When I first created my blog (oh, almost seven years ago), spam was something that automated software was posting, mindless comments that I can't imagine would inspire anyone to do anything. Cialis, Viagra, cheap fake Rolexes (as opposed to the expensive ones, I guess), pleasing my woman in bed, lasting longer; how could anyone imagine that, wanting all of these, I searched on the net, tried all the options, then still needed more? How much pleasing does my wife need anyway?(I'll have to look into that). Back then, I didn't even have a method to see all the comments for the blog and/or to delete the spam. Or any way to report it. I had to go to each post and remove them manually, even if they were identical texts and any tool could have noticed they were complete clones and, therefore, spam. Anyway CAPTCHAs were and are being used to stop these evil machines from polluting blog posts, yet sometimes they were not enough.

This was the first step in the blog spam evolution: if machines are stopping the spam machines, let's use humans. Getting so low that you need to have to write spam on people's blogs in order to win some money is something I thankfully never experienced or even understood and I hope I never will, but this is what I suppose happened. Some guy was randomly exploring the web, finding blogs that had enough visitors, then writing spammy comments in the hope that the blog master is not active enough to delete them as they are written. I hope I was active enough and, for those annoyed by post spam, I apologize. So, it didn't work too well for spammers on Siderite's blog.

Another mutation and the spam comments were now aimed at soothing my ego. "Thank you!","This info was great!","I am so glad that I read this post.". I felt wonderful the first few seconds before getting a comment email and opening it to see it riddled with links that had no connection to the content of the post. I felt so cheated that I created a javascript code to recognize any comment with the links I found and replace it with words acclaiming my work against spam. Now, THAT soothed my ego a little longer, thank you very much.

One of the feature of Blogger is that someone posts with a URL, their username appears as that link and goes to the person's "blog". So here I was, reading this comment that contained nothing bad, no links, but seemed a little too general. I mean, I know I am great and that my blog is wonderful, but how did other people find that out? I even replied to one or two such comments. My confusion was soon dispelled when going to see who wrote generic posts of praise for me and my blog. Cialis and Viagra were long gone. Instead, I had freemium software packages, trojan scams and fake antivirus packages. I deleted comments like that, even if, for a split second, I had the feeling that the text of the comment was OK and worth preserving. Oh, well.

And here I am, prompted to write this post by the latest wave of mutant spam: comments that are related to the content of the post! They seem very legit, at the limit of being vague. The links from the user name go to a site, but it is not necessarily a spam site. Today, for example, it was a completely free utility to help you play Scrabble. I don't know that it was a Trojan or was filled with ads; it could have been legit, an attempt by some Scrabble enthusiast to make himself known by attaching his web site to the Blogger comments. I always add the link of this blog to my comments elsewhere. I deleted it, anyway, but sometimes I find comments that are so far on the edge of legitimacy, that I don't have the certitude I need to delete them. So, I am pretty convinced that there are still spammy comments on the blog, but so well crafted that I failed to properly detect them.

This also means another thing, that sometimes there are false positives. I apologize to real people who found their comments removed. Try to leave more meaningful messages next time. And yes, it all boils down to that, doesn't it? If you have nothing to say, don't say it! It doesn't help anyone. And I already know the blog is great, tell me in what way it is so wonderful to you. Do tell :)

This is the point I've reached in my war against spam. It is still ongoing and far from over. I wonder when comments that will discuss real philosophical issues will appear, from people that were paid to have meaningful conversations on blogs and link to some site or another. I also wonder when, as people who can actually carry a conversation are expensive, I will find myself have a meaningful conversation with a spam bot.

I have dreaded the necessity of this post. Not only there are a zillion TV series that I have watched, but there are many that I had to dismiss for lack of time. Even so, I find myself more and more unwilling to spend evenings and mornings watching these stories. I've abandoned TV a few years ago, then TV shows on my computer have overshadowed full feature films and now... I feel I am wasting time. Perhaps this post will serve as data point in a statistic of my interests in time. Perhaps in itself it is not yet a waste.

Also, since it is obvious that I am also watching shows I don't particularly like, I will employ a colour coding scheme: red for shows I do not recommend, green for those I like.

• The Sarah Jane Adventures - following the death of the main actress, the show has been cancelled after a short fifth season made of the completed episodes that far. I can't say that I will miss it, but it was an entertaining series.
• Doctor Who - watched the Christmas special, but it wasn't that special. At least this year it was a flop. I will continue watching it, for originality's sake at least.
• Torchwood - the other Doctor Who spin-off continues with bursts of episodes. Miracle Day was weird enough to warrant continuity of watching.
• Eureka - ridiculous series, but one of the few that I can watch with no expectations whatsoever. That is pretty refreshing. Their Christmas special entered in the domain of animation, changing styles as it went along.
• House MD - not watching it anymore. The medicine has taken a backseat role, as it happens eventually in most medical series, so there is no reason to.
• Criminal Minds - a season and a half are waiting for my viewing pleasure. I've always found something else to do that took precedence.
• Dexter - the sixth season started really well, only to end in a sort of twisty, fancy way that did it no good. Two more seasons have been announced. Oh, and dirty Harrietta now knows Dexter is a killer, more like the original books.
• Fringe - the show continues to make no sense. It has become a sort of darker Eureka for me.
• True Blood - season 5 is due to begin in the summer. I have high hopes.
• Men of a Certain Age - I've finally got myself to watching the second season. It was great. Then they cancelled it. Fuck you!
• Weeds - The last episode of the last season is still waiting for me to watch it and I just can't make myself do it. I think this series will fall out of my viewing list
• The Good Wife - the show is back on track. Alicia is no longer having an affair with Will and she was considering buying the old family house back from the people who owned it. Her feud with Kalinda is over as well and the new partners in the firm (except Eli Gold) have been removed. It feels like getting back to the first season story arch and still well done.
• Haven - the series has some left potential, but not much. Along with Eureka and Fringe, they are just there to pass the time when too tired to think. I believe I will stop watching all of these three or keep watching them all.
• Lost Girl - from time to time I watch it. It's not guilty pleasure, because I don't like the girl so much. Sometimes it is fun. Rarely.
• Falling Skies - one of the few true sci-fi series left, it will start its second season in the summer. No high hopes, but what else is there?
• Southpark - the 16th season has just started with a pretty hilarious TV seat debate. May it continue in the same funny spirit!
• The Killing - still on my watch list, as it was in October. I keep away from shows with cops nowadays.
• Suits - second season to start in the summer. Might be fun.
• Breaking Bad - no watch. I have not yet deleted it, but I am not watching it, either. Perhaps when on a long vacation...
• Californication - fifth season has started and it's pretty good. A bit too much over the top and starting on the downhill path of "I'm a daddy and I need to be responsible", even when his daughter starts dating a guy that behaves like Hank's younger self, but still good.
• Beavis&Butt-head - when I was in highschool I would watch this religiously. Some of the episodes were really really funny, complete with the mischievous fun made of MTV music clips. Season 9 did not feel as funny to me now, maybe also because instead of music clips they work on MTV's reality shows. Anyone remember that M stood for Music in MTV? Some episodes were nice, so I will watch them if they continue. At least I owe them that from my childhood years.
• Homeland - a paranoid female CIA agent is convinced a war hero saved from the terrorists is actually a sleeper agent. The show is pretty dark, but it didn't go anywhere fast. There are some episodes unwatched that I need to decide to see in order to make up my mind about the show.
• Lie to Me - it "Housed". When the show is more about the people than what they do, it becomes boring for me. Off my list.
• Terra Nova - a true disaster, it was cancelled after only two seasons. It felt like a 70's show, without the story.
• The Fades - brilliant tv show. Something that we should all watch for quality's sake alone. The second season is still unannounced, but I loved the first season!
• Hidden - still haven't watched it, but it seems intriguing.
• Grimm and Once Upon a Time - TV shows about fairy tales. Unfortunately not even the presence of Robert Carlyle in Once Upon a Time could not make me watch more than a few episodes each

Time for shows I didn't mention in the last post about TV series:

• The Walking Dead - it's a zombie series! As excited as I was before I started watching it, I am now abashed. Of course stories with zombies will be about the people and their feelings and less about the zombies. Wait, what? Some of the episodes are interesting, but most are simply boring. It was an interesting video I've seen, an interview about the show, with some pretty slick ideas from the director just being dismissed out of hand because they were over budget. They were story ideas, not big explosion ideas, mind you. TV networks are dicks.
• A Game of Thrones - I've read the books and I liked them. The show is pretty much following the books, but the feel of it is a bit off. Sometimes you gotta move away from the story in order to preserve the spirit of a book and they are not doing it.
• The Firm - a TV series based on Grisham's The Firm. It started really bad and I could not watch it. Meanwhile, it was cancelled.
• Awake - a guy lives his life during day time, only to fall asleep and find himself live a slightly different life. Interesting concept and people have said nice things about it, but I haven't started watching it, yet.
• Black Mirror - a British sci-fi show, only three episodes, and they are separate stories. Again, I've heard nice things about it, but haven't watched it, yet.
• Boss - tough American politician and the world of corruption and power in which he lives. Interesting, haven't started it yet.
• Great Expectations - another British mini series, three episodes so far. It seems nicely done, but have not watched it yet.
• Inside Men - watched the first episode, but I don't think I will like it much. It is about people that decide to steal from their place of employment, then cover up the thing. It involves a heist, sordid decisions, huge regrets, enormous tension.
• L5 - this is another VODO film, you know, the freely distributed shows that depend on donations to continue. It is a true sci-fi show, with a colonisation spacecraft returning to Earth after a failed exploratory mission, only to find themselves 200 years into the future and no living human anywhere. Interesting!
• Mad Men - this is a very good show about the advertising world in the 60's. I've watched the first four seasons and the fifth is to start this March. Nice atmosphere, well acted and directed. Just be prepared to have smoking and drinking urges while you watch it :-) (and I don't smoke)
• Misfits - another show with great potential. Imagine Heroes, only made by the British, so it's funny and original. The final season was a bit of a downer, with a lot of characters leaving the show, but it is nice indeed.
• Person of Interest - I doubt we're going to be watching it again. It's another police procedural, only with a lone vigilante employed by a rich computer genius.
• Pioneer One - the first season has ended. It was interesting to watch this VODO distributed film, as it was both interesting and captivating. I hear the second season is going to be sponsored, so it will have a true budget. Unfortunately, I don't know where they can go with the idea.
• Sherlock - British revamping of Sherlock Holmes in the modern times. A bit interesting, but also a bit Doctor-Whoish. First and second seasons (both of three episodes each) were fun to watch and I await the third with mixed feelings. It could have been better, I guess, but it was pretty good as it was.
• Spartacus - Vengeance - The actor in Spartacus had cancer and died, so after the first season and a prequel, they replaced the actor and went on with Vengeance. The show is gory, sexual and full of intrigue. Some episodes are brilliant, others are less so. I will continue to watch it.
• The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff - British comedy show, parodying the work of Charles Dickens with the people in The IT Crowd. I didn't like it.
• The River - another show I haven't got around to watch. This one is a horror show situated in the forest of the Amazon, where people are trying to find a lost explorer, husband and father, while being surrounded by mystery and black magic.
• The Royal Bodyguard - seems to be another British comedy show about a ridiculous guy inside Buckingam Palace. Haven't watched it and I don't think I will get around to.
• Todd and the Book of Pure Evil - Ha ha, this Canadian show was pretty funny. I've watched the first season and I am now occasionally watching an episode from the second. Don't expect anything intelligent, it is like a satanic horror B movie, complete with weird special effects, only it is funny and a series. Canadians are getting good at this stuff.
• Touch - only the pilot has aired so far. Keith Sutherland is the proud father of an autistic son that seems not to want to speak. However, he sees patterns between people and makes random connections that are extraordinary. I am going to watch the first episode when the others start airing. I can't say I am terribly excited, but it could be nice.

Ultima Underworld was and continues to be an inspiration as to how and why to make video games. I've played this as a kid, on a 386 PC computer, and was blown away. It featured simulated 3D with angles that were not straight and rooms of different heights. You could jump, use weapons in multiple ways (like jabbing or cutting with swords), there was discoverable magic, NPCs, interaction that went as far as having to learn a new language or play an instrument, numerous puzzles and an amazing story.

But that is not what made it great. You see, I am telling everyone I know that this was one of the games that defined my childhood and today I've read the Wikipedia article for the game and remembered all the history related to it and I realized that I needed to blog about it, too. What made this game great was that there was no need to make the game as good. Released in 1992, it only had to compete with Wolfenstein 3D which was released a few months after, anyway. At the time Civilisation and Dune II, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II were also amazing games, but none in the genre of Ultima Underworld. They could have worked less, released sooner and gained more money. But that's not what they did, they did something to be proud of and that is why the game was great.

At the bottom of this post I will place a YouTube video of gameplay. The synthesised sounds (no recorded sounds were used in the game) and music as well as the graphics will probably make you cringe now, but at the time, it was state of the art. Just hearing that music fills me with strong emotion that I can hardly realize from where it comes, but it is deep. Ultima Underworld has left its mark on me, but not only. Look at the litany of games their authors attributed influence to Stygian Abyss: BioShock, Gears of War, Elder Scrolls, Deus Ex, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, Tomb Raider, Morrowind, World of Warcraft.

Amazingly enough, there was only a sequel to the game, Ultima Underworld II. The publishers refused to sponsor a third franchise and the developers ultimately decided to create a "spiritual successor", which was Arx Fatalis, also a great game. Younger people might only know Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, which has nothing to do with Might and Magic except financially, and is actually Arx Fatalis II. You can see even there that storyline and gameplay have suffered when a big corporate game company took the reigns, despite the high budget graphics and sounds.

I have voluntarily removed myself from the gaming scene. I've refused to upgrade my computer to a state where it can play any modern game and the only things I play are web games to pass the time between tasks at work. I am certain that even now there are exceptional people creating exceptional games that push the frontiers of technology, but more than that, the frontiers of imagination. I've heard of some of them: The Witcher, for example, a game made after a successful fantasy book series that features free play and allowing the character to be as bad, good or rotten as he wants, while the game shapes itself after his decisions. Look out for games like these. Even if you don't realize it, they will open your mind and your heart and will influence you to be better than you would otherwise be. They are not only games, but teachers. Love them!

There is a sentence hidden there inside the Ultima Underworld wiki page: the game is non-linear and allows for emergent gameplay. In other words, it let's you guide the story, change the game play, play multiple times with different outcomes. Embrace choice, it will only get better.

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If I would have written an article two years ago (wait a minute, I did!) it would have been a cold enumeration of rules and my outsider opinion about it.

If I would have written an article about Scrum two months ago, it would have probably been an insider rant, explaining how just following the rules of Scrum leads to blind bureaucracy and to a lot of waste of time.

Well, now I am writing about Scrum as I understood it from a personal viewpoint, because I've had this epiphany: Scrum (or any other development process) is a personal process first and foremost. To use a metaphor, so that I can move it out of the way and talk shop, it is like driving a car on a straight road. You are the engine (strong and reliable, hopefully), the road is the development process and your speed is your development speed. It is so easy to do everything fast and furious, it's a straight road after all, but what if there is a fog? Then you would have to slow down, for danger that you wouldn't see a sudden obstacle.

To get real now, the fog is the lack of foreknowledge about what you are going to do. And I don't mean project vision, or strategic planning, I am talking about your personal schedule, of how well you know what you are going to do. Scrum is trying to achieve this by enforcing a time table (the sprints) and a schedule (the sprint planning) and a recurrent update mechanism (the daily meetings), but it is only the beginning. If you plan your sprint superficially, it is like adding fog to the road in front of you. If you (and I mean YOU!) do not update your schedule as you go, including documentation, estimated time, time spent and all useful metrics, you add fog to the road behind you. If you are surrounded by uncertainty, you cannot plan anything. You don't know where you are, where you are going and how fast you are going to get there.

After 6 months of badly implemented Scrum, I've experimented with using a simple text file to mark when I start a job and when I finish it and any breaks in between, updating the actual work time and estimated time in the Scrum tool. We are using a clearly defined specification document for each feature, including requirements, acceptance tests, implementation details, code reviews, definition of done, test plan, updated as we go. I've discovered that all this huge amount of information, instead of slowing me down, lifts the fog and allows me to push the pedal to the metal and go as fast as I can. I know when I am doing something, why, and who is doing everything else and why. At the end of the day I don't have to rack my brains to remember what I did, I just cut and paste the task names and times from my text file to an email and the Scrum master just goes over the list and we are free to talk about what really mattered in those tasks: new issues, dependencies, implementation details. The result is visibility of what we are doing and not less important, I get to go home early.

Of course, I am writing this enthusiastic post after a single day of well done and 6 months of poorly done, but I have a great feeling about this, something akin to fog being lifted from my eyes.

This is the 912^nd post, see? :) And it is about terrorism.

It has just occurred to me that Anonymous, the hacker continuum that has humiliated security and financial companies and even governments, has the structure that would allow a terrorist organization to survive. Look at Al-Qaida: a news article described how the death of Osama bin-Laden has alienated the financial backers of the organization. Well, yes, it makes sense, because Al-Qaida is (and will always be) a corporation. Terror is a means to an end, not the reason for the existence of the group. The point of this top-to-bottom led movement is to gain support; ideological and political would be nice, but money would do even better. When power and money are concerned, people always tend to organize in a hierarchical fashion, thus the US strategy of targeting the leaders rather than the drones. It's funny that these feared terror kings of the East have not thought of going the same way against their enemies corporations, but let's not give them ideas.

Now look at my friends at Anonymous: their purpose, more or less, is to have fun. They don't really have leaders, only more or less involved individuals, doing their part as they see fit. I've previously found similarities between Anonymous and Ghost in the Shell's the Laughing Man, but it goes further than that. There were studies into the reasons why people are happy and motivated and the result was that money is only a motivation for repetitive non creative tasks, while for intelligent creative tasks the motivation comes from a job well done. So here we have a peer-to-peer network of people, motivated by a job well done, the perfect organization model for free happy people.

I know it does show similarities with communism, but the main difference is that communism was supposed to be a closed, self sustaining system, while "anonymism" is like a parallel system, based on hobby, like playing a complex multiplayer online game. You don't earn your money out of it, you earn your freedom, motivation and self-esteem, which are more important for an individual. The problem with this model from a terrorism standpoint is that terror doesn't motivate anyone. You might hate someone to really enjoy doing a great job harming them, but it is a method doomed to fail in the long run. Who has ever heard of flourishing organizations based on hate (except ridiculous super-hero movies)?

Oh, I have many more connections in my head right now, with the software piracy epidemic, for example, and the (futile, in my opinion) attempts of governments to regulate the Internet. The same conflict between corporation (as a larger concept, including churches, governments, Al-Qaida and all large top-down organizations) and the individual is linking all of these. And from all of these, the model of peer-to-peer sharing of time and passion for a common cause seems the only one which preserves individual freedom inside a group. And besides, I've added so many keywords in this post that I am sure some US security group is going to read it, I don't want to give them ideas either. (Hi, guys!) Anyway, I am sure that even CIA agents go home and play an online game from time to time and may even partake in software peer-to-peer piracy and could even feel like individuals from time to time ;)

I really wanted to wait a little longer before writing this post, but the shere number of series that appeared forced my hand. So here it goes:

• Doctor Who - As I was saying before, the show is slightly darker now, with the Doctor dying and River Song being somehow involved... It's kind of fun. The new actor, Math Smith, has matured in the show and exudes more confidence on the set.


• Torchwood - Continuing the format of the third "season", that of a continuous miniseries, season 4 explores dark cabals that manipulate the world and use a device to make everyone immortal. Fascist like camps for people who would normally be dead are created, complete with crematoria. Some interesting ideas there, but the acting and scripting were pretty poor.


• The Sarah Jane Adventures - I was surprised to see that the new season of Sarah Jane Smith started with Elisabeth Sladen still in the lead role. As you may know, the actress succumbed to cancer, so these are previously filmed episodes. Sarah Jane adopted new alien child, a girl this time, and she has the curious ability to grow spontaneously. Maybe she will become the next Sarah Jane? The show is pretty nice and doesn't seem so childish anymore. It is almost on par with its progenitor show, Doctor Who


• Eureka - It continues to be brainless fun, a show basically held together by the lead actor, Colin Ferguson. As a funny side note, The Guild's very own (and smoking hot) Felicia Day together with show colleague (and Wesley Crusher from Star Trek) Wil Wheaton. They both act like their Guild characters, too :)


• House MD - The eight season gets rid of useless Cuddy and gains a small Asian girl prodigy who stands up to House and gains his respect. We know she is going to leave dejected and heartbroken, as all the others did, but at least she's a change from the stuck up bimbo role that usually filled the gap. She is not smoking hot, though, and that is an issue that needs resolving!


• Criminal Minds - I couldn't get myself to watch any of the episodes in season 7. It is basically the lack of time that is the cause. I will get to it eventually.


• Dexter - The show is back on track with the usual Dexter, lovable and deadly. As opposed to the fourth book in the series, this season seems to explore religious cultism rather than cannibalism. Works for me. BSG's Edward James Olmos is the bad guy here, joined by Colin Hanks, as his acolyte.


• Fringe - Peter Bishop has healed the wound between the two universes, but erased himself from existence in the process. Or has he? His father and Olivia keep getting glimpses of him. Same old show, in rest. The weird experimentation at the end of the last season seems to have ended. I don't know if that is good or bad.


• True Blood - In the end it was still satisfying to watch. Not great, but certainly entertaining. Tara (finally) dies, as well as the annoying werewolf bitch, the pathetic old witch and the ridiculous gay nurse guy. A culling of all obnoxious characters can be good.


• Men of a Certain Age - I keep nagging the wife to keep watching the show, as we started watching it together, but she keeps delaying. She doesn't want me to watch it alone either. Girls!


• Weeds - After 7 years, the hot MILF Mary-Louise Parker is still hot! Anything else about the show kind of sucks, though. Same old convoluted plots that somehow revolve around marijuana, but have ceased being about the light drug for quite some time. I am still watching it because of the MILF factor, naturally.


• The Good Wife - As Aron Nimzowitsch used to say, the threat is stronger than the execution. The fact that Alicia is finally banging Will removes the thrill of the sexual tension between them. The personal issues of the characters also begin to take a larger role than actual court cases. That is not good. The show is still entertaining, but has lost some of its appeal (pun not intended)


• Haven - still silly, but now has gotten more confrontational, with "troubled" being discriminated against by normal people. Also we learn that Audrey is not really Audrey, nor is she the woman that looked like her and was in the town a few decades ago. Instead, it seems she appears whenever the troubles start and she always has the memories of someone else.


• Royal Pains - I haven't watched it and I don't miss it. The wife doesn't seem to consider it either. It's personally cancelled.


• Lost Girl - A new Ash has been chosen, one that is less lenient than the one before and who is quite annoying. There is a sort of cold war between him and our lovely succubus. An old girlfriend of Dyson also appears. Wrraawr! (or is it Growl! ?) The show is fun enough.


• Nikita - The second season has started with gorgeous Amanda now heading Division. Except the ridiculously good looking actors, the show's got nothing for me anymore. I am discontinuing it from my show list.


• Falling Skies - Still waiting for season 2.


• Southpark - I've just watched the third episode from season 15. It is the only one that was funny from the season. I hope this is the beginning of a trend.


• The Killing - Still on my watch list, didn't get around to it.


• Mortal Kombat Legacy - The web show stopped at episode 9, just when it was getting interesting. Oh, well...


• Suits - The very light courtroom male show is still fun to watch, although it has become sort of repetitive. The betrayed friend that turns on the main character is both exaggerated and an obvious season end cliff hanger.


• Camelot - Claire Forlani and Eva Green, free boobs or not, are not enough to make me watch this series. Sorry, girls!


• Wilfred - Unwatched episodes are rotting in my view list and I could not force myself to watch them. I guess this is another show I will stop watching.
• Breaking Bad - A full season is waiting for me to watch. Whenever I had the time, I didn't have the mood to watch it. Maybe it is still fun, but I don't know yet. I fear disappointment.


• Californication - Waiting for the next season.

And now for new shows:

• King - Beautiful police woman... bla bla bla. I can google the actress and drool at her pictures instead of watching this average police drama. Not a new show, because I mentioned it in the last post, but it is part of a larger group of "do not want"s


• The Protector - Blonde police woman protects the city. Yeah, right.


• Against the Wall - Blonde police woman takes a job in Internal Affairs, much to the dismay of her policeman father and policemen three brothers, who feel she switched sides. Some funny situations and an interesting concept kept me watching this for a few episodes, but that's about it.


• Prime Suspect - Blonde police woman fights to gain acceptance in a misogynistic crime unit. The cases are brutal, so is her mistreatment from her colleagues. That would make for an interesting premise if it weren't for my lack of time and ... because she is a police woman! And like it or not, this is no misogynism, either. There are just too many shows about that at a time when I've had it up to my ears of police dramas.


• Unforgettable - Redhead ex police woman (and smoking hot, too), can't forget anything she sees. She teams up with ex boyfriend to... solve police cases. Yes, he is a cop. If not for the lead actress, a completely forgettable show.


• Ringer - Sarah Michelle Geller is NOT a police woman. I like that. Instead she is a police witness that runs away from testifying and/or getting killed by a drug kingpin. Her solution is to take the role of her twin sister who mysteriously commits suicide. She finds herself married to a gold digging con artist, having a interior decorator best friend, having an affair with the husband of her best friend and so on and so on. I didn't buy it. Sorry.


• Suburgatory - The short plotline sounded interesting: a single dad moves into the suburbs with urban, mischievous teenage daughter. The execution, though, was ridiculous. One of those obvious shows that spoon feed you anything you need to think or enjoy. Pass!


• How to be a Gentleman - Drama from Entourage was one of the lead actors. Unfortunately for him, the show got cancelled almost immediately. It was also one of those background "ha ha" things. Awful!


• Beavis&Butthead - Yes! My childhood show is coming back. I don't know when, but when it will start it will either be disappointing or epic. I am betting on epic.


• American Horror Story - Interesting TV series remake of The Shining. I didn't really enjoy the film and I don't like how King writes his books. I tried to watch the first episode, but stopped in the middle. Not my type of show. Also, the "horror" is one forced by sound effects and obvious film tricks. I hated it.


• Homeland - Haven't started to watch it yet, but it sounds promising.


• Hung - Season 2 started, but I couldn't get myself to watch it. I guess I won't watch it.


• Lie to Me - A lot of people recommended this show. I finally started to watch it. The insights in human behaviour are very interesting, especially since they are showing pictures or videos of celebrities in similar situations to the fictive situations in the episodes. There is much to learn there. However the structure of the show is a combination of CSI and House. All too fast, trying to seem intelligent and smart, but creating a soulless mechanical feel. I will be watching it occasionally for the science alone.


• Terra Nova - Finally a sci-fi show! Humanity has botched the future, so they come back into the past, during the age of the dinosaurs. The main character is a cop. WHY?!?! OH, WHY?!?! The show is ok, but full of clichés and the idea of a father of three fending off for his family in a colony of humans in the Cretaceous... brrrr, who the hell thought that up? The science is nil and the family issues override any decent sci-fi in the show. Too bad. I will watch it, still, but only because of lack of alternatives.


• The Fades - By a long shot, this is the best of the new shows. It is a British horror series involving dead people trying to get back to life by eating living flesh. They are not zombies, they are Fades, and they make a lot more sense than other undead concepts. The main character is a clueless kid who happens to have special powers. Watch this, it is very nice, indeed.


• The Field of Blood - Well, it appears as a series, but for now it was a two parter film. A heavy Glasgow accent makes this hard to watch with no translation, but a nice film anyways. A sort of journalist drama in the 80's, with crimes and family issues and rampant religious ideology.


• The Secret Circle - A tv series remake of The Craft, as far as I see, with good looking teens being... witches! At least they are not vampires. The out of control member of the circle doesn't come even close to the beautiful craziness of Fairuza Balk. Baby, I still love you! Btw, the show is not worth watching, better rewatch The Craft a few times.


• Hidden - Not watching it yet, but it is on my list

Upcoming:

• Grimm - A fantasy series related to fairy tales. To my chagrin this is what Wikipedia says: The show has been described as "a cop drama—with a twist...a dark and fantastical project about a world in which characters inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales exist". Cop drama? Really?!


• Once Upon a Time - Another fairy tale series, with actresses from House and Big Love and whatever shows ended or from which people left.


• Hell on Wheels - a Western tv series. Could that work? We'll have to see

I have been pruning away from the TV series I have been watching, in order to gain some control over my personal life. But whenever I do that, more TV shows appear. It's like I need a hot redhead police woman to investigate this serial murders of my time and bring the culprits down in a climactic ending. But with my luck, I will probably find myself in cliff hangers at the end of each season!

A colleague of mine asked a question that seemed trivial, but then it revealed interesting layers of complexity: how would you build an algorithm for a random number in any integer interval assuming that you already have a function that returns a random binary bit? The distribution of the bit is perfectly random and so it should be that of your function.



My first attempt was to divide the interval in two, then choose the first or second half based on the random bit function. This worked perfectly for intervals of even length, but there were issues with odd sized intervals. Let's take the most basic version there is: we want a random number between 7 and 9. The interval has a size of 3, which is not divisible by 2.



One solution is to split it in half anyway, ignoring one number, then use the random bit function one more time to determine in which half the remaining number should be added. For example the random bit yields 1, so we add the odd number to the second half: 7,8,9 -> 7 and 8,9 . Now the random bit is 0, thus choosing the first half, which is 7. This sounds good enough, let's see how this works:



Possible random bit results:

• 0 (7,8|9)
  • 0 (7|8)
    • 0 (=7)
    • 1 (=8)
  • 1 (=9)
• 1 (7|8,9)
  • 0 (=7)
  • 1 (8|9)
    • 0 (=8)
    • 1 (=9)

The interesting part is coming when deciding (pun not intended) what type of probability we would consider. From the tree above, if we take the terminal leafs and count them, there are exactly 6. Each of the numbers in the interval appear exactly twice. There is a perfectly balanced probability that a number will appear in the leaf nodes. But if we decide that each random bit run divides the total probability by two, then we have a 50% chance for 0 or 1 and thus the probability that 7 would be chosen is 1/4 + 1/8 (3/8), the same for 9, but then 8 would have a 2/8 probability to be chosen, so not so perfect.



What is the correct way to compute it? As I see it, the terminal graph leaf way is the external method, the algorithm can end in just 6 possible states and an external observer would not care about the inner workings of the algorithm; the second is an internal view of the use of the "coin toss" function inside the algorithm. The methods could be reconciled by continuing the algorithm even when the function has terminated, until all the possible paths have the same length, something akin to splitting 7 in two 7 nodes, for example, so that the probability would be computed between all the 2 to the power of the maximum tree height options. If the random bit yielded 0, then 0, we still toss the coin to get 000 and 001; now there are 8 terminal nodes and they are divided in 3,2,3 nodes per numbers in the interval. But if we force this method, then we will never get a result. No power of two can be equally divided by 3.



Then I came with another algorithm. What if we could divide even an odd number in two, by multiplying it with two? So instead of solving for 7,8,9 what if we could solve it for 7,7,8,8,9,9 ? Now things become interesting because even for a small finite interval length like 3, the algorithm does not have a deterministic running length. Let's run it again:



Possible random bit results:

• 0 (7,7,8)
  • 0 (7,7,7)
  • 1 (7,8,8)
    • 0 (7,7,8)... and so on
    • 1 (8,8,8)
• 1 (8,9,9)
  • 0 (8,8,9)
    • 0 (8,8,8)
    • 1 (8,9,9)... and so on
  • 1 (9,9,9)

As you can see, the tree looks similar, but the algorithm never truly completes. There are always exactly two possibilities in each step that the algorithm will continue. Now, the algorithm does end most of the time, with a probability to end increasing exponentially with each step, but its maximum theoretical length is infinity. We are getting into Cantoresque sets of infinite numbers and we want to calculate what is the probability that a random infinite number would be part of one set or another. Ugh!



And even so, for the small example above, it does seem that the probability for each number is 25%, while there is another 25% chance to continue the algorithm, but if you look at the previous stage you have a 25% chance for 7 or 9, but no chance for 8 at all. If we arbitrarily stop in the middle of the algorithm, not only does it invalidate the result, but also makes no sense to compute any probability.



You can look at it another way: this new algorithm is splitting probability in three equal integer parts, then it throws the rest into the future. It is a funny way of using time and space equivalence, as we are trading interval space for time. (See the third and last algorithm in the post)



My conclusion is that the internal method of computing the probability of the result was flawed. As a black box operator of the algorithm I don't really care how it spews its output, only that it does so with an as perfect probability as possible (pun, again, not intended). That means that if I use the algorithm two times there is no way it can output equals amounts of three values. The probability can't be computed like that. If we use it a million times we would expect a rough 333333 times of each value, but still one would be off one side or another. So the two algorithms are just as good.



Also, some people might ask: how can you possible use the second algorithm for large intervals. You are not going to work with arrays of millions of items for million size intervals, are you? In fact, you only need five values for the algorithm: the limits of the interval (a and b), the amount of lower edge values (p), the amount for the higher edge (r), then the amount for any number in between (q). Example: 7778888888899999 a=7, b=9, p=3, q=8, r=5 . You split this in two and (for the coin toss of 0) you get 7778888 a=7, b=8, p=3, q=1 (don't care at this point), r=4. The next step of the algorithm you multiply by two p,q and r and you go on until a=b.



You can consider a simpler version though: there are three values in the interval so we need at least a number equal or bigger than three that is also a power of two. That means four, two coin tosses. If the coin toss is 00, the result is 7; if the coin toss is 01, the result is 8; for 10, the result is 9. What happens when you get 11? Well, you run the algorithm again.

Ok, I am cheating now. I was feeling bad for not playing chess lately (or playing badly when I had other stuff to do, generating even more guilt) and having nothing to blog about except maybe books and also thinking about all the other directions of the blog that I failed to cover: programming, music, tech news.

So I bring you Brute force or intelligence? The slow rise of computer chess, which is an article about chess, it is from Ars Technica (tech news) and it involves some notions of programming. All I need for this to be complete is music!

Seriously now, I went to a friend's last night and played a bit of chess. We were both a little tired and drunk, so we played chess "for fun" (which translates to incredibly bad), but it really felt fun as opposed to playing a computer at a very low level. Why is that? I believe it is all about prioritization.

When a human plays, he is trying to use the principles of chess, but he doesn't have the time or mental resources to take each one and analyse each piece or position. Humans do use subconscious mechanisms to quickly scan a table, but that only comes with a lot of chess training. So basically, what a beginner human player is left with is finding a strategy that would quickly and (preferably) forcibly win the game. That means that we use something akin with the "Type B" algorithm from the article above. But it's not quite it, because it is a bit of everything, something that is traditionally hard to implement in a computer program (and that has more to do with the psychology of programming engineers than with a specific level of difficulty). Basically we look at the pieces, prioritised by their power and reach as well as their position relative to an area of attack or defence. That is why we don't see the queen or bishop in the corner of the table, because, looking in ever wider circles around the area we are focused on, we suddenly stop and start doing something else. Compare that with a computer which can take the measly 32 pieces on the board and computer in a few fractions of a second all their possible moves and the resulting board position.

Then, when we see a possible good move, we take it forward as many steps as we can. Does a chess beginner do a comprehensive tree of all possible moves in that scenario? Of course not. Not only we do not see all (or most) of the moves, but when we see a possibility for the opponent to play a counter move, we quickly analyse the likelihood that the other guy would see it and sometimes we even gamble that they won't do it, just because we wish they didn't. This is also psychological: the gambler way of thinking has been documented for a while, they are motivated by loss which gives them more of an adrenaline rush than winning or that makes winning ever sweeter; also the guy we play with is probably our friend and we partly root for the guy as well. Program that into a computer! I've had games where I took huge risks on the hope that my friend would a) not see the move, which would make me look good when playing a cool game and b) that he would see the move, making his game look cool, thus making the entire session interesting.

Back to programming, I think that the easiest way of implementing this kind of bad human play in a computer game is to take a normal computer algorithm for playing chess, like mini-max, then program a sort of Alzheimer routine, that would remove bits of its reasoning based on a probability computed from the following factors: proximity of pieces to a region of interest (which would also have to be defined, but let's just assume it would be the average of positions of the pieces involved in the current line of thought), the artistic value of a line of thought (which would be defined either by massive sacrifices for important gains, or by how severely we limit the opponent options - in other words: power), the probability that the opponent would see a move (computed based on current history of play) and also by the artistic value of the entire game, as described in the last paragraph.

In other words, what I am proposing here is that we have a perfect algorithm for playing chess, one that is limited by computing power alone. What we don't have is a good algorithm for bad play, for fun play. Most computer programs I've seen, including ChessMaster, which boasts with its ability to simulate human players of varying abilities, have incredibly stupid ways of limiting performance. For example: a knight wants to attack f7, the black soft spot; it has plans to move a bishop there as well. I move a pawn to prevent the bishop from attacking that spot and the computer takes with the knight, sacrificing a minor piece for a pawn and my king's ability to castle. Or a rook attacks a knight. It then takes the knight, even if defended. In other words, random, pointless moves. Every human move is purposeful, even if the purpose if flawed by bad judgement. Random moves won't do, they have to be moves that follow a plan, no matter how bad that plan is. We need a perfect algorithm for throttling the playing chess level. We need to look at human bad games, make their own chess database, extract rules for bad play and implement this into computers.

As I was noting a few posts earlier, I recently watched the entire Star Trek Deep Space 9 series. This part of the franchise showed a lot of the Klingons as well as their choice of beverages: Bloodwine and Raktajino. The former is a strong alcoholic beverage which I will not get into, and the latter is a strong and spicy coffee that grew on the crew of the space station. As I knew that the Klingon culture spawned an entire real life current, including a complete language, I was curious if they also replicated (pun not intended :) ) their recipes. And I found that, indeed, there was at least one Raktajino recipe on the net: Klingon Raktajino Klah Version.

I was not satisfied, though. You see, Klingons are supposed to be mighty warriors. Why would they throw a bit of sweet chocolate, some cocoa and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg into their drinks if it's not going to be effective in battle? So I started researching the different active ingredients in the recipe, as well as other possible sources for a stronger effect. Here is my research on it, the result and the effects on myself (as any mad scientist knows, you first experiment on helpless victims or yourself. I was fresh out of victims that day).

Let's first examine the main stuff: coffee. There are other energizing beverages in the world, like tea, or mate tea, or even stuff like Burn or Red Bull. I will not touch the chemical energizer drinks in this post because I couldn't possibly replicate one out of simple ingredients (or could I? Note to self: make a one hundred times stronger energizer drink than Red Bull. Get more helpless victims.). Something I've recently (to my shame) found out is that when people researched coffee, tea and mate they called the main active ingredient for each by the substance they started with: caffeine, theine and mateine. Later on, it was proven to be the exact same substance. So there would be no point of mixing these together, since they have the same effect.

However, there are other ingredients in the beverages described above, like catechins, which are found in white and green tea, mostly. Also, found in cocoa, so there might be something there for the Raktajino, after all. The effect of flavanols on health is mixed, but it is clear that it has a health benefit for heart conditions as well as an apparent anti-aging effect when combined with regular exercise. Nothing Klingons like more, by the way.

Ok, which of these contains the biggest concentration of flavanols: cocoa or white tea? It is irrelevant, as this is actually a class of substances and the flavanols in each (and in wine, btw) are different. So, let's mix them up for starters.

What other active ingredients does cocoa have, except the flavanols? Well, it seems it contains something called Theobromine. It can appear naturally in the body as a result of metabolising caffeine, btw, so it seems like a good choice for the acceleration or augmentation of the effect of coffee. Also, it has a slight aphrodisiac effect :)

So, we got a mix of cocoa and white tea, something that is good for the heart, slows ageing and also should accelerate the absorption of coffee. But the recipe also had Cinnamon in it. So let's see what it contains. Well, it is called Cinnamaldehyde which sports effects like antimicrobial and anticancer. But what cinnamon does most is increase the blood flow, so also the metabolism, so the absorption of all the substances in our magic mix.

Of, if we have already a substance that increases blood flow and metabolism, why not use one that is really hot: Capsaicin? Yes, you read that right, it's the active ingredient in chilli peppers and the thing that tricks the heat sensors in our body to react to lower temperatures, giving us the sensation of heat. It also increases blood circulation and regulates sugar levels.

The net recipe also showed a use of nutmeg. I suspect that is mostly for the aroma, as large quantities of nutmeg are toxic, even if it also has a deliriant effect. Also, the "recreational" properties of nutmeg can take about four hours to take effect, so we don't actually need the stuff.

Ok. We have the ingredients we need to add to our coffee: cinnamon, cocoa, white or green tea and chilly powder. I used 2 spoon of cinnamon, 2 of cocoa, enough green tea for 2 litres of strong tea and one tablespoon of chilly powder. Then I've added it in my coffee. I also drank it with hot water only. The best results were with coffee, some sugar to add to the burn, and a bit of milk to take the edge off the tongue.

The effects: I am not a big drinker of coffee, but ever since I've moved to this job where they had a coffee machine, I would drink one cup a day. Sometimes four. Anyway, after a while it didn't seem to have any effect, other than a deficiency of calcium (that's another story, just remember to add calcium and vitamin D to your diet if you are a coffee drinker). So, the day I used a small portion of my spice in my coffee, not only did it taste great! but it also gave me a jittery active state that I hadn't felt since the first days of drinking coffee, a state that lasted for... 6 hours straight!

So, to wrap it up, I can't give you a recipe for my version of Raktajino, as I am experimenting with various quantities, but mix a lot of cocoa and cinnamon with your coffee, then add some concentrated green tea and as much chilly powder as your stomach can stand: Raktajino, Siderite version!. (I used strong text there because it is so strong of a coffee, see?)

Do let me know if you drink it and tell me what effect it had on you. The excitement of the research may be responsible for the jittery effect, after all, although I doubt it.

I've just finished watching the seven seasons of Star Trek DS9. I've decided to do it since I've only seen it on TV when I was younger and never from start to finish. Frankly, when I think about it, watching anything on TV, waiting for it to start at specific hours and then having no possibility to pause, stop or fast forward (not to mention the idiotic commercials), seems insane. But I digress.

What I found most interesting in this Star Trek series is that it showed so many pieces of technology that are now available. However, they were doing it wrong :) Let's take the "pad". They were using something looking like IPads. However, they were using multiple pads, one for each of the things they were reading or working on! Or they had these very complex communication systems: a badge that acted as a communicator, holographic video calls, screens everywhere. Yet whenever something was happening, they were calling the other person to come to them: "Captain, I think you'll want to see this". You can't really expect technical perspective from TV designer people, but they were so bloody close!

Another interesting thing, and that goes for the entire Star Trek franchise, is how they split the human mentality into clichés, made entire races out of them, then explored each one in particular. That is different from making the heroes be envomittingly good and the bad people nauseatingly evil. They took the mercantile personality, pushed it to an extreme, then built the Ferengi species around it. I still don't get how they did it without the Hollywood higherups shouting racism, since the race was clearly modelled after Jews. The Klingons were fierce warriors, honourable and brave. The Romulans were sneaky. The Kardasians were imperial invaders. And so on and so on.

But then, they explored each of these human traits and readded depth from the places where they took it. What happens with Ferengis when their lives are at stake or when their friends are in peril? What do Klingons do when imperial leaders become more and more political and corrupt? What do the worst enemies when they are forced to fight or work together and find themselves in the very situations they has previously forced the other to be? As far as I know, this is the only show that did this. The few other multispecies sci fi series, like Babylon 5, centered on the story more than on the characters.

As for what differentiates DS9 from the other Star Trek series, it's the grit. I suppose that is why it didn't have that much success with the audience, as it was a decent show with some deep (pardon the pun) ideas. It did had its sillyness: the entire Bajoran faith thing, with the alien Prophets intervening whenever the script went nowhere, the episodes about the crew getting to the past or locked in some holodeck fantasy or being mentally manipulated, all so that they get to act in present day situations that had nothing to do with the show. The silliest thing yet, I believe, are the fights. The ridiculous fighting style of the Federation "elites" and the ships that either resist dozens of hits or die from a single one.

I believe that there is much to be learned from Star Trek, from a television and scifi perspective, and DS9 specifically. We lack a space opera with real war scenes and actual grit.

Don't worry, it's ok now, my years old computer that I can't get myself to replace. The experience has been very educational and I want to share it with you. Here is what happened: the computer that I keep always on started making strange clanking sounds; they came from the HDD. I got a little concerned, but I didn't have the time to address the problem right then. The computer seemed to work fine so I continued (btw, don't you do that in the same situation :) ) to work on it. Finally the computer reset itself and it wouldn't boot. Or, better said, it would boot for a second and restart. I checked the hard drive cables, I removed and cleaned the processor cooler, I vacuumed the power source. Nothing worked. I took the IDE drive from an older Duron computer and tried to boot with that one. It didn't work either, but then again, I had no guarantee that the old drive was functional.

I was really upset. I had an exam to take, all my data was lost, I had a full schedule for days and, being the end of the month, not enough cash to buy a computer right away. And I needed bank loan formalities like I needed an anal probe. But, I thought, maybe I can take the hard drive at work and copy the data, or at least part of it. And it worked. In fact, the drive worked so well at work that I began to doubt that the HDD had any problems. What could it be? I did have a feeling that it might be from the processor cooler that I had removed to clean. After years of use, the thermoconducting gel that transferred heat from the CPU to the metal radiator was only a dusty crust. I decided to buy a cooler or at least some gel.

Of course, any computer shop that was near my work did not have coolers for my old Athlon processor, so I bought gel and then (to be sure) also a cooler for a more recent processor type. I went home, saw that the radiator was way too large for the processor so I removed the fan from the new cooler and placed it (using ingeniously twisted wires) on the old radiator, then applied it with new gel on the processor. And the computer began to work with no drives attached to it. However, attaching the drive would make it reset itself again.

The culprit was, I assumed, either the motherboard (oh no!) or the power source. I removed the old power source from the Duron computer and replaced it on the Athlon computer. And it worked! With wires and thermoconducting gel I brought my baby back to life. I was better than MacGyver! However, the new source would make a really high pitch sound when I turned the computer off and a loud fan noise when I turned it on. I had no intention of buying a new power source for an old computer, I just wanted to make it work.

So I went to my office and borrowed three power sources that had been replaced with newer models. Went back home... none of them worked. As computer parts go, the power source is both the most solicited and the less standard item. There are unlimited ways a power source can fail and the effects on the computer are always surprising. All three displayed some (different) sort of partial functionality. I was considering opening them up and making a Frankensteinian source from them. I know nothing of electronics, but how hard can it be (vision: me burned to a crisp by an electrical fire after having my heart stop due to electric shock). However, I did remember that the source in the Athlon computer was not the original source. I had replaced it with a newer model a while ago and I had kept the old one. I rummaged through my stuff and found the old power source. It worked, it had a somewhat loud fan, but not that loud and it didn't make any electrical high pitched noises. Saved!

I was congratulating myself on repairing the computer using only the things in my house (all but the new cooler) when I remembered that I had an old 500Gb external drive that wouldn't work unless you applied power from the computer power source to the internal drive in the box. And so I did that (using wires again, because the adapter from the old power port to the new got lost somewhere) and backed up all the data from the drive that I thought died. Now I have a backup!

And if I am here, why not borrow a voltmeter and try to figure out how to wire up this external drive so I can use it without all the wires sticking out of it? So the story continues, as this is what I intend to do. I am a guy, tinkering is in my DNA, and it is so satisfying. Also, it helps seeing the uncomprehending look on my wife's face and the horror in her eyes when she sees more wires. It's fun! :)

Another interesting List of Wikipedia is the list of religious texts. It's a medium sized list, although I suspect it is not nearly complete and that some of the works there are pretty big.

I am not much on religion, but I wonder what one would come to think of if presented with all the texts in the list, exposed to them without any cultural bias. Would some sort of distilation of the concept of religion emerge from it, or would everybody just choose a religion they feel more comfortable with? Or maybe they would write their own religious texts.

When I think about it, I can't help but compare it with the emergence of certain genres in fiction, like alien invasion sci-fi or comic book super heroes. First there are some original authors that come up with an idea. The idea is well liked, bought and distributed. It becomes well known so that other people start making work of their own that is inspired by that. It's almost organic, with reproduction, mutation, cross breeding and extinction. However, the integrity of religions is mostly enforced by communities of people that insist on changing nothing. They stop evolution, but also protect against extinction. Is stagnation the hallmark of religion or is it the stability that it provides in a world in continuous flux of change?

I will tell you this: I like evolution. And I mean it in the most general sense, not only the Darwinian one. I find it ironic that in my mind religion is the opposite of evolution. Or maybe that's a cultural bias. Hmm...

There are visionaries today that are capable of describing the future, as they see it. If it is close to the actual future, they get to be called futurologists. Of course, one will jump up and say that futurology has a definition and it is an art or a science that has nothing to do with vision, but I say that this is exactly what it is: guesswork. Guessing can be facilitated, however, by studying trends, staying current with new technology and thinking ahead on the needs that people have and will have in the future.

So how come no one is really good at it? How come people said in the past that by now we would get to Mars and have free energy and the likes? The reason is simple: because we can, but we won't! Just like people walking on the street and witnessing a robbery or a beating just stay and watch, but don't act, we are a world of diffuse responsibility. Nobody is responsible, everybody is to blame. But it's not true. I am responsibile, and you are; we make the future, we are the people, we are the ones that DO anything and everything.

So what is the error of futurology: they assume we would do what we can, when in truth we only do what we care. My New Year's resolution is to care, see where it takes me.

I've just finished watching episode two from the first season of Pioneer One, a sci-fi show made by amateurs, financed by donations and freely downloadable via Bittorrent. That is just fabulous! An episode is done with 20000$ and they need about 40000$ more to finish the last two episodes of the series.

I thought of this kind of system myself a year or so ago as I was observing that almost all movies and shows I watch are made by Americans, through gigantic media outlets that are only interested in profits and cancel any good show on the basis of money alone. I was wondering: where are the people that would be to TV what bloggers are to printed press? Of course, writing an article in a free public place like Blogger is a lot simpler than making a movie, but the idea is there. Mangakus do it all the time, in the US the comic book is back, why not TV shows?

The series is really good for the money that went into it. Except for some clueless actors that play very small parts, the people involved act decently and the atmosphere of the show is powerful and enticing. The dialogue is also strangely good, as I am used to clichees being sprouted in scenes of a certain type and when that doesn't happen, I have an eery feeling of unreality!

Pioneer One is not the only show like this. There is a network, called Vodo, with the motto: We love free! that helps distribute a lot of these Creative Commons licenced films and shows. I really want this to work. This gets the money from people interested to watch and gives it to the creators, rather than some vampire distribution network.

On that note, I would like to also talk about another TV show that is about to appear, called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Yes, indeed, it is a TV series inspired by the game with the same name, which in turn was inspired by Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers. The show is made by the Ukranian company that made the game and you can follow the progress of the series by going to its official site. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. show would not be freely released, but at least it is not part of the official channels for TV distribution. The story itself sounds cool and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe counts about 40 books already (in Russian, unfortunately, but give it time).

It moves slowly, but surely. I am convinced that in a few years people will make and distribute work via the Internet, directly sponsored by the people interested in their creation. All the salesmen in the middle will just be bypassed and creators will be controlling the cultural market rather than distributors. It only feels natural: if you distribute something under a Creative Commons licence, there can be no piracy :) So there, what I've always said comes true: the death of piracy is synonimous with the death of mammoth distribution companies and all their bullshit.

I found this link on the Codeproject newsletter, a place where I often find news that are not reported anywhere else and opinions that are well informed and interesting. So, here it is: The Weakest Link: What Wikileaks Has Taught Us About the Open Internet.

What it basically says is that the Internet is open only as the huge private companies that control it are willing to allow this openness. Governments and companies alike can pressure key points in order to control the spread of information. The laws (which set of laws, btw?) are vague, allowing a limbo in which only the powerful have the upper hand. Two services we take for granted, like DNS and the newly found fab cloud computing are easily attacked or pressured into blocking access or revealing information.

But what I found even more troubling is the way this challenge of Wikileaks (because what else can you call wearing the underpants of the biggest bully as your flag) has been answered so mindlessly by the US. The government that is trying to get its hands and make an example out of Gary McKinnon had his most secret documents openly exposed, making it look vulnerable, weak. Its response is nothing less than angry mindless rage: denial of service attacks on the Wikileaks DNS, harassment of anybody supporting financially or technically the Wikileaks organization, very convenient rape charges against Julian Assange and so on. This is the behemoth that, behind nice faces like Obama's, does stuff like Guantanamo and has that huge inertia that would almost push humanity to extinction during the Cold War: "you mess with me, I mess with you".

However, this is a battle that any government has already lost. Short of a global apocalypse, the rabbit is out of the hat and the Wikileaks model will live on, regardless of who runs it and what structure it has. People have been shown to actually make a difference. All that media and movie onslaught of images of the evil government that can kill anybody at will and make everything disappear has been proven a myth. They are not invulnerable. Even worse, they can't handle the stress, they are sore losers. They lost information, but also face and honor. And the funny thing is, they did it to themselves.