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I guess I am un-cool, trying to purchase a pair of jeans that are NOT “pre-washed”, “pre-patterned”, and “pre-torn” (George Carlin comes to mind with all this excessive use of pre-whatever).

I have just returned from a 10 day trip to Boston, where I attended a conference and presented a paper (which won “Best Student Paper“!) One of the items on my shopping list was a new pair of jeans, as my previous ones are torn, patterned, washed from real-life events. I wasn’t prepared to how difficult this would be.

Essentially, most jeans today come “pre-cooled”, which means that they have patterns on them that emulate heavy use and have torn bits which are “pre-patched”. When I confront “sale associates” with this issue they are a bit dazzled but soon realize that indeed, I am in a bit of a “situation” as non of the jeans they have on offer answer to my unique requirements: jeans that look new! (Some “associates” said that that is the first time they ever thought of this.)

I finally found a pair at Macy’s; it was not exactly the figure I was looking for, but I figured that if I want new jeans that looked new, my options are incredibly limited.

studentuniverse.com sells cheap airline tickets for students. They also have a neat little bonus they give for free to every student who signs up!

That’s like me demanding a medal for my good social conduct because I don’t go around randomly punching people in the face.

Well, thank you very much studentuniverse.com for protecting me from yourself and for practicing restraint with regards to your right to spam me and sell my information! It is also much appreciated that you are using my private information only for the purpose I am providing it for. (link to page imaged above).

Willis.

For me, he just stepped out of the festering Hollywood swamp by saying something intelligent about his own, and fellow actors’, intelligence and cerebral capacity.

BRUCE WILLIS is fed up with listening to outspoken actors - and believes their opinion shouldn’t mean “jack shit” to the general public. The Die Hard star understands some of his colleagues want to do good for various causes, but wishes others would keep their thoughts to themselves. He says, “I don’t think my opinion means jack shit, because I’m an actor. “Why do actors think their opinions mean more because you act? You just caught a break as an actor. There are hundreds - thousands - of actors who are just as good as I am, and probably better. “Have you heard anything useful come out of an actor’s mouth lately?” He adds, “Although I liked George Clooney’s documentary on Darfur.”

(emphasis mine)

I should add that acting is not exactly a prerequisite for, or the strong side of, the “actors” Willis is talking about; you just have to be good looking and know who to sleep with, and when… which, I suppose, requires some talent, I’ll give them that.

Damn it, I love starting my day with a good rant! ;)

Lately, I am increasingly annoyed with people assuming that a lack of an answer means a “no” when they are invited to do something. Well, it isn’t! A lack of an answer means (surprise!) a lack of an answer. I’d much rather hear a “no, I won’t come to your lousy party even if you served the last drink on earth” than a silenced cop-out. At least I know where I stand.

People are embarrassed/shy/uncomfortable saying “no” in general, for some odd reason. Delaying a “no”, or not giving it at all, hoping that everything will just magically go away — like kids closing their eyes assuming no one can see them anymore — is disrespectful for the other person’s time and effort. Yes, I believe that saying “no” is a sign of respect only second to a “yes”, of course (unless it is a “courtesy invite”, but that’s another matter), while non-answer is, you guessed it, insulting.

I don’t require a reason. I don’t care. Why do people feel obliged to give an, often made-up and unimaginative, excuse to weasel out of something they don’t want to do? I long for the day where I can comfortably say “Nah, don’t feel like it” (those who know me already know that I often do it anyway, but it is socially unaccepted and considered impolite, especially around relative strangers, and I end up looking like a weirdo).

So, for those of you that interact with me… say “no” without the excuse and I promise to never-ever-ever-ever be insulted or ask why. But for goodness sake, do it quick.

(By guest blogger Philip)

Or don’t. Probably better that way. I wondered about what I would write my first blog post of all time. But NPR answered that question for me when Michael Krasny decided to discuss the possible future secretary general of the U.N. candidates this morning. If there is one thing I can’t sit through it is a bunch of socialists talking about their plans for the U.N. Enter the caller from Berkeley. He didn’t have anything topical (i.e. about the potential future candidates for SG) but he was absolutely certain what the world needed: a U.N. tax on all citizens of the whole entire world. Thank you, Berkeley. Now I remember why I don’t call on you much, though you sit at the front of the class and raise your hand constantly.

Increasing the power of the U.N. is an idea that is an affront to the entire accumulated knowledge of human kind as far as it applies to government. Doesn’t human history scream out that power is abused? That centralization leads to extreme power? That even the best-intentioned governments eventually fail into corruption and self service? So now we ought to take an absurdly undemocratic institution (Brunei has a monarchy with absolute power to the sultan who appoints the UN ambassador, who therefore essentially has a personal vote in the UN; India shares one vote amongst its whole democratic populace) that spans the whole world (the British Empire only got halfway) and give it money (is power) so that it doesn’t even have to answer to the only people it currently answers to at all (the governments who fund it). Then it would be sure to further all of the noble goals set forth by its unelected representatives (mostly appointees of countries who rule themselves poorly) and better the lives of all us oppressed folk who previously only had our own democratically elected goverments to look after us.

Now, like communism, world government has fatal flaws that will prevent it from ever really working. But also like communism that wouldn’t stop it from maiming or killing hundreds of millions trying.

Let’s keep the U.N. poor and small and focused entirely on international ambassadorship. Let’s channel our international charity through our own home grown institutions. Let’s not throw out every bit of fear of government we have earned over recorded history just because we all wish for world peace, prosperity, and health. The U.N. isn’t the way.

I am sure I’ve made lots of new friends in class today by kicking the big fuzzy teddy bear that is the U.N. Please leave your love notes in the comments section.

Don’t you hate it when musicians decide to add 30 minutes of unintelligible crap to the end of a track because, somehow, they think it is cool? Fuck, it’s annoying.

I just had to let this one out. Haven’t had a good rant in a while.

Exhale. Feeling better.

A food vending machine, similar to the one on the right, was recently installed in the lab. It’s been giving us some trouble lately. Mostly the common failure mechanism of not supplying goods despite cash. The trouble is with the sliding door. A special—undocumented, mind you—procedure needs to be followed in order to get goods.

1. position tray to desired item.
2. insert cash.
3. slide door until stuck and release (it does not open all the way; this is to indicate to the machine which item you chose so two or more doors could not be opened simultaneously.)
4. slide door open again.
5. get item.
6. enjoy crappy food specially designed for graduate students with no life who need them to survive at night.

I asked Robert Watson (who was already home) though our irc channel if the machine is “safe.” He replied that it was wholly functioning earlier today. Knowing this, I ventured to get a muffin with confidence. I came back with a muffin but still screwed out of cash. I posed the riddle to Robert:

21:38 < rwatson> saar: so something that results in you getting screwed, yet still getting the muffin.

21:38 < saar> rwatson: yes. and it only involves the machine, not other people ;)

Can you guess what happened? It’s a tough one.

I only had one gigantic 2 GBP coin and I inserted it into the machine. Following the procedure above, I also got my double chocolate muffin. Happily, I was futzing around with the sliding door to examine its spring rigidity and the option of invading another compartment ;) Little did I know that since I had a 1.2 GBP credit, the machine charged me 80p AGAIN! So, I payed for that damn, unhealthy, fatty muffin TWICE!

Clearly a design error (NOT user.) I think I’m going on an 80p rampage a la Payback!

I’m not a World Cup follower… but I can feel the pain of people who care about it when it comes to penalties. Penalties suck! They are downright unfair. So here’s the fix:

1. After extended time, there is another 20 minute extension in which offside is cancelled.
2. Teams start with 9 players each and every 5 minutes a player is taken out from each team.

If they can’t score then, they both deserve to leave the cup!

There, problem solved; I require no royalties, only credit.

Alright, I hate it when people who argue with me, end up saying, after proven, by me, that their argument has holes the size of Switzerland, “I’m only playing devil’s advocate.” Arrrgggg… I explode inside trying to keep composure and control of my limbs. Why bother arguing if we agree? Believe me, there are a million and one other things we disagree on that we can comfortably argue about, why waste my time? Huh? Besides, I can tell it’s a cop-out.
Now, to sleep.

Last week I attended most of the WEIS and PET sessions. The topic is a bit removed from my interests but it was good to hear what is out there and chat with all the interesting people. The most valuable thing I learned, however, was that I am happy where I’m at, as far as research interests goes.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop, better described as a “desktop replacement.” It’s a great computer, but not for hauling around. I don’t take it to conferences or workshops; some of it has to do with the weight of the thing, but mostly, I believe that if I am somewhere, I should be fully there and give my undivided attention to the person on the podium–they deserve it.

As an experiment, I tried to phase out the speaker’s voice and listen to what I’ll call “conference clicks,” it’s quite astounding, you should try it. Looking around, I see that many people stare at their screens, meaning that they are not fully there; I can only imagine how the speaker feels (I have not spoken in front of this large crowed before.) I’d feel quite insulted, to be honest; I’d rather people not be there at all than not being fully there.

My solution? Cut the WiFi during sessions and have cabled ports outside the hall for people who choose not to attend the lecture. This may sound outrageous to some, but I think this is where we are headed.

To tie in one of my other rants, I’d ban laptops from business meetings too. When I am king/CEO, that will be corporate policy and I think this will become more wide spread soon as well.

Say no to “conference clicks”!

Exam administration in large is fundamentally flawed because it
1) tests mostly for memory capability rather than analytical ability, and
2) tests for performance under extreme pressure.

Both are very bad metrics for predicting the academic ability of a person because in the real-world these conditions are rarely present, BOCTAOE. And sure, memory is somewhat of an indicator for capability but not without the other (and besides, we now have Google to compensate.) Einstein said that “education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” In other words, education = understanding, not memory.

I’m a poor test taker, so you might question my motivation for changing the system although I honestly feel that what I propose is fair for all and a much better indicator for capability than current methods.

All exams should be
1) open material (anything paper allowed except for the one in front of the person sitting next to you,) and
2) loosely bounded by time (say, x3 the present settings.)

This will allow for
1) hard questions based on understanding rather than memory, and
2) elimination of the pressure element that is a differentiation factor that has very little to do with real life requirements.

The only down side to this is that it requires more work from the people who write the exams, which is the very reason why it will never be implemented. I had two teachers at UC Santa Cruz who implemented the above; they were the best educators I have ever had (if you are curious who they are, email me.)

I’m nuts (some say; one did just today!) but not allergic to them. If I was, I’d be confused by the following labeling on this Tesco-generic “full fat soft cheese”:

So, I think they are trying to tell us that there are no nuts in the cheese, but in case you die, they are not liable; so don’t come knocking. Would a person allergic to nuts eat this? I don’t know (I can tell you that if you are contemplating, take it on the safe side because the cheese wasn’t very good anyway and it’s just ain’t worth it.)

And what the hell does “Ingredients: Cannot guarantee nut free” suppose to mean? I’ve never seen the ingredients list take the negative form.

It’s all over the place; the aftermath of “Trapped in the closet” South Park episode (view here.) Links to get up-to-date on this incredibly logical and attractive cult: scientology, operation clambake, evil Xenu, costs and illustrated history of scientology [PDF].

I’ve spent a few hours reading into this bad joke (actually, a joke would be a compliment) and it occurred to me that there are a lot of similarities between its ways and hollywood.

- Scientology (S): First 6 months free without giving you any of the details… these are only revealed piecemeal as you pay to go through the ranks. Preconditioning.
- Hollywood (H): The trailer.

- S: Large sums required to get in the know, only to find out it’s utter crap ($360K, to be exact.)
- H: The movie.

- S: The shittiest plot ever. Come on! DC-8’s with jet engines? In space?
- H: Doesn’t need explanation.

- S: Congregation of rich people who think that they are the best thing that ever happened to this world/universe/man-kind.
- H: The Oscars.

- S: Out of touch with reality.
- H: Well, hollywood.

Now, I ask you, is it any surprise that the feeble minded hollywood folk are buying into this? Literally, they are spending their easily earned money on this Xenu story. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the creator of this establishment said in 1940, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” THEY STILL PAY UP!

No, unlike everything Hollywood, I would be surprised if they come up with a Munich sequel… but, stranger things have happened (did I say Rocky VI?) I’m more referencing to my previous post about Munich.

I haven’t seen the movie yet and probably never will. I hate Hollywood. If they decide to make a movie about the “New World” or “Kingdom of Heaven” in attempts to popularize (i.e. alter/shape the view of the masses of) history, fine, I’ll be able to stomach it. But, when they aim their grubby paws on something that I care about, it makes me sick. Oh, boy, that rant came out stronger than I expected, but I’m not editing it.

Zvi Zamir was the head of the Mossad during the Munich tragedy and the subsequent years. He’s given a first interview (to an Israeli newspaper) and has some interesting things to say and myths to dispel. There is no doubt, this sudden openness was motivated by Spielberg’s fantasies manifested in the “crappy movie.” I’ll believe Zamir before I take the word of someone motivated by the Oscars any day.

Here’s the thing. I hate Hollywood. Why? Because it all boils down to Cowboys and Indians. The simple recipe of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly mixed with revenge has not evolved from the heyday of the great westerns. Think about it and you’ll notice that most Hollywood movies are dumbed down to fit this scheme.

Did I say I hate Hollywood?

Since it got some decent reviews, I went and saw King Kong. I expect very little intellectual stimulation from Hollywood; However, I do anticipate some entertainment. This movie provided neither. It’s a 3 hour boring, sleepy experience in 3 acts… 1) get to secret island 2) stun and haul KK to NYC and 3) Kill KK… each phase taking about an hour. Yawn.

I heard a guy on TV say that “King Kong is the state of the art in special effects at the end of 2005.” And here lies the problem. I first realized it while reading Maddox‘ insight on Star Wars III:

NEWS FLASH: Episode III had no special effects.

They’re not “special effects” anymore when they’re found in EVERY SCENE. Lucas has done the seemingly impossible: he has made something that was once so unique that people called it “special” by name, and turned it into something so ordinary that nobody raises an eyebrow during a scene where a guy is having a sword fight on the back of a giant beast.

Fact is, there is no more “special” in “special effects.” What used to “wow” us and covered up for crap storyline and bad acting is over. King Kong is the ultimate example since the CGI is the story here, not anything else. They had 3 hours of good CGI and they stretched the story thin to accommodate it. The b-level actors didn’t help either. Hollywood is busy blaming everybody else for their losses except themselves for producing crap, but now the “special” well has dried up too.

I’ve learned another important thing from this movie: people run as fast as giant apes and dinosaurs. The movie accurately shows, in many a scene, that this has to be true. The scientific community is taking note.

Looking for a way to encrypt some of my directories and files I remembered that MS offered the Encrypting File System (EFS) in stock Windows. When I got to the “Advanced” dialog the encryption option was greyed out as seen below.

Given the way it’s presented, I assumed it needs to be enabled somewhere, or that I, of course, had done something wrong. After much frustration and searching I found that this feature is not available in WinXP Home edition (that’s what I got with my laptop, so don’t tell me I should have chosen a different OS; if Dell had offered Linux/No-OS I would have chosen that.)

Clearly, Microsoft chose the worst possible way of letting me know this. Given the choice of 1) not showing the option at all, 2) putting a little note saying “not available in this version” or 3) enabling this damn feature… they chose to grey it out. WTF were they thinking? Oh, maybe thinking wasn’t involved here.

What do you use for directory/file/HDD encryption?

In a recent weblog post, Scott Adams wrote:

…when anyone brings into the debate Hitler, or the slippery slope, or guilt by association arguments, I consider that a victory by knockout too. And if someone ignores a simple and direct question, that’s the cleanest victory there is.

How true is that? Here’s my commentary:

Hitler: Godwin’s Law states “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” This is true in real life too. In a (unrelated) debate, when someone brings up the Holocaust, Hitler or the Nazis I end the exchange there and then, usually walking away. People use this tactic when they run out of arguments and resort to the most extreme event in history as a “good example.” It’s not only inappropriate, it can’t lead anywhere.

Slippery slope: This is a tactic to move away from the topic at hand so that Hitler could be used as a trump. We’re not slippering sloping anywhere. One of the hardest things to do in an argument is to stay on topic and the most frustrating one to people who don’t know what they are talking about.

Guilt by association: Enter stupidity. Is anyone arguing with that?

Here’s my addition:

Generalization: “Don’t generalize” is an annoying retort to which I answer “I can’t go check one by one.” Seriously, can any debate be had without generalization? We wouldn’t get anywhere if we needed to ask every living person if tomatoes are red.

My problem with these argument-unfriendly tactics is not that I can’t answer to them. The problem is that I immediately feel that it’s a complete waste of time. I therefore choose who to argue with very carefully and don’t argue with strangers. I also do my best to argue about things I am knowledgeable about… I wish more people felt that this was a prerequisite too.

A few weeks ago I’ve written some criticism of reddit.com that got some attention and was moderated up quite a bit over there (it’s at a 105-point standstill and now off the top page.) I was happy to know that people mostly agreed with what I had to say and in general responded in a positive manner. I could write more about the aftermath of that post, but it’s no use… I’m giving it up socially “democratic” bookmarking services. (I know I am using this term loosely, so don’t get all caught up on the definitions.)

Let me explain…

1. It doesn’t work. Most of the links are crap not worth the time clicking and reading. Since these services are not moderated, the content quality is poor. “But Saar, that’s why the readers moderate the links — to weed out the bad ones.” Well, that’s the idea, but in practice, we all have different likings and a (social bookmarking) site that is “everything new” (reddit) or even “everything geek” (digg) just doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work here, and hey, it shouldn’t…

2. It doesn’t work 2 (maybe.) I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but the admins of those sites must, so chime in. My intuition tells me that there are many more submissions than eyes looking for good content. Someone can post 15 articles in a row (I’ve seen this happen) and immediately shove everything before it to oblivion. Even the greatest content wouldn’t have a chance to shine. If it was my site, I would limit one submission per 10 minutes or per 10 other submissions. “Whoa? But that’s moderation! Moderation baaaaaad…”

3. People don’t read the articles. From my experimentation — and from the shaming fact that I do it myself — people mostly moderate based on the title and the domain the link is from rather than content. People flame and demote self-posting while I don’t see anything wrong with that… if something is good, it shouldn’t matter who submitted it. I truly don’t think content is evaluated in a fair manner.

4. Repeats and similar content. If there is a popular link, many “copycats” appear almost instantly… same item from a different source or a different spin. Some of those don’t get “socially” filtered; no good.

5. Old news. Yesterday, I had an embarrassing incident. I forwarded a BBCNews link I got from reddit to a fellow blogger to write about. Turns out he already did, 10 months ago! I didn’t even look at the date and assumed it was fresh news (after all, “reddit: what’s new online” says the title.) It wasn’t, and I was left feeling stupid. Lesson learned, but reddit got moderated down a notch in my book although realistically it is not entirely their fault; I should have looked at the date.

Overall, within the last few weeks I have concluded that non-moderated social bookmarking of the reddit type are a time-wasting hype that will soon (i.e. 9-12 months) make way to some other hype and be forgotten. Bold statement, some may say, based on the fact that Yahoo! just purchased del.icio.us for $25mil… but I’m sticking to it (del.icio.us isn’t the same as reddit/digg, to be fair.) People (with lack of time to spare) will soon want to go back to the good-ol’ days of moderated content providers (i.e. slashdot,) with all their shortcomings of the occasional dupes and some old content. Admit it though, in general it does the job very well. Why? Because it is specialized and moderated! No silly news and content about why Bush burped in China, 10 Mind-Numbing Quotes By Tom Delay, Lindsey Lohan’s constant expression, the next 1.2234GB iPod Nano or why Python eats Lisp for breakfast with AJAX sprinkled on top. I don’t care about that crap. When I do want crap news I visit CNN or BBC.

Just to be clear and avoid some flaming from the minions: social bookmarking is a good thing… but not for me, not anymore and I’m willing to wager I am not the only one. At the end of the day, the whole “social” part doesn’t work in sifting through the content to bring out the best. Nonetheless, I will keep self-posting content that I believe is good because it is great for traffic and exposure.

So, I’m giving up reddit, digg and all the rest and getting my geek news from slashdot with the horrific two day delay after everyone and their grandmother blogged about them in the “blogosphere.” The rest of my info needs I get on demand from Google and from my favorite weblogs.

I remember hearing an Israeli comedian many years ago say that even if they had cigarettes in a black pack with a skull and cross-bones on it, people would still wait eagerly in line to buy the new cool brand.

Some warnings are effective and some are not. In a recent trip the following one caught my eye:

How ineffective is that? Do you know what each of those mean? Let’s see… benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. If you need to consult an encyclopedia or take a graduate level chemistry class to help you understand a warning label, I call that ineffective. Maybe the idea was to frighten people with scary “book-learnin’” names. “Smoking Kills” has a much greater punch and there’s a less effective version: “Smoking can kill”… wait, what? “Hey guys, the’re ain’t sure ’bout them cigarettes killin’ people… light-em if you got-em!” Another effective suggestion is found here [halfbakery.com] and is along the lines of…

“i smoke to compensate my tiny todger”, or “i smoke because i have a pathetic lack of will power”…

Canada introduced more effective picture based warning in 2000 that seem to show results. I think the visuals have a great impact on kids, where it matters the most.

During my search for info on this topic I found this horrific story from 1999. Anyone willing to guess how many packs a day the kid and wife are smoking today? There are some things I just don’t get… smoking is one of them.

I like Reddit; I was skeptical at first, but it won me over. I don’t bother that much with slashdot or digg as much as I used to. The simple interface, no comments and up/down moderation is the right combination.

Things have changed at Reddit in the last few months due to increase in users, — I’m not talking about the conversion to Python, a fact that I couldn’t care less about, but seemed to rock that little world for odd reasons — you can no longer get karma boosts from random news articles from BBCNEWS or CNN. This is a good thing, because if I want news articles from them I’ll go there directly, I don’t need Reddit as the middlesite.

The flip side is that these days literally every post from some weblogs are being submitted and moderated up. Examples are Dilbert, Schneier, Paul Graham and freaknomics to name a few. These are the best blogs around, no doubt, and highly popular (yes, I know Graham’s not a proper weblog.) Do we need Reddit to keep linking to them? Once or twice is enough, the rest I can get directly if I like it. It’s clogging the nice interface. When I see articles from popular weblogs (some of which I read,) I moderate the link down regardless of how I liked them (Adams’ and Graham’s posts are consistently awesome, but I still moderate them down.)

In short, I want Reddit to inform me of original content I wouldn’t otherwise get to. It does. Some of the time. Linking and encouraging links to highly popular weblogs/news outlets is not going in the right direction.

The other thing that bothers me is the incestuous self feeding at Reddit. Think about slashdot linking to itself, or to an article saying how great it is. Legitimate, but unpleasing. I can’t figure why people moderate these posts skywards. Early on, I submitted “reddit.com” just to see what happens… people moderated me down to oblivion.

So, are you a karma junky? Why worry about how the algorithm works? Link to Reddit praise, Dilbert, Paul Graham or Bush bashing.

My current Karma is 230, I’m going to link to this post, I’ll update what that figure looks like after the hoards of Reddit zealots find this offensive or informative. Who knows. Who cares.