WaRCHieFX’s blog

Been trying Wordpress as an alternative to hosting my posts, seems like a very good platform with lots of tweaking available. Also, you don't have to be a member just to post a comment, which I found irritating about Vox. The only problem i have now is exporting my Vox posts to Wordpress, but that can be hammered out, one way or another.

What will I miss?
Collections, QotD and the edtor.

Please check it and update your bookmarks: WaRCHieFX's blog

What is your favorite ring tone?
Submitted by rach. 

My tones are custom, baby... yeah! Something played by Joe Satriani or Machinae Supremacy

Please disregard this message if you work for the MAFIIA.

What's something you bought, knowing it was a total waste of money?

A PDA holder for my car. I needed something that allowed me to confortably place my Palm TX inside of the car since I usually connect it to The Panzer's stereo system. I hate FM radio, there is absolutely nothing there for me to listen, and when there is... there is a 70% chance i'm not driving my car. Cheaper than buying a car radio that plays MP3 and installing it.

Turns out it gets a bit obtrusive (right mirror view-wise) when attached to the windshield and the option to attach it to the air conditioning vent of the car was not stable enough. Anyway, there may still be some use for it, thought it escapes my mind for the moment being.

Following with my Books-To-Read-Queue, I just finished reading this book:

Most of the book deals with the life of 6 persons onboard a deep-sea power station, who had to be modded to be able to survive in this high pressure environment. The crew is composed by rapists, pedophiles, borderline psychotics, and victims of same, so you might guess the interaction between them might be. Also they get infected by a virus-like entity called βehemoth which, if set loose upon the world, will destroy all of the human race (and the ecosystem), and i'm talking in a bad way. The thing is, everything goes south thanks to fact that the powerfull nations of the world (year 2050) couldn't trust themselves, so they trust the handling of βehemoth to Skynet "Smart gels" (which appear to be some kind of Neural Net). The problem is that the computer has a thing for simpler systems (βehemoth) over complex ones (us). The reason for that, being related to what the net had become in those days and the role of the Smart gels in controlling it.

I can hardly wait to read Maelstrom (by the way, this is the name that the Interweb is called on those days) and see where this leads to, this one ended in quite a bit of hell in a desperate attempt to destroy βehemoth and I heard it somehow gets to enter the Maelstrom and evolve there. :)

Happy holidays for you 5-6 people that read this series of delusional thoughts from this insane, but good-natured, product of your delusional mind/person.

I finished reading some days ago this book:

As my friend Juan puts it, this is 'hardcore SciFi'. I won't go into details on the plot (else my little Green friend will kill me, seriously), but I really recommend this book to anyone who wishes to be amazed by the simple grace and style in which Peter Watts speaks not only of a 'First-Encounter' event with real aliens, but his comments about the nature of us carbon-based lifeforms humans.

Also, he includes a vampire in the crew. Most people seem to find Sarasti scary, but I didn't (and I read this book at night with all lights off while everyone at home was sleeping). Don't know why, but my first bet is my tv-damaged-brain that maybe has made me more insensitive to such things along the years. Need to admit, cool vampire.

One of the comments that brought most of my attention is the one that talks about the difference of technology level in alien encounter situations (read the book if you want the exact exciting speech), also --SPOILER ALERT-- doesn't apply to the aliens in the book --SPOILER ALERT--:

1. Technologically advanced civilizations will not be hostile
2. Technologically advanced civilizations will be hostile
3. I don't care

Point #1, when you reach certain level of knowledge your civilization will need not to resort to violence as a way to solve problems, since you will be enlightened, or something like that. I don't really identify with this point, so I don't know many arguments on this. Maybe possible, but what level is that? how far are we from that? is it possible that we already passed it?

Point #2, technology is used to dominate less advanced groups. The most compelling reason to create new technology is to gain an edge against other factions which we don't really like we <<insert uber-important philosofical reason here>>, so we need to vanquish them. This is the point I tend to agree the most...

Imagine you are a carbon-based monkey-descended lifeform whose ancestors from only a few hundred years ago were clubbing another carbon-based monkey-descended lifeform battling for the survival of your kind in some prehistoric marsh. Your most important technological achievements come from research for new-and-improved ways to club another carbon-based monkey-descended lifeforms defend yourself in the name of freedom, your religion, money (also a religion), etc. You live in what is defined as Society, defined as: something that forces you not to harm co-exist with other lifeforms you really can't stand living with for the sake of ... not being alone? getting some basic services and living longer?. But you don't live in The Society, you live in A Society, which implies that there are many more. You can't stand the people in your society, but somehow you manage to do it in a day-by-day basis. What you are sure about is that the thing you can't really stand are the other societies. Somehow you have technology.

Now comes the question: If you were to get some great technology breakthrough that allowed you to get the people in your society, the other societies, your entire planet, other races too under your cold steel hand, would you do it? even if it may be possible to destroy all the cited groups? including yourself?

Thought so.

If you came with a warning label, what would it say?
Submitted by chris.

Warning: Hammer-Wielding Wacko, may solve your code's problem if provoked. Keep away from non-technical persons unless you are ready for technical jokes and wordplay. Do not expose to fire and keep refrigerated at all costs. Is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan.

Today I had a Dream (not that kind of dream, mind you). I somehow modified my car (A.K.A. "The Panzer", see this) that allowed it to drive me to work and/or hell college while I was comfortably sitting in the front passenger's seat. The implementation of such a system is left as an exercise to the reader. It involved a radar, some pretty sadomasochist programming and a whole lot of heavy wizardry. The system worked mostly flawlessly, except in locating the semaphores (like many humans do) but it was solved with some witty hack involving the radar and some sick calculations with the flow of the other cars (with the obvious shortcomings when there are no cars). The point is, I got stopped by a transit officer due to the fact that no one was driving my car at the moment, even if my car was handling the transit better than all the motorized monkeys the other human beigns in the beginning.

So, this brings 2 things to my mind:

1. What the hell did I eat in yesterday's dinner?
2. How would humanity take it if we suddenly created machines that could really do something useful like waking me up and taking me to work everyday (harder than you may think) and giving me some real support on any kind of mad crusade I may get into.

What if I replaced my trusty T|X with a machine that noticed that I am hammering out some code and helpfully provided me with the documentation I seem to be needing but as a lazy person refuse to search... without me telling it to do it. We are not talking real AI here, just some context mapping and some guesswork. Apart from the obvious Clippy feeling (they say they have been trying to kill it since some recent version of office, but the bastard just keeps respawning), wouldn't my life be more... productive, perhaps?

My personal bet is in the range of [Hell Yeah!] and [Duh], and would be happy to get one. But I'm not sure about the rest of humanity. See, as the monkey-descended apes we are, we like gadgets, flashy stuff and women in their 20s with big boobs. But nothing more that that, people would start complaining that their devices stop them from being creative, that somehow these devices are trying to control their life. [Insert some crazy conspiracy theory here]

The problem here is that these devices are stupid, they just have a magical way of finding out what you are doing and offer you some help (you just programmed it way back with the necessary tools, nothing more). There is no real reasoning or self-awareness going on here, there is no Judgement-Day coming, just PDA v. 2.0. Wouldn't that fear be better directed at the fact that the future of this world is in the hands of a group of monkeys that just need to press a Big Red Button for it to be over with?

This would last for about 1 generation, then the next generation would embrace it and really kick off the technology. But the current generation would still see them as evil things, because we are afraid of change.

Why are we afraid of change? because change is uncomfortable, change brings risks, change brings change. (note the recursion)

We tend to accomodate ourselves to our boring everyday lives, we say that we are tired of doing the same thing every day, but if something comes and tries to change it we stand out and defend that same boredom. It's just like bad laziness (see my previous post).

Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop being lazy and embrace change?

What's your favorite heartbreak song?
Submitted by esta86.

"Bullet Proof Skin" by Institute

This song has almost all the phases I think there are for being heartbroken, specially the love you/hate you part.

What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.

So far, these are the top 5 games on my 'Wish I had more time to play games' list:

1. Unreal Tournament 2004
2. Battlefield 2
3. Starcraft
   
4. Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors
5. Call of Duty

UT2k4, how else would I release all the daily stress I get from dealing with people that deal with computers?

Battlefield 2, how can you not love blowing the hell out of your enemies while driving classics like a M1A2 tank?

Starcraft. So far, the best RTS I have ever seen. Too bad Blizzard has not developed a second version of this masterpiece.