Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • Douglas Hofstadter on Singularity

    via NIck Carr,Douglas Hofstadter recently had a critique of the concept of the Singularity that I found refreshing and utterly unsurprising.

    Indeed, I am very glad that we still have a very very long ways to go in our quest for AI. I think of this seemingly “pessimistic” view of mine as being in fact a profound kind of optimism, whereas the seemingly “optimistic” visions of Ray Kurzweil and others strike me as actually being a deeply pessimistic view of the nature of the human mind.

    The entire interview is an excellent read, and later on the interviewer points to some similarities in both Kurzweils’ and Hofst’s view about sentience as “software”. Hofst answers with a critique that I think echoes my earlier skepticism:

    Well, the problem is that a soul by itself would go crazy; it has to live in a vastly complex world, and it has to cohabit that world with many other souls, commingling with them just as we do here on earth. To be sure, Kurzweil sees those things as no problem, either — we’ll have virtual worlds galore, “up there” in Cyberheaven, and of course there will be souls by the barrelful all running on the same hardware. And Kurzweil sees the new software souls as intermingling in all sorts of unanticipated and unimaginable ways.

    Well, to me, this “glorious” new world would be the end of humanity as we know it. If such a vision comes to pass, it certainly would spell the end of human life.

    not trans-humanism, but null-humanism, indeed.

    Of course, for a more rigorous critique of Singularity, the recent IEEE special issue had some excellent critical articles alongside the fluffy vision pieces. Highly recommend: “Waiting for the Rapture“, “The Consciousness Conundrum”, and best of all, Singular Simplicity. All of these pieces level specific, scientific, and physical arguments that undercut the grandiose hand-waving arguments of the singularitans.

  • movie madness

    Mark is someone who would be a lot of fun to play Cineplexity with.

    Massawyrm at AICN just reviewed the game and it sounds like the ideal way to spend an evening – and part of the appeal is the sheer simplicity of the game’s design. He wrote,

    What works most for this game is the free, easy going format and just how it leads to great conversations. Someone will mention a movie no one else has thought of in years. Or someone will call forth a movie so bad the whole table winces at the idea of even thinking about. Someone will share their love or hate for a pick or argue the merits of whether or not the movie stated actually fits the bill – whether by technicality or just being wrong. The end result is a bunch of friends sitting around talking about movies for hours while jumping through mental hoops that really get your juices flowing.

    There is an online demo version, too.

  • Samurai 7

    I’ve burned through this in the past week.

    Samurai 7

    I’m almost done with it. After I finish the series I’ll write some thoughts on it, and let me admit up front that I’ve never seen the Kurosawa original. If anyone has seen it, do chime in, spoilers are ok.

  • fire sale at Right Stuf

    via Don, there’s a fantastic sale at RightStuf, with many discs going for $5. Some of the notable titles include Sugar: Snow Fairy, Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei, Last Exile, Read or Die, and Someday’s Dreamers. I’m picking the latter up, though they are sold out of disc 2 for the time being, I think it’s worth picking up the rest (and the soundtrack).

  • Philips DVP 5990

    philips dvp 5990
    Our old Samsung DVD player had been acting up of late – half the discs we inserted got a “no disc inserted” error and skipping had become a major problem, even on discs with no discernible scratches. So, I picked up a Philips DVP 5990 from Walmart yesterday evening, with an eye towards using it with the HDTV we will eventually buy. Note that Walmart is offering $100 gift cards for anyone buying a Blu-ray player (including the PS3) until next Sunday, but we didn’t want to spend that kind of money, so a regular upconverting DVD player seemed like the most reasonable choice.

    The 5990 is a 1080p upconverting player, which makes it future-proof. There is a hack available to make it fully region-free, which is nice in theory but in practice something I am unlikely to need unless I buy DVDs abroad. More useful is the unit’s DIVX support, and the USB2 port on the front. This means I can load up video files that I’ve dowloaded onto a USB flash drive and play them on my TV.

    Of course, my TV is still the analog set I’ve had for over ten years, so none of this will look as good as it does on my laptop screen, but eventually when we do go HDTV I am looking forward to having the convenience.

  • metahaiku by L6

    I don’t like haikus
    with limited syllables
    I’ll never write one

  • just wondering

    what would happen if you crossed moe with emo. Would that be emoe?

    And what’s the difference between kawaii and moe anyway? I am lexicon-challenged.

  • the beginning of anime

    My very first foray into anime was Robotech, and it hooked me so badly during spring finals week of my freshman year of college that I spent virtually all of my time between final exams in the TV room at the dorm with my stash of VHS tapes. Apart from watching Akira and Ghost in the Shell sometime afterwards (neither of which I remember particularly well), my next exposure to anime was Grave of the Fireflies, which left a bad impression, to say the least. It wasn’t until just two years ago that Steven got me addicted to Haibane Renmei, which as you may have noticed left something of an impression on me. Since then, my anime strategy has been a predilection for series that are, in Nick’s words, “emotionally tiring” (like Dennou Coil), or epic in scope (like Twelve Kingdoms or Escaflowne). I also enjoy series which have a unique take on technology (Last Exile), or adopt a philosophic and surreal bent (Kino’s Journey, Mushishi) . I also am drawn to certain styles of anime, where the story is of course important but also the manner in which the story is told (Samurai Jack, The Place Promised). Above all, I like a series that has interesting characters, who are human, flawed, and honorable, who charm me and make me care what happens next, even if I sort of already know the answer (Ranma, Shingu, The Cat Returns, The Girl Who Leapt). Of course, I am also heavily into the kawaii scene (Sugar Snow Fairy, Totoro), primarily because of my daughters. This list barely scratches the surface of what I have seen, and the list of what I want to see next is even longer still.

    I am partly responding here to Steven’s “end of anime” post in which he laments the lack of interesting material to be excited about – I think that the point where any one of us runs out of anime is when we exhaust the pool of what we like. There are very few truly original series out there, so everything in some sense is an echo of what comes before. Limit ourselves to our safe pond, and over time it is certain to dry up. And yet, inspiration to try something new often strikes from unlikely places. Take Ranma as an example – I’d tried it once, and recoiled due to excessive ecchi. It was solely due to Steven’s enthusiasm for it that got me to give it another shot, and now I am hooked, while ironically Steven’s interest has sagged (season 5, btw, has been superb, easily equal to the high points of seasons 2 and 3). Ranma is new ground for me in anime, with plenty of casual ecchi and fan service, a focus on martial arts, and a love dodecahedron as the primary plot driver. And yet, I have fallen for it in a sense, because over time you get to know the characters, even if they don’t grow that much, who they are is plenty enough. I am sure there are plenty of frontiers (relatively) for me to explore yet, not just on my watch list but also things like Evangelion, Haruhi, Ah My Goddess, Mahoromatic, etc. which all represent a significant departure from my usual fare, even more so than Ranma.

    All I am really trying to say is that anime is vast. Even if the industry were to die tomorrow from evil fansubbers or a withering of imaginative energy or displacement by Korean animation studios, there’s already a corpus of work that spans decades for me to work through, and I am limited only by my taste (stop snickering). I fully understand why Steven is at the end of anime, but for me, it’s just the beginning. And I owe that to him.

    As an aside, if anyone has discs of series that I’ve mentioned above that they’d like to sell, let me know. I am especially interested in buying Ranma or Kino.

  • netflix queue update

    I just added the rest of Escaflowne, Death Note, and Paprika to my netflix queue. I think I’ll add an RSS feed of my queue to the sidebar somewhere.

  • a DRM solution

    Shamus has long been a gamers’ advocate with regards to prohibitive DRM on computer games, and even has a common-sense 5 point solution to the problem. Unfortunately, since his plan (which treats customers as customers instead of potential pirates) does nothing to actually prevent pirates from pirating games, his solution is likely to be ignored. It seems to me that any solution to ease the DRM load on the end user will need to at least make a token effort to reduce or otherwise inhibit piracy, for it to be taken seriously. Obviously, the common-sense argument that Shamus makes, namely that good business practices which treat customers like a scarce resource instead of a bitter enemy will result in higher revenue despite piracy, is simply not going to penetrate. Even Penny Arcade, a longtime gaming fansite, fell prey to DRM’s allure in their own game, after all.

    Somewhat related to all of this is the lesser issue of CD keys, about which Shamus draws a distinction to DRM with. If all DRM was just CD keys, then DRM wouldn’t be that much of a pain, but the problem with CD keys from the manufacturer perspective is that they can be written down, cut and pasted, emailed, etc. I’ll readily admit that I’ve used CD keys for various software in the past that were “borrowed” – its no different (apart from being less annoying) than the old “whats the 10th word on page 4 of the game manual” routine. So, again, as far as preventing piracy, or even mitigating it, CD keys just can’t solve the problem.

    However, in considering CD keys, a possible solution to piracy does present itself. What is needed is something that is both dynamic and tied to the specific user. For example, imagine a software download service wherein:

    1. game can be downloaded if user sets up an account and registers a credit card for payment. game can also be mailed out on physical media for nominal extra charge.

    2. user is asked to set a password to their account. This account is treated like a bank acct password, ie you have the little picture for verification, you have security questions about your mom’s maiden name etc, the whole bit.

    3. upon download, game can be activated for installation (not play!) by entering a key that is generated via a standard one-way function in real-time by several inputs:
    a. the license number emailed to the user (or printed on the back of the physical disk).
    b. the user’s username and password to their online account
    c. the current date and time (automatically slurped from public date/time servers).

    4. the game itself can be played anytime, but still requires username and password (not CD key).

    the advantage of the scheme is that the activation code for installation is not a static string but something that changes in a consistent way. The one-way function should be something very well-known (like MD5). The only way that the game can then be shared would be for the user to share his account password and login, which presumably they’d be incentivized NOT to do, because their account represents private data including payment information for future game purchases.

    The user would be happy because the code is easy and really just requires a simple login, and then the game is fully unencumbered for play. The game company would be happy because they are tying each copy of the game to a specific consumer, and they can leverage that for marketing purposes as well (for example, offering good customers a buy 10 get one free deal, or a points system to redeem games, or the option to download exclusive minigames or other freebies). The problem for pirates who want to distribute the game should be pretty clear – especially if the encryption on the actual game software is pretty high.

    What do you think? would this work? does it meet all of Shamus’ criteria for a solution to the problem?