Reed Me : science fiction

I wasn’t concerned about warbots. Until...

reedme — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:44:54 GMT

The quote is long to provide context, but the bold part is what worries me. Ruh-roh.

A recent study prepared for the Office of Naval Research by a team from the California Polytechnic State University said that robot ethics had not received the attention it deserved because of a "rush to market" mentality and the "common misconception" that robots will do only what they have been programmed to do.

"Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to the time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person," the study says. "Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways."

Killer robots and a revolution in warfare (Reuters)

It’s not bad enough that we’re giving the robots guns, we’re not entirely sure what they’ll do when we tell them to shoot.

I think I’ve read that one. By Haldeman, right?

reedme — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:09:31 GMT

Would somebody please turn on the Large Hadron Collider so we can just end the debate? One way or another? Srsly? It might solve some other problems, too. *snicker* In short, a new paper says that the reports of the probable demise of black holes created by the LHC are greatly exaggerated (off by a half a second or more). Heh. Sounds familiar...

Joe Haldeman staged his “Forever Peace” novel around the possibility that an übercollider being built in the orbit of Jupiter could destroy all life in our solar system. (Not the only subject of purest conjecture in the novel, but I’ve been nostalgic about Haldeman’s work since I read “Forever War” as a kid.)

The book suggested that “now that we know what to look for” we can see all the other solar systems that other so-called intelligences used to inhabit before they built their own übercolliders and destroyed themselves... and only a magical mind-melding device that will make pacifists of us all can save humanity! (It’s a good book, if you like escapist scifi with remote controlled robots fighting our wars in the near future and a good bit of close up violence despite the peacenik dogma.)

Anywho, back to Reality™ where bombastic headlines and journalistic license sell advertising @ Fox News:

Casadio, Fabi and Harms think the black hole would lose out, and pass through the Earth or out of the atmosphere before it got to be a problem.

[snip]

If the worst comes to pass, and there's now a slightly greater chance that it might, at least it might explain why we've never heard from extraterrestrial civilizations: Maybe they built Large Hadron Colliders of their own.

Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

I think J.D. summed it up nicely in his Sunday comic: *wibble*

Even my 10 year-old daughter laffed out loud when it was suggested that we shouldn’t proceed with experiments until we know what will happen when we do them.

Where did I put that crowbar? (Just in case!)

Michael Crichton: RIP. We’ll miss you.

reedme — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:07:43 GMT

Loved the books, Michael. We’ll miss all the ones that you didn’t to write.

The novelist passed away in Los Angeles after a private battle with cancer. His family said the death was unexpected. Author Michael Crichton Dead at 66 (foxnews.com)

Catch up with you on the Other Side™.

Fictional characters with autism

reedme — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:12:02 GMT

Not exactly mainstream fiction, or even mainstream scifi, but it’s based on an Xbox game published by MSGS.

Mass Effect: Ascension

The central character (not the protagonist) is described as having autism and several parts of the book are from her perspective. I thought it was interesting and a generally positive treatment of a character on the spectrum.

Not sure how Drew came to the character or whether she will put in an appearance in the Mass Effect sequel, but I sent him an email to ask.

Drew's personal website

It was a pretty good book, but in the interest of full disclosure, since Mass Effect is my all-time favorite single-player game, bar none, I would’ve read the book any way.

Now playing in my Zune podcasts... Escape Pod

reedme — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:59:08 GMT

After finally making time to explore the 'cast inventory in the new Zune client*, I've found a few that I'm catching up on (my politically-oriented, paid-for 'casts notwithstanding). Escape Pod is first (Ask a Ninja will be second) and I just listened to EP107 which was a dramatic reading of a Hugo Award nominee short story (titled “Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed, no relation) that will make ya’ think. It’s an interesting perspective on nanoexploration of the universe.

Why would a story about a teeny-tiny alien spaceship be rated PG? You'll have listen to find out. It's actually a sad, but humorous, commentary on academia...

Rated PG. Contains some suggestive imagery, references to infidelity, and not very good television.
Escape Pod » EP107: Eight Episodes

EP109 might be one that I listen to with my kids later this evening on the Xbox**. Heh.

Why did I start with EP107? I didn't. I started with the unnumbered one before it because that was the first on the Zune had listed. Now that I know I've missed the first 100+, my OCD will require that I download them all and listen to them again in order. Later.

This is actually database-related, because I originally started off to figure out how to get the SQL Server Central 'cast onto my Zune, but... I got sidetracked into scifi. Whoops. If you say that you've never been distracted by miscellany, you're lying to yourself -or- you wouldn't understand why I now have dozens of new movie and video game soundtracks on my Zune, too. My wife suggested that I should listen to something else when I started humming the tunes from Mass Effect soundtrack all the time, so it must be time to wear out, the Halo trilogy tunes, Transformers and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. The soundtrack for Mechwarrior 4 was pretty good, so I'll have to dig up the CD and re-rip it.

I'll have to try again later to get Steve's 'cast when I get more time with my personal Tablet PC at home.***

______________________________________________________________________

* Although I absolutely hate the way the new client forces me to organize my 'casts, I'm getting used to it. I want to choose a 'cast and just play all the episodes in order! Or better yet, just organize them myself like music without manipulating the file metadata!!

** Assuming that the relatively new firmware on the Zune will let me find my Zune podcasts from the Xbox media center.

*** In case anybody at Xbox Live is list-, er, reading, I really want a way to manage my Zune from the Xbox without a PC. Pretty please?? I'll buy more Xbox hard drives and storage cards, I promise!

Internet vigilante justice?

reedme — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:04:54 GMT

I'm not advocating mob justice generally; however, this is the *only* case in which I can remember the media even coming close to a retraction of it's horribly biased, agenda-based drivel. "They" put up unresearched stories full of unnecessary ambiguity and emotionally-loaded 'nonsense' (to put it mildly)...

As one Amazon user put it: “I know all about this book but have never fully read it. Why? Due to the overwhelming backlash, I have no choice but to agree with the 1 star ratings. The rumors are rampant that this book was poorly written and poorly researched. So without verifying the contents myself — I give it a 1 star. Good thing video games aren’t judged in this manner — whew!!!”
Mass Effect - Video Games (New York Times)

Protests and political activity never seem to change media misbehavior. This time, though, gamers fire back and score on the pocket book of the ignorant talking head.

<insert_ironic_but_comical_tune />

In completely unrelated news, the SQL Server Business Unit snowball fight is scheduled today (20080128) from 12:00-12:30 Pacific Time in the common area between Buildings 34 and 35. There's more than enough snow for everyone!

Big brother (or SkyNet) is coming... to a PC near you.

reedme — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:18:24 GMT

I loved the book 1984, even though it was almost 1984 by the time I read it. The fact that the date was around the corner and technology wasn't anywhere close kind of took the punch out of the story. I guess it didn't scare me the way it scared "previous generations" (to put it politely). Perhaps being able to fool a lie detector later in life clinched it for me... Any system can be beaten; you just have to figure out how.

Labor unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer's assessment of their physiological state.
Microsoft System May Monitor Workers' Brains, Bodies (FOXNews.com)

I'm not concerned about the automated dismissal so much as I am about where and how we're going to store all of that telemetry data. Wow! Imagine how much sensor data would have to be collected every polling period (1 second?), centralized and sanitized to make it useful... Multiply that times 100,000 employees over the course of a couple years and you've got a serious data warehousing problem. Not to mention the AI for alerting someone in HR that a pink slip cannon needs to be activated.

Watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles this past two evenings did make me starting knoodling about the complexities of the database systems required for SkyNet's C3 systems (command, control and communications). Wouldn't that be a fun database to model on SQL Server 2008? Wish I had more free time!

Fiction is rapidly becoming science. Brought to you by Microsoft.

Alien? No way. Blade Runner was far better.

reedme — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:10:34 GMT

MSN's Cadillac of... promotion offers three choices for "best science fiction movie":

Alien
2001: A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner

I'm not even sure why 2001 is on that list. Must be a nod to the geriatric crowd, eh? (Just kiddink!) Alien seems to be the hands-down winner so far, despite the fact that Aliens (the sequel) was MUCH better... and Terminator doesn't even get a mention? Huh. But Blade Runner still beats 'em all!

There's no accounting for some peoples' taste in scifi, I guess.