mgroves

I found this list of Company Name Etymologies while cruising delicious. Not suprisingly, most are actually connected in some way to the name(s) of their founder(s). One thing I did learn though, is that LG is actually a combination of Lucky and Goldstar. This is clever marketing, because I associate “Goldstar” with “cheap poor quality electronics,” but I associate LG with cool cell phones.

Since I don’t really have readers, I guess I have to do my own criticism: I’m a biased partison idealogue, parroting the party line and echoing the talking points. I agree that I’m very biased. If you want something unbiased, may I suggest this or this, because everyone and just about everything is biased.

So call me biased if you will. But I’m not a partison idealogue. I have a set of principles like most people, and most of the time my principles are in line with conservative groups of people. Traditionally, I’ve voted Republican. I consider myself very much a Goldwater or Reagan Republican, but when I look at today’s Republican party, I only see scant remnants of the principles of two of its most influencial leaders.

It’s almost as if the Republican party has become Liberal Lite(c). All the “compassion” of throwing money at problems without the tax increases. George Bush signed a huge, worthless piece of pork known as the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as other pork like the farm bill. Bush has been hugely lax on border security, “moderate” on gay “marriage” (though he hasn’t really taken any action), inconsistent on foreign policy, and signed a “campaign finance reform bill” that amounts to no more than regulations on political free speech.

I’m not angry at him for doing so. He hasn’t broken any promises. He’s done exactly what he said he would do. So why did I vote for him twice? Mainly because I agreed with more of Bush than of Kerry or Gore. But to put that into perspective, I agreed maybe with 2 out of 50 issues with Gore/Kerry, and maybe 10 out of 50 issues with Bush. I’m basically voting for the lesser of two evils. Is that how things are supposed to be? I don’t expect to ever find a viable 50/50 candidate, but what about a 40/50 or even 25/50? Do most people who vote for Republicans or Democrats feel like they are voting the lesser of two evils? Maybe it’s not possible for anyone above a 10/50 to ever be elected.

Anyway, please know that if an action/opinion of a politician or public figure is in line with my principles, I will defend that person’s action/opinion, no matter what party or group they are from. If Jefrey Dahmer were to say that he’s in favor of tax cuts, I would defend his opinion on tax cuts, not his eating habits.

According to this article, there are 390 times more people who are killed in road accident than are victims of terrorism. This is a fact that I’m not disputing. But the researchers from New Zealand also had this to say:

“Policymakers need to be aware of this when allocating resources to preventing these two avoidable causes of mortality,” they say.

So. Swords to plowshares, anyone? Terrorism isn’t as important as road accidents, because more people die from road accidents. Therefore, we should spend 390 times more money on seatbelt awareness and safe driving campaigns than we do on national security. It’s unlikely that you are going to ever get hit by lightning, so that means it’s okay to walk around in thunderstorms holding your 9-iron aloft. Go ahead, New Zealand says it’s okay!

In all fairness, I know these researchers are just stat-heads, trying to provide useful data to decision makers, and may not see (or it’s not their job to see) the big picture. Perhaps the reporter is trying to cherry pick some out-of-context statement to drum up some controversy.

Here’s some more highlights from a Flickr set of 1982-1983 video game magazine scans:

• Are you hot enough to play with Journey? I distinctly remember playing this game for the Atari 2600. It was confusing, difficult, and boring. Basically it’s like Space Harrier or 3d World Runner, except with no weapons, it’s not in 3D, and not entertaining. I guess associating the game with Randy Jackson’s old band is how they sold any copies at all.
• Two page spread of the Atari 5200: The bottom half of this ad looks incredible. It’s simplistic and probably was awe inspiring back in the day. The top half, however, is unfortunate, because it shows the 5200′s key weakness and downfall: it’s the same games I already have!
• Here’s a gaming genre you don’t hear about anymore: climbing games
• Okay, so the controller looks cool enough, but what’s the deal with the “cart switcher”? Is anyone lazy enough to buy one, or do carts get damaged that easily? Also, check out the killer 80s woodgrain styling.
• Apparently, Konami wasn’t the first company to come up with a game controller for homosexuals: The Joyboard Power Body Control, or as I like to call it: the Father of DDR.
• Here’s an interesting service I wasn’t aware of: Gameline. Before Xbox live, the only moderately successful online console gaming venture to date, there was also the XBand for SNES and Genesis, which is basically the same thing as this Gameline.
• You’ve just walked into a computer store and the salesperson wants to show you some software. What happens next? If you answered “She shows you the latest foam rubber forks, knives, and spoons”, then you will probably fail the Can You Talk Like a Hacker? quiz. Actually, the only way to pass the quiz is to give up after the first two questions, and use this awful quiz for toilet paper.
• The more I read these magazine scans, the more I realize that time really does flow like a river, and history repeats itself.

That almost wraps it up for video game magazine scans. There is one more feature I’m going to do on these, but it could be a while until you see it.

I don’t know if your bank’s website already has an ATM locator or not, but someone has used the Google Maps API to create a universal ATM locator. This would be particularly useful if you are going out of town and you have no idea where to find an ATM for your bank.

Back in November, I wrote about Ohio State Issue #2 (which failed), that had the goal of making voting absentee easier.

Now, there is a bill in the Ohio Senate that would require voters to show some form of ID when they want to vote. If you have never voted before, or live somewhere that already does this, you might be shocked to find out that you don’t have to prove you are who you say you are to vote in Ohio. Sure, supposedly the poll workers are supposed to compare your signature to the signature last year, but is that really effective? Do any of these poll workers have enough handwriting expertise to eliminate errors and fraud?

There are critics who are saying things like, “[they] are trying to slow down the vote and keep people from voting.” I say, EXACTLY. If we require ID to buy a pack of cigarettes or a can of beer, why not require ID for something infinitely more important? If you don’t have time to take a few extra seconds to show an ID to a poll worker, perhaps you should loosen up your schedule a bit. Who is this measure going to keep from voting? If the hassle of showing an ID outweights the privelege of participating in democracy, perhaps you aren’t the kind of person that should be voting anyway.

If you haven’t tried a Linux distro yet, or are frustrated with the ones you have tried, may I suggest Ubuntu?

The only “problem” I’ve had with Ubuntu to date is the stupid name, the stupid themes and the lame marketing/slogans (supposedly, “Ubuntu” is an ancient African word for “humanity to others” or “I am what I am because of who we all are” — lame, the various versions are called things like “Dapper Drake” and “Breezy Badger” — lame). I guess the lameness in presentation and marketing is the tradeoff for an extremely usuable and smart Linux distro. I have now been running Ubuntu exclusively for 4 months straight on my home PC–the longest a non-Windows OS has ever run on my home PC.

The whole deal with Ubunutu is that it’s a Linux that’s finally usable enough for “non-techies.” But, Linux for “non-techies” is silly: just because someone is a ‘techy’ (typically a software developer or hardware/networking guy) doesn’t mean they want to spend hours configuring their OS to work properly.

The best part of Ubunutu: the official Ubuntu forums. There is a severe lack of BOFH/RTFM type Linux zealots that I believe drive people away from Linux.

If you ask a non-computer scientist what “artificial intelligence” means, you might get a simple answer like, “a computer that can think” or something more fanciful like, “a computer that has become a sentient being.” Actually, artificial intelligence is the use of well-defined “learning” algorithms that can be applied to find a non-trivial answer to a problem set. Some examples of applied AI include facial and handwriting recognition, video games, and e-mail spam filters.

The basic idea is similar to the game 20 questions. An AI algorithm is given a defined set of objects and a defined set of characteristics of those objects. For instance, let’s say we had a goal of getting a computer program to recognize whether or not there was a car in any given picture. We would feed a large number of pictures to an algorithm and have it analyze various characteristics of each picture. We would then tell the program whether or not there was a car in the picture. So after the first 10 pictures, let’s say, the algorithm might come to the conclusion that any picture with a lot of red pixels in it is a picture with a car. After another 10 pictures, it might say any picture with a lot of red pixels on a black background makes up a car.

After feeding a lot of pictures in this manner to our algorithm, we can then ask the algoritm to make it’s own guess. If we were to feed our algorithm a picture of a red Corvette on a blacktop parking lot, it would probably guess correctly. If we were to feed it a picture of a blue Escort parked on some grass, it would probably guess wrong. The more pictures we feed it, and the more characteristics we program it to look for, the more accurate its “learning” will be.

The Turing test is a famous test devised by Alan Turning, one of the forefathers of computer science. Basically, the test puts a human in a room alone with two computers both enabled for some sort of chat. One chat will connect him with another human, the other chat with an AI conversation program. If the subject cannot accurately tell which is which, the AI conversation program has satisfied the Turing test.

Below is a comic from Jerkcity which requires you to know what a Turing test is to get the punchline. Know that this comic is not appropriate for children.

Maybe you saw these scans of video game magazines from the early 80′s on Flickr. Here are some highlights:

• Both Intellivision and Odyssey2 were advertising ‘voice synthesis modules’, which allowed games to include digitized voice (stored in 4K to 8K of ROM memory).

• Here’s the Vectrex. The main selling point of this thing seems to have been that no TV was required.

• I don’t know if this “The Future” article is spoof or serious, but it’s funny either way.

• E.T. is ready for Christmas! If only they knew…

• Here we have an ancient “modem”. This device was used by primitive “hackers” to communicate with other computers over “phone lines.”

• You are the one and only moon master…I mean mind master.

• Wireless Joystick Bricks: The first wireless controllers didn’t use infrared, and were the size of Rubic’s Cubes.

There’s been a lot of buzz in my hometown about this Glass City BBQ place. There’s even an article about it in the local newspaper. I can’t wait to check out the place.

I have nothing against Glass City BBQ, but this article has some weirdness in it:

Quote the article: “The restaurant and sports bar, at 391 Lincoln Ave., is the first barbecue establishment in Lancaster.” Say what!? There’s a Damon’s, BW-3′s, Roosters, Lonestar, Applebees, etc etc. in Lancaster. Perhaps the author means the first non-chain BBQ restaurant? Perhaps the author is using the No True Scotsman logical fallacy?

Quote Becky Henderson: “It would take at least half an hour to 45 minutes to get up and down Memorial Drive,” the 39-year-old said while getting a meal. “This is so convenient.” FORTY FIVE MINUTES? I know the traffic is pretty bad on Memorial Drive, but there is no way it takes that long, even during the lunch hour. To get to most of the places I mentioned above, Becky doesn’t even need to take Memorial Drive.