Pop Music

First things first, I apologize for the unexpected hiatus.  The holidays were a pretty kickin' time on my end.  I skipped posting on Christmas, because Christmas.  I didn't post that Thursday, because I had spent 13 hours at work that day, and I was just too mentally exhausted to write.

I spent my New Year's eve puking, which is pretty common for me.  What was uncommon was the fact that I hadn't had anything to drink beforehand-- I was sick with the stomach flu (or cancer, according to WebMD).  And last Thursday I forgot to post, because I am a moron.  But everyone knows that already.

On to more pressing matters!

Scooter Braun owns the future... of popular music.  And he motherfucking knows it.  He's still consolidating power at the moment, but he has tested the waters and has managed to part the red sea.

And I have no gooddamn clue how.  It makes no sense.  This fact is the exact opposite of his chosen domain (pop music), which makes so much sense it's insultingly boring.

Most of you are probably looking at me like I'm crazy.  But I'm not crazy.  I have charts and numbers and science to back me up, and science would never lie to me.  Most of you don't even know what a Scooter Braun is, but since you're not abjectly retarded, you know it's his stupid redneck face I shared in an image a while back.

I'll repost it to catch the slower members of the audience up:

Scooter Braun.  Know the name.

Like many people in the music industry, Scooter works behind the scenes.  He's in the shadows, pulling various strings to make the aggravatingly catchy, yet bland and repetitive music in the "popular" genre sell millions of copies.  Luckily for nostalgia, time will eventually roll up its sleeves and wash off all the shit so the great music being made right now can shine.

This is why your grandpa makes fun of the music you listen to, and why 'oldies' stations can stay in business, despite the fact that, by definition, they cannot add any new songs to their playlists.  These 'oldie' stations only play the great music that survived the test of time*.

Not counting things like Rebecca Black's Friday, but we'll get to that in a bit.  First, you need to know that Scooter is the man behind Justin Bieber's success.  And you also need to accept that Justin Bieber is pretty damn successful with tweens.  He isn't the most successful, but he's up there when it comes to outright net worth.

I couldn't find inflation adjusted numbers, but I get the feeling that successful tween stars pretty much all follow the same pattern.  Most tweens just buy some artist's shit, and then they move onto another artist.  Tween stars never stay in the spotlight (and make bank) for long, because their audience A) doesn't know shit about dick and B) grows up.  Except for Justin Bieber.  Justin... is still famous.  Don't believe me?  Have a Google search hits chart:



Yeah, he's still beating his peers in the "shitty music" category.  And, he's more or less turned it into positive press-- the worst thing you can say about him is that he makes bad music.  So does Ke$ha (I honestly can't be bothered to care enough to see if I spelled that right), at least Justin doesn't look like he'll give me herpes at 500 yards.  Ok, and he's spoiled and a brat, but he's also 18.  As far as I know, that's sorta average for that age group.

Bieber is still in the spotlight.  And he's been there longer than any of his direct tween competitors, and shows very few signs of imploding.

But, it was Scooter Braun who put him there, and Scooter Braun who knows his shit.  Here, have a link: Read.  Don't look into the exact reporting here (not that it's bad/wrong/falsified, but its not what I want to bring to your attention), but Braun's reaction and comments.  He's smart. He doesn't sound like someone bumbling around with a one hit wonder, he sounds like a man who understands marketability on a level no one has yet to even comprehend.

How do I know this?  I compiled another chart of Google hits, this being the stuff in music that you heard approximately 10 billion times in 2012, against Bieber:



** Notes about this chart at the end of the post.

If you read that New Yorker article, you already know that Scooter signed Carly Rae Jepsen. What you now know is he also signed PSY.

 Only Friday remains... and Friday is the inverse of Scooter Braun.  Is there anyone here who thinks Rebecca Black has a stable superstar career ahead of her?  She is, actually, more or less set for life.  Oh, you didn't think super popular YouTube videos made money?  They make fucktons of money, if you can break into the millions-of-views level.  And Friday did that in spades.

Sure, she got teased, but she has money to spare.  She dropped out of school, but, with some smart investments,  she could do perfectly fine investing her profits and living on the interest.  And that was two years ago.  The difference is that she'll never be taken seriously, on a musical level.  Ever.

I've heard music snobs say that "Call Me Maybe" and "Gangnam Style" are "Brilliant, but horrible songs", despite the fact that, to my admittedly piss-poor ear, the only strong difference between them and Friday is the lyrics and effects used.  This is because Scooter Braun is a goddamn superhero.

(I am aware that Gangnam Style is a parody.  But, it has become the super-mega hit that it's making fun of, so it's valid.  And personally, I'm still sick of hearing it.  Bring it on in the comments if you disagree.)
 
Scooter Braun owns tweens, when it comes to pop music.  The next batch of radio hits?  Gonna be his.  He is a man to watch, if only so you know who to hang in effigy later.

*Not that all old music on the radio is good music.  But the average is skewed in favor of objectively good pieces.

**Terms were picked that were most favorable to the artist.  Nine times out of ten, that meant the song and not the person making the song,  Also, searching Friday on its own led to one weeeiiiirrrrrd trends chart.  I have no idea what the hell is up with November, but the searches for 'Friday' in every November since 2004 skyrocket.  It's absurd.

I'm moving.... eventually!

You should probably read this post listening to Billy Joel's "Movin' Out".  Have a youtube link for ease of access:

Ok, now that you've got the proper soundtrack, I have some news to announce   This will no longer be the primary portal to the blog.  This particular website may or may not still exist in some fashion, but I will start directing traffic elsewhere.

I'm still writing, mind you, because writing is important.  It's a skill I want to be gooder at.  And, hopefully, I can still make people laugh with words and teach them a little bit about this weird universe we live in and/or point and laugh at stupid people doing stupid shit.

But, guys, I do a lot more than just write boring old English.  I can write in Java and Python and Common Lisp.  And I want to start sharing that too.  You see, I have some cool/weird ideas for webapps that I'd like to start writing and hosting for people to try.  All of the source code will be open, obviously, and some of it would be stand-alone programs that you'd download.  Other parts would be web applications and I want a place to host those.

And I'd like to start a side blog that's devoted to nothing but computer science/software engineering.  Instead of trying to be funny/sarcastic/a giant asshole, I'd write more technically for assistance in using things like Apache Tomcat, or the Google Web Toolkit or Python or how to cron a script.  This was actually my original intent with this blog, but then I thought no one would read that, and I wanted to be read.

Now I've realized that I might as well just write what I want to write, and if I want to be read, I'll stop fucking around and write for Cracked.

All of this really should be under one umbrella, and as you might have guessed, most web hosting services don't allow the degree of customization that I'd be looking for.  So, I want to host this eventual website out of my house, and build it myself.  I'll also be able to get some free CS-sideblog posts out of the adventures I'm going to have making all the planned software tech I want to use play nice in the sandbox with each other.

What does this mean for you, dear reader?

Not a whole lot.  If all goes as planned, Blogger will still be hosting a variant of this blog, as I still like to pretend that someone will stumble upon this and like it and make me Internet famous.  However, it'll get a lot more computer science-y, which I will balance out with a banner of a unicorn.

The transition probably won't happen for a few months.  Why?  Because my dorm's firewall is a cast iron bitch to work around, and my attempts to set up a router to bypass it have not gone well (fun fact: you can't stick shitrail on 32kb of memory.  Like, nothing.  It might as well not even exist).

Yay for getting my own webzone!  Also, yay for copping out a post to talk about this instead!

Internet Browsing And You

I sorta forget that other people don't always keep up with the latest trends when it comes to Internet browsing.  Hell, I don't even keep up with all the browsers. If you use Avant you're officially the sad nerdy version of a hipster.  And heaven forbid I run into someone using K-meleon- which is Firefox's shunned Windows-only cousin. 

The point is that there are more ways to view the Internet than the amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.  That being said, I'm pretty sure all of you have the same picture when it comes to your choice of Internet browser.  This:

So... that's the kid from Up fighting with a furry?

Now, I'm not here to defend everyone's favorite browser for getting another browser.  If you don't know which one that is, have a hint: the one eating glue.  I use Firefox on my main computer because it has several add-ons I need to function (LeechBlock, FireBug and Chatzilla are the big three I use almost every day).  I've got Chrome on my netbook because it was shiny and new back then and I wanted to try it.

So, why does everyone hate IE?  Well, you probably first started avoiding it when your "computer" friend told you it was the worst thing ever.  This video sums it up fairly well:

It's a two minute video, but the important part is in the last stretch when he rants about IE.  You see, for a long time, Internet Explorer didn't play by the same rules as everyone else when it came to browsing the web.  Writing an application that worked for all browsers sucked because IE did things differently, so you'd have to tack on a lot of extra IE only code.

Then Microsoft pulled the stick out of their ass with IE 8 and 9, and made their browser Document Object Model compliant.  Or DOM compliant to cut down on typing, but don't confuse this with Marcus' gay lover in Gears of War.

Also known as the overcompensation duo

 So, in today's great world, developing for IE is just as easy as Firefox, Chrome, or Opera, as all of these browsers now follow the same rules (DOM).  I hope I just ruined some pretentious asshole's day with that one.  Wait, if that didn't do it, this will: as a programmer, you have no excuse anymore to say that developing for IE sucks.

Well, no one gives a shit about what's easy to write code on.   If that was the case, we'd have converted you people over to Linux a while ago.  And I know that- so I asked my Facebook feed, also known as the most fair distribution of people on the planet, why they thought IE sucked.

Almost everyone that replied complained about IE's speed.  Valid point.  Aside from the fact that IE recently beat Chrome in speed tests, and has historically beaten up on Firefox.  In fact, if speed was the only thing we judged browsers by, Opera would be launching nukes while everyone else was still working on gunpowder in the Civilization series.

What does this mean?  Not much.  IE still sucks at loading CSS style sheets (which is how 90% of graphics are done on the web) and recently has started taking close to 11 seconds to boot from a cold start.  Those are the two things that come to mind when you think about browser speed, so IE still feels slow.

But IE does a damn good job at dealing with multiple tabs (better than Chrome and Firefox in that regard) and running JavaScript (also known as animation on the web).  Is it any better than Firefox or Chrome?  Probably not- but its definitely comparable and not a glue huffing castoff from another age.

Also, (for your enjoyment) here are a few other reasons I got as to why people don't use IE:
"It's not as pretty as Firefox."
"I use Safari because [I'm not allowed to use] non-native browsers."
"BECAUSE IE WAS INVENTED BY THE MAN!!!!"

Thanks to everyone who answered my random Facebook poll.  Please don't flame me to hard.

SOPA and PIPA

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little scared of this post.

The pair of legislation- SOPA and PIPA in the US House and Senate- is not an easy thing to tackle.  This isn't like finding fun facts about crows or looking at statistics in porn or bitching about the space program or defending the color purple.

This stuff is serious.  This stuff is a legit issue.

I was going to ignore it, or tactfully dance around it while talking about other things, but then the Internet went and blacked the hell out, making it a big issue.  As they rightfully should have.  But I can't just ignore it anymore- and neither, as a blog reader, can you.

Because it's just plain ignorant to do so now.  That's the opposite of what the blog was started to do.  Time to man up.

Just like Jesus would have wanted

In brief summery, the bills are an attempt stop online piracy.  They allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement, or accused of spreading copyright infringement.  The court order could include barring online advertising from the website, barring search engines from linking to the website and requiring Internet Service Providers to block the website.

Also, it makes the streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.  Immunity is given to websites that help in rooting out online piracy, and given to websites that unknowingly host copyright infringing content.  Unknowing websites would still be liable for damages, however.

I tried to untangle the legalese, promise.

Lets get one thing out of the way- copyright infringement is bad news bears.  Period.  On a fundamental level, it's the theft of an idea.  I do not support that- if I found someone copying all my blog posts, I'd be a little pissed off.

I take it back, I'd be amused... unless they had more readers than I did.  Then I'd be calling in fire and brimstone like a vengeful Disney villain.

How I would try to stop copyright infringement.  This is also why I'm not good at politics

That being said, there are a few key points in the summary that leave me feeling like I swallowed cat vomit on purpose.

First, it doesn't sit well with me (much like cat vomit) that copyright holders can seek these court orders.  I'd feel a little better about the whole thing if they needed to go through a more complicated process with the Justice Department that involves some sort of proof of malicious intent/desire to profit.

I'm a big fan of due process and making sure some fictional amoral company isn't out to try and ruin it's competitors with this bill.  Which would be all the companies, as CEOs are generally goddamn psychopaths.

The next two issues are more complicated.  I'll handle the technical one first, then the legal one, and if you're not asleep by then I have some high grade chloroform.

The technical problems all stem from the whole "ISP's blocking websites" part.  Believe it or not, your ISP does not monitor your traffic- in fact, generally, your ISP could care less about what websites you visit.  Actually storing and checking all of that information would be a royal pain in the ass.

Think about the steps required to validate traffic for a second:
First, intercept every packet of data that goes through an ISP's gateway.  The largest size a packet can be is 1.5 Mb.  That's _tiny_ in today's web, a 30 second YouTube video could have up to three thousand of these packets (not all the packets are actual video data- there is a bit of overhead).

Never you mind the amount of data that an online game might generate.

Next, check the IP destination address of every packet.  This is easier than you might think, because IP addresses are always stored in the same place.  After that, compare the IP address to some table of blacklisted websites, and if you get  a match, drop or (even worse) reroute the packet or generate a reply that explains the content you're trying to access is blacklisted.

That's a lot of work.  I'll use numbers to help quantify how much effort just got placed on ISPs.  Let's say there are 10,000 blacklisted websites after SOPA gets passed.  IP addresses do map to a general ordering (numerically), so the number of steps it would take to search the list for a match is log(10,000), or 4.

That doesn't seem like a lot, you say.  But watch.

Every packet has to be checked, so our fictional you tube video would have to go though 12,000 steps, plus the steps required for the request packet (under the best circumstances, 4).  And it would have to undergo all these steps at each new gateway hop.

I did a trace route on my laptop on my university's network accessing part of my university's website.  I had to go through three hops to get there.

This gives us a grand total of something like 36,012 additional steps for a 30 second clip of How I Met Your Mother if you happened to be on the same network the video was hosted on.

I like to think Barney would appreciate the amount of computational complexity required to watch him

And that's not even the part of the bill anyone is complaining about from a technical side.  All the math geeks are more worried about the extra load on DNS servers as they now have to blacklist name queries for copyright infringing content.  That shit is easy (as DNS request packets are singular, leading up to only 24 additional steps).  But you'd need to do the IP based scanning and blocking as well, or else we'd just go back to memorizing the IP addresses and not the URLs of our favorite pirate websites.

And yes, this means DNS packets would have to get IP scanned, so for our example, that's now 288 more steps.  You see how this stuff ramps up very quickly.

The fact is, when you look at the sheer amount of traffic on the Internet, it doesn't make any sense to try and filter all of it.  God forbid you start adding to the load by sending reply packets back saying that a website was blocked, especially if the ISPs end up getting staggered (ISP blacklists get de-standardized, as one ISP starts blocking a website another ISP doesn't know about).

And again, I haven't even started on the first amendment stuff or privacy stuff yet, so lets dig into that, shall we?

First, a picture:

It's a new thing- brass bands and rap.  The guy in the center is gonna lay down some phat rhymes

Now, lets play a fun game- how does this violate SOPA?

If you answered, it doesn't, stop using your brain and really look.  No, not at the subject of the picture, at the background.  That's the Foot Locker logo back there, and as such, is copyrighted.  I assure you, no one took a picture of street performers and then checked with Foot Locker if it was OK to post online.

You see, with the language of the bill at it's current spot, stuff like this (which isn't a bad picture, to be honest) would be taken down along with all the other pirate websites.  This is how SOPA is purposed to work.

And within lies the rub- intellectual property (what SOPA is really trying to protect) is a very hard thing to define.  When are you simply taking pictures in front of a giant fucking sign, and when are you actively trying to steal the idea on the sign?  What it all comes down to, at some point, we- as a culture- lost respect for artists.

That's what this is all about- not corporations trying to get money, not about the US trying to censor things.  It's about art (and the most popular way to consume art, entertainment).  At some point (right around when Napster started) we stopped giving any value to creative efforts.  Why bother paying for them when we could get them for free, after all?

It was a bitch having to go to the store and actually pick out a song we wanted to hear.  But you did it anyway, you got the CD just to find out that all the other tracks sucked ass.

Why do all of that when you could get the song you actually wanted for free?  Why just stop at one song for free, might as well get the whole album too.  Hell, screw that, just get the entire disography, maybe you'll dig the sucky parts later.  Never any thought like, "wait- maybe the person on the other end needs money to survive?  And that if I value something, maybe I should pay for it?"

This isn't a problem with other things (like food.  Or computers).  We seem to have the market concept down when it comes to tangible, actual things.  But after we cheapened music, we cheapened software- video games, primarily.  Then we cheapened images (do Google searches for copying images from devantART).

Something like SOPA or PIPA needs to exist to try and give value back to creative efforts.  There are ways for creative efforts to exist within this new "entertainment is a free right" society we have now- just look at My Little Pony for a great example- but it shouldn't be that way.  I don't know the right answer. I do know the wrong one, however.

SOPA and PIPA are well meaning, but at the end of the day, impractical and silly.  I think that with some more discussion, perhaps some temperance and moderation- we can find a way to make everyone happy.

The grand ambitions of the people that deface websites

(The continuing crisis: still don't have Internet on my main laptop.  Netbook seems to be working, so at least I'm writing on a computer I actually own.)

Did you know that we can use songbird brains to synthesize estrogen?

Or, right, blog post.

As most of you know, I'm a bit of a fringe guy when it comes to computer science.  I work in a pair of very low profile fields (Computational Geometry and Geospatial Programming) that don't do anything cool, haven't done anything cool for years and have no plans on ever launching a robot that can make a cat happy via a good brush down.

Side note: that robot is damn awesome.  It is remotely controlled via a pair of Wii-motes, a treadmill, and everyone's favorite controller for everything except gaming, Microsoft's Kinect.  And yes, outside of a minor head bashing, the cat really does seem to enjoy itself.  I took this as a sign that cats will ally themselves with our future robot overlords and work as spies- cute and cuddly during the day, giving away valuable intel about the human resistance at night.

It may already be too late

"Relimited, what the hell were you doing, going on about your stupid computer science work when you had the cat brushing wonder up your sleeve?" I hear you ask in my head.

I hate to say this, but you're being a bit of a dick.  I had a point and was getting to it, but no, you just want the good stuff.  Fine.  Jerkface.

It turns out hackers plan on having their own satellite grid.  Yeah, that's right- those nerdy kids back in high school have decided to stop taking your shit and want to launch the Hammer of Dawn to prove it.

Not really, but the basic idea is that individuals and small groups will have access to launching and maintain their own satellites.  The real trick isn't the stuff in space, but the ground stations required to monitor the stuff in space, so you don't lose track of where the hell the stuff is.

Honey, where the fuck did you leave the remote?

The hackers hope to have low cost ground stations you can buy for about $150 on a non-profit basis, which actually is pretty cheap.  The end goal is to have a totally privately owned space-based internet for hackers and their friends.

So, when the government introduces bills like SOPA, hackers go, "Fuck you, I'll just surf the web from space!"  Which is exactly how real life problems should be tackled- always go for the most awesome solution.

One small step for man, one giant leap for trekkies

(The Continuing Crisis:  Still don't have Internet at home.  No idea when I will at this point.  Been too busy at work calibrating German aerial cameras)

There are a lot of awesome and cool things out there- but 3D movies, are not one of them.  I may have annoyed a few of you by saying that, but come now.  Even you must admit that 3D glasses are basically suck that you put over your eyes.  Also, there is the fact that 3D animators can't really go all out with the cool 3D effect, because then they'll give most of the audience migraines. This is a real thing and happens because your brain and eyes suck.

Things that are awesome and cool: Rainbow Dash

Not to mention, in scientific studies, most people do not give a rats ass about 3D.

Personally, I think the entire 3D movie thing is a letdown and generally not worth the price of the ticket.  Which is sad, because I do watch movies just for the CGI effects.  It's the only good reason to see Transformers 2, after all.  But, because of the limitations of how our eyes work, the illusion of 3D isn't a good viewing medium, and in its current state never, ever will be.

So, clearly, science has decided that we need to scrap this crap and take a note from Star Wars.  Fuck fake 3D- lets do real 3D by screwing around with lasers and microscopic mirrors to create real holograms.

not pictured- headaches, 3D glasses, or any of that stupidity.

Now, this technology isn't out on the market yet, but the people behind it want to do a proof-of-concept model that does real holographic 3D in high-freaking-definition by mid-2012.  Also known as, before the world ends.

Also known as- HOLY UNICORN FARTS THAT IS THIS SUMMER.

And don't think we'll have technology adoption problems- the BBC's R&D department is already working on a 3D holographic camera and smart people at MIT say they're getting damn close to a holographic TV camera using everyone's favorite controller for everything except video games- Microsoft's Kenect.

How close?  Try 15 fps close.  Or in the words of David Bowie: They're half way there.

Copyright laws and IPs- finally comming around to haunt the Internet

I do believe it was Shakespeare who first uttered the legendary "This shit writes itself" quote, but it could have been Mark Twain.

Because both writers are so damn similar and everything.  I was worried this was going to be the first day I would miss my posting schedule without a forwarding or at least  an apology.  It's 9:23 right now my time, I've been in a pair of restricted labs all day and I won't lie, writing up something for the blog slipped my mind.

This is one of the labs I work in.  You may now place bets on what I do.

I could have tried to pirate the post.  Steal someone else's idea, hope to the flying spaghetti monster that they actually did decent research and just copy and paste.  It would be a little fitting, to be honest.  Considering how much piracy and file sharing goes on the Internet these days, a stolen blog post would be really funny in a not-funny-at-all hipsterish way.

But I hear hipsters don't like mathematics (the language that describes the universe) because it's too mainstream (the entire universe digs it), so they can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.  Also, I hear hipsters find sex to mainstream, so be prepared to have a "physical-love-conjuncture" instead.  Because that's so romantic.

Yeah, a nerd is calling out a hispter for sucking at romance.  It may not get any more ironic... aw, shit.

Anyway, I didn't have to go hipsterfy myself because I got more lucky than the Lucky Charms mascot, who isn't lucky that he still has his cereal- he has magic for that- but is incredibly lucky those kids haven't murdered the hell out of him yet.  Everyone knows a young child will do what it takes for marshmallows.  Whatever. It. Takes.

Now that I look at a box, Lucky's lucky his cocaine high hasn't ended yet

So, away from making fun of cereal box mascots and back to tech.  It turns out that the RIAA pirates the living fuck out of TV shows.  How many many TV shows?  Try something along the lines of nine million dollars worth of TV shows.

Daaaaaamn.  That takes dedication.  Like, wow.  You have to be intentionally creating things just to steal them to steal that much.  Oh wait- it was full seasons of just Dexter?  Just that one show?  That was worth nine million dollars?

Now, this is mildly unfair to RIAA- because to get to nine million, we have to play by their own outrageous rules.  In order for one to that high, you simply use the RIAA guidelines that the shareholders can sue for $150,000 dollars an episode, or maybe more, depending on how you look at the phrase "copyrighted works".  Is each word copyrighted?  Each line?  How about the opening theme, is that an additional one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?  Or any original bit of music from the sound track?

Considering the recent debacle with the Megaupload song and Universal, a lot of old copyright protection techniques just seem retarded in this day and age.

Also, Youtube (and by extension, Google) doesn't have a soul or a lick of backbone, as apparently Universal has a contract with Youtube that lets them use the content management system to take down videos that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, people who fight for a traditional implementation of copyright law are often found the biggest perpetrators of file sharing- movie studios are often caught pirating their own movies.

The whole damn thing is sorta ironic- maybe the hipsters and I have more in common than I like.

Google vs Theoretical Quantum Physics, round one...

I made a promise to myself when I stared this blog.  Nothing serious, it wasn't like I hooked my little fingers together and made a pinkie promise with myself.

Also, if there is ever a promise you never, ever back out of, it's a pinkie promise.  That is the most legit kind of promise out there.  You keep them, even if you're dying because a rock from space hit you in the spleen and you're dying from complications due to infection.  You keep that damn pinkie promise to pick up your little sister from soccer practice and you do it with a smile.

Back on subject, I promised I wouldn't do quantum physics- namely, I wouldn't do posts on quantum entanglement, or quantum teleportation.  For a few reasons, the first being that it is not nearly as cool as it sounds, and two, because it's been talked about to death.  Any and all awesome that it once contained has been bled out slow news day reporters (who are probably vampires in secret, have you seen how pale they look?) and people getting confused and thinking that it has anything to do with the LHC, or more commonly known as the black hole machine.

Point: It does sorta look like an entry portal for Cuthulu

But, I break all my (non-pinkie related) promises, so here is a very quick and dirty primer on quantum entanglement, so we can get to the good stuff.  Quantum entanglement is the synching up of electrons across how ever far they damn please.  After scientists have forced a pair of electrons to synch up, whatever they do to one electron is done to the other.  This is commonly tested with electron "spin".

Note: Spin isn't how the electron spins.  See why I didn't want to do a post on this?  Friggin' theoretical physicists can't name things for shit.  It's actually how the plar-- you don't need to know any of this to get it later.  Just remember that when scientists change the "spin" on one electron, the other one changes too.  Instantaneously.  No distance lag, no time lag.

Yeah, it really does make absolutely no goddamn sense.

Here is some artist's picture representation of it.  Note how this also makes no goddamn sense

"Spin" is a handy property because it only has two values.  We'll call those values 0 and 1.  You know what else uses 0's and 1's in everything it does?  Its a marvel of the modern world, ubiquitous on all continents including Antarctica.  Your using it right now, and it isn't an ingredient in jello roofies.

It's your computer- which does all the awesome things it does based on binary, which is a way to count that only uses 0 and 1.  See where I'm going yet?  If we were to build a computer out of quantum entanglement, we could get data to go even faster than it already does.  We're vaguely starting to see the limits of using electricity (which flows at the speed of light).  Quantum entanglement goes even faster than that.

Pictured: Superman being slower than quantum entanglement.  Because we can see him.

Why does any of this matter?  Because some guys recently figured out how to copy Google's search algorithm using quantum entanglement.  As you know, that algorithm was the reason why Google became the all-Father of the Internet, the great god that looms over us all and dispenses us with information and silly search histories if we ask nicely.  So, when (because who are we kidding if.  These are scientists we're talking about, they're damn crazy enough to get it working) the quantum net comes online, we'll already have the greatest search algorithm in place to view it.

And they're also Spanish.  You heard it here first- Spain is totally going to ransom off the new quantum net in a desperate bid to become a relevant country again.

Today's post is about boobs

I don't have a lot of time to write today.

It's the first week of break away from finals (or Fuck I Never Actually Learned Shit for those unfamiliar with the acronym), and as such, I'm writing this at a party.  Because I'm on break damn it, and I deserve time off.  So, I had to kinda go for some low hanging fruit for blog inspiration, as I didn't have (read as: spend) a lot of time reseraching this post.

I'm coming in a close second to the "Fucks I don't give" category

So, lets talk about something I know your interested in: Boobs.

Or rather how your perspective on boobs and the female flesh they're attached to.  It turns out that the kind of porn you're into is an indicator of how poor you are.

Furries and other people into weird shit are exempt:
1) because I don't want to loose my faith in humanity right now
2) because I'm sure there is a subset to the Rules of the Internet somewhere that says that whenever you try to catagorize all the fetishes, you get another one.

I'd post a rule-34 related picture and make that joke because I'm lame today, but I want to keep the blog sort of kid friendly.  If the parents of said kids don't mind my incessant swearing and racist/sexist references.

Back to boobs.

Proving that scientists can't get close to women outside of labs, some scientists did a study on Playboy magazines.  What they found out was that during tough economic times, men (or lesbians) tend to prefer Playboy bunnies with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios and smaller body mass indexes.  Another study (at this point, study sorta seems to need to be in quotes) found that that men also prefered older and heavier bunnies.

So, to recap- when you have almost no money, you prefer your porn to be of the more cough, realistic, cough verity.  Why?  Well, in order to pretend they were still actually doing research, the scientists got drunk after their days of going over Playboy magazines and came up with the Enviromental Security Hypothesis.

Or rather, its the scientists saying that men prefer women better at reproduction (your standard model type) during good economic times and prefer women better at production (this adjusted model type) during rough economic times.

So, if your wondering why that mole suddenly seems to turn you on, its because you just got laid off.
heh. laid.

Like that shitty relative you have who sleeps in the garage, guess what's back?

November is over!  Yay!

We are now in the much better month of December, where people murder each other for a chance to act like they saved a metric shit ton of money on gifts they pretend to have bought for other people.

This is also known as my favorite month of the year.  But even more importantly, the blog is BACK.  IN.  ACTION.  Now that I'm not writing that pesky novel thing for November, we can go back to talking about how the robots are almost assured to take over humanity in our life times. It's cool.

Speaking of the novel, it isn't actually hosted in it's entirety here.  I don't know if I plan on uploading the finished (ish) manuscript.  After seeking the wise council of people who can actually write,  I've decided to sit on it for a few months before I start edit work.  I'll keep you guys posted n' stuff.

So... what to post, what to post?  Oh, hell if I know or actually plan this shit out.  Lets see what the all-father Google has to say about, um, midgets?

Nothing on the Randy Newman classic, "Short People Got No Reason To Live"?  Google, I am disappoint.

Ok, never fucking mind.

Here's something awesome- Intel recently unveiled their new teraflop chip, which if you don't know, is goddamn fast.  Flops stand for floating point operations per second, so that's 1000000000000 operations every second.  For context, it takes me about 15 minutes to do a floating point calculation by hand, and most hardcore gaming gear can't really push a kiloflop, which is only 1000 operations every second.

Now, before you go rushing to go try and attach the new chip to your rig (or go sell some children into slavery to afford one) do note that this isn't a CPU.  It's a secondary processor, built for its ability to do scientific calculations.  Getting those very high flop numbers requires a lot of optimization.  You'd actually get shitter performance trying to run a standard OS on it.

Or even use it as a GPU.  Don't get any crazy ideas.  Still, the fact that the chip exists is goddamn awesome.  So far, it looks like we're nowhere even close to slowing down Moore's Law.  Which, again, for those playing at home, is the theory that computational power doubles every year.  Which means by 2013, computers will by 16 times more powerful than my laptop, and by 2015, the robots will learn how to use human fear as high octane fuel.

No word on how soon it'll be before people actually go into the information grid, Tron-style though.

As  a computer scientist, this picture terrifies me on many, many levels

And some of us should have our Internet taken away

First things first, look up there.

See that shiny new awesome page link up there?  That's where the novel will be posted.  I'll just tack on more and more paragraphs as I go, and by the end of it, I should have a text file so large that Blogger better give me a complaint e-mail.

And I think that wraps up today's post.  Go check out the NaNoWriMo stuff.  Its awesome.  Ta da!  Done!

What do you mean you want a normal post?  What the hell do you think I am, a attention whore who only writes a blog because he prays that the Internet will somehow magically find it and make him famous for 3 seconds?

Well, that is all true, but that... oh.  Yeah, I guess I should keep this going if I want to keep what readership I have.  So, what shall I rant about today?  hmm...  people doing strange things?  nah.  Robots?  Nah.  Oh, I know, I'll do both!  Lets look at the Internet.

The Internet: Strange People, Robots and Porn

As most of you probably know, the Internet is full of crazy people spouting off crazy things.  Most of the time its all pretty harmless, usually just passes about your mother's colorful life, references to that proverbial whore "she" or some of the best insults you've ever heard.

However, every once and a while, crazy decides to up its game.  Take it to the next level of "what-the-fuck-are-you-serious-right-now".  This time the retarded has inflicted a particular Judi McLeod, as she has decided to rant and rave about something very minor.  It would seem that on November 9th, the FCC is going to perform a nationwide test of the EAS (Emergency Alert System).

It'll last for about 3 minutes, in which, apparently. will cause motorists to spontaneously crash as they check their radios.  Because... people still listen use their radios?   Also, this is clearly a government plan because of the fact that when you look at the date the way the Europeans do, it looks like 9/11!  HOLY SHIT.  STOP THE MOTHERFUCKING PRESSES.  Oh wait, the FCC is apparently doing that for 3 whole minutes.  Which, clearly, will cause everyone to die!

Also, this lady is tragically misinformed about how the Internet is privately owned, and therefore not regulated by the FCC and can't be shut down for an EAS test.  But you know, deducing that would require the use of sense and sanity which this woman clearly lacks.

To be fair, most of the denizens of the Internet also lack those things

However, if you want to really dive into crazy, try the comments section.  That'll fill your crazy person quota for months.  And hopefully, most of those people are just being assholes for the sake of being an asshole and  not being held accountable for it.  Still, even one of those people has enough crazy to fill a small town in a Steven King novel.

It's like I don't even know you anymore, Internet

I spend a lot of time on the Internet.  That might be an understatement.   It may be more telling to say the only block of time I'm totally disconnected from the net is when I sleep, and I haven't done that in ages.

Outside of sleep and isolated vacations/family functions, you can assume that I'm on the Internet somehow, somewhere.  Hell, I'm writing this blog post in class at the moment.

Aside: Teachers are sorta like lions.  Look 'em right in the eye, show that you won't take their shit and they won't give you any problems.

So, clearly, I pay attention to what's going on in the web.  Not only from the computer science-y side of things (the IEEE people and the WWC consortium), but also from an international law perspective (the copyright protection treaties that flare up every once and a while like a particularly stubborn and noticeable strain of herpes).

Also, from a subculture perspective.  I make a monthly pilgrimage to 4chan.  Afterward, I cry for 15 minutes over a large tub of ice cream, take a half hour shower and spend the rest of the day drinking away my sorrows at a dive bar.

Dealing with 4chan has all the emotional pain of a breakup

Oh, and from a geographic perspective.  I'm still convinced that rule 34's servers are in Atlantis, as any real government would purge the horrible with chemically assisted fire.  So far, all of my attempts to use Traceroute to find the servers have ended with my computer committing ritual suicide after leaving a note that just reads, "Why?"

All in all, the Internet is like a second home for me.  It has become an old friend- one that can trawl the 5 million terrabytes of information distributed around the world and find me the perfect picture of a pinball game that is buried in the code of Microsoft Word '97.

And here you thought only video games had Easter Eggs

So, it came as a bit of a surprise recently when I found out that the Internet is changing.  Or namely, for those that don't want to actually click on links, social networking traffic has eclipsed porn traffic on the web.  Not counting search engines, porn used to be the most common destination of all Internet traffic.

It was depressing that humanity had the greatest information network ever made and used to find boobs, but it seemed fitting somehow.  The fact that we used the Internet for porn showed our flawed nature, that no matter what we think, we're all just animals underneath and are subject to the same pressures, instincts and impulses that all animals deal with.

Now apparently we use it to make friends and connect with our peers around the world, which sounds disgustingly noble, mature and adult.  Eww.

Also, if you haven't yet, do give me feedback about my last post.  Your words do matter because I have no personal honor and will go with whatever has the most support.

Also, if anyone has trawled the blog recently, you may notice that an image is missing from this  old post.  It would seem Amazon does not like it when you hotlink a picture of an easy bake oven.  If I update the post and remove/change the image, it'll republish as my front page post, which isn't exactly helpful.  I do plan on fixing it... soon.

Cheating is just another way to fund a country

I've dabbled in massively multiplayer online games.  Yes, dabbled.  As in, only played for a little while.

Why are you staring like that at me again?

Alright, alright, I spent way more than my fair share of time playing several mmorpgs.  I put in obscene amounts of time into Final Fantasy 11, I played way to much World of Warcraft, I played a jedi in Star Wars Galaxies when that actually meant something and yes, I've even grinded up a character in Maple Story.

Don't judge me.

However, my mmo days are pretty much over.  It became very apparent to me that I could either pass school and have a life, or get an epic mount.  I couldn't have both.  I won't lie to you, I did a whole excel spreadsheet to the pros and cons of having a job at McDonalds vs an epic character that could shatter the servers themselves.  It was a pretty close call.

Most said phrase of Zul'garak, the Arbiter of Darkness: "Would you like fries with that?"

As any past or current mmo player can attest to, one of the most annoying aspects of the game comes from gold farming (or RMTing depending on how old school you are).  For those of you not acquainted with the term, its basically shorthand for a cycle of suck, failure, misbegotten profit and shortcuts.

The idea works as follows: in almost all mmorpgs, there is a form of currency.  Most of the time, you need to actually do things in game in order to earn said currency, something like selling items your character has made, doing tasks for others or whoring out your skills at teleporting people around the world, like some kind of monorail-prostitute combo.

Soulless destroyers of fun, smelling an opportunity, realized they could probably get some people to pay real money for fake in game money, because people are really lazy, really retarded and have no friends.

If you want to waste your parents cash on something that has no actual value, go right ahead.  I'm sure you're in the basement for a reason.  But please don't also ruin the game for someone who has been having fun actually playing it.

You know what game play does? Builds a skill set.  The game compensates for that- it gets harder to play.  So if you buy your way to the top, you're dead weight because you haven't put in the time to actually get good.  But then other retards see you with your cool shit, want your cool shit and buy their way to the top and the cycle of stupid continues.

The moral of the story is that you can't buy happiness or self worth.  But you can be annoying as fuck.

Anyway, because this makes the game less fun for everyone involved, most game companies go way out of their way to put a stop to it.  However, they're basically outclassed before they ever get off the launch pad because China uses gold farming as a way to put prisoners to work.  Yes, you read that right- we make prison gangs mow the medians of highways or something, but China makes them get as much fake currency as possible to it can be sold to stupid people.

That's fucking brilliant.  You can get your dangerous margin of society to hate every other country by having to deal with constant dumb meme references in the trade chat and make money at the same time.  Well, it could be worse, I guess.  Its not like China is using that money to fund a nuclear weapons development program-- but North Korea totally is.

Every time you reply to a person who has no vowels in their name offering you gold, North Korea gets a little closer to having the bomb

Videogames. Used for things other than entertainment.

Video games have been the great constant in my life since I unwrapped a Nintendo 64 for Christmas one year.  Ever since that one glorious moment, I've never lived up to my potential.  I have wasted hours, days, even entire weeks in imaginary worlds.  I've since changed places of residence, schools, jobs, friends, interests, and identities countless times since then, but video games have always been there for me.

And if it wasn't for online Halo matches, I would have never found out about my mother's colorful past.

Its really easy to see why- when it comes to entertainment, video games are very active.  You get feeling of accomplishment from building a skill (never mind the skill is essentially worth as much as a hobo's alcohol tolerance) along with all the joys of taking a break from your current sucky reality and being in an objectively better one.

Case in point, I have yet to see a video game where hipsters exist and I don't murder them for points.

When you add in the fact that the Internet now lets gamers get all their social interaction via gaming, its easy to see why video games and their kin are pretty much the next wave in the entertainment industry: they satisfy all of your emotional needs.  You get self gratification and social contact wrapped up in a nice package where you can forget about all the terrible failings and mistakes of your current meatspace life.

Playing video games for long enough will also remove you from ever having to deal with the pressures of starting a family

However, its when games go above and beyond the call of duty (pun totally intended) and start influencing the physical world around us that things get way cool.  Like, for example, a Doom 3 deathmatch used to settle a copyright lawsuit.  Which is beyond awesome, for several reasons:

1) Futuristic warriors running around with shotguns and rocket launchers blowing each other up is about 200% cooler than anything related to copyright law ever.
2) This opens the potential for other legal disputes to be solved in this fashion, which would mean that all lawyers would need to log hours playing deathmatch against kids calling them "fatass nerdy thundercunts" with nothing they can do about it.  If that doesn't drastically lower the amount of soulless attorneys, then I don't know what will.

However, there is the unfortunate counterpoint that if we let even one legal dispute be solved this way, the end result is that the world just gives up any and all sanity and becomes like the movie Rollerball, in which countries solves disputes not with war, but with teams of fucking combat rollerbladers.

The fact that anyone thought this was a good idea makes me wonder how anyone lived through the 70's

It is not only in the realm of war that video games have managed to influence reality.  They've caused love to-- especially when Portal 2 was used as a marriage proposal.  Warning: This story is all kinds of sweet and adorable.  Be prepared.

I dunno, I think I'd take some custom levels to Portal over a nice dinner any day of the week, honestly.   Video games just seem to make everything better.  Even the unholy-hell-according-to-sitcoms marriage.

I am a Brony

Readers, I have something personal to admit. I'm... well, I'll just say it and get it over with.

I am a Brony.

Huh. That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Why are you looking at me that way? You're not going to make me explain it are you? No, stop, I can already see that you are. You heartless bastards.

Ok, there is this show meant for young girls-- That was a bad way to start. No, I don't own a white van.

Alright, there is a line of toys for kids (slightly better) called My Little Pony.

Well, its really more focused on kids of the feminine persuasion

Recently, Hasbro wanted to start up a TV show to help promote their newest line of the pink frosting dipped pony toys, and decided to release a show about them. This allowed kids to get their dose of cavity inducing visuals in multiple mediums- plus, it was a girl's show. The plot could be dumber than Home Alone and girls would watch it and love it. Product based shows are pretty much just infomercials with a better time slot (which is great) and less Billy Mays (which is even better, considering he'd need to be a zombie at this point), after all.

The project lead, Lauren Faust, had decided she had enough of stupid shows for girls however, and she was going to make her stand with My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. And Hasbro said, "Fuck it. Go for it." The pilot aired, probably to the critical reception of the young kids it was aimed at. And all would have been well (and this post never written, and I would still have my masculinity) if it stopped there.

But it didn't. Instead, a Kathleen Ritcher had a retarded spasm. She posted an alarmist essay on the show, deciding that a kids show was where to take her stand against racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Because the shows audience deals with that on a daily basis, I guess? Shit, I thought life was tough enough for little girls considering that we get them kitchens for toys.  Oh, wait, I guess the sexism stuff makes sense now.

Anyone else see a distinct lack of sandwiches?

But, back to My Little Pony, because now something magical happens- Kathleen's essay ends up on 4chan.

If you don't know about 4chan, I hate you and your Internet innocence. This is the same unholy black abyss of a message board that created pedobear- an icon that represents pedophilia.  And that's tame for them.

To put it mildly, suicide is funny over there.

But for the sugar-coated ponies found their salvation, because 4chan started doing what it does and ripping Kathleen to shreds. And in this assault someone members actually go and watch the show.

And decree what they saw as good.

Yes, somehow, an overtly girly show (its main palette is saturated in enough pink to actually cause some people to go color-blind) found a home in the hearts of probably some of the worst the Internet has to offer. But, it gets even better.

Yes, Pinky Pie, the acid-cocaine-LSD party is only starting. (note: I can type that name without wanting to puke)

You see, most of that weird stuff you hear about on the web- those meme things- a lot of that starts in the black maw of 4chan.  It sorta spreads out and develops into an Internet subculture. 4chan isn't the only website that such a genesis happens, but it is the oldest one and probably still the most popular.

So, this insane, against all odds love of ponydom spread out among the web. And it multiplied- to the point where it got popular, several sites reporting 100,000 hits a day.

One of them happened to be a friend of mine. And I must have been really drunk or bored enough to actually break down and weep because I decided to check it out.  I won't lie, I almost didn't get through the first episode... but I did.

This is the villain of the first episode. Come on, you know you'd have to watch it to see how a bunch of frosting-sweet ponies take something this badass down

And then I saw the second episode. And the third. And then realized I would never, ever be a normal functioning member of society again or be able to use a masculine pronoun to refer to myself.

If you know anything about the web, then you know I am not the only male that weirdly, really gets into this show- as there are no girls on the Internet. Neigh (see what I did thar?) I am one of many. And we call ourselves Bronies. (portmanteau of bro and pony).

I'm serious- look at the stats for any of the episodes on youtube. You'll find that most of the viewers are males in the 12-35 range. And, judging from the comments, we don't really know why we like this show any more than you do.

But... I have a theory.  You see, the production values for the show are surprisingly high.  The team that put it all together gave more than just a casual passing fuck about how it would turn out.  But above all, the writing is fantastic. The show is straight up funny.  Not just the references that the shows target audience would never get (2001: A Space Odyssey gets a hat tip, for example) but the humor that had to be for everyone really is... for everyone.

I think the main draw to the show is the fact that the main cast (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Fluttershy) are, in fact, fleshed out characters- especially for a children's cartoon. I see a lot of myself in these ponies, as they learn about friendship by struggling through trials. And trials they are- the cast treats the events around them like Serious Goddamn Business. So, maybe the issues the ponies deal with are ridiculous, but because they treat it so seriously, you can't help but be reminded of similar analogies in your own life.

It makes them believable, despite the stupid name, stupid coat color and the fact that its a goddamn anthropomorphic horse. They have personality, they get into fights, they generally act similar to actual humans- and as such, draw you in.

More believable than the entire cast of Deep Blue Sea

So, say what you want. But if you can get past the visuals and color choice and let the ponies be themselves, you'll find something magical. So, without shame, I admit:

I am a Brony. Haters be damned. Because MLPFIM is Rainbow Dash cool.

And because Fluttershy don't take no shit from no dragon.

Surfing the Internetz (using Land Lines, yo.)

I can make some basic assumptions about your aptitude on the World* Wide Web because you can read this article.
*(Excepting assorted dictatorships like China)**

Obviously, unless you're in the increasingly tiny demographic that hates porn watching adorable videos of kittens, you've been on the web. Hell, odds are you've not only been on the web, but have been on it for the past 2 hours (raise that number to 2 weeks if coming here from TVTropes).

And, not only are you on the web, but you can perform tasks that lower your value to humanity, for example, spending any significant time on Farmville.

Bonus negative points if you're playing during work. Of course, that assumes people play outside of work- which may actually be worse, considering. Because if they are, they either a) consider playing not out of boredom, but because they find it fun and b) they find it more fun that doing anything else.

Better than sex

Other examples- knowing what Rule 34 means. More bonus negative points you've actually been to a message board about it, and triple positive bonus multiplier if you didn't weep for your childhood.

Or having over 1000 friends on any social networking site, or spending more time updating the wikipedia pages of Gundam than your job (this really happened). The list goes on.

The Internet can be a force for good too, don't get me wrong. Its allowed all kinds of amazing things to happen, and is how I get 100% of my news, and 98% of my social contact in any given day.

The other 2% is why my liver hates me

But, pray tell, do you know how the Internet actually works? Where does the Internet exist? If I told you all it took was a really retarded shark or careless anchor drop to take entire countries off the web, would you believe me?

Well, lets look at phone lines. All you kids going, "Whats a phone?" can shut up. Its that stupid app on your iPhone that lets you talk to someone else. But ignore cell phones for a minute (and by minute, I mean the rest of this post).

No, this isn't a tangent about technology that's older than you. The Internet and those old rotor phones are remarkably similar, when it comes down to it.

Here's the quick and dirty (but not like a cheap whore) rundown: You dial a number, that number is sent along your phone line to your phone company's office. The phone company connects your line and the line you dialed, and viola, you can say happy birthday to the cousin you don't really like.

The Internet is like that, except more. Confused? Thought so. Lets break it down.

Preferably with a dancing montage to 90's pop

You start Firefox or Google Chrome (or if you're stuck in a time warp, Internet Explorer or AOL depending on your era). Then, when you want to go to Google to look up pictures of memes, you type Google's address in the white bar up there.

Stop. Parallel time: that collection of letters and dots you just typed? That's a phone number. www.google.com is the "phone address" to Google's server. The moment you hit enter, your computer sends the "phone address" to your Internet Service Provider's Point of Presence- which is sorta like the phone company's office. They then send your request for Google to a fiber optic line, which then goes to Google's server, making a few stops along the way at other servers. Then, viola, you can get pictures of one of the Kardashians.

So, the Internet isn't some sort of abstract Information Superhighway or some great data cloud that hovers above our heads, waiting for our computers to plead with it for information.

Its just like phone lines you see running down your street.

above- ten thousand troll posts

Now, I know. The more sinister of you want to know what I mean by "taking countries off the net." Well, remember, fiber optic lines are that- lines. And in order to connect two places that happen to be divided by an ocean, we need to lay down lines. On the bottom of the ocean. Because that's safe. And Cheap.

As the more animated and chipper say these days, LOL no. There are only a handful of lines that span the Earth's oceans, to continue that example. They have about as much protection as an xbox controller- and my cats chew through those suckers like its goddamn candy. So, to force a country, or entire continent, off the web, simply sever the lines. This isn't even a new thing, it recently happened to Armenia. And that was a land line she severed.

Wait. I think I just found a way to get rid of 409 scammers once and for all. Or at least drastically reduce the number of African royalty estranged from their funds.
**Please don't hack my blog, China