The F.C.C vs. Internet Service Providers

So what does it take to get Republicans and Democrats to nearly universally agree on something? Apparently, wanting to control the purse strings of the internet. A branch of government, called the FCC (The Federal Communication Commission), has a strange desire to regulate Broadband and internet service fee's. Now the FCC is notorious for being buzz kills. Effectively, their idea would be to tell Comcast, or Verizon, or who ever your ISP is, how much, they can charge you and their rules and regulations. So it'd be the governments way, or the high way. My first knee jerk reaction to this was one of anger, just another way the government is trying to control everything. While this is true, they are indeed dipping their hand a bit deep in the cookie jar, the results may not be too bad. There was a meeting today (December 21st) that ended in approval of their regulations. At least for now, the FCC is trying to make large Broadband companies more transparent to its consumers. Three basic rules have been implemented:

1. No More Blocking Legal Content
No ISP can block competitors web sites, or any material that is deemed lawful. I believe it was Verizon who tried to put a ban on P2P sharing, by disabling certain websites. The FCC, put a stop to practices like that.

2. Transparency between the Company and Its Consumers
So if anyone calls up their ISP, they must disclose managament practices, and commericial terms, in order to let the consumer make a fair and balanced decision to the use of their service.


3. No discrimination that would be deemed "unreasonable"
This is a cool one, I like this rule. Lets say Company X wants Company Y's website to appear slow, unresponsive compared to their own site. They could pay whatever ISP money to bring down the speed of the site. This rule makes such practices illegal.


The most basic and fundamental part of this is that they want a person, who doesn't have much money and the richest person in the world, to able to use the same internet. One shouldn't have a faster connection or better content than the other. This socialization of the wired world may sound good for us, but is more begrudgingly accepted by ISP's. Comcast who, sued the FCC for trying to stop them from banning P2P sharing, left the department worried that they didn't have enough control over the way of the internet. Comcast won the suit and deemed that the FCC didn't have the power to tell the company how to run its business. Well now, today, December 21st, that changed. The FCC granted itself more power in order to handle situations like that. Meaning the FCC is going to be the watch dog of the ISP world.

What I'm not liking is the impending what if's. If a branch of the government has control over regulations for ISP's, that means they could themselves make up their own restrictions. While I appreciate them trying to level the playing field, between ISP and consumer, in due time, what happens when the FCC wants something taken down? Demand Verizon, or Comcast, that it should be removed? They're be no stopping what they could and couldn't censor. It just seems like we're trading one bad hand for another. Now as I had time to digest this, I'm not sure if this is really such a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of big government, stepping into out business, especially something as free as the internet. But them regulating ISP providers and keeping them in line really doesn't hurt us, in fact it makes sure that they're staying clean. One rule that I'm really liking is that the pricing (for now) has to be constant. You can't charge someone more because he downloads more. I think distributing the money to all subscribers is better than piling it on the few people who use up more bandwidth than others. What do you guys think? Chime in


Read up about this:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/12/fcc-order/comment-page-1/

http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/fcc/

The Validity of The Self CheckOut

I was in Ikea the other night, looking for new trappings, and neat compact furniture, and other novel ideas for an apartment that I may own some day. After I had collected my wares from the trip, I went to pay, and was met with a pretty disturbing scene. The There was no one at the check outs. All the check out lanes were darkened, and abandoned. The only stream of light came from the glowing self check out lane. This double wide lane featured two banks of self check out machines. A lone attendant stood at her podium, over looking operations. There was a long line so I had some time to observe and contemplate. Every so often, some one would slip up press a wrong button, and the attendant would come down from her podium, press a few buttons and return. I'd see the oversee'r pressing some buttons from her podium, which bypassed any errors that the customers may have made. Pretty efficient. Of course something like this had me ready to write. And this isn't the first time I've had my run in with these machine check outs. At the grocery stores, they're slowing pushing their way up from the last lane that no one goes to, all the way up to the middle lanes. Obviously the proficiency and money saved from these machines is invaluable to companies. Six machines, replaces six employee's. Its not hard to imagine how or why these are so popular. That's great for the company, but what about the shopper? Does the self check out really help the customer at all? Whats really the point? I'm torn between these techno-checkers. While I do like the idea of empowering the people, and letting them do their own dirty work, there seems something way to cold and remote about coming to a checkout area and finding no one there, except a row of "robots". (I say robots because the first self check out machine, which was introduced in 1992 by Dr. Howard Schnieder, were classified and coined by the Dr himself, as Service Robots. Which he hoped would be the first in a long list of other robot tech to "assist human living".)
Its not as if I eagerly await to see cashiers or anything, but I'm not to green on the idea of having no one there and the customers are herded to these vestibules and electronically guided through the check out process. I don't know maybe its just me. I just feel its very cold. As I was guided through the animated user interface of the self check out at Ikea, I really felt like taking a hammer to it. Not because the interface was confusing but because looking these quiet, and smooth running machines, I knew that atleast 5 people didn't have jobs. IT just really makes me wonder what other human jobs are going to be completely obsolete in a few years time? If you've guys have seen the movie Total Recall, the Johnny Cab are a perfect example. Programmed machine which know the traffic routes may be a few years off (a lot of years off) but still, that type of idea means that we'll be so limited to actually talking with another person when we step out our front door... What do you guys think? chime in

Johnny Cab from Blade Runner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsuOfieIG0Q

Saving Your "i" For A Rainy Day

I'm making a prediction folks, get out your notepads cause you can quote me on this. I believe that in the future, maybe sooner than we think, we as humans are going to be able to store memories, thoughts, mental images and other processes of the brain, onto computer chips. Now before you raise and eyebrow, just think about, if we can transmit data from computer to computer, and user to computer, then the next stage would be directly from the brain. Now technically we all can store our memories on USB drives, by just writing down a journal on Word and press 'save as'. But I'm talking about memories that include the visual as well. What if we could download the memory of someone who died recently in your life. You could 'plug in' the chip and experience the memories again, without fear of the memory fading in your own mortal brain. Instead of photo albums you could have a Rolodex of chips from past vacatons, old lovers, your college years etc.. All saved in a compressed file.
Some of you may be familiar with the work and writings of a man named Hans Moravec. He was the one who really got me thinking about this idea of uploading your own memories. But Han Moravec's idea is a step beyond my conclusion. He says that we will be able to upload our entire being, our conciousness itself. That we could literally merge with computer chips, and become bodiless. Mr. Moravec believes that its the next step in evolution, and should be embraced. No longer bound by time, we can live on entirely, in a network, where space and need for movement is completely unessasary. What a bizarre experience it would be. To have no body, no movement, but free roaming thought. Pressumably a nework of these "Memory banks" would be set up to allow the upload 'humans' to live on, without anyone to supervise their operation.

Of course there is the argument that "uploading" yourself into a computer chip merely creates a copy of you. That the true I is planted and deeply rooted in your body somewhere. I don't know how I feel about this. While I can see the connection of a face and body would make someone say that my thoughts and memories aren't all that make up me, I'm just as inclined to say that my body has very little to do with my true I.
Rene Descartes the philospher made it a point to seperate both the Mind and Body, a "dualistic" nature. He felt that the material plane we exist on, houses the body. While off on another plane somewhere, the Mind is dominant.

Anyway thats my idea. I'm not sure if we'll ever achieve what Han Moravec says, that we will eventually come to upload ourselves and live on computer memory, but I can definitely see years down the road, the ability up upload certain memories, dreams, and mental images to flash drives etc... Am I alone in thinking this??

For more on this check out the writings of Hans Moravec, especially his book "Robot"

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec.html

More Wikileaks News and..C++

The hole is dug deeper for Julian Assange, unfortunately he was indeed arrested and will probably be tried in Sweden. What I'm curious to see is if Sweden nulls the rape charges and sends him back to the United States. I think that would be pretty telling if these 'horrid rape charges' are just forgotten, and the real reason why they wanted him comes to the fore front. In case your missing something, Julian was allegedly accused of rape in Sweden, but it just so random and makeshift, it seems like they just needed a reason to bring him in. And evvvveryone is so sensitive to a rape charge. I'm not defending Assange, but it just seems like he's taking the brute of the retribution. If this story was broken to NY times, there's no way in hell that the Editor in Chief of the NY Times would be arrested and made into a public enemy. As I stated in my previous post, I truely understand that some secrets and information are meant to be kept private. But I think this was blown way way out of proportion. Admittly I don't know everything that was released, or 'leaked'... so there could be some pretty damning information in there that would warrant Assange to be reprimanded. But I still think that this should fall on the shoulders of Bradley Manning, if he did indeed leak it. While I wish Mr. Manning no ill will, Julian should have absolutely nothing to do with this.

What I really love is that this hacker group, "Anonymous" (whom I sometimes parlay with on 4chan), tried to really stick it to the companies that gave in, and tried to silence Wikileaks. It came out as a failed hacker assault, and I don't think such a brash attack was necessary or even warranted, but they're heart was in the right place... My favorite auther Douglas Rushkoff comments on the failed hacker attempt:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/10/rushkoff.hacking.wikileaks/index.html

Anyway back to some more regular topics. I was driving and my girlfriend happened to glance at my speedometer and noticed my "Round trip" meter (which I find utterly useless), spelled out the term "Leet" or in Leet spelling, "1337" 1337 or Leet is a term coined from the phrase "elite speak" which is a slang really generally used in the gaming community, or sometimes in chatrooms. It deals with using numbers to look like letters. Its definitely a slang that has died out, it was big in the late 90's. Any who I grabbed a pic of it for blogging purposes. Oh and I started my road to learning computer programming. It was high time I sat down and really put some time into it. So I took myself over to Youtube, grabbed a book from Barnes and Noble, and began learning C++. So far so good, nothing so out of left field. After I get C++ down I'll probably try for SQL or Java. If you all out there in computer land have any suggestions on sites to help learning programming, I'm all ears!

After a Hiatus...Wiki Leaks??

Hey everyone, a lot of stuff went down in my life, for the worst. I've gotten myself into some trouble, and haven't had time or urge to post... But I'm trying to get over it. Any who...Over the past few days, I've been trying to distract myself by keeping up on one HELL of an interesting story. Julian Assange and the Wikileaks has been a topic on controversy over the past few months, but only during the last week has it really exploded. Apparently many countries haven't been so forthcoming with they're true feeling. Like a teacher reading notes being passed around during class, aloud, Wikileaks has released many documents that give us an inside peek into gossip relating to countries and how they really feel about their surrounding neighbors. So was Julian right about releasing these documents? Do we have a right to know? How far should we take this thirst for knowledge? While I do support freedom of speech, and the right for the public to know what's being said by its own government, I can't help but feel some things are kept secret for a reason. While this case may not be the deciding factor that will cause years and years of calamity and pain, the next time someone may release documents or information that really is sensitive. Like I said, I think this series of Wikileaks is pretty harmless, at most some strained relations between countries, I don't think Assange should have been arrested, nor the wikileaks site taken down, atleast in regards to the leaks, the other allegations about sex crimes, are fair game, and should indeed be followed up. But as for the primary allegations of the information being released, I just dont' see it being all that threatening. What I think is happening, is that countries, and governments are seeing that information can be spread and leaked at lightening speed, and that very little is actually able to be kept secret. This, I believe is why everyone's so up in arms. That being said, freedom of information does have a point where I'd draw the line, and say, just because you can release documents, doesn't mean that you should. What do you guys think? What I was thinking about earlier was that, do you think this would have happened if the internet wasn't around? Obviously the site wikileaks wouldn't exist, but would a newspaper have been willing to publish these messages, if this was back say, in the 1970's? Chime in, let me know what you think, and I'll try to get updates back on track, at a more regular pace. Bare with me though!

Here's a surprisingly subtle defense of Julian Assange, from Ron Paul... I didn't expect that..

"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth,” Paul insisted. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/ron-paul-what-wikileaks/

That being said, what of, Bradley Manning? Months ago, he released (maybe?) to Wikileaks a video of a gunship killing Iraqi civilians. This sparked massive outrage and really painted a target on Wikileak's back. Does Manning deserve pain of death, or should we be praising him as a provider of truth? My opinion on this is split almost 50/50...

Geometry of Circles on Sesame Street

One of my favorite composers of all time, is a man by the name of Philip Glass. He's written some of the most beautiful pieces of music that I've ever heard. He has a five part piano solo labeled Metamorphosis that still sends shudders down my spine. Upon searching for more of his music on Youtube, I came upon something very familiar. Does anyone remember this from watching Sesame Street back in the day?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch-R1aIM-C0&feature=related

I'm only 23, so this skit aired originally well before my time, but they must have played it later on, cause I know I've seen this before. The animation is a geometrical feast for the eyes, and with Philip's music, a feast for the ears too. Apparently he wrote this song specifically for this animation. Very haunting and almost somber. Maybe its the nostalgia effecting me. But I figured a video of this nature would be appreciated by the likes of this blog. I haven't watched Sesame Street in years, but I'm pretty certain they don't have skits like these anymore.
Like I said, I'd definitely suggest looking into Philip Glass, some people don't like his style, his songs are very loopy, and repetitive. Its called "minimalism". He takes a short melody, and repeats it for the entire song changing only a few notes around it. To me, I couldn't ask for anything more, his songs usually end how they begin, created a nice closed loop feeling. Hit youtube up and listen to this Metamorphosis theme, and the song "Mad Rush".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW3Y4OuTPHQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w6a8pfG0V4&feature=related

Karn Evil 9: Load Your Program, I Am Yourself

I was driving home today (bought Scott Pilgrim vs. The World! Finally out on Blueray!) and I had the classic rock station blasting. Now I have no love of the radio let me tell you. I can't describe how infuriating it is to have to listen to the same recycled crap. I mean, don't get me wrong. The songs they play on the radio are popular for a reason, they're good, but there's just a lot of music that they don't play that's not 'main stream'. But that's business I suppose. Any who, in a rare act of divine good will, the station I'm listening to decides to play the entire Karn Evil 9 song! The entire 30 minute epic! I was thrilled beyond belief. Not only does this song never get played, its near impossible to hear it in its entirety! The song by the bombastic and often pompous band "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" or ELP. The song is my favorite prog rock song and perhaps one of my favorite songs of all time period. The 30 minute suite is split up into 3 parts or "impressions". With the first impression being further split up into 2 parts. The 2nd part of the first impression, is probably most familiar with you, if that. The reason why I'm even talking about this, is because of what the song is about. If you haven't heard of this song, (I can assume most of you have) go check it out, its really wild piece of work.
Anyway the song Karn Evil 9, is a dark, sinister, and dystopian view of the future. Greg Lake who wrote the lyrics for this, really hits the nail on the head with some of this. Basically the human race, in this twisted future, is turned into a side show. At least all of our more human aspects. Nature, free will, religion, all abandoned to side show acts. Even human emotions, like anger and misery are something to be gawked at.

"If you follow me there's a speciality
Some tears for you to see
Misery, misery"

One of my favorite lines from the song, very eerie.

"Right before your eyes, we pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries, then he dies, then he dies"

The 1st impression has a very carnivalesque sound to it, to give that impression of a bizarre world filled with vaudeville shows about what used to be humanity. And here's something that I've been thinking about with this song. When I first heard this song, in its entirety, I always assumed that it was the humans giving the "side show". That somehow human nature had just become very cold, and non emotional,and everyone was very distant from each other. But now that I hear it again, I'm wondering if its some sort of computer sentient life that's looking at humanity in a side show. If you listen to the 3rd part of this song, this analogy makes a lot more sense. It just seems more fitting if it were a new type of beings, that were created by humans, but superior to us now, that would be looking back on all these things, like a "Real blade of grass", and "A Bomb inside a car".

The 2nd impression is a piano solo that's not exactly my favorite part of the song. I will admit, the middle of the solo, which is much darker, and more somber is very pretty, I wish the entire song would have been like that. But, it doesn't last long before the speed picks up again, and is back to a jazzy upbeat tempo. If they wanted to do an instrumental solo, I wish they would have chosen another instrument, something more fitting. The light carefree piano playing doesn't really fit the mood.

The 3rd impression is the crux of the entire song. It describes a vast battle for humanity, in the far future, determining the fate of the human race. Its the Computers and Machines versus Humanity. In a terminator esque battle, the creators and the created clash. I've listened to this part many times and its hard to determine who's the over all victor. I suppose its written by Lake like that on purpose. But the very last paragraph leads me to believe that it is indeed the machines who dominate over humanity:

Computers: NEGATIVE! PRIMITIVE! LIMITED! I LET YOU LIVE!
Humans: But I gave you life
Computers: WHAT ELSE COULD YOU DO?
Humans: To do what was right
Computers: I'M PERFECT! ARE YOU?

I was elated hearing the whole piece on the radio. So much so, I arrived back at my house in the middle of it, but sat in my car until the whole thing played through.
The last impression ends in a bit of binary code sounding piece. This song to me seems like it's an almost eerie foreshadowing of the future. The carnival side show image gets me every time, thinking about human traits, being reduced to mere attractions! To wrap it all up, the album that this song is on "Brain Salad Surgery" is in side a piece of artwork from H.R Giger. He's my favorite artist, and you all should be obliged to look at his work. the album cover features a skull that opens up featuring a woman's face underneath. Thats on the vinyl at least. H.R Giger's paintings are superb. They feature, biomechanical, and very grotesque creatures. Much of his work is mixed with sexual, themes, and machinary, and distorted gaunt twisted but yet utterly beautiful creatures. Definitely look into him, and the album Splendid, original piece, if you haven't heard it, check it out guys. You're thoughts? or Similar suggested songs?

Robophilia

Hey everyone. This weekend I had to clean out a lot of the crap in my room, so I came across my relatively small stack of anime. I flipped through some of it... Samurai Champloo, Serial Experiments: Lain (look for my full review of this cyberpunk and philosophical anime in the near future)... And I also came across my two movies, ghost in the shell and it's sequel, Innocence. So it was late but I figured I'm have a mini movie night and watch both. I haven't seen them in a while. I watched the first and really got back into it. Now while watching the sequel, the topic of sex robots, or sexiods as they're referee to by Dr. Harrowway, in the movie, came up. As an aside note, the character of Dr. Harroway is one of the more interesting characters in the series. One of my favorites. I wish they would have explored her a little more. Apparently in the future, cybernetics has gotten to the point where companies can create synthetic human skin and reproductive organs that would in essence simulate a human's.
Now for those of you who haven't seen the movie, Ghost in the Shell 2,the movie deals with a series of attacks on humans by 'gynoids'. Basically everyone in the Ghost in the Shell series has atleast some sort of cybernetic enhancement.it can range from just subtle brain enhancements to full scale body overhauls, like artificial hearts, arms, limbs.. Even exoskeletons can be cybernetic. But technology has progressed to such a point that humans can create synthetic humans. Completely Robotic and programmable these 'gynoids' are created for specific tasks. One such gynoid is programmed and designed exclusively for sex and oral pleasure. If you haven't seen the movie, I don't want to spoil it for you, so consider this a spoiler warning... In the movie said 'sexoid' robots begin to malfunction and intentional 'kill' themselves. This is as much as I'll say without giving too much away. The moral implications are pretty obvious. Now after I watched this i was curious and that usually leads to trouble... I began googling terms 'sex with robots' and 'human robot sex' etc... I stepped into a pretty bizarre realm of fetish that i didn't really know existed. Apparently "robophillia" is a very real fetish. Guys (and maybe women?) enjoy thinking about having sexual relations with robots, or rather people simulating robotic qualities. A lot of then apparently just simply like the submissiveness of what would be a robot girl, but for many and maybe the majority really do get excited about the idea of a robo-girl. So I'd love to know in the future when Apple has taken over the world, and they release the igirl, would anyone be willing to buy one? A totally mobile, walking, talking 'human' being, just for sex? Now as it stands currently we can't sell or buy other humans. So would robotic humans who could have the power of talking and reasoning be given the same rights? Of course I wouldn't be the first to pose this question, it's almost at the heart of all cyberpunk. I just think that with these 'love dolls' on the market now, that it would be the next step to improve these 'real dolls' so they could move, talk and increase the 'awareness' of the sex doll. Of course these idea's are many years away. So any of you out there, closet or open robophilliac's? In the digital age now, such cyber fetishes seem less and less bizarre. We may all have stepford wives type sex robots in the future. Silently and obediently cleaning up after us, very little emotional needs.
Now, the moral implications of such human / robot relationship interest me. Could one need to marry one of these robots? Would it be recognized in the eyes of the church? Would they be looked at as human? What if it were totally conscious? But just made instead of born? Better yet, and here's one to think about... Hans Moravec said that in the future we'd be able to download our memories, thoughts and consciousness into chips like RAM. Now if one of these robots were given human memory, thought and consciousness, would it be human? This brings up the question, what's more 'human', the body, or the mind? And does consciousness need be in an organic body? I'd contest that if you strip the body down to its simpliest functions, they would resemble a machine like process. Anyway guys if you haven't watched any of the Ghost in the Shell movies, I'd highly recommend both. Though, admittedly I wasn't a big fan of the 2nd . I don't like mixing cgi with drawn art. But let me know what you think, your thoughts on the matter, and if you are a robophiliac, please share your thoughts!

As always,a recommendation:
There's an essay written by Daniel C. Dennet, called: Consciousness in Human Mind and Robot Minds. Its pretty interesting

Also if your in Barnes and Noble, or Borders, check out the book "Science Fiction and Philosophy" Its a thicker book, but its composed of a whole bunch of short essays and mirco stories all about, A.I, consciousness, time travel, the matrix etc... Its a really good read, trust me.

Limewire is Shut Down

Well last week saw the final nail in the coffin for the popular file sharing program called Limewire. For years now the feds have been on the case of Limewire, and they finally won. The peer 2 peer sharing program has been a stronghold for file sharing since the collapse of Napster. Now with Limewire gone the world of file sharing has grown dimmer. Mega sites like Piratebay, demonoid, and others, are still available, but for how long? While I do respect that philosophy that information should be shared, and the idea of peer 2 peer sharing is enticing, obviously developers, record companies, and software designers are losing massive amounts of money to these file sharing programs. Just last week a friend of mine downloaded the entire cracked version of Photoshop CS3. What do you guys think? Should people be able to share and swap programs for free? Do you think that inevitably thats what the internet will ultimately turn into? What I'm seeing here is that its the Software companies, and record labels that are going to have to adjust to this. I do believe that with all the Web 2.0 additions, and the growing mainstay of user based media, I think the government will be hard pressed, to be able to stop them all. When Napster fell, it was big news, and it sparked massive retaliation. File sharing programs were popping up all over the place. Many still exist today. I honestly don't think there's enough man power to put down such a wide spread issue. They'll have to conform, not the people.

Easter Eggs: The Hunt

Alright so I'm like 6 years late with this...but as I was doing my late night wired crawling, and I happened upon people talking about "Star Wars" and ASCII coding... My interest being piqued, I looked into it...so if you guys even have XP any more you can try this out. Go to Start, click Run, and type in: Telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl


If done correctly you should be seeing a DOS window open...enjoy the movie! You ladies and gentleman by now probably have either heard of this or don't even have XP anymore...but its pretty cool. Can anyone out there tell me if this works for Vista, or Windows 7? Speaking of Easter eggs, and hidden goodies, does any one else get a thrill at finding these? Also for all you lain fans out there, if you have the DVD of the TV series, theres definitely a few hidden surprises on there. I won't give them away if your curious.

One of my favorite "hidden" messages is actually hidden in plain sight. If any of you own or owned a Zune 1st gen MP3 player, on the back where all the technical jargen is, is the words, "Hello, From Seattle". Obviously a salutations from Mircosoft which is based in Seattle. Yes I will admit I do get a bit giddy and excited when discovering easter eggs.

I believe the first Easter Egg that I recognized and was aware of was then I was playing Quake III, waaaay back on the Dreamcast. I was walking 'n stalking all normal like, when in the shadows I saw something in the corner of the screen. Thinking it was ammo or some goodies that I missed, I was pretty surprised to see a head lying there. My first reaction was that it was just a fraged body. but it looked way to rendered to be an ingame sprite. Later on I realized that the head was put there by the developers,Eric Webb. I was intrigued to say the least.

Later on (that same year I believe...probably around 2001) I was playing Donkey Kong 64, on my N64. Right in the beginning to your right, you see a big painting of a dolphin. And I got it! I had just been reading about how Nintendo's 'new' system was going to be called the Dolphin! Of course we all know that the name "Dolphin" was scrapped for a less marine name. The GameCube. But all the same, that painting, I knew was there because of the new game system! I loved it..

There's something about finding what others miss, thats pretty rewarding. Alot of earlier games I know where loaded with easter eggs. Not so much anymore which is a shame. It really makes the game in my opinion that more enthralling. Even if its nothing but the names of the developers, or a sort message, all the same, finding something hidden like that, to me is what cyber culture is all about. If any of you guys have your own Easter egg stories, and hidden secrets post them here. Especially if any of you guys know any hidden stuff on Windows 7.

If you wanna check out your own easter eggs, or see which ones you can discover or rediscover, check out here: http://www.eeggs.com/

Droste Effect

As discussed earlier last week, the idea of a picture, referencing itself over and over again, really intrigues me. I love looking at a picture and it having a picture of its own product on the picture! Here's a few I found. I can't really tell if the morton salt girl is holding a box of herself...but I can only assume so...
If anyone else has any additional Droste Effect products and ads, send them to Damnthemachine09@aol.com and I'll post them here.

Benoit Mandelbrot R.I.P

I know I said my next update was going to include more Droste effect, but over the last week, a very important figure passed away. Benoit Mandelbrot, father of the Mandelbrot set, died at the age of 85. Coining the term "fractal" he set into motion an idea that changed chaos math as we know it.
javascript:void(0)
Benoit's main complaint was that in general math treated the world as a very smooth, made up of spheres and planes. While as we know nothing can be a perfect plane. Theses fractals that mandelbrot brought to life showed that chaos does actually have a sort of order to it. Fractals are circular in nature. And they're math equations demonstrate this. When you get an answer, you plug it into the first equation and you can do this infinitely. He proposed that everything in human nature, including patterns in nature itself are never smooth and perfect. Upon close inspection, everything is made of jagged edges, ups and downs and unique patterns. Even the cosmo's and the gathering of galaxies, and clusters of stars, Mandelbrot explained through his theory. What I love about fractals, is that the more you zoom in on the it, the deeper it goes. There's quite a few Youtube video's that display pretty cool Fractals. In Douglass Rushkoff's book "Cyberia" He describes how the Fractal is sort of the 'symbol' for the hacker, and cyber culture community. He leaves behind his iconic Mandelbrot set and the Julia set, which changed Geometry for the better.
Check out a few links to his biography and some fractals

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/cgi-bin/expl.cgi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_GBwuYuOOs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-yKOYaXq0

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html?_r=1

"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line."

Land 'O Lakes Butter

Upon watching the latest episode of the TV show Mad Men, I was struck by a curiously over looked loop! I noticed that one of the younger characters on the show, a daughter of one of the Ad men, was talking to young boy. She says to him that the Indian girl on the Land 'O Lakes box, is holding a box with her on it, holding a box with her on it... and so on. My ears perked up, so much so I had to rewind it! ( I was watching on SurftheChannel.com) Sure enough, I went to Google, typed in the Land 'O lakes logo, and presto... There she was holding a box with her on it, holding a box. It was great, I had never even noticed this one! The morton salt girl was pretty recursive, but this is really in your face. After doing some research, this effect of Morton Salt, and Land 'O lakes is called the Droste Effect. Look for another update within the week, spotlighting the Droste effect. Until then, enjoy the Self Referencing!

Video Loops: Into the Wild Blue Yonder

After reading Douglas Hofstadters "I am a Strange Loop", I had to put this video loop idea's into play myself. So I picked up a cheap web cam (Creative), fired it up, and let it rip. I got some pretty interesting and cool looking pics with it. What really fascinates me is the implied infinity of the image. While obviously the screen can only show so many windows, the implied amount is infinite. There would always be another window inside the window! I got some nice effects by turning the cam, or by holding it up close to the screen, and then pulling it away quickly. Even by sticking objects like fingers, or pens, infront of the camera, give you a nice spiraling effect. I really like the 4th pic down. Don't know how I got it, but I got the lens to churn out a red glare instead of the blue one that it normally has. I love how some of the pics resemble spiraling staircases to no where. I suggest for all you loopy enthusiaists that you try this experiment yourself. The possibilities are too, infinite. Let me know what you think and send in your own video loop pics. Remember press the "Print scr" button on your keyboard to take a snap shot of whatever's on your screen. Then paste your pic onto Microsoft paint, and send it to me at damnthemachine09@aol.com.

Send in your pics of you're computer set ups!

This is the G3, I got from a thrift store last week. I mentioned it in my last post. Its pretty much stock, nothing fancy done to it. But it reminds me if you have any pictures of your computers that you want to send in, I'll post them up, for the "community" (which looks like its 3 people) to see. Send 'em in to damnthemachine09@aol.com

Alive and Dreaming? Or Dead and Remembering?

I'm not sure what everyone's musical preferences are but mine are pretty varied. While I'm not a big rap, or heavy metal fan, my tastes rest somewhere in between. This isn't a music blog, so I won't go into detail, but I came across a song by the band Metallica called "One". And listening to the video version of the song really made my philisophical nerves tingle. So I did the same thing when I first heard Pink Floyd's Darkside of the Moon, I put on my headphones, turned out all the lights, and listened to the song on repeat for like and hour. If you haven't heard the song or watched the movie that its based on, let me explain... A movie called "Johnny Got His Gun" is about a young guy who's shipped off to go fight in World World I. Leaving his father and girlfriend behind, he promises he'll return and is then carted off. Well in the dark, gritty trenches of WWI, his unit is ambushed by presumably German mortars. They scatter, and Johnny bunkers down in a small fox hole trying to wait out the shelling. Unfortunately a stray shell falls insanely close to him virtually shredding him apart. His broken, burnt, and torn body is taken to a vets hospital, where they over look his condition. Surprisiningly he's still alive, but whats left of his arms, and legs must be cut off. And his face is mangled beyond repair. In short, he's lost his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. Basically his face is scooped out, with only his mind left. For all purposes he's just now a slab of meat. The doctors, mistakenly suggest to the military that because he's been so badly broken that he can no longer feel anything. Saying that he will be as "Unfeeling, unthinking as the dead, until the day he joins them". Basically they think his mind is lost as well as his senses. But they are obviously mistaken. So, try to picture if you can, being stuck in a hospital bed, no arms or legs, and no way to hear, see, speak or smell. You couldn't communicate your message to anyone, and they couldn't tell if you were even trying to say something. So the whole movie for the most part takes place in Johnny's mind. He travels through his memories, and tries to find a way out of his prison. But when he wakes up, all he see's is blackness anyway, so he soon can't tell when he's sleeping, or awake, it all looks the same. This idea of being trapped in yourself, fascinated me. I couldn't even fathom how frustrating and hard that must be, to have no ability to move, communicate or atleast hear, while strapped to a bed. The movie has some bizarre scenes that make the journey even more surreal. His memories are tampered by desires, and the need to escape himself. He talks with his father (well atleast the memory of his father) and he tells Johnny that he can figure a way out of this prison. He tells him just to use his head. This clever pun, is brought to life, with Johnny, tapping at Morse Code with his head, his only remaining appendage. I won't spoil the ending, for those of you who haven't seen it, because its indeed a powerful ending... But the idea of being only with your brain and more importantly your mind, was seductive. Take a look at the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw&ob=av2e

Now this brings me to my point... Lets say this event took place, in the future. Where we had the techonolgy of transplanting human brains. So Johnny gets hit by a mortar, or whatever weapon of the future exists. And instead of keeping him in a hospital bed they give him a new body, that looks completely identical. Would he still be Johnny? Or did the real Johnny die when they removed his brain from his broken old body? Anyway, enjoy the song and I'll see you next week!

Ever Repeating Loops of Tape

Has anyone ever heard of Dr. John C. Lilly? He was a friend of Timothy Leary and did alot of work with communication with dolphins, and basically invented the Sensory Deprivation chamber. If you've never heard of such an evil sounding device, let me explain... The chamber is more of a tank that can be filled with salt water, in which a human can be immersed into. And while floating in this tank, you're given a breating tube, and that's about it. You have no light, no sound, nothing.. And these tanks are supposed to have theraputic effects on the human pysche. But anyway Deprivation chambers isn't what I wanted to talk to you about! I recently bought an old G3 Imac, one of those clear colored macs from like 2000. Remember those? I saw it in a thrift store for 20 bucks, so I couldn't pass it up... Anyway, I get it home and plug it in, and I notice that its stuck in some weird repeating loop. The hard drive keeps opening and closing. As I stared in wonder of its constant opening and closing,I couldn't help but feel like these repetition wasn't just felt by computers. Ever get the feeling that your life repeats? Atleast sometimes when you say things, or feel things? Even what you do, it just seems like an ever repeating loop? Well John C. Lilly believed just that. He described that people are "controlled by loops of tape" that cycle endlessy, without you ever being aware of it. With Repeating words, sentences, idea's and actions we fall prey to these cosmic tape loops. These closed circuit loops must be eliminated, turning them into shapes that are more parabolic or hyperbolic. Staying with our old tapes we remain calm, passive and but we can't experience anything new. What I love most about this, is why we stay fixed to our tape loops. We repeat in order to be safe. To hide behind the safety of the repeating tape loops. The safety of the familiar. I for one know for a fact that I would often avoid going out and socializing more, by always staying at home. Preferring to remain by myself rather than talk to people. It was safe. I didn't like being pulled out of my safe area. I felt comfortable there. Unfortunately John C. Lilly never really tells us how to expand our repeating loops. He just says that you can convert yourself to be more parabolic, in which these tape loops aren't circular but more...shooting off in asymptotic paths far out into the infinite universe.

Memory

Does anyone remember they're early childhood? There's a few sites that have people talking about they early childhood, infancy and even birth. Such memories would be reduced to feelings, images and maybe smells. This seems so bizarre to me that one could retain memory from such an early period. But i myself have a strange memory that could only be from my extremely young childhood. Back when I was around 2 or 3, we had an aquarium set up in the living room. I remember standing in the dark, with just the pale light from the fish tank illuminating the room. I specifically remember standing infront of it, but I'm not sure if I was even able to walk then. Either way my early memory is just reduced to images, and 'scenes'. What's your earliest childhood memory?
I was doing some research and apparently, there's a few people out there that claim they can recall what it's like being inside their mothers womb. The descriptions, warm,dark,quiet, and slippery, come up alot. For some these memories don't come easy, or even conciously. Many purporters of these memories say that they had dreams about themselves being in dark warm areas. And even dreaming about the entire birth process, describing in accurate detail they're own birth! What's truely bizarre is that they view the dream from the 3rd person perspective. So they'd be privy to knowledge thy wasn't even available to them, like what color was the clock on the wall. Often times when people with these dreams told their parents, they were astonished to find out they had described an exact detail or a certain aspect of their birth precisely as it happened. So can these reverse memories be true? Is it indeed possible to dream up your own birth, as your Subconcious way of remembering it? When your born, area's in your brain aren't fully developed, on e such area is that of long term memory. But an event as tramatizing as being pushed out of your nice quiet, cozy bed were you've been sleeping And relaxing for 9 months, is bound to leave some sort of imprint on you. What do you think?

Where Are You Earth Girl?

In the early 90's raves had become a sort of underground cult. These all night dance parties where more than just people looking to party, get wasted, and get laid. These were indeed spiritual movements. The rave was like a ceremony to bring out the hidden and often imprisoned inner self. I had the pleasure of a attending a mini rave last month in June, and it was eye opening. From what little I experienced, I felt alive out there. I always scoffed at party goers as , vapid, and just an excuse to get a cheap fuck, or way to get blitzed. And I still stick by that statement. But for a select few, the rave, and dancing is truly a metaphysical and mind expanding deal. Never in my life, and this is a pretty profound statement, have I felt like that. Euphoria is an understatement. I felt connected almost to the others in the room. Sort of like a microscopic cog in a greater machine, or a newly connected chip into a computer. This vibe of "togetherness" waxed and waned all night, it was great. Drenched in sweat, my cloths, soaked, and my feet burning, I danced more, shaking out my inner self that is usually so locked up with guarded key. During the early to mid 90's a girl who called herself "Earth Girl" was well known at the rave scene. Showing up with a mobile bar, she would sell drinks and tonics for ravers to keep them going all night. These cyber-tonics and elixers would be sources of nutrition to her dancing brethren. Where did you go Earth Girl? I could sure use a drink of your Cyber-tonic...

Am I who I was?

Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm not who I was 4 days ago, let alone 4 years ago. Idea's, memories, and personalities, come and go. My ego rises and falls, and what made me Chris years ago, isn't what makes me Chris currently. In essence it's a new Chris, with new idea's, new hobbies, passions, goals etc. Everyone goes through this cycle, its unheard of for someone to not change from childhood to adulthood in the slightest. I feel as though my inner core, the foundation of who I am has been remodeled, a face lift on an old run down store. I love the two following analogies to prove my point. If you have an older car that you wish to get restored. So you get a whole new set of parts for it, new interior, and new engine parts etc... As you applying these new body pieces and engine parts, you get to thinking... At what point is this car not the same car? If you fix it up removing random piece after piece, eventually you'll have a brand new car. So it shouldn't be thought of as the same car should it? Another great idea of this is lets say you have a train of about 40 cars long. On its way across the united states, this train (which is named 9001), makes frequent stops along its route, picking up and dropping off cars at its station stops. Freight comes and goes. By the time it reaches its destination across the country, Mostly all of the cars have been switched and swapped out, even the engine pulling the train has been replaced multiple times with new conductors. When the train finally comes to its final stop, is it still 9001? Technically it shouldn't be considered the same train that left.
These idea's that we're never the same person that wakes up, give me a need to really examine who I was and who I am now. I've seen a lot of my own personality change, and warp, and I have to wonder... Am I who I was?

Morton Salt and Inception

I've recently read a book called "I am a Strange Loop". If you're a visitor to this blog, you've probably already heard of it. Written by Douglas Hofstadter, he makes many references to the loop qualities that I find some enthralling. It was like I had found a companion in the woods! He makes references to things I've never even thought of, like the Morton Salt girl. Check out an older version of the Morton Salt girl...she's depicted, walking in the rain, carrying....another box of Morton Salt... in which there would be an even smaller version of her and so on... Something about that just excites me!

I also recently saw the movie Inception. Quite surprising! I figured it would be another action/movie with a lame twist at the end... like the killer was actually the main character or something like that. But it actually had everything that I found interesting... Loops, paradoxes, the mind, communications. It was an exciting watch! Many interesting images, paradoxes, and one great scene of Ellen Page putting two mirrors face to face, creating and infinite well of images. While it could have been more visual, I think it was a very good attempt. Any of your thoughts on it?

Double Slits

Greetings my friends, I bring you my first post here via iPhone. You know sometimes, things happen to me that I can't help. Sometimes we just have no control over what befalls upon us. Car accidents, being robbed, losing your wallet, all various calamities that seemingly we have little control over. That being said there are things in life especially in the social aspect that I can control, but I don't. Let me explain in the way of analogy. Photons, can be thought of the tiny little "carriers" of light. They are essentially massless. Now these photons, as you may know, have the attributes of a wave, but also those of individual particles. Using the famous double slit experiment, photons were shot out toward a board with two slits in it. The two tiny slits allowed only two thin lines of photons to pass through, and impact on the wall in back of it. At the time when this experiment was first done, people thought photons were particles. Meaning tiny little orbs. When they performed the act of firing photons through the two slits, they showed properties of waves. Just to be sure, scientist fired photons one by one at the slits. But alas they still received wave like properties! And how, dear reader is that possible? If fired one by one the photon should either bounce off the wall, or make it through one of the slits, and impact on the far wall. Some how, the photon which was fired singley, managed to interfere with itself, and create a wave pattern. What a concept! That a single nearly massless object could interfere with itself! When I first read of this, I thought of myself really? It seems the biggest road block in my life is myself.