More Complaints Concerning E-Books ( ! )

Saturday, March 22, 2014 12:10:07 PM

More Complaints about E-Books

Illustrations, Special Characters or Anything that can Not or is Not an ASCII Character is invariably presented in it’s smallest possible size, Does Not change it’s Size when The Size of The Text is changed, & is often difficult to enlarge to view, especially if The item is near an edge or any other hot spot which causes some other effect to occur when you tap on The Character to Enlarge it ( ! )

Every Page of An EBook should allow Pinch to Enlarge, whether it’s an illustration, Text or Combination of Presentation Items.

This Pinch in Enlarge should be accompanied by all The ‘Usual’ Viewing Graphic Functions.

All Words, Terms & Phrases in The EBook should be in a Glossary Attached to The EBook. This may work in conjunction with The Tablet’s Own Dictionary, so that only The EBook’s own Esoteric Words, Terms & Phrases would be Included in this Special Supplement.

This ‘Bring Along’ Glossary would also include The Correct Pronunciation for all Words, Terms, Abbreviations & Phrases which The Tablet’s Text to Speech Functionality may Stumble over. 

The User should be able to Choose Between Page Flipping or Page Sliding along with Page Scrolling. Another Preference should then be to Scroll The Text at a Preset Velocity, which includes a Full Spectrum of Velocities, from Ridiculously Slow to Absurdly Fast.

i have this Feature on a Bible App, but its fasted Scrolling speed is still frustratingly slow.

The User Should be Allowed to ReDefine The EBook’s Hot Zones, So that if they have a Particular way that they like to hold The Tablet, they won’t have to worry around turning pages or activating other features accidentally.

There should also be more choices for Page & Text Colors.

Possibly even allowing The User to choose a texture for The Paper, & allow The User to install their favorite Fonts.

: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o

i’ve been toying with an idea for several years now;

Which would like to see Text to Speech Expanded to EBooks becoming Radio Dramas with Preferences that Extend in all Directions.

The Author, or Possibly an Appointed Editor would Parse The Book into a Variety of Sections, Including Narration, Characters, Sound Effects, Added Music, Subliminal Tones & InfraWaves, Hand Vibrations, Visual Effects & so on.

Although The Ebook would remain a Book in most senses; Whenever there is some ‘Action’ that would be desirably Supplemented by a Visual Effect, such a Bright Flash for Explosions, The Screen Going Dark when The Active Character is thrown into a pit, Or Fish Swimming by in The Background, behind The Text when Mermaids are being discussed.

Each of Characters would be given a very good Synthetic Voice, But if The Reader was Unhappy with The Voice of A Character, they’d be able to change it, Effectively choosing a New Actor to play a Role in The Story.

Likewise; Sound Effects could be subdued or accented.

Along with all The Usual Controls over Text Size, Color, Font & Paper Color & Texture. If The Text is Scrolling, The Paper Texture will Scroll with it.

- - -

Also; All EBooks that Feature Illustrations, should be open to Animated Illustrations, or even Inset Videos; Although these should be carefully selected to prevent The Idea of The EBook making The Transition to a Full Blow MultiMedia Presentation, which would be a Perfectly Viable Media Choice, But there should be Some EBooks that Remain EBooks.

- - -

Another Feature that i would like is to Cross Reference A Magazine with Articles in Previous Issues. i have several issues of Fortean Times in my Kindle, & They often refer to items in Previous Issues. If i have that Issue that The Issue i’m reading makes a Reference to, i should have The option of easily accessing The other article & then returning to my open issue.

,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,

Breaking Bad

Thursday, March 20, 2014 10:59:47 PM

Breaking Bad

i just recently watched The final 8 episodes of Breaking Bad, which came to Netflix Streaming Video.

After The 8 Episodes that came before this; The first Half of The Last Season, i’d heard some things about The second half, & now, i’m disappointed.

i’m disappointed that The Shooting Machine that Mr. White Built was so simple. i’d been led to believe that it’d be substantially more complicated; Plus; The Functionality of it depended largely on The Precise Aiming of The Device by The Placement of The Car, but how could Mr. White have known The Layout of The Compound, or where they’d be meeting.

It seems to me that The Device should have had an additional feature which would have allowed it to orient it’s Focal Wedge of The Firing Solution on The Device that Mr. White was Carrying, with The Caveat that it aim slightly higher than Than The Primary Line of Sight. i would have also arranged so that it would shoot in random spurts, so that The victims would be more likely to pop their heads up from time to time, to attempt to return fire, as opposed to simply diving for The floor throughout The entire barrage.

i was also very disappointed & perplexed by The Murder of Gail, & in The Last Episodes, This Murder is Mocked ( ! ) by Jesse’s account of The Murder being Cut off, just as he was getting to The point in his confession where The Incongruous Elements of The Murder would have been explained !!! ( ? ) Was this entire ’episode’ inserted just to add a whiff of DADA ?

In The ‘Confession’ that Mr. White hands to Hank to get him to back off, Why would Mr. White have paid $ 177,000 for Hanks Rehabilitation if Hank was The Mastermind ? Hank would have had The lion’s share of The profits.

i can understand why Hank was reluctant to go to his DEA Partners with is suspicions of Mr. White, but it’s annoying that that secrecy was largely responsible for his downfall. That sort of Plot ‘Snag’ occurs often enough that it should have a cinematic term to refer to it.

i never really understood why Mr. White poisoned The little boy that was Jesse’s ‘girl friends’ son. Was it to break them up ? Mr White latter suggested that it was to get Jesse ‘On Board’ for The Murder of Fring, but i didn’t get how that all fit together. It was Jesse’s ( assumed ) bungling of The Rican Capsule that made Jesse believe that he was responsible, but then he later learned that it wasn’t The Rican, & furthermore, that The poisoning was probably an accidental ingestion or contact with a local toxic plant. ( ? )

Also; i’d heard that Mr. White Blackmailed his two former business partners into laundering his last 9 Million Dollars ( Close to his Original Desired Estimate ( ? ( or was that less than 1 Million ( ? ) ) ) to his Family, but then it turned out that this was all very clumsy. i was hoping for some explanation of their original breakup, why Mr. White Left The Company, & then somehow used that information to blackmail them, but it turned out to be just thuggery.

What was The point of leaving for New Hampshire if he never really intended to leave. Part of his return was spurred on by seeing his former business partners on TV, but cleaning up The Thugs that killed Hank were always on his list of things to do; he was discussing that with Saul before he left.

One of The Principle Considerations throughout The Series was The Futility of Amassing a Stupendous Amount of Money, & then Not being able to Spend it. Especially nowadays, i personally almost never buy anything with money. i have an elderly aunt that still has a purse full of money & writes checks— As she doesn’t trust The Debit & Credit Cards Security Issues, But The larger problem is; How does one properly Launder a Large amount of Money like that ? It seems to me that Fring should have laundered The Money for Mr. White & Jesse when they were working for him, Or; His Lawyer, Saul should have shown him how to do it more effectively than nickel & diming it through these small businesses.

When Mr. White First Started; He should have told Skyler that some of his old ‘Chemical Processes or Materials Patents’ were finally being used by Overseas Corporations, & Saul could have then routed The money back into local Banks under that pretext.

You would also want to widely diversify your earnings through dozens of small businesses & investments through shell venture capitalists to insulate you from any future investigations & confiscations, should things go sour like a hamburger left out on The counter overnight.

You might also take a lesson from The Audrey Hepburn film ‘Charade’ & turn some of The Money into seemingly inconsequential Knick-Knacks, Relics or Books that can be hidden in plain sight or lent to ‘( Clean ) Friends’ to keep for you.

If Mr. White was such a genius, why didn’t he ever start up another Company ? Even something small that would have allowed him to invent a few new materials for industry & then sell The patents for quick money.

That seems The way to go to me if you’re a genius, Start original product or service companies, get them off The ground, then sell them. Repeat.

You might continue to make a few dollars by acting as a consultant to solve on-going problems as they arise, without burying you with all The nightmares of actually running a struggling business.

Obviously; The Premise of The Entire Series was that for some people, if you discover that you’re dying, it might unleash a previously deeply repressed alternate Personality.

Was Mr. White Always a Psychopath ?

Or might it be that anyone can become a psychopath under The right circumstances.

The latter position is probably The correct interpretation, it is most commonly demonstrated by perfectly ordinary young boys going off to war & discovering that if they’re given permission to do The most horrific acts, they will eagerly participate without reflecting for a moment on The Ethical Consequences.

That’s our true Human Nature.

We wear clothes in a Civilized Society so that we’ll be just that much more removed from our actual, easily recovered awareness that we’re animals.

Cannibalistic Animals. The Tiniest Amount of Introspection should cause any reasonable thinking being to wonder why we adhere to such ridiculous constraints pertaining to only eating animals that look differently from ourselves.

Animals are Animals. Everything is Food.

Is that what Breaking Bad had intended to show us ?

The Luckiest Amoebae

Friday, March 21, 2014 12:04:29 AM

The Luckiest Amoebae

When an Amoebae Divides; Does it produce two daughters, one mother & one daughter, two new mothers, two clones or two originals.

The Answer is Two Originals.

The Mother’s Name is Amy & now there are two Amys.

It’s all very confusing, because Not only are all Amoeba’s…

( Amoebae ( Amoeba ( Singular; but i prefer The Spelling with ae !!! ( They’re both pronounced The Same, & Even if you do Say; Amoeb-eye, People will just think your British ( ? ) ) )

…named Amy, but all other Single Celled Protozoa whose grandparents were originally The First Self Replicating Prokaryotic Cell, are also Amy. ( ! )

The Wild bit then is this:

Everyone of these Amy’s has never experienced The slightest misfortune. They are all The Single Surviving Thread from The Original ! They are all The Original Prokaryotic Cell from 3.5 Billion years ago, that have split Trillions of Times, & throughout their History; Have never been eaten. Never gone hungry, never torn their external membrane, Never gotten seriously ill or was ever washed up on a sun baked rock.

Furthermore; Every Genetic or Cellular Mutation was for their Advantage. Millions & Millions of them, one after another, Everyone of them was for The Best.

All this time; All around them, they witnessed The Horrors of their Sisters befalling The Worst Misfortunes, but somehow, they skittered untouched by Personal Sorrows & Misery.

Mathematicians have this thing they call The Sigma Index of Certainty in which they’ve decided ( arbitrarily ) that if you can Produce some Phenomena with a Statistical Probability with an Equivalency of Flipping 8 Coin-Heads in a Row, ( 1 in 256 ) That is Unlikely ( Improbable ) enough to Reasonably Expect that there is an Underlying Causality to What Just Happened.

The Crazier Aspect of this is that if you were to Flip a Coin a Hundred Times, There is an Entirely Reasonable chance of getting 8 heads in a row.

There is a Fun Trick that you can play on a Class of Young Mathematicians having to do with ‘Unlikeliness’.

You create two teams; The Coin Flipping Team & The Guessing Team, The Coin Flipping Team flips a coin 100 times & records all The Heads as 1’s & all The Tails as 0’s on The Blackboard. The Guessing Team simply writes 100 1’s & 0’s on The Board in what they suppose is a Random Sequence.

You don’t watch any of this. You are outside The room until they’re done. When they call you back in. You then examine both Blackboard Arrays & declare which is The Real Sequence of Random Heads & Tails & which isn’t.

The Trick is to look for The Unlikely Stretches of 1’s or 0’s.

That’s The One that was made by The Coin Flipping Team.

People don’t feel comfortable with writing more than 4 or 5 1’s or 0’s in a row if they think it’s supposed to be random !!!

But these ‘Runs’ are actually pretty common.

No matter how Unlikely something is presumed to be,

It is Statistically Expected that it will happen sooner or later, & if there’s a Million to one chance of it happening, you won’t have to wait a Million Trials for it happen, You’ll probably only have to wait for a half a Million trials or less.

And if it’s The Sort of thing that you do all The Time, day in & day out; You should expect it to turn wonky on a fairly regular basis.

Just how Strange is The World,

When it’s Not being Strange at all?

Another Odd Sensation

a few weeks ago I reported that I had a 'premonition' of sorts, in that I had a distinct and unmistakable 'recollection' of a scene from breaking bad that I was sure that i'd just seen in a different film, but then came to 'realize' that it must have been from a dream.

I happened again.
this time it was with Ender's Game.
When ben Kingsley came on with the Tattooed face,
I had this incredible reaction that i'd seen that before,
only this time, I was sure that It came from Cloud Atlas.
Ben Kingsley was in Cloud Atlas with that exact same makeup.

But he wasn't.
he wasn't even in Cloud Atlas.
There were some other characters that had Tattoos in Cloud Atlas,
But nothing which could have caused this reaction that I had.
Again; I suspect that the Remembrance that I experienced, must have come from a Dream.
I searched the Web's image libraries to find another source for this confusion and I haven't found anything like this.
Plus; I am absolutely sure that there is no way that I could have seen that image of Ben Kingsley before I watched Ender's Game.

( ? )

An Alternative To Democracy

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 12:49:26 AM

An Alternative To Democracy

Initial Questions :

 

What is Good ?

What is The Best Solution for Dealing with Bad People ?

What is Worthwhile ?

How do you know if something is True ?

Is Life The Best Solution to Existence ?

What should a Mind Strive Towards ?

What comes after Evolutionary Consciousness ?

What is The Best Way to Keep Busy ?

Is Keeping Busy Important ?

- - -

If you Take Away All The Directives of Organic Living,

What Directives are Left ?

Should Directives be Imposed ?

Can Directives be Chosen ?

- - -

What does Democracy Assume ?

Is A Single Consistent Dream of One Leader Desirable ?

What if you Removed The Dream of The Leader ?

How would Anarchy Work, If it did Work ?

What is Human Nature ?

Would a Hive Mind Be Best ?

- - -

If everyone Played by One Set of Rules;

Government would be Irrelevant.

What are These Rules ?

Why would anyone believe anything Contrary to The Rules ?

- - -

Additional Commentary :

The Purpose of Any Government is to Superimpose an artificial Set of Objectives & Direction onto A Population of Damp Sponges;

But Certainly An Artificial Set of Anything is Just Wrong.

Unless you assume that there is No ‘Real’ Objectives.

Scientific Evolution teaches us this;

That everything is merely an Accident,

& Any Directives we Choose to Follow other than The Procreation & Replication of our DNA are Completely Artificial.

Is this Wrong ?

If it is ‘Right’; Then by Assuming it’s Wrong, it’s Irrelevant.

So If it is Right; There are No Directives, There is No Best Way to Keep Busy; Then any Artificial Directives which Claim to be The Bsst Way to Keep Busy is Acceptable.

But if There is A Best Way to Keep Busy;

What is that ?

If there is a Best Way to Keep Busy;

This Activity Shouldn’t be Hacked out by a Democracy,

It needs to be ‘Revealed’ & once Revealed;

It should be ‘Obviously True’.

If it is Not Obviously True, & Is True;

How could anyone believe that it’s Not True ?

Are these Individuals Insane ?

Isn’t this how Governments have always Worked ?

Anyone that doesn’t See The Correctness of Their Countries Taboos, Mores, Laws, Cultural Conventions & Praxis— Must be Insane.

So how can a Reasonable Person, that is Seeking The True Way to Keep Busy know if The Correct way is The Correct Way ?

The Problem is that People are only as smart as fish.

But if this were True; Then all of our ( Human ) activity would Not be from The Generation of Thoughts, but from Instincts—

Which would by these Definitions; Would be True as Selected by The Grinder of Evolution; Which only produces Pragmatic Truths.

It is also true however, that Evolution does make mistakes,

So it may be That this Ultimate Solution to :

What is The Best Way to Keep Busy ?

Will have to wait until Evolution Stumbles upon a Brain that Can Actually Think Properly.

Until Then; Any Government or Human Behaviour that is in Existence, was produced by Evolutionary Condiments,

Which is The Only Method that is Now Available to us.

- - -

Film Reviews

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:20:44 PM

Gravity

i just recently saw Gravity on A DVD & i was really expecting The Lady Astronaut to wake up from a dream at The End, Given there were so many elements that required A High Level of Suspension of DisBelief.

A Few of The Most Egregious :

 

- -

In The Bit where George Clooney Sacrifices himself to save The LadyAstronaut ( Astronautess ), When they Reached The End of The ‘Snap’ after being caught in The Parachute Cables, Their Momentum would have stopped. In fact, Even if The Parachute Cables didn’t have a natural elasticity, which i’m sure that they did, They would have Recoiled back towards The Space Station. George Clooney would Not have continued to Pull The Lady Astronaut away from The Space Station.

- -

Where were The Chinese Astronauts ? ( Asianauts )

Or Alternatively; How many Escape Pods did they have connected to their albeit tiny Space Station.

How many were on Skylab ? ( None ? )

- -

During ReEntry; Isn’t that a rather Precision Requiring Maneuver in which The slightest Angular miscalculation would result in a misadventure ( ? ) It seems very unlikely to have ‘gone well’ under The circumstances provided.

- -

The Consequences of Blowing Up Spy Satellites that have reached The End of their Expected Useful Lifespan has been well understood for quite awhile. Simply Slowing them down, so that they fall out of Orbit is The Prescribed solution. But this would only be viable for Low Earth Orbit Satellites. In either case; Might it be more Practicable to simple rig up your Spy Satellite with some kind of Internal Self Destruct mechanism that would effectively destroy any proprietary electronics or optical lens; Effectively leaving an empty ( Self Contained )husk for anyone that took The trouble of retrieving it.

A Different Explanation for this Disaster would have been more palatable.

- -

That all Three of The Space Stations involved where within ‘Walking Distance’ seems improbable.

- -

When The Lady Astronaut is attempting to rocket her way to The Chinese Space Station, The ‘Necessary’ Steps of Aiming her Capsule & Preparing The Boosters is, comparatively speaking, well scripted, Assuming that she speaks fluent Russian & Chinese, But then when she has to ‘Trick’ The Russian Escape/ReEntry Pod into firing it’s Automated Landing Rockets, it is substantially less Described. Would it even have been designed to allow for this ( mis- ) use of them ?

Also; Why are there all these Manuals onboard ? i thought astronauts were supposed to undergo months, if Not years of training ?

If you buy a new car & attentively peruse The Owners Manual, How often do you have to refer back to it to turn on The Radio or Activate The Wind Shield Wipers ?

- -

Given that she’s having Full blown Schizophrenic Hallucinations, Should we expect her judgements for all subsequent decisions to have been rational ?

- -

That ( All ) of The Communications Satellites were Destroyed by This Comparatively small Cloud of Debris, seems, well, flat out impossible. Most of our Communications Satellites are Not in Near Earth Orbit, but in Stationary Geosyncronous Orbits which are something like 22,500 miles up. The ISS & other Space Stations are like 300 miles up, Underneath The Van Allen Radiation Belts.  The GeoSynchronous Satellites are Above these Belts.

Also; Using a ‘Missile’ to Shoot down a Satellite is Not Only Ridiculous in Theory, but The Satellite would be Far out of The Range of any Terrestrial Purposed Missile.

Even an InterContinental Ballistic Missile is Not Designed to Put a Warhead into Orbit or reach A Specific Satellite for a Precision Strike.

We might be willing to allow that The Russians have a Special Missile Delivery Rocket for this Purpose; But how often are you going to use this sort of Technology ? How many Millions of Billions of Dollars are you going to Spend for a Single Purpose Mission like this ?

 

- -

:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*

The Other Two DVDs that i watched from this SafeWay Set

3 DVDs for 3 Days )

Were ( The Last Days of Mars

& ( Ender’s Game

>The Last Days of Mars< was a Perfectly ( Literally: Perfectly ) Horrible Film. What is so very mysterious to me, is Why anyone would Expend The Millions of Dollars that it took to make a film like this without a modicum of Oversight to simply ‘Repair’ The Horrific Dialogue, Absence of Novelty or Tweak The Plot up a little to Reflect the Evolution of The Zombie Film Genre ( ? )

Many ‘Notable’ Films are just as Bad as this one, But contain one or Two Signature Shots, A Few Lines of Clever Dialogue, Some Eye Candy, A Snappy Musical Score or A Plot Line that is So Incomprehensible that it becomes Endearing.

>The American Astronaut< is an Example of this.

But The Last Days of Mars was just awful.

- - -

>Ender’s Game< was another Incomprehensible Film in that;

What was it about ?

The War in Rwanda ?

Human Nature ?

The Dangers of Video Games ?

A Remake of >Independence Day<, >Starship Troopers< or A Reworking of The Daleks ?

Questions Regarding -Evil- or ( Us vs Them ) ?

Are all Games, Not Games ?

- - -

What was missing from it was an Examination of The Aliens.

If you’re going to set The film up with an Alien Species Invading Earth with a Cockamamie Premise ( Looking for Water which is Common throughout any given Solar System ) & then Extending that with Their ‘Alieness’ but Not Expanding on that, was unforgivable.

It seems to me that they should have spent a little of their Filler on Their Attempts & Frustrations with trying & Failing to Communicate with an Apparently Highly Technological Species. Were they A ‘Pure’ Insect Race that Evolved over a Period of Billions of Years from Bee Like Ancestors to Become a Star Faring Super Colony without ever developing Instinct Suppressed Consciousness ( ? )

That would have been Interesting.

Would it be possible to have A Entire Race of Beings that had Star Drive & Other Technological Wonders, But No Mathematics or Science of Physics ( ! )

No Art or Music & A Language Based only on A Small Sampling of Chemical or Static Electrical ‘Phrases’.

That alone would have made a good movie.

But what is Ender’s Game About ?

If The Human’s are The Bad Guys, What were The Aliens up to in their Initial Invasion ?

How ‘MisUnderstood’ was that ?

If The Aliens were able ‘Hack’ into a Game to communicate with Ender, Why was this Effort so Feeble & Essentially Ineffectual, & also Limited to this One Electronic Attack or Effort to Communicate with us ?

Ugh.

i hate plot holes.

And then The End is even Worse.

What is that about ?

If there is this sudden Change of Heart & The Humans decide to preserve this species, why Not simply Create an Isolated Martian Zoo Colony or Use a Moon around Jupiter or Saturn to let them live on. Clearly; If they’re going to be allowed to set up a new Home World somewheres, they’re going to have to be Watched over &/or ‘Contained’ in perpetuity.

Are The Human’s prepared to do that ?

Even if The Human’s thought that they weren’t going to be a Future Threat to us, Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that they’ll someday be a Thread to some other World ?

 

:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*:-.,_,.-:*’``’*