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Digipen and SIT ranked world most useless university. | Thursday, March 31, 2011

APRIL FOOL! Don’t panic. Digipen is still ranked top 3 game program course in the world by Princeton review.

There used to be a time where April fool pranks were committed by physical act of mischief. Now in this modern age, our pranks have turned digital. Gone were the days of powder pouring, water splashing practical joke but instead, massive coordinated pranks created by major news agency and corporate pop-up every single year on this faithful 1st of April. While some might find the prank funny, other could find it down right offensive. Some might finds it’s misleading and leads to panic or other social unrest, there are others who embrace it and even use it as a marketing tool.

Currently, most of the biggest April fool jokes are committed online. There was a hoaxed announcement about Google’s new mapping service called Verticals, where multiple users are able to capture images of their location in open space in real time as long as a Google Bird, basically a bird fitted with a camera that’s linked to Google’s central server, is flying around the area. While the presentation of the article was clearly friction, some joke actually pull the audience leg slightly too far.

While many corporations’ runs their own April fool joke, but the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled was the documentary, Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, by BBC in 1957. Broadcast on national television, it managed to convince a massive amount of viewer that spaghetti was grown from tress instead of wheat flour and water. Hundreds of viewers phoned the station to inquire about the spaghetti tree, with some even asking how to grow their own.

Some jokes which are intended to be frictional actually turned into successful products because of high interest and demand generated during the hoax. A great example will be a joke by ThinkGeek where they announce an 8 Bit Tie. Designed to resemble old computer graphic art back in the 1990s, many were fascinated with the product. Popular demand and pressure after the hoax actually lead ThinkGeek to the actual development and eventual release of the 8 bit tie. The finished ties were a sellout item for a couple of production runs.

Those successful jokes would not be possible without rapid distribution abilities. In such, technology helps spread the hoax and involving as much people as possible. This played a key role in making April fool’s Day a fun and entertaining event held once a year. One cannot help but wonder what will this year bring to us. What do you think will be an awesome prank this year?

Reference.

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest/

Google Verticals
http://socialblade.com/show/2010/03/31/announcing-google-verticals-real-time-images-to-buzz/

ThinkGeek 8 Bit tie
http://gizmodo.com/#!249949/8+bit-tie-not-a-joke-any-more

11:26 AM
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Resonance Cascade | Sunday, March 20, 2011

Half Life, a game virtually all self-respecting gamer would have played before. It won more than 55 Game of the year awards and spawned much other great mod game for example, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. The game plot revolves around the player, the game’s protagonist and his journey of saving the Earth from the Resonance Cascade, a fictitious phenomenon that rips apart dimensional seams, which is a sabotage or accident caused by unknown agents.

The player plays as a Gordon Freeman, a MIT graduate theoretical physicist. He accidentally caused a space time portal to be open while performing routine experiment and aliens from another world start swarming Earth. The alien which is generally hostile by natural started attacking people in the facility.

The military and government tried to recover the accident by sending in Special Forces to kill any alien that were in the vicinity. While doing so a satellite was launch that resulted in a greater fall out of alien invasion. This time round, an invading army of alien started to attack Earth and Earth falls to the alien in a 7hour war. While the story is still on going, the current situation is very bleak for Earth and the human race as they get enslaved and face near extinction.

There are currently many ongoing experiments currently being carried by scientist all around the world. One for example will be the Large Hadron Collider which is currently searching for the Higgs Boson, God particle. Many say there may be a chance that black hole may be created by the LHC during its search for the Higgs as it is essentially recreating the moments just right after the universe is born.
Other will be when a major science project goes downhill, governmental intervention and information blackout may cause greater harm than good. Look at the Chernobyl disaster; it is a prime example of government control went wrong. Massive amount people suffered from radiation poisoning and many died from cancer.

While advancement in technology allows us to live a greater and more abundant life, are we able to cope with the ill effect of the disaster that may be caused when those technology fails? Are we prepared for the worst case scenario and are we even willing to take that risk?

Reference
The Half Life Story Saga
http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/

3:14 PM
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Should GM food be banned? |

About a billion people go hungry every single day. However, 50% of food produced in America goes into waste. That amount of food could have fed all the 1 billion hungry people around the world. This is not taking account into the food output in other net food producing country.

Genetically Modified food or GM Food, have be said to solve the world problem in food shortage. It is said to allow country who have little food to grow more food and be self-sustaining. Sadly, the problem is not with having enough food but weather food is distributed to places that need it the most. The lack of food in those area are actually cause by poverty. The real reason those people are hungry is that they cannot afford to buy or trade for food. The producer of food is not willing to sell food or produce food below the cost price of growing them. GM food though have the ability to gain higher yield and survive pest infestation or even drought are not financially variable to the poor farmer to even being with. GM food has a much higher startup cost as compared to normal food. This in turn actually cancel off the financial benefit GM food provides to the poor farmer. Unless GM seed are provided at a heavily discounted rate such that it is substantial financial gain to the farmer, the environmental risk associated with GM plantation will be difficult to shallow. The marketing of GM seeds for poor farmer is economically invariable.

Environmental risk is a major argument between natural conservative and GM lobbyist. The effects of GM plantation having on the native wild life, flora and fauna are still highly debated. The prime example used by both party would be the Monarch Butterfly. While it is proven that the Bt-gene in genetically modified corn pollen causes death in the butterfly by researches done by natural conservative supporter, counter research shown that in real life situation, Monarch Butterfly are clever enough to avoid the Bt-laced pollen. In fact, Monarch Butterfly have a higher percentage of population as compared to area where none such Bt-gene enable food are planted. Biologist have argued that while GM food upset the local eco system, natural always have a way to balances itself, either in the form of natural selection or adaptation. They added that GM crop actually require less herbicide and pesticide to maintain, this have greater and far more reaching immediate effects on the environment as the plantation industry is huge.

Many had brought about concern about GM food to human health. If the pollen of a GM food can kill such an innocently beautiful butterfly, what effect does it have on humans? Thankfully, a study in 2008 by the Royal Society of Medicine noted that while GM food have been eaten by millions of people worldwide for over 15 years, there is no report of ill side effects. However, there are immediate negative effects on a small percentage of people who consume GM food, and virtually all on in the form of allergy. Allergy comes because of human reaction to certain protein. When food is genetically modified, gene from other organism maybe be added and this gene essentially bring the protein over to the food. Allergy reaction can be highly dangerous from death to minor reaction like sneezing. Sadly, people who have strong allergy always have to carry their antidote wherever they go to cure any sudden allergic reaction. While it is in despicable to ask allergic sufferer to use their antidote every time they consume their food, clear and strong warning can be used on food label to inform them of their choices. While in theory, this seems like a very easy way to implement, simple stamping of label to identify GM food, in practice, this will be hard to achieve as food that are non GM maybe cross contaminated by GM food anywhere during their lifetime from planting to harvesting and finally the consumer mouth. Unless the issue of allergy is totally irradiated, GM food does prove to be risky and deadly to a small percentage of consumers.

Progress in GM food now allows maker to remove those protein that cause allergy as well as add them. It has far reaching effects. Now we have the ability to add useful nutrients and remove harmful toxic from the food. Food with negative elements can be removed and food can have positive properties added into them. For example, Golden rice have unusually high content of Vitamin A and this can potentially alleviate malnutrition in impoverish people. However, general fear of GM food by politician puts them out of reach for people who are willing to accept it.

The debate for GM food will go on and on. The religious will claim GM food producer are playing God by modifying the basic building block of life, gene, but that practice had been already used by cross breeding. Genetically modifying a food offers a direct way for producer to get an end result and cross breeding is just a crude way of getting there. We can see and learn that there are many advantage and disadvantage in GM food. From economic variability to environment protection, human health either beneficial or harmful to even playing God, this is totally not acceptable reasons to either accept or ban GM food.

While there are many claims that go for or against GM food, the outright ban on GM food is way too extreme. This limits the progress of science and instantly close door on virtually limitless possibility. We will effectively be push back into the renaissance era where claims of earth being round is out rightly banned and punished instead of given more thought. GM food has its risk but correct regulation instead of outright rejection can and will bring more benefits. It is claimed that everything will have its own revolution and food, the most basic human need is having a revolution this very moment. Should we accept or ban it? Let those who are directly affect by it choose, the consumer. Give them a choice to either pickup that GM food or totally ignore it.

Reference.
World Hungry Education Service. ( 2011 ). 2011 World Hungry and Poverty Facts and Statistics.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Food Production Daily. ( 24 November 2004 ). Half of US food goes to Waste.
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Half-of-US-food-goes-to-waste

David F. Durham and Jim C. Fandrem. ( Winter 1988 ) The Food ”Surplus”: A staple illusion of economics; A cruel illusion for populations. Population and Environment, Volume 10, number 2
http://dieoff.org/page115.htm

Deborah B. Whitman. ( April 2000 ) Genetically Modified Foods: Harmful or Helpful.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php

Key S, Ma JK, Drake PM (June 2008).Royal Society of Medicine. "Genetically modified plants and human health".
J R Soc Med 101 (6): 290–8.

3:12 PM
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Artificial Intelligent had taken over the World. | Thursday, February 17, 2011

There are no war between the humans and machine. We are neither slave nor prisoner of the machine but thinking machine had taken over almost every single aspect of our life. They exist in the physical from like the autonomous vacuum cleaner, Roomba, to virtual variant like a website, Wolfram Alpha, which can solve and provide solution to many mathematical math problems a student will face.

AI in the 1950s was about the machine being able to replicate human mental intelligence. Many believe that the machine will very soon out smart human with their logic-based reasoning. This had proven to be extremely unachievable as our knowledge of the brain and how it work is so limited, programmer have a very hard time recreating a digital brain. This field of brain uploading, the ability for human to obtain singularity still has a very long way to go.

As time pass into the 1980s, researcher started to implement machine that catered for a single task. They started to create machine that is intelligent only in its own field of specialty. Take the widely used Automatic Breaking System (ABS) that is so common in vehicle today. The driver applies the break but the ABS process and applies the correct amount of break to prevent wheel lock and many other safety features that a human driver would not be able to duplicate from just pressing the break paddle.

We are generally not afraid of the machine artificial intelligent. It’s only when it appears to be smarter than us or perform better than us human do we start to fear and repel them. There was a project where an AI was made for Pathologist to aid in their studies. The AI performed very well and virtually always right in its analyzing and suggestion. However, the Pathologist only begin to trust and us the result when the programmer added a delay with flashing light, as though the AI was thinking and computing to puff out the correct answer. The machine problem was that it provided the answer too quickly. When it was reviewed that the AI can generate the result in second and the delay was just to give a feel of working, the Pathologist rejected the system saying it was not accurate.

Machine and its artificial intelligent has now mostly perpetrated into every comprehensible object in our daily life. From communication to transport to even our financial infrastructure, machine aided with AI is prevalent. Will it be possible for us to root out machine or AI out now? Will it be as simple as switching off a switch? Or has it come to a stage where Human are dependent on it? Are we now slave to Human’s child, the machine?

Reference.

Mind Uploading
http://www.minduploading.org/

Roomba, the autonomous vacuum cleaner
http://www.irobot.com.sg/roomba.html

Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

AI Revolution is on
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_ai_essay_airevolution/

Technological Singularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

12:48 PM
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Internet aided social boom. | Monday, February 14, 2011

Tagging, poking, walling. There was never more social involvement in such a massive scale since the boom in social networking. Facebook single handedly changed the way we interact with one another. Prior to Facebook, there were many other social networking sites for example, Friendster and MySpace. Those did not manage to gain the critical mass favor but were leaders in their own right. Friendster is practically very popular in East Asia and MySpace is very popular in blogging teens.

Avid user of Facebook would have sworn by how their live had transformed since they were introduced to Facebook. Before Facebook, many would not be able to get directly involve with so many social activities. Event planning has never been made easier. Setting a location time and date and waiting friend to respond. There is even the ability for user to comment on the upcoming event in treads and when the event is over, the tread is still open for post event debrief.

In social aspect, Facebook allow their user to form Groups and Network. This enables the easy creation and maintenance of communities. One can easily linkup with the community in their school or workplace by using the Network function. Once the user join, they can actively seek out others in the same network and interact with said user. What happen when the user have a special interest? They can use the Group function and join with many other who have the same interest. The main advantage is that for many special groups, the local community may not have a mass of people to generate content and activity but with the Internet, many from around the world who may share a similar rare interest can gather together and provide the critical mass needed to sustain social activity.

Other socially encouraging feature like tagging your friends in your photos and the open documentation of the user thought encourages interaction. This generates social awareness for people not involved in the actual event where the photo is taken and provided new feedback by the open documentation of users thought which they can translate into community involvement.

While one may notice that in order for to gain any social interaction in Facebook, users have to be connected as friends. There are many other social networking platforms that do not require the users to be related in any way. This is the same for community, one may not directly be related to another person but they are linked by the events that happen in their circle. Platform like Twitter is the online solution to such an event. It allows users to be involved in activity without be related.

In fact, this platform was put to great use recently in some Middle East countries, Iran and Egypt, where it managed to unite the community in a single cause. In the case for Egypt, it even managed to successfully cause in a regime change.

While the past have the Interest used mainly as an information sharing medium, the maturity of the Internet has actually bought forth new social play field. We must understand that human civilization is built upon the ability to document information and successfully share it. The community is just an integral working part of our civilization. As the Internet matures, it provides more dimension for the community to grow. Human civilization can only improve from the usages of the Internet as its basic building blocks are information documentation and sharing.

12:15 PM
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You are a Pirate. | Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Do what you want cause a Pirate is free, you are a Pirate! We are all guilty of piracy. From the death penalty during the British colonial time to getting ignored by police, in some countries, piracy law has largely evolved thanks to modern technology.
During the peak of the East Indian Company, Pirates had to brave stormy seas and hijack ships for their precious cargo. They risk their life in a dangerous and tedious process just for that bolt of silks, barrel of wine or even boxes of spices. Modern Pirate just has to click and download.
The penalty of piracy has been formulated in the past to prevent the loss of goods and life. The law prevents piracy with penalty of death and amputation to protect the merchant life as they pursue their trade. As piracy evolve to modern standard, its main aim is to protect the monetary value of their goods being plundered.
While we may not be stealing precious cargo that cost tons of money, the material that we rip of the Internet do cost money as well. No argument can save us from the crime of piracy. We may argue the item is too costly for us to purchase and thus we pirate it, we still did not answer the crime of stealing what does not belong to you. If you can’t afford a car, do you steal one?
Ironically, piracy had also been credited to the exponential growth of many industries. The entertainment industries for example credited its early grow to video game piracy. Many would not have tasted computer games, home movie and pop music if not for the cheap pirated stores that once littered the street.
The question will be how piracy will be embraced. Vast majority of the public wants piracy to be decriminalized (flaw of democracy) as we are all guilty of it but anyone in the business of intellectual property wants piracy law to be enforced. What is your take on this?

Reference.

East Indian Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Modern software copyright law
http://www.sharewarejustice.com/software_copyright_law.htm

Case: Pirate vs Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial

11:43 AM
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The Twitter Revolution. |

In recent years, political playing field in regard to an entire nation had been shaken because of the Internet. The protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election had major reliance on twitter and other social-networking sites in order for the protesters to communicate with each other. The ongoing Egypt protest at Tahrir Square exploded when the Egyptian government shut down the Internet.
This 2 country had a very similar problem that sparked the protest. Its citizen revolted under supposedly political oppression or lack of political freedom. Simple words, they want freedom from tyrant ruler. After years of oppression and maybe even foreign involvement in destabilization, the tipping point that caused the turmoil is of great difference.
Iran’s protest started off because of allegation of foul play in the election. People tweet and blog about how things were unfair and protester started to rally and chaos started. However, heavy governmental effort helps to keep the seemingly uncontrollable protester from reaching critical and prevented the protester aim of overthrowing the government.
Egypt having learned from Iran, on the onset of the protest, started to shut down Internet and other communication services in an effort to quench the protester and prevent coordination. This however back fired and the protest went beyond the governmental control. Talk of reform in the country governing body are planned and some senior official stepping down.
Why did 2 seemingly similar problems have such a drastically different result? The main different we observed here is the way the government reacted to the protester. Iran only shut down services critical to the coordination of the protest while Egypt had the Internet shutdown wholesale.
The take away point in this 2 conflict in simple word would be rather amusing.
You can take away my freedom but not Internet.
In other words, give potential protester Internet and they will be busy tweeting and blogging about the protest. Take their Internet and you will be busy tweeting and blogging about their protest.
In the modern world, we all know how much we cannot live with being connected to the gird. Have you ever wonder how would you survive without Facebook, twitter, MSN and all the other modern application? Would you fight to stay connected?
Reference.

The Twitter Revolution
www.washingtontimes.com/news/.../irans-twitter-revolution/

Egypt Revolution
http://www.matchdoctor.com/blog_127254/Egypt_Internet_Revolution.html

Egypt Turmoil and Protester
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/09/us-egypt-idUSTRE70O3UW20110209

8:47 AM
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On Demand Everything. | Thursday, January 27, 2011

Gone were the days where you will wait for that prime evening time slot to catch your favorite series. You simply catch it on demand at any time you deem fit. Likewise for music, hardly anyone still listen to the radio. You either have your own playlist on your IPod that suit your music taste or listen to Podcast. Even non entertainment products like university lecture are on demand. There are colleges where student get to choose between watching recorded videos of lecture instead of being the school at a given time on a given day to attend the lesson.

There is a changing trend in which how entertainment, information and experiences are distributed. All of such service distribution started in a static form. They are feed on a channel thought a medium to the user in a linear fashion. The user does not get to choose the product but they do have choice over the medium and channel. In such, for example, a user seeking music entertainment has to choose between a Television or a Radio as a medium and the countless channels it provide. If none are playing anything of interest to the user, that is pretty much tough luck for him.

Distributor tried to solve this problem with many ways. In the case with television, user can always make a trip down to the video store to purchase what they want to watch. The purchase model even evolved to rental service to entice more people who find purchasing too expensive. Lately there is the ability to get what user want at the moment they want it and thus coining the term On Demand.

Do note that the progression in which the distribution model changes is directly related to how technology develops. Purchasing or renting a video is only made possible by the introduction of cheap and standardized cassette/disk player. This distribution was not available during the onset of television as the cost of storage and playback is beyond the reach of normal consumer. Likewise for the boom for On Demand services only started in the modern era as data transmission prior to the digital age were slow and expensive. Not to mention extremely costly backup support to provide customized services to individual user.

Looking at how the tread is going, we know that On Demand service will be the prevailing format of distribution. Why is it that some services have to adopt this method to survive while other does not? This basically boils down to basic Needs and Wants. There is more competition in the Want sector than there is in a Need. For the Want sector, they have to constantly innovate in order to attract and maintain their customer pool to prevent them from spending on other Wants. A Need however, the customer will always have to return and thus, lowering the requirement for innovation.

While observing current trend, one does not fail to notice how a successful On Demand service changes the playing field in that area. It has the ability to unset the playing field and throws all competitors service that are not using the medium to the ground. YouTube proved the point. While it allow user to share video, it basically provide an On Demand service to anyone who has a video. There are now countless Video Station and uses YouTube as a medium of distribution.

Not all service that adopts On Demand necessary succeeds. We do note that On Demand services is used primarily for Wants and those under Needs does not really need to innovate but however, on a closer look, those Wants that are treading the line of turning into a Need are the most viable for conversion. We shall refer back to YouTube for example; video entertainment has become so part and parcel of our life that without it, we can be considered to be socially disconnected. Video is basically transforming into a need in the modern age. Coupled with the combination of On Demand service, YouTube managed to propel itself as the forerunner in Video distribution.

As one marvel at On Demand services, it is the advances of the Internet that allows it to be possible. From the humble beginning of dial up to current Fiber to the Home, High Speed Internet opens the door to many countless possibility.
The question posted here is, do you agree that On Demand distribution service is the ongoing trend for distribution of medium.
If so, what do you think is the next most variable service to incorporate On Demand service and what can possible success On Demand Services?
If not, why and what do you think is the tread for distribution of medium?

Reference
University that post free Lecture online
http://www.pennenergyjobs.com/article_display.jsp?ARTICLE_ID=292461

Relationship between Broadband Internet and On Demand Services
http://www.tvgenius.net/blog/2010/04/06/broadband-users-control-watch/

NUS usage of video lecture
http://blog.nus.edu.sg/citations/2011/01/17/don%E2%80%99t-lose-lectures-to-public-holidays/

12:24 PM
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Unrestricted Information Distribution, WikiLeaks | Thursday, January 20, 2011

WikiLeaks totally changed the playing field for journalism as the Time Magazine quotes, WikiLeaks could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.

While the concept of spreading classified document have been around since there was mass media. WikiLeaks provided a platform for information to be published and virtually impossible to remove. There used to be a time where a central government can limit the distribution of restricted article and prevent it introduction into the general public.

Media censorship existed can be traced back to the foundation of human civilization. One of the earliest forms of censorship is the Qin Dynasty burning of book and burial of scholars. Censorship is pervasive in all social order. It is one of the Governments greatest tools of social engineering by allow the removal and suppression of material that is deem to be a threat to society, or the established order either politically or morally.

What makes WikiLeaks so scary is how technology enables the unrestricted publication of classified media with almost no possibility to take it offline. Coupled with the Barbra Streisand’s effect and the massive backend support of mirrors and server, WikiLeaks managed to survive multiple governmental attack and free roaming hacker.
What is commendable is WikiLeaks sophisticated design. Firstly it is hosted in Sweden as the Swedish constitution protection of media publication makes it very difficult to take WikiLeaks offline. Secondly the massive amount of mirror and rerouting of internet traffic provided a cloud network that ensures that no one server is responsible for the hosting of WikiLeaks.

While the majority of the media reaction to the current WikiLeaks outbreak is about how the releases of classified diplomatic cable damage relationship with entangled countries and national security related issue, the mass majority had overlook how technology can upset the established order of society – Censorship.

References.

Chinese book burning
http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron//China/BookBurn.html

CNN article on WikiLeaks Impact
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/29/what-is-wikileaks-2/

A look inside WikiLeaks server bunker
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40482347/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
http://www.disinfo.com/2010/09/the-wikileaks-servers-fortress-inside-a-mountain/
http://www.fotograf.nu/360/bahnhof/

Barbra Streisand’s Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

11:19 AM
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