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- programming - It's late on a cool and comfortable Christmas Eve - perfect for a spot of leisurely coding. With a few hours to burn, I thought, why not try a spot of Captcha breaking? I've covered a bit about Captchas a year and half ago, but let's do the summary all over again. Captchas usually take the form of distorted text, displayed for a human to respond to by typing the text back in order to prevent computer "bots" from (repeatedly) accessing some resource, whether it be signing up for a new email account, posting a comment on a blog, or whatever. Why does it work? Well, the thing is that computers can do some things very easily - say adding humongous amounts of figures - but in other stuff humans are (still) far superior, and should continue to be so for quite some time. Indeed, I daresay the person who creates an artificial intelligence that can convincingly impersonate a human to the extent of displaying understanding would not only win a Turing Award (and other assorted prizes), but would probably have opened the door to the most monumental accomplishment bar none - for once the first machine that is even marginally more intelligent than a human is created, it would be able to improve and propagate itself at a far greater pace than humans could hope to do, and attain a technological singularity. Or so theory goes. Suffice to say that recognizing symbols, although a tiny, tiny subset of what computers would need to be capable of to be considered intelligent, is no easy task at all. It is true that the problem of optical character recognition can be considered to be solved, when confronted with properly scanned and reasonably regular fonts. But reading a handwritten cursive script (especially a doctor's), easy as it may be for most humans (other than the doctor's, maybe), still cannot be done with appreciable accuracy by computers. Which is strange, if you think about it - yes, maybe humans are helped along by context, but give a human isolated words from a cursive pen, of differing styles from different people, and he would likely still be able to read them (well, generally better than a computer anyway). This could enter into a digression on graphology and the merits thereof, but the basic point of such a seemingly simple task being so badly flunked by crazily powerful processors still stands. 
Perhaps not always... (Source: Graphic Insight) Astute readers at this point might ask, why not just use handwritten words as a Captcha then? Well, the answer has to do with reusability and cost. Non-text based (and often contextual) captchas have been implemented, which may ask one to name, say, the third object to the left of the hamster in a picture. However, these types of Captchas often suffer from a relative lack of objects (which may be the abovementioned hamster, or handwriting samples), which open them up to another line of attack, that being simply storing the objects in a database for future use. It is easy to see that if the number of objects is small compared to the number of queries (and remember, a single popular website may need to serve millions of Captchas a day), this form of protection would quickly be defeated. Moreover, random objects look quite messy. Text in contrast has many combinations just from combining different letters and easy on the eye, and it is pretty simple to generate an image of a word (or random string of letters to counter dictionary attacks) on some background and mess it up a little, to prevent simple OCR from being able to decipher it. Let us walk through a practical example: 
A Captcha check by Mousehunt We are supposed to type in the five letters displayed on the cheese to continue. Not particularly hard to grab that part of the screenshot since it appears in much the same position each time (no one moved the cheese here), but just for fun I used a probabilistic function (using Perl to call ImageMagick) that tries to recognize the cheese. It seems to work, and I got: 
Cheese Identified What next? The cheesy background seems to complicate things, but in reality it is not much of an obstacle - I simply strip the oranges and yellows out using their RGB values. What if the Captcha designers then use these very colours? Well, they could, but the Captcha would than be infuriatingly hard (and maybe even impossible) to read (remember some of us are colour blind, so certain other combinations would be bad enough already). Not good when facing potential customers. Indeed, in general I guess it wouldn't be hard to recognize and strip the background. 
Black and White Looking good, but there's still some extra noise; I therefore wrote another heuristic to clear away extraneous text (N.B. Actually, in most Captchas the Captcha is in its own image, so this step and the first would not apply). By iteratively clearing away small concentrations of pixels, we can get an idea of where the relevant text is: 
Can't Run Can't Hide The code then grabs that part of the image. But now comes the hard part. Clearing away the background gunk is, as previously noted, easy; Identifying individual (even distorted) characters is likewise quite achievable. The trouble for now is breaking up a word into those individual characters. Note that some Captchas (e.g. Blogger's) have their letters clearly separated, which makes things quite easy. Mousehunt (and indeed the reCAPTCHA system used on this blog) aren't quite so nice, and mess stuff up by generating lines over the letters. To the best of my knowledge, solving this in general is still an open problem. Humans can effortlessly filter out the lines automatically, but to a naive program, they are just so many more pixels, same as the pixels actually making up the letters. I suppose someone out there will have a very smart pattern matching algorithm that does decently for the general case, but for this Captcha in particular I applied a simple horizontal line detection heuristic for a start: 
Lines Removed. Sort Of. Note that the thick blotches aren't recognized as line noise, and remain. This is the part that admits the most research, and to be honest a good general solution would probably be sufficient to support a whole Ph.D. thesis on. So we'll put this aside for now, and move on. Though the text is extracted, it is not horizontal yet, and this would probably pose unnecessary problems for our OCR process. There are likely many ways to correct this, for example identifying the baseline (which may not be straightforward with lowercase and distorted characters), but for now I adopted the simple method of taking each pixel as a point and using the line of best fit, which is as general as it goes: 
Thin Red Line It's far from perfect, but an improvement nevertheless. The script then rotates the image such that the line of best fit is horizontal, and we are ready to OCR: 
Gogogo I chose Google's freeware Tesseract engine, and proceeded to install it on my hosted web server. In the process, I learnt that one could avoid the (protected) default directories by supplying the right arguments to the configure file (Linux noob, sorry), and that one could simulate a shell console with Perl statements (just open a filehandle piping the linux commands suffixed with 2>&1; to merge stdout and stderr messages). There was a bit of a sticky situation as the default TIFF files produced by ImageMagick weren't compatible with Tesseract, but a bit of Googling revealed that running the ImageMagick convert executable on those files with -compress None -density 300 -strip -depth 8 -monochrome -normalize -endian MSB would return just about what is needed: 
N.B. Displayed in GIF format here All that is left is to run it through Tesseract, and we get: Four out of five ain't too bad for a first try, I guess. Interestingly, this might even pass a reCAPTCHA check. Remember that Captcha's were never meant to be anything more than a preliminary challenge, however, as the cost of reliably "breaking" them would be no more than what it costs to employ a kid at minimum wage is - the need for Captchas to be solvable by everybody, regardless of their background, caps the level of complexity that can realistically be used. Once more, Merry Christmas!
- Corinthians 13 Hope Well it seems that's that for those lingering First Class Honours hopes, as I only managed a 4.50 (again), when I really needed a 5. Here goes the post-mortem: CS4213 Game Development - A-. Thought I did decently well for this, with 18/20 for the midterm and 28/30 for the labs, but it seems the final examinations left something to be desired. Few regrets here as I don't really see how I could have boosted my chances much more anyway. LSM1301 General Biology - A-. Not enough for the A in the end, but no regrets either. It was immensely (okay, maybe a bit less than immensely) fun :) CS4101 B. Comp. Dissertation - IP. The FYP. Can relax a bit more now, though since it's a shared one, maybe not. CS3108B Independent Work - CS. For the holiday project. More modular credits just for fun. SAP for computing: 4.50 (third semester in a row...) EC3312 Game Theory & Applications To Economics - B+. Have to admit this was a bit of a surprise, since I *did* top the cohort for the midterms; perhaps not finishing the last question did cost me, or were there more mistakes mixed in? Nevertheless, I can live with this, just a bit disappointed since it's one of my pet personal interest topics after all. EC3353 Health Economics I - A+. The irony is that I only took this module as it fit nicely into my schedule. Just goes to show that one's foresight is limited, no? Relatively straightforward from beginning to end, kinda like Financial Economics. Now if I could only get six of these one semester... EC3361 Labour Economics I - B-. Unprepared midterms + slack off for finals after the Game Development examination = poor result + no complaints. Would still take Labour Economics II next semester if the schedule were right. So, now what? The second-upper classification is probably secure as long as I don't miss any final exams, but of course there remains some lingering sourness of once again not attaining the maximum possible. In a way I suppose that's the story of my life so far... PSLE (lost to two), O Levels (one A2), A Levels (both S Papers only merits) and now, probably some 0.0X points away from the top class. But it is also fair to say that I know exactly who to blame, and that is myself; Mostly, it was a case of wanting it, but not wanting it enough. And perhaps not wholly without reason, since this attitude has gotten me through quite alot, and really who cares about your PSLE once you get past your Os, who cares about your Os once you get past your As, right up to the point where nobody much cares about your bachelor's once you get your Ph.D. (in the same subject). Looking at the big picture, it seriously didn't matter enough. Still, I don't particularly like "losing" (you're looking at a guy who's still waiting for Brighton to beat Man Utd in the FA Cup Final in Championship Manager 4 after some fifty reloads), and it still is a little hard to take each time the imperfect results come back - but then in the modules where others scored higher, I suppose quite a few of them put in much more sweat than me, so we more or less get what we deserve. In a way, it is for lack of a true dream, the sort that can be actively pursued as an end unto itself. Oh, there is always dumping effort into something one does not particularly like, just to earn a living (and probably somewhat more), and that's all and well also. Or perhaps let's just cut it down to two words - I'm lazy. Then again, oftentimes I'm not exactly slothful either. Dream on, shall we? Books Recently borrowed a bunch of these from the libraries (they've doubled the borrowing quota for the holidays) for these quiet nights, and I thought I might as well give a brief overview of the first batch:
- An adult giving a kid some early instruction in aviation, unavoidably overheard on a bus. Never let a fragment of your psyche and two hamsters do the job when you can do it yourself, they say. Thankfully, the layoff at least allowed me to make a bit of progress on my FYP. Either Way Also Cannot An interesting excerpt from page two of Saturday's Straits Times: "...Recession Budgets are easy for (political) opponents to attack. If it is seen as being tight-fisted with giveaways, the opposition can cry: 'Not enough!' If the Budget is liberal with lots of giveaways, the opposition can turn around and say, 'Too lax! This will ruin the country in the future.' ... And one thing is for sure - even Singapore's pretty tame opposition will take the opportunity to blame the Government for the recession." Keeping in mind that the writer was referring to politics in general, with examples from the United States and Britain, the point conveyed appears to be that the ruling party will get the short end of the stick no matter what. But what then is the alternative? The opposition lauding a tight budget for being prudent, and cheering the largesse of the incumbents if a generous budget is proclaimed? As Catch-22 situations go, it is just as likely that incumbents could downplay the opposition for being lax, irrelevant and useless if they kept quiet, and attack the opposition for splitting national solidarity during difficult times if they were so bold as to raise questions about budgets or state reserves etc. Another measure of whether a government is fair game for criticism on an issue would be if it had previously taken credit for the good times - it is somewhat less convincing to use, say, the "helpless small open economy" excuse, if prior boom years were chalked up to good domestic planning and leadership. So this appears to be an argument that does not actually mean much about anything, though heavens know, I have used it often enough myself; even a passably comprehensive assessment of a government's merits would probably be too unwieldy for the usual broadsheet. For example, take an investment agency that has taken a paper loss, which in these days is most of them. The right question is probably not how much it has lost, but how much it has lost compared to the average agency. In the same vein, comparing governments is often a business of recognizing the tradeoffs. Singapore, for instance, is commonly held to be fast-paced, stressful, conservative, somewhat sterile, with strict laws and a high cost of living. But it is also known to be stable, relatively prosperous, clean and safe. Not perfect, true - but does a perfect country exist? It would be more productive to ask if a country has maximized its potential, with as many liberties and privileges accorded to its citizens as is sustainable, and no unnecessary burdens or sacrifices placed upon them. Law By Law A few months ago, I brought up the issue of wealth and justice in passing, and concluded that it was often next to impossible to disentangle the outcome of a case from the resources available to the parties involved - otherwise, how would high(er)-priced lawyers be able to justify their fees? Recently, no less than the renowned criminal lawyer (that's a lawyer who specializes in criminal cases, not a lawyer who is a criminal, folks) Subhas Anandan saw fit to publicly raise the issue, as regards to the compounding (i.e. to agree, for a consideration, not to prosecute or punish a wrongdoer for) of offences. Let it not be said that the authorities are slow to respond, as Attorney-General Walter Woon responded in a couple of days, saying that "There is no such thing as one law for the rich and one for the poor, nor one for the well-connected in Singapore." (though he did in fact admit that "compensation naturally favours richer people", but compounding is enforced at the discretion of the judge in the public interest). Leaving that aside for the moment, the Ministry of Law itself got into the act, chiding Mr. Anandan for not knowing better, and:
I have previously acknowledged that coming to a scientific conclusion on whether wealth etc affects sentencing is very tough, as no cases are exactly the same, and indeed it may be that the well-heeled and well-connected simply have a greater propensity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a greater capacity for remorse to boot. Unfortunately, it is unrealistic for judges to emulate the traditionally blind Lady Justice, and preside over cases where no actual identities are known and only relevant facts are (publicly) supplied, without the whole system being radically overhauled (and also having judges cut off from the news for long periods). However, as with blind auditions in symphony orchestras, the effects may be... surprising. Ip Man N.B. You may have been in Computing and Economics too long when a friend SMSes to ask if you would like to watch Ip Man, and the first thing that comes to mind is Internet Protocol Man or Intellectual Property Man? In fact, Ip (or Yip) Man was a Wing Chun master and Bruce Lee's sifu, and the movie was based on his deeds in his early life, especially the Japanese Occupation (though likely with a good dose of dramatic license taken). But who really watches martial arts movies for the plot? It's all about the kicks and flips and chain punches, man. It should eventually cross the mind of viewers of such movies on the actual efficacy of martial arts, though, and while most of the scenes in Ip Man were well done, I was never quite sold on the chain punching with a wheel-like motion. Another fair question is then on which is the best martial art, but before that, it would be appropriate to ask, what are martial arts for nowadays? Fitness and conditioning is one thing, fun is another, self-cultivation a third, but what makes martial arts unique is its ability to control, subdue and physically hurt another person in combat. This was obviously very practical in less civilized (and less technologically-advanced) ages, but the development of personal sidearms in particular somewhat reduced its utility - it would be rather silly to spend decades smashing one's limbs into dummies, only to be shot in the face in one's first encounter. Incidentally Ip Man did disarm a careless police officer in the movie, but it would be a foolish martial artist who argues with a submachine gun at ten feet. (Ip Man did have to give up his house without a fight presumably for this reason) Of course, it is not true that every confrontation begins with a quick-draw out of a holster, and being able to stand one's ground in a spontaneous messy situation would still be useful - though any responsible sifu would probably teach that negotiation, and failing that, flight, should be considered before unleashing the fists of fury. Here, let us assume that one's stints in the Debating Society and Cross-Country Club are inapplicable, perhaps because one is cornered, or has to play the part of protector etc, for discussion's sake, and the opponent(s) are implacable. It may be that fights are bound by certain codes (for instance, local gangs supposedly frown upon kicking and hitting the face), to minimize unnecessary losses (as animals often engage in ritual non-serious contests to determine territorial or breeding rights) from escalation of violence. The martial artist must then decide on the length (and depth) he is willing to go to in order to win, knowing the circumstances - and that any fight is still possibly fatal. If the penalty for defeat is certain death, in a war for example, then I suspect that using the very techniques forbidden in competitive martial arts (i.e. biting, eye-gouging, small joint manipulation, groin attacks) would be most rewarding (indeed a sharp kick to the groin has been touted as a great defence for women against would-be rapists), as would be using any improvised weapon at hand to gain an advantage. Note that while in the movie it was said (in response to the jibe that Wing Chun is a woman's art) that what really matters is the person who uses the martial art and not his or her physical attributes, I would beg to differ. Yes, the smaller guy wins if he has an AK-47. Yes, the smaller guy wins if the bigger guy is an uncoordinated oaf. Yes, the smaller guy may win even if the bigger guy is an accomplished fighter, if he is more skilful, or gets the drop on him. But once a certain level of competence is reached on both sides, size (and determination) does matter a lot. As they say, 一胆二力三功夫 (first courage, second strength, and finally skill) One analogy is basketball - one can point out Muggsy Bogues and Spud Webb as counterexamples, but really being well over six feet is almost a baseline requirement for the big leagues. Closer to the point, take boxing, or wrestling, or indeed any contact martial arts competition; the weight classes are there for a good reason, that being a 250 pound heavyweight landing a solid hit on a 110 pound flyweight ain't pretty. Moreover, how much damage is the flyweight going to do? True, there are always exceptions, but that's why they are called exceptions to the rule. So, taking away forbidden techniques, what is the best martial arts for an unavoidable and unarmed one-on-one fight in an enclosed area? I would say that the best answer would be found from real-life mixed martial art competitions (discounting the unverifable kung fu masters in the mountains), where superbly conditioned and trained fighters duke it out to see what actually works, and what doesn't (see a classic boxer vs wrestler bout). There have been non-direct attempts to resolve the issue, like Fight Science, but it appears their methods are quite flawed (see linked article). Some example MMA fights:
The evolution of such contests is interesting - arts that focused almost exclusively on striking (e.g. boxing) would be at a loss once grabbed, and indeed quite often a fight would end rather simply on the ground, either though active punching ("ground and pound") or some sort of choke or joint lock. Hardly the all-action styles we get used to in the movies, but to be fair showing two sweaty, contorted guys rolling about on the floor for several minutes probably wouldn't sell many tickets. Still, there is at least one saving grace for striking styles, as going to ground is a big no-no when more than one opponent is involved, using common sense. The SOP in such cases would be to try and align oneself such that one faces as many opponents as possible (possibly using the terrain), since not everybody has the ability to sense an attack from the back as in the movies, opponents probably won't consciously aim to make one look good by attacking one at a time, and moreover a roundhouse kick would likely stop at the first guy hit and not scatter men like tenpins. Really, the odds against multiple opponents are not ideal if they are any good at all, and in such a case it is advised to identify the group leader as early as possible and try to take him out first (and quickly). Oh, and have I mentioned to run for it if any opening shows itself? As for the overt anti-Japanese sentiments, what can I say? It is somewhat hard to critique the response of people who may have experienced at first hand the horrors we only read about, and well, let's just say the Japanese are going to be the generic bad guys in Chinese films (but then, probably vice versa too) for some time to come anyway. - Mr. Batulcar to Passepartout, in Around the World in 80 Days
- + hamsters - Mr. Ham G. Bacon, President, Web Designer and all-around odd-job hamster here! As this blog's customer service representative, I have got to apologize for the conduct of Fake Bert a few days ago. My goodness! I would have got onto it sooner, too, had I not been completely tied up with all this work that's coming along, including fulfilling my duties as official hand wipe during football matches. Did you watch the eight goal thriller between United and Gamba Osaka in the Club World Cup? That was fabulous! Yes sirree, it's a hard life for a hamster out here. The benefits aren't anything to shout about, but we do what we have to get food in the belly, teehee. To cope, I've developed some foolproof strategies against the big bad corporate machine:  Tip 1: Play dead when your colleagues approach you  Tip 2: Get wasted at the office pantry after a hard ten minutes of work (Editor's note: Nope, can't tell which side is up either) Tip 3: Train yourself so that you can perform job-related functions in your sleep. The hand-waving here got me through hours of receptionist duty But back to the main point - I am so pleased to inform our dear readers that I had been assigned to castigate Fake Bert for his absolutely inappropriate post. And from the firm and reassuring way he squeezed me and then left me upside down in a toilet roll for a couple of hours, I am absolutely sure that he has taken heed of this warning. Don't let his act get you, however - deep down, he's a nice guy like me too!
- Pennyworth, in The Dark Knight Sounds great! But let me first introduce myself. My name is Fake Bert, and I have a problem. Actually no. Not really. But since "Real" Bert continually moans like some teenaged angst-ridden emogoth wannabe and writes disgustingly vapid and hopeless posts like this (oh my f**king gawd) and this, I thought that I should at least humour my wimpy alter ego a teeny bit by crashing with him, but suck this, it seriously cramps my style. "So f**k him and f**k you too!" Damn, always liked that line from Eminem. But back to myself, which is after all rightly the most important thing there is to write about. So like, that useless bum was coming blubbering to Big Daddy here, and he was like, man, completely hamsterf**ked up. He wasn't thinking straight, man. I couldn't take his nambypampy whining about waiting for whoever or whatever s**t he is waiting for and about his dumb FYP problems, and started smacking him in the face, only it hurt after awhile so I stopped. Like, you know, get a f**king grip. If I were him I would just shake my butt around for the next half year and remember to turn up for the exams - or don't, he'd probably pass anyway - and oh, stick about for the fancy ceremony where they hand him his little degree and shove him off the stage. Whatever. "You know what's your problem?" I told him. "You give a s**t. Of all the bazillion dumb things in this world that you could have done, you went and gave a s**t." I mean, I'm not perfect. A witty, intelligent, asswhooping all-around great guy, but nowhere near perfect, and I'm cool with that, you see. And the secret? No biggie. I just don't give a s**t. About mostly everything. And when you really, truly, don't give a s**t, your mind clears, and you feel high, like zen, man. But maybe it's partly down to this fancy multiple personality gig, I think I got all the deserved f**k yous in storage, and he got left with the scraps. F**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k f**k See? I swear, one more line of what he calls philosophy or whatever he vomits out to appear smart, yes I know his type, Mr. Eager-to-impress-nice-guy, yes that's you, and I'll take that messed-up head of his and smash it until it works right again. That is if I can dig it out of the ground first. Yes, yes, "Real" Bert (oh, the irony), what the f**k are you after? You want people to like you? You want sympathy? You want to somehow play a part in creating a better world, in your own small, humble, way? Hey, you know what? F**k you. You really care about any of that s**t? Well, I've got to hand it to you, man. I couldn't act like that if you gave me a million dollars. Well, maybe I could, but that's besides the point. I would leave you to wallow in your own s**t, man, but as you're a part of me in a way, I'll give you some good solid advice, pro bono as it were. I can't help it, I'm just too kind. Just don't give a f**king s**t. What you worried about? You worried about other people feeling bad? Man, that's totally a loser proposition to begin with, and I can't even begin to describe how loser loserish it is. You thinking of obligations, of not disappointing other people? Something like that? Well you should be the expert on them, the way I see it you made most of them up anyway. Now, I don't mean being a jerk and kicking candy out of babies, that's totally not cool, but once you recognize that what you're doing is beating yourself topside silly with a baseball bat and nobody really f**king cares, and you do the right thing by yourself, now that's cool. And I don't mean pretending not to give a s**t just to like, project an image for other people so they can see how s**tless you are. That's a whole new level of loserific that plumbs new depths. I mean honestly, from the bottom of your heart, not giving the tiniest bit of a s**t. It grows on you, and after awhile you don't even have to think about it. When you know somebody's wasting your time, be ready with a charming little smile and say "f**k you" and walk away. Now, that's satisfaction. It may not start out easy, but you're not dumb, man, I mean, you're a part of me. You can do it! And oh, now that I'll be sticking around - I gather my guest post was well-received, no? - it's time to insert some life into this blog, man. You think people want to hear about problems and paper theories and pretend betting and all that s**t? Sorry man, f**k you man, the hell no! Now that I'm here, there's gonna be fun. Big time fun.
- changelog - changelog v1.10 --------------- * glolg now supports multiple users and associated profiles. Okay, okay, coz the big guy's gearing up to do his FYP, GYP, whatever that beep is, I had to code this stupid thing by myself. Does he even care how difficult it is to type when you're the size of half the numberpad on the keyboard??? Anyway the person or hamster who posts to this... what's the term... newly collaborative blog will have his name at the top right just under the date. It even works in the old blog skin, as a nice touch. Now he's gotta give me my treat or it's bite-bite time, if you get the drift. Cya all.
- + hamsters - - George Bernard Shaw A week of the holidays gone, and I could (should) have done much more (but having to get out for the past few days for one reason or another didn't help). Getting back into the mood by doing something, anything at all, which happens to include blogging. One thing that was accomplished was a settling of scores with the hamsters, though; they thought that they could get away with biting people freely without suffering any consequences, just because they happen to be passably cute. Ha!  It looks like another crisis of belief is hitting me in terms of my FYP - does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Hopefully, I'm just being lazy as usual. It would do well to remember that a month of holidays isn't really that long, but I still have several outstanding things I have been waiting to do for some time. Well, time to pay myself first, as in myself myself. I started by reactivating all my sixty-six Dragon Court accounts, then checking in on the Kingdom of Loathing accounts that I have abandoned for close to a year, only to be reminded why I retired from that game. Started Mousehunting (in the process wondering when I would ever seriously get some game off the ground), and even engaged in a spot of Neopets item arbitrage, just like the good old days (almost forgot how addictive - like an online flea market - it could be), until I realised that their trading post was buggy and didn't refund unsuccessful bids sometimes. Your Standard Idealistic and Useless Undergraduate Expousing his Short Analysis on the Current State of the World and How It Should Be Run Buying and selling virtual stuff led me to think of the recent real-life occurences, and how much value is indeed "real". The more I read about finance, the more it seems that stuff doesn't add up (quote: "...he had asked his young assistant, Dan Gertner, a chemical engineer with an M.B.A., to see if he could understand them. Gertner went off with the documents that purported to explain C.D.O.s to potential investors and for several days sweated and groaned and heaved and suffered. 'Then he came back,' says Grant, 'and said, I can't figure this thing out. And I said, I think we have our story.'") For example, take a sealed box (or slightly more valuable item) that some trusted agents vouch is worth... something rather more than it actually is, when in fact it is gloriously empty; the box can then be bought and sold, and bets taken against the movement of its price, with jobs, firms, even whole industries springing up around it. And when somebody actually opens Pandora's box to find nothing inside, we get a "correction" or "burst bubble", resulting in a dark period where nobody wants to touch sealed boxes with notarized ten-foot poles, whereupon the masses pontificate over the evils of the imperialist capitalist model - until next time, when the sealed boxes are Web 3.0 ready, or come with a free sealed tincan, and the whole business begins anew...  Source: Dilbert.com Value is indeed a strange thing. It is not unthinkable for say, farmers to be better off if, through some combination of bad weather and tardiness, they collectively produce a poor harvest. It might then be possible for them to raise prices sufficiently to make much more profit than they would have otherwise in a free market, as people have got to eat no matter what. Of course, local or specific shortfalls would have far less effect, and were a global situation actually to occur, some combination of price controls, rationing, or even military requisitions would likely come into play. Perhaps it is true that what's important is simply whatever somebody else is willing to pay for something, in which case creating the illusion of value may be more important than creating actual value. Note that with enough stored value, one can subtly adjust the rules in order to preserve and propagate their own value ("unfair" labour practices, tax avoidance, legacy admissions etc - question: are people aware of the long-term repercussions of their current decisions?), admittedly alongside the beneficial effect of allowing those proven to be able to generate real value to continue their good work. But is there any other way to measure value? If all parties concerned were honest and consistent judges of value and were agreeable on the value of any commodity, then yes - indeed, this sometimes occurs, as when deals were sealed with a gentleman's handshake after short pleasantries. However, quite often both parties are eager to get the better half of the deal, and on top of that they might have no reason to believe themselves capable of assigning proper value - how many apples is an orange worth? Then, the only reasonable thing to do might be to hawk one's wares around and see what they can fetch. These issues can likely be reduced to fundamental problems that have probably been recognized from antiquity, but which humans have essentially made zero progress on, that is if it is assumed that progress can be made in the first place. So what was the point of philosophy at all? (Discussion collapses) The Dark Knight (Spoiler warning, blah blah) Observation 1: If a criminal is instructed to shoot his accomplice after his part of the heist is done in order to receive a bigger share, shouldn't he have some suspicion that it will occur to him later? Response 1: If they were big on rational long-range planning, perhaps they wouldn't be criminals to begin with. Observation 2: If a criminal threatens to continue murdering people in a city if his demands are not met, should the city accede, or refuse? Response 2: This is a case of blackmail, and as with most cases where the object of blackmail (in this case the ability to murder) is not surrendered upon payment, there are just two logical responses in an isolated case - refuse to pay right from the beginning, or be prepared to pay everything eventually. The reasoning is that there is nothing to stop the blackmailer from repeating his demands after receiving his payment, especially where the circumstances are such that the blackmailer is unlikely to be a nice fella. However, this discounts the fact that paying does buy something else - it buys time, and the hope that the blackmailer will indeed keep to his word. Repeat blackmail by the same person/organization is another matter - take kidnappings for ransom, say in Columbia. While it might be expected for a sufficiently heartless kidnapper to slay his hostage after (or even before) collecting his payment, and minimize the risks of being identified in future (though possibly increasing the resolve of the general public and police to apprehend him, whatever that counts for), a kidnapper who plans to continue would do well to return hostages safe and sound, as otherwise there would be little incentive to pay up. This now poses a dilemma - if a blanket policy were put in place refusing any negotiation or payment, the business of kidnapping should eventually dwindle to nothing as the kidnappers recognize that they are not going to earn anything. However, this will likely cost the lives of innocent hostages in the meantime (as releasing hostages alive further reduces the probability of getting paid), many of whom relatives might be very willing to pay reasonable amounts to secure their release. Canny kidnappers might at this point demand a paltry, but public, ransom to test the resolve of the public - letting a loved one be killed for a mere thousand dollars would certainly leave a sour taste in the mouth. The authorities would look bad in the eyes of many if they refused this, but if they go back on their word they could hardly be taken seriously again when the kidnappers up the ante. In many cases, this would settle into a sort of balance, with organized crime being self-regulating and taking their cut, with authorities and the general public grumbling but unwilling to endure the costs of booting them out. Now it is easy to condemn them to a morass of their own making, and say that they would have avoided it if they were perfectly upstanding. However, morality exists on a gradient, and is not even self-consistent. For instance, it is commonly held to be a virtue to be helpful and tell the truth. What then if a violent mob asks one for the (known) location of an individual? Should the person keep to his basic principles and tell the truth, or lie and protect that individual's safety? There are many other examples which have no doubt come to pass - what should a conscripted soldier do, if commanded to torture and kill a civilian? One option is to make the death as quick and painless as possible, and another is to refuse, but which would almost certainly result in worse torture and eventual death for both himself and the civilian. Other possibilities would be for the soldier to kill himself and/or the civilian, or go on a suicide rampage and attempt to take out as much of the evil leadership as possible; perhaps he could even do his job well, in the hope of rising to a position of prominence, then change the system from within, thus saving many more (twisted as this may sound)! Should we resort to torture to foil terrorist plans, if we know that tens of thousands of lives are at risk? And if we know that the terrorists themselves are impervious to torture, but the torture of their innocent relatives might cause them to reveal the required information? A key obstacle in reality is that we never completely know the outcomes of our actions. It is reasonable to expect that a stone we release will fall to the ground, but especially where other humans are concerned, it is difficult to predict the effects. Observation 3: Rig two ferries up with explosives and hand the people in each ferry the detonator to the other ferry, with the condition that they will survive if they blow up the other ferry, but if neither detonator is pressed within a specified time limit, then both ferries explode and everybody dies. What should happen? Response 3: This was a scenario set up by the Joker in the movie, with one ferry filled with convicts, and the other with ordinary citizens. In the movie, one convict persuaded the captain of his ferry to hand the detonator over by saying that he knew the captain couldn't kill anybody, and that they could later say that he snatched the detonator over by force, before throwing the detonator out of the porthole once it was in his hands. On the other ferry, the citizens took a vote, in which about three-quarters of the people voted to blow up the other ferry. However, no one was willing to press the detonator itself, and even the most vocal proponent of their right to live ended up putting the detonator back into its box after attempting to gather enough willpower to activate it. This resulted in a rather uplifting feel-good effect, especially as Batman was on hand to smack the Joker's universal detonator out of his hands and deliver the "they're not as ugly as you, you're alone" speech to the evil mastermind (knowing the Joker, it would have been a nice touch for the ferries to have actually been supplied with the detonators to their own ship, though). But if I had to stake everything on predicting what would happen in real life, and not according to the whims of a Hollywood scriptwriter, what would I guess? Firstly, the detonators were held by seemingly experienced and doughty sea captains/officers flanked by reliable crew, in the movie, with many of their passengers already clamouring for the detonator to be pressed once the initial pronouncement was made. Had the detonator found its way to one of their number, it is not improbable that it would have been pressed, and rather early on at that. We must also recognize that the act of pressing the detonator would be a very public act - the one who did the actual deed could expect to be vilified, rightly or wrongly, for the rest of his life. "A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation." (quote from Dune). What then if the Joker had rigged up a system such that any individual (or small number of individuals) could detonate the other ferry without being identified (offhand, one method would be requiring each ferry to send a certain number of SMS messages every few minutes to avoid detonation of both ferries, but broadcasting a special code that any individual could send through an SMS to blow up the other ferry)? My personal expectation would be that destruction would be nearly assured and come very swiftly (as both sides know that the chances of a single less-than-patient guy on the other side would spell their doom), though this need not necessarily reflect badly on the majority of the people (and would probably be less satisfying for the Joker, which may be why he didn't try this variation) Also, would it be right for one ferry to decide to blow up the other just before the time limit, reasoning that if the outcome could not be averted, it is better for half of them to die rather than all of them? There are two immediate objections: One is that it would be a victory for the Joker, and more generally evil, against good (and knowing the Joker, they might very well end up dead anyway). The second is that the result is unfair. We might negate these objections by borrowing a scene from Dune - here, two people are trapped in the path of an oncoming sandstorm, and the only way to survive is to wedge oneself into a hole within solid rock, or be torn apart by the sand. Such a hole exists, but is only large enough to fit a single person. In the story, the two play a game of skill, with the winner gaining the right to hide it out and also taking responsibility for the other person's kin. Now it might seem that this is an eminently reasonable outcome, and I for one would not see the point of both perishing in the open just for fairness' sake. We then transform this back to the original problem. We now have two fully-loaded ferries, each containing thousands of people. Let these ferries be slowly but inexorably washed towards a waterfall, which happens to have a concave-shaped rocky outcrop in the middle which should be sufficient to stop one ferry. However, its size is such that if both ferries try to come to a stop against it, both will not be held but instead tumble over the edge. Now also suppose that the ferries can communicate. Would it then be right for them to try to come to some agreement (perhaps just flipping a coin) about which ferry would be saved, and which go down? Again, it appears the most enlightened response would be to do so, to have half rather than all the passengers lose their lives where it could be avoided. So, it appears that the major sticking point is the symbolism of giving in to evil - yet on some level this seeming defiance might be looked upon as a complete capitulation, a surrender in the interests of one's selfish personal integrity. Maybe there is no absolute morality after all. N.B. Some ideas borrowed from The Pig that Wants to be Eaten by Julian Baggini, and also here previously. Observation 4: Does Batman really think his breathy voice is intimidating? Response 4: Whatever rocks his Batmobile.
- methinks that (a) the commentator isn't too impressed with the dribbling standards of the Suzuki Cup (b) that's one special footballer Just a few days gone, and already things like my ever-present FYP, debugging the system from the summer job, YASBP (Yet Another System-Building Project) etc are already threatening to pile up. Compounding all that is the incessant drilling going on from the Lift Upgrading Project (slightly miss the short walk down to an elevator landing), and perhaps as a side-effect the annoying "Sending PADI..." loop my router gets into for about an hour each boot-up. Well, let's see what we've got here.  On the left, we've got a photo of Rabbit by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) by Law, who is currently traipsing across Europe; on the right, we've got a movie poster of The House Bunny, which I just happened to watch (and is probably worth it if only for the eye candy). Was wondering how they would cast Hugh Hefner during the show, and as it turned out, he played himself (why am I not very surprised?). Continuing the cursory scan of the cast revealed that, interestingly enough, Tom Hanks' son (never heard of him - the son that is - before this, though) and Bruce Willis/Demi Moore's daughter were in the show too. Seems like show business is a family business after all. Spent a few hours on Guitar Hero: Aerosmith on my cousin's spanking new Xbox 360. Suffice to say I was never much into performing any sort of music (I remember mechanically plugging away at my recorder in primary school just to pass music classes), but I have got to say that with the right accompaniment, the gamepad is an inviting instrument. I can just about hold my own on medium difficulty, but having to manage five keys on hard and beyond is beyond me for now. Off to watch Madagascar 2 (soon), as well as United vs Aalborg in the Champions League. Hopefully the Danes don't park the bus like Sunderland did (now, that 1-0 win felt like a 10-0 one), especially as they have nothing but pride to play for. In the worst case, I guess United can always call upon Vidic again... 
Messed up the final question for Labour Economics, but I suppose that's alright - now I'll surely remember the Efficient Contract Theory for far longer than I would have otherwise. Filled out some graduate school applications, but my U.S. targets are likely a tad too ambitious. Well, it never hurts (it just costs $$$) to try. I suppose I have other reasons for staying in Singapore as well. The basic personal statement was fine (but I'm not gonna beat someone who can say "I was six years old, the eldest of six children in the Bronx, when my father was murdered", having led a relatively quiet life), but the ones on "how did your personal background influence your decision... how you can contribute to the diversity blah blah" on top of the personal statement were slightly annoying. Guess I'll probably end up at NUS if I do qualify. In any case, I think I realise what I've been missing:  Haha, "eyes shining like a little kid's". How do I go about getting a pair of those again? It's not really possible to fool oneself into renewed hopefulness, in the same way that one cannot be forbidden to fear, but only be forbidden to show fear. But it also happens that those with less hope probably feel less fear. Haven't done any commentary on the Mumbai terror attacks that claimed - for the first time - a Singaporean, but truth was I had little to say. It was certainly repulsive, but Singapore's involvement was... for want of a better word, rather random. Bombings are pretty much a dozen a dime in today's world, but only now does the message really hit home. There was a compelling contrast of views when The New Paper screamed out Cowards! as their headline the day after the tragedy, while a more measured piece in The Straits Times took the opposite position and pointed out that the terrorists were willing to get up close and personal, instead of just leaving explosives in trash bins and whatnot. But cowards or not, they were certainly irrational - or were they? Not much is likely to change about this sad state of affairs, so let's switch to a more palatable topic. Actually, Roy Keane leaving Sunderland isn't much to cheer about either - love him or hate him, he was the sort of guy that the world could do with more of (less the vindictive leg-breaking), the sort that cares enough to, and dares to, stand up and yell the equivalent of "I FARK U LAH" into others' faces when he is in disagreement with them. Oh, Sunderland face Man Utd next. This is going to be a happy ending after all. (Now on $1138.25/$1400) $100 on Man Utd (-2.5) vs Sunderland (at 2.00) - Double or quits!
- rants - changelog v1.09c --------------- * Akismet spam filter implemented on top of Mollom (both don't seem to be catching some pretty illogical stuff, however...) for chatterbox. * Mollom quality threshold for chatterbox lowered (some legit comments appeared to be rejected) * Blog copyright notice at page footer automatically extended to whatever year it currently is (unsure if credit for this already claimed) So the Game Development paper is over, as are my examinations (effectively). Labour Economics is on Friday, and while its the economics module I'm shakiest with out of the three this semester, I won't be losing too much sleep over it. Planned for my final semester in NUS (as an undergrad at least) - I need three more economics modules for the B.A. in Econs and one more computing one (and the ongoing FYP of course) for the B.Comp, and with the self-imposed constraints, it's going to get ugly. I'm leaning towards CS4248 Natural Language Processing and PH2100 Logic if need be, and also EC4333 Financial Economics II. These three modules are on Tuesday through Thursday, and it turns out getting two more Economics modules on these three days is difficult. I will have to wake at six-plus in the morning again for EC3371 Development Economics I, and venture into something of a blind spot with EC4102 Macroeconomics III. Microeconomics III would probably be quite a bit easier (it appears that as with Micro II, half of it is game theory), but shoring up weaknesses rather than regurgitating old concepts is probably a better choice (especially as grades aren't a concern here). /begin rant And I think I figured out why my GRE scores haven't arrived after one-and-a-half months of waiting. Firstly, I rang Prometric (the local test provider) up, and they referred me to ETS. I decided that I might as well order my additional score reports first, if possible, and indeed was able to log in at their portal. Oh, they didn't accept any spaces in their First Name field, so I became YongSanGilbert Lim. Fine by me. The good news was, they had a record of me taking the GRE (but no, they didn't display the Analytical Writing scores online, simple as it would have been to implement). The bad news was:  Yes, my address was cut off at the floor number, and therefore any mail sent would have little chance of reaching my mailbox. Now, my address appeared in full in the confirmation email Prometric sent me, so I garner that it got truncated when passed between them and ETS. The very easy one-time solution to this would be to set a maximum field length in the web registration form, such that customers would actually know when their address has exceeded the character limit; I would bet that I am not the only one to have fallen foul of this detail. Given that they are taking in over a hundred bucks for each test, and an extra twenty for each grad school a student decides to "donate" to, one might think that they could have handled this better... This calls for my favourite facepalm image:  /end rant
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