Turing Award - Barbara Liskov

The ACM announced the winner of the Turing Award, and it went to Barbara Liskov. Now, for those of you who don't know, the Turing Award is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Computer Science. Because of my work, I happen to be very familiar with Liskov's work, specially her work on Behavioral Sub-typing. Her book Abstraction and Specification in Program Development is a seminal work in the area of specification of object oriented programs, and specification refinement.

Congratulations to Dr. Barbara Liskiv for her well deserved recognition.

Watchmen

If you haven't watched this movie, I really recommend it. I never read the graphic novel and I've heard the movie is very loyal to the source, so I guess the credit goes to the comic - so I guess the movie made me want to read the comic :-) The movie touches some interesting aspects relating to the human nature, just as The Dark Knight did, and well, I just love any piece of art that makes me think.

If you haven't seen the movie, and you're planning to see it, stop here because there are some MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

The most interesting plot piece the movie has to offer, in my opinion, is the state of affairs of the movie's universe at the end of the film. Without going into much detail, one of the heroes, who is known as "the smartest man in the world" (rightfully so) is the one responsible for the planning of armageddon, sending the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. When the other heroes find out, they try to stop him... but it's too late, he's always one step ahead of everyone. I like the line where he says "Do you think I'm so comic book supervillain? Do you think I would tell you my plans if you had the slightest chance of stopping me? I triggered everything 20 minutes ago... it already happened". He destroys several major cities in the world, not with bombs, but something more devastating that basically vaporizes everything. It all looks like the work of one of the good heroes, as this is the kind of power he wields.

And here's where the moral conundrum comes. The world thinks the other hero did it (a hero called Dr. Manhattan). And so the world, that was about to go into nuclear war, after this event, goes in peace to unite against this new enemy, and they vow to fight Dr. Manhattan. This was the plotter's plan all along... he knew this would happen, and this is how he saw he could achieve real lasting world peace. He now suggests to everyone that they should now support him and condone the lie, that Dr. Manhattan has to take the blame and go into exile for the good of humanity, that his plan, despite the deaths of millions of people, worked, and was the right thing to do. Dr. Manhattan agrees... but another hero, called Rorschach says people have to know the truth, that this is no way to achieve world peace... this was a massacre. The remaining heroes are on the line... Rorschach tries to leave, but Dr. Manhattan cuts him.

Now, Dr. Manhattan is this all powerful being that can do pretty much everything. Rorschach says "Never compromise... not even in the face of armageddon". He basically tells Dr. Manhattan that people need to know, and he's going to have to kill him, because otherwise he's going to tell everyone what happened, and Dr. Manhattan says he can't let him do that, as he thinks this will put the world back where it was, eventually ending in total destruction. So Rorschach tells him "So this is it?... one more body to lay on the foundations where you'll build your world peace?... Do it!", and... Dr. Manhattan vaporizes him... The movie ends with Dr. Manhattan going into exile to another galaxy, the other heroes keeping silent, and a journalist finding the Rorschach's journal.

So, as I did before in the post about Fable 2, I ask you now... what would you do? What do you think is the right choice here? I mean, after everything has been done, would you keep quiet for the benefit of this peace? Or do you think it is important to tell the truth about what happened, whatever consequences that may carry? Are you a Dr. Manhattan or a Rorschach? Please comment and elaborate on your reasons :-)

I will say where stand in a later comment and why.

Seriously? A DELETE button?

Recently I ran into this article concerning the findings of a three months investigation regarding problems with voting machines in California. Now, I've had discussions with some of my friends, in particular with Scott Harmon, about all the problems with voting machines, and why it's just something very hard to get right, but the people involved in the design of the machines discussed in this article seemed to be working very hard to get it wrong. According to the findings of the investigation, they put a button, which by the way was next to the one used to request a print, that basically deletes logs. That's right, it deletes the log from the memory, even if it hasn't been printed and there's no paper trail. What's better is that it doesn't even prompt you with a message asking you whether this is something you really want to do... nothing! It just deletes the log as if nothing happened.

Now, what were they thinking? Hasn't all the debate and discussions about the problems with voting machines reached the people that are actually making them? And why, oh why, didn't anyone notice this until now? Now, after it was used in an election and there was a loss of about 200 ballots (according to the article). I mean, really? So, you're meaning to tell me nobody thought this was not a good idea!

There has to be a problem of miscommunication here. The academia has put out many articles in the past couple of years, where experiments and extensive studies have been done, and things like this have been pointed out as big problems. Yet, you still have to see this in the news, as if the work of those people never happened. It looks as if the only people looking at that work (which is payed for with taxpayers money by the way) are us, the geeks, and the rest of the world seems to be oblivious to all this information... until something bad happens.

*sigh* Seriously, my hopes for humanity decrease by the day... Hopefully, now they will start listening to the computer scientists and designing these machines with all these problems in mind, from the get go... yeah right, what am I even saying? Sometimes I think they put that delete button on purpose. What's even hilarious is that it took a three months investigation to notice a delete button in the machine :-).

Fable 2 Ending - Moral Choice

In a previous post I made a list of games that I owned, but had not finished. One of those games was Fable 2. This is a game I was playing before I went to the hospital. Last night I was up late again, and decided to play some of it. It turns out I wasn't so far from the end. It took me about an hour to actually finish the game (so one less in the list of unfinished games). The reason for this post is something that happens in the ending of this game, an interesting moral choice.

Upon finishing the game, after the hero defeats the villain and all that, the hero is granted a wish. But it's not just any wish, he must choose from three possibilities:

• The Sacrifice - "The Needs of the Many": if the hero chooses this, all the people that have been killed by the evil during this adventure will be resurrected, brought back to life, except for those close to the hero, that is, his loved ones will not be resurrected. These include his dog (a loyal canine companion that fights along the hero throughout the whole adventure, and sacrifices himself at the end to save his master), his sister, and depending on whether you decided to marry during the game, his family (wife and children). So, he must sacrifice his loved ones for the many lives of members of other families, hundreds or thousands of people.
• Love - The Needs of the Few: the hero chooses to save his loved ones, at the expense of all the people that were killed by the evil during the adventure (hundreds or thousands of people).
• Wealth - The Needs of the One: the hero chooses to receive huge riches and gold, at the expense of all the people sacrificed during the adventure... no one is saved, and the hero receives big wealth.

Now, when I finished the game and got to this point, I had a hard time deciding what to do. I should point out that I usually play RPGs with a "good" or "noble" alignment, yet this decision was very tough to make. I didn't know what to do. If it had been a binary decision between money and the lives of people, that would have been easy. But here I am... How do I choose between my loved ones, and the many, many, loved ones of other people? Sticking to the good alignment precludes the money, of course.

I didn't know what to do. I went through several changes of mind... and I considered all three options seriously. I mean, how can I choose between these two groups of people, perhaps I should just take the money!

So if you happen to be reading this, I would like you to comment and tell me what your choice would be, and why. I am not going to expose here what my choice was now... I will do so later in a comment to this post. But before I would like to know what other people would have chosen.

Unfinished Games

So, last night I couldn't sleep (the Prednisone is starting to work its magic) and I was just wandering around the house, looking for something to do. I started moving stuff around, played some DS, watched some TV... and then, oddly enough, I decided to make a list of all the games I own, but haven't finished. Here the criteria is not completionism, that is, it's not about whether I've done everything there is to do in the game, but rather whether I've finished the game, in conventional terms. This means, if it's a story-based game, I've finished the story. Of course, in the case of Viva Piñata, which is a game about collecting piñatas, then it's about collecting all the piñatas (which I haven't done, and so it is listed as unfinished).

I was surprised by the amount of games in the list. There's just quite a few a games I haven't come back to, and didn't realize there were so many until last night. The list totals 22 games! Here's the list:

1. Fable 2
2. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
3. Chrono Trigger
4. Street Fighter IV
5. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The Shivering Isles
6. Psychonauts
7. Ninja Gaiden
8. Blynx
9. The Incredibles
10. Catwoman
11. Lego Starwars
12. Sonic Heroes
13. Viva Piñata
14. Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
15. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
16. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
17. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
18. Grand Theft Auto III
19. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
20. Half Life 2
21. Half Life 2: Episode 1
22. Half Life 2: Episode 2

So there you have it. There are a few games that I got recently, basically the first four games in the list, but I thought I'd add them to the list since I haven't finished them, and remove them when I'm done with them.

It bothers me a little that I keep moving on to other games, when I have stuff on the shelf that I can work on, and so the list keeps growing. So I've decided to commit myself to work on this list and get it down. I don't know where to start though... there's so many games on that list. I guess I'll start with the fresh ones (the ones at the top) and then move on to the rest

Auto-Immune Myositis

So, I have been diagnosed with Auto-Immune Myositis, most likely to be Polymyositis. I am back after at home after 3 weeks in the hospital, where I underwent a bunch of tests to find out what was going on.

I guess from this point on starts my fight with this disease, which I've learned can be very unforgiving. In my case it has presented with involvement of the lungs and bones, to make things a bit more interesting. In the case of the lungs, I was found to have Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis. In the case of the bones, well, I was found to have Osteoporosis. All this at the age of 31...

I don't know exactly how I feel about all this. I don't know if I'm scared, or angry... I don't know if I feel optimistic or pessimistic... one thing is for sure: there's a lot of uncertainty in my head. I wonder about the path that lies ahead of me, how's it going to be? What's going to happen? How will I be one year from now? Two years from now? How is this going to change my life?...

I don't think I'm angry or scared. I've never been one to sulk into things I can't change or control. I'm under treatment and well... I'll just try to keep moving forward.

Keep moving forward...

The Black Hole in the Center of the Galaxy

So, there's been recent news of confirmation of the presence of a massive black hole in the center of the galaxy. This black hole has been accepted as a fact for a while now, but mostly as the mostly as the likely hypothesis that explains the movement of certain stars close to the center of the Milky Way. This study, on the other hand, has tracked the movement of a group of stars for 16 years, and has yield results that almost conclusively evidence the presence of this astral entity.

The interesting thing is that even after this study, the evidence is still indirect. I mean, we haven't seen the thing (although if it's there we know we can't see it). We've just been able to detect its presence by observing its effects. Isn't science amazing? It reminds me of my Electrical Workshop teacher in highschool. When we were learning the basic concepts, we started, of course, by learning what electricity is. And so, one of the things we learned is that you can't see electricity. He would ask "How do we know the damned thing is there then?", and then would tell us "We observe the effects it produces! Touch a live wire and you'll know there's electricity there!". So it's kind of the same thing here. Electricity lights a bulb, that's an effect, we know it's there. In this case, the black hole has an effect on the astral bodies in its vicinity, so we know it's there.

You have to love the scientific method!...

-- AI