Entries from September 2003 ↓

Well, the release date for the last Matrix movie is approaching, and I was recently thinking about something… wouldn’t a lot of the “weirder” stuff from quantum physics start to make a little more sense if we were, in fact, inside a Matrix ?

Take, for example, the idea that things that are not being watched may temporarily cease to exist. Well, obviously, if you were designing a computer simulation of anything, you would not render what is not visible. It’s just common sense. It would also explain the Schroedinger’s cat thought-experiment: the result is, indeed, only made real when someone opens the box and looks inside. Before that, the result was not rendered and, thus, did not exist, and the cat may not even be there.

Or the problem with the randomness of quantum events (God playing dice); this is also easy to explain. At some point, in the limit of the resolution of the simulation, the program needs to decide what to do, and a random number generator would make the universe more interesting than a fixed set of rules. And if you want to watch the universe from the outside, you want to make it interesting.

Some other strange things might be the result of bugs in the simulation (or, actually, features that were not expected to be used and lead to undefined behaviour). I`m sure it is possible to think of several other examples… anyone ?

Just something to think about before going to bed

How did people ever plan vacations before the Internet ?

On the other hand… yes, there is such a thing as too much information.

I used some time today to set up a nice development environment in my home machine (which runs WinXP). I already had Cygwin installed, and it comes with every conceivable Unix tool nicely packaged so that you can pretend you have a Unix box even while using Windows (in fact, I can’t remember when was the last time I used the regular Command window; now I use bash instead). Today I set up a CVS repository for my source code and made sure the environment is properly set so I can use it properly.

Then I downloaded ant, the building tool of choice for Java, and installed it. Remarkably easy, now all I have to do is learn to use it properly. Yes, I’ve been building my projects manually so far.

Lastly, I downloaded JBuilder 9, a free (for personal use) tool from Borland that provides a nice environment for developing applications, applets and everything else. It is a huge download, over 65MB, and installation takes quite a while; looks better than “vi” and “ant” on a bash window, and I do hope it is worth using; can’t really comment much on it so far.

I’ll keep you posted on further developments. By the way, the next thing I need to do is to set up a backup tool…

Firebird and Thunderbird are the stand-alone versions of the Mozilla web browser and e-mail application, respectively. And they are great. I’ve just finished switching my e-mail to Thunderbird, and since yesterday I’m using nothing but Firebird for browsing. They impressed me a lot: very lightweight, very fast, and with great features. I can’t recommend them strongly enough. Don’t be scared of the 0.x version numbers, these apps are production-grade.

Probably old news to almost everyone, but too hilarious to pass up. Back in June, Bill Gates sent out a letter in Microsoft’s “executive e-mail” list about his vision for a spam free future. This is the best part:

Like almost everyone, I receive a lot of spam every day, much of it offering to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It’s ridiculous.

In any case, it’s good to see someone with deep pockets (Microsoft and Bill Gates) going after spammers.

This is not exactly a new story, but it’s a little scary anyway. MSNBC did a research on who profits from spam and found out a few very interesting facts. The answer to the question is, quite a lot of people, including companies you’d never suspect.

This makes it hard to fight spam by boycotting businesses that spam. I will not knowingly do business with someone who spams me, unless I have no other choice. However, as that article shows, for many messages, it’s hard to see whom, exactly, you should boycott. Should you boycott just the one spammer who sent the message ? If so, how do you know who is he ? And, more importantly, would you be doing business with him in the first place ?

Or should you boycott whomever would profit if you responded to the spam ? That might be way too broad. Let’s see a few examples: one message I got said “Win a 2002 Corvette!”; the contest seems to be run by surveynetworks.com. I don’t think I should boycott Corvettes and, in fact, I’d very much appreciate getting a brand new one. surveynetworks.com, on the other hand, doesn’t rank too well with me.

Maybe that one was a little too far-fetched; let’s see another one, one I am sure most of you are familiar with. Let’s take any of the spams advertising Viagra. Now, assuming that they are really delivering something to buyers, and that what they deliver is, in fact, Viagra (a long shot, I know), then presumably Pfizer would make money if I bought something from the spammer. Should I boycott them ? I don’t think so. Not that I need them, of course.

And, anyway, how do you even figure out who will profit ? The MSNBC reporters were very surprised when they answered a mortgage ad, and I guess the same scheme applies to a lot of other types of spam.

Are we really losing the fight ?

This weekend, I watched the play “Breaking the Code”, by Hugh Whitemore, about the life of Alan Turing. The title of the play refers both to the work he did during the Second World War, breaking the secret codes used by the German military, and to the moral codes of his time (1912-1954), against which he fought fiercely and because of which he suffered greatly. Persecuted for being homosexual, Turing committed suicide at 42 by eating a poisoned apple (the rumour saying that the Apple logo is a homage to Turing, however, is probably just that: a rumour).

The play begins shortly before his suicide, and tells the story of his life in flashbacks, through his memories. We watch scenes from his youth, when he lost a great friend (and possibly his first passion) to tuberculosis; then we see the years when he worked for the Secret Service and we watch as his life is slowly destroyed during his last years, after he was arrested and sentenced to jail for moral misconduct (namely, having an homosexual affair). The play is set in a very simple stage, with almost no elements other than the actors (and Turing never leaves the scene); it convincingly transmits the idea that you are inside the mind of Turing, watching as he remembers key moments of his life before ending it.

This would be a sad history for any character, but it is made even sadder by the genius of Turing. The computer where I am writing this text, as well as the one you are using to read it, comes from ideas first described by this man; both are, in the end, Turing Machines. These theoretical machines, invented by him years before it was possible to build anything remotely resembling a modern-day computer, are mathematical abstractions created and described by Turing that became fundamental for computer science.

In the end, this play is the real story of a genius who brought new ideas to mathematics and to the, at the time, nascent field of computers, but who had his life destroyed by a rigid moral code and a life style then seen as unacceptable. To whomever has the chance, I recommend watching this play (there is also a TV version, which is not as good); no technical knowledge is necessary. And, to whomever does not have the chance, I recommend reading more about one of the men who made possible this digital world in which we live.