Random Chat Connects

Perhaps my largest problem with IM is the inability to know who you're talking to without some other form of either authentication or identity confirmation.

For instance, this afternoon two people contacted me on IM who refused to give their real name (one was posing as Hillary Clinton . . . ) or a legitimate reason contacting me (not an exclusive or). It's just common courtesy to provide one or the other. Anyone who doesn't do one or the other I block out of hand.

My best advice: get in touch via another method first, then if warranted go for chat. For instance, I am on the Ubuntu Forums and have my IM's up. If you want to IM me to ask an Ubuntu question, please PM me through the forums first with an explanation of why and the nick you'll use to contact me so when you IM me I know not to kick you out of hand.

You Know You're a Geek When . . .

You read webcomics instead of watching the Superbowl.

Why I Can't Be an Engineer or Scientist

Quite simply, I hate units. More specifically, I hate worrying about them.

Whenever someone says, "This formula takes kilograms and meters/second, but we're working with metric tons moving at kilometers/hour, so you'll need to convert" I think "Why didn't we just measure it in kilograms and meters per second up front and save ourselves the effort of converting back and forth?" Whenever someone says "And now we need to convert to use the next formula" I think "Why don't we convert the formula once rather than the inputs every time?"

Is this a little petty of me? Yeah, it probably is. On the other hand, UNITS ARE ARBITRARY ANYWAY, and I like mine that way.

Digital Copyright Protection

I've been reading a very fascinating debate at the New York Times site about the topic between--go figure--two lawyers. You can infer the joke about how the first commentators on an economic/business question are the ones with arguably the least direct training and experience therein.

First, let's start the debate over again. Why do people create content in any form? Two reasons. First, because they want to. Second, for some form of renumeration. In the case of corporations, this means monetary payment. In the case of open source coders (such as GNU contributors) I would say this is in the form of more usable software that does what they want it to do.

Then there's the US Constitution's granting of copyrights (I use this as an example only because I live in the States). Let's all remember they lived in an analog age where to infringe on a copyrighted work you had to either (a) hand copy it over and over again or (b) pay someone with a printing press to print copies. Either way you had to put in some serious time and money in hopes of making enough on sales to offset the costs. Let's face it, barriers to successful mass infringement were huge when those words were written and have been dropping steadily ever since. Computers and the Internet might be as low as barriers will go, but only time will tell.

What does this say about the debate of copyright protection on digital media? Very simply, it says that the only time such protection makes sense from an economic point of view is when it generates more revenue than it costs to implement. Does it? I don't know, but I know no protection system which allows the media to be played is going to ever stay unbroken forever. Moreover, it's likely that as time goes on it's going to get harder, not easier, to protect content.

I think any casual visit to doom9 or recalling the publication to the Internet of the key to hundreds of DVD titles a few months ago (not to mention the ongoing success of dvdlibcss2, which lets DVD's be played on Linux boxes or my history example above) will convince most reasonable people that in the arms race between "hackers" and "protectors", given time the hackers will win every time. It's not just software either. At some point the material has to be played, and a clever person with a Linux box could physically hack the monitor to record the imagery--unencrypted--as it gets displayed. This is not hyperbole, merely a more sophisticated version of sneaking a camcorder into a movie theater.

So what does this make copy protection schemes? I'd say "futile" sums it up nicely. Any system, not matter how strong, which enables playback will eventually get cracked. Period.

Then there's the argument that if we can't protect media we can keep it from being transfered. I refer back to my previous point about any system being able to be worked around. Maybe with enough draconian restrictions such a system could stop more transfers than it misses, but are we really willing to (a) pay the money or (b) the cost in civil liberties?

There's one last point that seems to get missed: some people pirate on principle, most because it's cheaper than getting an official copy (in terms of total expense of time, money, and effort). One key question is therefore this: of the people any copyright protection system prevents from pirating/having access to pirated materials, how many would buy a legal copy to have access?

I'll be honest, there are lots of songs and movies that if they were free to download I'd download and keep but that I would never buy nor rent. My favorite example is the annual James Bond marathons on cable TV. Yes, I like James Bond, but I'd not rent them, much less buy them. So if someone suddenly said to me "Goldeneye will never again be played on cable TV" this isn't a big loss and I'm not going to turn around and buy a new copy at prevailing store prices (even the Amazon ones I link to), but I might buy one used for half as much or better yet, for $1 to download. Radiohead's experiment in name your own prices would make for an interesting case study. One question I have is how many downloaded the album because they had never heard much of Radiohead's music and thought they'd try it out. Even more interesting, how many of those people then paid for a second download of the album? How many of those then recommended the album to others who then did the same thing? How many sales have happened since the cited articles? There are many interesting questions here that would inform the debate with hard evidence which, as far as I have seen, no one has bothered talking about to the public.

Whether we (or anyone else) likes it or not, Internet file sharing and downloading are here to stay. Is it legal? Not in most places. Is it ethical? I don't happen to think so and I think everyone who paid for Radiohead's album agrees. On the other hand, business is about the bottom line: profits. Is it profitable to fight the copy protection arms race? With several of the biggest music labels dropping DRM, I'd say the answer is probably "no", but the question is still open.

Never forget: in any market it's not the law that matters, but the bottom line. The world's lawyers need to sit up and take notice.

Thoughts on the AMS/MAA Joint Meeting 2008 Part Two: How to get mistaken for a Professor at 22.

This is really a tongue-in-cheek guide to the dress code at the Joint Meeting. There are two basic axes: age and formality. From there most people can be accurately classified. However, there are some notable exception.

First is age. There are three broad bins: 24 and under, 24-32, and 32+. These roughly line up with undergrads/first year grad students, grad students/job seekers, and profs.

The second is formality (of dress). This is a much broader scale, but on the low end is jeans and a tee-shirt and on the other is a full suit or equivalent. I'll lump things into three categories nonetheless: casual, business casual (slacks, polo, sport coat; shirt and tie, no jacket), and business formal (shirt and tie with jacket, suit).

How to spot a:

• Prof: 32+ in either casual or business casual clothes. If it's business casual, it's probably not new or gently used unless they're presenting.
• Grad student/job seeker: Business casual most of the time as they're interviewing or speaking. Business formal means interviews or a presentation where they expect to be performing for future employers (not always true). Usually 24-32.
• Undergrad: Under 24, business formal will only be seen if presenting, but will present in business casual and up. Otherwise seen in jean and a tee shirt or slacks and a polo (but not much of the latter).

Wildcards:

• Exhibitors: If young and well dressed, probably a book representative/salesperson. Fortunately, they're labeled on their name badges.
• Undergrads who don't like to look like slobs. That would be me. Simply put, I walked around in business casual (polo and sport coat) or business formal (shirt, tie, sport coat) all week and was constantly mistaken for a prof or graduate student.
  

Economics of Eternal Damnation

Eternal damnation. Just the sound is intimidating, much less the prospect of unending suffering at the hand of some set of eternal creatures with a penchant for sadism.

My question is this: why would a religion (I'm mostly picking on Christianity here as an ex-Roman Catholic) say "Follow the rules or be eternally damned"?

First, the area of discussion needs to be framed. So a few bound, hypotheses and axioms are in order.

1. The existence of God is not under discussion beyond, perhaps, its status as a rational belief. Regardless, it is stipulated that belief in God is possible a priori and that the set of believers is non-empty.
2. Likewise, the existence of an immortal soul is not up for discussion, but it is assumed a priori that there exists a practiced religion whose adherents accept its existence.
   
3. There exists a practiced religious system with both a defined ethical philosophy which makes a decent stab at being consistent and comprehensive.
4. Said religion must require its members to follow its moral teachings which are believed to be inspired/revealed by God or are derived from such inspiration/revelation.
5. The religion incorporates meaningful notions of reward and punishment for behavior. For simplicity, I'll label these heaven, hell, purgatory and the lukewarm (the last in the Dantean sense). Of these, only the first two are required.
6. A requirement is not meaningful unless it can and will be enforced with meaningful sanction for violation at some future time.
7. God is assumed to be believed to be rational and its behavior consistent with religious teachings of the religion in question.
   

Under these conditions, why would a religion promise damnation to the sinful and heaven to the (relatively) sinless?

By way of contradiction, suppose without loss of generality that heaven was promised to all after death. By (4), moral laws must be enforced and by (6) a sanction is required. However, by definition and (5) religious law is at the most laid down by God through some revelatory mechanism and at the least based on such revelation. But by (7) God would recognize the establishment of a non-binding standard which by (6) is no standard at all. This contradicts the revelation of a binding morality to the people (3, 4). Therefore there must exist a decision rule based on compliance with revealed ethics which assigns persons to either heaven or hell.

In short, where God doesn't care about compliance with ethics, no ethics have been imposed. Similar arguments are quite common, especially in the Thomistic ethical framework used in Catholicism.

Having dispensed with that question, we now turn to why is damnation must be eternal. To do so we must introduce the idea of discounting.

Put simply, discounting is where values are reduced through multiplication by a constant strictly between zero and one raised to a power which increases monotonically as a function of time.

Clearly, given enough time the reward or punishment is meaningless. Moreover, humanity being what it is, there are any number of crimes one could commit known only to God. Therefore, for a religious ethical edict to still have punitive force, God must (as noted) impose the punishment. So, let's assume a person is considering committing a crime that will be known only to God and is asking whether the gains outweigh the punishments. For simplicity, assume this crime would earn them (they believe) a guaranteed trip to hell. For them to not do it, the total sum of hellish torment must be perceived to be more significant than the benefits in this life.

But most people don't think they're going to die anytime soon. So the question now turns on discounting. If they don't die for a number of years, the future torment becomes less and less meaningful to them in their current decision-making. So the only response it to add as much as possible to the total pool of punishment to overcome the discounting.

Nothing is longer than eternity. Any finite amount of punishment could be under some set of benefits after discounting.

Therefore the case for eternal damnation is clear.

Off to Conference Land

I'll be at the AMS-MAA Joint Meeting in San Diego. I'm flying in tomorrow afternoon and out Wednesday afternoon. I have a 10 minute contributed paper, which is completely awesome even though it takes no work to get one.

Should be fun. While I have to front everything, my university is going to pay me back for basic living expenses. I completely expect to look at them and say "Look, I don't expect you to pay all of this, so pay what you consider reasonable". Dangerous, but I know who will be putting this thing together and they don't want to screw me any more than they want to get screwed. It should be okay.

Not sure if I'll go to the beach. Never have been a fan of that place.

Facebook Apps

I'll start with a confession: I have a Facebook page.

I've even added some apps to it, but unless you look at the list of apps on the left-hand side of my profile you can't tell.

The reason is simple: I find huge lists of apps obnoxious and most of the apps people post to be at best a bit silly and at worst ridiculous. Okay, some of them make some sense, like the ones where you can track the performance of your favorite teams from your profile. Others, like the ones related to biorhythms and fortunes are just electronic versions of the same nonsense which has been peddled for hundreds of years. On the whole, however, most of them are large and dedicated to one thing: getting more people to use them. Vampires vesus Slayers is one of my personal favorites on the list of worthless (I don't subscribe).

I came to Facebook as a way to keep track of friends and aquantences without most of the usual hassle of regular phone or written contact. Most of the people I know at college use Facebook as their prefered method of indirect contact. When it comes to casual communication between friends, I hear "Just Facebook me" more often than "Just call" or even "Email me". All I have to do is add someone as a friend and so long as they update their profiles halfway regularly it's easy to keep in touch. With the focus shifting to apps and entertainment, I have to wonder if the powers that be have lost touch with the real value of their site: keeping in touch.

Google, Medicine, and The Expert

I was reading an interesting article this afternoon from the New York Times about patients Googling for health information. It's just more evidence that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I rather prefer Alexander Pope's verion: "People who know only a little do not understand how little they know and are therefore prone to error."

I really divide these people into two big camps. First, those well meaning, humble folks with an active curiosity and desire to learn. The second are the instant experts who think a few minutes on the Internet qualifies them to diagnose rare diseases or some such thing.

The former are really not a problem as with a little patience and preparation they can become useful allies once steered toward good sources of information. I'm one of them and usually apologize in advance for asking questions that are "probably obvious" out of my own curiosity and if I'm going to cite a source, I cite a source. None of this "I read it on the Internet" garbage.

The instant experts (read: instant idiots) are dangerous and annoying. Dangerous because they can now do something they couldn't before but don't have a good understanding of the consequences, much like the infamous blind axeman in a classroom, etc. Annoying because they can't resist butting into what should be the purview of the expert.

God save us from inquisitive idiots.

Minnesota's Special Prosecutor

A while back here in Minnesota we had a major bridge collapse. Recently the local Legislature decided the wise move was to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate what happened.

I'll start with the facts.

1. A bridge collapsed.
2. It collapsed in summer.
3. Through the grace of God the casualties were light (and far lighter than they would have been in winter in this state).
4. Everything fails eventually.
5. People have been screaming about the decay of American infrastructure for decades.
6. Honestly, does anyone honestly expect politicians to invest in needed preventative maintenance over pork when forced to chose?

As for the loss of life, it was of course tragic.

At the end of the day, the bridge collapsed as all old structures do and for the same reason: insufficient upkeep. I had hoped some elected officials would, in the aftermath of the collapse, learn about total cost of ownership and maintenance. I probably hope for too much.

My Objection to People Who Object to "Merry Christmas"

It's Christmas season again, and also time to hear from almost everyone: "Happy Holidays". I don't in principle object to having a standard, secular holiday greeting to be used in cases of unknown sentiment, religious or otherwise.

What I do object to is twofold. First, the presumption that Christmas will never be a secular holiday, and therefore wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" will always carry a certain degree of religious insensitivity. The second is that "Happy Holidays" is a suitable replacement to be used even when religious sentiments are known.

As to the first, regardless of the religious origins of Christmas, there have been winter solstice festivals in hundreds of cultures for thousands of years. Same with harvest festivals, ceremonies equivalent to marriage, burial rituals, etc. Sure, there are tens of thousands of Christians out there who would object that Christmas is not some pagan holiday to be lumped in with your run-of-the-mill solstice festival, but in the modern secular state outside of overtly religious contexts, the coming of Christ the savior, et al. is no longer mentioned or even hinted at except, perhaps, through some oblique deconstructionist analysis of the imagery used in assosiation with Christmas, and of course, the name of the holiday itself. We don't hear people objecting that Mardi Gras (which is literally "Fat Tuesday" in French) is a religious holiday and wishing one a happy Mardi Gras is insensitive. Truth be told, it originates as a celebration of the last day before Lent. Why? Because it has been secularized and institutionalized. I, as an agnostic (and ex-Roman Catholic) take "Merry Christmas" the way I imagine a foreign traveler might take "Happy 4th of July"--not something to be offended at, merely as indication that some people happen to think it's a great day to hold some spectacular parties.

As for the second, just as Christmas has been secularized, it is still a very religious holiday for lots of people around the world, and the entirety of the significance of the season is that it's Christmas, the day the arrival of the Christ is to be celebrated by all sufficiently reverent Christians around the globe (allowing for time zones, of course). But when we say "Happy Holidays", we are automatically automatically lumping Christmas into the big basket of every other holiday that happens to fall between 15 December and 5 January (roughly). We are saying, in effect, it doesn't matter which holiday you're going to celebrate, none of them are really special or worth recognizing as such. Whether it's Hanukkah, Christmas, or any other holiday the effect is the same. Is it really less offensive to say all holidays are equal (and to the devout they are not) than to say only holiday X matters?

My approach is simple: If I don't know what someone's preferences are, I'll say "Happy Holidays" and if it doesn't seem impolite, I'll ask. If I know, I use that holiday, especially if it's in season. Example: for my Christian friends, it's always Merry Christmas, for my Jewish ones, Happy Hanukkah. Simple.

Another one bites the dust

That would be another finals season.

This one was in fact surprisingly relaxing. I had plenty of time to do other things, and completely wasted it. But they're all done now, so there's no going back.

Haiku #1 and #2

I must admit that aside from my otherwise aesthetic feelings towards the format particularly, poetry holds a certain cathartic value for me. Some feelings, some thoughts are so deeply held it seems they are only fully recognized in poetic forms.

At some point, I suppose, I’ll have to reckon with my own little contradictions—a man who strives after the rigorous logic of mathematics as the key to life simultaneously giving voice and comfort to his deepest passions in poetry, not exactly the most logical or deterministic form of expression. Perhaps if I wrote in Lojban . . .

Regardless, here are number 1 and 2, in that order:

A vibrant blossom.
softly its gentle beauty fades,
withering to dust.

Hope of love and joy,
once cast aside by fearful hearts,
crumbles into dust.

Another interesting feature of haiku and poetry generally is the need to encode information though subtext, metaphor, and other lingual constructs in order to convey the complete message. For instance, while neither of the above are per say particularly cryptic, unless one knows me and my life at time of writing (within a month of this post), what's really being spoken to will remain unclear. Presuming the analogy to cryptography can be sufficiently fleshed out, one interesting information theoretic question might be this: Given a particular amount of poetry, how much total information could be unambiguously conveyed? The idea certainly lends a new twist to "literary analysis".

Haiku

I've decided one thing to do before I die is learn and practice the art of Haiku.

Why Haiku? Three reasons. Those are the challenge, the experience, and the convenience.

As self expression goes, a single thought into 17 syllables is fairly trivial, craming it into exactly 17 is non-trivial, and doing it well is very challenging. Mix with my own semi-perfectionist nature, and this gets interesting fast. Example: "W.T.F" is a complete thought, but how would you express the same thing in 17 syllables?

I can't explain it, but there's something about the experience of Haiku which is simply amazing from start to finish. The setup, the suspense, the contrast . . . it's just awesome to finally look at even a decent haiku (much less a good one) and simply enjoy the way it works on me.

Third, poetry takes lots of itterations before it's anywhere near good. Haiku's being as short as they are, the cyclic rate for a complete set of revisions is high (even if the number of revisions is longer). This is more compatible with my lifestyle as I much more frequently have 15 minutes (which can be enough to ponder a single word choice) here and there than the hours it would take to consider the implications of a single work or comma on a larger poem.

Webcomics

I realized the other day just how much like real life a web comic can be when I began categorizing people I know by which character from Questionable Content they are like.

I'm just hoping I can't ever make effective match-ups with Dilbert characters.