Reality Runs Just Fine on Its Ultraspace Hyperframes

Today, I wanted to write something about Ubuntu or one of the books by Iain M. Banks I recently read, but there’s no time left to do such serious and lengthy things now. Instead, I will briefly tell about a dream I had the other night.

I dreamt that I was something of a reality auditor (not in the Pratchett sense, thankfully). I had to continuously check how reality is running on its mainframes, or, to be more precise, on the eleven-dimensional ultraspace toroidal-fractal hyperframes from Core Centre Beginning which actually only produces that type of hyperframes. So, there I was, looking at a couple of screens, watching for problems with the rendering, missing subtitles, or any audio glitches. For some time after I began this noble task, there were no problems. But then I suddenly registered some stuttering, as if the processors were overloaded and could not produce enough frames per second to trick the human eyes. I immediately knew that someone at CCB was updating the servers for some reason – probably to prevent yet another tear in the fabric of good old reality caused by extremely high concentrations of cooking genius, too many impossible space sock matching coincidences, or far too many sci-fi books in one small place. Actually, someone let me know that that was the case a couple of minutes afterwards, and asked me to watch for further disturbances. There were none.

I woke up with a feeling of having fulfilled my duty, and with a quiet optimism in my heart. So there you have the good news of the day, folks: reality’s running perfectly fine on its ultraspace hyperframes! Q. W3ary out.

No Country for Anything at All

Rarely does a film manages to disgust me as much as this one did. I had previously seen The Big Lebowsky, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and thought good thoughts of the Coen Brothers. Then, overwhelmed by all sorts of troubles, I had no time for No Country for Old Men, and consequently managed to see it for the first time today. I wish I hadn’t. This films feels like an utter mess. I should have been more suspicious when I heard that it had won heaps and heaps of awards everywhere it went: such a response can sometimes be indicative for seriously deep nonsense.

I have to admit that the first three quarters or so of the film felt funny, intriguing and entertaining. Then everything went down a drain that suddenly dropped down out of the bright blue sky. A nicely dressed Mexican mafioso came out of the proverbial machina instead of good ole deus, quickly used the only memorable female character – Carla Jean’s mother – to learn where they are meeting Llewelyn, the protagonist welder / hunter / ‘Nam veteran, and went on, with his buddies, to slaughter said welder. Although not shown on-film, mad-as-a-hatter hitman Chigurh appeared on the murder scene after the investigators were gone, used his captive bolt pistol to push out yet another cylinder lock, and hid, waiting. On film, sarcastic old-ish sheriff Ed Tom came to the scene, recognised the captive-bolt-pistol gameplay mechanic of the insane assassin, and went into the motel room to find that the hitman had just disappeared. Then, we see Chigurh in Carla Jean’s house, waiting to kill her because her husband Llewelyn hasn’t kept his promise to deliver the money to the lunatic assassin. Because he happened to be killed by the suddenly very well-informed Mexican mafia. Surprisingly active and investigative Mexican mafia. All about which murder Chigurh the mad-cap assassin knew perfectly well because he was on the damn crime scene. Do you see how absurd this is? Do I need to go on?

We could ascribe all these absurdities to Chigurh’s evident madness, but he doesn’t seem to be as crazy as described by others. He leaves no witnesses, he can take care of serious wounds, he can plan lucidly, and he can predict other’s actions quite reasonably. Probably, his only craziness consists of the fact that he doesn’t give a dime for human life. Which could have been very interesting had the film explored it in any way. Which the film doesn’t do at all. It is too busy spreading thin moral preachings about the bad times we live in: children walk around with green hair and bones in their noses and never say “Sir” and “Ma’am“, while their fathers are proud to have killed Vietnamese children for years. In fact, that’s the only thing that makes them American and gets them across US borders into the great country: just look at Llewelyn coming back in from Mexico again, and listen to what the policeman in the booth tells him.

Finally, as I mentioned a bit earlier, the only interesting female character remains the annoying old mother of Carla Jean. And that is all one can remember of her – being annoying. It’s easy to understand that: this film is about men, and not about women at all; were that possible, the film would not have included any. Mr. McCarthy’s book, on which it is based, probably is also only about men. That I will never know because I do not plan to read it, not in the multiplicity of any observable/foreseeable futures. What I plan is to go live in a country for humans, young, middle-aged and old alike. No Country for Old Men? I don’t really care. A country where the old men are only there to complain and do nothing but dream of their fathers, instead of actually organising something and bringing some change about, is not for me. Such a country as the one depicted in this film seems to be a revolting place, not a place where someone would like to live.

Back to Linux: WUbI Rules Supreme!

When life chases you down with its banal stupidities like electric ovens that short-circuit and burn out, or headphones that break into two just so, out of the blue, you forget the good things that made existence on this planet so pleasant in the first place. In the small, neat universe of computers, one of those good things is Linux. I first discovered it some 5 or 6 years ago, when I heard of Knoppix. A friend of mine then introduced me to some deeper concepts of Unix-like thinking, and I have been hooked ever since. Not that I have become anything near an expert user over the years, mind you – there is a lot to learn in the Linux world. Still, I know how to partition a hard drive to install a Linux distribution, how to install new packages/programmes, where to find some config files and how to edit a couple of them, and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, after buying my current hard drive and installing it into my PC, I did not do a Linux-friendly partitioning, to my eternal shame.

Along comes Wubi.

The first several versions of the programme I used & abused last year (April, May, June) tended to produce little or no result on my system – which is always clogged by excessive, unneeded and only partially uninstalled drivers/progs/data anyway. (Remember what WINDOWS stands for, esp. since Vista: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System!) After a while, I got it to work but then had other, non-computing problems to deal with and completely forgot everything about it, again to my shame.

Now, more than a year later, Jonas, Verena and I were discussing where Linux is right now and what it can do about the profit-/power-mad multinationals. Then I did a bit of searching, and re-discovered this excellent piece of software called Wubi. And Wubi worked almost like magic. What it actually does, for the un-initiated: it creates a big file (the minimum is 5 GB, I think) on your hard drive where you choose. That large file is then loop-mounted: that is, made visible to the computer like a device connected to it. The big file is what Ubuntu Linux goes on to use as a hard disk for itself. In a sense, what Wubi does is create a file and mask it as a hard drive, download Ubuntu and install it to that virtual hard drive, and then let you uninstall the whole setup if you happen to dislike it. This is the best part of it: you get to experience the full power of Linux by creating a large file somewhere on your hard drive. You don’t need to do any partitioning, you don’t have to fear the Dreaded Loss of Data by Accidental Deletion, and you can always completely uninstall the whole construction should you start thinking it doesn’t do you any good.

In order to get started, you go to Wubi’s homepage and download the programme (1.5 MB or so). You, of course, double-click it. What you see above is the Wubi start-up screen (this shot is a bit old, but the newest one looks just the same) that appears after the clicking. You choose the Installation Drive where the big file will be created, you then choose the actual Installation Size of that big file, then your language, and then your Desktop Environment and you username/password. For Desktop Environment, I had to select Ubuntu (comes with Gnome) because the others could not download on my system – and Windows always showed a message that the print spooler service had just crashed, meaning I need to reinstall Windows because it crossed the Rubicon of driver overload, can no longer function smoothly, and, consequently, has started to severely annoy me. If you are luckier than me, you can choose Kubuntu with KDE, Xubuntu with XFCE, or Mythbuntu for use of MythTV. All the desktops are beautiful in their own ways; KDE means best eye-candy to me, XFCE has nice looks for older computers, but all perform well and are so full of well-placed functionality it will take you some time to realise all the simple and useful things you can do with them.

One important thing is to remember your username and password. Most Linux distributions, unlike Windows, are designed with security in mind, so they will ask for your password at start-up and also every time you want to change system settings (that’s called acting as a superuser, or sys admin in other words). While you try to memorise the crazy username and pass you just typed in, Wubi will download the image for the Desktop Environment / Ubuntu flavour you chose and will copy it to the big file it created. Afterwards, you will need to reboot and choose you new Linux system from the list of two options that appear in the boot-loader, the second one being, of course, your old Windows, so it always stays just one restart away. After booting up into Linux, the installer will finish its business and will then drop you into your new environment.

Shortly after that happened, my new Ubuntu Linux surprised me with the Update Manager, a friendly programme that is the Ubuntu equivalent of Windows Update. In the five months since the release of Ubuntu 9.04 – the current version which Wubi downloaded and installed – the Ubuntu developers had managed to release around 200 updates to various programmes, both to increase security and to squash bugs. That translates to an average of about 40 per month, or slightly more than one per day. Solid work, guys! Of course, some, if not most, of these updates come from the maintainers of the respective applications, but this means that the Ubuntu devs at least coordinate all this versioning and installing rather well.

So after gleefully minimising the Update Manager, I began with the fun: played a couple of songs, saw a short video, opened up Firefox and looked at a couple of pages, fine-tuned my screen resolution and refresh rate, fired up Open Office and went through a couple of files, and so on. All available from the very moment the installation was completed, all running quite fast – and all functioning on top of drivers that have been installed after successful automatic recognition of my hardware. The time Wubi took to get me to this point: about 1.5 hours. Now I do realise that I have a 16 Mbit/s pipeline to the Net, and that my CPU, RAM, graphics card, hard drive and so on are, if not the bleeding edge of tech, then certainly strong racing horses. That nonetheless does not diminish the enormous accomplishment Wubi is. (There is no doubt that the Ubuntu family is definitely a huge accomplishment, but there’s no need to discuss that – if the old profit-worshipping giants are afraid, then it’s true, simple as that.) Wubi does what it’s supposed to do, and manages it with ease and aplomb.

Since I’m a PC games addict, I won’t be moving completely to Linux any time soon, although I dream and hope for such a day – but I will surely keep this dual-boot system Wubi helped set up, and will enhance it as much as possible. In the meantime, check/search the Ubuntu Forums if you have any specific questions. I know I am going to do that because Nvidia hasn’t produced any open source drivers for Linux yet, and the ones they distribute now are difficult to control. Those lucky enough to have bought an ATI/AMD card seem to be enjoying much better config, feature and usage experiences under Linux. Everyone else like me – meet you at/in/on the forums perhaps. Q. W3ary out.

Getting Closer to Solving AIDS and Alzheimer’s

Recently, I saw (as usual, on /.) a couple of news items/links to articles that made my day a degree brighter. One relates to a prototype vaccine for AIDS which has obviously managed to prevent a little above 30% of expected infections. Of course, one central problem with fighting AIDS is that scientists need actual humans to test the vaccines and other medical produce on, which represents a very tough ethical dilemma -infect people with AIDS to produce vaccine against it? – in itself. On the other hand, this recent development is something of a major breakthrough since no other earlier treatment had managed anything near this percentage of prevented infections.

In somewhat related news, researchers seem to have discovered a possible link between sleep deprivation and Alzheimer’s disease. Although this is just a small step toward uncovering the myriad interconnected factors that cause/contribute to the illness, it is nevertheless quite important. If the link can be confirmed for all, or most, of the cases, that would mean discovering a rather easily manageable cause for Alzheimer’s which can be brought under control, or perhaps completely eliminated. Let us hope for the best. Q. W3ary out.

Water on the Moon, Water on Mars

Good news for the, hopefully, not so distant future. Stories on Slashdot from the last couple of days reported that scientists have discovered (mostly frozen) water in various amounts and states of purity on both our good old natural satellite the Moon as well as on the neighbouring Red Planet. This will make possible human visits to, and prolonged stays on these two planets noticeably easier than before. Here’s one article and here’s another for the first and the second finding, respectively. If we have really damaged the Earth beyond repair, let us hope that these unexpected water “reserves” might keep some of us alive in our future migration to the painfully distant stars. If not, then we should push our governments to do more on space exploration. It’s one of those scientific pursuits that are always worth the effort, the passion, and the blood – everyone, sooner or later, benefits from them. Q. W3ary out.

Resisting the Cold

It is a pleasure to break a frozen silence with good news. In a world filled with hatred, news of love spread only slowly, and resistance against the cold that surrounds us is difficult to maintain for long. This is the reason why Muse come to us so very welcome with their new album, The Resistance. What they bring is not simply a collection of songs, but a philosophy that resists the hatred and the coldness it carries.

“Tell me the things you hate, and I will tell you who you are.” That’s a saying I have heard often, too often perhaps. These days, people tend to define themselves by, through and with the things they hate and fear. Those can include anyone and anything: coffee, strawberries, milk, hippies, the Arabs, the Americans, metal music, jazz music, pop music, science fiction, postmodernism, chick lit, comedy, feminism, machismo, the Jews, the black people, the Chinese, the Europeans, soldiers, pacifists, neo-Nazis, neo-Marxists, eggs and eggplants, open shirts and leather jeans, the cities and the mountains, the strong communities and the strong individuals, capitalism and communism, the cold air and the hot air and the salt waters and the noisy rivers and the computers and the calculators and the children and the old people and the sunshine and the night-time and the rain and ourselves. Loathing has become something of a way of life. The question of whom and what we love is lost amidst all this roaring hatership. Not that hatred and fear are feelings unnatural and completely alien to us humans; no, but they are taken as the one, singular way of experiencing things, as the truly visceral and most powerful manner of relating to reality. When faced with these tidal waves of scorn, one wonders where to go, what to do, and how to resist.

It all starts with an uprising. Going against hatred means saying no to it, it means putting an end to cold exploitation – even through strength, if need be: “Rise up and take the power back / It’s time the fat cats had a heart attack” (“Uprising”). What one must never forget, though, is that any battle against oppression is a fight for truth, justice, for equality and love. That kind of struggle always reaches an end, unlike the struggle for power. The power-hungry can never be full; and those who do not believe me should re-read Orwell’s 1984. Intentionally or not, Muse’s music and especially lyrics seem to relate to that conveniently forgotten book. They act in a starkly subversive manner and regularly bring together the need to fight with the need for justice:

“I’m hungry for some unrest
I wanna push it beyond a peaceful protest
I wanna speak in a language that they will understand
Dedication to a new age
This is the end of destruction and rampage
Another chance to raise and never plead again

Counter balance this commotion
We’re not droplets in the ocean” (“Unnatural Selection”)

There is, however, one very specific and central thought to these combative moods. It’s short and simple, and it goes like this: “Love is our resistance” (“Resistance”). The truth is very brief, as one famous character from The Name of the Rose would have it, and lends itself to almost immediate comprehension; one just has to see, hear, read it. This plain statement of intent, truth and philosophy rightfully belongs to the beginning of a story, and that is where Muse have put it.

From a musical viewpoint, it remains blessedly difficult to put Muse into one category: the band show too many different faces on an album of medium length. One thing I see in their manner of composing and playing is the spirit of a Queen reborn. Just like the older fellow countrymen of theirs, Muse tend to explode into symphonicity, bombastic choruses, and soaring harmonies. Another feature the two bands can be said to share is the enormous amount of reverb and sheer space with which they build their songs. Just remember “Innuendo” and compare it to, say, “Resistance”, “Guiding Light”, or “Exogenesis: Symphony”. They want you to turn the volume up and up and up to get closer to the actual notes, beats, and words, and in the process to help erect cathedrals and ziggurats of resplendent melodies in front of yourself. Finally, just think for a minute: how often do we meet excellent singers who also happen to be extremely proficient on both the piano and the guitar? The comparisons, however, end here. Muse, as mentioned, incorporate a huge number of musical knacks, tricks and licks borrowed from a range of bands like Genesis or Yes to a whole row of 80’s groups (a list of which will perhaps be several times longer than the list of things people hate that I conjured up on the fly above). Last but certainly not least, they are themselves throughout. Precise, surprisingly flourishing, and sublimely titanic drumming; profoundly expressive bass (see “Resistance” again – no other comments) that one often mistakes for synths and even guitars; as well as floods of piano and orchestration, especially in the closing “Exogenesis: Symphony”. Bellamy’s guitar has been put to the side for some of the duration, or tends to lurk low in the harmonical edifice, but never fails to come to the fore at the very right moments in “Resistance”, “Unnatural Selection” and “Guiding Light”. The trio constantly show love for the music they create, and for the listener it is intended for.

Many are the depictions of love that can fit on that modern piece of technology we call a CD, and the more skillful the people who paint those portraits, the more truthful, diverse and vivid they become. One thing Muse cannot allow themselves to do, nonetheless, is paint love blind, or turn it into a blanket but blank emotion that is supposed to cover everyone and everything. Love is no carpet under which you can sweep all your emotional luggage. It is a living thing that gives you life and always breathes back into your lungs the force you put into it, but it is also something mortal. As we build monuments to those truly good among us who have died, so do Muse to love in their world-shattering and primordial “Guiding Light”:

“Impure hearts stumble
In my hands they crumble
And fragile and stripped to the core
I can’t hurt you anymore

Loved by numbers
You’re losing life’s wonder
Touch like strangers detached
I can’t feel you anymore”

When the cold numbers outnumber the heartbeats of love and the sunshine inside is crushed by that ultimate freeze, love dies; its guiding light vanishes. Such is the colossal force of this cosmic death that it remains only barely describable. Even when love returns in the new form – in “I Belong to You” – of an appropriately named “guiding lightning strike”, its presence retains the sinister quality of a possible vanishing; in the song, that is indicated by Muse’s version of the aria “Mon Coeur S’ouvre A Ta Voix” from Saint-Saens’s Samson and Delilah, embedded into the piece as a song-within-the-song. Such ominous moments can be experienced on several occasions: in “United States of Eurasia”, where the protagonist dreams of a united Eurasia, but that always entails “Collateral Damage”; in “MK Ultra”, where things are slipping out of control (“How much deception can you take? / How many lies will you create?”) while Bellamy’s guitar meets an orchestra and the two stroll away hand-in-hand with the listener; and in the grandeur of the closing “Exogenesis: Symphony”.

I am not wading knee-deep into the vast oceans of orchestration on a daily basis, but this three-part piece slowly and infallibly ensnared me with its electro-magnetic flow. And if what it says is true – that we have failed this planet, that we have already forfeited all our chances to preserve life on it and must begin a centuries-slow, womb-to-tomb migration to stars so incredibly far – then it says it with a gentle hope, and a wide-eyed, tearful, shivering optimism.

The end of the music at this point seems to signal the end of a world, and one is left in the uneasy silence with too many questions. A handful of things are clear for the free-thinking person: that one can be sure the fight continues; that love is the unifier, and with it comes a pervasive but not blind optimism, and a knowledge that truths, all truths, must always be kept close. We should probably learn at least this from Muse: to speak in the future simple tense when fighting for the future, to remember the truth of oppression and exploitation, and to know that love is the mightiest power of resistance.