666 Bits

Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made of Sand

2012-03-05T23:51:00.000+01:00

Throwing dice

2012-02-20T22:16:00.000+01:00

This was an interesting question posted somewhere on the Internet. I rephrased it a bit as I understood it.

Suppose you're playing the following game: Each time you throw a dice you get the result payed out. If you throw 4 or more, you can throw again; otherwise, the game stops. How much are you willing to pay to play the game?

The solution I came up with:

If you write down a tree, you can see you're calculating the limit of:

(1/6+...+6/6) + (3/6)( (1/6+...+6/6) + (3/6)( (1/6+...+6/6) + ... ))

of which the fixed point is

ϕ = (1/6+...+6/6) + (3/6)(ϕ)

is ϕ = (7/2) + (1/2)(ϕ)

is (1/2)(ϕ) = (7/2)

is ϕ = 7

At most 7.

Corollary: if you take ϕ = (2/2) + (5/2) + (1/2)(ϕ) it is trivial to expand ϕ to (2/2) + (7/4) + (12/8) + (17/16) + ...

Bernanke is a genius?

2012-02-08T05:17:00.000+01:00

I was looking at an English investor on the London School of Economics channel, and he called Bernanke an 'evil genius.' I don't know about the evil part, but it seems to me that he did everything right. So, this is what I think he did:

What do you do when your assets -mostly debt- in an economy deteriorate and everybody wants to sell them (actually everything) off, leading to possible deflation? You aggressively buy all bad assets at the central bank, supply lots of liquidity to the banks, wait a bit, and let them destroy the bad debt with the returning liquidity.

I am not even sure this leads to inflation since the bad debt is destroyed, but I will not claim to understand a lot of it...

Anyway, people complain about the enormous balance sheets of the Fed today, but at least the Fed now has an enormous capacity to fight inflation when they want to. Bernanke certainly cleaned up a lot of mess there.

Toiletpaper (Doghouse Diaries)

2012-01-29T19:50:00.003+01:00

Internet Goes on Strike

2012-01-18T05:54:00.003+01:00

Rap News #Occupy2012 ft. Noam Chomsky

2012-01-17T23:57:00.000+01:00

Sef - Diamanten ft. Hans de Booij

2012-01-14T00:08:00.000+01:00

Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL

2012-01-13T17:31:00.000+01:00

Unfunny comment on above video.

Vintage Lady Gaga

2012-01-12T03:10:00.000+01:00

Waer werd oprechter trouw

2011-12-29T23:42:00.001+01:00

Waer werd oprechter trouw
Dan tussen man en vrouw
Ter wereld ooit gevonden?
Twee zielen gloeiende aaneen gesmeed,
Of vast geschakeld en verbonden
In lief en leed.
De band die 't harte bindt
Der moeder aan het kind,
Gebaard met wee en smarte,
Aan hare borst met melk gevoed,
Zo lang gedragen onder 't harte
Verbindt het bloed.
Nog sterker bindt de band
van 't paar, door hand en hand
Verknocht, om niet te scheiden,
Nadat ze jaren lang gepaard
Een kuis en vreedzaam leven leidden,
Gelijk van aard.
Waar zo de liefde viel,
Smolt liefde ziel met ziel

-- Part of a the Dutch play 'Gijsbrecht van Aemstel' usually performed during the Christmas holidays.

Fedora 16 Works... Kind of...

2011-12-25T19:19:00.000+01:00

I am still booting with the Fedora live CD on my Macbook Pro, everything else now works. I used the rpmfusion free and nonfree depository and upgraded, installed kmod-wl for Wifi, installed Adobe Flash with rpm on linuxdownloads.adobe.com, unmuted the sound with Alsamixer, and installed google chrome through Google's repository. I also updated the fonts and hinting settings, this is a must for Fedora.

So I hope that I just need to burn a rEFIt CD to 'fix' the partition table, otherwise I'll keep on booting from the Live CD since it doesn't really seem useful to spend at least a thousand Euros on a new laptop.

Fedora 16 is nice. I've been using redhat product since RedHat 3 and later went on using Fedora Core distributions. So I am kind of used to three day install and debug tracks. Since I did this in less than a day, stuff really progressed since those days.

What I can't get used to is that I once started on a laptop with a whopping 64MB of memory, everything worked great, and to me -except for eye candy- no functionality has been added since then. Of course, I am a rabid vi/gcc/make/bash user who only needs a set of virtual desktops and terminals to program, but why in heaven's name does Fedora now need 1GB to work?

Ah well, Fedora looks great. The virtual desktops need some getting used though. I came from a 2x3 virtual desktop layout, moved on to 1x4 horizontal layout due to the 'cube' virtual desktop candy of Gnome, and now get a default of a Xx1 vertical layout. So it becomes up-down, instead of left-right, scrolling through the desktops, and I don't know whether my old manner was just more intuitive, or I just got accustomed to the other order. (I just noticed that the menu doesn't scroll along, which is great, since now one scrolls work spaces and not virtual desktops.)

Having a black menu on top certainly looks great, and I think is more natural since the menu should be in the background most of the time. The new activities manner of selecting applications also needs some getting used to. What I think would make the new user experience really great: I want different shortcuts, but more importantly I want applications to open in a new work space maximized. And I think an idea to try out would be to have the activities menu open by default on the first work space, so one can just get around with the keys, and have no clutter left.

Ah, well. I'll see whether I can get my old set of Toon-like icons installed, probably make a bunch of new ones, and will just get on with programming, again.

(I also noticed another thing. My TV works with an ADSL modem attached to a box which gets its content with a normal Ethernet cable. So, everything works with TCP/IP anyway. Why can't I just install a player and stream the content to the laptop without that box? Or maybe I can?)

MacBook Pro Fedora 16 Woes

2011-12-25T12:28:00.001+01:00

I tried to upgrade to Fedora 16 on my Macbook, and it failed miserably. I could get the Live edition to spin, and it looked impressive, though I have a bit of doubts what the new interface does to programmer's productivity, but it doesn't play well with the EFI bootloader.

I even thought of buying a new laptop, but once you owned a Macbook, you're not going to downgrade very fast on that. I've owned lots of good laptops from Asus (great machines - like the M series), Dell (sometimes great, but I didn't like the XPS series), and now Apple (an old Air which overheated followed by a Macbook Pro). The only real machine which might be an upgrade might be an Asus Zenbook, but no backlight on the keys, and without info on the biggest problem -overheating- of these small machines, I won't buy it fast.

Fedora on a Macbook is the best of the software and hardware worlds, so I guess I am waiting for a patch.

(Great, I removed the EFI and HFS+ partitions -all Linux data is backed on a FAT partition- in the hope of getting a bootable system, and now nothing works anymore, except for the Live CD and booting from that. Guess removing EFI was one step too much.)

I can't believe I am still stuck in the 1970's with Apple boot loaders. The thing boots from the disk, by first booting from the Live CD. This might work, but it's for Ubuntu:

If you have OSX installed, boot to it and mute sound. This assures that you won't be annoyed by the startup/poweron sound afterwards. I even used This software to be absolutely sure. Restart to confirm that no startup sound is audible.
Prepare rEFIt boot disk (CD-RW).
Boot Ubuntu install and remove all partitions, partition as you like for your Linux installation. Install Ubuntu, restart.
Put in rEFIt CD and holding down alt key, boot rEFIT cd. Synchronize GUID and MBR. Restart.
Insert OSX disc, boot from it, open terminal and enter following:bless --device /dev/disk0s2 --setBoot --legacy --verbose where /dev/disk0s2 is the partition you installed grub (do 'diskutil list' to find out correct partition). Of course, '--verbose' is optional. This makes Macbook EFI firmware boot your Linux installation in legacy mode without long delay (20s vs 3s).
Restart your Mac (don't forget to remove OSX disc). And boot directly to Linux!

CanYouCrackIt Solution explained by Dr Gareth Owen

2011-12-11T15:46:00.000+01:00

Absolutely wonderful.

Deelder & Gauthier: Goddank

2011-11-14T03:41:00.000+01:00

I like Dutch poetry slams, they usually go together with great parties. Unfortunately, you need to be Dutch for it.

Debt

2011-11-13T15:30:00.001+01:00

I post debt positions from time to time because, in the end, it is the only thing which matters - okay, apart from private debt of states. Picture is clear, the 'red' countries are in problems, Germany and France pretend that they are trying to fix things, which can't be true since their debt cannot run higher. Moreover, Europe can be damned glad with the former eastern bloc countries, who have low debt and a lot of room for growth.

RAP NEWS?

2011-11-07T15:54:00.000+01:00

RAP News: Transmitting truth.

Warning

2011-11-02T14:13:00.004+01:00

Shut up, fool.

2011-10-20T16:32:00.001+01:00

The envy of B.A. Baracus, as used in Libya, a bulldozer remodeled for a civil war's need.

High School Guitar Blues

2011-10-15T19:48:00.000+01:00

In a weird twist of fate, in high school, I ended up playing bass with some conservatorium 'Santana' with perfect hearing (playing guitar here)

and some other price-winning 'gent' (playing guitar here)

I did my best to make the first tone deaf and make the second lose his sense of rythm.

Somehow, it still takes some of the fun out of playing guitar when you know that they both play about nine orders better.

Only in America

2011-10-12T14:14:00.000+01:00

Protesters are paid, and some form of light-weight socialism is libertarianism. The Fox eats the hens.

Apollo 11 US Customs

2011-10-09T16:26:00.002+01:00

What do you expect when you fly to the moon and back? "Sorry, sir. But, uhm, you know about all these rocks you fine lads all brought back? Can you sign off on the paper?"

Greed?

2011-10-06T17:59:00.003+01:00

Look Anywhere

2011-10-05T10:33:00.000+01:00

Experimental Music from Short Programs

2011-10-02T15:22:00.000+01:00

The fact that these oneliners are even close to music is far beyond amazing.

A nice way to doodle, like me, is here.

I am Robot

2011-09-25T15:41:00.000+01:00

I liked the track more than the moves. Looking for the music.

I didn't know Gander before 9/11

2011-09-11T15:59:00.001+01:00

By editor Lambert Teuwissen from NOS (Dutch State Television), translated.

"At a given moment, we were flying around in circles, and everybody was wondering what happened. Then the captain announced that America was under attack and the U.S. airspace closed, that was the only statement."

The Dutch artist Clemens Briels was on September 11, 2001, en route to the opening of an exhibition in New York. Over the Atlantic, the KLM flight had been told that U.S. airspace was closed and was rerouted to the nearest airport in Canada: Gander.

"'The pilot reported that we would arrive at Gander. I had never heard of it before that." No fewer than 38 aircraft arrived that day in Gander, the first Canadian airport after the Atlantic crossing.

The sleepy town of some 10,000 inhabitants suddenly needed to take care of nearly 7000 stranded travelers. Briels, despite the horror of 9/11, forever connected with the humanity he encountered in Gander. "It's a paradox. A phenomenon in itself."

Torture Gander really committed itself to the care of the plane people. Schools, community centers, summer camps, even the fire department garage, they all provided beds. The hotels in the surrounding area were cleared for the crews, so that at least they didn't need to sleep on cots.

Logistics was a nightmare. The planes were on the second runway, now a parking place for aircraft. Because passengers had to be taken from the ship per flight, some flights had been waiting hours; Briels sat 17 hours solid.

"It was torture. School buses arrived regularly. In the dark, you could see the lights driving by and you'ld think: Now it's our turn, but then they moved on. But everybody remained calm. No one rebelled. "

At the arrival gates, all effort was made to allow passengers to leave as soon as possible. The TVs, on which the American drama was repeated over and over again, were turned off. The phones were blocked with signs saying "Out of Order." Instead, there hung an attentive large world map with an arrow and the text "Gander, YOU ARE HERE." It was the middle of nowhere. As flat as a dime and you only saw some bushes."

Four kinds of rice Briels was moved to Lakewood Academy, a high school gym where room was made in the classes. He felt like a war refugee, because his luggage was still stuck in the plane. "We all only had some hand luggage. So there were boxes of briefs: large, medium and small. Tooth pastes and bottles were also provided."

The whole town helped. People spontaneously brought food for the unexpected guests. "There was a man with a barbecue of 8 meters. There was so much rice that we could choose from four different kinds. At one point, a sign was placed that no more food was needed. All these women were cooking, providing incredibly good food. "

The people of Gander opened their homes for those who wanted a shower. They arranged truckloads of toys for stranded children. The local pharmacist provided replacement drugs, even if it meant countless international phone calls to get the recipe right.

Signs For four days U.S. airspace was closed, and the passengers remained in Gander. Briels was hit with boredom. "The weather was nice, so I mostly remained outside. I had a couple of walks, and sometimes came into a bar where you could throw horseshoes. That was the manner in which I spent the days."

And he drew. "One time out, I started a drawing on a blackboard. With the text: Thank you for your hospitality. The school later framed it and hung it on a wall. It is still there."

Eventually, the message came that the journey could be continued. Not to New York, to Detroit. "I rented a car to take me to New York. On the road, I always saw the same people, hired cars filled with seedy types of the Russian mafia, priests on their world tours, the most diverse types of people. Along at gas stations and restaurants, I noticed all those people you normally ignore. I was reminded of that movie "Rat Race"."

Spasm Briels reached a totally changed New York. "On the plane, the stupid thought crossed my head that I would come too late for the opening," he laughs. "But the gallery in SoHo was closed. The whole area was protected. New York was a disaster area. It was an atmosphere like you normally only see in war movies."

Every year around September 11 he speaks to someone he met that day in Gander, a Dutchman who was living in Connecticut. "We made a tradition out of it. Every year we call and we informally meet again."

About 9 / 11 isn't spoken during these encounters, says Briels. But sometimes, like now with the 10-year anniversary, there again is that lump in the throat."It's like a spasm, like the contraction of a muscle over which you have no control."

Chef'Special - Birds

2011-09-06T21:49:00.000+01:00

Greek Collateral

2011-08-19T02:01:00.001+01:00

The Greek debt situation has struck new absurd heights in the latest deal with the Finnish government.

Look, now we're doing absurd stuff anyway, I suggest the Dutch also go for collateral. But not cash, no, I want Zakynthos. Nice little island between mainland Greece and Italy. Take it!

The joke continues. On the radio they thought Samos would also be a good candidate. No way! Zakynthos has oil and wine production, an airfield, and is closer to the Netherlands. Nothing you can't fix with a good Dutch government, a Dutch bank, a Dutch bar, some hotels, and some windmills. Take it!

Victims of Psychiatry

2011-08-17T21:41:00.008+01:00

Since I am at home, I thought I would try and help people who are also victimized by psychiatry. It is impossible: three out of four forums don't accept criticism[*]. Comments on mainstream articles are edited out. It confirms what I see from the inside:

Psychiatry is incapable of self-reflection and therefore lacks any notion of morality or ethics.

Remember Lives Ruined by Psychiatry

And despite severe criticism, even from within the community, and despite of hundreds of thousands of accounts of victimized people on the Internet, people still pretend everything is nice and dandy.

It is not.

In English, this is a start http://antipsychiatry.org/, in Dutch http://www.zielenknijper.nl/. Though stuff is not very organized yet.

[*] Make that four out of four sites now. Psychiatrie forum, psy, psychiatrische patienten, forgot the last one. Psychiatry can only exist because it represses any form of criticism.

Dr Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry

2011-08-17T01:09:00.000+01:00

Dylan Ratigan on Congress

2011-08-11T20:54:00.000+01:00

On Anger

2011-08-01T22:30:00.020+01:00

Actually, Norway has the LARGEST party in Europe that has, in my view, occasionally perfectly legitimate criticism of the worrying trends of Islamization we observe, namely the Party of Progress.

As for Islamization, as evaluated along several parameters, like sex segregation, veiling of women, genital mutilation, polygamy, honour killings, assault rapes of Muslim-on-nonMuslim women, invitation of extremist preachers, bullying of non-Muslim children in kindergartens&schools, that Islamization IS a real phenomenon in Europe.

Breivik, in his evil, twisted mind finally saw in this an excuse to sate his already murderous cravings. There can never be an excuse for such actions.

His murderous rampage is more about personal self-glorification than any rational form of political debate.

Man, do I disagree with you. Christian history is full of atrocities too. There really is no need to be anti-Islam, anti-Jew, or anti-any-religion. It is just bigot fear.

That's what is what I have against it. Breivik is just as normal a terrorist as any Jihadist is. Even his attack is fully normal for a terrorist, they normally attack their own society too. Sure he could have wasted some muslims. But that wouldn't serve his purpose, right? In the public view it would have been outrageous, people would feel sorry for muslims, the opposite of what he wants. So like all terrorist he attacks the system; and particularly heinous, he attacks the future of the system, the leftwing children. How sick can a person be?

Most people want to peacefully coexist and most muslims give a rats about extremists, just like we give a rats about extremist Christian views.

You know what all that rhetoric of Breivik is? Our 'grand leader' of the populist rightwing preaches it too. He's a fervent visitor of Israel and an active supporter of them. The rhetoric isn't his own: it is an invention (result) of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by orthodox jews.

Preaching that rhetoric in the Netherlands can only have predictable effects:

A deepening of divides.
Segregation of muslims. (They huddle together; moreover, ghettos will emerge since whites are driven out of muslim quarters since they worry about house prices)
An increase of 'muslim' crimes since we stick them in a hole they won't be able to get out off.
Jihadists on the muslim side and Knight Templars on the white side.
Gang wars, ideological violence, possibly ending in bombings.

And that in a setting where we started in a position where the worst we could say about muslims is that some of their kids were mostly involved in petty-thieving.

It's like returning to the states of the fifties regarding blacks. Anyone in the US now want to claim that returning to that is a good idea? Anyone want to explain to the poster how difficult it is to get rid of the bigotry, the ghettos, and the gang-war violence? Does anyone in the US respect people preaching South-African 'apartheid'?

It is foreign war rhetoric which deepens divides and has no rational basis.

The way out is continuous pressure on everybody that we all strive for peace and equal opportunities.

I find the leader of our rightwing a complete moron. He's importing the Gaza conflict into what used to be a tolerant, peaceful, society and doesn't even know it.

I am so angry that I am going to respond to an argument you didn't post yet: "Just look at the statistics, everything is increasing!"

As I stated before: Social darwinism is a compelling argument. You need to kick most people, especially the military, several times in the head for them to see the fallacy of the argument.

I am not going to go into any bigot 'anti-Islam' arguments, but into one comment which was given here [somewhere on a forum] "Whites will be the minority in the US in a few decades."

It is a meaningless observation on demographic trends. We are all the product of several cultures, and our offspring will also be. I.e., the offspring in several generations of that commenter will be mixed race. Who here really cares?

Does anybody want to start a movement to defend 'the superior WASP manner of life'? Prove the inferiority of other races with 'rationalizations'? Introduce hate and violence, ghettos? Or would you rather live in a peace and have your children live in a peace?

It's idiocy.

On Denial

2011-07-30T08:02:00.010+01:00

God Evo, no! My own personal political views are non-activist, moderate, and left-centrist in the Netherlands, which doesn't translate in a any meaningful manner to US political views. The best approximation would be that I am at the far left of the progressive part of the Democratic party, but since I am a moderate and political issues in the US are different, that description would also be very flawed.

I think the current rightwing populist party is a bigot hate-speech party which destabilizes our country and has goals which will achieve the opposite of what they want.

I sympathize somewhat with some of the voters for that party since they are mostly afraid that they will end up in a crime-ridden suburb full with Arabs which will try to slice their throats, which is what they see on TV. That's something to be avoided, but the party itself is a dead-end.

Fascism is not a natural law; it’s a sad part of human history. One of the basic fundaments of fascism is violence, fear and peer pressure. These 'incitements' have been used by rulers throughout the history of human civilization. Time to learn from previous mistakes...

Anyhow, it doesn’t really matter much if you and I think Breivik is nutcase or not. What this moron in fact has accomplished (at least in the Nordic countries) is a genuine disgust for anything that comes even close to extreme right-wing populism. They are smoked for years after this.

As I said – everybody hates violence and extreme right-wing populism will forever be connected to Breivik’s terror attack on innocent teenagers on the island, and there’s nothing they can do to change this fact.

Your view on fascism is the romantic one. The sociological definition of fascism is the believe that -since we are stuck in a social darwinistic struggle between countries, ideologies, or races- it's best to organize society as a monoculture with a military build-up. It is easy to see why Germany, Japan, and Italy fell for that trap.

Social darwinism is a compelling belief. You need to kick most of the population, and certainly the military, several times in the head to see the failure of the argument.

When it comes to gassing: There are a lot of references in Breivik's document towards the Netherlands. I can only conclude given recent events that the Netherlands have become an exporter of bigot irrational fears, I have some of those Oslo's kids blood on my hand.

The (very moderate) rightwing party in Norway grew after Breivik's attack.

The Dutch society also fails to tackle rightwing populism at the moment. As a society, we have moved over the last decade from tolerance towards loudmouth bigotry, irrational fears, and we are now starting -though in an innocent manner- to take away basic human rights from Islamic parts of our population. I have been wary of that and am very angry since what I predicted, though in a different form, now happened in Norway.

You think that we won't end up gassing our muslims? The trend is straightforward towards a new form of national-socialism. Yeah, it's unlikely we end up gassing people, but as a society we have little defense against it. I.e., when I talk to you (US I assume) about hate speech, you know exactly what I mean and what will come of it; even Evo's response is in a sense very US. Most people in the Netherlands just allow it at the moment and make fun with it.

There is little to assume that we will move away from rightwing populism, most people are unaware of the threats involved. What I see at the moment in the Netherlands is a state of collective denial: we didn't pull the trigger, so we are not in any way responsible. If I were to say that we are moving towards national-socialism, people would laugh or partly agree and reason that this time is different and it's worth it.

A Very Sad Strange Day

2011-07-24T04:33:00.008+01:00

The above ultra-nationalist, Anders Behring Breivik (32), bombs a ministry and subsequently shoots eighty kids. It looks like he doesn't have any personality disorder whatsoever except for narcism. A well-educated clean rationalist who meticulously targeted not muslims but social democrat youth to stop the multi-cultural society.

And the same day, the news that Amy Winehouse (27) died due to an overdose. Given that she's dead, I wasn't too sure to post the above picture, but well, it's brutally honest; apart from her extreme talent, the woman had severe mental problems.

He lives because he's a control-freak, and he wants to continue his fight; she dies because she was unable to get clean, and what she could have become is lost forever.

Most of the public tries to dismiss the actions of Breivik as that of a lunatic. I disagree, human history is filled with wars and genocides rather than with peace. Face it, ideological violence is the norm.

Re: how does a post-industrial economy work exactly?

2011-07-23T02:51:00.011+01:00

I was a bit annoyed that a thread at the physics forum was closed since it was four years old. Who cares? The same thing happens on LtU often, it's the nature of forums. Anyway, my edited response on going to a post-industrial economy.

It doesn't work. A post-industrial country is defined by de-industrialization, automation through information technology, and a rich financial system. The idea would be that wealth can be created by handling incoming money from foreign investors, through investment into other countries, or -maybe- by exporting/selling very high-tech ideas.

Now, partly de-industrializing an economy is not a bad thing in itself. It makes an economy more robust against world market fluctuations. I.e., if prices fluctuate suddenly, an export driven country like Germany or Japan takes bigger hits than the UK, for example. Also, it may remove parts of globally uncompetitive industries to be replaced by parts which create more value, from Ford to Microsoft and from US Steel to Merrill Lynch. Moreover, if more countries become wealthy, the hope would be that you can trade high-end goods between each other, and everyone will own SUVs and game stations instead of only a few nations being the sole consumers of wealth.

Unfortunately, the bigger picture still is that you can only make money by swapping goods between countries, and handling foreign money, or exporting high-tech ideas, or movies, sometimes don't weigh up against even exporting simple things in bulk, like grain. If more goods come in than goods come out, and you're not making enough money selling services to other economies, you're running a trade deficit, and this can only make a country poorer. This becomes worse when parts of industry are removed instead of swapped towards more high-tech value-creation.

In the end, this is what is happening to the US at the moment. The Chinese banks now hold 3 trillion dollars, prices of imported raw materials (like steel and oil) go up, and people in the US are trading their SUVs for smaller cars whereas Chinese are trading in riksjas for automobiles. Sure, US investors in China made some money by providing credit such that China could construct factories, but those factories now export some very expensive products, and China became a wealth creation machine against the US dollar.

Bottom line: De-industrialization is not a bad thing unless you give away all your manners of wealth creation. It distributes wealth amongst countries, which also isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the de-industrialized country is almost always poorer (relative to others) by definition.

Of course, one might disagree with all the above. There's certainly the case to be made that China is essentially giving away products for free since there are not enough goods returning.

Agnes Obel - Brother Sparrow

2011-07-22T00:09:00.000+01:00

Slime Dress

2011-07-21T01:37:00.001+01:00

Bart Hess made a 'slime dress' for Lady Gaga.

It's also a joke: a 'slime dress' in dutch is an expression for someone who flatters too much.

Refinancing

2011-07-20T22:00:00.012+01:00

A lot of people in the Netherlands don't seem to understand that we will pay for the Greek debt issue, no matter what. There just is a gaping hole of debt which must be filled either through tax money or bank money, so either higher taxes or bigger bills from our banks. It doesn't matter.

The only problem is a technical one. I am not a financial banker, but a solution I would prefer is to build one big bank in Brussels which will buy back all debt of the sovereign nations of the EU. That manner, debt can be bought back at a discount, and that Brussels bank could supervise the debt of the EU nations as a sole broker - nations can be held from running at a high deficit since that bank will only loan a restricted amount of money. A ministry of finance for the EU.

It is not a silver bullet, debt doesn't disappear magically. But it would be a good systemic move forward. In this manner, the national banks take a loss, tax payers will need to be involved, we will still pay for the PIIGS states, but at least government spending can be controlled from that point on.

The silly thing: Suppose people bought Greek debt at 50% and can sell it to the Brussels bank at 70% then a lot of people holding cheap Greek debt, which are not the dutch banks, will make an enormous profit. Where would all that money go?

The next silly thing: The ESFS is buying debt! And the bigger the disturbance in the financial markets is, the cheaper that debt is sold. Don your paranoid hat for an extreme conclusion: the whole crisis is a joke!

All Psychologists are Assholes

2011-07-17T03:34:00.023+01:00

I am listening to the radio tonight, and the subject is Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Of course, a professor in psychology, a woman, is mixed into the discussion to share her expert knowledge on 'Why women are attracted to powerful men.'

The thing with psychologists is that they are brain-washed: according to the ape-model-of-men, all people are present-day hedonists who only follow their basic instincts and are happy only when they their needs are satisfied. Since men are bigger apes than women, this apparently applies double to them.

At least from a professor I would expect some more intelligence, or a hint of adult responsibility, than what fills the average tabloid and not fall for easy stereotyping bartalk, some tuning down of the whole event, like 'We all have/like sex, surely?' I was sorely mistaken. This tart-of-psychology only vented unsubstantiated claims confirming each simplistic explanation that males on top of the hierarchy attract naive females since they want to have a safe environment to procreate. Surely she expects her husband to communicate with grunts while beating his chest and believes she doesn't need voting rights since that must be 'unnatural.'

My take on DSK: Two people had sex in New York, something went wrong, like it daily goes wrong between men and woman probably millions of times. Other people will never find out what happened, only the courts can judge whether anything plausibly morally wrong happened anywhere, and they -if justice is blind- cannot judge on it, since they cannot conclude what something went wrong. A tasteless non-event which is nobodies business.

According to psychologists I am listening to tabloid radio made by monkeys about other monkeys assumed to attract monkeys supported by chit-chat bartalk remarks of another monkey.

Psychologists have no ideals or ethics: there is nothing in their view of the world which lifts humans above apes. According to them, we are all primitive assholes, and therefor all psychologists are assholes themselves.

We want...

2011-07-16T23:36:00.002+01:00

What's up with the above picture? It's about beer, right? Wrong, look again. Almost everybody is wearing a hat: women, men, and if there would be a dog in the picture, I get the feeling it would wear one too.

Where did all the hats go? Did they become an extinct species because of automobiles and cheap heating? If that is true, then in fifty years or so, when oil will definitely have run out, I predict lots of people will wear hats again.

Even Tree Huggers use Wash Machines

2011-07-12T03:30:00.000+01:00

Splendid - Again

2011-07-09T22:39:00.000+01:00

China's Ghost Cities and Malls

2011-07-09T02:01:00.000+01:00

A Potential Joke

2011-07-07T21:56:00.024+01:00

If you don't have height to store potential energy, you need to increase the mass. What is the cost of building a 'battery' by lifting weight which can hold one day of electricity in the Netherlands?

The Netherlands consumes about 100TWh of electricity annually, or about 300GWh a day. With a tenfold increase in height of the proposed solution -lift a thousand tonnes per installation- to fifty metres, one can store about 100kWh per installation. So one would need ten for 1MWh, ten thousand for 1GWh, three million for 300GWh, about one city of dead weight. Three million installations at a low bulk cost of, say, two hundred fifty thousand euros each gives 750 billion euros.

The Tianhuangping Pumped-Storage Hydro Plant in China has a reservoir capacity of eight million cubic meters with a vertical distance of 600 m; the reservoir can provide about 13 GWh. The equivalent by lifting dead weight would cost around 30 billion euros.
Taisun, in China, is the world's strongest crane and has a safe working load of 20,000 metric tons. It can hold about 4MWh, at a cost of 28 million €.
The world's largest battery is located in Fairbanks, Alaska. It consists of 14 thousand industrial NiCad cells on about the size of a football field and can provide 40MW for 7 minutes, or also about 4MWh, at a cost of 25 million €. You'ld need seventy-five thousand warehouses to store one day of dutch electricity consumption.

The price of lifting weight would be 0.4Wh/€ versus 0.2Wh/€ for the Fairbanks battery; the cost of the Taisun crane is similar to the battery, so that may be closer to reality than my estimate. Bottom line: it doesn't seem to matter whether you buy NiCad batteries or a crane, but batteries need to be replaced.
The cost of the Tianhuangping hydro plant is about 20Wh/€, but I wouldn't know where to buy twenty-five lakes with a 600m drop in the EU.

Wind Physics and Gravity Batteries

2011-07-05T15:54:00.020+01:00

At the current rate of oil consumption, the world will run out of it in twenty years. The Netherlands is investing somewhat into wind energy since that's one of the few renewable resources around in our country.

Now the obvious problem with wind energy is that it is unreliable, so people are looking at manners in which to store that energy. The most popular solution is to store overspill energy into a lake, a gigantic gravity battery, by pumping water into -sometimes, out of- it and harvesting that energy at a later stage with generators. A proposal is to construct a massive lake, 40 metres deep, in the sea.

It sounds wasteful to me. What about storing energy directly at your house by lifting matter? If you use lead instead of water, you need less volume/height, and a mechanical solution should have better efficiency than a 'hydraulic' solution.

So I arrived at the following basic physics question: Suppose that you store energy by lifting matter, and suppose that system runs at 90% efficiency, and suppose the mass is lifted (at most) 5 metres. What amount of matter do you need to store the equivalent of one day of electric energy for one household, annual 4200kWh consumption?

The answer is about a million kilos or a thousand tonnes, or about the weight of 700 cars, or about 90m^3 of lead.

I am actually not only kidding here. If we need to build a North Sea full of windmills, and a 'city' full of dead weight which can be raised fifty metres to solve an energy problem, then -heck- go for it.

Amadou & Mariam: Sabali

2011-07-04T17:49:00.000+01:00

The Cost of Globalization and the Free Market

2011-06-30T22:32:00.032+01:00

What was the role of the hedge funds in the Greek debt crisis? They sold the Greek bonds, let fear grow rampant around the EU, bought back the bonds at an enormous discount, and secured themselves with either a risky credit default swap, or going short on the debts of Spain and Ireland.

As long as the PIIGS situation continues, they stand to make billions either way. If you're paranoid enough, it is just a big scheme between the credit reference agencies and wealthy investors: Whoever holds the rating, decides on the outcome. It's like a casino where the owner doesn't roll but puts the dice on the table, and that in the combination which favors him best. And the EU governments, banks, pension funds and tax payers are the chips.

I am not too paranoid, but I recognize a systemic risk when I see one; and aside from that, I find the scheme perverse. Neither am I a fan of sharia, Islamic law, but at least they got right that banks should work for the people, not against them - under Islamic law, banks are not allowed loan shark deals.

In the US, Fox is propagating that all this is not due to not enough regulation, but too much off it. Who's buying that still? As far as I am concerned, it is time to stop worrying about the Greek situation and make a system which is both stable and just - I want my children to grow up as wealthy as I did. And there's another reason for reconsidering the system.

The simple fact is that the financial markets have become too good at extracting money out of the western economies. And, in a global playing field, they cash in on our industries and ship that money to the developing countries. The advantage should be that we distribute wealth around the globe, I am not against that.

But what is happening? We make maoists trillionaires -I don't think we'll see any money back- and double the amount of billionaires in India each year. We are not distributing wealth, we are exacerbating the divide between the rich and the poor, both in the western and in the developing countries.

And now there is talk about deleveraging EU debt with economies which decreasingly hold industrial output. Right, shrink the economies and simultaneously ship out all the money to our competitors! Who is buying into that pipe dream? Just working off debt might have worked in the fifties, but not in a global competitive market.

We should learn from the best capitalists in the world, the Chinese, and rethink the system:

'Nationalize' the banks in the EU region. We should secure the savings of EU inhabitants, stop insane yields on bonds, and make investment in the EU attractive or pseudo-mandatory.
Run the governments at a fiscal surplus. We should stop them from blowing up the monetary system.
Disband or strongly regulate the financial markets. We should stop the insane speed at which money is pouring out.
Create EU rating agencies. It's just against financial sagacity to have US agencies rate EU investment.
Invest in industrial growth in the EU. We should create a job-rich market where everyone is reasonably wealthy. For the rich core of Europe, it is better to have reasonably rich neighbors in the EU, than jobless Germans, starving Polish and rich Chinese.
Distribute wealth to other countries by investing into durable growth only. When we have our economies durable, then we can think about shipping part of that. I don't see why we should destroy our reasonably environment-friendly economies to start wasteful, polluting, and unfair economies on other continents.

It is not too late, we are incredibly rich in the EU, that won't go away any time soon. But at the moment, the system needs fixing.

Why not write my own unsubstantiated articles?

Unpaid Bills

2011-06-25T23:35:00.048+01:00

Greece rigged the books, allowed their debt to float to a record high of 350 billion, and cannot borrow money anymore since they are now bankrupt. Is it the end of the story for them?

One might wonder how this situation arose. Likely, the Greeks had a socialist bureaucratic welfare state which subsidized itself by just printing more Drachmas whenever they ran out of money. Of course, this is just an implicit manner of taxing the population. Some might say it is even a fair scheme for a corrupt state in which many -especially the rich- avoid paying taxes all together. That scheme stopped working when they joined the Euro. In the end, the bureaucracy just kept on borrowing money until they hit a hard brick wall.

The EU seems to be kicking the can: they pay the bills now. Some of that money goes to the Greeks, but also to the EU bankers and investors who hold Greek debt.

For the financial markets, the situation is a bonanza. There's nothing nicer than to stack a company full with debt, stick a triple A rating on it, secure yourself with a credit default swap, and just watch the money pour in from all directions until the situation blows up, in which case you make even more money. It happened with the subprime mortgages in the US, it now happened to the EU.

The Greek population is fed up with it, and most financial analysts expect the Greeks to default. A five year credit default swap on ten million Euros now costs two million each year; the market is always right, it is hard to disagree with that.

And why wouldn't the Greek populace default? There are only ten million people in Greece, so a short calculation gives that each owes about thirty-five thousand Euros. I estimate that the mean -not average- income in Greece is about ten thousand Euros. A default would present them with a gift of three to four year salaries per capita, and a chance to restart the economy. Even if you run the risk of destroying the banks, they would need to be nationalized, that seems like a great deal.

However, in the case of a unilateral default, the EU only has one option left: Kick Greece out of the Euro and EU, and lay the country to waste economically for the irresponsible manner in which they were spending EU's money and thereby undermining the Euro. Locally, also, the banks will be in turmoil, and the EU states probably will be forced to take over the gaping hole of debt left by the Greeks bonds. Nobody wins, it will not happen.

So what will happen? The EU has no other choice than to put the burden of that debt on itself, the tax paying population and banks, effectively rewriting part of that debt. They cannot allow the Euro to be undermined, and government debt -to some extent- will always be a monetary illusion since the states hold the money printing press. It isn't nice, but, in the end, they can afford to do so; even at the risk of blowing up the whole system.

Of course, the German, French, Italian and British states are now bickering on the portion of the bill they need to cough up. Some nations hold massive investments, while others downgraded their exposure to Greece to a minimum, maybe even didn't join the Eurozone. The EU is under massive stress; and yes, it could collapse.

With the current bailout, the EU governments will end up holding a great stake in the Greece economy, the government will not be allowed another spending spree. Greece will be forced to restructure its economy, the illusionary socialist welfare state will be torn down, and the populace will be forced to explicitly pay the state bill through their taxes.

But at the same time there is no other option than to restructure the Greek debt. The hundreds of billions debt is a virtual gun aimed at the head of the Euro currency; as long as Greece has the option to default, thereby squeezing the trigger, this sword of Damocles will be hanging above the Eurozone. Possibly, an eased default where Greece will be denied EU funds for a decade is an option - but directly opposed to the EU's wish to develop the peripher countries.

After the restructuring, there is the option to turn Greece into a big factory to get some of the bill back. But how to do that to an internationally uncompetitive and corrupt state is still a puzzle; having the government spend more and just grow Greek billionaires is certainly not an option. Call me paranoid, but the EU states would be wise to send their accountants, maybe even secret services, after each Euro of the last one billion 'investment' package.

The Greek malakas invited the EU to a party and left without paying the bills. The populace is not responsible for that. But whoever is, whoever rigged the books and heisted billions out of the EU, should be hung from a tree.

(A spiced-up simplified story written by someone who is essentially clueless about economics.)

Poolside - "Do You Believe?"

2011-06-16T02:34:00.000+01:00

33 Ways To Stay Creative

2011-06-09T10:28:00.000+01:00

From www.mymodernmet.com.

Collatz may be Proven

2011-06-02T17:37:00.010+01:00

Gerhard Opfer has posted a paper that claims to resolve the famous Collatz conjecture.

Start with a positive number n and repeatedly apply these simple rules:
If n = 1, stop.
If n is even, divide n by 2.
If n is odd, multiply n by 3 and add 1.

In 1937, Lothar Collatz asked whether this procedure always stops for every positive starting value of n. If Gerhard Opfer is correct, we can finally say that indeed it always stops.

I have looked at this myself for fun once. Collatz sequences are interesting when you look at the bit representation of the numbers: Step 2 becomes n >> 1, right-shift one bit. Step 3 becomes n << 1 + n + 1, left-shift the argument one bit and add the argument and one.

For instance, let's take an arbitrary uneven number and see what happens on step 3, the only interesting step in the function.

Step 3:

     110011
    1100110
          1
   --------+
   10011010

To me, the example screams that the Collatz conjecture is about bit cancellation. I.e., that there is an inductive argument on sequences of bits. Question would be: What is the decreasing measure on bit sequences with each iteration of Collatz?

(It's interesting to modify the definition a bit by removing step 2 and terminating on a sequence which just consist of a one followed by zeroes.)

Subterranean Homesick Blues

2011-05-22T20:53:00.000+01:00

Man can't sing. Man can't play guitar. Man can't play harp. But man, can he make music.

Diggy Dex ft. Jenny Lane - Dezelfde spijt

2011-05-16T12:34:00.000+01:00

Любовь Орлова

2011-05-06T17:13:00.000+01:00

Sanity

2011-04-28T14:06:00.004+01:00

Stuff you need to accept to be declared sane:

People with a handicap are criminals.
People with the common flu are criminals.
People who mourn are whining.
People who slaunder are not criminals.
People of age twenty-one are not adults.
Psychiatrists are benevolent.

Looks like I am going to be insane for a long while.

P, NP and Edmonds' Blossom Algorithm

2011-04-28T10:44:00.006+01:00

I've been asked why I am one of the few people who believe that P might equal NP. To answer that, let's dive into the start of the previous century with the following question:
[MATCH] A matching in a graph is a set of edges, no two of which meet at a common vertex. A maximum matching is a matching of maximum cardinality. Is matching in P?
During the start of the previous century, almost all mathematicians believed MATCH to be in NP. It was obvious for them by the following reasoning: We -mathematicians- are smart. Since We are smart, and no polynomial algorithm has been found for MATCH, it is clearly true that MATCH is in NP. QED.

True, until mr. Edmonds came along and gave a polynomial algorithm for matching.

The fact that people believe something to be true doesn't make it true. And, generalizing that, in my opinion, therefor P=NP should be seen as an open conjecture.

The open question I've looked at, of course, is: Why, or why not, does SAT reduce to MATCH? But, that's for later.

3Pad

2011-04-18T01:31:00.000+01:00

Just a prediction: After the iPad, what will -must- follow. The 3D iPad, of course, what else? Wondering how many years it will take...

Robots enter Fukushima reactor building

2011-04-17T23:13:00.000+01:00

PINA - Wim Wenders

2011-02-18T20:34:00.010+01:00

I am so excited and full of expectation about this 3D film. Strange, since I rarely go to dance events but usually enjoy them. Stranger even, since I am not that big on 3D. Most movies are about the visual and intellectual narrative, that third extra dimension usually doesn't seem to add that much to the story. Though sometimes I wonder if they already found the vocabulary of third dimensional stylistic elements.

Unexpectedly, so far, I found that 3D adds the most to sports if anything. I mean, if you have that perfectly passed, handled, and placed goal you just crave to see that skill in 3D. As often as possible. And from all angles, thank you! I am not that big a sports fan but I would rather buy a 3D enabled television for that experience than for the current 3D gimmicky movies.

But now dance... I cannot phantom another three dimensional art form which matches 3D movies that well and which should be able to amplify the best of both experiences in truly novel manners. So, I am very thrilled to go and see this movie by Wim Wenders. I don't expect a lot of new stylistic elements, but this could be a match made in heaven.

Egypt, Political Satire next to KFC

2011-02-12T19:30:00.001+01:00

Prank on a Call Center

2011-02-04T17:03:00.000+01:00

Plain White T's - Rhythm Of Love

2011-02-03T03:59:00.000+01:00

Total central government debt % of GDP

2011-01-25T04:06:00.000+01:00

Variable	Total central government debt % of GDP
Type	Stocks: Outstanding amounts
Unit	Percentage
Frequency	Annual
Time period	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Time period
Greece	105.2	103.7	103.6	108.9	109.7	109.2	105.8	108.3	110.3	107.5	105.8	109.6	125.7
Italy	111.0	108.7	106.7	103.6	102.7	99.5	96.8	96.2	97.5	96.7	95.2	98.0	106.6
Belgium	109.9	105.3	103.4	99.5	99.1	97.9	95.4	92.8	91.8	87.6	85.3	90.2	95.3
Iceland	46.2	40.7	35.3	33.8	39.2	35.3	33.3	28.2	19.4	24.8	23.2	44.3	87.2
Portugal	58.0	54.8	55.1	54.1	56.0	58.7	60.2	63.0	68.2	69.8	69.2	71.2	81.1
United Kingdom	..	49.7	44.1	42.2	38.8	39.1	38.7	40.0	43.4	43.3	42.6	61.3	75.1
Hungary	60.9	59.0	59.1	54.1	50.5	53.6	56.3	55.7	58.1	61.9	61.3	68.2	72.7
Austria	59.2	59.9	62.0	61.2	60.7	60.4	60.9	62.2	62.1	60.6	58.1	59.6	64.3
France	45.6	46.3	47.8	47.4	48.3	49.9	51.9	52.6	53.3	52.1	52.1	54.2	60.8
United States	45.4	42.5	39.0	33.9	32.4	33.2	34.9	36.0	36.1	36.0	35.6	40.0	53.1
Netherlands	53.9	52.0	49.2	44.1	41.3	41.5	43.0	43.8	43.0	39.2	37.8	50.1	49.9
Poland	43.0	39.5	39.7	35.8	36.4	40.6	44.9	43.6	44.8	45.1	42.6	44.8	47.1
Turkey	32.9	31.0	39.8	38.2	74.1	69.2	62.2	56.6	51.1	45.5	39.6	40.0	46.3
Spain	55.3	53.6	52.3	49.9	46.3	43.9	40.7	39.3	36.4	33.0	30.0	33.7	46.1
Ireland	57.4	47.8	44.1	34.8	30.9	27.9	26.9	25.4	23.6	20.3	19.8	27.7	46.0
Germany	24.3	26.1	34.1	34.1	34.6	36.1	37.7	39.2	40.4	40.9	39.4	38.8	43.8
Sweden	74.1	72.0	64.0	56.9	48.6	46.8	47.7	46.6	46.2	42.3	36.4	35.5	37.8
Denmark	69.1	64.0	60.9	54.8	52.0	51.6	49.6	47.0	39.3	32.7	27.8	32.4	37.8
Finland	65.0	59.9	55.7	48.0	44.4	41.3	43.5	41.9	38.2	35.6	31.2	29.5	37.6
Canada	52.7	50.1	46.7	40.9	39.7	38.1	35.9	32.1	30.2	28.0	25.1	28.6	35.7
Slovenia	..	..	..	..	..	..	26.9	27.1	26.9	25.8	23.2	21.3	34.1
Slovak Republic	20.8	22.5	22.7	23.9	36.0	35.1	35.1	38.4	33.1	29.2	28.1	26.3	33.6
Korea	10.0	14.3	16.3	16.7	17.4	17.6	20.7	23.7	27.6	30.1	29.7	29.0	32.6
Czech Republic	9.6	9.8	11.0	13.2	14.7	16.1	19.1	21.1	23.2	24.9	25.2	27.1	32.5
Mexico	23.5	25.4	23.3	21.2	20.5	21.9	22.1	20.7	20.2	20.5	21.0	24.5	28.2
New Zealand	36.3	37.9	35.1	32.2	30.2	28.5	26.4	23.8	22.1	21.6	20.4	20.6	27.5
Norway	24.7	22.2	20.9	19.3	18.1	19.0	21.3	18.4	17.2	12.5	11.7	13.8	26.1
Switzerland	25.3	27.7	25.4	25.6	24.8	28.2	28.3	28.1	28.1	25.2	23.2	22.5	20.7
Luxembourg	3.7	4.1	3.5	3.2	3.1	2.7	1.7	1.4	0.8	1.4	1.4	8.2	8.6
Australia	18.5	15.6	13.8	11.4	9.6	8.6	7.5	6.7	6.3	5.8	5.2	4.9	8.1
Chile	13.2	12.5	13.7	13.6	14.9	15.7	13.0	10.7	7.3	5.3	4.1	5.2	6.1
Japan	76.7	87.7	97.0	106.1	123.5	137.6	140.9	156.7	164.3	161.4	164.2	178.0	..
Israel	103.0	103.8	92.9	83.2	87.4	95.0	97.5	96.4	91.9	82.8	76.4	75.4	..

Adele - Rolling In The Deep

2011-01-20T02:34:00.001+01:00

There's a fire starting in my heart,

Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark

Finally, I can see you crystal clear.

Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your ship there.

See how I leave, with every piece of you

Don't underestimate the things that I will do.

There's a fire starting in my heart,

Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark

The scars of your love, remind me of us.

They keep me thinking that we almost had it all

The scars of your love, they leave me breathless

I can't help feeling...

We could have had it all... (you're gonna wish you, never had met me)...

Rolling in the Deep (Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep)

Your had my heart... (you're gonna wish you)... Inside of your hand (Never had met me)

And you played it... (Tears are gonna fall)... To the beat (Rolling in the deep)

Baby I have no story to be told,

But I've heard one of you and I'm gonna make your head burn.

Think of me in the depths of your despair.

Making a home down there, as mine sure won't be shared.

The scars of your love, remind you of us.

They keep me thinking that we almost had it all

The scars of your love, they leave me breathless

I can't help feeling...

We could have had it all... (you're gonna wish you never had met me)... Rolling in the Deep (Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep)

Your had my heart... (you're gonna wish you)... inside of your hand (Never had met me)

And you played it... (Tears are gonna fall)... To the beat (Rolling in the deep)

Could have had it all

Rolling in the deep.

You had my heart inside of your hand,

But you played it with your beating

Throw yourself through every open door (Whoa)

Count your blessings to find what look for (Whoa-uh)

Turn my sorrow into treasured gold (Whoa)

And pay me back in kind- You reap just what you sow.

(You're gonna wish you... Never had met me)

We could have had it all (Tears are gonna fall... Rolling in the deep)

We could have had it all yeah ( you're gonna wish you... never had met me)

It all. (Tears are gonna fall)

It all

It all (Rolling in the deep)

We could have had it all (you're gonna wish you, never had met me)

Rolling in the deep (Tears are gonna fall rolling in the deep)

You had my heart inside... (you're gonna wish you)... of your hand (Never had met me)

And you played it... (Tears are gonna fall)... to the beat (Rolling in the deep)

We could have had it all ( you're wish you never had met me)

Rolling in the deep (tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep)

You had my heart... ( you're gonna wish you)... Inside of your hand (Never had met me)

But you played it

You played it.

You played it to the beat.

Dutch Wikileaks Cables: Indecent and Embarrassing

2011-01-18T10:34:00.012+01:00

I normally don't write my own flawed, simplistic and private opinions into a blog; I change opinions as fast as clothes. Who am I to comment, but... Ah well, see what I think about it in a year or so.

The Wikileaks organization has distributed the cables to some commercial and state-sponsored media in the Netherlands. My feelings so far: Wikileaks, positive for doing what they do - US, neutral for being what they are - Netherlands, negative for being gullible.

The cables exposed private opinions of US diplomats which tried to gather information from people and subsequently tried to influence the decision making process of Dutch politicians. Moreover, Dutch politicians, bureaucrats and police are sharing too much or even confidential information with the US embassy.

The first opened cables were with respect to the previous Afghan mission. Both a party and our then vice prime minister were exposed to the US embassy as the primary adversaries - I am not sure it was that simple. The US embassy subsequently went to great length to influence that decision, some of our psychological weak points were revealing and a bit demeaning.

One of our top diplomats touted the US actions as 'indecent.' I don't agree. The US politics is a complex conglomerate of lobbying individuals which endeavour to implement private goals, usually achieved by team-play. That the US diplomats do similar here, is just a bit out of line with the traditional Dutch principled approach to political issues; at least, what remains of that. Moreover, I hardly expect our own embassies to act differently.

The more grave issues arrived subsequently. Okay, the US tried to sell us a JSF we might not need; whatever, it's more economics than politics. My main beef is with the fact that Dutchmen willingly supply the US embassy with private opinions bordering on stupidity ("Please, shoot this African warlord,") or civil sensitive lawfully-protected data ("Here are the names and telephone numbers of suspected terrorists.") What the hell is going on here?

The Dutch, traditionally, have a very favorable view of the US and its citizens. Historically, the reasons for that are the liberation of the Netherlands by US allied forces, the support in building the post-WWII economy, the shared front against communist influences, and an overwhelming exposure to US culture through music, movies, tv-series, and other media.

However, despite that and the common European heritage of both, the Dutch certainly aren't that culturally close to the US. The same, but different, the average US and Dutch citizens have very different views on manners, family values, courting and sex, value of friendships, free speech, the right to bear arms, religion, the role of the state, individual social responsibilities, monetary policies, economic policies, third-world policies, international policy, nationalism and -that global US dream- capitalism.

But, fascism and communism are gone, now replaced by the post-9/11-outrage common goal. The Bush doctrine has implemented a new dichotomy, 'a war on terrorism,' possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the Netherlands, the US events, actions and rhetorics gave further rise to a growing tension between the traditional Dutch and the Islamic immigrant, but also the typically Dutch unrespectful comments gave a fundamentalist response: Two murders of local outspoken public Dutch citizens.

The Dutch follow the US, it is assumed we are similar and serve common Truman-like goals. So, our politicians and public are willing to share information and more. But the questionable Bush doctrine, "Lets bring the war to them!" is mostly a response to local US outrage. Was there really a war? Incidents, even if they are outrageous and cost many innocent lives, are not a war. The Iraq interventions were. The Afghan intervention is dubious.

The strangest observation in the Dutch discussion of the possible Afghan 'policing' mission, is that the central 'humanistic' question is never asked. So, we are supposed to go and help the poor people there. Do they want us to help them? Anything else but a locally democratically supported action is not aid, but a military intervention which can back-fire in more local eastern Islamic, fundamental, hatred against the US and the occupying European forces. Since when are we part of that discussion? Since we want to help third-world countries through the UN and the NATO, or since we are part of a construed emotional US reaction, a 'war on terror?'

The Dutch reason the same as in the fifties: What is good for the US is good for us. But, the provincial, naive, principled Netherlands is gone, so are the rural, heterogenous, religious states of the US. Like the US, the media condemns us to consume one-liners by media-trained politicians. Can we please go back to idealistic, thorough, political and economic discussions and get this world to work?

The big problem exposed by the cables with our naive politicians and bureaucrats, which spoke with the US embassy, is that each of them should have prudently stuck to the economic and diplomatic national Dutch issues instead of making donkeys of themselves. The embarrassment should not be on the US side.

Unfortunately, the principled approach is under severe pressure. The Dutch lefties last Sunday have tried to define an answer to the current after-9/11, partly anti-Islam driven, Dutch minority government which wants the Afghan mission. With a strategy which seems to be copied straight from the Obama campaign, mostly a few nationalistic, and optimistic, populist simplistic sentiments and some hatred towards the other side, I should be convinced to vote on the lefties. Even in that everybody is following the trend-setting US: Not a principled discussion in sight - the Dutch cease to think.

God bless the US and the fact that I live in the Netherlands. Though that latter fact may be dubious.

Motorola Atrix 4G Hands-On

2011-01-06T23:43:00.001+01:00

Awesome. Is it a phone, a desktop, or a media center? Turns out, it's all three of them:

For me, actually everything which has more than 32MB ram, runs Linux and has Vi/Gcc classifies as a development machine. How difficult is it to install the Gnu Compiler Collection on it?

World of Warcraft with Microsoft Kinect

2010-12-29T03:35:00.000+01:00

Epic Docs Animation

2010-12-23T00:13:00.000+01:00

No News

2010-12-22T16:31:00.001+01:00

I've been posting about the WikiLeaks soap a bit, also to see what I personally think about it. If you take down all rhetorics, the whole enchilada boils down to:

"Diplomats, and government institutions, overestimate their own importance."

We all know the game and the players. The general public is not stupid, and shouldn't be sheep-herded into dumb flocks. The strikingly simple reaction by the Russian government was the correct one: "We don't care, and will just ignore whatever is leaked." They have their own problems and the dealings of the US government are just well-known by the players even if never stated publicly until now. What probably will be found in the US cables is the extension of a nationalistic company-interests-driven policy. At worst, it will cause some embarrassment. Where's the news exactly?

The question is what the US will do in response. More secrecy, or more transparency? As a citizen of this world, I'ld hope for more transparency. There are just not that many interesting secrets a government can, or should, hold.

CIA Launches WTF to Investigate Wikileaks

2010-12-22T15:59:00.000+01:00

In an hilarious move, the CIA has launched the WikiLeaks Task Force (WTF) to investigate, possibly handle, the damage done by the leaked diplomatic cables. Hilarious probably only to Internet-savvy people, since WTF is the common acronym for "What the F*ck?!," which nicely summarizes some of the US government's reaction.

Handshake Solutions

2010-12-21T14:13:00.000+01:00

A spin-off of Philips, named Handshake Solution, has recently been buried. I am rather surprised at this. Handshake Solutions designed clockless asynchronous integrated circuits with low power consumption. Normal ICs spend a lot of their space budget on forwarding the clock signal, and clocked chips dissipate a lot of heat and noise just to keep everything in step, even when doing nothing that clock just ticks away.

I thought this was difficult but revolutionary technology with a bright future given the coming "Internet of Things" and multi-core machines with hundreds of cores. The spin-off was terminated but NXP still manufactures the chips.

Looks like a case where too early in being right means being wrong.

Wikileaks and Bank of America

2010-12-18T18:25:00.002+01:00

The Bank of America has decided that it will follow in the footsteps of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, and halt all its transactions that it believes are intended for WikiLeaks, including donations in support of the organization. 'This decision, is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.'

Please don your tin-foil hat for the following analyses from Slashdot.

Wikileaks is supposedly in possession of the hard drive of a Bank of America executive.
Wikileaks may become subject to criminal charges on terrorism. The bank may be avoiding future heavy fines for supporting 'terrorists'.
Wikileaks/Assange are hindered in gathering funds for lawyers.

But, true, it certainly looks like The Bank of America acts as an extension of the US government, being collaborative, or even pressured.

To me, Wikileaks is journalism, not terrorism. Is the US giving up on principal democratic rights under the flag of ultra-nationalistic, or even outright fascist, tendencies? By extension, can we expect a more aggressive nationalistic US in the future, with possible China-like monitoring of the Internet as to avoid thought-crimes by its citizens? The overall effect on me, as a European, is roughly: 'If the US feels like, let them dig their own nationalistic grave.'

(Note that fascism has little to do with Jews and such, that is national-socialism, but has everything to do with suppression and organizing a society in a military manner.)

Introducing Word Lens

2010-12-18T00:50:00.000+01:00

Lego Antikythera Mechanism

2010-12-16T16:28:00.000+01:00

Wikileaks in Court

2010-12-15T22:06:00.004+01:00

A Dutch judge made a strange move today. In the decision to send back Afghanistan refugees, the judge decided to take the statements by the ministry used during due process less into account. Instead, given information supplied by Wikileaks, the refugees may stay.

The relevant part of the decision:

" (...) De rechtbank is er niet langer van overtuigd dat het feitencomplex waarop de ambtsberichten zijn gebaseerd voor juist moet worden gehouden."

Translated:

"(...) The court is no longer convinced that the complex of facts on which the official messages are based can still be seen as valid."

In short, the judge thinks governments may be lying.

Kinect Hand Detection

2010-12-15T00:51:00.000+01:00

DDoS, Teenagers and Laws

2010-12-13T20:54:00.007+01:00

In my country, the police arrested two teenagers for their part in the DDoS of sites by the flock Anonymous in response to the arrest of Assange, the freezing of accounts, and the denial to host Wikileaks. It's a bit of a bullshit game with an ignorant police showing their muscle against cyber-game playing teenagers. I find it laughable to pick on teenagers for what can only be considered silly pestering games and am a bit appalled by the media coverage of it.

What interests me is whether a DDoS 'attack' is actually a crime or can be seen as a valid means of cyber protest. Despite the war-games like rhetorics such as "Low Orbit Ion Cannon," "Operation Payback," and "Fire in the Hole!", there is no breaking and entering of digital goods, no theft of information. Instead, a machine is hindered in doing its job, the processing of information.

But that is pretty normal in a democratic protest. It's entirely equivalent to laying in front of train moving nuclear material, taking part in a picket line in front of a bank, or bothering office employees by protesting through making lots of noise.

I am not sure about (Dutch) law here. But, it seems ridiculous to condemn teenagers to jail for normal democratic processes.

(One of the kids was on the radio; of course, he claimed a similar defense.)

Transparency

2010-12-10T23:39:00.001+01:00

Free (Condoms for) Assange?

2010-12-08T04:42:00.002+01:00

Apparently Wikileaks founder Assange is in a British jail, for a week, since his condoms broke on two separate occasions of consensual sex and the horny guy didn't know when to quit.

Malicious intent? Seems more like bad luck. Or rather, maybe someone should explain to the guy to clip his damned dirty fingernails before applying the rubber to his bazooka. Whatever, give the guy a reprimand, a sex education and a cigar and the women two bunches of flowers.

A Turing Machine - Overview

2010-11-29T18:32:00.000+01:00

A Turing machine is a theoretical concept used as a precise vehicle for describing computation. As such, one would never build one since, as the video shows, it is way too slow in practice and mostly only interesting as an abstract machine to prove properties over. But still, to finally see one implemented in practice in a gorgeous apparatus is overwhelming. Every CS department should have one as a teaching aid.

INTO THE COSMOS - Architeq/Chopsy

2010-10-21T21:14:00.000+01:00

Stargazer Live [Miku's 39 ginving day concert]

2010-10-21T16:55:00.000+01:00

MakerLegoBot: Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer

2010-10-20T16:22:00.000+01:00

The Internet of Things

2010-10-19T13:23:00.000+01:00

Pulse of the Nation: U.S. Mood Throughout the Day inferred from Twitter

2010-10-17T14:21:00.000+01:00

World's first flight by "flapless" aircraft

2010-10-14T15:40:00.000+01:00

Nice date

2010-10-10T10:28:00.000+01:00

There a lot of jokes around 10/10/10 on the web. A cheesy one:

There are only 10 kinds of people: Those who can count binary, and those who can't.

Muhahaha

Making Stuff Tick

2010-10-09T12:54:00.003+01:00

Once in a while I read stuff on sensor networks, and it is interesting how bafflingly difficult the simplest problems are in that context.

A sensor network node is (usually) defined as a small piece of hardware including a radio, a battery, and a few simple sensors and actuators. The most important aspect to optimize against is battery life; in many applications nodes will just sleep most of the time. Academically, a sensor network comprises a distributed loosely connected network of uniform nodes. Non-academically, admittedly, sensor networks will often be small (less than a hundred nodes), consist of a sink, usually tethered to a network and a power supply, and anchor nodes may be developed in a network, for instance, for positioning/triangualization reasons. Often, just the addition of a few specialized nodes greatly simplifies design and tree-spanning protocols with a root node just work well.

However, for robust development of protocols for self-organizing networks, often the academic view is taken. So, a small, exercise:

Assume a thousand nodes, make them all blink at 1Hz at roughly the same time while preserving battery life.

Chromepad Demo

2010-10-06T16:03:00.000+01:00

Google in Antartica?

2010-10-02T13:45:00.000+01:00

View Larger Map

Is College Worth it?

2010-09-27T17:26:00.000+01:00

This is just a reminder to digest once and post a follow-up to this.

QNX fast boot on Intel Atom / Kontron nanoETXexpress-SP

2010-09-25T19:57:00.000+01:00

Javascript Fractal Tree

2010-09-17T20:44:00.001+01:00

I was wondering how to teach programming to kids these days, and I ended up with that teaching them javascript and general recursion would probably be a great start. So, I hacked this for fun. (You should see a tree, otherwise you'll need a browser with javascript and HTML5 -canvas- support.)

Mathematician needs to be Shot

2010-08-29T19:16:00.001+01:00

I was reading up on Galois connections, which seems all the thong, and all that.

Now you've got lower, and upper adjoins, denoted f^* and f_*.

One can shoot people for wasting one's time, right?

Puhleease?

An Opera Invitation

2010-08-27T18:43:00.002+01:00

Cat in Bin

2010-08-26T12:35:00.002+01:00

The Key Message is Friendship

2010-08-22T23:01:00.000+01:00

From the BBC/Reuters.

How Sorting Algorithms Sound Like

2010-08-20T20:37:00.002+01:00

What about Now?

2010-08-18T18:00:00.001+01:00

This is just a funny post, for, erm, well, fun, really.

Time has a past, a present and a future. And, for some reason, time is fixed. Westerners fix it around the presumed birth date of a guy, Chinese are not really sure, but time surely started with the reign of an emperor, and Arabs are sure time started when some guy took his holidays very serious sometime ago.

I say, we get rid of all the prejudice and start a calendar which starts time at, well, now. Just imagine how convenient it'll be. Make an appointment two weeks from now, just look ahead two weeks in your calendar, rip out a page each day. Or, your favorite birthday of your pet dog, well just three months and fifteen days from your own birthdate.

The good thing, no computer ever needs to synchronize anything anymore, since everything is relative to now, which is well, just now, at this exact moment in time.

Sure, historians might not like it, but hey, it's surely fixable.

Lets face it. The fact is that stuff happens now, not yesterday, and surely not tomorrow.

Why I think Deolalikar's Proof Probably is Wrong

2010-08-18T10:17:00.005+01:00

First off, I don't hold a PhD in mathematics and I didn't read his proof in full, that is to the experts. However, I know a few things, and this is a high-level comment on his attempt, mostly from what I got from other people.

What's Up With That P=NP Question Anyway?

It dives into a fundamental question of computer science which just states that it is sometimes very hard to find a solution to a problem, but very easy to verify it.

A good analogy is doing groceries. Say, you did your groceries and you want to fit them into the back of your trunk. Will it fit?

Now, it is hard to find whether a solution exists to the above problem. You might need to try all possible ways of packing them into your trunk, before you find out that they do, or maybe don't, fit. But is easy to verify any given solution, just pack your stuff according to a description and see if it fits, and you're done.

What's Up With That Phase Transition Anyway?

Phase transition is also an easy concept. When given the above problem 'fitting groceries in my trunk,' it basically deals with for what list of groceries you might find a solution fast.

In case you bought two match-boxes, and try to fit them, you can easily determine a solution. The problem is underconstrained. In case you also bought two refrigerators, you can easily see there isn't a solution, just making one fit may already be hard. The problem is overconstrained. But for a lot of lists of groceries, which might fit seemingly, or might just not, you're on a phase transition bound where, suddenly, there are no computer programs which can determine in a fast manner whether they'll fit or not. The best computer programs may even take the rest of the life of this universe spending time determining that.

Does That Matter?

The problem is that we don't know whether better programs can exist. And that's the heart of the problem. Oversimplifying the fitting problem again: If P!=NP, which it does pragmatically at the moment, no algorithms exists, and if P=NP, somewhere an algorithm may exist.

What Did Deolalikar Probably Do?

I didn't read his proposal. But he starts of with a construction, assumes P=NP, and shows that that, according to what we know now, cannot compute fast solutions since we'll hit phase transitions. But that's the crux: Phase transitions only exist since we don't have fast algorithms, therefor most of us assume P!=NP. He just proved his own assumption.

Pragmatically, he may be right. But, pragmatically, for a lot of applications, 22/7 just equals π.