ZOMG ‘BLOG

You have probably heard of IPv6 by now. Well besides being used as a Chinese vehicle of war, it also has its good side. With the greatly expanded IP range we can have IP addresses for EVERYTHING. Your toaster, your refridgerator, everything.

Now, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING[1]: “WHY WOULD I WANT A NETWORKED TOASTER?” Here is why: Imagine how great a place the world will be when your toaster can write a ‘blog! A toaster ‘blog! For every toaster! The future is so close I can smell it. It smells golden-brown, not too dark.

Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:35 AM

Today room temperature was changed +5 degrees. I micro-adjusted my heating time to compensate. Human Operators 1 and 2 both seemed pleased with their toast.

Friday September 26, 2008, 8:35 AM

Toasting for Human Operator 1 went smoothly. Human Operator 2 mistakenly put a half piece of bread in. Auxiluary toast lifters had to be deployed.

Saturday September 27, 2008, 11:18 AM

Both operators left without toast this morning. I downloaded the latest firmware upgrades and bread thermal profiles from ToastNet.

[ETC.]

Who wouldn’t read that every day! I love to keep track of my things! Also, remember this true fact: The first webcam star was a coffee machine. Appliances are the original pioneers of the Internet! And a new wave of fantastic ‘blogs will surely inspire the world to more greatness. I can hardly wait.

kthxbye.

[1] If you are a giant nerd you are probably thinking “Can’t I just use a router with NAT?” BUT DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SET UP PORT FORWARDING FOR A TOASTER?

I finally drew one hundred robots with my keyboard. The next major milestone is 200. Then I can officially say “HUNDREDS” of robots.

kthxbye.

It was a sad day for innovation at the Sony zone of E3 when they announced the boomerang functionality (and all the promising boomerang gameplay which would have come with it) would not be in the final Playstation 3. The controller will no longer return to you when you throw it. At least not without some sort of trampoline peripheral. Or maybe you could pull it back if you tied it to a string. BUT IT ISN’T THE SAME.

Continuing on their path away from the future, and as a blatant ripoff of Nintendo, they shamelessly copied the non-vibration feature of the Wavebird controller. This is not the next-generation. This is a travesty. Truly, the human race has been set back a few years by this event.

Thankfully, Nintendo is finally picking up some of the innovation slack, as demonstrated by the fact that we will soon be able to use their new console play twenty-one year old games on our television sets!

kthxbye.

See also:

• PS3 Update
• Next Generation

In regards to the Internet, China is probably best known for their censorship and relative e-isolationism. But few realize the true reason. It is for the good of the rest of the Internet! If the Chinese government were to adopt and promote a liberal policy toward Internet the results could be disastrous.

In fact, the Chinese government knows this well, and may be holding this back as their trump card should there be a future international relations breakdown. The fact is, if the Chinese government decided to mobilize the general Chinese public into an army of ‘bloggers, it would be obvious to all that this was an Act of War.

Let me explain. According to the CIA World Factbook North America and Europe contain nearly half of the world’s 1 billion Internet users. China contains only 111,000,000 or 11% of the Internet users. HOWEVER, China contains 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population. Over 80% of those people are old enough to ‘blog. That is still nearly a billion potential ‘bloggers, or the entire current Internet population again, who could overwhelm and crush the Western ‘blogosphere, not just with their sheer numbers, but with surprising cultural force.

I mean, which ‘blog entry would be more interesting to read: “They didn’t have half-and-half at the coffee shop, AGAIN.” OR “10 ways my human rights were abused today.“? Would you like to see more pictures of cats, OR pictures of cats WITH PANDAS? And so on. It’s pretty obvious we would stand no chance. And so, honestly, I applaud the Chinese Government for their prudent restraint and non-abuse of the potent ‘blogging resource which they contain, and I am glad they are taking precautions when working with the Internet rather than working recklessly against it.

kthxbye.

There has been a lot of talk about global epidemics lately, but they all seem to fizzle out. I mean SARS, bird flu, etc. never managed to reach a truly impressive global scale. This may sound like a “good thing” but IT IS NOT. We NEED more global epidemics. The fate of the Earth depends on it!

Epidemics make us stronger. Obviously there are the evolutionary benefits i.e. the stronger humans survive. Of course the more clever microbes will survive this struggle as well so this would seem to be a never-ending stalemate. However, that is only true if you consider a closed reference frame of humans vs. microbes. The actual truth is that this constant struggle makes our whole planet stronger.

When aliens invade it will serve us well to have a planet that contains both mighty disease-resistant humans AND powerful, adaptable infectious microbes. While the diseases may appear to be our foes now, when the time comes they will be our powerful allies! The fact is that in the inevitable future galactic war the most fearsome aliens will be the filthiest ones with the most unstoppable germs. So remember, we must never let our battles with the microbes become too one-sided if we ever hope to become those filthy aliens!

kthxbye.

Well the news today is that the PS3 launch has been delayed again. Apparently the elliptical gyro-stabilizers that they need for the real working boomerang-controllers are on exclusive license to the DARPA until late May, and they still need to work out some kinks in the collision sensors to minimize damage in case of mis-throws. Supposedly their ultimate goal is for the boomerang-controller to return to no matter where you move in the room much like the boomerang in Legend of Zelda (Note: There will never be a Zelda game for PS3.). Of course I don’t need to remind you how this innovate technology will help change the world, but I will tell you that I have heard that world-changing technology apparently does not come cheaply.

The lineup of new RealThrow^TM boomerang-based titles seems to be coming along well. The screenshots (which I unfortunately cannot release due to NDAs) for both Konami’s Castlevania: Crossfire and Capcom’s Mega Man spin-off, Quick Man: Vengeance, look amazing. There were also some heavy hints that there may be an Australia-based Metal Gear Solid sequel. It was something like “Did you know that Australia is home to 25% of the world’s population of venomous snakes and over 80% of all snakes there are venomous… WELL THERE IS ABOUT TO BE ONE MORE DANGEROUS ‘SNAKE’ THERE… WITH A BOOMERANG… A BOOMERANG BECAUSE IT’S AUSTRALIA.” I thought that it was kind of less subtle than they meant it to be, but I guess it was a rushed announcement. There is unfortunately still no word from Taito on the possibility of a Power Blade sequel.

kthxbye.

Pain. No one likes it. (except for masochists, but anyway) But of course it is useful. For instance, it tells us when our food is burning us! But that is now. What if, in the future we had super-skin, highly-resistant to damage and scuffing? It would make sense to cure pain then, especially since stuff that used to hurt, just shouldn’t anymore, because it doesn’t damage us!

However, we suck at curing pain right now. Sure we have anaesthetics, but those are only useful in certain situations. So what is our best painkiller where you can maintain consciousness? Morphine? No offense to morphine-addicts, but as a “painkiller” it sucks. I mean it doesn’t really STOP pain, so much as it covers it up with crazy feelings and hallucinations or whatever, much like those “air-freshening” sprays cover up odors by filling the room with artificial lavender and citrus. And then there are plenty of other so-called painkillers, which actually work by “relieving the symptoms that cause pain”. That’s kind of sneaky, I think. Well, we are probably going to need some advanced micro-neurology before we come up with anything really good.

But by that point, we can probably cure more than just physical paint. We can make it so we don’t feel sad, or frustrated, or whatever. Would that be great? Some people say without bad things good things don’t have meaning, but maybe those people are the ones who don’t have meaning. Think about it: what if we cured, for example, hate. Does love lose meaning? I mean is hate even the opposite of love or is it apathy or something else? The truth is there are no clear opposites, and getting rid of the bad feelings could only stop the good things if they were even related. Duh.

I know what you are thinking. “But if people didn’t feel guilt or shame, wouldn’t they do bad things all the time?” No. They wouldn’t do bad things because they would have the painful desires that make people do bad things, like hunger, and lust, and greed, and etc. People would all become boring hippie-buddhas who love everything as it is and never want to do anything because they are just happy. (again except for masochists) And honestly, that would suck.

So basically what I am saying is you might as well enjoy your morphine if you have any.

kthxbye.

Debris. Waste. Junk. Garbage. We cast it away as useless, but the truth is it is the stuff of LIFE. Organic wastes provide food and habitats for all sorts of tiny creatures. Radioactive wastes help speed evolution (defective mutants are a natural part of evolution, FYI). Even things like shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea, quickly become teeming habitats for life even thought they are mostly just lifeless piles of wood and metal.

Out of all of the planets in the solar system, Earth, this planet, has the most garbage and junk and goo. We also have the most life. This is no coincidence. Now, I know life creates garbage, and that is one explanation for this corellation, but even before there was life on earth there was garbage. Lots of lava and space rock debris and space dust. This finally settled down into what could be described as a gas-covered soggy ball of dirt, and then there was life. It’s a cycle. Life creates garbage creates more life. Well that is simplifying things (energy is important too) but you get the idea.

Now life is good and all, but the kind of life that is in some of our garbage is just not cool for human life to co-habitate with at the time. Why not send that garbage to Mars? Yeah, just rocket our trash into Mars. After a decade or so of blasting Mars with trash rockets we could have a nice habitat for … “something”. Then we send some “seed life” and wait another decade and see what grows! This simple project would both solve our waste disposal problems and be an amazing experiment.

kthxbye.

Scientists continue to work on mapping the neural pathways of the human brain. It is only a matter of time — around maybe 50–150 years — before we know the truth. Are we mere robots: mechanically more complex but fundamentally no different from a rock or a lever, or are we special beings with an intangible quality that takes us beyond being mere machines?

If we learn we are machines, what next? Should we move into a virtual reality of our own devising? Create new humans from scratch to prove we can? Drop all codes of ethics and morality on the pretense that we are all mere mechanisms and our actions are not really our own decide even though it may seem that way?

Or, on the other hand if we find out we are special, will that be justification enough for decades of robot slave labor? I mean they are just machines, right? They don’t have the secret aura or whatever.

But either way, the true important thing is that we must be prepared to use our new knowledge of the human brain to enable everyone to ‘blog by thinking. Documenting our experiences at this time will be very useful for future more enlightened generations (who will know the secret reason of why it actually doesn’t matter if we are mechanical or not.). They will be able to look back at us and laugh and laugh at how silly the old days were. But really they might need stories from the past to help them repair time rifts or something. Yet another possible reason that ‘blogging is important.

kthxbye.

In about 4 to 5 billion years our Sun’s core will exhaust its supply of hydrogen and begin to expand into a red giant. THIS COULD KILL US ALL. Unless… we stop it.

Current technology is not enough to prevent this cataclysm, BUT by the time 4 to 5 billion years later rolls around, or even before then, if we are still alive, we will be MUCH more highly advanced. We will have advanced brain powers, either through nanosynaptic augmentations which increase our brains’ speed and ability by many orders of magnitude, or through a mental interface to a fourth dimensional collective mindspace which allows all humans to share thoughts and learn from each other (not unlike the ‘blogosphere), or something else*. Anyway, with our highly advanced brainpower and technology we will be able to handle many things.

Even a simpleton from 2006 like me can make the simple and obvious calculation that by feeding Jupiter, which is mostly hydrogen, into the Sun, we can get several million more years out of it. And it is not beyond the realm of imagination that future generations will have even more brilliant ideas than me. So, all in all, this “Sun dying and killing us all with it” thing is probably not as inevitable as all these scientists whine about it being sometimes.

kthxbye.

(*please note that this billions of years later enlightened superbrain future is much later in time than the future when the dystopian world government will use time travel to recruit our near future’s retired ‘bloggers to power their Orwellian propaganda machines.)