Older blog entries for kelly (starting at number 417)

The Kinect: Hot topic for November 8, 2010

The only new rising topic for today is the Microsoft XBox Kinect (displacing Divali, the Hindu festival of light).  The Kinect is, for those who don't already know, an addon for the XBox that provides "controllerless control" by using a combination of posture recognition, facial recognition, and voice recognition to allow control of the XBox merely by moving around within its recognition space.  I'm totally not a console gamer at all (the only console game I've ever had was a Pong game my father bought us back in 1978), but I'm seriously impressed by this technology.  If it performs half as well as Microsoft claims it does, it'll still be very impressive.

Interestingly, there is already FUD spreading about Kinect: several sources are claiming that the device "doesn't recognize black people", based on a GameSpot comment that the Kinect had difficulty recognizing some darker-skinned employees under certain lighting conditions.  In further testing by GameSpot, they were able to make it fail on white people too, and changing shirt colors seemed to make a difference.

It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before similar input devices become available for use with general computing environments.  Probably a while yet.  The Kinect isn't that precise, but in the environment it's being used in it doesn't have to be.

Syndicated 2010-11-08 16:22:00 (Updated 2010-11-08 16:22:44) from Kelly Martin

8 Nov 2010 (updated 8 Nov 2010 at 17:10 UTC) »

Sims 3, Late Night, and Transfiguration of Metals

Ok, I know, this is a bit off my usual beaten path, but I don't care. I've played the Sims since 2000, and I freely admit to wasting a lot of time on it.

In the Sims 3, since World Adventures, there has been a pair of objects (the Carter XL Display Cases) that can be filled up with objects and "irreversibly transfiguricated" (more commonly known as transfigurated) into other objects. What object one gets as a result of a transfiguration depends on what objects one puts into it, along with some random factors. Various people who know how to look at the scripting language that the Sims uses internally have done so and posted descriptions of the relevant algorithms. I spent quite some time exploring this for the special case of transfigurating metals, and have a simulator now that can predict the result of transfiguration for any particular combination of metals for a game with the World Adventures and Ambitions expansion packs installed (WA+A). I could do the same for just WA if I wanted to set up an install that had just WA loaded, but I've been too lazy to do this yet.

Part of the algorithm for metals works by XORing together the internal OIDs of the metals involved, and then using that as a index into the list of metals (modulo the number of metals) to generate a random metal. The index is then pushed through a PRNG (pseudorandom number generator), and repeated until metals totaling more than a certain value are created. This worked fine and good in prior versions, with the longest string being about 8 or 9 metals in WA+A, where there were 14 metals. However, while in WA alone (which had 13 metals) it was possible (with some care) to create any metal using this process, in WA+A five of the metals (silver, palladium, copper, titanium, and mercury) could not be produced at all, and two more (supernovium and woohooium) were very hard to produce. This is, no doubt, because the low bit of the XOR result is always 0 (because all the OIDs have a low byte of 0), and the modulus 14 of an even number is always even, and so that effectively excluded half of the metals (the ones with odd indices in the metals table) from being the "first result". Add to that a relatively "inaggressive" PRNG and you get a relatively sparse result set, which is what I had noticed with WA+A.

Late Night (LN) added two more metals; as a result, in WA+A+LN, there are 16 metals. Those of you with some experience with generating hash codes will immediately understand where this all goes belgium, but I'll explain it for the rest of you. A modulus of 16 results in only 4 bits of the source value contributing to the resulting index. And all of the OIDs in use have a 0 in the low byte (for whatever reason). As a result, the random value generated by this process is always 0, which corresponds to iron, the cheapest of the metals. To make matters worse, the PRNG EA uses apparently isn't that "random": it appears to map all values that have a low nibble of 0 to values that also have a low nibble of 0. As a result, every metal after the first is also iron. So, instead of getting a "random" (but predictable with much effort) result of various metals (which makes the process both interesting and potentially useful within the context of game play), the result of every transmogrification in Sims 3 with WA+A+LN is a huge stack of iron bars, which is neither interesting nor valuable within the context of game play; furthermore, the resulting stacks are often so large (in some cases, one hundred or more, although the game doesn't show it) that it corrupts the player's inventory, rendering that game effectively unplayable and forcing a retreat to the last save point. Here's hoping you had one.

This wouldn't have shown up in testing with just the base game plus LN, or with A+LN, because in those games there is no transmogrifier (it's a WA expansion item), nor in testing with just WA+LN because in that game there are 15 metals and with 15 metals the randomness of the distribution will be nearly as good as it was in WA alone (with 13), possibly even better.

I had a lot of fun figuring out the matrix for WA+A, and was really looking forward to doing in in WA+A+LN. A shame it had to be completely broken instead. We can only hope that EA will fix this in a forthcoming patch; however, any patch is going to mean a new algorithm (or at least a different PRNG), which means all the work I (and others) did for the preceding algorithm will probably be wasted.

Syndicated 2010-11-08 06:26:00 (Updated 2010-11-08 16:51:23) from Kelly Martin

7 Nov 2010 (updated 8 Nov 2010 at 07:10 UTC) »

Kik, Diwali, and Lil Wayne: Hot topics for November 7, 2010

There are three new rising items today: something called "Kik", Diwali, and Lil Wayne.

Kik appears to be the Kik Instant Messenger, which is a substitute IM service for smartphones, available for Blackberries, Android, and the iPhone.  The appeal is, supposedly, that you can send instant messages without paying for them, by using your data connection instead of a carrier SMS.  The downside is that your recipient has to be using Kik as well.  I don't see what this offers ahead of Google Talk, which has been available for all three platforms for far longer, and has a far larger user base as well.  Perhaps I'm missing something here.

Diwali is, of course, the annual Hindu festival of lights, which started Friday, November 5th.

The third rising item for today is more celebrity gossip, as rapper Lil Wayne seems to be flaunting his probation by posing for a photograph with a glass of cognac.  Not quite sure what it is about rappers that forces them to flagrantly and stupidly break the law, but there you have it.

Daylight saving time ended this morning, so don't forget to adjust any old-fashioned clocks you have that don't automatically adjust.  And it's still not too late to change the batteries in your smoke detectors.

Syndicated 2010-11-07 17:13:00 (Updated 2010-11-08 06:28:54) from Kelly Martin

6 Nov 2010 (updated 20 Nov 2010 at 22:10 UTC) »

Tony Parker: Hot topic for November 19, 2010

Today's only new item is Tony Parker, a basketball player who is in the spotlight apparently because he was caught sending sexually explicit text messages ("sexting") to the wife of another player (someone by the name of Erin Barry, apparently).  This seems to have come out in the context of his divorce, which is, of course, totally unsurprising.

I'm sure this sort of thing goes on all the time, and this is only making the news now because it involves both a basketball player (Parker) of some repute and also a television celebrity: his soon-to-be ex-wife is Eva Longoria, who is apparently somehow involved in Desparate Housewives, which I understand is a TV show of some fame.  Ok, whatever: two people who are famous for things I don't generally pay attention to.

Oh well, I suppose the masses need their opiates.

Syndicated 2010-11-06 19:42:00 (Updated 2010-11-20 21:47:32) from Kelly Martin

5 Nov 2010 (updated 8 Nov 2010 at 07:10 UTC) »

Andy Irons, Demi Lovato, and legal pot: Hot topics for November 5, 2010

The big item for today appears to be Andy Irons, a pro surfer who died of unknown causes, but possibly dengue fever, on November 2.  Dengue fever, now that's a disease you don't hear about much, although it's actually relatively common in less-developed parts of the world.  I suppose it's not entirely unreasonable that a surfer might catch it.

The other up-and-coming item has to do with a Disney exploitee by the name of Demi Lovato, who apparently beat up another performer recently.  If there's anything that I pay less attention to than celebrity gossip, it's celebrity gossip involving those insipidly disgusting child "performers" being exploited by America's most odious cultural hegemon.  Perhaps we could arrange for them to all catch dengue fever.  Or, better yet, for their corporate managers to do so.

Searches for election results are, unsurprisingly, rising, with an apparent special focus on those in California and especially Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative to legalize pot there, which failed, gaining only 44% of the vote.  I guess the rest of their supporters were too stoned to figure out how to find the polling place.  In any case, even if it the proposition had passed there would still have been the federal prohibition on marijuana to overcome.  Still going to be a while before you can toke up anywhere you want. 

Football player Randy Moss, who I mentioned yesterday, is holding at number 5; I haven't looked to see if there's anything new about him, as I really don't care.  The upcoming change back to standard time this weekend fills out the remainder of the top ten for today.  Don't forget to change the batteries in your smoke detector.

Syndicated 2010-11-05 13:34:00 (Updated 2010-11-08 06:29:54) from Kelly Martin

Capri Anderson, Randy Moss, and Jon Stewart: Hot topics for November 4, 2010

Apparently the hot story from the past few days has something to do with actor Charlie Sheen, a porn actress called Capri Anderson, and a trashed hotel room.  I can't be bothered to make sense out of the social gossip reporting, so if you really care Google's over that way.

Normally I care about as much about sports as I do about celebrity gossip (which is why I am mainly happy that the World Series is over, and so I won't be hearing much about it even if it is still trending up at the moment).  However, I must admit that I am slightly amused by the situation surrounding Randy Moss' low opinion of Tinucci's Restaurant, which apparently provides catering services to the team Moss used to play for before recently being traded.  In response to his verbal tirade about the quality of their food, the restaurant is offering a free lunch to the first 50 people who show up and agree to trade in their Randy Moss fanwear.  Still, I'd be far more interested in Maurice Moss than in Randy Moss any day.

Please note that daylight stupidity time (sorry, daylight savings time) ends this weekend.  Of course, having grown up in Indiana daylight savings time seems strange to me.  Plus, with the recent changes we're now on daylight saving time from early March until early October, or about two thirds of the year.  Frankly I don't see why we don't just leap forward next March and not bother leaping back ever again.  It's not like solar noon is anywhere near clock noon in most of the country anyway.  But then again, if we did this, how would we remember to check the batteries in our smoke detectors?

Jon Stewart continues to trend high, probably because of the combination of his recent interview with Barack Obama and the Rally to Restore Freedom (and/or Fear) that Comedy Central recently held in Washington.  Stewart has, perhaps improbably, emerged as one of the most prominent voices of this generation.  I haven't watched any of this week's shows yet—they're on the TiVo—so it's also quite likely that he's had some interesting, or at least amusing, comments on the election results as well.

Limewire continues to trend up even as it disintegrates under the force of the court's adverse ruling in its battle against the RIAA.  Hard to imagine what is left for them.  This was pretty much inevitable; what surprises me is how long it took and how long Limewire held out.

Searches for "Black Friday", the traditional name for the Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopaganza, are starting to trend up, presumably as people start to plan for their annual shopping fix.  There's even an "official" Black Friday 2010 website.  Just the other day I heard a radio commentator (WBBM in Chicago) suggest that Black Friday is starting early this year, with pre-Christmas sales starting even before Halloween. 

The tenth rising search at the moment is for "Black Ops", which seems strange at first until one realizes it's for the next installment of the Call of Duty franchise, due out in about a week.  I don't personally care for first-person (or third-person) shooters, so I won't comment further.

Syndicated 2010-11-04 17:02:00 (Updated 2010-11-04 17:02:20) from Kelly Martin

28 Aug 2010 (updated 29 Aug 2010 at 13:17 UTC) »

The IT-Who?

T1B01: What is the ITU?

  1. An agency of the United States Department of Telecommunications Management
  2. A United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues
  3. An independent frequency coordination agency
  4. A department of the FCC

The correct answer is B–A United Nations agency for information and communication technology issues.

(Authority: 97.3(a)(28))

I touched on this topic back when talking about T1A02. The International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, is a very important entity in the broader scheme of radio regulation. The ITU is an agency of the United Nations that deals with information and communication technology; prior to being adopted into the United Nations it was a treaty organization that dealt primarily with the cooperative regulation of telegraphy and other uses of radio across international borders. As radio signals
have a bad habit of refusing to stop at national boundaries, this is
pretty much necessary, especially with respect to the world-reaching HF
bands, in which a station in South America can easily interfere with a
station in Russia. The ITU's rules do not apply directly to amateurs, or indeed to anyone; rather, the ITU makes recommendations which member nations are encouraged to adopt.

The ITU has a significant influence over amateur radio; in their role of creating the International Table of Allocations, they set aside the spectrum that virtually all countries will reserve for amateur radio operators. An example of how the ITU influences amateur radio arose at the World Administrative Radio Conference (a quadrennial meeting of the ITU) in 1979 that resulted in the so-called "WARC" bands of 30 meters, 17 meters, and 12 meters being opened up to amateur use. The United States has historically been one of the most aggressive protectors of amateur radio at the ITU; few nations have as solid a history of arguing in favor of protecting amateur radio spectrum at the international level.

Syndicated 2010-08-28 16:48:00 (Updated 2010-08-29 13:16:08) from Kelly Martin

27 Aug 2010 (updated 29 Aug 2010 at 13:17 UTC) »

Special operations: Auxiliary stations

T1A11: Which of the following stations transmits signals over the air from a remote receive site to a repeater for retransmission?

  1. Beacon station
  2. Relay station
  3. Auxiliary station
  4. Message forwarding station

The correct answer is C–Auxiliary station.

(Authority: 97.3(a)(7))

This question broaches, albeit only lightly, the topic of what are called "special operations". There are, in subpart C of the amateur radio regulations, a number of special ways to use, or operate, a radio station that are subject to special rules. These special rules typically impose certain restrictions while relaxing others. For example, an auxiliary station (the topic of this question) is an amateur station (other than a packet station) that is transmitting communications point-to-point within a system of cooperating amateur stations. Auxiliary stations are not permitted to operate on bands below 222 MHz, but are allowed to be automatically controlled (that is, no control operator at the control point). Auxiliary stations which have been coordinated also gain some extra protection against interference, and the general rule against one-way communications is relaxed for auxiliary stations.

The most common use for auxiliary stations is in conjunction with a repeater station. Two linked repeaters may use a pair of auxiliary stations to establish the link, or a remote receiver may use an auxiliary station to connect back to the main transmitter. The W9DUP repeater, operated by the DuPage Amateur Radio Club (of which I am a member) uses an auxiliary station to connect its IRLP node to the repeater, since the IRLP computer cannot be placed at the repeater's location (no Internet access there).

There are several special operations listed in Subpart C, but this is the only one that the NCVEC Question Pool Committee saw fit to include on the Technician pool.

Syndicated 2010-08-27 19:37:00 (Updated 2010-08-29 13:16:33) from Kelly Martin

Just what is a "radio station"?

T1A10: What is the FCC Part 97 definition of an amateur station?

  1. A station in an Amateur Radio Service consisting of the apparatus necessary for carrying on radio communications
  2. A building where Amateur Radio receivers, transmitters, and RF power amplifiers are installed
  3. Any radio station operated by a non-professional
  4. Any radio station for hobby use

The correct answer is A–A station in an Amateur Radio Service consisting of the apparatus necessary for carrying on radio communications.

(Authority: 97.3(a)(5))

More regulatory jargon here. The correct answer above probably seems a bit circular, in that it essentially says that an amateur station is defined as a station in the amateur radio service. But that's about right. A radio station, generally, is simply any collection of devices that, when used together by a sufficiently trained operator make possible communication via radio. What makes a radio station an "amateur" station, and not some other sort of radio station, is simply the intent of its owner for the station to be used in the amateur radio service, as opposed to some other service. 

Not necessarily every radio owned by an amateur radio operator, or installed at the location of an amateur radio station, will necessarily be part of that amateur's station. For example, my Android phone contains five radios, and yet it is not part of either of my amateur radio stations since currently my Android isn't directly used for radio communication within the amateur service. (Not that it can't be. There are ways I could use my Android in conjunction with other devices to form an amateur radio station. I just haven't yet.)

Also, despite the term, stations need not be stationary. The use of "station" is something of an archaism from the days when radio transmitters were huge and effectively immobile. Modern transmitters can be quite tiny and thus very portable.  Amateurs may also have as many stations as they want. Originally we had to declare to the FCC the location of our "primary" station (and hams in many countries still have to do this) and were allowed only one such "primary" station, but the FCC has long since done away with this. US hams may have as many primary fixed stations as they want (including none), and may have as many additional portable and mobile stations as they can afford. The FCC used to require that certain classes of station (auxiliary, repeater, and beacon stations) be separately licensed, but that requirement has also been done away with and any ham (other than a Novice) may operate any number of stations in one of these special operational modes with no special notice to the FCC.

Syndicated 2010-08-18 18:37:00 (Updated 2010-08-18 18:37:22) from Kelly Martin

17 Aug 2010 (updated 18 Aug 2010 at 18:12 UTC) »

Frequency coordination

T1A08: Which of the following entities recommends transmit/receive channels and other parameters for auxiliary and repeater stations?

  1. Frequency Spectrum Manager
  2. Frequency Coordinator
  3. FCC Regional Field Office
  4. International Telecommunications Union

The correct answer is B–Frequency Coordinator.

(Authority: 97.3(a)(22))

T1A09: Who selects a Frequency Coordinator?

  1. The FCC Office of Spectrum Management and Coordination Policy
  2. The local chapter of the Office of National Council of Independent Frequency Coordinators
  3. Amateur operators in a local or regional area whose stations are eligible to be auxiliary or repeater stations
  4. FCC Regional Field Office

The correct answer is C–Amateur operators in a local or regional area whose stations are eligible to be auxiliary or repeater stations.

(Authority: 97.3(a)(22))

These questions only briefly touch on an issue in part because going deeper into it would touch on areas on which the amateur radio community is in disagreement. The prior version of the Technician pool had two questions on this issue, and one of the questions set forth the arguably controversial position that coordination "reduce[d] interference and promote[d]  proper use of spectrum". I don't know why the NCVEC dumped those two questions in favor of these, but at least these questions are much more closely tied to the actual definitions in the regulations.

Frequency coordination, in general, is the recommendation of operating frequencies (transmit and receive parameters) and other parameters (such as antenna gain, antenna directionality, and selective squelch) to allow multiple repeater and auxiliary stations operating in the same general area to interoperate with a minimum of interference. In the business services frequency coordination by an FCC-recognized frequency coordinator is mandatory for all applicants, and applicants must generally pay a fee to the coordinator for that service. In the amateur service, coordination is strictly optional; however, the regulations give an advantage to repeater and auxiliary stations that do coordinate by essentially giving them priority over uncoordinated stations in an interference dispute, but only when the other interfering station is also a repeater or auxiliary station.

In principle coordination, when properly done, should reduce interference and encourage better utilization of spectrum. Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way. Frequency coordinators have a tendency to become "old boy" clubs that seek to protect the interests of their friends at the expense of those who are not their friends. My personal recommendation with respect to coordination is that one should avail oneself of the service if and when it is offered under reasonable terms, but not let it get in the way of doing something interesting or useful, especially if the coordination body is nonresponsive or unreasonably obstructive.

The other interesting thing about coordinators is that there's no top-down process for selecting one. Instead, the amateur radio operators (at least those eligible to be repeater or auxiliary station operators, which is everyone except Novices, and the FCC has proposed allowing Novices to be repeater operators, too) in an area choose, by no defined process, who their coordinator is. What this means, as far as I can tell, is if enough hams in an area get together and coordinate frequencies amongst themselves, and are recognized as having done so, then they've formed a coordination body and are acting as a "frequency coordinator". The FCC's regulation is very silent on what happens if there's a disagreement over who has jurisdiction in a particular area or if there are two competing entities both claiming to be "the" frequency coordinator for a given area. The key here is that the recognition process is bottom-up rather than top-down.

Finally, don't confuse frequency coordination with the bands established by the FCC (and consistent with ITU policy directives). FCC-set band allocations establish the limits of the frequencies on which an amateur may operate, with specific power limits and modulations. Also do not confuse frequency coordination with the voluntary band plans recommended by the ARRL (and other entities) for general use of frequencies within the limits of the FCC allocations. Frequency coordination is always a specific recommendation for a specific repeater or auxiliary station, based on the particular characteristics and expected usage of that station.

(Edited 8/18 to add T1A09.)

Syndicated 2010-08-17 20:31:00 (Updated 2010-08-18 18:08:22) from Kelly Martin

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