Here’s a nice blog entry and here’s the actual paper.

A while ago, Netflix released the movie ratings made by their users and offered one million dollars who could make their recommender system better by at least 10%. Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov at the the University of Texas have managed to strip it of its anonymity by matching up a few ratings with IMDB ratings.

From the paper about one Netflix user:

First, we can immediately find his political orientation based on his strong opinions about “Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times” and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Strong guesses about his religious views can be made based on his ratings on “Jesus of Nazareth” and “The Gospel of John”. He did not like “Super Size Me” at all; perhaps this implies something about his physical size? Both items that we found with predominantly gay themes, “Bent” and “Queer as folk” were rated one star out of five. He is a cultish follower of “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. This is far from all we found about this one person, but having made our point, we will spare the reader further lurid details.

I found this really interesting, considering that my first data mining assignment of the semester involved mining data from this particular dataset. I forwarded this to my advisor (the professor of that class), and he responded:

Interesting. I dare say we predicted such things in a paper of ours from 2001.

At that time, reviewers said our ideas were too far fetched. See:
http://people.cs.vt.edu/~naren/papers/ppp.pdf.

Of course the UT work is more exhaustive and has lemmas and theorems!

Naren

Too cool.

Synopsis: A three-dimensional sphere visits a two-dimensional square. Geometry ensues.

I discovered this book just after high school, when I read Rudy Rucker’s Spaceland and this book was mentioned often, since it was the inspiration for Spaceland.  Afterward, I picked up Flatland twice, but never got around to finishing it.  Oddly enough, Rudy Rucker just CC’d Postsingular.  I find it really coincidental that I have ran into Rucker twice in the past two days, on completely different notes.  First for the CC’d novel, then again when I looked up Spaceland on Wikipedia to rediscover that Rudy Rucker had written that (I had forgotten).

This is a really great book. I keep going back to some of the phrases and marveling at how crisp they sound. Like this line: “…no better than the offspring of a diseased imagination, or the baseless fabric of a dream.”

The book also provides a lot of insight into the nature of scientific revolutions (see Thomas S. Kuhn for more…paradigms and stuff), critisism of Victorian caste and sexism, and analogy on hyper-geometric concepts.  Abbott accomplishes a lot of education in a very short book.

The only thing that really bothers me is the mention of a half hour glass.  If all the shapes lie flat, where is the gravity to move the sand?

So, the book is definitely a worth-while read, very entertaining as well as thought-provoking.  This coupled with the shortness (about 80 pages) leaves one hard-pressed to find a good excuse to not read it.

From IMDB:

A doctor experimenting with transplant techniques keeps his girlfriend’s head alive when she is decapitated in a car crash, then goes hunting for a new body.

“Alive… without a body… fed by an unspeakable horror from hell!” This movie is an unspeakable horror from hell…and I loved it!

This movie was incredibly cheesy, but it was not so bad that I found it difficult to enjoy watching.  The main character has a very hero like manner.  His rigid chin turns sharply to the side, just before he declares science boldly.  The dialogue is amazingly melodramatic, and so is the acting.

That was just the acting and the scripting.  The other bits that the movie just expected you to take in stride were ridiculous.  So the girl is in a burning car and he just reaches in and pulls out her detached head?  So she is able to speak even though she has no lungs to push air through her vocal chords?  So this serum gives her supernatural powers of…communication to other freaks of nature?  He just starts up an easy conversation with her even though she hasn’t spoke to him once since her head fell off?

The music was really good.  I especially liked the jazz every time the main character went to pick up chicks in his stalkermobile.

If you enjoy campy movies, you will definitely enjoy this one.  Watch it with friends.

From Archive:

In this classic yet still creepy horror film, strangers hold up in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse and battle constant attacks from dead locals who have been brought back to life by mysterious radiation.

This movie was pretty good, even though it retains a lot of the poor production quality that old horror films tend to have.  The zombies were rarely creepy (though some were, especially the girl).  Most of the cool scenes were only described, not actually filmed.  For example, the hero talks about how he plowed through zombies in his car and they would fly off to the sides.  That sounded awesome.  Let’s see it.

Speaking of the hero, I really liked him.  Even though he smacked the whiney chick into a coma, he was pretty awesome.  He took charge when he was surrounded by a team of weenies.

I thought the ending was horrible.  While I don’t think it was very predictable, I had it figured out from the dialogue the first time we met the rescue crew.  Maybe the ending itself was OK, but I just wish it had been done a little differently.  Maybe it would be nice if they built up to it a little bit more and made it a little more sudden.  I would have liked to see the hero run out to the rescue crew at the end, instead of just sit in the house.

Favorite lines:

• “It’s getting hot in here”
• “Well, the television said that that’s the right thing to do.”

Overall, the movie had a good plot and I loved the characters.  While some of the film is cheesy, this movie is still a classic, so watch it.

OK, so immediately you must be thinking: “Wait, they aren’t done with Peach yet. Why would they start another short film when they aren’t done with the one they are currently working on?” The reason is because this fruit is not a movie.

It’s a video game!

You can read more about it here. Blender will not be doing this alone. They will be working with Crystal Space as well. If it strikes you as odd (it struck me as odd) that they wouldn’t be using Cystal Space instead of Blender GE, you should read Ton’s reasoning here.

Art: To save time, most of the art is going to come from Peach.

Genre: “This probably means an adventure/platform style of game, or maybe it’s going to be like mini games or party games.”

Other sponsors: Dutch Game Days

Team: 6 people (they need people if you are interested)

• one hardcore game engine developer
• two ‘integrators’
• two artists
• one artist / lead game designer

Production schedule: February 2008 - July 2008

I don’t expect it to be an amazing game, but I do expect it to look amazing. Well, I will be looking forward to this being released this summer.

I’ve been a hardcore Fedora advocate for a while, one of the biggest reasons being how strong their position was on nonfree software. With codec buddy, the are still keeping themselves slightly divorced, but not nearly as much. I kind of feel like Fedora (Red Hat) is taking on the Ubuntu (Canonical) strategy that compromises on core values just to attract a larger user base.

If you want more info, see the linux.com article. I really like how linux.com likened codec buddy to passing out condoms. Maybe they didn’t actually say that, but it was pretty close.

I’ve known about this for a while now, even before this article came out. If you check out the Fedora channel logs on freenode from a couple of weeks ago, you will see me show up and rant a bit. Anyway, I’m thinking about switching distros. I’m open to suggestions, especially since I don’t know of any other Nazi distros like Fedora was. I’ve heard Debian is, but I’m a little hesitant to switch to Debian for some reason. I think it’s because I associate it with Ubuntu too much, haha.

Here are my priorities, in order:

1. Free software only
2. Actively developed
3. User friendly
4. Source based packages are a plus

So shoot me your distro suggestions. I may just end up staying with Fedora, but heck, now that I’m not set on it, I’ll even consider Ubuntu.

If you are unfamiliar with this case, see my previous entry.  From the SFLC announcement:

Monsoon Multimedia has agreed to appoint an Open Source Compliance Officer within its organization to monitor and ensure GPL compliance, to publish the source code for the version of BusyBox it previously distributed on its Web site, and to undertake substantial efforts to notify previous recipients of BusyBox from Monsoon Multimedia of their rights to the software under the GPL. The settlement also includes an undisclosed amount of financial consideration paid by Monsoon Multimedia to the plaintiffs.

So, compliance, a little more effort, and money.  It’s all kind of vague.  I would really like to know how much money was involved.  I think that would play a big role in setting a precedent for future cases.

Well, even though this was a pretty clear-cut case, it’s good to see the good guys won with little effort.  If you want to read more about it, check out the article on linux.com.

From the BloodSpell website:

It is a story of a world where men and women carry magic in their blood, and spilling it can unleash terrible power.

Where these “Blooded” hide in fetid slums from the Church of the Angels, commanded by their divine masters to “cleanse” the Blood Magic.

Where choices are fraught, alliances rarely safe, and blood is all.

A young monk named Jered flees the Church when his own Blood Magic is released. Now he must survive the pursuit of the Church, the gladiatorial pits of the Blooded underground, and the hidden truths of the ancient struggle. The choices he makes will tip the balance of the war between Church and Blooded, and change his world forever.

Mixing a vivid world with fast-paced action and punk attitude, we think BloodSpell will be like no film you’ve ever seen.

It is made using the game Neverwinter Nights, and is written and directed by Machinima pioneer Hugh Hancock.

This is a full-length machinima film made with Neverwinter Nights. They seem to be getting a lot of publicity in the short time that this movie has been out, so I was very curious to see it.

So if you follow my reviews, you probably have figured out to just ignore the stars. When I give BloodSpell a “4″ and Beasts of New York a “3″, you know something is wrong. However, this was really an impressive film given the genre, and it definitely is a very pioneering film as it’s one of the few full length CC films in existence, and one of the few full-length machinima films in existence. The creators should be very, very proud of their work. Here is a list of awards it has one at this point (not long after the release, although it was a show previously).

• Nomination: Best Machinima Movie - GameShadow Innovation In Games Awards
• Nominations: Best Series, Best Technical Achievement - Machinima Film Festival 2006
• Best Machinima July 2006 - Sims 99
• Movie of the Month, July 2006 - Machinima Premiere
• Movie of the Month, August 2006 - Machinima Premiere
• Movie of the Month, October 2006 - Machinima Premiere
• Movie of the Month, December 2006 - Machinima Premiere
• Movie of the Season, Q4 2006 - Machinima Premiere
• Movie of the Year (Bronze), 2006-2007 - Machinima Premiere
• Nominations: Best Series, Best Technical Achievement - Machinima Europe
• Gold Medal Winner, Best Technical Achievement, Online Machinima Film Festival 2007.
• Gold Medal Winner, Best Custom Content, Online Machinima Film Festival 2007.
• Silver Medal Winner, Best Series, Online Machinima Film Festival 2007.

The production quality is superb, and the soundtrack is pretty punk and exciting. The voice acting was also well done, though could have used some work in areas.

The plot was not the best. It was a little predictable and perhaps had a few holes. I’m not sure if there really were holes or if I was just talking too much during the movie and missed important points. However, even if the plot wasn’t that amazing, the story-telling style was great. For example, I wouldn’t say the story of the big bad wolf is that amazing, but I’ve heard some great renditions.

So, if you can handle 84 minutes of video game graphics and a cheesy plot, I suggest you watch this.

Note: This film contains some strong language, ridiculous fantasy religion, scantily-clad video game chicks, and a man-butt.

No one can make me smile and cringe simultaneously as much as Jonahthan Schwartz.

If you were unaware of this case, NetApps has claimed that Sun is infringing on their patents. According to my friend that did an internship this past summer at NetApps, Sun is. So perhaps they aren’t being a troll, but I still think software patents are bogus. Chz, if you care to give the technical details, please do.

Quotes from this that make me cringe:

1. “..instead, we joined the free software community and innovated.”
2. ” One of the ways we innovated was to create a magical file system called ZFS“

Ugh…”innovation”. Magic? Chz, can you verify?

Quotes that make me smile:

1. “…we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace.”
2. “…we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform…”

NetApps wanted several things

1. “…they’d like us to unfree ZFS.”
2. ” they want us to limit ZFS’s allowable field of use to computers - and to forbid its use in storage devices.”

The first one is impossible to comply with, the second one just doesn’t make sense. So Sun is going to fight fire with fire and sue back…despite that he says three times in this post that he has no interest in suing them :). Yay for defensive patent portfolios.

Note: Look at the url of the entry. The title of Schwartz’s post was not originally “ZFS put Net App Viability at Risk?”, but “Harvesting From a Troll”.

Synopsis: Artificial intelligence surpasses the limits of human intellect and three generations of the Macx family find themselves bouncing their way through the singularity in the most ridiculous cyberpunk trip ever.

OK, that was a bad synopsis, you should read what someone else has to say too.

This novel was very, very hard to keep up with. It launches the reader out into the deep end of a furturistic world without sufficiently letting him or her play around in the kiddie pool for a while. Sometimes I really appreciate that, but I didn’t like it here. I felt like I spent half the time hacking my way through tech mumbo-jumbo with a dull machete to get to the story. Oh the story was definitely there, but it was pretty difficult to follow too. It may not have been that bad if more of the book focused on the story rather than impressing the reader with novel technology.

So many readers probably don’t find this a fault. Some can handle the static of a torrential onslaught of futuristic inventions, but I just wasn’t in the mood for it. Some people can follow a complicated story pretty well (I usually can), but I zoned out on a chapter halfway through, and I was fairly lost for the rest of it.

Apart from that, the writing style is great, and the plot (if you can keep up with it), is pretty good.

I was pretty harsh on it, but I still gave it a “2″. If you really like cyberpunk and enjoy fantasizing about the singularity, you will probably enjoy this book. It wasn’t for me.

Note: Though this is not a graphic novel, it contains several graphic sex scenes.