News – April 13, 2012

[There will be no news over the weekend.]

Mass effect 2 bad ending – everyone dies

It really is possible to fail so hard at Mass Effect 2 that absolutely everyone dies except for Joker. It takes a lot of effort, though, and you have to make abysmal choices all along the way. Still, it’s nice to know that failure is possible. Winning a video game isn’t nearly as satisfying if there is no way to lose.

 

Why Netflix Never Implemented The Algorithm That Won The Netflix $1 Million Challenge

Yes, that’s right. Netflix had a million-dollar contest to come up with a new algorithm, and they never implemented the winning answer. It turns out that taking someone else’s code and sticking it into your codebase is really hard (who knew, right?), and the improvement wasn’t good enough to justify the cost. Netflix did get some improvements out of some code that came out of the contest, but the winning algorithm was never used.

 

Portugal considers ‘Terabyte Tax’

For the record, this tax did not pass. However, it’s still worth mentioning because I keep seeing this insanity pop up; Canada has had something similar for a while now. What these government people are saying boils down to this: we know that all of you people out there are dirty thieving pirates, so we’re going to slap all of you with a penalty whenever you buy a hard drive. After all, we know the only reason you bought it was so you could steal things. And no, that doesn’t mean it’s now ok for you to go and download whatever you want; we’re still going to put you in jail and stuff.

There are a whole lot of things wrong with the “Everyone is a criminal, so let’s just punish everybody” mentality. The whole point of the justice system is justice – you punish the guilty people and keep them from harming the innocent. Harming absolutely everyone misses the entire point. The whole concept of “Let’s just punish the guilty people, and leave the innocent ones alone” is rapidly being lost. God made it clear that punishing an innocent person was an abomination to Him; I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that godless societies have no qualms about it.

Then there’s the whole issue of whether copyright infringement should be a crime in the first place, but that’s a discussion for another time.

It all boils down to this: the government wants your money, and ultimately the government is going to take your money, one way or another. They’ll come up with an excuse, but it’s really just that – an excuse. (In terms of pure greed it’s hard to beat the Death Tax, where the government comes along and says “You died, so we get half your stuff.” You just know that, if they could get away with it, they would confiscate everything.) Just listen to Democrats talk sometime. They really believe that your money belongs to the government. You are a peon; you are not bright enough to be allowed your own money. Only the all-wise government knows how to do it properly. (After all, how many ordinary people have managed to get $15 trillion in debt?)

 

Jay Carney on Rosen’s WH visits: I personally know three women named “Hilary Rosen”

For those of you who aren’t following the story, here is the payoff: “Deep down, although you hate yourself for it, you kind of admire the sheer [nerve] it takes to lie to a room full of reporters like this with a straight face.”

Basically, the White House spokesman is lying. Everyone knows it, and yet he still tells obvious, easily disproven, blatant lies. It’s become accepted. Of course the White House is going to lie! Of course they’re not going to be honest with us! It’s just to be expected that the government is going to tell blatantly obvious lies. It’s the normal order of things.

This story is a rather sad commentary on our times. It use to be the Soviets who were notorious for handing out blatant, ridiculous lies. Everyone made fun of their blatant propaganda. Now our own government is doing it as well When citizens expect their government to routinely lie to them, you know the end cannot be very far away.

 

Why the Human Will Cannot Overcome Sin: A Study of Paul’s Commentary on the 10th Commandment

The whole thing is worth reading. It boils down to this: our behavior can, to some extent, be controlled by outside forces. There are times when we may be tempted to do bad things and then decide not to follow through because of the possible consequences. That seems like a victory (“I didn’t do it! I resisted!”), but it’s not. Jesus pointed out that sin actually starts in the desire. You may not have actually committed adultery, but if you lusted – if you had the desire – then you sinned. External forces can have some effect on what we do, but they can’t kill the desire. We cannot somehow “will” ourselves to stop sinning because we cannot control our desires – which is an entirely different thing from controlling our actions. The reality is that our desires drive us and cause endless problems. As James said, “Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed.” Desires are the whole problem.

What this means is that we cannot overcome sin by just trying really hard to resist. That may affect our actions, but it won’t affect our heart. The only way to defeat sin is by grace. Jesus has to change us; there is no other way. Changing our behavior is not enough; our heart must change as well. It is not enough for us to not murder our neighbors; we must also stop hating them. In fact, we must love them. The only way we can do that is if Christ does it for us. The only way we can achieve victory is if Christ gives it to us. There is no other way to defeat sin.

If you are caught up in a “besetting sin” (or any kind of sin at all), you will never be able to defeat it by just trying harder. You will fail. Even if you somehow find a way to change your behavior, the sinful desires – the corrupt heart – will still be there, waiting for a chance to reveal itself again. You haven’t actually fixed anything. You’ve just put a new coat of paint on a tomb full of corruption.

The only way you can be free is by the power of Christ. He must change you, from the inside. You are powerless, but He is not. He is your only hope. We need to move away from this attitude of “I can change myself if I just try hard enough”, to “I am utterly ruined; Jesus is my only hope”. We need to learn to battle sin by taking it to Jesus – not by resolving to somehow “do better next time”.

 

Quantum Random Number Generator

This generates truly random numbers, thanks to the magic of quantum mechanics. It is astonishingly difficult to generate random numbers; ultimately the only way to do it is to use some sort of physical process. You really can’t do it with computers. After all, computers are ultimately calculators; writing software to generate random numbers is like coming up with a math theorem that gives you random results. The best you can really do is come up with numbers that appear to be random as long as you don’t look at them too closely.

If you really need actual random numbers, harnessing quantum physics is a great way to go.

 

Police salvage blind Trish Vickers’ inkless novel pages

There was a Father Brown story about a thief who swindled a blind woman out of her fortune by making sure that, when she sat down to write her will, her pen ran out of ink and the will was left blank. (I think it was “The Eye of Apollo”, but I’m not sure.) Today the power of forensics could actually recreate the lost writing – as it did in this case.

 

Mars Viking Robots ‘Found Life’

A rather long time ago I came across a National Geogrophic magazine that was published at the time Viking actually landed on Mars (1976). I seem to recall that the lander performed several tests for life; some passed, and some did not. Despite the fact that some of the tests actually passed and indicated the possibility of life, the scientific community said “Oh, I guess there’s no life on Mars” and moved on. (Someone who worked on the Viking project actually commented about this very thing here. It’s worth a read. Even at the time people thought that the tests indicated the presence of life on Mars.)

Apparently people are now going back and rethinking about that data. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there is actually life on Mars – plant life, especially, seems quite likely. I’ve seen numerous reports that hint at this; this is just one of many. If there really is life on Mars, I’m sure we’ll run into it eventually if we keep on exploring the planet.

And yet, I’m not sure that we are even looking for life on Mars anymore. One rather shocking fact is that, on the last 4 landers that have visited Mars since 1976, not a single one of them had any biological tests. No probe has ever included a microscope powerful enough to see bacteria or cellular life – which is something you would think would be a “must-have” if you’re looking for life. It is almost as if somewhere along the line “science” decided that there was no life on Mars, and so has refused to take the subject seriously ever since – even to the point of not making serious attempts to find it. Groupthink can be a powerful thing; see “global warming” as another example of this. (Note how global warming “scientists” are more than willing to actually alter the data and blatantly lie to make their case. They believe so firmly in their theories that they don’t give a second thought about actually modifying the data to fit their fantasies. You don’t even need some heavy-handed conspiracy run by a sinister figure in the shadows; groupthink alone is enough to keep it going.)

On a separate note, the article includes a Viking 2 landing image. In that picture the sky is a reddish color. However, if you go to Google images and search for “viking 2 landing”, you will see pictures where the sky is actually blue. I have a hunch that the Martian sky is actually blue most of the time, and is only red occasionally. But that is a topic for another time.

 

Odd fact of the day: Cinderella’s name comes from the term “cinders”, or ashes/soot. So, really, it was Cinder-ella. It was not intended to be a beautiful name. It would be like calling someone “Ash lady” or “Soot girl”.