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Travelling Link Dump
I'll be on vacation this week, so Kaedrin compatriots Samael and DyRE will be posting in my stead, though they may not be able to post tomorrow. In any case, here are some links to chew on while I'm gone.

• Bruce Schneier Facts: In the style of the infamous Chuck Norris Facts, some enterprising folks have come up with facts for security expert Bruce Schneier. "Bruce Schneier only smiles when he finds an unbreakable cryptosystem. Of course, Bruce Schneier never smiles." and "There is an otherwise featureless big black computer in Ft. Meade that has a single dial with three settings: Off, Standby, and Schneier." Heh, Cryptonerd humor.
• Khaaan! [via the Ministry]
• Neal Stephenson Q&A (.ram Real Video): I hate Real Player too, but it's worth it to see the man in action. It's from a few years ago, but it's great stuff.
• I Smell a Mash-Up: James Grimmelmann notes the irony of Weird Al Yankovic's new song entitled Don’t Download This Song (available for free download, naturally) that parodies the RIAA's anti-downloading efforts.
• How to read: Nick Hornby tells us to read what we like:

  It's set in stone, apparently: books must be hard work, otherwise they're a waste of time. And so we grind our way through serious, and sometimes seriously dull, novels, or enormous biographies of political figures, and every time we do so, books come to seem a little more like a duty, and Pop Idol starts to look a little more attractive. Please, please, put it down.
  
  And please, please stop patronising those who are reading a book - The Da Vinci Code, maybe - because they are enjoying it.
  
  For a start, none of us knows what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction that books exert on others. And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing.
  
  ...The regrettable thing about the culture war we still seem to be fighting is that it divides books into two camps, the trashy and the worthwhile. No one who is paid to talk about books for a living seems to be able to convey the message that this isn't how it works, that 'good' books can provide every bit as much pleasure as 'trashy' ones.

That's all from now. I hope everyone has a great week. I now leave you in the capable hands of the guest bloggers, Sam & DyRE....



Traversing the Geek Tail
Shamus laments the difficulty of traversing the long tail of geek blogs, and I can sympathize. The need for better information aggregation and analysis has been something of a theme on this blog for a while, so I figured I'd make a few comments. Interestingly enough, this dovetails with another discussion I followed a while back (and never got around to writing about).

First, to illustrate a point, I wanted to recount how I found Twenty Sided. Basically, it all started with that infamous blond joke. I didn't link to Shamus for the joke, but it turns out that we both linked to the same place (and we both apparently found out about the blond joke from Chizumatic). I was intrigued by the blond joke phenomenon, and made a half hearted attempt at mapping the tree of links (once I realized how many branches and branches-of-branches there were, I gave up). Since we'd both linked to the same place and since we'd both pinged that blog (so that our links showed up on the linked post), Twenty Sided was one of the first I recorded. At some point, I ended up viewing his main page and commented on one of this posts. Shamus apparently noticed and then started reading my blog, and on we went.

There are a couple of things to note here. I discovered Twenty Sided almost completely by accident. It was the result of a lame yet deceptively complex blog meme (the sort of thing I used to avoid like the plague). In short, I found his blog through serendipity. What's more, I've found that many of my favorite sites were found in a similar manner: when I wasn't actually looking for them.

Which brings me to a recent (er, 5 month old) article on the subject:

Serendipity is defined as the ability to make fortunate discoveries accidentally. There's so much of modern life that makes it preferable to the vaunted good old days - better hygiene products and power steering leap to mind - but in these disposable days of now and the future, the concept of serendipity is endangered.

Think about the library. Do people browse anymore? We have become such a directed people. We can target what we want, thanks to the Internet. Put a couple of key words into a search engine and you find - with an irritating hit or miss here and there - exactly what you're looking for. It's efficient, but dull. You miss the time-consuming but enriching act of looking through shelves, of pulling down a book because the title interests you, or the binding. Inside, the book might be a loser, a waste of the effort and calories it took to remove it from its place and then return. Or it might be a dark chest of wonders, a life-changing first step into another world, something to lead your life down a path you didn't know was there.

... Looking for something and being surprised by what you find - even if it's not what you set out looking for - is one of life's great pleasures, and so far no software exists that can duplicate that experience.

There is obviously value in analog serendipity (i.e. browsing the library stacks, etc...). Indeed, I used to take a guilty pleasure in ransacking the shelves of the library in which I was supposed to be studying. On one such expedition, I discovered The Book of Imaginary Beings ("a handbook of the strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination") which inspired me to create a new website (that has sadly been neglected for years). On the other hand, what the hell is this guy talking about? Like Steven Johnson, I have to wonder if this guy even uses the internet...

I find these arguments completely infuriating. Do these people actually use the web? I find vastly more weird, unplanned stuff online than I ever did browsing the stacks as a grad student. Browsing the stacks is one of the most overrated and abused examples in the canon of things-we-used-to-do-that-were-so-much-better. (I love the whole idea of pulling down a book because you like the "binding.") Thanks to the connective nature of hypertext, and the blogosphere's exploratory hunger for finding new stuff, the web is the greatest serendipity engine in the history of culture. It is far, far easier to sit down in front of your browser and stumble across something completely brilliant but surprising than it is walking through a library looking at the spines of books.

Is there a way to harness serendipity in an organized fashion? After all, serendipity isn't just random noise, it's the unexpected discovery of signal. The trick is really getting started. Shamus mentions in his post that his starting points are Google, Technorati, and referral logs (i.e. noticing that someone has linked to you). Google is a reasonable starting place for general information, but there's way too much information to sift through there, and it's difficult to find a good geek blog that way. Technorati is hit or miss (mostly miss, in my experience) and referral logs are wonderful if you get noticed (but that's not as easy as it sounds and doesn't happen all that often, especially to beginners).

In the past, I've found blogs I've liked in many ways. Often, I will find a blog I like, then surf through blogrolls. This will sometimes result in a good find (often chaining through several blogroll trees), though it also seems to induce something of a short-term ADD in me as I mostly scan without reading unless something really catches my eye. I used to post a lot on discussion boards and do a lot of debating. This often led me to do some research on various subjects, which sometimes turned up interesting articles. Finding these articles, then exploring the site it's on or googling the author will sometimes yield results.

There are, of course, the big social aggregators like Digg and Reddit. I've always found del.icio.us to be a good place to start (particularly the popular page). Of course, you still have to sift through all of these things to find the hidden gems, but once you do, the structure of the internet gives you the ability to follow a trail of associations (blogrolls being the key example here) easily and efficiently (once you find a blog you like, aggregators like Technorati become a little more useful). Those social aggregators are a good starting place, but they still leave something to be desired. However, all of these sites have come on strong only in the last couple of years and they're growing better every day.

In any case, I've noticed that my blogroll has become a bit stale these days. I still read most of those blogs regularly and they're all good, but I think it's time to add some new ones. After all, the past several entries have referenced the same blogs over and over again! Alas, I'll be away on vacation next week, with little or no computer access, so perhaps I'll just start with a "link to someone new" type post...



Bear Pajamas
One of the things I like about watching foreign movies are the cultural differences that don't quite make it through (it's a novelty thing, perhaps). Sometimes this is due to poor translation and sometimes it's due to a physical mannerism or custom that simply can't be translated. There is a perfect example of this in Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Towards the beginning of the film, the main character Chihiro is taken to the boiler room where she meets an old man with several arms who runs the place. At one point, this man puts up his hands in what looks sort of like a football goalpoast gesture and Chihiro pushes her hand through it (alas, I do not have a copy at my hands, so I can't give a screenshot). I have no idea what this means, but it's clearly something children in Japan do (I'm not sure how I picked up on this - I think I might have watched the movie with the commentary on at one point, which might actually explain what this means).

Most of the Anime I've seen are films, not series. I've seen a few Miyazaki movies, and some other movies like Akira and the Cowboy Bebop movie, amongst assorted other stuff. A few months ago, I watched Haibane Renmei because of the enthusiastic recommendations of Steven Den Beste (and pretty much everyone else who has seen it). Their enthusiasm is certainly warranted. Again, my expectations were constantly thwarted, which I think is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much (I'm sure this series will come up again here). I have since moved on to Serial Experiments Lain. I haven't gotten too far into the series, but one thing that really struck me as funny was Lain's bear pajamas, which she seems to wear whenever she's feeling down:

(Click images for a larger version)






As you can see, it's adorable (I believe the appropriate word is Kawaii). Now, what I don't know is if such pajamas are normal garb for young Japanese girls, or if it's just a quirky Anime trope like washpans that bonk people on the head or Absurdly Powerful Student Councils (not that I've seen either of those). Like I said, I haven't seen much anime, but I've fallen into the habit of reading blogs in the Otakusphere, many of whom seem to delight in posting screenshots and I seem to remember some similar type pajama/costume type stuff coming up from time to time. So is this a pseudo-trope, another cultural difference, or is it just an oddity limited to Serial Experiments Lain (one could certainly find symbolic meanings in such a visual)?



Gloriously Bad
I think you can tell what movie I'm referring to by the title of this post. Indeed, the most gloriously bad thing about the film is it's title, perhaps the best, most hyped title of all time: Snakes on a Plane. Steven Den Beste has been writing about this (likely permalink) a lot on his blog recently, and he cites a CNN review which claims that the movie is good. Not "so bad it's good" good, but actually, genuinely good. I don't agree. I think it's so bad it's good, but in my book, that's not a bad thing. It's transcendently bad, this is exactly what they were going for, and this sort of thing is honestly not as easy to create as you might think. Much of the time, movies only reach this status unintentionally. It's a rare bird indeed that is able to cultivate the bad into something good.

There's little to be said about the film that hasn't already been said. I think the most astounding thing about the film is its title, in that I think it could serve as an appropriate litmus test. If you like the title, chances are, you'll like the movie. If you're baffled or otherwise dismissive of the title, you'll probably won't. As many have noted, it's critic-proof. You don't need anyone to tell you if you want to see it or not, you just do (or don't).

When I was in college, I didn't get to take a free elective until my senior year, and when I finally did, I jumped at the chance to take a film-related course. It was an excellent course, and I think my teacher did a great job giving a broad overview of the history and types of film theory. However, it seemed to me that the real joy of films was lost on her. This was brought into stark relief one day when the students of the class were talking about the first X-Men movie. Everyone enjoyed the film. It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot of fun. Our teacher was totally dismissive of the movie, and as the semester went on, it seemed to me that she had studied filmmaking and theory so much that she couldn't watch a movie without over-analysing it. She would hate Snakes on a Plane.

Now, as readers of this blog might have observed, I like movies a lot. I even like a lot of arty, offbeat movies. Because of this, I sometimes worry that I'm turning into my teacher, but in reality, I think my tolerance for movies so bad they're good has increased over the years. Hence, I enjoyed Snakes on a Plane. Perhaps not as much as Tremors, but it's still a lot of fun. Den Beste explains why he's interested in the movie:

It's because it's completely unpretentious. There's no message in this film. It doesn't preach. It doesn't have a political point of view. It isn't politically correct. The people who made it are interested in one and only one thing: entertaining their audience. Even the title is unpretentious.

Indeed, and pretentiousness is something that is bothering me more and more these days. Hopefully, we'll see more of this sort of pure entertainment in the future (and not just lame knock-offs like Spiders on a Boat, Clowns on a Toilet, or, my personal favorite which two friends of mine independently mentioned: Ostriches on a Hovercraft... er, wait, you know, I think I'd pay to see those. Never mind.)



GPL & Asimov's First Law
Ars Technica reports on a Open source project called GPU. The purpose of this project is to provide an infrastructure for distributed computing (i.e. sharing CPU cycles). The developers of this project are apparently pacifists, and they've modified the GPL (the GNU General Public License, which is the primary license for open source software) to make that clear. One of the developers explains it thusly: "The fact is that open source is used by the military industry. Open source operating systems can steer warplanes and rockets. [This] patch should make clear to users of the software that this is definitely not allowed by the licenser."

Regardless of what you might think about the developers' intentions, the thing I find strangest about this is the way they've chosen to communicate their desires. They've modified the standard GPL to include a "patch" which is supposedly for no military use (full text here). Here is what this addition says [emphasis mine]:

PATCH FOR NO MILITARY USE

This patch restricts the field of endeavour of the Program in such a way that this license collides with paragraph 6 of the Open Source Definition. Therefore, this modified version of the GPL is no more OSI compliant.

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.

This is astoundingly silly, for several reasons. First, as many open source devotees have pointed out (and as the developers themselves even note in the above text), you're not allowed to modify the GPL. As Ars Technica notes:

Only sentences after their patch comes the phrase, "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed." This is part of the GPL, and by modifying the license, the developers seem to run afoul of it. The Free Software Foundation has already contacted them about the matter.

Next, Asimov's laws of robotics were written for autonomous beings called robots. This might seem obvious to some, but apparently not to the developers, who have applied it to software. As Ars notes: "Code is not an autonomous agent that can go around bombing people or hauling them from burning buildings." Also, Asimov always alluded to the fact that the plain English definitions (which is what the developers used in their "patch") just gave you the basic idea of what the law did - the code that implemented this functionality in his robots was much more complex.

Third, we have a military for a reason, and their purpose extends far beyond bombing the crap out of people. For example, many major disasters are met with international aid delivered and administered by... military transports and personnel (there are many other examples, but this is a common one that illustrates the point well). Since this software is not allowed, through inaction, to permit any human being from being harmed, wouldn't the military be justified (if not actually required) to use it? Indeed, this "inaction" clause seems like it could cause lots of unintended consequences.

Finally, Asimov created the laws of robotics in a work of fiction as a literary device that allowed him to have fun with his stories. Anyone who has actually read the robot novels knows that they're basically just an extended exercise in subverting the three laws (eventually even superseding them with a "zeroth" law). He set himself some reasonable sounding laws, then went to town finding ways to get around them. For crying out loud, he had robots attempting murder on humans all throughout the series. The laws were created precisely to demonstrate how foolish it was to have such laws. Granted, many fictional stories with robots have featured Asimov's laws (or some variation), but that's more of an artistic homage (or parody, in a lot of cases). It's not something you put into a legal document.

Ars notes that not all the developers agree on the "patch," which is good, I guess. If I were more cynical, I'd say this was just a ploy to get more attention for their project, but I doubt that was the intention. If they were really serious about this, they'd probably have been a little more thorough with their legalese. Maybe in the next revision they'll actually mention that the military isn't allowed to use the software.

Update: It seems that someone on Slashdot has similar thoughts:

Have any of them actually read I, Robot? I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?

And another commenter does too:

From a plain English reading of the text "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed", I am forced to conclude that the program will not through inaction allow any human being to be harmed. This isn't just silly; it's nonsensical. The Kwik-E-Mart's being robbed, and the program, through inaction (since it's running on a computer in another state, and has nothing to do with a convenience store), fails to save Apu from being shot in the leg. Has it violated the terms of it's own license? What does this clause even mean?

Heh.



Book Meme
It appears that I've been "tagged" (not in the cool, web 2.0ey sense of the word, but rather the lame chain-letter equivalent used in blogging - not that I mind, though) for a book meme.

1. One book that changed your life
   This might seem lame to some, but Lightning, by Dean Koontz was one of the first books that I ever read for pleasure. I was about 14 years old, and grounded (for reasons I won't get into), and my brother had given me this book to read. I was skeptical, of course. The suggestion to read for pleasure was scandalous. I mean, come on, that's something they force you to do in school, not something you spend precious spare time on! At some point, I got around to picking it up and as soon as I started reading it, I was hooked. I read the whole thing in about two days, then moved on to the rest of Koontz's catalog, eventually branching out to other authors and genres (Asimov was also a notable influence in my early reading days). In any case, I hold this book responsible for all the reading I have done since, and I'll always have a soft spot for Koontz (even if I don't find his stuff as enjoyable these days - perhaps a topic for another post).
2. One book that you’ve read more than once
   Well, I could mention Lightning again here (while still gripping and entertaining, it was, alas, not as good as I had rememberd it - the difference between a 14 year old and a 23 year old, I guess), but I assume the point of this is not to repeat myself... So I think the most impressive book I've reread is Neal Stephenson's brilliant Cryptonomicon. I read this book a few years ago, then again after I had read the Baroque Cycle. Some might question the wisdom of re-reading a 900 page book after reading it's 2700 page prequel, but it was actually great. There are tons of subtle references that I hadn't noticed in the Baroque Cycle (sometimes extremely subtle, but it even to the point of fairly promintent side characters). Interestingly enough, the book was better the second time around,perhaps because of all the small tie-ins with the Baroque Cycle, but also because my focus had changed. When I first read the book, my favorite parts were in the WWII era of the story, but the second reading made me notice more about the present-day era.
3. One book you’d want on a desert island
   This would depend greatly on the details of said island, but my first instinct was to go all pragmatic and pick a survival book (like Shamus notes, one with pictures and diagrams would be most useful). I assume the real intention here is to name a book that I think is so great that it would allow me to escape my dismal surroundings. I could probably go with any of the aformentioned books (perhaps Cryptonomicon would be ideal, as it's longer) or perhaps the LotR trilogy (counting that as a single full book).
4. One book that made you laugh
   Hmm, I'm getting the feeling that it will become more and more difficult to not mention books already mentioned. Both Koontz and Stephenson have keen senses of humor and almost always have things in their books that make me laugh out loud. I think I'll go with Snow Crash here (though Cryptonomicon is the one that really comes to mind for me...)
5. One book that made you cry
   Honestly, I can't think of one. I'm not generally into the sad weepy stories that are likely to make one cry, so I tend to avoid those types of books...
6. One book that you wish had been written
   I think this is the toughest question on the list because, you know, I haven't really read many books in the grand scheme of things. There are plenty of books I'm waiting for, but the form of this question implies books that won't be written (perhaps because the desired author is dead, etc...) not books that haven't been written yet. I've looked around at others who participated in the meme and mostly what I see are humorous or clever answers. Eh, how about the The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, Explained So You May Understand It (yes, yes, I know, 42. Thanks a lot.).
7. One book that you wish had never been written
   The obvious answer is, of course, Mein Kampf. There's also some others like perhaps Protocols of the Elders of Zion (hmmm, catching a trend here?) or perhaps the entire political commentary rack at the local bookstore... but in reality, I find it hard to wish anything hadn't been written. I'm just not the censoring type, I guess, and I value freedom of speech enough to put up with stuff I don't like.
8. One book you’re currently reading
   The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi. Heinein-inspired military sci-fi, and it's pretty entertaining too (though not as good so far as the first in the series, Old Man's War, which I'll eventually get around to posting about one of these days).
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read
   Well, this is quite a long list, but if I make the criteria dependent on actually owning the book but not having read it, I'll have to go with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I've heard good things and bad things, and it's sat on my shelf for a few years now. It's quite a hefty book, which doesn't normally bother me, but considering that a lot of people seem to think the book is a clever exercise in literary style, I'm not sure I'm all that excited (at least, not for 1000 pages of it). Really, it just seems like there's always something more interesting also on my shelf...
10. Tag 5 people
    I'm not sure I know 5 other bloggers to tag that would bother to respond (and one of them tagged me, so that narrows it down further), so instead, I'll just comdemn the practice of "tagging" (in the bloggers equivalent of chain letter sense) in a self righteous manner, thus proving my superiority to the rest of the blogging world. Or something.
    
    Seriously though, if you're a blogger and you want to participate, go right ahead:) If you're not a blogger, feel free to leave your answers in the comments...

That's all for now. I know I mentioned last week that I'd post more, but I never got around to it. Apologies for the lameness lately, I'm sure I'll get back on track soon...



IMDB Bookmarklet
In last week's post, I ended up linking to a whole bunch of movies on the IMDB. The process was somewhat tedious, and I lamented the lack of movable type plugins that would help. There are a few plugins that could potentially help, but not in the exact context I'm looking for (MT-Textile does have some IMDB shortcuts, but they're for IMDB searches).

So after a looking around, I decided that the best way to go would be to write a bookmarklet that would generate the code to insert a link to IMDB. I'm no expert on this stuff and I'm sure there's something wrong with the below code, but it appears to work passably well (maybe I should just call it IMDB Bookmarklet - Beta). Basically, all you need to do is go to the movie you want to link to on IMDB, click the bookmarklet in your browser, then copy and paste the text into your post (IE actually has a function that will copy a string directly to your clipboard, but no other browser will do so because of obvious security reasons. Therefore, I simply used a prompt() function to display the generated text which you have to then copy manually.)

This turned out to be something of a pain, mainly because I primarily use the Opera web browser, which is apparently more strict about javascript than any other browser. My first attempt at the bookmarklet appeared to work fine when I just pasted it into the location bar, but when I actually set up the bookmark, it choked. This apparently had something to do with single and double quotes (I thought you were supposed to be able to use both in javascript, but for whatever reason, Opera kept throwing syntax errors.)

Anyway, here's the code:

javascript:mname=document.title;murl=document.location;mdatepos=mname.lastIndexOf(' (');if(mdatepos!=-1){mname2=mname.slice(0,mdatepos);}else{mname2=mname;} temp=prompt('Copy text for a link to IMDB movie:','<a href=\''+murl+'\' title=\'IMDB: '+ mname2 +'\'>'+mname2+'</a>');focus();

Or just use this link: Generate IMDB Link

Again, all you need to do is go to the movie you want to link to on IMDB, click the bookmarklet in your browser, then copy and paste the text into your post. This is the output of the bookmarklet when you use it on IMDB's Miami Vice page:

<a href='http://imdb.com/title/tt0430357/' title='IMDB: Miami Vice'>Miami Vice</a>

A few nerdy coding things to note here:

• The link that is generated uses single quotes (') instead of the usual double quotes ("). Both work in HTML, but I usually use double quotes and would prefer consistency. However, as previously mentioned, using double quotes does not appear to work in Opera (even when escaped with \"). If you use firefox and want to get double quotes in the generated link, try this:

  javascript:mname=document.title;murl=document.location;mdatepos=mname.lastIndexOf(' (');if(mdatepos!=-1){mname2=mname.slice(0,mdatepos);}else{mname2=mname;} temp=prompt('text','<a href=\"'+murl+'\" title=\"IMDB: '+ mname2 +'\">'+mname2+'</a>');focus();

• The code is generated by reading in the page's URL and title tag. As such, I had to do some manipulation to remove the year from the page's title (otherwise the link would show up saying Miami Vice (2006). The way I did this may cause problems if a title has an open parentheses, but I tried to account for it. I might change it so that the year shows up in the title attribute of the link, but I don't think it's that big of a deal.
• Foreign movies will still show up with the foreign title. So Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance will show up as Boksuneun naui geot. Personally, I think this still helps, but I don't see an easy way of generating the link with the English title (and sometimes it's nice to use the foreign title).
• Now that I think about it, this would be helpful for linking to Amazon too. It seems like they make it more difficult to link using your Associates ID these days, so an automated way to do so will probably be helpful.

And that's it. If you're a javascript or bookmarklet expert and see something wrong with the above, please do let me know.

I realize this post has next to no appeal to the grand majority of my readers, but I ended up spending more time on this than I wanted. I'll see if I can make another post during the week this week...


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