BillSaysThis

Singularity News

John Robb, CEO of UserLand Software, has started Singularity, a weblog with news and information on the Singularity. I’ve briefly touched on this before. Vernor Vinge, the idea’s originator, and Ray Kurzweil explain it as “the idea that accelerating technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030. The results on the other side of the “event horizon” are unpredictable.” I expect this will be a very interesting weblog if Robb gives it much attention.

Kurzweil’s site has a number of interesting articles on this topic such as Robin Hanson’s detailed, math-filled economic analysis of the Singularity; John Smart’s What is the Singularity?, which surveys the history, thinkers, and development of the concept; and a video preview of Kurzweil’s next book The Singularity is Near.

Little things to do for your love

Don’t forget:

to leave little love notes in surprise locations

to make a bag lunch for her once in a while (with a note)

to bring her flowers for no reason

to plant a tree for your love

to light candles nightly

to tell her she will always be beautiful

to hold her when she cries

two tickets to paradise, once a year; and

a tennis bracelet!!!!

Courtesy of a wonderful friend

And so did I

09 Sep 01

You had six months of affection

Flowers and phone calls

Kisses, dinners, happiness

And so did I

The white hot blaze burned us

Touched us with the magic wand

Then you questioned happiness

And so did I

We ran an amazing race together

Almost making the finish line

You hesitated and stumbled

And so did I

The passion had us running

The days and nights blurring

You lost the magic ring

And so did I

We bounced and bounded together

Climbing the hills of love

You fell down and broke your crown

And so did I

I gave you my heart too easily

Then took it away too soon

Remember the beauty of the fire

And so will I

The problem of pleasure

Philosophers have for centuries (and ordinary folk for millenia) been wondering why, if there is a God, suffering exists in the world. Sin alone cannot be the answer since large events (such as hurricanes) can have the same effect on large groups, all of whom cannot have committed the same ‘quantity’ of sin. But the opposite question is rarely explored. Steven DenBeste, writing in his USS Clueless weblog says pleasure is easily explained in mechanistic terms: “We enjoy things because creatures who enjoy the right things are differentially better adapted to survive and breed. It’s as simple as that.” Read the whole essay, it’s worth it. Steven was writing in response to Sean’s post, so I guess I’m just adding a link in the chain.

Green tea: not just for Chinese restaurants

Ivanhoe’s Medical Breakthroughs reports on the Benefits of Green Tea as reported by two UCLA medical researchers. Regular drinking of green tea has been shown to lower the risk of breast cancer, gastritis, and stomach cancer but Drs. Zuo-Feng Zhang and Mai Nguyen believe further studies will show similar benefits for several other types of cancers. A key differentiation between green and other teas is that green tea is not fermented, a process that destroys the anti-oxidents that are naturally part of all teas.

MTV President Judy McGrath is wanted for the murder of music

Matt Drudge is a man with opinions and he’s never been afraid to let them out. But this time he really let’s loose on Judy McGrath. My only comment is that I don’t watch MTV and haven’t for awhile except for the occasional Celebrity Deathmatch; shows like TRL and Jackass are just over my head. Sample quotes from Drudge:

“Long after we rip out the infected pierced stud in our tongues and wash off all our tats and forget we ever witnessed three-and-a-half-hours of something called The Eighteenth Annual MTV Video Music Awards… we’ll possibly be able to look at ourselves in the mirror again.”

“THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO THOUGHT WE WOULD MAKE GOOD WHORES.”

“McGrath, a star in the VIACOMCBS family, knew she had hit the Zeitgeist with promos for the “Music Awards” which featured host Jamie Foxx simulating intercourse with a live sheep. You could almost hear McGrath applaud, cheer and order heavy rotation as Foxx gyrated his pelvis into the sheep.”

Drudge is not the only one catching on… Eric Boehlert in Salon gives us Rock stars for sale! and Adam Curry, original VJ and now Web entrepreneur, is always good for a gut shot.

Linux guys need laughs too

Another case of a smartass with too much time on his hands–O’Really & Associates, a parody of O’Reilly & Associates with “computer book parodies, not much else.” But they did make t-shirts out of some of the book covers and, me being easily amused, I ordered some.

Could MS do HomeStation if it was split up?

PC Format, a UK home computing magazine, has a world scoop on the Microsoft HomeStation. And Flangy, an MS employee, appears to confirm. What is HomeStation? Microsoft’s idea of a home entertainment hub, a combination XBox/PC, with heavy duty graphics and sound. You’ll hook it up to your TV, cable modem or DSL connection, digital camera, PDA, and telephone. It will include personal video recorder functionality. It will be able to play XBox and PC games and run on WindowsXP. And it will make heavy use of Microsoft’s .NET servers and services.

Curiously, David Banks in Breaking Windows is quite clear that one of Bill Gates’ most fundamental principles is the separation of hardware and software and now he’s going to break that a second time. Has the world changed that much?

What I’d like to know is how some obscure British pub had this story before the major tech sources?

Today’s book: Potshot

I’m a big Robert B. Parker fan–I even read his crappy western Gunman’s Rhapsody–so of course I was eager to get to the latest Spenser novel, Potshot. In this volume, Spenser is asked to solve a murder the local police in the desert town of Potshot, Arizona, are ignoring and, while he’s at it, to clean out a gang that’s extorting protection money. He takes Hawk, of course, and rounds up a bunch of tough guys from past adventures/novels (Vinny, Tedy Sapp, Bernard J. Fortunato, Chollo, and Bobby Horse) to help him as the gang has about 40 tough guys of its own.

I enjoyed this one a lot, it is better than the last five novels Parker’s written. He does spend a lot of the ink on characterization and dialog and less effort on plot but after writing about these guys for all these years I understand. And there is enough plot to make it work. Oddly, Spenser spends very little time writing about the food, especially food preparation, which is usually a staple of his books; poetry features much larger here: “The grave’s a fine and private place,” I said, “but none I think do there embrace.”

Last night’s movie: American Pie 2

After reading and writing up yesterday’s anti-movie rant by Sacramento Bee movie reviewer Joe Baltake, I decided I had to go out and see American Pie 2 for myself. Short answer: he was wrong. The movie is funny and I was laughing thoughout. Yes, the filmmakers depend on sex and gross out humor for the bulk of their jokes but what teen comedy except for American Grafitti didn’t? Sure, the “Are they lesbians?,” superglue, and peeing off the balcony scenes go further than, say, Animal House did or could 20 years ago, but that’s also just a sign of our changing cultural values. Pong was a lot less violent than Quake, too. I think screenwriter Adam Herz, who also wrote the original, does a good job with the story, keeping a lot of the concepts and characterizations from AP1 but finding new ways to express them. Good example is Finch’s obsession over Steiffler’s mom (and therefore Tantra) throughout the movie and the way Oz (the ever-improving Chris Klein) and Heather (Mena Suvari) can’t quite get together even though they want to badly.

And did the producers hire every large breasted actress between 17 and 21 in Hollywood? It sure looks that way on screen. But none of them can compare to Shannon Elizabeth (whose personal website is poorly designed, IMO, but does have lots of photos), back as sex goddess/exchange student Nadia. Getting smart, Elizabeth put a no nudity (not even topless) clause in her contract although she looks awesome in anything and does one great bikini scene. Always on the lookout for titillation, I would suggest Stekson’s Shannon Elizabeth Picture Page as a good place to look.

Pauline Kael

On the other hand, Pauline Kael recently passed away. Kael was probably the most prominent and important film critic of the last half century and, had she deigned to review this film, would undoubtedly have not gotten past the opening scene–the sequel’s version of dad walking in on Jim. Louis Menand wrote an excellent appreciation of Kael for the NY Review of Books several years ago when a huge collection of Kael’s reviews and columns were published in For Keeps.

Eric Clapton Royally sucks ass

An ongoing series, Behind The Music That Sucks tears Eric Clapton to shreds in a new episode. In this excellent use of Flash director Andy Smith, writer Conor Lynch, and music composer Jared Gutstadt use a Clockwork Orange framework (“Hello, my droogies”), Mick Jagger leads the first brainwashing forcing Clapton watch hours and hours of American Bandstand to switch to his soft rock crap (then Clapton goes on Oprah, who we see in panties with her curly hairs showing) Barbra Streisand and James Taylor doing a second brainwashing forcing Clapton to watch streams of Full House episodes, and what appears to be a third brainwashing by blues masters including B.B. King but turns out to be just a serious ass kicking. A good bit of very funny original parody music is featured. Other musicians/groups featured in past episodes include Brittney (I watched this episode and it’s damn funny too), J. Lo, Garth Brooks, Glenn Miller, William Shatner, and Guns N Roses.

Trekkers are wonderful people

Star Trek fans do all kinds of fun stuff–heck, GalaxyQuest was a whole movie spoofing Trek fans–but I have to say that Brian Connors has probably taken things beyond any reasonable semblance of a line with How do Klingons compute? He’s actually devised a programming language based on how Star Trek’s Klingons would look at programming, and describes it as “the bastard child of a back-room tryst between PostScript and Lisp after a Star Trek convention.” And, de rigeur in this age, the language is open source and freeware. As best I can tell, you can actually write programs in var’aq although it is far from being a complete competitor to, say, Perl (which it’s written in) or Java. But wacko-way cool!

Update: I wrote a note to Brian telling him of this entry and he answered back. “<horntoot>I do take a sort of pride in the possibility that of all geeky things, this very likely might be one of the geekiest in existence. And the amusing part is that there are far greater geeks than I in the world, and yet I cooked up this and they didn’t, yes?</horntoot>”

HP/CPQ: It’s all bad

The Merc had a major takeout on the merger this morning. Scott Herbold, the stock columnist, said the merger wasn’t worth a hill of beans. Dan Gillmor said: “When one beleaguered giant buys another, you can smell the desperation. It’s oozing from the corporate pores” at the two computer makers. Some observers see this as indicator of a wave of consolidation; Ernst & Young, for example, is staffing up its San Jose office, which focuses on mergers and acquisitions. Employees are nervous and with a projected reduction of 15,000 staff I can’t blame them.

The Reg has an insightful analysis of how the talks began. Another side effect of SirCam?

Make better, not fancier, movies

Two recent articles and a talk with my buddy have me thinking lately about what’s up with Hollywood.

My buddy says he just won’t cough up $8.75 or more for every film that comes along the way he would last year and before. The tipping point for him were films like Pearl Harbor and The Score that came with big press and expectations but bored him silly. And beyond the basic quality issue is cost: it’s gotten too expensive with tiny bags of popcorn costing $3 on top of the high ticket price. For the most part he’s willing to wait and rent a DVD or see it on a cable movie channel. What’s the rush, he asks?

Joe Baltake, movie critic for the Sacramento Bee, complains standards are declining, that critics (and viewers) are being forced “by the entertainment industry to systematically lower our standards.” Baltake says the problem applies to TV shows as well, pointing to putdowns and sex jokes as “the only laugh-getters that writers can come up with nowadays.”

Stuart Maschwitz, speaking at the Ars Electronica festival, says that the tools are becoming available to allow independents to make major studio quality films and this will only get easier. This might be a solution to the quality and price issue in a few years. In the meantime, though, he says the studios are so enamored of the possibilities digital effects allow that the films are being overwhelmed. Maschwitz, who worked on Star Wars: Phantom Menace supervising the space battle scenes, cites this as an example and says the original film even with its much poorer f/x was far superior as a movie.

But I am willing to still believe in the magic. I can’t wait to see such effects-laden films as Jet Li’s The One, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and especially Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Tonight’s movie: Masterminds

Think of Home Alone except (a) the bad guy is Englishman Patrick Stewart (b) the Macaully Culkin character is a 16 year old hacker (c) the setting is a ritzy private school (d) Stewart and a surprisingly large crew of baddies hold the students hostage (e) the target is $650 million in bearer bonds and you have 1997’s Masterminds. Stewart must have a had a really hard time keeping a straight face while the cameras were rolling but he goes way over the top here (think of him in Conspiracy Theory) only to end up plunging his hopped up ATV escape car into a sewage outlet pond–literally! Vincent Kartheiser is cool as Ozzie Paxton, our slacker hero, who not only has to stop Stewart and crew but patch up his family. In an odd coincidence, Kartheiser was born the day after me, 18 years later. Mr. Showbiz called this a “Die Hard for kids” but I prefer my analogy.

Finally finished the Italy Book writeups

Okay, I got home two months ago, but somehow I forgot to input the last of the Italy 2001 Book Reviews, which I’ve now done. Phew!!! Still a little more work on the Italy Pages to go, hopefully done soon.

And sometimes good news comes in threes

Following the recent announcements by Senators Thurmond and Helms, Texas ultra-right wing Republican Senator Phil Gramm announced he Won’t Seek Re-Election. Yay! Hurrah! Wahoo!!!

Today’s book: Breaking Windows

After seeing lots of fuss over this book from various weblogs and others, I couldn’t resist picking up this look inside Microsoft by Wall Street Journal reporter David Bank. A very interesting read focusing on the years 1996-2000 as Bank had boxes full of Microsoft email and other internal documents thanks to the antitrust case and interviews with many key MS employees, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Worth the read.

Dave Winer published an excerpt online (with the publisher’s permission).

HP-CPQ: More people think its a stupid deal

Forbes.com weighs in to call it the Deal Of The Year–In 1998. Mike Langberg, writing in the SJ Mercury News (a site to which I prefer not to link since they charge for access after seven days), calls for government regulators to reject the deal on antitrust grounds; a combined company, assuming today’s market shares stand up (not likely in myopinion), would have a 67% share of the retail PC market.

Carly Fiorina, chairperson of HP and of the combined company, told reporters, “Hang with us, it’s going to be a great party.” Not if you’re one of the thousands of workers who’ll be losing a job as a result of this deal. The two have already announced over 17,000 layoffs this year but execs are projecting another $2.5 billion in savings from the deal, which means several thousand more employees will get the big L. C|Net News.com analyzes the challenges and sees a hard road ahead.

If this deal does not go through, I have to wonder if Fiorina and Compaq chair Michael Capellas will keep their jobs. Fiorina, especially, is under pressure to deliver after a previous acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers fell through last fall and she completely mishandled Wall Street over the first half of this year as HP forecasts fell and fell and fell.

I have to fess up to a small error in my previous entry where I said that Compaq had thrown away their entire investment in Digital. That isn’t completely true as they retain a very large and profitable services group; what they did throw away was Digital’s hardware business, which once was number two only to IBM. Of course, when they were number two, founder and then-chairman Ken Olsen famously said something to the effect of “Who needs a PC on their desk or in their home?”

I stand with my earlier sentiment: these are two drowning rats trying to use each other as life preservers. A Giga Research analyst had positive comments but that isn’t surprising given the amount of money the two companies pay Giga and the other maket research firms. More importantly, Wall Street is not reacting well, and both stocks are down in the initial trading with HP off 15%!

HP and Compaq merger: more stupid people?

In a stunning move, the NY Times is reporting that Hewlett-Packard to Acquire Compaq in $25 Billion Deal. While they’ll be the number two computer company after IBM, independently they are 2 and 3 now. Compaq recently killed their non-Intel business (throwing all that money they spent acquiring Digital Equipment and Tandem away) but they do bring a big consulting group to the table. HP still has servers based on their PA-RISC chips although those are going away since HP help Intel develop the 64 bit Itanium line. Both companies get major revenues from PCs and I wonder how that number will hold up in a consolidation, and will they be sold under the HP or Compaq or a new/combined brand… I just don’t get the benefits of this deal other than lower operating costs.

One note: the article mentions “a new operating system for computer servers that was developed by Intel (news/quote) and Hewlett-Packard.” But this is a mistake, they co-developed the chip as I mention above.