Virtual World

I read a great article from the NY Times about Dr. Bostrom's theory that we might be living in a virtual world.

The great part was that it used a completely logical argument for this. Here's a quick run-through. Within around 50 years we will have a computer with the processing power of all of humanity's brains combined. Within 100 years such machines will be totally commonplace. A simulation of a complete human world will be as easy to run as something like the Sims or WoW is now.
For a number of reasons, future people are likely to simulate humanity. First, scientists will want to know more about the development of their ancestors. Second, playing with people, place or events you're familiar with is fun - witness the success of the Civilization series. Third, even if this was developed by some non-human race, they'd have fun playing with us too -witness orcs and elves in Warcraft, the aliens in Starcraft or even the near-infinite variability in the much-anticipated Spore.

What's the point? Well, if there are 9 million people playing WoW right now, it seems like a safe assumption that a similar number will play these new, more intensive games. So. If there's one 'real' world that hosts a million virtual worlds and all we know is that we're in a world, it's hugely probable that we're a simulation of some sort. Also, if computers start to be awesome enough, they'll be able to simulate things like worlds were simulation techniques are developed. And then you get a million squared. And the argument to cubed and more can follow the same logic. Basically, we are almost certainly virtual unless there is something else correlated with having this powerful a computer. For example, if we believe we'll blow up Earth earlier than this amount of technology then there will never be virtual worlds (assuming any aliens that could exist also kill themselves off before attaining this level of technology). He brings up other possibilities, but they seem sillier.

Near the end of the article, Dr. Bostrom says his gut feeling is that there's a 20% chance that our world is virtual. Personally, I'm thinking it's far far higher. Not that this affects anything for me, but it's an interesting thought. Please do leave thoughts. I'd particularly like to hear a religious take on this article if anyone's up for it...

Reading a book real fast-like

I just practice-read Stephen King's The Gunslinger. Practice-reading is when you try to read faster than you can actually handle. You get pretty bad comprehension, but it helps increase your reading rate. It took me 57 minutes to get through its roughly 300 pages. The first time through I went a page a second (this is to just pick up character names, a rough chronology and a bit of the novel's structure) and the second time I was going at around 1500 WPM.

This is actually a full 50% faster than my original goal for this whole speed-reading thing. w00t!
Also: it's about 4 times the speed I read at going in. Hooray!

It's hard to keep going at breakneck pace - having my computer yell at me every minute and louder every 5th minute helped a lot. I'd end up picking up the pace every time the 5th beep came along as I kept on falling about a minute slow. I ended about 3 minutes slow so I guess it was a bit shy of 1500WPM. Sadly, I don't actually have many books that are short and easy enough for me to read in one sitting like this...

It looks like a trip to the library is in order.

:-D

PS - The gunslinger series is pretty awesome. Not my all-time favortie but certainly in the top 10 and maybe in the top 5.

Neat magic trick

I just learned a fantastic magic trick. It's really quite simple. It's one of those tricks that depends on manual dexterity and quick talking instead of complex design. Truly fantastic.

I'll put up a youtube video when I give up on it. You can either see it there or from me (if giving up turns out to be unnecessary).

No big deal

So. I haven't written for a while. Partly because I'm on chillaxing at home and basking in profound depths of unproductivity an partly because my computer had some issues. Or, rather, I gave it some issues.

I was running some neat software I'd found that did diagnostics on all sorts of things and for part of it I needed to go into safe mode. No big deal. There's two main (read: safe) ways to get into safe mode. One is to hit F8 during the boot sequence. But, at the time, I couldn't remember which function key I had to hit. So I used the other method. Go to run and type in msconfig. Then check the /SAFEBOOT option in the boot.ini tab. No big deal.

I'll not that when I did this a warning came up that told me I didn't have priveleges to do that change. But then it let me do it anyways. This should've made me stop and think, but hey...

So I reboot and... realize that safe mode can't use my network log-in. Damn. No big deal. I'd just reboot and hit F8 (I looked it up) and select normal boot. Oh yeah. The boot.ini file defines what a normal boot is and I'd set that to be safe mode. Damn. Oh well. No big deal. I figure I can just log in locally and change it back and I'll be good to go. Well I couldn't figure out how to log into my local machine. Eventually I called IT and it was easy enough - I just had to use that password that they'd given us during orientation... yeah... OK. Now that I had that I just had to change it back and that'd be that. No big deal.

Sadly, I didn't have the privileges to use msconfig. No big deal, I could go and do it by hand (I just had to edit a text file). But I didn't have the privileges to edit that file. No big deal. I'd just change the permissions. Except I didn't have the privileges to do that either. Big deal. Well this sucks.

Then I came up with a solution. I could just use my linux partition to get at the text file and fix it. No big deal. Except that Fedora core 4 can't mount ntfs. No big deal - I could get the right package with yum. Except that I couldn't access yum off-campus w/o an ssh account. No big deal - I just sent an e-mail to helpdesk... and found out that Olin didn't have a yum repository for fc4 anyymore. No big deal - I could just change which repos were enabled and used the fedora-extras one to get me some ntfs support. Except they didn't have 3g-ntfs for fc4. Sad. Thankfully, a kind soul at IT suggested a Knoppix LiveCD with built-in ntfs support. Now it was definitely no big deal. Right? I mounted my windows partition. I found the text file. I opened it up. I changed the offending portion. And I found out that Knoppix only has read support for ntfs. Damn.

Then I found Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK). This aptly-named Linux distro booted from a LiveCD with built-in ntfs read and write support. Hooray!!

Now, Lappy feels much better and I'm back online and fully functional. And I even found a hot new program to blabber on about. You'll get that shortly I'm sure. ;-)

Home is so unproductive

Continuing my earlier line of thought, I've played far too much Xeno Tactic. But now I've got the 6th mission unlocked. I haven't actually been able to find anyone online who says they beat the 6th mission. It does not bode well.

Boris' Brain - This is stupid. This is a huge waste of time.
Boris - Yeah but it's only for until Olin starts... (yes "for until")
Boris' Brain - Ok. Ok. Whatever.
Boris: Proceeds to forgo sleep in order to get the most uhmmm... nothing(?) out of his time

I came up with a pseudo-compromise. I will now close the webpage and put my 'puter in standby. If the game is badly designed enough that I shouldn't be doing such things I'll declare it n00bish and ignore it for the rest of eternity.

A little post

I haven't posted in a long time. Well here's this to put an end to your brief respite from my evil online voice:

Uhmm... actually. Nevermind. I don't really feel like writing anything. I'm gonna go play Noidzor. It's a sweet breakout-ish game. You'll note the noid in its name. I'm glad they acknowledge the time-sucking awesomeness that once was.

Then I'll go hang out with friends. I'm home now, so it's summer's summer. No work and lots of time. The clear path is to use it as ineffectively as humanly possible.

More on metric

I'm writing this as a response to a great comment on my post about metric system use in the US.

Do you really think so? Speedometers have both metric and imperial units, but I don't think that's done much to improve "metric literacy" in the 'States.

Listing metric measurements after the imperial units doesn't quite say "these units are the ones we will be using." Even then, the things that list both don't really have "teeth." Switching speed limit signs to metric only would, I think, have a much larger effect since people could be punished for failing to process the information.

But, yes. Hooray for New Hampshire!

True enough anonymous. That being said, speedometers are easier to ignore. It's an analog measurement so you don't get the effect of repeated drilling of a=b. Also, the metric numbers are way smaller and on the inside loop. It's true that you could just look at the left side of the sign, but I think the minimum benefit would be a definition for a number of common mileages (1, 1/2 etc). I'd guess a fair number of people know that 100 k/h is close to 60 mph because those actually have lines on the speedometer and they're pretty close. Likewise I'd bet lots of people know 0°C is the same as 32°F because that's a temperature that people are exposed to (on both scales) on a regular basis. I'd bet 32 f/s being equal to 9.8 m/s is also not uncommon.

Here's a long-term plan I just came up with right nowish. Whenever an all-imperial sign needs to be replaced, put up a sign with imperial units followed by metric units in parentheses. When on of these imperial-metric signs needs to be replaced, put up a metric-imperial sign that has metric units followed by imperial units in parentheses. At some pint, once everyone is pretty hip on things, stop having imperial units on the signs at all. Hooray!

I don't think teeth are needed. I don't think this is a switch we can, should or will make quickly. My thought is pretty much that the next generation should be heavily exposed to metric - they should become SI literate even if we have failed to do so ourselves.

Is this just me? If I think about how many meters are in 32 feet, I take quite a while to get a correct answer. First I estimate by using yards and I get just under 11 meters. On my second pass, I use 1 m = 3.3 ft and get that it's just under 10 m. Win.
It's odd that my mind doesn't just think of the fact that it knows 9.8 m/s ~ 32 f/s and that it can just cancel the seconds and get to a much faster, more correct answer...