Siderite's Blog

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My tastes in blogs are rather particular and the number of blogs I am visiting is not large. I write mostly about computing and personal taste and a lot of the things that really bug me! Well, I did use to be a debugger, after all.

Returning to Roblogfest. This was some sort of top blog thing + a party where bloggers got together and talked about ... wait a minute! What would bloggers talk about? And even more than this, would they repeat the most interesting stuff in the blogs the next day? I imagined blog entries like "Yesterday I talked to [some guy - with a link to the guy's blog] at Roblogfest and it was really interesting what he said about [this - a link to the entry of the guy's blog]". That's the Internet for you, hyperlinking to the extreme, I thought, feeling slightly smug and imaginative.

Returning to Roblogfest. I kept bumping into it, while reading some blog or the other, waiting for some smart thing to enlighten me. Instead: the RoBlogFest competition, with voting and everything. I imagined stuff like "The least interesting blog category: Xulescu's, winner with 5534 votes" or "Most read blog: Roblogfest". Well, it wasn't interesting enough to care, so I ignored it. I kept reading BBC news and Google news, looking for stuff. Who cares about who's blog is better or not? Isn't the blog a symbol of personal expression, uncorrupted by external demand?

Returning to Roblogfest. The competition is over, the party is over. The blogs are full of Roblogfest again. This time people either enjoy having won something (more people on their blogs?) or thinking the whole competition was stupid (they didn't get more people on their blogs). Also, a lot of pictures, little youtube videos and stories about how bloggers got together and talked and whatever. Lots of links, too. "I talked to [this guy] yesterday. The rest I didn't know. I wanted to know them, but some I didn't". Most of the bloggers were kids. Some cute, some not, mostly the kind of social pariah which would write their feelings in a blog rather than sharing them during a party. They enjoyed the party, though.

This reminds me of that joke, with two people meeting in a park and admitting to each other that they really enjoy walking alone in the park, then decide to take the walk together. Yeah, I am sure now I feel smug. I am definitely superior. I would have liked to be that young again... or to go to parties and meet cute blogger girls, but I am well beyond that. I am definitely superior. And my blog is better.

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Yes, at last another one of the World Sucks series. Here I am tackling globalisation, yet not the concept, but the buzz. People that somehow are against globalisation are the ones that have actually already accepted defeat. They see the franchise epidemic and high level political and economic games as the cause, not the symptom. They are nothing but fork and torch villagers trying to kill the beast without really understanding the cause of everything. They are especially wrong since they try to kill a beast much stronger than they will ever be.

And the cause is... not dr. Frankenstein, but statistical discrimination. It is the thing that makes shops disappear if they don't give to most of the people most of what they want, that puts people that don't behave like the majority into ignorable categories, the thing that doesn't come from high up to affect us, little people, but comes from very little people to affect the higher ups.

I am talking about statistics. Once you have enough objective data you can draw conclusions based on hard mathematics, conclusions that you know are not biased and that have true meaning. It tells shop chains which are the most financially effective customers and what exactly choose to buy, it tells media conglomerates which are the people which will be most inclined to see their shows, exactly what they would want to watch and how much they are going to be influenced by commercials in order to buy products, it tells politicians which is the biggest part of the electorate and what they could be told in order to elect them.

The effect of this is statistical discrimination, or the oppression of the minority groups that don't "fit" into the whole data schema. That's why you will not get the products you really want, you will not see the shows you want to see or the movies you crave or the books you need. That's why you will see young people asking you about every day things like some vegetables you used to find when you were a child and now nobody knows what they are. They do know about some exotic fruit you've never heard about, too, and they are willing to pay ten times the price of normal fruit for the privilege to eat it.

It starts with small business, it extends to media, then to art, then to politics. Before you know it, you can either do what everyone else does or be ignored. Does it sound like 1984? That was a naive view of the world, where the actual oppressors were a very small minority, where democracy was a dream. No, the actual oppression comes from the majority of people, the idiots watching today's TV shows, eating popcorn at European Gigolo and Scooby Doo the Movie. And it all starts from you, the little people.

Every form of discrimination in this world, either good or bad (yes, there is good discrimination), is statistical in nature, but most bad ones are determined by bad entry data, like all Gypsies are dirty or all black people are thieves. This time there is a growing mother-of-all discrimination, one that starts with perfect data, ends up with the perfect solution and leaves just about everyone that matters out of it.

The only option IS globalisation, the only possible solution for the people that want to do something different is to get together, through the Internet, through the disappearance of borders, nationalities and local law, through the dismissal of all things that separate people of the same type, because the oldest and most effective method of ruling other people is divide-and-conquer. Because no one is special for being American or Romanian, these are just stupid inventions, based on geography or past connections. Each person is special for their own reasons.

Globalisation is not the cause, it is the symptom. It is the opposite of localisation, or keeping something for yourself in a single place. Globalisation is the crucible of sense: you now get to decide what is important and what not in the whole world! And the problem is not high up, it's down with you, it's your decision.

Fight stupidity; elect common sense; choose diversity; create AND consume what others create just don't limit yourself to consumption alone; say the things you mean, not the things others want to hear; fight for your right to party, but think of the people who want to sleep; do what you like, but consider the others.

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"Hey!", you will shout, "You are Romanian, what do you know about the American mind?". And you would be right. I don't know much about the American mind, but I do know what I see on the news and in the movies. And three movies I've recently seen opened my eyes even more.

First of all This Film Is Not Yet Rated talks about the MPAA and the way they enforce the ratings on movies. You might think that is not so important, but each rating brings with it a different possible audience size. There is a huge difference between the last two ratings R and NC-17 because an NC-17 movie doesn't get picked by distribution companies, nor does it reach into theaters.

What does that mean? It means people in the entire USA see nothing but what the MPAA deems "decent". Statistics show that in the last 50 years they mostly rate R violent movies, no matter how violent, while NC-17 are films which involve sex or even the manifestation of sexual pleasure. Do you think that has any connection with the fact the average American is a violent and militaristic puritan? Interesting enough, the MPAA "council" is completely secret. Movie directors get answers like "your film is NC-17 and we don't tell you who we are and why we rated it like this". Also, check out how the MPAA is financed by the biggest 7 film studios in Hollywood, which own 95% of all movie industry in the US and belong to conglomerates that own 90% of the entire US media!

Another interesting fact is that in that council there are two religious representatives, which brings me to the next two movies: Jesus Camp and The God Who Wasn't There.

Jesus Camp is a pretty famous documentary, because it was mostly comprised of filmed video footage and there were almost no comments in it, yet it spun a lot of controversy. Fundamentalists praised it and so did Anti-fundamentalists and atheists alike. It showed how children are entranced and then conditioned to believe in Creationism, to actively oppose abortion (when they are children), to support Bush and to think that they must act as soldiers that bring America back "under God". This camp teaches the Pentecostal religion, maybe only an extreme version of it, but what is majorly important in this religion is the Rapture. The Rapture is the second coming of Jesus, which will quickly take all true believers to Heaven, then end the world. Maybe even reformat the hard drive. 22% of Americans are Pentecostals who believe Jesus will come during their lifetime. Why wonder Americans don't really care what happens to the Earth? A major Pentecostal preacher is a weekly counselor for the White House and, interviewed in this movie, said that if Evangelicals vote, they determine the outcome of US elections. Pretty scary stuff. Even more scary is the fact that they are a big religion with between 40 and 80 million adepts and no one can do anything about this child brainwashing that they do in this camp (and a lot of others, I guess). David Byrne, from Talking Heads, said in his blog that he saw no difference between this camp and the extreme Muslim madrases training people to blow themselves up.

The God Who Wasn't There starts off like an atheist movie that proves most of Christianity is copied from other older religions, including details, and that average common sense makes believing in a religion like this kind of stupid. The special effects and direct attacks against religion made me think that this is an extreme in itself. Atheists turned anti-theists and throwing everything they have at poor people that believe stuff like that. This until the guy admitted he was a Christian Fundamentalist until the age of 15, when he actually decided everything he was taught under threat of eternal damnation was plain stupid.

OK. Back to the main point. Now I understand more about the American Mind. I understand how a nation that created the ideas of secular state, individual freedom and freedom of faith can also be hard ass conservatives, God fearing and warmongers in the same time. How most American morality is ridiculously naive when concerning sex while in the same time the US is producing the most adult content in the world. I realize why some of the Americans I talk to are really smart and funny people and others sound like rednecks from old Westerns, why US science is the most advanced in the world while in the same time regulated by people following 1st century morality.

Therefore I highly recommend seeing these films. Eye openers.

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I know it's bad taste, but it was too good not to blog about it. I just had this vision of this school bully, pushing kids around, hitting and scaring them. One day, one of the kids fights back and kicks the bully in the nads. So he crumbles to the floor, but then tells everyone how that attack was unmanly and cowardly and then beats the crap out of the kid.

The same thing happened with the 9/11 thing. Two every important American items, symbolically destroyed to show the otherwise almighty US that they can be hit, even by the little people. It hurt like hell and it made everybody angry, but it also made the point.

The vision of the twin towers, as giant testicles (with small sperm inside?) felt hilarious to me...

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I've just remembered that I had to write a long overdue blog entry about the dogs of Bucharest. Bucharest is an old European city, meaning that it grew with the needs of the people, starting from a little village and becoming Romania's capital. A lot of things happened here, like the world wars. During the war a lot of pets were left homeless and ownerless and became street mutts. That created in time a large population of dogs, living in packs, having their own territory and so on and so on.

Now, fast forward to the Basescu era. This guy was so frustrated that Bucharest was not looking like most western European capitals, that he focused on transforming Bucharest, starting with what he probably saw while he was abroad. That meant getting rid of dogs and boutiques and street merchants, amongst other things. Well, I went for a small tour of Europe a while ago, and I didn't like it. All the cities were barren, like lifeless stone deserts, where you could only pay a lot of money for the smallest amount of food or walk aimlessly looking at old buildings. Basescu wanted to turn Bucharest into this.

A lot of people were for this getting rid of dogs business, while in the mean time, animal lovers were crying against it. In order to truly make a decision, one must know what the dogs of Bucharest are like. Most of them are very friendly, they let people pet them, while begging for food or attention. They are not wild animals, but liberated pets, and they act more like pets that way. Some of them, organised in packs, tend to become very territorial, defending their turf with loud barks and sometimes (when the human doesn't get it) with bites. Because of this kind of behaviour, most Bucharest dwellers agreed with the dog removal. But most dogs were having a very adapted life to the city. They had families, ways to get food that included being nice to humans as well as hunting and eating rats and, don't laugh, a culture of their own. I do say that because I have watched them behave and along with their natural instinctive behaviour and the stuff they learned during their life, they also exhibited learning and teaching abilities. I have seen mother dogs showing their pups how to grovel or how to cross the street and avoid cars.

But what does this say about us? That we want to destroy what we fear and don't understand. Even the more aggressive dog packs would not attack a human that doesn't provoke them and that faces them. A simple trick like walking backwards (and not trying to show the human superiority by kicking dogs or by throwing stones at them) would have left even a 20 dog strong pack barking, but not biting. And this kind of aggressive dog behaviour can be immediately fixed in each particular case. No, instead we chose to "nuke" the dogs, making us worse than the most bite happy mutt pack out there.

No dogs means also no life on the streets, no puppies except the ones in pet shops (the expensive ones that you have to buy because they have a pedigree and that get sick really easy), more rats. In some of the western countries that people like Basescu so blindly admire, dogs are being used in anger management programs in prisons. Taking care of an animal, just looking at a friendly, uncomplicated creature that craves your attention, gives us something that fights off anger and rage. We have enough rage in Bucharest, alright, but the dogs may soon be gone.

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Update!! Read the Sift3 post. It is an even better algorithm.


A while ago I wrote a little algorithm that tried to cope with the large amount of time that the Levenshtein edit-distance algorithm took to compare two strings. It was a really funny algorithm, but it was fast enough to show me the similarity between strings that, after all, should have been either very similar or different.

Meanwhile I started thinking if I could improve on it. I was sure I could, because it wasn't very scientific, it was empirical. And finally I did it. This is the Sift2 algorithm, along with an SQL server function that can make one million string comparisons in 2.5 minutes. Compared with Levenshtein, Sift2 performs 10 to 25 times faster and it is four times faster than Sift.

The concept:
  • Starting from the beginning of both words, compare the letters on the same position.
  • If the same, move forward, else search the letter from the first word in the next maxOffset letters in the second word and viceversa.
  • Offset the words according to the closest found letter, add 1 to distance
  • Repeat until one of the words ends
  • Add to the calculated distance half of the length of string remained unparsed from the other word
That's it! Here is the code:


C# Code (double click to show/hide)




T-SQL code (double click to show/hide)



You can find a nice OOP Javascript implementation at IT BASE.

Performance:
The algorithm seems to be working fine for letter insertions, typos, letter inversions and such. It gives slightly different values than Levenshtein when big words are inverted. When a lot of letters are inverted, the difference from Levenshtein increases. Example: abcdefghijkl vs. badcfehgjilk (every two letters inverted) results in 0.42 similarity in Levenshtein and 0.08 in Sift2. But let's face it, the two words are really different.

Update:
I've optimised the algorithm a little and also changed the formula so that it matches the Levenshtein distance as close as possible. The basic idea remains the same, but now the average error from Levenshtein (calculated or real company name and address data) is only 3%.
Some people saw the goto line and immediately laughed. Well, I tried replacing it with a break and a subtraction and even removed the subtraction altogether (thus maiming the algorithm) and the goto implementation was still the fastest. So I will continue to use goto, as it is more efficient.

Request:
I have seen a lot of people actually searched on Google and got here. I would really really really like some comments, links to implementations or whatever... It's my baby after all. Thanks!

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It was going to be an easy job. Get in, do something, get out. It wasn't much, the reasons for doing it were rather more intellectual than financial. I was making a point, kind of like Robin Hood. But she was there. The thing was done, she could see it. She wasn't in a position to stop me. She looked at me, sized me up, found me lacking. Something was terribly ugly on her face when she howled and threw herself at me, shouting all the time. It was like I have offended her on a personal level, like she wouldn't take defeat, one that was obvious at the time we've met.

So I did it. In fear, panic more likely, with all my power, I stabbed her with the screwdriver I've used to get in. I did it once, twice, three times. I didn't believe that it was so easy to stick something that long in a human being so easily, through clothes, skin, meat... She looked at me, with annoyed surprize, my screwdriver dripping blood, her official looking shirt dirtied by three horrible red dots, she looked at me for the longest of moments, her face showing angry disaproval, hateful disgust.

Then she attacked again, with renewed force, in silence, which actually made her even scarier, like a demon from hell. Her face contorted by unmistakeable hate, she pushed me with all her strength, trying to claw at my eyes. All I could do is let me be pushed, holding her arms, trying to defend myself, until I reached a stair rail with my back. We couldn't go any further and starting from a mischievous thing, the simplest of things, I was fighting for my life with a witch which I've just stabbed, but didn't die. So I tried to throw her down the stair case, three floors down, which I am sure would have killed her.

But she clang to me, she knew she would fall, but instead of thinking of saving her life, she pulled at me, trying to make me fall with her. She wanted me hurt, dead, she wanted to avenge something terribly ugly from her own life, which, I am sure now, had nothing to do with me personally. She was scarred, long before I got there, with my bloody Johnson screwdriver. But right then, the only thing I could think about was I was going to die. But I didn't. Somehow I landed safely on a stair underneath, while the hag took the plunge.

She didn't die, though. Clinging to me has slowed her fall, so now she was sprawled on the floor downstairs, mumbling something, her legs in an awkard position. I went to her, partly because I wanted to get out, and I had to use the stairs, partly because I wanted to see her, to see what I have done, my brain in shock, yet sickly curios about the bloody mess I have caused.

She was clearly dying, her face wasn't wrinkled in hate anymore, she looked... peaceful. But she was alive and she looked at me with something resembling love or something similar. All her scars were gone in that moment and her thoughts, or what had remained of them after hitting the floor with her head, weren't evil anymore. There was no anger on her face and that made her look, well, beautiful. She was about 50, maybe more, but she looked like someone good at heart, like an innocent child.

So I did the only thing I could have. I kneeled next to her, I took her head in my hands, conforted her for a moment, telling her it will not hurt for long, then I snapped her neck. It isn't so easy as in the movies, I had to try several times, making this more of a mess than it already was. When I heard the snap, like in a chicken's neck, I turned her head in the other way, just to make sure that she was dead, not paralysed or feeling pain in any way.

Of course, That wouldn't have made it all better, I have done all of that, and I knew it, and my soul was crying and a huge depression engulfed me, like I had killed a part of me. And I also knew that no one would have waited for her home. She was this spiteful angry hateful person that no one liked, that stayed at the work place during the night because there was nothing waiting for her outside. I was sure that the members of her family would feel partly relieved that she was dead. And the only person that saw her beautiful, the only person that saw, even for the briefest moments, beyond that wall of negative emotions, was the man that had killed her.

At the time, struggling with all my strength to break that woman's neck, I had wished that I was more efficient in stabbing her, less panicked, maybe sticking her in the heart, killing her instantly, but now I know I was meant to see that beautiful face, that it couldn't go any other way, that I was meant to see that face looking at me, with an innocent sadness, for the rest of my life.

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I've spent my last two days watching popular science shows. I've started with the very bad and time wasting "What we still don't know" and ended up with the marvelous "Stephen Hawking's Universe". I've always had this fantasy of doing something that matters, maybe become proficient in the things I really like, but rarely do, like writing, or science. And, in the good old trandition of Sierra games, I've thought of a "So you want to be a ..." series, where average everyday people like myself could be shown how to become something they always wanted, in the shortest time possible. Something like a career guide on speed.

Well, I am certainly not the only one to have come up with this idea: Dr. Michio Kaku wrote an article about becoming a physicist. Well, he basically tells you you cannot become a physicist if you've already lost the train. But I disagree. If you really want something, you can achieve it, at any age, only you can't do it with support from others.

So, what do I want to become? I've written in my todo list to check out calculus, topology and noncommutative geometry. That is almost certain not to go well, but at least I plan to try (trying). Damn, I like to think of stuff and never do anything about it. I only like whinning more! But the question is: what do you want to become? Don't waste your time. And I am not talking about carrers, I am talking about the things that makes one define himself on. Like for me, I am a C# programmer. That defines me at this moment. I certainly am glad there is more to add to that, like other achievements or "I am a good person" or "I have felt true love", but I still wish I could add more. Maybe being a part time garage cosmologist wouldn't hurt. Dreams ARE important and they are surely unachievable only when you don't even try to achieve them.

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Ok, I am not the greatest child lover in the world. I don't want any children, not even to have sex with them. But when I see sites like this: 'Santa Claus does not exist' school tells stunned kids I can't help myself reply in anger.
Does anyone realise that while telling nice stories about Santa, or God, or Halloween or whatever, one is actually lying? When I read the above mentioned article, I immediately replied in irony that kids should believe in Santa and other increasingly idiotic things we usually are told when we're kids. And the list grew immediately to a stagering dimension. I stopped myself, censored some of the things I've written and sent the reply. I am curious if it will ever be published on the said site, as I've noticed that UK sites, including BBC, only publish the moderate or expected responses, especially if you mention you're not from the UK.
How did you feel when you found out Santa is not really a real person? Didn't it change not only the way you see Christmas and the world, but the trust you had in your parents? I am almost 30 and I remember the day when my dad told me an obvious lie and I realised, for the first time in my life, that my parents do lie to me, as opposed to what they've said to me in the past. A lot of the things I've been told during my childhood have been lies, and while there weren't bad lies, nobody desiring my harm in any way, they shaped the way I saw the world afterwards.
Every time such a fairy tale bubble burst, I felt more out of touch with reality, more insecure, sadder, disappointed. Don't do that to your children, no matter how obnoxious they are. So they don't let you sleep well, don't punish them by giving them false hope you just know will break their heart when they realise they have been fed with lies. Beat the crap out of them, it's safer, it hurts less.
Of course, I have no idea how a kid would develop if you told him everything. It is a frightening concept, but does one really have the right to shape one's reality as they see fit just because they don't like the one they live in? "Yes, daddy is going everyday to a shitty job, hating his shitty life, wanting to die, but lacking the courage to end it all." Would such a notion push a child to suicide or to a real life, one that is different from the one his dad hates?
There is no such thing as political corectness. Politics are about the acquisition and application of power. Will you give your child the option to apply his own power of the brain to his own chosen life or will you maim him in his infancy, by feeding him false information, seeding his mind with lies that will never go away, no matter how much he tries as an adult?

And as a small Christmas article that makes sense, check this out: The Real Story of Christmas

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Have you seen the movie "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"? It is a Romanian movie about a guy that is taken from hospital to hospital in order to fix what seems to be a slow cerebral hemorrhage. Wonderful moment when, in the very end, the man is still living, but in a very bad state, and the movie ends. Because the title does say it all.

As a divine retribution for accusing the holidays of sucking, my wife had a car accident. Some female driver hit her while on the designated street crossing area. She is fine, thank you all, but for a clavicular fracture. This specific injury means that she can barely do anything by herself and I have to tend to her until the bone fuses together or she has surgery (I'll know for sure on Sunday, December 24th, when I take her to the hospital again).

Ok, back to mr. Lazarescu. As in the movie, the medical establishment is a dirty, underfunded, disorganised piece of crap. When I got the phone call, Maria was already at the hospital, waiting for treatment. The emergency hospital Floreasca was partially closed, due to reconstruction, and the only entrance was covered with signs that said "Access forbidden to visitors!". I was a visitor, but it was the only way in, so I phoned my wife and asked. I was supposed to enter through there.

I found her holding her right arm with her left, in obvious shock and pain, waiting... for what? She just had her radiography taken to her shoulder and they sent us to another section of the hospital. There they asked what has happened, and my wife explained that immediately after the hit she couldn't see well, and that she was afraid not to have a head injury. So they sent her back to the radiology room.
[small paranthesis] The woman doctor indicated we should go right, then right again, to where the rotating door is, in the middle of the wall. That was her female for first door on the right. There wasn't any revolving or rotating door anywhere![end paranthesis]
I was told to wait outside the radiology room until the male nurse would call us in. I waited, seeing three people appearing out of nowhere and entering in, before I got the nerve to ask the guy there "excuse me, is there a name calling, an order number system, or people just enter?". "People just enter", he replied apathetically. So I took Maria, pushed her in, to finally get her head scanned. All this time she held her injured arm with the other, no one even considered doing anything about it, even if we already had the radio image of the clavicular fracture.

Then we went back to the previous room where a doctor interpreted the scans, then sent us to another section, the one where they actually do something. We waited there as well, at least another half hour, in front of a door which said "we are in the middle of hospital reconstruction, we only have limited support, we prioritize people, do not enter, do not open the door, etc". Already knowing the drill, I opened the door and entered, taking Maria with me.

The actual fix was to make a figure 8 bandage around her shoulders, to keep the bones together. Then they sent us again to the radiology room, to see how well the doctor did, then we went back. All this was done without anestethic, even if it didn't hurt too much, and the only shot they gave her was an antitetanos shot for a little scratch on her leg.

You have to imagine this so called hospital, with rooms that had building materials in them and the whole facility smelling like a zoo. This is not a metaphor, I've recently been to the zoo, and the neglected reptile cages smell exactly how this hospital did. Maria reached the hospital at around 16:40 and we left at around 21:00, this being an «emergency» hospital.

The doctor also prescribed us some medicine, because they didn't actually have a farmacy there. So we had to take a cab, look for a farmacy, pay for the medicine, get back, take her home, etc. I then inquired on how will the insurance company (ING Bank, btw) cover this, since it wasn't her fault (it was determined by the police that it was the driver's fault) and we had to both miss work, pay for medicine, go to the hospital now and then by using a cab, etc. It appears that the insurance, which we dutifully payed for at least 3 years now, doesn't cover anything but the spitalization cost. No spitalization, no fucking insurance. More so, in order to take some sort of compensation from the driver, we must actively sue her, go through courts and so on.

Let me make a short synopsis: car accident, hospital, 4-5 hours spent for 3 X-rays, an antitetanos shot and a bandage, no insurance coverage. If my employers weren't good human beings (as most aren't) I would probably be forced to either neglect my wife or lose my job, and in order to somehow fix it, I should actively sue the driver and (without a job, maybe) go through courts, pay a lawyer, etc., which I don't really want to do anyway, since the driver didn't actually intend to hit my wife, she was just incredibly slow!

Did you like the movie? It's a nice holiday piece. Fuck!!!!

The funny thing is, Floreasca is actually one of the good hospitals. No doctor asked us for extra payment, each doctor or technician actually wanted to help, I am sure whatever they did, they did good work, but they do it in such a misguided, unfunded, disorganised matter. I mean, do I actually need to scan a bone, create a picture of it, carying it all around the hospital in order for another doctor to see it in the next room? It's like the middle ages in there!

There is this saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. None of the people involved in this story had any bad intentions, but we still got screwed!

Update:

Maria doesn't need surgery. Phew! We've changed the bandages to a more manageable type that is also adjustable in case it is too tight or too loose. We are going to the doctor's on January 2nd for another check. Then on the 3rd I am going to work X(. Anyway, I was going crazy sitting in the house all the time, helping Maria up and down, etc. (you have to appreciate me not going into the sordid details), so I guess it will be good.

Thank all the people that showed genuine concern over my wife's state and I hope you had better holidays than my own. ;)

Update 2:

X( We went to the doctor's again. It seems that the bones didn't fuse together and it mostly because the last bandage was too thick and thus ineffective. So Maria was right after all, she always is a good judge of character, that Petre doctor that made the bandage last time was all talk and nothing else.
More than that, it's not that she doesn't need surgery, is that after 4 weeks of observation we will know for sure. Doctors are certain it will heal, eventually, but the whole process gives me the creeps. I'll keep you posted here until she heals (or gets off my back! :) just kidding.)

Update 3:

Another visit to the hospital (with yet another doctor) was close to personal hell for me. The entire facility was packed with old sick people sitting in queues. This might not mean a hell of a lot to others, but I really hate these kinds of things. The only thing I hate more is being very hot. Sure enough, when we left from the radiology section to go to the actual doctor we reached and even more crowded room, which had the air conditioner turned to hot and with no open door or windows. Being very crowded, Maria went in and got out almost immediately. The x-ray looked better, the bones seemingly fusing. So the doctor send us home, told us to return in three weeks. Then we will know more. :-/ Well, at least there are some good news.

Earlier today I went to the family doctor (in Romania this is a doctor that is assigned to our family... and other thousands of others X( ) to ask for a medical break for Maria's work. I had to fought off sickly old people again in order to get to see the doctor, but after all I only had to take a paper in and return with another paper.
Of course, it wasn't going to be so easy. Apparently, the doc is supposed to give me a paper for the orthopedy department, they will give me the medical break letter. However, I need to take there yet another document to attest that Maria is hired somewhere. Why the hell would I need the papers for a medical break if she wasn't hired?! I say this while trying to ignore that if I weren't around Maria would have to make one trip to the work place to get this latest paper, then go to the family doctor to get that paper, go to orthopedy, etc.
Getting to the orthopedy department reserved a special surprise to me: it was going to open at 14:00 hours. Of course, it was 8:00 and I went there especially in order to find the family doctor who worked mornings and get to work immediately after. So that would have meant another trip for Maria.

Update 4:

Ok, last update on this post. Maria is now (1st of February 2007) ok. Her bandages are off, she is painfully using her hand and she goes to kineto and physio therapy. We had to pay around 50 euros to be able to do that now and not after a few weeks (with the other people waiting to get well, but without money) and, of course, that's not a sum that will be covered by the insurance. The medical insurance actually payed for nothing at all. Isn't that great? Fortunately, the driver agreed to pay us the medical expenses so we won't sue. We wouldn't have sued anyway, I think. Although for my avid readers I might have started a whole Romanian legal system series :)

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Yes! At popular demand and enormous pressure, the World Sucks series is back!
Todays episode: holidays! The word itself comes from holly and day, but in the meanwhile it collapsed into this one word that has nothing holly in it anymore. It's all about buying stuff, planning vacations in the "season" when all prices are inflated and all nice places are assaulted by noisy tourists (like yourself) which makes them less than nice, getting job time off in the same damn time with everybody else (and being considered not a team player if you want to work while all the others go away) and, last but not least, all kind of deities mixed together with local folklore to create a special kind of brand for each particular miserable disgusting day of each bloody holiday.

Accept it, people, holidays suck! It's this type of awful planned and allowed liberations that show the true nature of slavery. Holidays have become so much embedded in our culture, that we measure our own time and pleasure by them. If there is a holiday, you must enjoy it! If you don't you are a weirdo and if it ends you must stop enjoying anything. Get back to work, you lazy bum! I see people that expect those few free days from work like a child awaits the cndy from the sweets dispencer. What about the other days?! They are also yours. You can decide what to do with them. You can stop feeling miserable in any given day, you can miss on office work and stay in bed all day any time. I completely understand that some employers might not agree with this and even some self employed work alcoholics that think the world spins around them might growl at me from their dark den, but that doesn't make them right!

Holidays suck because they take away freedom, in it's most basic sense. You are allowed to not go to work, you are allowed to buy things that in the middle of the year you wouldn't even consider buying (ask yourself why?) and you are allowed to spend it with your family and friends. What? You don't have family and friends any other day? What if you don't want to spend your free time with family and friends? What if you just want to be left alone, to make a cool software program, play a game for 24 hours straight or watch the entire third season of Battlestar Galactica continuously from start to end? Then you clearly don't have the holiday spirit. Well, fuck the holiday spirit! It sucks!

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This article is obsolete, a better version of the algorithm has been published: Sift3

While researching different ways of measuring the distance between two strings, or how different they are, I've found of course the Levenstein algorithm. The problem with it is that it is slow. Searching more, I've seen some algorithms that seemed fast, but I didn't have the time or brain power to understand them. So I've devised my own algorithm, called SIFT. You might think the name comes from Siderite's Intelligent and Fast Technique, but it comes from the English word 'sift'. :)
How does it work? Well, the common scenario in comparing strings is that someone made a mistake, a typo. So in principle, the two strings should be very similar in order to be worth comparing them. So what I do is this:

foreach phase
    remove identical overlapping characters
    shake strings
return number of shakes + the length of the longest string between the two.

There is an optimisation towards the safe side: if the sift similarity is big enough, perform the constly Levenstein distance.

Ok, it might not be so clear, let's take an example:
INTERESTING
INFORMATIVE

Step 1: remove all identical overlapping characters (sift)
TEESNG
FOMAVE

Now we have smaller words to check, let's suppose there was a typo, that means that part of the one word is offset with one or maybe two characters from the other. So we move them a bit, that's a 'shake'.

Step 2: shake
TEESNG
[]FOMAVE

Oops, no overlapping characters. We do this one or two times more and there is no result, so...

Step 3: return result
MaxLength(TEESNG, FOMAVE)=6

There you have it. The sifting algorithm, because it resembles sifting grain.

Not satisfied with such a simple example? Let's take another:
Click here

Tests have shown it to be pretty close to Levenstein, at least in the cases that matter, while being substantially faster.

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Spurred by two TV shows about two famous people, I came to the conclusion that Osama bin Laden's history has a lot in common with the one of Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general, just as the history and technological development of the US has a lot in common with the Roman Empire.
Think about it!
Hannibal was born in Carthage, but he left it when he was nine years old. He hated the Romans with all his being and when he attacked their empire (which then span the Italian peninsula) he did it by hitting targets deep within their teritory. Using innovative strategy, he defeated the strong Roman army by using its flaws: size, but no coordination; force, but not precision. With a small mercenary army that also used elephants, he surrounded the huge Roman army and destroyed it. He then demanded support from Carthage, in order to siege and capture Rome, but the politicians of that state decided that it would be safer to not antagonize the Roman Empire and didn't sent support. Powerless to set siege to Rome, Hannibal could do nothing but watch how the Romans build another army which will then defeat him. In order to avoid capture, after years of exile, he commited suicide.
Osama didn't leave Saudi Arabia from childhood, but he was exposed to the teachings of returned exiled teachers, who brought different ideas. He came to hate the Americans and when he attacked them, he struck deep within their teritory. Using innovative strategy he defeated the US antiterrorism machine by using their flaws: size, but no coordination; force, but bureaucracy. With the smallest of terrorist groups that also used air elephants (heh, I stretched it out a bit, but it holds), he struck a major blow to the confidence of the US. He then demanded support from the Arabic nations, which decided to not antagonize the American Empire. We all know what happened to the ones that did. Powerless to continue his campaign, Osama watched as the US machine learned from its mistakes, rebuilt it's antiterror army and then defeated him. After years of exile, he dies, avoiding capture through death.
Now, what it even more interesting is that Hannibal's actions led to the expansion of the Roman Empire into Iberia and Carthage and the refining of their army and war strategy. This eventually led to the Roman Empire conquering so much and becomnig the most famous and technologically advanced civilisation of its time. Carthage was completely raised from the surface of earth, destroyed by Romans and plowed clean. If we were to continue these parallels, the American Empire should now have a more powerful and precise war machine, it should conquer or at least neutralize any threat from the Arab nations, then proceed on conquering the world. Some poor country should take the blame, as Carthage did for Hannibal, and be completely ravaged by war. Does it sound familiar? Brrrr...

Other related links from people that had similar ideas:

There are even more links, in total Google showed 573 links that contained Osama bin Laden, Hannibal and not L*ecter. But since people spell Osama differently, others make it clear that it's not the guy from the movie, thus causing false positives and there are a lot of sites that just enumerate famous people, the count cound be completely different.
Happy thinking!

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It was one of those moments when you think of nothing and suddenly something distillates into conscience. It sounded too good and too important not to find it on the net so I googled for "God is a brand" and I found 17 entries out of 98.200 (yes, Google is getting weirder and weirder).
Now, when it hit me, it seemed like something really smart, but now I understand it is just obvious; I was the dumb one for not getting it sooner. People don't have holly wars on Linux vs Microsoft, they are having brand wars on Jesus vs Mohamed.

What started me is looking for furniture for my new rented apartment (expect a huge blog in a few days) and I found the same models in two different places, but with two different prices. My wife said that it was because the more expensive ones were better made, but they really weren't.
Then I realised that most commerce is run on brands, it's nothing new, it goes on from the beginning of trade. You buy from where you know it's good, or from where stuff makes you look or feel good. People are attached to the spirit of the thing, not the thing itself (well, most people). The Stradivarius violin can be made better and cheaper using modern computer modelling and automated manufacturing, but people care about the original Stradivarius, made by a human, a human that represents something. The enormous price of Stradivarius violins is not due to their utility, but the faith of the people in the original builder, the artist. Ring a bell? Original artist? The Creator? Yes! God!
The epiphany came when I explored the idea in my mind. People doing idiotic things because of their faith, the experiment where people were given to wear a t-shirt for 10$ and refused to do it when they heard it belonged to a serial killer or the one with the children that were given a "perfect replica" of an object that they loved and they prefered the original or the simple superstitions like avoiding number 13. Movies, as well, usually portray clones as imprefect, evil, empty of true purpose or life. People remain married for decades, respecting and even loving the other person, when all rational motives to stay together have withered in time. Of course, this is also linked to the way human instincts work, but nevertheless, there are people who do it and people who don't.
Somehow, the intricate mechanism of the brain puts values on associations rather that on the objects. I think this is important. It is obvious that people have inner representations of different things and people, but I've always assumed that the inner value is put on the thing not on the associations. I now believe to have been wrong. It makes sense: there is no absolute value, only when you put something into context it reveals its value.

Therefore, returning to the God is a brand issue, it seems to me that the branding is made on oneself. You don't buy the product, you become the product. You brand yourself with a god, then act in accordance with its meaning. Then losing one's faith would be like becoming an clone of yourself, empty of meaning. It could explain the feeling of loss of a person, when "there are other fish in the sea". It makes old people be grumpy, since no one truly understand the different deep meanings that they've attached to objects and people and behaviours.

I can't even ask myself "Do brands suck?". It would attack a defining feature of humans AND animals alike. This warrants a look into the idea of religious feeling in animals. It is not possible for everything to suck. Religion sucks, though.

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You know the annoying feeling when you want to find something on the net and you can't find the proper search keywords? It's like trying to find the Triple X movie rather than porn flicks. It happends a lot when you want to find something that you know is named in some way, but a new buzz word is emerging and you either don't find everything you need or you find a lot of unrelated stuff. Like trying to find people talking about computer programming, but you end up with all these TV programming sites. Now try to find how to turn your PC into a TV by programming :).

Anyway, searching on programming led me to wonder about the difference between programming and software development in describing my own job. As previously mentioned, there are other sorts of programming and development except computer ones and to top it all, people mean different things when using these concepts in the software context. Wikipedia, for example, takes "programming" and gives me the page for "computer programming". It then takes software development and takes me to software engineering (which in my mind are different things).

How does google see this? Let's search:
TermPage count
Software development175.000.000
Programming858.000.000
Computer programming19.700.000
Software engineering80.700.000
 
Software developer27.400.000
Programmer156.000.000
Computer programmer4.270.000
Software engineer22.500.000
Developer1.030.000.000

So it seems that there is a lot more programming and programmers than software development or software developers, but add "computer" in front and there is less. But that's because no one bothers to say "computer" in those cases.

And there is more. While software development/engineering start to go towards "designing programs", computer programming goes towards "typing code". I believe that is happening because in large software companies there are a lot of people writing code, but very few that actually have a say on how the program is to behave or what technology to use. I am watching Microsoft presentations and they are ridiculing the "old school" programmers that type their code while the new breed of software developers point, click, drag, drop and everything works in a few minutes. People that actually think through what algorithms to use and how it all works and optimize lines of code and try to think like a compiler from time to time are grunts to be enclosed in cubicles, while those who think how the general program should work, create UML diagrams of interacting business objects are the lords of their domain.
That makes no sense to me, especially since the drag and drop people use software delveloped by code typers. Or it does make sense in the way that software development has become a feudal industry, like most industries become shortly after they become mass consumed. They have an elite, a clique that behaves like aristocracy, while most members of that industry work their asses off in the employ of these people. This gives a whooole new meaning to the term software revolution :)

So what is this job that I am performing? Am I just a meta-computer? Something high level that understands what it must do and obeys blindly by using a computer? Why is it that I like to code? Is there a difference in my mind between software and a program, so that the term software developer scratches my ears while programmer boosts my ego? And why do most people feel the other way around?

These are questions that I will probably be asking for a long time. Meanwhile, take a look at this wikipedia page, which I found informative: Programming paradigm. Also, consider this little link: Javascript 3D where you can find the explanation on how to do a Wolfenstein like game in Javascript, with only 5 kilobytes of code. You might want to wait a bit until it loads completely or use Mozilla Firefox. I noticed it works faster. Can't believe it? Check it out! That's what programmers do!