Ted's Friends

2:16AM - Spanish

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/2009/07/10/spanish/

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/?p=2872

In college, I took Spanish classes off and on to fill elective spots. I was a couple of classes short of a minor when I graduated. It’s been something I’ve enjoyed studying for a while, though I’ve never been great at it. Despite having studied the language since 7th grade, I’d never actually used it until last week. I mean, yeah, I’ve translated the occasional sign from time to time, but I’ve never really needed to use it for anything. I spent a week in Puerto Rico during my senior year of college, and didn’t speak a word of Spanish while I was there.

In Chile, I had real opportunities to speak Spanish- many of the people I talked with knew less English than I knew Spanish (plus I was in their country, so I generally tried not to resort to English). It took a few days for it to come back, but it ended up being quite enjoyable. I was able to tell stories to my brother’s host family (more on that later), buy things, ask questions, etc. On the plane ride back, I sat next to a woman from Argentina who didn’t speak any English, and I felt comfortable talking with her and translating some customs forms for her (one wasn’t translated). I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing any of that on the way down.

Brian has been in the country since February. He didn’t really know much Spanish when he got there, but, as you can imagine, he speaks and understands it quite well now. His Spanish is better than mine, but I’d say it’s somewhere in the same league. The interesting thing is how the different modes of language acquisition affect the mistakes that we both make. It’s like I learned Spanish “in the lab” or something. I could conjugate weird verbs better than Brian, or remember irregular nouns (mapa, tema, clima, programa etc.), but his vocabulary, slang, and comprehension of Chilean Spanish were far better than mine. In practice, nobody is going to be confuse if you say la mapa, even though it’s wrong, so some of the things I was good at were not terribly useful.

Another thing that took me a while to get the hang of was different terms that translate to “I’m sorry” and “excuse me”: perdon, permiso, disculpe, and lo siento (there are more, and they generally aren’t interchangeable, as far as I know). These are things that you end up saying a lot when you’re somewhere unfamiliar, but aren’t terribly important in a classroom.

Chilean Spanish was rather challenging: they tend to drop the letter S a lot, as well as consonant sounds at the end of words. This took me a while to get used to. I asked someone where I could find post cards at one point, postales, but she didn’t understand my pronunciation of the word. I’m pretty sure I was pronouncing it correctly, but then I tried again, dropping the S sounds and weakening the L and she understood immediately. That made me think of someone from Boston not being able to understand the word “car” with all of its letters pronounced.

It was a lot of fun to somewhat be able to speak the language, and the experience made me want to learn another. Maybe Italian.

jwz

1:47PM - "Join us now" indeed.

You stay classy, RMS.

jwz

7:40PM - SoundExchange

I can't make any sense of what this new SoundExchange settlement actually means for DNA Lounge. Is someone going to come knocking on my door asking for an additional $25,000 per year because of our webcasts? Given that A) we are already paying ASCAP/SESAC/BMI for them, and B) the webcasts produce zero revenue. If you think you understand this crap, please explain it to me...

jwz

7:19PM - The Robotic Head of Albert Einstein Teaches Itself to Smile.

crisper

4:00PM - short shameful Star Wars confession

It (Ep.4) was showing on Spike TV over the holiday weekend and even though it was the Special Edition, I was unable to stop myself from watching all the way to the end when we stumbled upon it.

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For consideration: bonus SSC - I had to fast forward past Greedo shooting first

bramcohen

3:24PM - Someone at Mozilla Foundation needs to be fired

Somebody at Mozilla decided they need lots of 'true' random numbers.

My patience for this subject completely ran out about five years ago, so this post is going to show a complete lack of diplomacy. I would like to emphasize, in advance, that this is my honest, reasoned opinion, not said in anger, and that if you ask my opinion again in the future I'll say the exact same thing.

Once a computer has collected a small number of 'true' random bits (maybe it's 128, maybe it's 256, but regardless it's small) there's no need whatsoever for it to block on collecting more 'random' numbers. A pseudorandom number generator based on AES will be able to generate random numbers based on that seed until the end of the universe and noone constrained by the laws of physics and math will ever be able to tell the difference between that and 'true' random numbers. This is extremely well established cryptography. To require 'true' random numbers is, to use an apt analogy, wankery. It does not, and cannot, do anything to improve security, and it mostly just causes huge amounts of pain. It is (and I repeat myself, because I have a hunch people will think I'm glossing over some nuance here) of no benefit whatsoever.

My advice to the Mozilla foundation (and again, this is my reasoned opinion, not said in anger, and I won't be changing my mind later): find out who was responsible for this policy of requiring lots of 'true' random numbers, and fire them. Fire them today. They have demonstrated gross incompetence, a total lack of understanding of the very most basic concepts in security.

Some people might think that if I knew more about who was behind this and what their specific motivations are, then that might change my mind. That is incorrect. The security field is filled with people who to non-experts seem very impressive and knowledgeable, especially when they're advocating, and even moreso demanding, very painful and difficult things in the name of security. Most of these people are frauds. I have had it with paying homage to the concept of impartiality when discussing these peoples's opinions. If someone spouts a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo to bring the conversation to a place which a lay person has trouble understanding, then they may be able to make the argument be based on pure rhetoric, but gross incompetence is still gross incompetence, and despite having found an effective way to bullshit their way through, they're still wrong.

jwz

2:39PM - Train

jwz

2:23PM - Docking

jwz

2:18PM - Gaultier still engaged in Barbarelloid acts of Supervillainy.

crisper

9:06AM - Forgotten NetFlix Reviews #8

This should have been ready to post a few weeks ago - this was all around the time of our Barcelona trip - but I forgot about it until I went back to add notes for the most recent batch of viewings. So the next one will be along shortly as well.

( SOLARIS: * * * )

( SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: * * * * )

( QUANTUM OF SOLACE: * * * * )

( THE WRESTLER: * * * )

( JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES: * * * )

( TORN CURTAIN: * * * * )

( VERTIGO: * * * * )

( RATATOUILLE: * * * * )

( TOPAZ: * * * * )

( VALLEY GIRL: * * * * )

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For consideration: coming up, a mixed bag of SF and humor

6:42AM - A volcano from space

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/2009/07/08/a-volcano-from-space/

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/?p=2869

via

4:20AM - Chile!

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/2009/07/08/chile/

http://www.magicspatula.com/blog/?p=2861

Last week, I went to Chile to visit my brother. Peyton also made the trip, and it was his first time out of the country. It was a great trip and a much-needed break.

I’m not going to write a long, monolithic travel summary, as those are rarely interesting, but instead I’m going to write several short posts about different topics of interest from the trip over the next several days. All the Chile-related posts have the tag chile, so they’ll be easy to find.

I brought my digital camera as well as my flip HD video camera. Because of the prevalence of theft (more on that later), I only carried around one camera at a time (if any). Lots of the pictures in these posts are from Peyton.

Brian has a periodically-updated blog about his time in Chile here.

jwz

3:37PM - JAILBREAK ZEPPELIN!

Spanish police thwart jail break using remote-controlled Zeppelin

Three people have been arrested after their plan to aid the escape of an inmate from prison in Las Palmas on the Canary Islands was discovered by police. They planned to use a 13 foot long remote-controlled airship to deliver night vision goggles, climbing gear and camouflage paint to the Italian convict who would then use the equipment to escape from prison.

It is thought the inmate, identified by police as 52 year-old Giulio B, would use the gear to scale down a prison wall at night where a car would be waiting to take him into hiding.

"He would be transported to a foreign country where he would hide out while he waited for false identity documents and would continue to oversee the shipment of drugs to our country," a statement released by Spanish police said.

The three people arrested by police had sent up camp in a camouflaged tent on a hill some 600 metres away from the jail where they spent weeks observing security measures at the prison through powerful binoculars and telephoto lenses. The team of two Spaniards and a Urugauan had set up motion detection sensors around their camp to warn of anyone approaching their stake-out site.

Authorities said they learnt of the plan and intercepted the package containing the inflatable zeppelin when it arrived in the Canary Islands from Bergamo.

jwz

12:34PM - the time is now...

...12:34:56 07-08-09.

Previously.

jwz

9:43PM - dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein even ABC's own investigators think ABC is out of control.

jwz

9:16PM - The Zeiram Burqa and other Tentacular Fashions.

jwz

4:15PM - This is just like Hubba Hubba Revue!

bramcohen

11:30AM - Ludology in City of Heroes

City of Heroes has had some interesting issues with its gameplay, involving a character named Twixt using some tactics which made everybody hate him.

Several years ago I happened to be seated next to the designer of City of Heroes at an event where he won something. He was a pudgy guy, wearing big round glasses, with a white city of heroes t-shirt and a blue cape on. We got into a conversation about his game, and I asked what it was that made it compelling, and he said that it's every kid's fantasy of being a superhero, and it was very obvious that he'd based the game's design on his own. I asked him if City of Heroes is compelling as a pure abstract game, and the interesting response was that he didn't understand the question. After a few minutes of conversation he got what I was asking, and his answer, which really perplexed me at the time, was that it was a good question, but he didn't know.

Consider a game with the following semantics: You sit, unmoving, for two hours, with no user feedback, no buttons to push, nothing, completely passive, while the game plays out in front of you, exactly the same way as it would for anybody else. This sounds like a terrible game, but it's exactly what movies are, and movies are very popular and get little criticism that they're terrible games.

The Twixt problem was caused not so much by any one person behaving unreasonably as the game engine having a problem. There's a battle tactic which is quite effective but has the effect of wiping out an enemy without even giving them a chance to play, making it not much fun for them and it doesn't even get much credit for you. Because City of Heroes is more fantasy than game, players have a convention of not using this tactic, because that maximizes the fun of play. This is done at the expense of an individual's success taking the game as a sport, but since the game isn't a sport, people don't worry about that too much. Real sports don't involve dressing up as superheroes (except for figure skating, but that isn't a real sport). What really should be done is that the rules should be modified so that the particular tactic isn't so nasty. It's a general rule of game design that all players should get a chance to play and have fun, even if they aren't very good, and tactics which allow a better player to win without the weaker player even having a chance to try to retaliate are no fun.

jwz

9:27PM - I, for one, welcome our new seething, glistening bryozoan underlords.

The sewer monster is made up of thousands of tiny organisms called bryozoans, or moss animacules, said N.C. State University biologist Thomas Kwak. Invertebrates, they bunch together in colonies and feed with tiny tentacles.

"They can get as big as the size of a watermelon," he said.

They've been known to clog pipes, but Raleigh officials aren't worried, even though bryozoans can move up to 10 centimeters a day. "I don't know if we've seen anything move on its own inside a sanitary sewer line," Public Utilities Director Dale Crisp said.

Previously, previously.

bramcohen

4:07PM - Bandwidth fundamentals

A random person asks about something they read on Wikipedia: