Come with me if you want to live

Drat! Its Wednesday, April 27, 2011, I've dropped the ball, and this is The Side. I've been doing Ask Nozz Day on the last Wednesday of the month for a couple of months now. Well I completely forgot this time. I've been planning a beach workout, and my mind has been on that. That and being distracted by Easter goings one. Oh and my neighbor's house burning down.

Y'know, little things like that.

I'll try again next month.

SCIENCE!!!

I really wonder about computer programmers sometimes. I see these stories about programmers trying to teach computers regret and hindsight. And then there's the stuff going down with genetic programming. I have to wonder at what point is this all going to go horribly wrong.

Seriously, sometimes I think these guys sit around sometimes over coffee and discuss how cool the TERMINATOR movies are, but that'll never happen with the stuff they're doing. Oh no, they're so much smarter than those fools in the movie that created an AI. Their AI will be so much better and never ever turn against them.

Cripes.

Obviously, computer systems will continue to advance and computers are everywhere now. My crappy little cell phone probably has more processing power than my old Commodore 128. And there's problems and extrapolations that are so insanely difficult that we need more advanced tools to figure them out. But there seems to be that imp or the perverse in some programmers that just has to fuck with things just to see what happens.

Let's take those guys in Tel Aviv trying to teach a computer regret. They say that'll help the computer's performance, because it'll feel bad about not performing well previously. That's dumb. Its a tool. I don't want my tools to feel bad. I don't want my tools to feel anything. Can you imagine what my hammer (Gussie Manlove) could possibly be feeling? I can't imagine she enjoys the stuff I make her do. Or worse... what if she does enjoy it? Gussie Manlove is one kinky hammer.

I cuss at my computer a lot. Its not because the computer is some horrible piece of crap. Sure its older, but it'll still do stuff. Its because I don't know how to fully operate the machine. Its me, not it, and if I go cussing the computer and the computer starts feeling bad, what kind of monster does that make me? I don't even like keeping virtual pets because I'd feel bad about forgetting to feed them. Forget it. I cuss out my comp because it doesn't feel anything. I don't want to go emotionally abusing an AI.

Sure there's a part of my nerdom which would love to live out a sci-fi story, but I don't really want it to be a robot uprising one. It seems like whenever I find a different story about crazy advancements or stunts like the programmed regret there'll always be a comment from some reader about this is how "Skynet" got started.

I'll stick to my cold emotionless, non-poltting-against-me technology, thankyewverymuch.

MUSIC!!!

For some reason I couldn't find the official video to this on YouTube, with stinks because the cat on the hamster wheel was pretty cool.



End program for today. I'll see y'all Sunday.

The World According to Nozz

Open wide and say "ah". Its Wednesday, January 4, 2011, I got the date right on the first try, and this is The Side. Last year saw the exponential growth of the amount of people who follow this blog. Rest assured I value every page view, even the ones that just show up for a the pictures of Pocoyo.

That's honestly the main reason most people come here. I checked.

But, with such a wide array of people here from so many backgrounds I find that really I have to be careful. Its risky enough putting things online that family or potential employers could see. The internet is a wonderful place for sharing ideas, but it can leave a person very open and exposed. Generally online its pretty much safe to stick to the same rules as having a polite conversation so that you don't offend anybody.

So with that in mind, hide the kids and grab your ankles. Its time to light this candle.

RELIGION!!

I sit in an odd seat. I was raised believing in God. Went to church regularly. I am a Christian, albeit not a terribly good one because I swear a lot and enjoy doing horrible things. I'm also a hard science guy. While my skills at crunching numbers, memorizing theorems, and running equations have atrophied quite a bit, I still try to keep up a bit. So here I sit in a lonely spot of a guy who has made studies into the universe and its origins and how the work around me works and functions, and a firm belief in a divine creator. Typically, its not a problem, but it sticks me in a nasty position on Creationism versus Evolution.

Creationism just doesn't add up. That's just population wise. I'm not even getting into the kooky stuff about where blacks and asians supposedly come from or that dinosaurs are some conspiracy myth. Most Christians and Creationists don't subscribe to that garbage. The biggest bone of contention seems to be if God made us in his image then there's no need for us to evolve, that and the whole monkey thing.

Scientists don't believe we evolved from monkeys. It was a whole other species that happened to have a little in common with monkeys. Any creationist who does believe that scientists believe we evolved from monkeys really should have stayed awake in class.

But that bigger bone of contention is one that I'm baffled is even a problem. If God made us in him image then why do we all look different? Its a body. Its the most amazing bio-mechanical machine on the plant. Work it hard, and it becomes stronger. It repairs damage to itself. It can be trained to do amazing things. However, our bodies are not who we are. What is more important than the body? The mind and soul.

Here's a thought. God did indeed create us in his image, and it was the important stuff that he replicated. It was the ability to think and feel. It was the flame inside all of us that is our selves. He took that in put it in a machine that could house it and allow it to thrive. This machine has many different aspects, but it is one thing above all others: adaptable.

Its not God versus Science. Science is our way of understanding the miracle. The more I learn from science the more amazing I think God's creations are.

And for any militant atheitists who read this and start thinking "HA, I knew Chrisitians were all stupid", shaddup, you douchey pricks. Unlike you assholes who just got done with your annual fuming and bitching every time you see a Christmas tree, I'm not out to attempt to crush anyone's spiritual journey. I'm hoping to give them a different perspective.

Behold: Theologian Nozz! You are free to throw Bibles at me now.

POLITICS!!

Political leanings are pretty flat. You lean one way or another depending points of view on various topics. And its easy when you have something that's measured on a flat scale to confuse the two sides, those being liberal and conservative, with good and evil. It reality these things aren't good or evil. They're merely points of view, and both of which have their place.

Conservatives (the real ones, not the ones who spend buckets of money) should be running things with the regular business of the country. The federal government is there to do what regular citizens can't, like pave roads, protect our borders, and maintain our military. They typically like to keep taxes low and create an economic environment in which individuals can succeed and thrive. We've had the federal government overstep its bounds to the point that people are expecting the government to take care of them. This isn't good for anybody, as we can see by the state of things now.

Liberals do have their place. They are very good about whining about things. We need them around. They can't run much of anything bigger than a soup kitchen effectively, but they do draw attention to social problems and concerns that we should be aware of. The problem is while they're great for drawing interest and awareness to issues that do warrant it is good, their methods of addressing these things tends to be bad. Throwing money at problems doesn't really help in the long run. You can't find a problem and expect it to get fixed just because you turn it over to the government and think they'll have the funds and power to handle it.

Really, we should have conservatives running the day to day business of the country, and keeping an objective ear open to the liberals. When they whine about whatever cause they have that week it should be discussed and if necessary addressed. There's plenty of things that people can handle themselves without the federal government stepping in.

Let's take the environment for example. The environment is important. However, all the fret and worry about the climate and the global warming nutters aren't. Is this a problem that's going to fixed by the government? Nope. What they can do is apply more ecologically friendly business practices in their own day to day running. They can also do things like offer tax incentives to companies that explore cleaner energy options. If you make it advantageous for people to do something they will usually do it. That and it might actually do some good, because those moron hippies buying Priuses to save the planet is a freaking qualification to ride a short bus if I ever saw one.

Its pretty easy. Government has its place, and it should stay in its place. The country wasn't made great by the government. It was made great by the people. However people can tear a government and a country down. That tends to happen when they figure they can vote for free stuff for themselves. There were a lot of people out there that voted for our Pop Star-in-Chief, because they thought he was going to provide for them. Look how that turned out.

I am The Nozz, and I approved that message.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!

As far as space sci-fi goes, Joss Whedon got it right. You know what you don't see in FIREFLY or the movie SERENITY? Aliens. Its just us. Humans. Going out to explore and settle the universe. There's no advanced alien civilization helping us along. There's no one out there waiting for us. There's something called Fermi's Paradox which put bluntly is if there's all this room out there in space and there must be intelligent life out there somewhere, then where the hell are they?

Let's look at the factors involved in there being intelligent life out in the universe. The need a planet capable of sustaining life of some sort. That's tough enough. On top of that you need enough time for that life form to develop that skills and technology necessary to space travel. That's a big toughie. Earth has already had at least one extinction event. One of the main reasons we don't have more it we've got the gas giant planets in the right spots to catch a good chunk of the nasty planet killers flying around out there.

So you can have an alien civilization on the verge of getting something good going. They may have developed tool, simple machines, domesticated animals, and gotten a good handle on agriculture then WHAM an asteroid hits the planet and wipes everything out. Its not like this process takes place in a matter of years. It takes millennia.



We can't look to the skies and wait for beings to usher us into an age of space travel. They aren't going to show us the stars. There's a pretty good chance that they're out there looking to the skies as well and waiting on us. You see, its not that I don't think that there's life out there on other planets. I just think that we're better than them.

Space Nozz is coming to find the blue women before Captain Kirk bangs them all.

MUSIC!!

I pondered what song would be fitting with my post, and it didn't take a whole lot of pondering.



That's it for today. If I haven't offended you all horribly with this, come on back Friday. I'll be sure to try harder.

More tech stuff

Ellis had this clip up over on his site.



More wearable tech. This is a bit slicker than that rig I posted about a few months ago which had a projector hanging around your neck and used an IPhone for it's processing. Sure you could do cool things with neat hand gestures, but you were stuck with having to find surfaces to project on. This uses your body for input and doesn't require multicolored fingertips.

Is it practical? The jury is still out. Not sure if the tech will function if the user is wearing long sleeves or if they're in the rain and water drops are impacting their skin giving false signals. I'm also looking at the points on the arm that are being targeted. They're pretty near certain pressure points. I wonder what prolonged tapping of these points would do.

So the future is here, it'll be taking your picture and be worn on you.

Fighting over the future

If science fiction has taught me anything it's that sometime in the future a battle will be fought over who's going to run this here planet. No, I'm not talking about assaults from alien life forms, extra-dimensional overlords or sparkly vampires. I'm talking about humanity seeing who's is going to be in charge around here. See, in every sci-fi story I've ever been exposed to in any medium it's always one of two groups running the show: the government or the corporations.

So on one hand you have the business minded, profit driven groups in control of everything, or it's the a government that taken control of nearly every aspect of the population's lives. It's pretty much conservatism versus liberalism. Do the free markets when out with the winners of the game being whoever has the better product and therefore garners the loyalty of the masses, or is it the government whom we elect because we put them there to serve out best interests? What's really nifty is that the authors of the works no matter which side they come down on in this debate always write about the other side winning. It's always that little undertone of "you see! This is what'll happen if we let them win!"

Will we all work for the faceless corporation heads, whom invariable be hiding some secret that could bring the corporation to ruin?

Will we all be government drones in a totalitarian regime where a small but plucky cabal of freedom fighters will uncover the underhanded methods at which the masses were fooled into bringing them to power?

Is this starting to sound like a cable news network and not science fiction?

And the conservatives are thinking right now, "yeah it sounds like those left wing pussies at CNN!" while the liberals are thinking "hey that sounds like those right wing fascist nuts at Fox News."

And then there's the people rolling their eyes and laughing at both sides.

It filters down to even the most innocent science fiction. Look at poor George Jetson. Toiling away pushing buttons for ol' man Spacely just so he could sell his precious Sprockets. The mortal terror George felt regularly at the thought of his corporate master catching him taking a breath to relax from the frantic button pushing and firing him. How would he be able to confront Jane, Judy and Elroy once deemed inferior and useless by the the Kaisers of the Free Market. Would he be forever ruined and forced to sell Rosey the Robot for scrap parts? Would Cosmo Cogs perhaps look past his years of loyalty to Spacely and hire him?

Then we go over to the more bitter sides of science fiction like the movie Equilibrium in which we see a government run society that's gone so far as to outlaw emotions. They determined that human emotion was the cause of crime, violence and wars so they got rid of such untidy things like art, literature and anything pretty. They also doped the population so they would feel anything.

On paper, Communism works. It should, Marx had enough time to work the bugs out of his manifesto as he was crashing with his friends and being a lazy do-nothing. Hell, this clown was so lazy he didn't even finish writing his manifesto. Here we had a guy who just wanted the government to take care of him. He'd be on welfare today and probably quite content. He probably didn't bank on politicians being... well... politicians.

On paper, Capitalism works. You work hard and earn your living. If you have a trade, a craft or even just a really good idea that is valuable you are rewarded monetarily for it and can sustain yourself. But then greed comes into play, and people start getting the urge to break the rules to get ahead.

So, when will this future battle come to head? Well, it's been said that Democracies come to an end when the population figures out that they can vote for free stuff. I think of the idiot in Florida gushing over the President and asking him what he's going to do about getting him better benefits at McDonalds. I think of London and the fools in streets who lack the ability and knowledge to make a lasting and beneficial change in their own lives and throw tantrums making fools of themselves and doing nothing to help their cause. I think of an acquaintance of main debating the merits of Socialist healthcare and when I pointed out that the government does have healthcare plans for those who need it. She informed me they don't work. The government run healthcare plans don't work, so the solution is the turn the whole system over to the same government. I think I know who is winning.

The battle will not be decided by a giant catastrophic event. It will be determined by the laziness and lack of education of the masses. They don't show that in the sci-fi stories. It's not interesting.