings like "space smells of ozone" and "a whiff of vacuum" do nothing to help that.
After all, why the hell do I expect stuff from astronauts. Astronauts are more like soldiers than like scientists. They get too much hype anyway: Dood, let's off the lights and light them candles and watch the space shuttel land and celebrate urth our!!
Whatever makes you happy, people.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
noise
Mkay... some ex-convict, who also happens to be famous, is denied entry in the UK. The UK rules, I love the UK. I fully agree with the British Border Agency: "we continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good". (In one way or another.)
Mkay... stupid mascot causes floods, or maybe it's just that Chinese symbolism is dumb and outdated. Also, those mascots are hideous. While we're at it, why don't we just shift all those eights a little bit? (pausing for a few moments) Aha! so that's how one transmutes prosperity to death and darkness to light etcetera. Interesting, I've learned something today.
Mkay... A lot of time has passed and people are still discussing Pluto. It's still amazing to see how much time and energy people invest in such irrelevant matters. Gravity Probe B canceled on the home stretch? Anyone? Bah! Pluto! You know what? Fuck Pluto and fuck the Hubble telescope for not being able to snap a photo of Pluto that's more than six pixels wide. We have pictures of Neptune, both from deep-space probes and from that orbiting piece of scrap that's been launched in space without being properly tested first, but we have great difficulty in obtaining pictures of Pluto. We also know there are bodies larger than Pluto beyond it and we don't call them planets, but we're still giving a shit about that piece of crap that can't even hold it's own orbit. We've failed as a race.
Mkay... crazy fanatic preacher admits to inscribing "an X, not a cross" on students' arms. A-ha! So not all terrorists are Muslim! We've learned something today, haven't we? The interesting thing is that he used "a science tool known as a high-frequency generator" to do what he did. This warrants further comments:
1. On the one hand, what he did is obviously wrong on many levels, but why the hell did he have to use an RF generator? I said this before in a previous post, concerning laser pointers: a knife can be used to prepare food, to heal people through surgery, or to kill people. Are you ready to ban knifes just because they can be used to kill people? I don't want to live in a world where I'm not allowed to use an RF generator because it can be used to burn people or cause interference. I know the article isn't about this, but I feel the problem needs to be raised. There also remains the question: why the hell use an RF generator, which is intrinsically evil and satanic as per the Bible, when there are matches and cigars and stuff available?
2. On the other hand, the guy might actually earn some bonus points for his technique. I mean, that's being inventive. It has hack value. For instance, if I had an RF generator and wanted to draw stuff on my skin, I'd certainly consider using it for that purpose, but maybe I wouldn't be thinking about this, had it not been for this guy's misdeeds.
Mkay... I was simulating some low-power wireless network and it wasn't working. No packets would get from one node to another. After countless hours of digging through the sources (I was lucky I had the sources), I found out that the simulated noise what at a constant level of plus 127 dBm. Sadly I can't give a fancy link to Google Calculator because it doesn't seem to know dBm, but I can tell you that's huge. I mean just look: Wikipedia has tables that speculate on how a hundred yottameters look like, but its dBm-to-watts table stops at 80. To get 127 dBm of noise power, or 5 gigawatts, you'd have to be inside a fusion reactor, or better yet, a hydrogen bomb. Well, the radio simulator would detect a collision at anything above -70dBm (like the physical chip does), which, as the Wikipedia table states, is quite a reasonable value. Anyway, fuck that, and fuck the fact that the interface for specifying noise in the radio simulation changed from TinyOS 2.0.0 to 2.0.1, breaking compatibility and silently failing (at least in the code I was working on, which I admit is... particular). You know what? Fuck bad programming, and fuck such a lousy sense of physics. This however raises the question: If I wrote a simulator from scratch, would I give debug warnings when parameters go haywire? Of course not, if only because there is no clear threshold after which a value can be safely identified as being totally insane. Maybe I should submit a patch that simulates the RF chip instantly vaporising into a greenish puff of smoke, so hot that even all the magic's gone away. I mean, if they simulate noise and attenuation and collisions and bit errors, why not?
Mkay... stupid mascot causes floods, or maybe it's just that Chinese symbolism is dumb and outdated. Also, those mascots are hideous. While we're at it, why don't we just shift all those eights a little bit? (pausing for a few moments) Aha! so that's how one transmutes prosperity to death and darkness to light etcetera. Interesting, I've learned something today.
Mkay... A lot of time has passed and people are still discussing Pluto. It's still amazing to see how much time and energy people invest in such irrelevant matters. Gravity Probe B canceled on the home stretch? Anyone? Bah! Pluto! You know what? Fuck Pluto and fuck the Hubble telescope for not being able to snap a photo of Pluto that's more than six pixels wide. We have pictures of Neptune, both from deep-space probes and from that orbiting piece of scrap that's been launched in space without being properly tested first, but we have great difficulty in obtaining pictures of Pluto. We also know there are bodies larger than Pluto beyond it and we don't call them planets, but we're still giving a shit about that piece of crap that can't even hold it's own orbit. We've failed as a race.
Mkay... crazy fanatic preacher admits to inscribing "an X, not a cross" on students' arms. A-ha! So not all terrorists are Muslim! We've learned something today, haven't we? The interesting thing is that he used "a science tool known as a high-frequency generator" to do what he did. This warrants further comments:
1. On the one hand, what he did is obviously wrong on many levels, but why the hell did he have to use an RF generator? I said this before in a previous post, concerning laser pointers: a knife can be used to prepare food, to heal people through surgery, or to kill people. Are you ready to ban knifes just because they can be used to kill people? I don't want to live in a world where I'm not allowed to use an RF generator because it can be used to burn people or cause interference. I know the article isn't about this, but I feel the problem needs to be raised. There also remains the question: why the hell use an RF generator, which is intrinsically evil and satanic as per the Bible, when there are matches and cigars and stuff available?
2. On the other hand, the guy might actually earn some bonus points for his technique. I mean, that's being inventive. It has hack value. For instance, if I had an RF generator and wanted to draw stuff on my skin, I'd certainly consider using it for that purpose, but maybe I wouldn't be thinking about this, had it not been for this guy's misdeeds.
Mkay... I was simulating some low-power wireless network and it wasn't working. No packets would get from one node to another. After countless hours of digging through the sources (I was lucky I had the sources), I found out that the simulated noise what at a constant level of plus 127 dBm. Sadly I can't give a fancy link to Google Calculator because it doesn't seem to know dBm, but I can tell you that's huge. I mean just look: Wikipedia has tables that speculate on how a hundred yottameters look like, but its dBm-to-watts table stops at 80. To get 127 dBm of noise power, or 5 gigawatts, you'd have to be inside a fusion reactor, or better yet, a hydrogen bomb. Well, the radio simulator would detect a collision at anything above -70dBm (like the physical chip does), which, as the Wikipedia table states, is quite a reasonable value. Anyway, fuck that, and fuck the fact that the interface for specifying noise in the radio simulation changed from TinyOS 2.0.0 to 2.0.1, breaking compatibility and silently failing (at least in the code I was working on, which I admit is... particular). You know what? Fuck bad programming, and fuck such a lousy sense of physics. This however raises the question: If I wrote a simulator from scratch, would I give debug warnings when parameters go haywire? Of course not, if only because there is no clear threshold after which a value can be safely identified as being totally insane. Maybe I should submit a patch that simulates the RF chip instantly vaporising into a greenish puff of smoke, so hot that even all the magic's gone away. I mean, if they simulate noise and attenuation and collisions and bit errors, why not?
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
voting
This weekend is, er, was voting day. We're supposedly electing mayors, local councils and the other things that come with them. Therefore, last night I dreamt I was voting :D It was an interesting experience, akin to a trip into a future world and its voting ways.
So without further ado, I give you
Voting: 2084.
It was a cold April morning and the dew on the grass was frozen like tiny beads of glass.
I turn off the artificial landscape and open the window to smell the warm, polluted air.
Aaah, nitric dioxide, so sweet. Sulphur trioxide, yummy. Etcetera. (We still didn't find a cheap, pervasive way to command our windows to open and our lights to turn on in 2084, although computers students are still studying "Evolved Interfaces", but based on Web 4.0) First there was the Web, then pr0n, then the Social Web 2.0, then the Semantic Web 3.0 which failed to deliver, then there was Web 4.0, the EmoWeb, where people would use galvanic skin response, blood pressure, rectal probes and other sensors to upload their feelings online. Then of course marketoids were talking about Web 5.0, where you could blog by thought alone, but that wouldn't happen until 2337.
Alas, I reluctantly get up, take a shower, put some clothes on (dumb clothes, mind you, no electronics or anything) and walk out the door. I reach the voting room, sign on a sheet of paper, the supervisor hands me two booklets (where I am to stamp the desired candidates) and some advertising leaflets. There was absolutely no other person in that room. It was big, empty and quiet. Therefore I take my time and slowly walk towards the voting booth, which is a small, improvised box with dark blue drapes obscuring my secret choice. As usual, I might say.
I start analyzing the advertising materials and going through the list of candidates. Oddly enough, most are well-known TV stars. I finally decide on a sexy female TV presenter. After all, no mayor has done anything of note for the city in the last half-century, at least we'll have a sexy, charismatic mayor. But I'm not yet ready to cast my vote. I take a peek outside the small voting booth, and there are still no people around. Even the supervising authority has gone out for a smoke, leaving only a low-resolution security camera to keep watch. I calmly walk out of the booth, go into the next room, take out my 2-kg laptop, connect to the nearest wireless access point, and start searching for data on the few candidates I like most. After half an hour of searching, I think: Oh shit, I left the voting booth occupied! Think of the queue! Heck, what queue. There was no queue.
The End.
So without further ado, I give you
Voting: 2084.
It was a cold April morning and the dew on the grass was frozen like tiny beads of glass.
I turn off the artificial landscape and open the window to smell the warm, polluted air.
Aaah, nitric dioxide, so sweet. Sulphur trioxide, yummy. Etcetera. (We still didn't find a cheap, pervasive way to command our windows to open and our lights to turn on in 2084, although computers students are still studying "Evolved Interfaces", but based on Web 4.0) First there was the Web, then pr0n, then the Social Web 2.0, then the Semantic Web 3.0 which failed to deliver, then there was Web 4.0, the EmoWeb, where people would use galvanic skin response, blood pressure, rectal probes and other sensors to upload their feelings online. Then of course marketoids were talking about Web 5.0, where you could blog by thought alone, but that wouldn't happen until 2337.
Alas, I reluctantly get up, take a shower, put some clothes on (dumb clothes, mind you, no electronics or anything) and walk out the door. I reach the voting room, sign on a sheet of paper, the supervisor hands me two booklets (where I am to stamp the desired candidates) and some advertising leaflets. There was absolutely no other person in that room. It was big, empty and quiet. Therefore I take my time and slowly walk towards the voting booth, which is a small, improvised box with dark blue drapes obscuring my secret choice. As usual, I might say.
I start analyzing the advertising materials and going through the list of candidates. Oddly enough, most are well-known TV stars. I finally decide on a sexy female TV presenter. After all, no mayor has done anything of note for the city in the last half-century, at least we'll have a sexy, charismatic mayor. But I'm not yet ready to cast my vote. I take a peek outside the small voting booth, and there are still no people around. Even the supervising authority has gone out for a smoke, leaving only a low-resolution security camera to keep watch. I calmly walk out of the booth, go into the next room, take out my 2-kg laptop, connect to the nearest wireless access point, and start searching for data on the few candidates I like most. After half an hour of searching, I think: Oh shit, I left the voting booth occupied! Think of the queue! Heck, what queue. There was no queue.
The End.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
outlawing
Some British chef wants to outlaw out-of-season vegetables. Besides this being extremmely funny, it's of course stupid. Let's compare this to some hypothetical situations, in order to better understand just why is this so stupid.
First, let's assume some "celebrity" fashion designer decides they want to outlaw out-of-season or out-of-fashion clothes. I guess nobody is going to pass such a law (in a serious country in this timeframe), but just the idea of lobbying for something like this is preposterous. Imagine stores being unable to sell ... t-shirts in winter. Imagine yourself not being allowed to... I don't know, wear a blue hat because it's unfashionable and thus illegal.
Let's imagine then, that some "celebrity" "deejay" decides to lobby for a law banning songs and records that are more than 3 years old. So then I go to the usual rock bars and I'm not able to listen to 80's rock because some idiot passed a law that some other idiot lobbied for.
Then, let's imagine that some "celebrity" porn star bans you from having sex in other ways than the missionary position (a real law in some USA state).
Finally, let's imagine that some celebrity electonic circuit designer bans electrolytic capacitors, which they should actually do, as electrolytic capacitors currently suck balls and are a main cause of appliance failure. That would be extremmely stupid, because electrolytic capacitors, though unreliable, are very small and cannot be replaced with some other type without ending up with for example a mobile phone the size of a bucket.
First, let's assume some "celebrity" fashion designer decides they want to outlaw out-of-season or out-of-fashion clothes. I guess nobody is going to pass such a law (in a serious country in this timeframe), but just the idea of lobbying for something like this is preposterous. Imagine stores being unable to sell ... t-shirts in winter. Imagine yourself not being allowed to... I don't know, wear a blue hat because it's unfashionable and thus illegal.
Let's imagine then, that some "celebrity" "deejay" decides to lobby for a law banning songs and records that are more than 3 years old. So then I go to the usual rock bars and I'm not able to listen to 80's rock because some idiot passed a law that some other idiot lobbied for.
Then, let's imagine that some "celebrity" porn star bans you from having sex in other ways than the missionary position (a real law in some USA state).
Finally, let's imagine that some celebrity electonic circuit designer bans electrolytic capacitors, which they should actually do, as electrolytic capacitors currently suck balls and are a main cause of appliance failure. That would be extremmely stupid, because electrolytic capacitors, though unreliable, are very small and cannot be replaced with some other type without ending up with for example a mobile phone the size of a bucket.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
testicles
A very funny piece of news caught my attention today. Don't you just like the part with the North and the South? :D Apparently some Florida senator thinks truck nuts are offensive and must be banned. WTF? Not only that, but the guy owns a gun shop! :)) So basically, the way I see it, is: killing people is not obscene, but displaying a pair of fake animal testicles is. Way to go dude, way to go. See my previous post about some people having zero respect for life. Of course, people are hypocrites, and morality is just a word. ("Stop the world... ... Peace is just a word...") I guess to some people it is moral and ethical to own and sell guns, but it is unethical to well, jack off to porn, kiss in public, or stick some plastic balls on your truck.
Here in Romania most people are Christian Orthodox, meaning we start celebrating Easter this night. One of the bigger TV establishments here is running an entertainment show intended as a fund raiser to help some sick kids who need a ton of cash to well... live. You dial a number and donate $$$ if you like the stars' performance. The $$$ go to some kids who need surgery. One of the kids needs a treatment based on stem cells if they are to well, live. Of course, one can't treat people with stem cells in the 'civilized' western world anymore, because it's illegal. They have to do it in China. Why? Because some people think they have the moral authority to decide who lives and who doesn't. Because they don't necessarily value life, but they have to appease the vocal fanatic hypocrites who don't know shit about anything but feel they have the answer to life, the universe and everything else in some book or text or judgment or something. Whatever. Go on preaching damnation, salvation, environment, cloning, genetic engineering, global warming and nuckular \/\/ar while I go eat a sandwich or something.
Here in Romania most people are Christian Orthodox, meaning we start celebrating Easter this night. One of the bigger TV establishments here is running an entertainment show intended as a fund raiser to help some sick kids who need a ton of cash to well... live. You dial a number and donate $$$ if you like the stars' performance. The $$$ go to some kids who need surgery. One of the kids needs a treatment based on stem cells if they are to well, live. Of course, one can't treat people with stem cells in the 'civilized' western world anymore, because it's illegal. They have to do it in China. Why? Because some people think they have the moral authority to decide who lives and who doesn't. Because they don't necessarily value life, but they have to appease the vocal fanatic hypocrites who don't know shit about anything but feel they have the answer to life, the universe and everything else in some book or text or judgment or something. Whatever. Go on preaching damnation, salvation, environment, cloning, genetic engineering, global warming and nuckular \/\/ar while I go eat a sandwich or something.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
war
Laser pointers have been banned in "some Australian state" after a number of idiots pointed them at aircraft cockpits. Now, the article isn't very clear on wether all laser pointers are banned, or just high-powered ones that can really blind pilots. For instance, the crappy ones that I can get here for around half a buck couldn't blind anything more than 10 meters away. So instead of just arresting and convicting the idiots who endanger passengers' lives, the state just bans laser pointers alltogether. What next, banning forks because one can stab people with them? Should we eat with Chinese sticks then instead of forks? What if someone finds a criminal use for chopsticks then? Eat with our bare hands of course. Then someone uses their hands to beats up somebody else to death and we all get to wear little remote-controlled collars that give you a paralysing shock whenever the state says so. Maybe that would be good. But until then, what if lasers get banned in my country as well? Maybe I want to build a long-range laser data transceiver. Will I be able to do so without a license in 5 years time? Will I be able to get a license then? Will a high-school hacker with reasonable technical knowledge but no engineering degree be able to get such a license? This sucks.
Then I learn that Hillary Clinton, who is ugly, said that the U.S. could wipe Iran off the face of the Earth. Well of course they could! The U.S. can wipe anything out, including the whole planet. So can Russia, and a couple other countries can do some serious damage. We all know that. Do they want to wipe everything out? No. There was no Cold War, there was no Cuban missile crisis, in my humble opinion. No one in their right mind would have launched their nuclear arsenal against another nuclear power. It was all just bluffing and political bullshit, regardless of what the press or Discovery says. But I'm probably wrong. I was walking through the Polytechnic's campus this morning and I was thinking... scientists don't understand life, and maybe it's good they don't. When humans understand something, they tend to devalue it. For instance, we (the civilized world) no longer attribute lightning to some gods being angry, and we no longer fear it and sacrifice animals to calm the gods down or something. Well. Kind of. So it's lost its value. Now it's just a meteorological phenomenon. Yeah, some may find it beautiful, sure, but it's not divine anymore. Its value has diminished. Solar and lunar eclipses, same shit. Sure, there are still a lot of uncivilized or semi-civilized people who hold a wide variety of beliefs regarding these, so these phenomena have a much greater emotional value to them than to us. Steam engines (think the ancient Greek spinning ball that was used for magic and stuff). Whatever. So when we understand life, when we begin engineering life in the lab for good, then we'd have lost all respect for it. Of course, big political leaders never had any respect for life. Think Hitler, Stalin, the Crusades, the World Wars, the Roman, Otoman, British, Spanish empires, whatever. We can wipe Iran off the face of the Earth, sure. Yeah I also hate oppresive regimes, I hate oppresive cultures, but you can't just kill everybody who's not as civilized as yourself from certain points of view. Maybe they're more civilized in ways you fail to see. And finally, maybe there are space aliens out there who are far more civilized than we are, and they don't go around killing us just because well, we suck. And until the U.S. and Russia and France and the others scrap all their nukes, they have no moral right whatsoever to accuse Iran of wanting to have their own. Fuck Iran, fuck the U.S., fuck Australia, fuck the human race, peace already.
Then I learn that Hillary Clinton, who is ugly, said that the U.S. could wipe Iran off the face of the Earth. Well of course they could! The U.S. can wipe anything out, including the whole planet. So can Russia, and a couple other countries can do some serious damage. We all know that. Do they want to wipe everything out? No. There was no Cold War, there was no Cuban missile crisis, in my humble opinion. No one in their right mind would have launched their nuclear arsenal against another nuclear power. It was all just bluffing and political bullshit, regardless of what the press or Discovery says. But I'm probably wrong. I was walking through the Polytechnic's campus this morning and I was thinking... scientists don't understand life, and maybe it's good they don't. When humans understand something, they tend to devalue it. For instance, we (the civilized world) no longer attribute lightning to some gods being angry, and we no longer fear it and sacrifice animals to calm the gods down or something. Well. Kind of. So it's lost its value. Now it's just a meteorological phenomenon. Yeah, some may find it beautiful, sure, but it's not divine anymore. Its value has diminished. Solar and lunar eclipses, same shit. Sure, there are still a lot of uncivilized or semi-civilized people who hold a wide variety of beliefs regarding these, so these phenomena have a much greater emotional value to them than to us. Steam engines (think the ancient Greek spinning ball that was used for magic and stuff). Whatever. So when we understand life, when we begin engineering life in the lab for good, then we'd have lost all respect for it. Of course, big political leaders never had any respect for life. Think Hitler, Stalin, the Crusades, the World Wars, the Roman, Otoman, British, Spanish empires, whatever. We can wipe Iran off the face of the Earth, sure. Yeah I also hate oppresive regimes, I hate oppresive cultures, but you can't just kill everybody who's not as civilized as yourself from certain points of view. Maybe they're more civilized in ways you fail to see. And finally, maybe there are space aliens out there who are far more civilized than we are, and they don't go around killing us just because well, we suck. And until the U.S. and Russia and France and the others scrap all their nukes, they have no moral right whatsoever to accuse Iran of wanting to have their own. Fuck Iran, fuck the U.S., fuck Australia, fuck the human race, peace already.
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