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| Friday, January 8th, 2010 |
hoiho
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12:48p |
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jerkcity
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9:41a |
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amuchmoreexotic
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9:40a |
PS
The best thing about Avatar: 3D means you can't film every action sequence as a nonsensical shakycam mess (not that Cameron ever did that). Goodbye Michael Bay! |
amuchmoreexotic
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8:28a |
Yeah, I saw Avatar
The marine-catgirl romance does for bestiality what Star Wars did for incest. It's quite a missed opportunity that, although the Na'avi [1] are riding around on six-legged horses, they themselves are boringly bipedal. It would have been much more interesting visually - and more realistic from an evolutionary science perspective - if they hadn't been so completely humanoid (even down to having five-fingered hands). Perhaps they could have had, I dunno, two pairs of back legs instead of one. With dainty little blue hooves. You might say that this would have made it impossible for humans to control vat-grown Na'avi bodies. But the avatar technology can clearly compensate for different body plans - I mean, the Na'avi have much longer limbs than humans, so there is already a mismatch between the human's mental representation of the body and its actual shape. If you couldn't compensate for that, the avatar operator would end up like those body integrity identity disorder cases where people feel like one of their limbs is 'wrong' and try to amputate it - the problem is that the limb isn't represented properly in their brain's mental image of the body, so, even though they can move it and feel through it, it seems alien. Clearly the avatar box can stop that happening. In fact, the Na'avi have tails, and despite the lack of a human brain area dealing with tail movement, Sully's avatar's tail is depicted as moving around right from the beginning. So the avatar technology can somehow emulate parts of the nervous system which the operator doesn't have. Walking is largely controlled at the spinal cord level, so I'm sure it would be fairly easy for the technology to translate from "sprint" to "gallop". Could have been the breakthrough girltaur film. Like how Desert Hearts made lesbianism mainstream. Oh well. Oh yeah, and I was bothered by the fact that the human's Na'avi lover seemed to have no problem at all when she encountered his human body. Suppose you found out that the person you'd been mating with was actually a tiny dwarf with stunted limbs, atrophied eyes and ears, and a skin colour that didn't occur in nature. If you came across that dwarf, would you cradle it tenderly? Anyway, I don't think you can fit enough characters in an LJ update to describe everything that was wrong with Avatar. The storytelling isn't incompetent, like Phantom Menace, it's just very, very predictable. And yes, for a film that is supposed to be damning humans, it does depict the human protagonist as far superior to the "blue savages" whose way of life he is supposed to be protecting (even though it is just a mish-mash of lots of non-WASP human cultures). At one point, we are told that the Na'avi have only ever managed to tame a certain type of dragon leonopteryx five times in recorded history. But it turns out all you need to do to tame it is to jump on it from above. Only a marine in a Na'avi minstrel body has the smarts to think of that! Boo colonialism. Boo cultural appropriation. In a universe with remote control of vat-grown avatars, why doesn't the evil Corporation exploit the espionage potential of human avatars? It would have been a nice twist to find out that Sigourney Weaver had been replaced with a puppet version of herself controlled by the HR department. In fact, if you have the avatar technology, why worry about the PR implications of genocide at all? Just gradually replace the Na'avi with duplicates of themselves controlled by evil anthropologists, or hack their brains using avatars of the plug 'n' play wildlife, then once the whole society is puppetised, have them say they welcome the Sky People mine in exchange for vaccination and electricity and a diet of bread instead of potatoes. That was probably the evil Corporation's plan all along. They are using an advanced Colonialism 2.0 technique. Their apparent military defeat was all staged for the benefit of the news; it was human avatars doing all the 'dying', and Sully is a triple agent who is gradually going to hack into the personalities of all the Na'avi, and make them love Big Sky Brother. Then they will willingly start exporting unobtainium at a very favourable rate. It's weaponised cultural appropriation. Instead of forcing the populace to obey your will, you simply become them. If you think I am over-analysing a stupid popcorn film, just look at the people who inspired this masterly bit of trolling:
Well I went into the movie yesterday thinking I was just going to see a sci-fi romp. Little did I know it would change my life forever. I sat in the theater after it was over just stunned, and then I began to cry. I was ripped apart with feelings I had never had before, hate for myself and my species, hate for my capitalistic and worthless society, and a feeling of such despair that I would never be able to know the Na’vi or their superior culture and way of life. I was there just thinking and crying for about 15 minutes before an usher asked me to leave. I told him I never wanted to leave and he was confused for a second. Then he said I had to go and if I wanted to see this “crappy movie” again I’d have to pay for another ticket. Well to cut to the chase it got a bit heated at that point and we ended up in a shoving match. The police officer who took me out of there didn’t seem to care either. When I told him he was a tool of an oppressive society that is destroying the world he laughed at me. Now I’ve got a charge against me for public disturbance but I don’t care. Hopefully that jerk usher got fired.
The next day I saw it at a different theater in 3d. All of a sudden the world was as real as my own. At the end I stood up and started telling the people that they were the bad guys and were killing the Na’vi everyday with their western society. I said look at Afghanistan! I got cussed out and had a soda thrown on me but I wore those like a badge of honor, I felt like a Na’vi standing against human oppression and sickness. I just wished I had a weapon at that point and could have fought like Jake did. Jake was so strong. I began to wish that I could be like a new Hitler, only instead of exterminating one race I’d do the whole human race then shoot myself at the end. My mom always said I get too wrapped up in this stuff but she is an idiot who is just as much part of the problem as every other American. I told her when I got home and she cried but I don’t care anymore, I’m 35 and I can do what I want in my room and don’t have to take any “medicine” if I don’t want to. Did the Na’vi take pills to “get better” Did the Indians? Nope. I just wish I could stop thinking of this; it’s more than a movie. My Mom used to think I was too into WoW but that was just a game. I quit playing and told my guild wife there to just forget me. This feels real, that is just stupid now. I don't even really want to go into work.
Sorry for a long first post. I’m in an emotional state right now and just wanted to vent with other believers. I wish I could wake up and be in a real world, not this hell hole we have created on Earth. I don't know if I should cry or be mad anymore.
[1] I bet in the first draft they were called the "Nativi", but someone persuaded Cameron to change it slightly in the second (and final) draft. He forgot to do the find and replace to change the name of the precious mineral from "unobtainium". ^ |
ghoti
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8:21a |
Best baby books!
Judith's favourite library book for a long time has been "My doll Keshia" by Eloise Springfield. It's a simple story about playing with a doll, with really lovely pictures; detailed enough to be realistic, but plain backgrounds. I got it for her for Christmas, along with another in the series, "My Daddy and I. We were reading that yesterday, and at the end, there's a hug, so I hugged her, and she kissed me, then suddenly pointed at the picture of the boy and man hugging, and hugged/kissed me again. She did this a couple of times, it was like she suddenly realised the connection. |
dannipenguin
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1:40p |
tramtracker in maemo extras-devel [plus some crap about Optus]
Finally got a version of tramtracker (a client for tracking Melbourne trams) and python-suds uploaded to Maemo's extras-devel. There are a couple of issues, the known ones relate to this bug. In my head I was having a race to see which would be done first: Optus sorting out my phone enough so that I could have data on it; or getting my app into the repository. Turns out, even though I didn't make a lot of effort, I still won. In fairness, I probably could have gone today to get my phone recontracted (since I think it cut over last night), but the guy told me to come back on Saturday. I'm really hoping this is the end of about 4 hours of dealing with Optus over my phone. It started off by me looking at 3G data plans, and realising that if Stephanie and I both recontracted for 12 months, and put our numbers onto the same account, we could pay for both of our phones for the cost of her phone bill. Unfortunately my phone number was still in my Dad's name, and stuck in some antique account keeping system, so had to be migrated forwards (which took forever), then some nonsense about a credit check. [I'm sorry, but you gave the international student who's been here 4 months, and is not even a resident, a $60/month iPhone plan; why do I need to jump through so many hoops when I have a job and only want a $20/month plan where I bring my own damn phone?] Finally though both phones have been moved onto the same account, so I can go and recontract tomorrow (hopefully; I've been saying this for weeks). That said, while Optus the company have basically been screwing me around. I do have to give kudos to the peoples at Optus Shop Brunswick, who have spent countless hours on the phone to Optus HQ trying to sort this out for me, even though they've so far earned absolutely no commission from me. I had thought about recontracting my phone at whatever store I happened to pass, but I think I should make sure these guys get the commission. |
| Thursday, January 7th, 2010 |
mjg59
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10:53a |
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uisgebeatha
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2:31p |
CELEBRATE
Three pieces of joyous news for shuffling Radio 2 fans... Moira Stuart to read news on Chris Evans's new breakfast show! This is great news because a) she's an excellent newsreader, and b) it's one in the eye for the Beeb who allegedly dropped her due to her age. Looking forward to the banter between the two. Yay Moira! Chris's show to be longer than Wogan's! Good, if only to shorten the amount of time we have to put up with vacuous, jolly hockeysticks Daily Heil-loving waste of space and G&T-in-the-morning news headline slurrer, Sarah Kennedy [ pace Radcliffe and Maconie :p]. Wossy to quit the Beeb! Does this really need explaining as to why it's good news? Or shall I leave it to the HYS commenters? My speculation as to some plausible replacements: Graham Norton, who did a fine job sitting in for Wrighty in the afternoon; Chris Moyles, very much the outside bet and not one I'd like; Wogan, who would fit into that slot well; Huey Morgan from 6Music with Liza Tarbuck, as they were *excellent* standins; or my favourite, Danny Baker, who has gone up in my estimations as much as Evans for maturing into a great DJ. Prace bets now! ...I have half a mind to crack open the fizzy wine tonight and have a mini-party, but I doubt anyone's sad enough to attend ;) Current Mood:  jubilant |
amuchmoreexotic
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11:23a |
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pjc50
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9:40a |
Brr
15 degrees in the office, and I skidded into a kerb on the way here. Should really write a Christmas update some time :) |
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jerkcity
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9:37a |
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nassus
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2:18p |
Adelaide Perlmongers - finally!
Kim has gotten round to doing what I said I'd do ages ago and started up Adelaide.pm officially. Website is: http://adelaide.pm.org/mailing.htmlEarly days - they are planning once a month get together for beer/wine/softies and general geekery which sounds good and what I'm used to with london.pm First meeting being sorted out now. Web page typos also going to be fixed - ergh! But it's a start! Who is in? -grue- Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |
debian
[ tobestool ]
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4:53p |
Creating a Wi-Fi Access Point.
Hi, Can anyone point me in the direction of a reasonably up-to-date HOWTO of how to run an access point within Debian, please? I am looking to be able to use my MiniITX based system as an access point, and all the documentation I've found seems wildly out of date. More specifically, I'm currently failing to get my Broadcom BCM4306 (rev3) based PCI card to switch to Master mode. I am using the b43 driver, with a firmware collected with b43-cutter. All appears to be well, and acording to this the driver should support Master mode. Am I missing something? (I'm on kernel 2.6.26-2-686 if that helps.) To pre-empt the two most obvious questions: * I don't want to just run this in Ad-Hoc mode as part of the duty of the wireless network will be for the connection of smartphones, which seems to be considerably easier with an infrastructure type network. * I don't want to just plug an access point in for a number of reasons, firstly I don't have one spare, secondly I would like to minimise the power consumption of this setup, and there's always the aspect that I'd like to know how to do this by hand if it's reasonably practical. Thanks in advance for any help. --Toby Current Mood:  frustrated |
hoiho
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11:49a |
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jerkcity
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9:10a |
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puzzlement
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1:41p |
Ethics of Free Software community research
Most of this entry is exactly a year old today and it's just sat around
in draft form all that time. Since I posted something
similar on Geek Feminism about research into women in tech and similar
topics, I thought I'd get it out there.
In January 2009 a researcher named Anne Chin of Monash University Law
emailed the chat list for the linux.conf.au 2009 conference asking for research
subjects to be interviewed about licencing and Open Source software. There were
several responses criticising her use of HTML email and Microsoft Word
attachments. I'll leave the specifics of this alone except that people should
be (and probably are) aware that this is almost always an unknowing violation
of community norms.
I did, though, think about making some notes on research ethics and Free
Software research. A bit about my background: I am not a specialist in ethics.
I'm somewhat familiar with ethics applications to work with human subjects, but
not from the perspective of evaluating them. I've made them, and I've been a
subject in a study that had made them.
For people who haven't seen this process, the ethical questions arising from
using human subjects in your research in general covers the question of whether
the good likely to arise from the outcomes of the study outweighs the harm done
to the subjects, together with issues of consent to that harm. (There are many
philosophical assumptions underlying this ethical framework, I don't intend to
treat them here.) Researchers in universities, hospitals, schools and research
institutes usually have to present their experimental designs to an ethics
committee who will determine this question for them and approve their
experiment. Researchers who work across several of these (eg, a PhD student who
wants to interview schoolchildren) will need to do several ethics applications,
a notable chore when the forms and guidelines aren't standardised and
occasionally directly conflict. Researchers working for private commercial
entities may or may not have a similar requirement. Researchers who use animals
also have to have ethical reviews, these are done by animal ethics committees,
which are usually separate.
At my university, essentially any part of your research that involves
measuring or recording another person's response to a research question and
using it to help answer that question needs a human ethics application.
( 6 more paragraphs )Originally posted at http://puzzling.org/logs/thoughts/2010/January/6/ethics
Please comment at http://puzzlement.dreamwidth.org/8991.html using OpenID.
See http://puzzlement.livejournal.com/253667.html for more info about Dreamwidth. |
puzzlement
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12:30p |
Donating our OLPC XO
Way back at linux.conf.au 2008 there was a large OLPC XO giveaway, but with
the rider do something wonderful with this, or give it to someone who
will. Neither Andrew nor I received one directly, but Matthew Garrett gave
his to Andrew essentially on the grounds that he wasn't going to do anything
wonderful with it. (If I have the chronology right, Matthew had a stack of
laptops in his possession at the time and did things to them regularly,
generally making them sleep on demand.)
In any event, neither Andrew nor I did anything wonderful with the XO: Andrew
intended to look at some point at Python or Python application startup times
(the Bazaar team have a bunch of tricks in that regard), but two years is a lot
of intending.
Still, better late than never. In the spirit of the original giveaway, we've
handed it over to be taken to New Zealand by someone going to linux.conf.au
2010. It will be donated to the Wellington OLPC testers
group, who meet weekly to work on various projects and who are somewhat short
on machines.
If you are similarly (morally) bound by the linux.conf.au 2008 giveaway
conditions, aren't doing anything wonderful with your XO, and are going to
linux.conf.au 2010 or can get your XO there, you could do likewise. You could
drop off to Tabitha
Roder at the education miniconf, the OLPC stand at Open Day or otherwise
get in touch with her. (You probably want to let her know yours is coming
anyway, so she has a sense of whether to expect one or two, or a
truckload.)
Other possibilities include getting involved in the Sydney group or
checking if they'd have a use for laptop donations. (They meet more regularly
than that wiki page implies; they are now meeting at SLUG.) I don't know what
the status of the OLPC
library is. The webpage being down is probably not a great sign, but
perhaps collaborators would help John out there. You'd at least be doing
something meta-wonderful.
Originally posted at http://puzzling.org/logs/thoughts/2010/January/6/donating-our-xo |
brrm
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1:16a |
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
pavanne
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7:13p |
Letters to and from a ferry company...
So no car company will let me hire a car to drive one way to Europe, or at least not for less than £1,300, which would make my parents cry if I ever told them about it. ( Read more... )w00t! Now what will the 'xos do on the vehicle deck? Current Mood:  cheerful |
emperor
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6:39p |
the definition of fun...
...does not include cycling home in moderately-heavy snow-fall. It stings my eyes, makes visibility difficult, and the road surfaces hazardous (even the semi-main roads on my commute had snow on them, despite the gritting). Still, I made it in one piece! |
reddragdiva
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11:44a |
Apache proxy configuration question.
A question for work. We can ssh into our intranet via a particular host (call it foo). I'm using the Lotus Notes webmail (which is 1000% nicer than the software client, and I now use it all the time by preference) and can easily access our internal IRC, source control and intranet websites via ssh tunnelling.
The intranet website access requires foo to be running a proxy. This is of course easy in Apache 2.0:
ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On
ProxyDomain .internal.example.com
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 172.26 10.1 localhost
</Proxy>
172.26.*.* and 10.1.*.* are intranet IPs. (Yes, we have multiple RFC-1918 ranges.)
All well and good. However, foo can thus be used as a proxy to access outside websites, in a manner that bypasses our WebSense filter (which is running as a transparent proxy). WebSense is inherently patronising and braindead rubbish that is not fit for purpose, but we don't want to upset the IT department unduly, and outside access is not after all what the proxy is there for. Also, not all intranet sites are in .internal.example.com — I need access control based on IP range.
So — how do I tell the proxy to only allow itself to be used for access to intranet IP ranges? What manual page did I miss?
(I could carefully construct a ProxyBlock entry to block everything except our ranges, but that's more than a little laborious. I could do it server-by-server using ProxyPass, but that's way too much like work and I can't be sure my whitelist would ever be complete — I just want to allow it to proxy to intranet IP ranges but not to other IPs.)
Has anyone done this? How did you do it? |
emperor
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10:59a |
Christmas decorations...
Poll #1507466 Undecorating
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 98 When should Christmas decorations be taken down? When are you taking your Christmas decorations down this year? |
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jerkcity
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9:54a |
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| Monday, January 4th, 2010 |
pavanne
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11:50p |
Finding the key to avoiding late-night timewasting... Broken Skype and series 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from itunes. Current Mood: satisfied |
brrm
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8:43p |
Questions Meme
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) burkesworks kindly set me some questions. Here are my answers: 1) Was driving that V8 Vantage all it was cracked up to be?I think I'm going to have to say yes (it was the new V12 Vantage, incidentally - their most powerful engine in their lightest and smallest car). Being used to a Mazda MX-5, I was expecting it to be large and unwieldy, but the car feels surprisingly nimble behind the wheel. And quick. Mind-bendingly, warp-speed quick. As to whether it's worth the sticker price of £135,000 I'm less sure. Never having bought a house, I don't have a good handle on that sort of amount of money - it would certainly buy me a very large number of slightly lesser cars. However, what *is* clear to me is the craftsmanship that goes into making them. I have been to the factory twice now, and the attention to detail in all areas is as impressive as the car is fast. 2) Should I have bought that Austin 3-litre Westminster in 1988, or would I have found myself with a big lemon on my hands?Well, they appear to be quite spendy now, but I think as with most old Brit cars, unless you had somewhere warm & dry to keep it and barely drove it, it'd mostly be made of rust now. However, my top tip for the future is a Morris Marina or Ital - there's around 250 of each left on british roads and, provided you can convince the seller you're not a Top Gear researcher, they might be a worthwhile investment. ;-) 3) Have you ever thought about getting a Hindustan Ambassador?Actually, yes. I discovered this website, but in the end, they're quite pricey and I already have a Morris Minor, which isn't far off from their driving experience, I suspect... 4) How long have you been using Macs, and which models have you owned?First Mac I ever used was a Mac Plus my father bought, probably circa 1986, for some ridiculous amount of money - it included a whopping 20MB external hard disk and Imagewriter II dot matrix printer. Whiled away many happy hours with Macpaint, until I discovered games like Crystal Quest and the Dark Castle series... When he upgraded, I inherited that, and that pattern continued for a while - my next was an LC, then Performa 630, then Power Mac 8600/200, which was my first one bought new for me. Then followed the original Bondi iMac, Powerbook 2400c/180 (only available in the US and Japan, so I bought it while working in the states in '98). Then a Powerbook G3 Pismo. Finally, iMac G4 anglepoise cast off from work, followed by 13" aluminium Macbook and 24" aluminium iMac, which are my current machines. This doesn't include the castoffs I've picked up in the meantime for collecting rather than use as a main machine. You can see those here, on Flickr and a more exhaustive but out of date list on my website. I think that's it. Glad you asked? ;-) 5) Which is your favourite Oxford pub?That's a tricky one. When I was a student it was always the Radcliffe Arms, which was friendly and had good cheap food. It's since turned into "the Raddy", a football pub with TVs everywhere and no appeal for me any more - though it seems popular. Current favourites are probably the Royal Oak, work's regular pub, and Far From the Madding Crowd, popular among ox.ac.uk geeks. |
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