30.06.04
second order equations of emotion
from a robots paper i'm reading:
On the other hand, we introduced a mental space with three independent parameters, the Learning System, the Mood Vector, the Second Order Equations of Emotion, the Robot Personality and the Need Model as the mental model for humanoid robots [7].
'sorry, honey, but i really can't deal with this right now. my second order equations of emotion are already totally wrecked today, and you're not doing enough to solve my need model'.
29.06.04
bike found
this seems to be a day of closures.
over 1.5 months after it was lost, i found by bike again. still locked to the media lab bikestand, as if nothing happened.
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:50
that is so adorable
- cynthia
Fri, 2 Jul 2004 11:50
Did you check the media lab bikestand?!?!?
- Ady
Fri, 2 Jul 2004 21:17
Just realized this comment was posted under the wrong entry. That's what you get when you try to be witty...
- Ady
Sat, 3 Jul 2004 20:56
fixed...i assume that is the entry you wanted to comment on...
- guy
f9/11 by tony pierce
i wasn't the only one laughing and crying at fahrenheit 9/11, tony pierce was, too (warning: spoilers).
nice column, tony style, although i would be hard-pressed to agree with his claim that there were "both sides being represented", and i outright laugh when i read jeff jarvis being called "logical", unless that was meant to be sarcastic.
update: udi sent me a link to the real left's view on the movie.
Ironically, Moore ignores the fact that he too is making a hefty profit from this war. Like all propagandists, Moore fails to perceive himself as part of the problem.
Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:49
Another good review of F9/11:
http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/001838.html#001838
- Ady
poem mystery solved
cynthia solved the davis sq station poetry mystery:
i'm nobody! who are you?
are you nobody, too?
then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
they'd banish us, you know!
how dreary to be somebody!
how public, like a frog
to tell your name the livelong day
to an admiring bog!
by emily dickinson (punctuation debated)
28.06.04
journalism, cite, politics, israel
two pieces by rubinstein
The separation wall and fences are a good example. The fence's route in the northern West Bank, and around the settlements, has ruined the livelihood of masses of Arab peasants who returned to working the land after they lost their jobs in Israel. The wall in Jerusalem destroys the fabric of life for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents of the Ramallah, Abu Dis and Bethlehem regions. But Israeli public opinion has become deaf to Palestinian suffering, because a clear equation has been created in Israel: They are suffering - but we are not being blown up. They will lose their livelihoods, and their children will not be able to reach their schools or doctors' clinics, but we will be able to ride the bus or go to the supermarket with less fear.
new column: until the end of the world
27.06.04
post-jdate
blaire wants to be engaged by the end of the year. thing is, she's not seeing anyone at the moment.
so, in a culture ridden by reality tv, the most logical thing is to make a competition out of it.
hope she wont be too disappointed when she realizes that prioritizing the state of marriage over the actual choice of husband might not be the recipe for happiness.
other than that, she doesn't seem half bad, so if you're a jewish male between 25-31 fitting all the standard american dating criteria (you know, gym, commitment, earning money and having a goal in life) and want to get married to a goodlooking jewish girl real soon, you should give it a try.
why i love football ('soccer')
with the european championship in full bloom, a conversation with andrea reminded me why i love football over any other sport:
Tue, 29 Jun 2004 12:37
Yeah well it's boring, but I do think about you when I watch the occaisional game - falling asleep on the sofa at the 60th minute or so - even the czech game was sad and awful. I think you are the strongest soccer enthusiast of all me friends.
- Jack
Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:30
well, that's totally understandable for people with basketball attention spans.
- guy
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 13:51
there is a really funny Simpsons episode that begins with a soccer promo and then they go see the game. i think it sums up what most americans feel about the sport.
- ori
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:11
And what would that be? What happens in the simpsons episode?
- guy
Thu, 1 Jul 2004 05:08
Well, you really have to see it, it's not the same if I describe it here.
You can go here for the reference. The episode is called "The Cartridge Family" (An excellent name don't you think?)
- ori
26.06.04
gmail again!
i can't believe i didn't think of that before! it was so obvious.
google ripped off their 'label' idea from my blog categories. guess they couldn't resist the striking logic of being able to file something under multiple categories, and then filter according to each one of those 'labels'.
now, a google press release confirms my worries:
[...] the original idea for our patent pending 'label' concept was inspired by a student weblog hosted on a server located at an unnamed university in massachusetts.
there you have it. i can't believe these guys.
update: the incriminating press release has since been removed from the google web servers.
25.06.04
fahrenheit 9/11 visited
no spoilers. just thoughts.
this is the best the average consumer can stomach: image, image, image, flash, simplified claim, flash, soundbyte, image. i mean, seriously, who knows this better than the white house and fox news?
my guess is - it will soar.
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 10:11
are you suggesting that any liberal who dislikes michael moore or disagrees with the masses is just doing it to look like they are "independent thinkers" and not because they actually disagree?
- cynthia
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 10:58
no i'm not.
i'm suggesting that liberals value breaking the ranks and thinking differently, and therefore tend to try and think differently within their own ranks, a symbol of which is not liking michael moore.
what i was suggesting is an explanation of why conservatives always seem to be more unified, and it's the liberals that always seem to split and make themselves weaker that way.
as a generalization, conservatives thrive on faith, liberals on doubt.
- guy
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:08
ok.
- cynthia
Wed, 1 Dec 2004 06:46
In your free time, check some information about...
-
digging and burying
for those of you having followed the layne story, some people have been digging hard.
Lemme float a theory (again).
"Layne" was created by Odin Soli, who worked at Aptura and knew Mitch from when they worked together at Integrity Solutions. A certain "Greg" who dug up information on Aptura and presented it on Joshua's blog, mentioned that Odin Soli is a "self-professed novelist." Mitch described the person behind Layne as an "accomplished but frustrated writer."
Now for the intriguing part.
According to the following site, Odin Soli was a casket-bearer for an Irene G. Thompson at her funeral on July 1, 2003. Judging from a photo on the Web, Odin must be at least a generation younger than Paul Soli, brother-in-law of the deceased. In other words, Mrs. Thompson was Odin's aunt.
Layne's post for the next day (July 2, 2003) was titled: "Burying Aunt Inga"
Hmmm.
Posted by: Jimmo at June 23, 2004 05:51 PM
obsessive
it was funny to find one commenter linking to my online column (in hebrew).
24.06.04
fahrenheit tomorrow
and since everyone and their mothers are busting balls about this movie that it makes you sick, and i definitely have nothing to add on this topic, i'll just quote tony:
youre a dog in a dirty fight. the other dog is definately deceitful and mistrustful, and ugly, and selfish, and solely interested in its own agenda. the other dog told the nation that there were definately weapons of mass destruction in iraq and that those weapons needed to be removed in order to protect america. and yet some liberals are trying to pretend that that dog's inaccuraccy is on the same level as yours.
woof
professor of erbology
these days, girls is 'avin sex at younga ages, de's an increase in absentee fathers, and mo an' mo people is 'avin affairs... but we shouldn't just concentrate on da good thangs.
many of you have heard that ali g gave a commencement speech at harvard's class of 2004 class day this month.
fast forward the stuck up 'avahdites to 1:25:00, and make sure to stop the streaming video before the 'a-capella dream team' starts chanting. i kid you not.
23.06.04
cheeky google
god forbid we should know better than the golden boy of software how to debug their application. they probably have all their spiders and scripts scurrying around gmail collecting usage patterns and determining in a robot-like way how to make gmail better. no lowly human input necessary.
Thu, 24 Jun 2004 03:08
Your comment seem to be rather harsh.
It seems that at this stage gmail beta is not an ordinary beta sent to upto hundreds of users, but rather a "stress test" used by hundreds of thousands if not millions.
It seems reasonable that google will not be able to deal seriously with comments from so many users, so do not ask for them
One last thing,
what good are those comments anway?
- skeptic
Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:55
you've got a point there, although there is still a place for statistical collection of complaints, to see what the issues are that most people have problems with.
so if there was a feedback form where you would choose what part does or does not work well, google would know that 85% of the problems are in the 'archive' functionality.
as to the comments on this page, their goal is to enable different perspectives on topics, such as yours on this one.
- guy
Thu, 24 Jun 2004 11:24
perhaps you can enlighten me as to what's so great about gmail...other than the abundant storage space, it just seems like typical email to me. is there something i'm missing?
- cynthia
Thu, 24 Jun 2004 20:42
i personally like the keyboard shortcuts and the multiple labeling feature. i also like the way conversations are displayed. con: it's pretty slow.
- guy
Fri, 25 Jun 2004 06:04
I think that Gmail is good if you're disorganized, like I am.
I forwarded literally hundreds of emails to my Gmail account using names and dates as subject lines, and instead of finding 17 emails labeled "Jane: 5 May 2004" like I was expecting, I found one conversation with that title. And the conversations were arranged chronologically, according to the subject line dates, not the times when I forwarded the emails.
This email program is smart.
- Paulette
Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:08
yeah the way they group messages is nice, i admit.
- cynthia
22.06.04
the hate pages, 1997-1998
my dad died surprisingly a few months later, me still not having talked to him more than a couple of times after that. it's weird for me now to imagine feeling annoyed to hear his voice on the phone.
Wed, 23 Jun 2004 20:23
well there are plenty of asshole americans out there and many are in the blog world. but i don't think it's a bad thing to start caring more about what people think of you, as long as you care about the people whose opinion you care about. and if you want to let loose more you could always start an anonymous blog.
- cynthia
oh, so you want it actually delivered?
"look buddy. you can pay $10 to have your package delivered. but if you want it really delivered, that will cost you another $7. just so that, you know, nothing bad will happen to it on the way."
robotic typewriter
my old parsons mfadt classmate fang-yu lin made a robotic typewriter that "channels the invisible and intangible entity called the internet".
whatever.
it's wicked cool.
like: you type something in, and the ghost of the internet rattles a reply back.
you can see transcripts of conversations with this typewriter, as well as images and video (you gotta click 'experimental' and then the left icon.)
if you hate framesets like me, here's the direct link to the frame.
Wed, 1 Dec 2004 05:57
Please visit the sites in the field of... Thanks!!!
-
21.06.04
socioeconomic brace
got this magical ankle brace today that makes walking much easier.
thank you, mit medical!
the instruction booklet claims that
the aircast air-stirrup is the treatment of choice for ankle sprains both from a medical and a socioeconomic point of view.
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 14:08
does it really say that???
- cynthia
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:30
meant to add: what exactly are the socioeconomic benefits?
- cynthia
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:45
yes it does: worker bees can go back to work sooner with this brace.
- guy
Tue, 22 Jun 2004 00:50
do worker bees have ankles?
- Udi
new column: layne doesn't live here anymore
this week's column is up, entitled 'layne deosn't live here anymore'
update: for my two non-hebrew speaking readers, i did a crude translation to english. this comes with no warranty of precision.
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:15
Hey people: I hope you don't believe that "Guy" really exists, either.
- Paulette
20.06.04
jimmy and me
today i feel like james stewart in rear window. my iced, sprained ankle is propped up as i'm trying to write my column about the mysterious disappearance of super blogger layne johnson.
replaced old motd
"if you have a talent, and you have your health, you should help others."
- james
roche (1907-2004)
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:26
I have to ask the obvious - what the fuck? Hitler?
- Udi
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:47
since i got this question also in private, maybe i should clarify: this is in reference of recent leaders referring to their foreign policy as serving the will of the Almighty. I was planning to couple it with the quote from the bush speech, but i thought the reference would be obvious.
it's a comment on religiously inspired politics, i didn't turn neo-nazi all of a sudden, despite the hundreds of german neo-nazi spam that i'm getting...
- guy
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:55
added the bush quote. maybe this whole thing is a bad idea...
- guy
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 01:56
Now it makes more sense.
- Udi
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 03:21
I didn't get the Bush connection, even after his quote was posted, until I read the comments box. Also, I wasn't disturbed by the Hitler motd to start off with. Maybe something is wrong with me.
- Paulette
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 08:40
i only saw it after both quotes were posted and the connection seemed clear to me.
- cynthia
19.06.04
tomatoes, chickpeas and ginger
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 03:06
Feh. This sounds bad.
- Paulette
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 08:28
i know!
but it's good. really. honest.
- guy
17.06.04
c+c visited
Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:21
something tells me you haven't visited the american south...
- cynthia
Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:04
actually, i was thinking about my roadtrip to the south when i was writing that, and admittedly, things are much slower down there.
but still, i think that you have to live in a place like that to really get into that pace, you know, have your friends there, get to know the place, the people. it's not
quite the same as a tourist.
- guy
Sat, 19 Jun 2004 08:35
your comment box is tiny! i think it's actually kinda cute. i'd agree that you'd probably have to live in the south to get into it...but you probably wouldn't wanna. but generally yes pretty much all americans are achievement-oriented. it's an attitude that informs the media so it's pretty much everywhere, even southern cities. but not austin, tx, for some reason.
- cynthia
rss reader bugfix
if you have noticed that my rss feed doesn't support the 'check update' feature in mozilla's cool rss reader panel, you can now rejoice. it's fixed.
it's mishandling on the panel's part if you ask me, but whatever. i'm compliant.
review: shrek 2
see, i understand that you let an intern animate the little poodle. and here's something i didn't know about poodles: apparently their legs are made out of water-filled rubber.
16.06.04
building robots (the other way around)
the first wall ever built entirely by a machine, with no use of human hands. your house is next.
15.06.04
mit graffiti
on a flyer that had a typo saying
when you're defrosting your freezer, do not use sharp object.
someone added in blue pen:
when you're defrosting your freezer, do not use sharp object. or plurals
childhood memories, today
seeing into the future through the eyes of my friends' 2.5-year-old, i envision a conversation like this:
- who is coming to visit?
- guy. remember him?
- no, have i ever met him?
- remember when we used to live in america when you were a little kid?
- sort of, i have seen pictures.
- he used to come and visit us all the time. you used to call him 'guy, the blonde'.
- i don't remember that.
- he was a good friend of ours.
- i remember all sorts of grownups coming to visit...but, well. never mind. i gotta go.
- here, this is a picture of us with guy in boston.
- yeah, nice. alright, anyway, i'm meeting tali at the mall, so have fun tonight.
it's fascinating to me to think that someone's childhood memories are being created today.
14.06.04
new column: playing with your head
13.06.04
text-based pong
alright, this is simply too good to pass up on: text based pong!
Your opponent, the Left Paddle, Has bounced the ball back to you. It looks like it's going to go above your paddle. What do you do?
= Move your Paddle Up
= Don't Move your Paddle
= Move your Paddle Down
12.06.04
rubber side up
from ori, and following a conversation with jg:
Harley people hate jap bikes, crotch rocket riders think harley and cruiser people should sit home on the couch, Gold wingers think sport riders are young and stupid, european bike riders think jap bikes have no character, canyon carvers think the bling bling riders are poseurs, and everyone who doesn't have one thinks the gold wingers are so uncool, but secretly envy that stereo.
off nyc craigslist.
hawkcam
no pregnancy classes, no questions answered, she just knew what to do. when to clean the puppies and how, how to carry them around, when to give up on a sick puppy, and when to give a weaker one suckling privileges to make up for its smaller size.
boston in haaretz
the haaretz weekend magazine runs a nice and pretty accurate piece on boston this weekend (link in hebrew; unfortunately, but not surprisingly, no english translation).
the country that invented disneyland has somehow succeeded to cram dozens of its most important historic sites into an amusement-park sized area, in the heart of a single city.
10.06.04
try something new
stop beating around that same pattern. scientists have shown that fear of novelty leads to a shorter life. it's not that scary.
too drunk to elaborate on that right now.
08.06.04
review: 'one-hour photo'
davis sq station poetry
didn't have a book with me today, so i noticed this:
right underneath the escalator (the one closer to college ave), there's a faint carving in the redbrick floor, which looks like a poem. my train arrived before i was able to decypher it all.
not even sure whether it's guerilla or sponsored.
update: apparently there's another poem burnt into the bricks at davis sq, too. that's not the one i saw, though.
replaced old motd
"the advances of the age are advances in mechanism -- in radio
and television, in electronics, in jet planes. new world wars
threaten, for the world's social conscience is still primitive."
- alexander s. neill (1960)
reagan memories
coz we all knew that we were the ones to get hit if the two superpowers decided to up the ante. i mean you would fucking see pershing-IIs driving down the autobahn.
07.06.04
schreibelust
in case you wondered, schmuddelblog says it best:
(links not fit for professional environments)
Meine Lust aufs Schreiben, wie meine Lust auf Sex, ist periodisch. Manchmal will ich nicht oder manchmal habe ich einfach zu viel anderes zu tun.
new column: looked at porn? your wife's gonna know!
new column is up, also syndicated on walla, entitled "looked at porn? your wife's gonna know".
03.06.04
in the car
citing "What's more,":
I have returned from a long weekend in the hudson river valley, and am thrilled to be reunited with my Personality, which tends to suddenly disappear in the presence of my girlfriend's relatives, turning me into the Most Boring Person on the Planet. The reasons for this are manyfold and not interesting enough to get into but thankfully my personality was waiting patiently in the car all along, not buried alive by some psychopath in an unmarked grave.
02.06.04
john stuart, ph.d
john stuart got an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, and this is how he thanks them:
Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it.
Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry.
yuppie baby?
an american friend visiting our common israeli friends, who have a little girl, found it hilarious that the child had a toy garlic press. i failed to see the humor.
only later i realized that she thought that a garlic press was a very yuppie utensil, as if the kid had a purple plastic champagne cooler.
to me, coming from the middle east, a garlic press seems almost as basic a household item as a knife, making it a natural fit for a child's play kitchen.
Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:02
Do they make toys of garlic press for kids? Never seen one. We don't use that much ourselves and hence to see it as part of a child's kitchen toy set is something that should be amusing!
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01.06.04
review: goodbye lenin
a psychologist couldn't have set up a more interesting experiment: two countries sharing a common century-long history, totally blocked off for 40 years dictated by completely opposing political philosophy. then, in one stroke, one country is absorbed into the other, discarding all national symbols and just becoming part of something else. part of the enemy.
new column: ask bill volume 2
new column is up, this week also in print ( (it's still amazing to me to see my name on haaretz...). and it's syndicated with talkbacks, entitled 'ask bill volume 2'.
use filters on the right to see additional content by month or category
content here by guy hoffman .. as seen times since march 2004
Thu, 1 Jul 2004 10:09
This one is amazing. Short... yet so accurate...
But what's the name of the paper. Or beter - can you send it ?
- moran
Thu, 1 Jul 2004 11:01
well, i assume you're interested in the citation, not the paper i'm reading, so [7] is listed as:
Hiroyasu Miwa, et al: “Introduction of the Need Model for Humanoid Robots to Generate Active Behavior”, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp.1400-1406, 2003
- guy
Fri, 2 Jul 2004 11:43
If only it were so simple.
Then drugs for accurately controling needs and emotions would be prevalent, and finding a spouse or difussing an argument would be as easy as 1-2-3 (or x-y-z).
If only it were so simple - life would be completely and utterly BORING.
- Ady