Here is an amusing anti-piracy ad:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=y5UYHXQPCPk

This is unrelated but incredibly cool:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3MT6Wi3Kp8

I've just started going through some of my things and boxing them up because I'll have to eventually and I was bored.  While boxing my books I decided to do something a little different and sort them by subject this time. What I found was a little bit of a surprising breakdown:

1 box mathematics
1 box economics, finance, investment, self help
1 box political science, law, copyright, history, current events, etc.
1 box miscellaneous nonfiction
1.5 boxes philosophy and religion
3 boxes programming, computer science, information technology, software project management, etc.

The boxes are 10 by 12 by 15 inches by the way.  I didn't do my fiction books yet. Those are currently occupying a 4/5ths of a 5 shelf bookshelf. All of this doesn't count books I am reading right now or books that I flat out threw away because I just don't want to own them or books that are currently in my possession that I don't own.

It bothers me how many more CS/IT books I have than everything else. Philosophy I love so I'll keep those forever. Math, econ, poly sci all feel as if they could potentially have some use in the future or at least I feel as if they have enlightened me in some way so I am in no rush to get rid of them. Math in particular is pretty timeless as reference works go. But what of the CS? Do I really need or want to keep them?

Those boxes are also by far the heaviest of the boxes. For some reason CS book are all excessively big heavy tomes, a lot of them hard back. In these boxes are also the most books I haven't even read yet. And they're also the books I am least likely to read or reread in the future especially if the fates would have it as I prefer that I never have to program again (which is looking increasingly unlikely as time goes on unfortunately). Still, although there are a lot of classic CS books and useful reference materials here, most of it is hopelessly out of date these days and you can often find the same information, only more up to date, online for free (though not always as well written or organized).

So what am I to do with all of these useless programming books?  Any ideas?  Maybe I will sell them all as one big lot on ebay with a starting bid of $0.01 and see what people are willing to pay for them.

I'm sure the day after I give them up I will miss them and wish I'd kept them all. But then that's the kind of thinking that got me into having to deal with so many damn books in the first place.

Avatar is shaping up to be probably one of the best animated series ever made. This is includes all anime and such classics as Transformers and Gargoyles. It's that good. Easily top 5. Maybe top 3.

The new third season is starting to air soon and I truly cannot wait. I usually wait until the whole season is complete and watch it all at once, but this time I'm not sure if I can help myself, I might just have to watch them as they air.

There have been a couple of trailers that have come out and they look totally awesome.  Here's a link to one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nw_gFwYK22g

This might not work being as these videos tend to get taken down due to 'copyright' infringement though that makes no sense at all to me since having these videos on youtube would only increase the series popularity. It's like shooting yourself in the foot. I mean these are only 'trailers' what's the big deal?

Anyway, I love Avatar. And Toph is one of the coolest characters in history.

The first time I heard this absurd argument was way back when I was in college maybe 6 years ago or so and I remember that no one took it seriously and everybody thought it was kind of absurd. But I heard it again and again over the years and I heard it fairly recently. And it isn't amongst the kooks or the fringe elements. It's very mainstream. It's become common to say it and everybody seems to take it a lot more seriously now than they did then. I wonder what changed.

The argument goes that if you block or skip advertisements than you are stealing the content from the content producers just as surely as if you had walked out of the store with a DVD without paying for it.  And consequently those tools that allow advertisements to be skipped are enablers of theft and should be illegal. Before it was popup blockers, and tivo, now'a'days people are complaining about the adblock extension for firefox and demanding that people boycott firefox because the developers haven't disowned the extension. 

The articles discussing this idea try to be somewhat neutral and they don't often come out full out in favor of banning such tools, but they do set the tone of the discussion in such a way that is consistent with the aims of those who want to paint advertisements skipping as an unjust act.They call it a "moral" issue. Or they say things like the "ethical question" and so on.

But this us utter B.S.  There is no inherent moral issue here.  The people making this argument as just making an obvious logical flaw that should be treated as dismissively as one might treat someone claiming that the sky is red or that pigs can fly. It's just nonsense.

The argument that since some content is able to be distributed for free or reduced cost because of advertising implies that skipping advertisement is unjust is ridiculous. If A requires B in order to exist, that is no where near enough to imply that skipping B makes you responsible for the loss of A.  Indeed, in the case of advertising A will not in any way be jeopardized unless a critical mass of entities skip B, but any particular person skipping B will have no effect on the survival of A.

But even if you are some mythical tipping point person. I.e. you're the free rider that breaks the camels back and your choice to not do B making it impossible for A to continue to exist, that still does not imply that you are morally responsible for the end of A.  You contributed to the end of A, that cannot be denied, but you are not to blame for the end of A. You can only be held accountable for the end of A if you also are both aware of A's dependence on B and determined A's dependence on B.

So for advertisement, it's clear. The program content being provided to consummers does not have to depend up the efficacy of advertisement. That's just what the program content providers decided to do and consumers unasked went along with it and have generally been happy with the consequences. But if for some reason consumers choose not to watch the advertisements any more, that does not make them to blame for the content no longer being able to be supported by advertisements. That's just a case of a failed system of support that didn't work because the people didn't want it. The content producers can always try something else or they can give up and not produce the content, either way it isn't out business and we shouldn't particularly care at least as far as conscience goes. We should feel no moral dilemma for acting naturally as consumers do to select content we prefer and filter out that which we do not.

Advertisers are trying to create a system where you have a moral or social incentive to force yourself to experience content that you do not want to experience. That is in the system they are foisting on us, a person who skips advertisements will be rejected by society as a 'bad person' or a 'freeloader' and so as a natural result we'll just watch it all in order to avoid being branded as such. That's the basic implication of these policies. Of course that's very good for advertisers since they don't even have to try particularly hard to make advertisements that people actually want to see. And it's good new for content providers since they don't have to even think particularly hard about how best to fund their endeavors. It's only bad news for you and me since we are stuck with bad advertisements that we are forced to experience and we cannot even exercise our natural freedom of choice in order to force the providers to alter or improve it without being branded a thief.

Look what it basically boils down to is this. No one has a right to tell you what you can and can't experience with your senses that are before you. If you want to turn off your television during the commercials and turn it back on when the show comes back you can. If you want to walk away from your tv and do something else during the commercials you can. No one would dare say you are being immoral by watching the content while not giving the advertisers their due.

At least nobody would have in the past.I'm not sure now though. Maybe we are getting closer to a crazy society where that is the case. Parents will teach children not to 'flip' channels because only 'bad people' don't watch the advertisements when they are watching the show. The people who create the content will have chains bounds to our eyeballs pulling them hither and thither making us see the things that they want us to see with no control of our own as the 'price' for free content. I don't know about you, but such a world sounds pretty sick and repulsive to me. I hope we aren't heading there.

Principles of feedom have to supersede profits. If technology develops that makes advertisements effectively obsolete, and consumers choose to use it, then advertisers and content providers will just have to find another way to produce their content and make their profits that consumers are willing to be on board with. Who said the current system is written in stone?

The truth is people don't change very easily.
There isn't ever this extraordinary moment where all of a sudden you
just become a different person than the person you've always been. You
don't suddenly just start holding different beliefs and living a
completely different life in an instance. There just isn't going to be
a day in the future where all of a sudden President Bush will just
decide that he doesn't want to use war as a tool for spreading
Democracy in the Middle East and start to think that the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan were just terrible mistakes. It just won't happen. Not
any time soon.

People are naturally resistant to change. Our
habits and instincts and thought patterns are strongly ingrained in us
from a fairly early age and the longer we live with them the more
essential they become to our nature.

But stubborn presidents
aside people do change all the time and usually when they do there
tends to be one or more quintessential moments that serve as the
turning points that make the change possible. Sometimes we don't
realize these turning points until long after when looking back in
retrospect. Other times we consciously choose to make a certain moment
such a moment. As in you might on a particular day say that you are
going to live differently from now on and resolve with all your might
to work as hard as you can to do so.

There is a problem though.
These turning points no matter how meaningful and significant they may
be and no matter how sincere and determined we are in our conviction
are not the ends of the process of change. Rather they are but a step
along the path. An important step, often the most important first step,
but still just a step. Just because I say today that I will never be a
person who lives in X way again doesn't mean I won't ever again do
anything X-like no matter how much I might mean it when I say it. 
Rather change is a gradual process. It takes time.

Let's take an
example from my own nature. I am a naturally disorganized person and am
very much inclined to just throw papers and stuff about and let them
lie wherever they lie. Taking the time to sort them and place them in
folders or what not has never been a thing I've been good at or
particularly interested in doing. Let's say though that one day I
decided that this being disorganized was a detriment to my life. I
might resolve that from this point forward I will be a neat and
organized person.

Even if I were to do that I'd imagine an
outside observer who perhaps witnessed my declarative moment might
notice on another occasion some time after that I got some papers and
just threw them on the floor or something without looking at them or
thinking about them and went about the rest of my business.  Now the
question is after having observed my resolve and my failure to meet my
goal, should said observer conclude that I am a liar? Or rather a
hopelessly weak person incapable or unwilling to change? I think not.

One
incident is not sufficient evidence to draw any such conclusion. It may
be that the old me before I set forth my conviction would have out of
ten opportunities to throw papers on the ground without organizing
them, gone ahead and thrown the paper on the ground 9 or 10 out the 10
cases.  But perhaps the new me has thanks to my new conviction managed
to in 6 out of the 10 cases remember to sort the papers properly. Have
I changed then? Yes. Am I, as I want to be, "a neat and organized
person"? Clearly not yet. But I am getting there. Nevertheless if you
judged just by watching one of those four lapses you might conclude the
wrong thing. You might think I was just lying or am not really trying
to do my best to be a different person.

So the observer has at
least three choices upon observing me in such a lapse. They can condemn
me as a failure or a liar. Or they can ignore the lapse and just say 'I
guess he just forgot this time'. Or they can remind me in this instance
of my conviction and point out that I lapsed.  Surficially
and perhaps in most cases the third choice seems like it really is the
best option if it is done without malice or blame. If you tell me that
I didn't pick up the papers just now, I am likely to pick them up and
thus through enforced habit I'll change into a person who picks up my
papers without thinking about it faster thanks to your reminder.

However,
I have observed that in my case, reminding me of my lapse might not be
the best thing to do. The truth is that if I had resolved with all my
heart to be a neat and organized person and then I failed to organize
some papers and you saw it and reminded me of my error, I am likely to
get upset at you. I am likely to say quite rudely something like "Oh
give me a break. It's just some friggin
papers. Leave me alone!". Or I might be rudely dismissive: "Blah blah.
Papers. I'll get them when I feel like it."  Or worst of all I might
just say "Thanks. I'll get them." And then the next time I'll say
"Thanks for reminding me. I'll get them. I'll try to do better next
time." And the third time I'll say "Many thanks to you. You're a life
saver."  And I'll continue like that as pleasant and as polite as could
be each and every time you remind me. Until.  The twentieth time comes
along and let's say it happens to be on a bad day where I am feeling
miserable or something terrible happened to me or maybe it's just
nothing at all, just a normal day. But for some reason on that 20th
day, rather than politely responding to your reminder, I'll really
really freak out. I'll start cursing and raging and say all kinds of
mean and cruel things about picking up papers and being reminded.  I
may not even be coherent but one thing will be clear by my actions and
mannerisms that your words this time oddly and bewilderingly made me
extremely ticked off.

Why would I react in this way. The "20th
case" example is obviously the consequence of my having been angry in
all 19 cases before hand and having kept it all bottled in. The real
question is though, why I am likely to get angry in the first place.
After all, I did say that having some one point out my mistake will
likely help me reach my goal faster. So it's a good thing, not
something to be angry at. But I know me. I will definitely get angry no
matter how important the goal and no matter how much I don't want to
get angry at the person pointing out the error. 

Upon reflecting on this I have come up with the following possible partial explanations for my irrational anger:

1.
I have a natural extremely strong aversion to the sensation of feeling
like I am being watched or tested. When someone points out a mistake I
have made I perhaps irrationally get the impression that they are
watching my every move waiting for my error. I sometimes even begin to
imagine that they are testing me trying to determine if I have 'really'
changed in the manner that I said I would and then finding me lacking
for having failed to measure up. They may well be doing that, but it
doesn't matter if they are, the mere act of their mentioning that I had
made a mistake would make me feel as if they were. And that would make
me angry.

Where does this aversion come from? I don't know. I've
always been a person who feels as if he is being watched and I've
always been extremely self-conscious about it.

2. Secondly I
might be upset because I feel as if the observer is not giving me a
fair shake. In effect, rather than seeing the observer's commentary as
merely helpful advice meant to benefit me, I might see it is an
external criticism for my error. Which is not necessarily something
that would make me angry, bu the more frequently I feel criticized and
if it is not balanced with equal or greater praise than I might get
angry. I might start to wonder at why the observer only seems to notice
the times when I *fail* to pick up the papers and organize them
correctly but never seems to notice how much better I have become at
sorting and organizing papers. The 6 out of 10 times where I succeeded
might feel like meaningless victories because the only thing that
matters to outside observers is the 4 out of 10 times I failed. That
would make me angry and increasingly angry as time went on. I would
want people to see me as the person who now is organized enough to sort
my papers 6 out of 10 times whereas before I never did it at all not as
a person who still can't manage to keep himself organized 4 out of 10
times. It's one of those glass half empty, glass half full things.

3.
Much more likely to be the source of my anger would be feelings of
disappointment and anger that I would feel toward myself for the
lapses. Each and every time I fail to act in a neat and organized
fashion a good part of me would get very annoyed at myself. I would
think millions of people around the world manage to lead their lives
every day in a neat and organized fashion, why can't I? What makes me
so inadequate? The stronger my conviction to change the more I would
feel like a failure each time I show evidence that I had not changed.
And of course I'd be embarrassed by those failures and I wouldn't want
others to know about them or take note of them and if they did the last
thing I would want them to do is tell me about them, remind me of my
inadequacy, even if doing so might help me to get closer to my goal of
succeeding in changing. It is not surprising then that I would take out
those feelings if disappointment and anger on others in particular
those who happened to be the ones who brought my failure to my
attention. Being rude, curt, or just plain mean might well be the
behaviors I might exercise as a consequence.

4. Perhaps the most
important reason why I might get angry and the hardest for me to face
would be the fact that I might well be angry because I don't really
want to change. Not that I don't not want to change either. Rather I
may well be internally conflicted over my desire to change and those
occurrences where I lapse and act in accordance with how I used to act
all the time are in fact occurring in large part because there is still
a big part of me that does not feel that these new behavior patterns
are right or good or better for me than the old.

I may just
want to be a messy person. The experience of striving to be neat and
organized I might find stressful and unpleasant, more so than I
expected. And whereas when I made my conviction to be neat and
organized I saw only benefits to making such a self change, now after
say the twentieth reminder perhaps I am starting to rethink it on some
level. Was the way I was before so bad? Is the way I am now so good?
Deep down I might be lost unsure of how I should be acting, unclear on
what is best for me. I still want to follow through with my convictions
and become a neat and organized person but I may be afraid of what kind
of a person that will really make me. Will I be happy that way? Or will
I feel as if I am forever tapped by my convictions forced to act in a
manner that is unnatural and uncomfortable for me. So when I act in
accordance with my will I might get angry and when I act outside of my
will I might get even more angry. The contradiction might drive me into
a rage, until I can settle it within myself and decide finally who I
really want to become.

The truth is, as Aristotle taught us (or
rather as was blindingly obvious to anyone who ever thought about it),
we have to live in our lives in a balance. The fact that I have setup
my self change as an all or nothing proposition is likely the source of
my anger. I said I will become a neat and organized person. That's it.
That means any lapse is failure toward that goal and I can only succeed
if I manage a 100% success rate. This is wrong.  There may be people
out there who are perfectly happy being 100% neat and organized and
there may be people for whom it makes their lives just perfect to be 0%
neat. But it is clear that I am neither. The fact that I felt the
desire to become neat and organized is sufficient evidence to suggest
that I am not content being at 0% but the fact that I might still be
conflicted over my desire to change suggests that I might not be
satisfied with 100%.

So what I should ask myself is what is the
correct amount of neatness and organization that works for me? Would I
be content with being 40% neat and organized or 60% or 80%? Whatever
the amount there will by definition be cases where I do not act in a
manner that is consistent with a neat and organized lifestyle. But if I
am only aiming to be as neat and organized as I feel comfortable being,
that should not phase me or upset me at all.  Nor would there be any
need for a reminder when I lapse since I could understand any err as a
component of my attempt to find the amount of organization in my
lifestyle that makes me happiest.

Still, it's clear I won't be
happy until I make it clear to myself and to others exactly what level
of balance between myself as I was and myself as I am that I am seeking
to obtain or at least as close as I am able to estimate and then accept
that person as who I am.

Over time that balance may change. As
I become more neat and organized I might well become a person who wants
to be more neat and organized and does not feel any bit conflicted over
it. Eventually all unawares to me I may one day become nearly 100% neat
and organized just by virtue of slow incremental developments of
organized habits that became ingrained in me. Being neat and organized
had external benefits that made my life easier and happier over time so
I had incentives leading me to become incrementally more and more neat
and organized over the years. But it would surely take a long time. At
first 40% neat and organized might be the best I am comfortable with
and rushing to strive to be 80% or more would make me feel miserable
and angry and likely to snap out at anyone who reminds me of what seems
to be my failure to become as much as I want to be. But after say 30
years or so, I might be able to easily manage being 80% or more neat
and organized. It might just be who I have become over that extended
time period.

Such is the way that people change. We don't change
easily. We don't change quickly. It takes a long time and a lot of
effort and the right kind of effort. Try too hard and the backlash may
be worse than the original. Try too little and you might not change
enough to make you satisfied. There's just a big component of human
beings that just doesn't want to change very much. We tend to be
comfortable leaving well enough alone. But even when we develop a
conviction to change and apply our strictest and utmost resolve to
become different and better than we were. It still takes time. A long
time. And rushing it can be a dangerous thing that can cause more harm
than good.

So it is unwise for us to wish or expect of others or
ourselves that we might become immediately different or better people
or to hope that we might see or find some certain proof of the extent
to which we have changed. That will only lead to our owninevitable disappointment.

There's no direct link but go HERE and click on the first link for 9/8/2007.

 The first 26 minutes are useless introductory stuff and can be skipped and most of the  part of the presentation that I found interesting is toward the second half when he tells his story specifically. The presentation lasts 2 hours. The last hour of the clip is some pointless interview which I half watched but got bored with pretty fast.

Just a little while ago I was flipping through channels and came across this speech being given by William Rodriguez about his experiences during 9/11 as part of the American Perspectives series on CSPAN. This was an extraordinary story and the best account of the events of 9/11 I have ever heard. I think everyone should probably hear it.

It looks like I can't link to it yet since it is so soon after it finished airing but I will add a link as soon as it becomes available on C-SPAN.org.

I've spent a good deal of time sorting papers lately and in the process I came across a mysterious box of papers. As I went through it I discovered that for some reason I do not comprehend I had somehow managed to place in this sole box every scrap of paper related to any disappointment or failure that had happened to me since early High School. I don't recall ever putting together this box consciously, but here it was. A historical archive of all of my many mistakes.

In it were papers an tests where the score I got was not as high as I felt I should have gotten or did not reflect what I felt was my understanding of the subject. In it were standardized test scores too where I was disappointed that my score was not higher. In it were lots of grade reports where my grades were mediocre or downright bad and various associated notes and documents. In it were letters I received that hurt me in someway or reminded me of something that was a disappointment to me. In it were letters and thank you notes I had half way written but never finished because I could not find the words to say and which I always regretted not sending. In it were scraps of journal entries that I had written during times when I was distraught or frustrated or downright angry at the world.

But most of all it was filled with tons upon tons of rejection letters. I was really surprised at how many I had received over the years. How many things I had tried for and not gotten going all the way back to my Freshman year of High School  I was applying for all kinds of things I didn't have much real hope of getting. There were graduate school rejection letters. There were job application rejection letters. Scholarship rejection letters. Various special groups and societies rejection letters. Essay contest rejection letters. Journal article and short story submission rejection letters. Even credit card and loan application rejection letters. I even have a rejection letter from an application to get a checking account at a bank. I'm not sure why they rejected me for that one.  Anyway, it was just filled with lots and lots of rejections. It's funny I wouldn't say that I have been unsuccessful in most of the important things I've tried for, just the opposite, but to look in this box it seems as if I was rejected by virtually everything I've attempted. It was like looking through a catalog of a lifetime of failures.

I read all of these letters again wondering why I had saved them all, all this time. And as I read I determined something interesting. Rejection letters are really stupid and really dishonest and really boring.  They almost all tend to say something like this:

"While we would have liked to have accepted you from blah blah program, there were just so many qualified applicants and we have so little space in our program that we had to...."

Or this:

"We regret to inform you that we are unable to accept your application for blah blah..."

What a load of BS. It is clear that they would not have liked to have accepted you because if they did they would have accepted you. The truth is that they really wanted to accept all of those other people a lot more than you and so they did. Of course they are ABLE to accept your application, they just chose not to. It isn't beyond their power to do so, you just aren't good enough. That's the fact. And like they really regret telling you about it? It is an automated letter that probably took zero thought. They don't regret rejecting you since they got someone better in return and they don't regret telling you about it since it hurts them not at all to do so. In fact they are probably ecstatic that they got so many better applicants and were able to reject someone mediocre like you so easily. These letters are just a bunch of absurd lies.

But more upsetting to me by far is that they are just so boring and uninteresting. Why don't they make the rejection letters be both more honest and more interesting at the same time? That is what I would prefer. They should say something like this:

"You SUCK. You didn't get this blah blah because you are pathetic and unworthy."

That is at least a letter that you could laugh at or get angry at. In either case you feel something other than the sense of inadequacy and failure and near invisibility which is all you feel when you get one of those form rejection letters that they usually send out.

Better yet they could send letters that tell you why you didn't get whatever it is you tried to get. They could be more informative in that way and maybe help you to be able to get whatever you are trying to get next time.  So maybe a letter would say:

"While your grades and test scores were quite notably good it appears that you have done nothing noteworthy with the rest of your life. All of the applicants whom we have accepted have either published works or won major noteworthy awards whereas you have not. Please try to apply yourself outside of your school work before you apply again for our program."

Or better yet you could combine the two approaches and create letters that are both informative and silly at the same time. So you might have:

"Did you really think you could get this with those test scores."

or

"You write like a toddler. Learn how to write and then we'll talk."

or

"Sorry. Your grades indicate that you are either just plain too stupid or too lazy or both to be worth our time. Try harder next time."

or

"Why should we give you this when you can't even get two people to say nice things about you? Work on being more likable, maybe your recommendations will be better then."

or maybe just

"hahahahahhahaha.... Yeah right."

Which really just says it all now doesn't it?

Well anyway, I think that letters like these might be worth keeping in a box locked away somewhere both for self-awareness and amusement and to keep yourself from taking yourself too seriously, but the letters I actually have serve no such purpose.  I don't know why I kept it all. For some reason I guess I just wanted to remember. I thought it might be a motivating force for me or something, but I never once looked in that box until now and it doesn't feel so motivating right now. It's just annoying. Memories I don't even want anymore.

So I shredded them, all the rejection letters and most of the other contents of the bad news box. There was no point in keeping it. So now its gone forever and I can let myself forget again only this time I will never be reminded again. It's a little sad to think that the past will be lost but maybe some pasts are worth forgetting so that we can move on to better things.

I suspect I'll get a lot more rejections in the near future as I'm entering a phase in my life where I am again trying for lots and lots of things but this time I'm sure I won't keep them and I'll just keep on trying.

The most important difference between the person who tells a story and the person who lives a story is that the teller has to believe.

In order to tell a good a tale you have to believe in the characters. You have to believe in the symbols and the gestures. You have to believe in the events and the plot. You have to believe in the message. You have to think it is all important and that it all fits together into some sort of beautiful whole. You have to think it all matters as if the story has something important to tell, an essential lesson for others to learn. You have to believe that the characters will change and grow in important ways and that things will ultimately work out in the manner that they are supposed to. In order to tell a story faithfully, you have to believe unquestioningly that it makes a good story worthy of being told.

But those who live within the story do not have to believe. They can doubt and they can look upon the world with cynicism and disgust. Everything that they see could seem meaningless to them, trivial, a waste of time. The events that they experience could feel tedious and boring and they and the characters that they interact with may well seem as ordinary and unimportant to them as could possibly be. The person who lives a story may well feel that everyone and everything is little more than a pointless joke to them. They may spend all their lives looking for something important to happen to them, something meaningful, something worthy of someone else taking note of.

Of course if you are within a story it does not preclude you from telling your own tale.You can be both story teller and story dweller alike if you so choose. The only thing you have to do is believe.