Month: June 2012

Damn, I’m Out of Shape!!!

I went swimming today, the first time in probably a quarter of a century.  It was an eye opening experience.  If I fell off a boat without a life preserver I’d be dead in 2 minutes, maybe even 1 minute.  I was never a good swimmer, nor could tread water well, but I had the stamina to struggle along for maybe 50 yards.  I could have put up a good fight.  At 60 and weighing 232 pounds I’d just go under immediately in open water and not come up.

When I was first married, and we lived at an apartment with a pool, I weighed 155 pounds and could run for miles.  I thought before I got in the pool today that fat floated.  Boy was I wrong.  My fat don’t float!  I sink.

For years people have been telling me to take up swimming to help my back.  I’ve always said no because swimming is inconvenient.  But my neighbor, who has a pool, has been urging me to use her pool, so this morning I gave it a try.  I jumped in off the ladder at the deep end and immediately discovered my lack of buoyancy.  It was a struggle to get back to the surface.

At first I thought her pool too small to do laps, but then I tried to do a lap, on the short length, which can’t be more than 20-25 feet.  I made it, using my flailing doggie paddle style, but I had to grab on the edge of the pool and catch my breath after just the first crossing.

I did some experiments trying to hold my breath under water using the stop-watch feature of my Casio.  At first I could only go 8 seconds.  Eventually I worked up to 13.  That’s pitiful.  I guess that’s a sign of getting old.  When I was young it wasn’t much trouble to hold my breath under water for 60 seconds or more.

I stuck with doing laps and I went back and forth maybe 10 times, either doggie paddling, or some kind of crude breast stroke.  I tried the normal crawl one time but I just don’t have that kind of coordination.

I’m not completely out of shape.  After swimming I did 20 minutes of physical therapy and then 10 minutes of Bowflex.  But it’s obvious that being overweight and 60 that I’m at a lifetime low point when it comes to stamina.  Before my back got bad I did stair walking at work and could do 20-24 floors on my break.  I can ride my bike for 30-45 minutes now, but I’ve discovered that unless I’m riding uphill, bikes are so efficient that it’s not much exercise. 

It so weird watching my body decline, because mentally I feel like I did when I was 19.

So far I’ve lost 6 pounds on my diet.  I do believe if I worked hard I could regain some of my stamina – but will I?  I’ve discovered in recent years I’ve adapted to a very sedentary lifestyle.  My back limits my activities, especially standing or walking, so I’ve just accepted doing less.  I think I need to get an exercise bike to push myself.  Sitting on a bike, leaning forward on the handlebars, doesn’t hurt my back.  Swimming, or more precisely, trying to swim, didn’t seem to hurt my back either.  So I’ll keep it up.  At least in warm weather.

On one hand I feel like just accepting getting old and doing less, on the other hand I believe I should fight the inevitable.  I see all these natural catastrophes on TV and how old people need so much help just to run away from danger.  I don’t want to be like that.  I see news reports of people rushing to rescue stuff in their homes before fires engulf them.  With my stamina I couldn’t rescue much.  And living in an emergency shelter would be very hard on me.  I’ve gotten old and soft and addicted to creature comforts, the crutch of modern air conditioned living. 

I wouldn’t be much of a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world.

I’ve become an animal highly adapted to a very specific environment.  I’ve developed a routine where I expend very little energy to survive.  But what will life be like at 70?  Or 80?  I would ask about 90, but I just can’t imagine my declining stamina letting me live to 90.  But I see 90 year-old people all the  time – but most of them move very little.

Do I ride the current slope of my declining stamina, or do I made a big effort and bend that declining slope into a rising one?  Could I regain the stamina I had at 50 or 40?  That might be dreaming, but I do know people my age that are many times more active than I am.  However, I think they’ve always been many times more active than I was.

I’ll keep you posted.  I need some way of measuring progress though.  Have to think about that.  Are there standardized tests for stamina?

JWH – 6/30/12

How Microsoft Can Make Extra Millions When They Roll Out Windows 8

Dear Microsoft,

When Microsoft rolls out Windows 8 they could make some extra corporate chump change by selling a new version of Windows 7 that’s designed for the “I hate Windows 8” crowd.   I have a feeling there’s going to be millions of Windows 7 fans that will swear they will give up their favorite OS when it’s pried from their cold dead fingers.

I’ve installed two pre-releases of Windows 8 so far, and I just don’t like it.  Sure it has some slick new functions, but I just don’t like the way it looks.  I keep trying Mac OS and Linux, but I prefer Windows 7 by light years.  I just don’t want Windows 7 to go away.

I build my own computers and I worry that Microsoft will stop selling Windows 7.  So Microsoft, I’d like to buy a copy of Windows 7 that I could put on any machine I build in the future.  I know that operating systems only have a limited supported life, but I’d like to stretch my use of Windows 7 until I die.   I’m 60, and I only expect to live another 15-20 years.

Y’all are still supporting Windows XP which came out in 2001, so I should at least get another 12 years out of Windows 7.  The trouble is the weird activation restrictions.  I don’t blame you for copy protecting your product but it does make my plans more difficult.  How about selling a version of Windows 7 with some kind of activation scheme that ties it to me and any machine I build for home use.  It would be nice to also be able to buy a Family pack version for 3 machines.

I know it’s mean of me to call your new baby ugly, but I’m sure you’re used to old farts not wanting to try newfangled ideas.  Just whip up some kind of marketing campaign – Windows 7 Forever – and make a few extra bucks off us stick-in-the-muds.  I really don’t want to switch to Mac OS and Linux is perennially clunky.

Thanks.

Jim

Why Humans Won’t Be the God of Robots

There’s a scene in the film Prometheus where an android asked a human why he would want to meet his maker?  The human replied that he’d like to ask his maker why he made him.  So the android said to the human, “Why did you make me?”  And the human replied, “Because we could.”  And the android then asked, “Will that answer be good enough for you?”

Science fiction has always loved the motif of man being the God of robots and AI machines – but I don’t think that will be true.  Not because artificial intelligence can’t exist, but because of how AI will evolve.

Please read “’A Perfect and Beautiful Machine’: What Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Reveal About Artificial Intelligence” by Daniel C. Dennett at The Atlantic.  No really, take the time to read this essay, if you are at all interested in artificial intelligence because this is an elegant essay about how AI will evolve.  It’s also a unique comparison of Charles Darwin and Alan Turing that observes concepts I’ve never read or thought about before, especially about the nature of evolution.  But for those who won’t take the time to read the article, I’ll summarize.  Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to Dennett, proves that God or an intelligent designer didn’t create life on Earth.  And Turing, with his Turing machine, proves that computers can produce creative output with no intelligent mind at all.  What I get from this is simplicity can produce complexity.

But back to AI and robots.  For a long time we’ve thought we could program our way to artificial intelligence.  That once we learned how intelligence worked we could write a program that allowed machines to be smart and aware like humans.  The belief was if random events in physics, chemistry and biology could produce us, why couldn’t we create life in silicon by our own intelligent design?

The solution to AI has always been elusive.  Time and again we’ve invented machines that could do smart things without being smart.  Machine self-awareness is always just over the horizon.

What Dennett is suggesting, is artificial intelligence won’t come from our intelligent designs, but from programs evolving in the same kind of mindless way that we evolved out of the organic elements of the Earth.  That humans can create the context of AI creation, that humans can be the amino acids, but they can’t be the designers.  The programs that produce AI need a context to evolve on their own.  In other words, we need to invent an ecosystem for computer programs to develop and evolve on their own.  How that will work I have no idea.

This means we’ll never get to code in Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.  It also suggests that complexity doesn’t come from complexity, but the creative power of non-intelligent design.  There’s a lot to this.

I’m also reading Imagine by Jonah Lehrer and it discusses how creativity often comes from our unconscious mind, and through group interaction.  Often creative ideas burst out in an Ah-Ha! moment after we have digested the facts, chewed them over, worried, given up and then forgot about the problem.  We are not even the God of our own thoughts and creativity.  That intelligent design is the randomness of evolution.

lehrerimagine

Time and again the Lehrer book talks about creativity coming from process and not an individual expression.  If you combine what Dennett and Lehrer are saying you catch a whiff of spookiness about unconscious forces at play in our minds and life in general.  Conscious thinking become less impressive because it’s only the tip of the iceberg that surfs on the deep waves of the unconscious mind.  Evolution is a blind force of statistics.  Is creativity just another blind force like evolution?

If Dennett is right, our conscious minds will never be powerful enough to conceive of an artificial mind.  And Dennett also says that Charles Darwin by coming up with the theory of evolution indirectly proves that a God couldn’t have created us whole in a divine mind.  If you think about all of this enough, you’ll start seeing this is saying something new.  It’s a new paradigm, like the Copernican revolution.  We’re not the center of the universe, and now conscious thought is not the crown of creation.

[I didn’t write this.  Thousands of books that I’ve read did.]

JWH – 6/28/12

How To Pay for Music?

David Lowery, of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker wrote “Letter to Emily White at NPR All Thing Songs Consider” last week that got a lot of attention on the net.  The post currently has 533 comments, many of which try to justify stealing music with various self-serving excuses, even after Lowry carefully explained why stealing music is hurting musicians.  Emily White had written “I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With” at NPR Music, confessing how she has 11,000 songs on her iPod but never bought more than 15 CDs in her life.  Emily loves music and wants to work in the music business, but confesses she doesn’t pay for music.  There are some fascinating comments for this blog post that’s well worth reading, but basically it comes down to telling hundreds of stories about why people don’t pay for music.

If all these people had their weekly paychecks stolen I wonder if they’d be so willing to admit to stealing other people’s pay?

Is there a solution to this problem?

In another post Lowery shows how it’s quicker to find music at iTunes and Amazon than to find copies to steal, disproving that people steal because it’s convenient.  People steal music because they don’t want to pay.  Lowery also showed that more music is available for sale than to steal, but that doesn’t seem to sway people either.  Most folks just flat out just don’t want to buy music anymore.

Is there anything the record companies can do?  Is there such a thing as music that can’t be stolen?  Before the Internet LPs and cassettes could be copied, but not easily.  The net lets people distribute stolen music easily.  Unless we do away with the Internet it’s doubtful the music industry can stop piracy, even with DRM.  So is this the end of the music industry?

I’ve bought 4 CDs this past month, but that’s a fluke, and one CD, Our Version of Events by Emeli Sandé, I bought two copies, one to give as a gift.  But I primarily listen to Emeli via Rdio ($9.99/month).  I could also listen to her by Rhapsody ($9.99/month) which is my backup streaming music service.  So I’ve paid 4 times for the rights to listen to this one album.  I could also listen to Spotify on my free account.  And if I wanted to take the trouble, I’m sure I could track down a stolen copy.  My point is Rdio is the absolute easiest way to listen to music.  The only reason I bought the CD is because sometimes I want to hear the music played very loud on my big stereo at it’s best sonic version.  But it’s a pain to keep up with CD and to play it.  So I just use Rdio 99% of the time.

emili-sandi

People can pay as little as $4.99 a month to legally listen to most music via Rdio, Rhapsody, Spotify, MOG and other streaming music services on a computer.  So why do people choose to be thieves instead?  I don’t know.  Like Lowery points out, paid for music is far more convenient to use.  They aren’t too cheap to pay $80 a month for a smartphone, but they won’t pay $10 a month to play the music they love on it.

I own two copies of all the Beatles CDs, the old ones and the new re-mastered ones, but I don’t play them because they aren’t on Rdio, and Rdio is too convenient.  People who work so hard to steal music have no idea how easy it is to use legal music.

But there’s a problem with streaming subscription music – some artists don’t feel they pay enough.  And that might be true.  In the comments to Lowery’s post, one person wrote in they were paid $.0091 per stream from Rhapsody and $.0008 from Spotify.  In other words, Rhapsody pays just under a cent per play and Spotify under one tenth of a cent per play.

For Our Version of Events I paid $8.99 for the CD.  That’s just 64.21 cents for my favorite song, “River.”  But that’s the whole cost which includes Amazon’s cut, the record company’s take and Emeli’s royalty.  I don’t know how accurate these streaming play figures are, but it’s enough to give us an idea.

“River” by Emeli Sandé Cost to Buy/Play
Amazon CD 65 cents (whole cost)
Amazon MP3 99 cents (whole cost)
iTunes 129 cents (whole cost)
Rhapsody .91 cents (royalty)
Spotify .08 cents (royalty)

For Emeli to make as much money as whole cost of the CD song, I’d have to play the “River” 71.43 times on Rhapsody or   812.5 times on Spotify.  No wonder artists think Spotify is a rip-off.  If anyone can document the actual payment schemes please post a reply.

I have no idea what Rdio pays per stream, but I’ve been playing the hell out of this song.  I’m sure I’m coming close to the 71.43 figure, meaning for people who love a song it can pay as much or more than buying a CD.

The problem with pay per stream method is songs that don’t get played don’t earn money, whereas CDs buyers do pay for them, even if they don’t listen to them.  Pay per stream is actually more fair, but it’s a big cut in pay to artists used to the CD sales method.  I’ve bought hundreds of CDs I’ve only played once or twice.

I wish all the streaming services would post their stream rates so us music fans could use that knowledge in deciding on which streaming service to use.  I’m about to settle on Rdio and abandon Rhapsody, but if I learned Rdio paid so little as Spotify I’d change my mind.

I don’t know how to make everyone pay for music, but I’m more than willing to pay for subscription streaming music.  $9.99 a month is little enough to be an honest music fan.  I’d be willing to pay more if I knew the artists were getting a better deal.  Even though I still buy CDs, they are very inconvenient to use and I prefer the emerging subscription streaming services.

Other sources about earnings:

JWH – 6/24/12