Categories
Gaming Liberty

[73] Of Democracy is such a foul word

Democracy is such a foul word.

One quiet night, I was in front of the computer playing Soldier of Fortune II multiplayer game. However, I was on a new server instead of redcoat.net or dontsleep.org. Those two servers were offline for unknown reason. In fact, a lot of cracked servers for SoF2 were  offline, leaving only several cracked servers located in Europe.

I was connected to a server in Austria and was playing a deathmatch game peacefully. There were eight players trying to shoot each other’s head off for a few minutes. One guy was leading the pact with unbelievable amount of frags with the second-placed player having no way of getting near the leader score. I was fighting for a second place with a grenade launcher.

In the middle of the game, a new player logged on and was playing well enough to avoid from being called a noob. After a few cycle, he was tired of deathmatch and called for a team deathmatch. The nine players voted and the motion was passed with five with against three against. The map changed and the cycle restarted. For some reasons, the new player was unsatisfied with the new game type and called for another vote, asking for infiltration game type. I love infiltration game but with only nine players, it would certainly be dull game. So, I voted against. Most of the other thought of the same thing and the motion was denied from becoming active. He was not happy with the result and called for another vote and it failed yet again.

After a few kills, he called for yet another vote for an infiltration game. Annoyed by the needless calls, I sent a global message to him asking him to stop calling for a vote. In return, he said that I cannot do anything because it is his rights. I told him later that he won’t win because he had called the same motion three times and all tries had failed.

Certainly common sense would have told him the same thing but he just wouldn’t give up.

Having enough of his nuisance, I called for a vote to kick him and it was passed swiftly. After that incident, now I remember why democracy was not practiced on redcoat.net or dontsleep.org. There will always somebody who will abuse the system.

Talk about rights and democracy.

Democracy is not the nature of human society as some would have claimed. The ideology is neither the best nor perfect; not when it is fully exercised without restrictions.

I believe in a limited democracy. The word limited is not a bad word as it would seem to be. It is merely to describe a controlled environment and it doesn’t matter whether the control is a total grip or just a couple of weak strings keeping a lot of sticks together.

Nevertheless, by uttering these words doesn’t mean that I am against freedom. I am a freedom lover. I am simply stressing that a few regulations made intact is a good thing.

Oh, did I mention that I made a new personal record for Minesweeper’s beginner level?

My record is six seconds without cheats but unfortunately for me, the world record is two seconds. I wonder how on earth somebody could complete the game without excessively being lucky. Hmm…

Oh well… Btw, read this will you?

Categories
Personal

[72] Of what a lovely day

I love the weather condition today.

For some reasons, today is a very fantastic day indeed although I slept just for four hours – from five thru nine in the morning due to the invention of differential equation, infamously known to humankind as the capital dee dot capital eee dot.

Yesterday, I did a full pump for D.E. after two weeks preparing for the much expected midterm. Although the sound of it makes it looks bad, I actually enjoyed the pain that I went through. The suffering of not able to comprehend some of the weird equations made me mad and discouraged. Nevertheless, God saved me by making my mind worked better and thus, I suddenly saw through the misty forest of mathematics and found its secret. Out of the blue, the solutions seem to be clearly written in my mind and I could do any problem that was spitted out at me.

Discouragement quickly became eagerness and I sat in front of my desk until four o’clock in the morning, studying the population, acceleration-velocity models and homogeneous equations. By the time I closed my weary eyes, all that I could think of were P (t), M, C, k, P’, e, and all the other math stuffs.

One REM later, I woke up and all ready for the confrontation. I was all ready for midterm. Actually, I doubt I even had a REM sleep.

Two hours later, I was done and smiled all the way from Dennison to Stockwell. I smiled and that means that it was a nice day.

Reason number two, it was a bright but mildly warm day. Previously, Ann Arbor’s atmosphere was extremely hot with static air. The last two days, a so-called isolated storm occurred. It’s not that I hated the storm. I appreciated the storm. The storm did function to cool the environment down a bit but the fact that it was a gloomy day didn’t make me felt happy.

But today, TODAY, I repeat again, was a bright but mildly warm day. It reminds me of how the days during the fall season would be, nicely litted up and gently warm. I am looking to experience fall again. I guess that makes fall as my favorite season.
Thirdly, met up JJ though I don’t really know why I was glad of meeting him. Maybe it was just that it has been awhile since I last met him. Or perhaps, he is one of the few American friends that I think I have a very good relationship. I guess I’ll be looking forward of meeting Matt again. And Khateeb and Unmesh etc. Guys, I seriously miss your squabbling over the dinner.

Fourth, the Commonwealth Games will be up and running in a few hours time.
Next, the food was good (minus the milk which JJ complained to the manager about. AND the greens were yucky).

Sixth, I am just feeling happy. Plain happy and loving myself although I doubt this feeling will last long. Nevertheless, I am happy for the time being and savoring every drop of the juice.

Categories
Personal

[71] Of Ann Arbor Art Fair

Life is getting out of hand. I am still trying to get hold on my life after all of these years.

Pleasingly, The __earth Inc. received its 1800th visitor after eight months it came online. That particular visitor was from Kodak.com and to be precise he or she was from Rochester, New York. I have absolutely no idea who was that but I’ve visited Rochester a few months back. Whoever you are, I wish to thank you for visiting The __earth Inc. Yeah, 200 more visitors and voila, the sacred number 2000!

Updating and maintaining this site has proved to be a daunting task. I thought it was going to be an easy job but I was wrong. It requires more time than what I am willing to spend. Yet, the satisfaction of having a personal site is something to be enjoyed alone by the creator. It’s something that I enjoy greatly. After eight months of continuous building and modification, The __earth Inc. still hasn’t been completed by me. After eight months, it has been praised and mock. It has even been hacked but nevertheless, the damage was negligible.

Eight months. I can’t believe how eight months had passed so far and how I have done so little. Oh how I wish that I have a time machine. I need to change the past. Damn, I am digressing.

Lastly, I wish the visitors will continue to visit this site and support it Together, we shall rule the universe. Hmm… A little bit ambitious aren’t we?

I went to the ongoing Art Fair at South University St. after having a lunch with the gang yesteraday. They were a bit reluctant to go to fair and told me that we should go there tomorrow instead of today. Their reason was – the day was hot. I then replied “yeah, like tomorrow is going to be a lot cooler. It’s summer man.”

We had a debate but then, I was tired arguing with them and decided to use my “mind trick” on their weak mind. Guess what? It worked!

So, he walked from the lousy Stockwell dining hall to the Art Fair via the Diag. The fair was about, well, art but there were nothing much to see at the South U. St. other than paintings and stuffs. Maybe we should have gone to State St. instead because according to Ronnie, there are a lot of artifacts over there instead of paintings and paintings and paintings. Yet, there was one booth that offered something different and made the visit worthwhile.

This one booth exhibited steel sculptures, the sculptures that resemble roller coaster track but instead of trains, balls were made to roll on the track. First, I saw a small scale sculpture and was immediately impressed by the work of art. I told David that I want it. It should be fun to have one of those things inside of my room.

Immediately next to the petty track stood a two-meter high steel sculpture with more than a dozen steel balls being lifted up by electric-powered gear and rolled down the track at a decent speed simultaneously. I was frozen there for minutes trying to keep track of the balls routes. One of the guys realized that I was absorbed by those gadget. So, they pulled me away from the booth.

Later, we strolled down the South U. until the street meets up with Geddes. There, there was a guitar-playing guy that looked like he had just had hashish. Nevertheless, his music was cool.

I was enjoying myself when a member of the party insisted that we go home. I know he was not having a good time so I realized that there was no point of arguing with him. On that, we headed home but before we were out of the fair area, I saw a sign that said “Make a difference” or sort of that. Nearby, I saw a girl on a wheelchair expressing herself by painting on a huge piece of paper laid on the ground. I stood there and stared at her while watching the others walked passed beside me. I just stood there and pitied at the sweet little girl. I wish God wouldn’t have been so cruel to her.

Knowing that life goes on, I tried to get her off my mind and walked toward home under the scorching Sun.

Categories
Books & printed materials

[70] Of The Turk

I’ve updated __earth Inc.’s source code last week. As you can see, the scroll bar has been changed to suit the current __earth Inc.’s design. Admittedly, I didn’t construct the code by myself but it was taken from a site. However, I didn’t take the whole lot of the code and paste it into the source code but rather I did some alteration of myself.

Not much happened in my life except that I am getting too indiscipline for my own good. Throughout the weeks, I’d promised myself to revise my mathematics but that promise was eroded easily. Although the current math level to my pleasure does not provide a significant challenge to me, such complacency is dangerous. It was this sort of complacency that made me lost an A, in fact, a few A’s for the past few semesters.

Nevertheless, my life has started to resemble the way I had lived it a few years ago. I’m starting to read comics; currently, my taste stands with Darkhorse Comics instead of Marvel and books. Usually, I would read fantasy and science fiction novels but now, the taste changed to something more serious.

During the Fourth of July, a few friends of mine accompanied me to Borders Bookstore nearby Ann Arbor’s downtown. The first section that I visited was as always, fantasy and science fiction section. I was searching for Kim Robinson’s Blue Mars, which is the last installment of the Martian trilogy. It’s one of the best sci-fi novels ever written last decade.

I was about to buy Blue Mars until I found this newly released book by Tom Standage entitled “The Turk” under the chess section. I couldn’t tell why did I suddenly invested such an interest at the chess section but I sat there for nearly an hour and in effect, managed to finished off a few chapters. Later, I bought the book for USD 25. What made me bought the book was not because it looks impressive. The reason was because it discusses about The Turk, a name that strike a chord inside of my head.

Back when I was a small boy, I was introduced to the game of chess by my uncle. I must say that I am not an expert player but playing chess provide a satisfaction that no other game could present. On the other hand, one of my favorite subjects is history. Therefore, I am quite please to say that I have a splitter knowledge of chess history even when I was about 12 years old. It was during this time that I heard the machine called The Turk.

The Turk was a machine, an automaton to be precise, that could play chess; a mechanical being that could think on its own, built by Wolfgang Von Kempelen back during the 18th century. The idea of a being that consists only gears and metals could play chess is absurd but somehow in history, The Turk was a formidable chess player. For about one century, the Europeans were tricked into believing that this mechanical being could think on its own.

I myself was not well-versed in The Turk’s history but at the moment I read the book, my first thought was that someone must be inside of the machine. I believe that a machine that was made out of just bolts and nuts couldn’t think for itself. The idea of the machine such as that could play chess is an insult to human intelligence. Nevertheless, after reading a few chapters, the author somehow managed to convince me to seriously think that the automaton could think for itself, which was foolish of me. Only near the end of the book did the author revealed that the automaton was a fraud. Nevertheless, Francis Willis, one of The Turk scrutinizer thought that, as mentioned in the book:

“…the Turk as a mechanical puzzle to be solved, rather than a fraud to be uncovered.”

Truly, whether it was a hoax or not, The Turk itself was designed by an excellent man whom managed to keep the secret on how The Turk works to his death. If you are curious of what empowered The Turk, read the book. You’ll be surprised at the answer no matter how obvious the answer is.

Yet, after analyzing the content of the book, I believe the main idea of the book is not about the rich history of The Turk which had played against well-known figure nor about the secret that Kempelen kept. The book actually discusses about human dreams of building a machine that could think for its own good; an artificial intelligence. Quoting the book, this in turn paraphrased Lady Byron in London:

“Unlike the machines of the industrial revolution, which replace human physical activity, this fragment of the Difference Engine, like the Turk, raised the possibility that machine might eventually be capable of replacing mental activity too.”

Latter part of the book, there is a chapter that entitled “The Turk versus Deep Blue” which I haven’t read yet but the title itself convinced me that the main idea of the book concerns about artificial intelligence rather than the “Promethean heat” that empowered The Turk.

Be mindful, this book is not a sci-fi. It’s an investigative book that discuss real history.

Read this for a related post.

Categories
Personal Politics & government

[69] Of Mahathir’s announcement and Top of the Park

Malaysia … Don’t say it isn’t you … because you know, I do love you too! I am waiting for an answer..
– Cupcake, www.swirve.com

The World Cup is nearing its end with Brazil almost for certain will win this fight yet again. It’s a pity that the South Korean team failed to beat off Germany for if they did, being an Asia is cooler than I thought it would be.

People at Ann Arbor were excited and somebody even drew a huge South Korea flag at the Diag.

Well, the Asian teams lost but in the end, Asia managed to prove to the world that they’re worth more than being just a cheap labor market.

Another interesting development in Asia was a retirement announcement by Asia’s longest serving Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. What surprised me more was how that event received tons of attention by the Americans’ media. The Washington Post wrote an article about it. A few other major newspapers even printed the news at the front page! Imagine that. Malaysia has truly caught the eyes of the world. Or maybe it’s just Mahathir.

Nevertheless, Mahathir was irresponsible. Announcing his retirement at such an abrupt time will do nothing but hurt the country’s recovering economy. Mahathir shouldn’t have done that, whether he orchestrated it or not.

Seeing through my blurry eyes, I would say that Mahathir cannot leave the throne yet. He has no worthy successor. However, I’m not saying that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is not a good leader but Malaysia needs a leader with visions; a leader better than Mahathir, or at least on par. Before the economy crisis, Anwar Ibrahim promised Malaysia something but his fall was unfortunate. From that day on, Malaysia has only Mahathir to steer her helm.

Well, whatever it is, right now, Ann Arbor is as hot as hell. (Despite my words, no, I haven’t been to hell. Oh c’mon, it’s just an expression.) I can’t believe Michigan’s weather. Last month, it was cold regardless we called the season spring and then suddenly, the Sun is baking the Earth.

Yet, summer is fun. At the Fletcher Structure, Top of the Park Summer Fest is going on at full stream. Staying near AA’s cultural sites, I visited the Fair with a few friends, namely David, JJ and Batcha. Ronnie was there too but he seems to be more excited of being with his other friend. Truly, the Fair was amazing.

Last Sunday, there were this famous Blues ban from Detroit performing at the Fair. They were versatile; playing trombone, saxophone, you name it for 3 straight hours without even taking a breath. I had a good time. I’m going to the Fair again this week. Hell, make it everyday.

Well, spring has gone away with the wind and a few friends have gone home, back to Malaysia. I wish them safe journey.

Paeh, sorry aa. Nanti aku belikan ko sweat shirt bile aku balik nanti.

Tod, ko datang aa Michigan kalau ko nak baju tu.

Cherap, I’m so sorry because I won’t be able to send you off to the U.K.

Zeff, singgah aa US haram.

Adam, please accept my apology for not going home. I have more important thing to do. By the way, I think you would rather spend more time with that girl than me huh? :p

Apad, kenape ko tanye aku balik ke tak? Ko rindu kat aku ek? :)