If I have to make up the balance of my life at this point, then all I can say is that it's most precarious. While I was able to work relatively normally for the past few months, my emotional issues are once again beginning to affect even that aspect of my life. The past three days I have had this case of painfully sensitive skin on the left side of my face, with occasional stabbing pain plus a continuous headache in that area as well. Coincidentally this occurred right after a little mishap at the pool last Sunday when I got launched into the water at an unfortunate angle and managed to injure my lower back. As an aside I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks to Ivy and her husband, the Chinese couple who have helped me before and from whom I have only ever felt warmth and kindness.
So anyway, I spent Monday being all bedridden and drugged up on Pieter's prescription painkillers with only one position (lying on my side) not being extremely painful. By the end of the day the pain began to recede, but that's when I first noticed this painful skin on my face, concentrated around my left eyesocket. On Tuesday it was even more painful, Wednesday topping the level of pure agony even more, with me wrestling through the day in a somewhat dazed state. These days I also suffered from an old friend: extreme hyperventilation, with me unable to breathe properly for hours despite every breathing exercise I could think of.
Today I woke up with the sudden realization that the pain was virtually gone, with the affected skin area only being somewhat sensitive, and me feeling great in general. This lasted until later that afternoon, when I got a really bad case of hyperventilation, forcing me to find some source of distraction. I ended up reading in my current book while trying to relax in bed, yet I had to put the book away multiple times because I was pretty much choking. By the time Pieter got home from his work, I was pretty much in tears from the sheer pain and frustration.
During dinner I felt alright for a while again, then afterwards the hyperventilating started again, until I decided to retire to bed again, where I finally totally collapsed. I had noticed before during the past few days that releasing the suppressed emotions and frustrations inside me helps to reduce the headache and hyperventilating. In this case I had a really bad release, with me having to fight back a really strong urge to maim myself, others and destroy something. It wasn't until Pieter came downstairs to comfort me that I managed to settle down somewhat.
Based on previous experiences and research it seems pretty clear to me that the above is a result of my worsening PTSD, which seems to be reaching a critical stage, most of all due to the causes still being present and there being no alternative treatment. Considering earlier outbursts the past few days it seems clear to me that the right - or wrong - set of impulses could push me far enough to make that last fatal mistake. One of the halmarks of PTSD is that it precludes rational thought, and I fear that I am now rapidly reaching the point of no return. All I need now is some bad news from the UMCG hospital and my life could be forfeit. This frightens me to no end.
On a brighter note, yesterday's voting went well for me. I had my first name and gender scratched away on my ID card and yet this wasn't questioned. No questions were asked or remarks made at all, actually. My suspicion is that the women behind the desk might have recognized me, since a modified ID card should raise at least some questions.
What I'm also pretty happy with is this new Nintendo DSi I bought last Sunday. I got some games for it includes the usual assortment of Harvest Moon games but also My Chinese Coach, as I still intend to learn Mandarin Chinese. My first impressions are that Chinese is incredibly hard and very challenging to learn. Good thing I like a challenge, I guess :)
Maya
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
The Grand Illusion of A Monetary, or Debt-based Economy
Today we are having national elections here in the Netherlands and the past weeks we have had to endure a barrage of debates and downright propaganda from politicians desiring our vote. Many topics discussed or merely used as a bludgeon to scare people into voting were related to finances, to work and similar items which all have one thing in common: they're the symptoms of a monetary, or as it's more accurately known, a debt-based society.
What does this mean, a debt-based society? In short, we are all familiar with the concept of money, whether it's a physical coin, bank note, cheque or a digital number on some virtual account somewhere. It is the lifeblood of society, something people are willing to let themselves be enslaved into mindless jobs, and even steal and kill for. It is also the biggest lie and delusion mankind has come up with after religion.
What is money? Imagine a society where money isn't used but physical goods and/or services are exchanged to the benefit of all. Then someone lacks the time or resources for a particular exchange, so he gives the other person an IOU (I Owe You), basically a declaration of debt which that person can collect upon at his or her convenience. Nothing of value is created, only debt. This is how a monetary system starts: a collection of IOUs, or debts which slowly coalesce in a global system of shifting debt from one place to another, while constantly adding to it.
This is the one thing I have heard no politician ever mention; how we are all deluding ourselves into believing that we have no choice but to work all our lives to earn money so that we can afford to pay for things. All the resources we need are all around us, we can do the processing ourselves or ask someone else to do it for us because we lack the skills or time.
What does it mean, to earn money? What is it exactly we 'gain'? It isn't value, as we have earlier concluded that money (which is an IOU) is in essence debt. What we are thus doing by 'earning money' is procuring some of the debt fulfillment from one side (the employer, or clients/customers) and literally pumping it to the other side where we do our own debt fulfillment as we 'buy' items or services. The monetary system thus in essence is nothing more than the exchanging of debt, shifting it from one individual to another.
Worse is that this debt can only keep growing, through the process of 'borrowing money', which is the process through which additional debt is procured by an individual from a instance (a 'bank') which has designated itself the maintainer of the monetary economy. Even countries keep borrowing money, as does everyone else. If a country or individual isn't borrowing money for some reason, there are many others who do, thus adding to the collective global debt. What does this concretely mean?
It is never possible for the world economy to be debt-free. Debt can only be moved around so someone is always going to be worse off when someone else is doing better, financially. No country will ever reach the point where the national debt is zero and will remain that indefinitely. Countries like Norway have only managed to stay without a national debt for so long due to lots of natural resources other countries wanted to buy, thus shifting the debt to those countries. Once Norway runs out of oil and other easy resources they too will gain a national debt.
One might think at this point that a debt-based economy is unmaintainable as it keeps inflating like a balloon, and one would be right. Nobody knows what the breaking point is exactly, only that crashes like at the end of the 1920s in the US and recent local or global recessions are child's play in comparison to what will happen once the cache of global debt becomes too much to bear and the entire world simply goes bankrupt.
To maintain such a debt-based economy is delusional and suicidal, benefiting only the rich and powerful who can shift their debt to those less fortunate. It legitimizes slavery, puts most of the world's population at a disadvantage, denies resources to those who need them the most and is in many ways responsible for overpopulation, pollution and many other mishaps of this and previous centuries.
The answer? To switch to a durable, social and almost paradise-like resource-based society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j21MeTJ4rNg
Of course, I don't see any politician include that in their plans for the next four years.
Maya
What does this mean, a debt-based society? In short, we are all familiar with the concept of money, whether it's a physical coin, bank note, cheque or a digital number on some virtual account somewhere. It is the lifeblood of society, something people are willing to let themselves be enslaved into mindless jobs, and even steal and kill for. It is also the biggest lie and delusion mankind has come up with after religion.
What is money? Imagine a society where money isn't used but physical goods and/or services are exchanged to the benefit of all. Then someone lacks the time or resources for a particular exchange, so he gives the other person an IOU (I Owe You), basically a declaration of debt which that person can collect upon at his or her convenience. Nothing of value is created, only debt. This is how a monetary system starts: a collection of IOUs, or debts which slowly coalesce in a global system of shifting debt from one place to another, while constantly adding to it.
This is the one thing I have heard no politician ever mention; how we are all deluding ourselves into believing that we have no choice but to work all our lives to earn money so that we can afford to pay for things. All the resources we need are all around us, we can do the processing ourselves or ask someone else to do it for us because we lack the skills or time.
What does it mean, to earn money? What is it exactly we 'gain'? It isn't value, as we have earlier concluded that money (which is an IOU) is in essence debt. What we are thus doing by 'earning money' is procuring some of the debt fulfillment from one side (the employer, or clients/customers) and literally pumping it to the other side where we do our own debt fulfillment as we 'buy' items or services. The monetary system thus in essence is nothing more than the exchanging of debt, shifting it from one individual to another.
Worse is that this debt can only keep growing, through the process of 'borrowing money', which is the process through which additional debt is procured by an individual from a instance (a 'bank') which has designated itself the maintainer of the monetary economy. Even countries keep borrowing money, as does everyone else. If a country or individual isn't borrowing money for some reason, there are many others who do, thus adding to the collective global debt. What does this concretely mean?
It is never possible for the world economy to be debt-free. Debt can only be moved around so someone is always going to be worse off when someone else is doing better, financially. No country will ever reach the point where the national debt is zero and will remain that indefinitely. Countries like Norway have only managed to stay without a national debt for so long due to lots of natural resources other countries wanted to buy, thus shifting the debt to those countries. Once Norway runs out of oil and other easy resources they too will gain a national debt.
One might think at this point that a debt-based economy is unmaintainable as it keeps inflating like a balloon, and one would be right. Nobody knows what the breaking point is exactly, only that crashes like at the end of the 1920s in the US and recent local or global recessions are child's play in comparison to what will happen once the cache of global debt becomes too much to bear and the entire world simply goes bankrupt.
To maintain such a debt-based economy is delusional and suicidal, benefiting only the rich and powerful who can shift their debt to those less fortunate. It legitimizes slavery, puts most of the world's population at a disadvantage, denies resources to those who need them the most and is in many ways responsible for overpopulation, pollution and many other mishaps of this and previous centuries.
The answer? To switch to a durable, social and almost paradise-like resource-based society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j21MeTJ4rNg
Of course, I don't see any politician include that in their plans for the next four years.
Maya
Friday, 4 June 2010
Hangover
This morning I woke up with an incredible headache and feeling pretty sick in general. Bright lights got quickly on my list of things to avoid. Yet despite appearances I hadn't had a drop of alcohol the day before, instead I had been exposed to an overdose of medical stuff, thanks to my appointment yesterday at the UMCG. As a matter of fact I haven't had a single drop of alcohol this year yet, and I'm not even sure I had any last year either :)
I went there together with Pieter to talk things through with the psychiatrist of the team there, particularly to see what they could still do for me. My two main points were basically: (a) to get medical recognition for my intersexuality so that I can change my official gender to female, which would make life so much easier for me, and (b) find an explanation for my body and/or some facts about which organs (vagina, prostate) I may or may not have, mostly with an eye on any possibly surgeries and which kinds of cancers and such to watch out for.
Since there is a legal basis for my first request it will definitely be considered. The psychiatrist, Jiawan, will contact my lawyer and discuss the law in question which enables this. As for the second point, they may look at some specifics as well, depending on what the team decides. Best of all is that the psychiatrist not only recognized that my wishes and desires have remained constant since I got there at the UMCG, but also that he recognizes me as being an exception, and thus that standard protocols, including the one for transsexuals, are not that relevant.
I guess it's about as good a result as I could get for now. June 9th the matter will be discussed within the team. I did feel relatively well afterwards, I thought. It was only once we got home and I got to relax that I pretty much collapsed. Before I knew it I was feeling so exhausted that I could barely drag myself to bed where I slept for a while. When I woke up I still had the annoying headache. This morning it was even worse, and it took two strong painkillers to tame it.
Today was still a pretty good day, I guess. I managed to debug the source code for Lilium Milestone 1 (M1) and get it to compile. Once I get the remaining linker issues resolved I can begin testing it and fix the bugs the compiler didn't catch. I'm feeling pretty happy I got this far in just one day, especially considering that the code in question has been written over the span of nearly two years time. I noticed that the code I wrote most recently is of higher quality than what I wrote first as well.
Yesterday I set up a developer forum for the Wild Fox project and got all developers (4, including me) to sign up for it. My hope is that it'll make communication a lot easier. As for the project's status, I have worked together with the Mozilla developer on getting the GStreamer patch integrated into the Mozilla trunk code, which I'll compile next to verify that it works. If it does I can back-port the feature to the Firefox 3.6.3 code, which will then be renamed to Wild Fox 3.6.3, and the usual Alpha, Beta and RC versions will be released prior to the stable release. Hopefully this can be done before Firefox 3.6.4 stable gets released. It would be nice to stay current :)
Maya
I went there together with Pieter to talk things through with the psychiatrist of the team there, particularly to see what they could still do for me. My two main points were basically: (a) to get medical recognition for my intersexuality so that I can change my official gender to female, which would make life so much easier for me, and (b) find an explanation for my body and/or some facts about which organs (vagina, prostate) I may or may not have, mostly with an eye on any possibly surgeries and which kinds of cancers and such to watch out for.
Since there is a legal basis for my first request it will definitely be considered. The psychiatrist, Jiawan, will contact my lawyer and discuss the law in question which enables this. As for the second point, they may look at some specifics as well, depending on what the team decides. Best of all is that the psychiatrist not only recognized that my wishes and desires have remained constant since I got there at the UMCG, but also that he recognizes me as being an exception, and thus that standard protocols, including the one for transsexuals, are not that relevant.
I guess it's about as good a result as I could get for now. June 9th the matter will be discussed within the team. I did feel relatively well afterwards, I thought. It was only once we got home and I got to relax that I pretty much collapsed. Before I knew it I was feeling so exhausted that I could barely drag myself to bed where I slept for a while. When I woke up I still had the annoying headache. This morning it was even worse, and it took two strong painkillers to tame it.
Today was still a pretty good day, I guess. I managed to debug the source code for Lilium Milestone 1 (M1) and get it to compile. Once I get the remaining linker issues resolved I can begin testing it and fix the bugs the compiler didn't catch. I'm feeling pretty happy I got this far in just one day, especially considering that the code in question has been written over the span of nearly two years time. I noticed that the code I wrote most recently is of higher quality than what I wrote first as well.
Yesterday I set up a developer forum for the Wild Fox project and got all developers (4, including me) to sign up for it. My hope is that it'll make communication a lot easier. As for the project's status, I have worked together with the Mozilla developer on getting the GStreamer patch integrated into the Mozilla trunk code, which I'll compile next to verify that it works. If it does I can back-port the feature to the Firefox 3.6.3 code, which will then be renamed to Wild Fox 3.6.3, and the usual Alpha, Beta and RC versions will be released prior to the stable release. Hopefully this can be done before Firefox 3.6.4 stable gets released. It would be nice to stay current :)
Maya
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Things One Can't Do Anything About
The past week or so I have noticed something quite disturbing if true; apparently during some nights I have managed to inflict wounds on myself while asleep. At the very least I have woken up three times the past few days already to find fresh wounds, some more obvious than others.
The primary target appears to be my genitals, with painful open wounds which take a few days to close and stop hurting. Yesterday I also noticed a piece of skin missing on my forehead, apparently scratched away as it matches the size and direction of me inflicting such a wound with my fingernails. Today I noticed bloody scratches on my right arm.
If these are indeed injuries I have caused to myself during my sleep it would be the beginning of a disturbing new trend. Before I would mostly express my frustrations and pain by crying and by retreating into myself during a paralyzation attack. Self-mutilation was very uncommon and I was always conscious and aware of the event. Having read up on cases where people managed to become semi-awake and realizing the effects prolonged exposure to stress can have on this symptom, it's a worrying development.
I have had many occasions where I would wake up from my sleep drenched in sweat, even with the room being quite cool in temperature, sometimes with my fists tightly clenched across my chest. This would seem to suggest that my sleep is often restless, disturbed by night terrors. I really hope that I won't end up harming myself more than I already have, though. I have no idea what the limits are to what I can and will do to myself while asleep and whether it'll get any worse from now on. Maybe I'll just have to be restrained while in bed to prevent such things from happening again :(
Anyway, on a more positive note, Lilium Milestone 1 will soon undergo its unit testing. With some (a lot?) luck I could have it more or less working by next weekend. Then it's a matter of putting a good benchmark together, both in VHDL and THDL (the internal language for Lilium), and seeing whether Lilium can do better than 1% of the performance of the competition :)
I have been working on the Wild Fox project as well, together with the Mozilla developer (whose name I'm not sure I can use freely yet). I will be testing a build of Firefox with H.264 enabled, then if it works I'll backport it to the Firefox 3.6.3 code which will then be called Wild Fox 3.6.3. Wild Fox will follow the version numbering of Firefox. If the backporting works well an Alpha release of Wild Fox (WF) 3.6.3 will be released in one or two weeks time. This will be followed by as many Beta and RC releases as necessary to get it stable.
Within Nyanko I'm also still working together with Trevor on Even Cats Dream. The resource cooker utility app is done, we are now using the FBX resource format which will make the creation work flow more streamlined between 3D Studio Max, other creation tools and the game. The past few days I have spent putting some 3D models together for use in the first level of the game (to be recycled for other levels too, of course). Hopefully next week we can have something resembling the first level put together. Once we get the first one done things should go a lot faster :)
In other news, this week I ordered some new clothes and shoes from an online store and received them Thursday. Everything fit just fine aside from some shorts which - although marked as being size 36 - fit like a size 34. In other words a tight squeeze. Fortunately the return policy of the store allowed me to have it picked up and the money returned without any costs on my side. Sadly it's not possible to directly exchange the item, only to order it again, but I doubt I would do it for this piece of clothing anyway if they can't even get the size for it right. The rest of the clothes look and fit fine, though. I'm well-equipped for the summer now :)
Last Thursday Pieter went to a debate in Amsterdam on basically the issue of the downloading of copyrighted materials, currently legal for movies and music. The event included lots of politicians, lawyers, Dutch Pirate Party members and the Dutch RIAA/MPAA equivalent (Brein). He got to speak there as well, asking a question to the politicians on how they had imagined outlawing 'illegal' downloads could be enforced as methods like Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) are completely ineffective when it comes to detecting copyrighted materials, also because it can not determine whether it's a legal or illegal download. In other words, even if it could be made to work it would trip up on legal downloads from online music/movies stores just as often. In other words, it's utter tripe to think that a technological solution exists for this 'problem'. What would help more is actually making it possible for every online Dutch citizen to buy (legally) a digital copy of any music and movie (and games) currently available in brick and mortar stores.
At any rate it's a debate which will take much longer to settle, if it ever will. I do not believe that people will stop choosing for the easiest (and cheapest in terms of time and money) solution, whether it's downloading a movie from some not-so-legal Bittorrent site, or from a fully legal online store. It's often about instant gratification. If the user has to jump through a dozen hoops to find a legal digital copy of some song or movie, gets burdened with DRM which requires him to be online while playing the movie, disallows making any copies and uses a stupid video format which only plays in some proprietary player provided by the store, and many more inconveniences, then it should be clear that only the insane will opt for this method of self-torture.
Technically this debate isn't new with the arrival of P2P on internet, though. Even with VHS tapes there was already this affliction to put stupid trailers, FBI warnings and heavens know what else on the tape before the movie started, forcing people to fast forward through this junk before they could watch the movie. Copying the actual movie to another tape allowed one to skip this bit, even if the movie studios hated it when you did it.
Then when DVDs came along, which theoretically would allow one to skip directly to the main menu, they came along with a new 'feature': unskippable content, forcing one to yet again fast-forward through the same old trailers, FBI warnings and retarded anti-piracy clips. Yes, I would like a copy of that car, please. Thus people began to rip their DVDs to make it more convenient to do what they bought the DVD for in the first place: watching the friggin' movie. Insert DVD, play movie.
The application of crippling DRM to digital copies of movies and music is just a continuing trend in this regard, and equally doomed to failure. Things should be made more convenient for consumers if they'll even want to look at what you're offering them. Recently Ubisoft tried a new experiment with super-restrictive DRM on its games, basically requiring the player to be online to play at all, with any hiccup in online connectivity resulting in the game pausing, throwing one back to the menu and maybe saving your progress. This means you can not play games with this DRM while your internet is down, during an 8-hour long flight on your laptop, during a vacation to Middle of Nowhere, Somewhere, or when some jokers feel like DDoSing the Ubisoft servers. In other words it is a stupid idea which hasn't found much positive feedback among gamers.
In stark contrast there are companies like Blizzard who have never used severe DRM implementations in their games, which includes hits like Star Craft and (World of) Warcraft, and have even denounced the use of such crippling DRM. Star Craft II will require one to active the game online one time after installation, which is at least a plausible proposition, even if I despise any kind of 'activation' on a software product I just bought.
Nyanko's own games will not have any DRM. What ECD for example will have is a key which doesn't unlock the game or anything, but can be used to gain access to online features on the ECD website. This way one can play the game anywhere, any time, with or without paying for it, but for the full experience you will have to pay for access. We also accept that piracy exists, but will not attempt to sue our userbase into submission. Instead we hope that being customer-friendly will make people want to buy our games. You know, instead of forcing people to pay up, such as what for example the 'three-strikes' laws in France, Ireland and the UK are attempting.
Maya
The primary target appears to be my genitals, with painful open wounds which take a few days to close and stop hurting. Yesterday I also noticed a piece of skin missing on my forehead, apparently scratched away as it matches the size and direction of me inflicting such a wound with my fingernails. Today I noticed bloody scratches on my right arm.
If these are indeed injuries I have caused to myself during my sleep it would be the beginning of a disturbing new trend. Before I would mostly express my frustrations and pain by crying and by retreating into myself during a paralyzation attack. Self-mutilation was very uncommon and I was always conscious and aware of the event. Having read up on cases where people managed to become semi-awake and realizing the effects prolonged exposure to stress can have on this symptom, it's a worrying development.
I have had many occasions where I would wake up from my sleep drenched in sweat, even with the room being quite cool in temperature, sometimes with my fists tightly clenched across my chest. This would seem to suggest that my sleep is often restless, disturbed by night terrors. I really hope that I won't end up harming myself more than I already have, though. I have no idea what the limits are to what I can and will do to myself while asleep and whether it'll get any worse from now on. Maybe I'll just have to be restrained while in bed to prevent such things from happening again :(
Anyway, on a more positive note, Lilium Milestone 1 will soon undergo its unit testing. With some (a lot?) luck I could have it more or less working by next weekend. Then it's a matter of putting a good benchmark together, both in VHDL and THDL (the internal language for Lilium), and seeing whether Lilium can do better than 1% of the performance of the competition :)
I have been working on the Wild Fox project as well, together with the Mozilla developer (whose name I'm not sure I can use freely yet). I will be testing a build of Firefox with H.264 enabled, then if it works I'll backport it to the Firefox 3.6.3 code which will then be called Wild Fox 3.6.3. Wild Fox will follow the version numbering of Firefox. If the backporting works well an Alpha release of Wild Fox (WF) 3.6.3 will be released in one or two weeks time. This will be followed by as many Beta and RC releases as necessary to get it stable.
Within Nyanko I'm also still working together with Trevor on Even Cats Dream. The resource cooker utility app is done, we are now using the FBX resource format which will make the creation work flow more streamlined between 3D Studio Max, other creation tools and the game. The past few days I have spent putting some 3D models together for use in the first level of the game (to be recycled for other levels too, of course). Hopefully next week we can have something resembling the first level put together. Once we get the first one done things should go a lot faster :)
In other news, this week I ordered some new clothes and shoes from an online store and received them Thursday. Everything fit just fine aside from some shorts which - although marked as being size 36 - fit like a size 34. In other words a tight squeeze. Fortunately the return policy of the store allowed me to have it picked up and the money returned without any costs on my side. Sadly it's not possible to directly exchange the item, only to order it again, but I doubt I would do it for this piece of clothing anyway if they can't even get the size for it right. The rest of the clothes look and fit fine, though. I'm well-equipped for the summer now :)
Last Thursday Pieter went to a debate in Amsterdam on basically the issue of the downloading of copyrighted materials, currently legal for movies and music. The event included lots of politicians, lawyers, Dutch Pirate Party members and the Dutch RIAA/MPAA equivalent (Brein). He got to speak there as well, asking a question to the politicians on how they had imagined outlawing 'illegal' downloads could be enforced as methods like Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) are completely ineffective when it comes to detecting copyrighted materials, also because it can not determine whether it's a legal or illegal download. In other words, even if it could be made to work it would trip up on legal downloads from online music/movies stores just as often. In other words, it's utter tripe to think that a technological solution exists for this 'problem'. What would help more is actually making it possible for every online Dutch citizen to buy (legally) a digital copy of any music and movie (and games) currently available in brick and mortar stores.
At any rate it's a debate which will take much longer to settle, if it ever will. I do not believe that people will stop choosing for the easiest (and cheapest in terms of time and money) solution, whether it's downloading a movie from some not-so-legal Bittorrent site, or from a fully legal online store. It's often about instant gratification. If the user has to jump through a dozen hoops to find a legal digital copy of some song or movie, gets burdened with DRM which requires him to be online while playing the movie, disallows making any copies and uses a stupid video format which only plays in some proprietary player provided by the store, and many more inconveniences, then it should be clear that only the insane will opt for this method of self-torture.
Technically this debate isn't new with the arrival of P2P on internet, though. Even with VHS tapes there was already this affliction to put stupid trailers, FBI warnings and heavens know what else on the tape before the movie started, forcing people to fast forward through this junk before they could watch the movie. Copying the actual movie to another tape allowed one to skip this bit, even if the movie studios hated it when you did it.
Then when DVDs came along, which theoretically would allow one to skip directly to the main menu, they came along with a new 'feature': unskippable content, forcing one to yet again fast-forward through the same old trailers, FBI warnings and retarded anti-piracy clips. Yes, I would like a copy of that car, please. Thus people began to rip their DVDs to make it more convenient to do what they bought the DVD for in the first place: watching the friggin' movie. Insert DVD, play movie.
The application of crippling DRM to digital copies of movies and music is just a continuing trend in this regard, and equally doomed to failure. Things should be made more convenient for consumers if they'll even want to look at what you're offering them. Recently Ubisoft tried a new experiment with super-restrictive DRM on its games, basically requiring the player to be online to play at all, with any hiccup in online connectivity resulting in the game pausing, throwing one back to the menu and maybe saving your progress. This means you can not play games with this DRM while your internet is down, during an 8-hour long flight on your laptop, during a vacation to Middle of Nowhere, Somewhere, or when some jokers feel like DDoSing the Ubisoft servers. In other words it is a stupid idea which hasn't found much positive feedback among gamers.
In stark contrast there are companies like Blizzard who have never used severe DRM implementations in their games, which includes hits like Star Craft and (World of) Warcraft, and have even denounced the use of such crippling DRM. Star Craft II will require one to active the game online one time after installation, which is at least a plausible proposition, even if I despise any kind of 'activation' on a software product I just bought.
Nyanko's own games will not have any DRM. What ECD for example will have is a key which doesn't unlock the game or anything, but can be used to gain access to online features on the ECD website. This way one can play the game anywhere, any time, with or without paying for it, but for the full experience you will have to pay for access. We also accept that piracy exists, but will not attempt to sue our userbase into submission. Instead we hope that being customer-friendly will make people want to buy our games. You know, instead of forcing people to pay up, such as what for example the 'three-strikes' laws in France, Ireland and the UK are attempting.
Maya
Monday, 24 May 2010
Milestone Joys And Frights
A few weeks ago I finished reading an interesting fantasy book in the Forgotten Realms novels range by Clayton Emery titled 'Star of Cursrah'. I mention it because it's one of the few books which has left a significant impression on me. Note that the following section will probably contain a few spoilers, so skip it if you want to keep it a secret :)
The thing which isn't immediately apparent when you start reading this book is how the two storylines the book starts off with are related. Both have a head-strong girl with two male friends who would not be counted among those her parents would like to see her associate with. Both girls and their companions head off on their own paths, ignoring their wishes and desires of their parents and environment.
The first storyline can be considered to be the present day, with the titles of the first two chapters indicating that the second storyline is situated many thousands of years before the first. The relation between the two storylines doesn't become apparent until the present day girl, together with her friends, discover the ruins of a lost city in the desert. As the story develops it becomes clear that this city was the city of the princess in the second storyline, a city which has been razed to the ground, but which isn't dead yet. In a sense both girls, very much alike in their looks and attitudes, meet there in that city and the princess begs the other girl to prevent the city from awakening and do what she didn't all those years ago.
Is it a completely original story? Of course not, yet it felt to me that the story avoided the easy shortcuts and went for a proper experience, in which the reader has to figure things out much like in a detective story. I'm fairly sure it'd be a pretty awesome movie as well :)
Moving on, I'm fairly sure many of you have already read the news that a German court has upheld a software patent which the German patent office had initially rejected. There's also the news that the MPEG-LA, including Apple, has announced that they're putting a patent pool together for the VP8 codec which Google had previously open-sourced. This would give VP8 the same patent-encumbered status as H.264, pointing out yet once more that where there are software patents there can be no 'free' software and especially no innovation.
Meanwhile I'm making fair progress with the Wild Fox project, with a lot of help from the Mozilla developer. I hope to have GStreamer patched into the Firefox 3.6.3 code by next week. It's still fairly involved but with the pointers I'm getting from the patch maintainer it should be relatively easy going.
A major milestone I'm getting awfully close to is the completion of the first prototype of the Lilium FPGA/ASIC simulator I have been working on part-time for the past few years. Its design has gone through a number of rethinks and redesigns, and the code has seen a few rewrites, but with the work I have put into it the past few days it's finally nearing completion.
As a first prototype it won't be able to do that much. It supports enough instructions to for example simulate a simple AND gate. It is therefore primarily meant to test the foundations of the simulator in a simplified implementation, making debugging easier. The next prototype will feature innovative features such as a VHDL compiler, expanded instruction set and some GUI tools. For now I'll just be happy if the darn thing compiles and runs the way I want it to. Some nice benchmark figures compared to the competition would be a real gift :)
It's somewhat frightening to get this close to what could be a breakthrough in the Lilium project, though. When I initially started it it seemed fairly easy, turned out to be more complicated than anticipated, got nearly abandoned and restarted a few times and basically has become something which is now such a big part of me that I'd loathe for it to turn out to be a waste of time. My mind tells me that I did everything I could, that it is going to work, that I didn't overlook anything. My heart tells me that I missed something crucial in the design which will invalidate all my work and will make me look like a fool. Sometimes my heart really sucks.
Still, if this prototype works as expected and the analysis shows that all bottlenecks are where I expected them and are easy to resolve, it'll mean that I'll basically have a friggin' homerun on my hands as it'll soon turn into a product which hundreds if not more companies will want to pay tens of thousands of Euros a year in license costs for. If it works.
Forget bungee-jumping or skydiving, software development is where the real thrill is at ;)
Maya
The thing which isn't immediately apparent when you start reading this book is how the two storylines the book starts off with are related. Both have a head-strong girl with two male friends who would not be counted among those her parents would like to see her associate with. Both girls and their companions head off on their own paths, ignoring their wishes and desires of their parents and environment.
The first storyline can be considered to be the present day, with the titles of the first two chapters indicating that the second storyline is situated many thousands of years before the first. The relation between the two storylines doesn't become apparent until the present day girl, together with her friends, discover the ruins of a lost city in the desert. As the story develops it becomes clear that this city was the city of the princess in the second storyline, a city which has been razed to the ground, but which isn't dead yet. In a sense both girls, very much alike in their looks and attitudes, meet there in that city and the princess begs the other girl to prevent the city from awakening and do what she didn't all those years ago.
Is it a completely original story? Of course not, yet it felt to me that the story avoided the easy shortcuts and went for a proper experience, in which the reader has to figure things out much like in a detective story. I'm fairly sure it'd be a pretty awesome movie as well :)
Moving on, I'm fairly sure many of you have already read the news that a German court has upheld a software patent which the German patent office had initially rejected. There's also the news that the MPEG-LA, including Apple, has announced that they're putting a patent pool together for the VP8 codec which Google had previously open-sourced. This would give VP8 the same patent-encumbered status as H.264, pointing out yet once more that where there are software patents there can be no 'free' software and especially no innovation.
Meanwhile I'm making fair progress with the Wild Fox project, with a lot of help from the Mozilla developer. I hope to have GStreamer patched into the Firefox 3.6.3 code by next week. It's still fairly involved but with the pointers I'm getting from the patch maintainer it should be relatively easy going.
A major milestone I'm getting awfully close to is the completion of the first prototype of the Lilium FPGA/ASIC simulator I have been working on part-time for the past few years. Its design has gone through a number of rethinks and redesigns, and the code has seen a few rewrites, but with the work I have put into it the past few days it's finally nearing completion.
As a first prototype it won't be able to do that much. It supports enough instructions to for example simulate a simple AND gate. It is therefore primarily meant to test the foundations of the simulator in a simplified implementation, making debugging easier. The next prototype will feature innovative features such as a VHDL compiler, expanded instruction set and some GUI tools. For now I'll just be happy if the darn thing compiles and runs the way I want it to. Some nice benchmark figures compared to the competition would be a real gift :)
It's somewhat frightening to get this close to what could be a breakthrough in the Lilium project, though. When I initially started it it seemed fairly easy, turned out to be more complicated than anticipated, got nearly abandoned and restarted a few times and basically has become something which is now such a big part of me that I'd loathe for it to turn out to be a waste of time. My mind tells me that I did everything I could, that it is going to work, that I didn't overlook anything. My heart tells me that I missed something crucial in the design which will invalidate all my work and will make me look like a fool. Sometimes my heart really sucks.
Still, if this prototype works as expected and the analysis shows that all bottlenecks are where I expected them and are easy to resolve, it'll mean that I'll basically have a friggin' homerun on my hands as it'll soon turn into a product which hundreds if not more companies will want to pay tens of thousands of Euros a year in license costs for. If it works.
Forget bungee-jumping or skydiving, software development is where the real thrill is at ;)
Maya
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Controversy Feeding Frenzy
I'd like to start off with a bit of personal good news: I received a call from my lawyer earlier informing me that my official first name change to Maya has been approved and that after a 3 month complaint period I can begin changing all official documents to my new official name.
Now, on to the big, global news: a few days ago I launched a new Open Source project called 'Wild Fox', which aims to release builds of Firefox with features such as HTML 5 H.264 (AVC) video support added, as well as other features which the Mozilla project does not wish to add due to software patents. As the Wild Fox project is based in Europe where (pure) software patents do not apply, we can safely add such features without having to risk a patent infringement lawsuit. You can find more information on the project site at http://wildfox.sourceforge.net which will soon redirect to the permanent site at BerliOS.de, a German government-funded forge for open source software.
Naturally, no one in a software patent-encumbered country can use Wild Fox unless he or she pays the license costs associated with it. So far this affects everyone from the United States of America and South-Korea. As far as I can determine Japan doesn't seem encumbered, though I don't speak legalese well enough to call that one. It will have to come down to each individual to research the patent law in his or her country before downloading a copy of Wild Fox as I or my fellow developers can impossibly determine this for each single country in the world.
Since Slashdot first published a story about the Wild Fox project I have received a barrage of emails from people wanting to help, criticizing, asking for interviews and to tell me how much they admire me for having a medical issue like mine and not giving up. Two developers seem to have stuck for now, I'll see what they can do the coming days. A Mozilla developer has also pledged his assistance, specifically with the GStreamer framework which Wild Fox will be using to replace the existing rendering backend with. I got a few dozen more potential developers to pick from.
After Slashdot broke the story, it got picked up by Reddit.com, OSNews.com, WebWereld.nl and a few others. I just did an interview for The Register and another site wants to interview me as well. The comments on these stories seem to be split along the same lines as in the whole HTML 5 video debate, with one side complaining that I'm giving in to the evil conglomerates by adding a software-patent burdened codec to Firefox and should stick to 'open' codecs like Theora instead. The other side applauds the project and thinks it's a great move which could save Firefox.
As Pieter puts it, it's not the browsers which determine which codec will be used, but the sites people visit. If sites like YouTube only offer HTML 5 video in H.264 format, people will use a browser like Chrome, Opera or even Internet Explorer 9 once it comes out. The browser is just the tool one uses to visit a site with, after all, and if Firefox doesn't allow one to view video on a site due to some idealistic point of view, they will drop it for another browser. Maybe if they had 90+% marketshare like IE once did they could have pulled it off, but not now, not like this.
So it's about letting people decide which codec will be used the most, without trying to force anyone's hand. What it is also about is fighting the at least in my eyes ridiculous notion of having to pay license fees for the use of particular pieces of software. When people claim that I'm selling out to the MPEG-LA, the organization collecting the license feeds for H.264, they seem to miss this point completely. I do not intend to ever pay the MPEG-LA even one cent, nor to have them collect it from anyone else. As long as only people outside software patent-encumbered countries use H.264, MPEG-LA will never see a dime from their patent pool investment. Ergo the companies which form MPEG-LA will have wasted their investment in software patents.
How things will really work out I'm not sure, but I do believe that this is the right approach. Software patents are an evil which can only destroy innovation and progress in more than just the software industries. My own company, Nyanko, would be wiped away due to software patent lawsuits if they were valid here in the EU. I'm grateful to the European Parliament for taking a stand against software patents, despite juggernauts like Microsoft lobbying for allowing them.
The article at The Register just went online: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/18/wild_fox_adds_h_dot_264_to_firefox/
The coming weeks will be interesting indeed.
Maya
Now, on to the big, global news: a few days ago I launched a new Open Source project called 'Wild Fox', which aims to release builds of Firefox with features such as HTML 5 H.264 (AVC) video support added, as well as other features which the Mozilla project does not wish to add due to software patents. As the Wild Fox project is based in Europe where (pure) software patents do not apply, we can safely add such features without having to risk a patent infringement lawsuit. You can find more information on the project site at http://wildfox.sourceforge.net which will soon redirect to the permanent site at BerliOS.de, a German government-funded forge for open source software.
Naturally, no one in a software patent-encumbered country can use Wild Fox unless he or she pays the license costs associated with it. So far this affects everyone from the United States of America and South-Korea. As far as I can determine Japan doesn't seem encumbered, though I don't speak legalese well enough to call that one. It will have to come down to each individual to research the patent law in his or her country before downloading a copy of Wild Fox as I or my fellow developers can impossibly determine this for each single country in the world.
Since Slashdot first published a story about the Wild Fox project I have received a barrage of emails from people wanting to help, criticizing, asking for interviews and to tell me how much they admire me for having a medical issue like mine and not giving up. Two developers seem to have stuck for now, I'll see what they can do the coming days. A Mozilla developer has also pledged his assistance, specifically with the GStreamer framework which Wild Fox will be using to replace the existing rendering backend with. I got a few dozen more potential developers to pick from.
After Slashdot broke the story, it got picked up by Reddit.com, OSNews.com, WebWereld.nl and a few others. I just did an interview for The Register and another site wants to interview me as well. The comments on these stories seem to be split along the same lines as in the whole HTML 5 video debate, with one side complaining that I'm giving in to the evil conglomerates by adding a software-patent burdened codec to Firefox and should stick to 'open' codecs like Theora instead. The other side applauds the project and thinks it's a great move which could save Firefox.
As Pieter puts it, it's not the browsers which determine which codec will be used, but the sites people visit. If sites like YouTube only offer HTML 5 video in H.264 format, people will use a browser like Chrome, Opera or even Internet Explorer 9 once it comes out. The browser is just the tool one uses to visit a site with, after all, and if Firefox doesn't allow one to view video on a site due to some idealistic point of view, they will drop it for another browser. Maybe if they had 90+% marketshare like IE once did they could have pulled it off, but not now, not like this.
So it's about letting people decide which codec will be used the most, without trying to force anyone's hand. What it is also about is fighting the at least in my eyes ridiculous notion of having to pay license fees for the use of particular pieces of software. When people claim that I'm selling out to the MPEG-LA, the organization collecting the license feeds for H.264, they seem to miss this point completely. I do not intend to ever pay the MPEG-LA even one cent, nor to have them collect it from anyone else. As long as only people outside software patent-encumbered countries use H.264, MPEG-LA will never see a dime from their patent pool investment. Ergo the companies which form MPEG-LA will have wasted their investment in software patents.
How things will really work out I'm not sure, but I do believe that this is the right approach. Software patents are an evil which can only destroy innovation and progress in more than just the software industries. My own company, Nyanko, would be wiped away due to software patent lawsuits if they were valid here in the EU. I'm grateful to the European Parliament for taking a stand against software patents, despite juggernauts like Microsoft lobbying for allowing them.
The article at The Register just went online: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/18/wild_fox_adds_h_dot_264_to_firefox/
The coming weeks will be interesting indeed.
Maya
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Torn Apart
Yesterday I found out what happens when I receive a message from the UMCG hospital welcoming me back, but only and only if I follow their rules and protocols: a nearly continuous paralyzation attack. It evoked such impossibly strong feelings inside me that I virtually shut down.
It also forced me to question a number of things, such as what I really want regarding my body, and why I did decide to move more towards a female role instead of leaving things as they were. It's still very clear, though. I can't become or know what I want to become at this point as I don't know what I am now other than some intersexual one-person freak show. A medical resolution is required there.
Further, I did move towards a more feminine role not because of some silly desire to become female or anything, but to become more like what I feel my body and I are like; I have a feminine body, so pretending it's masculine as I have done for 21 years prior would be stupid, foolish and suicidal, as history shows. I still don't give a damn about 'male' or 'female' at this point, just 'me'.
What yesterday's attacks showed is how severely the current disconnect between my rational and emotional side has become. Only through actively suppressing, basically tearing off parts of myself, have I been able to more or less function normally lately. It would be hard for those who have never been forced into such a situation to really understand how much of a horror it is to have to live like this. It's akin to having to bite off your own leg or arm to survive, just without the blood and gore.
So now I'll probably be going to the UMCG in a few months from now to have a little talk during which it will probably be concluded that they'll gladly help me pretend to be a pretty little filthy, disgusting transsexual freak, but won't lift a finger to deal with the real issue at hand. This is what has happened before. This is what will happen again. At least I will have given them their last chance.
Is there really any help for a case like mine? Will I only get this help ten years from now when I'll finally have the money to afford it? Will I even live that long? Just living is becoming so bloody tough.
What only keeps me going right now are the things my intellectual side occupies itself with. Tidbits such as Pieter's new supervisor expressing interest in the FPGA/ASIC simulator I'm developing when he mentioned it recently was one thing which kind of put me back onto track. I must feel like I am in control, like there is something to live for. Not just a list of things I can't or never will do, including sexuality, friend- and relationships and other 'normal' things, or things I'm about to fail on, but some real, honest-to-god solid foundations to build a life upon.
I can't live my life in isolation, and yet this is actually the situation I find myself in. Maybe I'm just not good at being horrifically selfish like virtually everyone else and should have opted for something which is easier to sympathize with, such as horrific physical injuries or so. It's so stupid to only have people realize what the heck was going and express their regrets after one has committed suicide already. That's what makes it so pointless, and physical mutilation the more attractive option.
No threats, just observations. And a desperate cry for help.
Maya
It also forced me to question a number of things, such as what I really want regarding my body, and why I did decide to move more towards a female role instead of leaving things as they were. It's still very clear, though. I can't become or know what I want to become at this point as I don't know what I am now other than some intersexual one-person freak show. A medical resolution is required there.
Further, I did move towards a more feminine role not because of some silly desire to become female or anything, but to become more like what I feel my body and I are like; I have a feminine body, so pretending it's masculine as I have done for 21 years prior would be stupid, foolish and suicidal, as history shows. I still don't give a damn about 'male' or 'female' at this point, just 'me'.
What yesterday's attacks showed is how severely the current disconnect between my rational and emotional side has become. Only through actively suppressing, basically tearing off parts of myself, have I been able to more or less function normally lately. It would be hard for those who have never been forced into such a situation to really understand how much of a horror it is to have to live like this. It's akin to having to bite off your own leg or arm to survive, just without the blood and gore.
So now I'll probably be going to the UMCG in a few months from now to have a little talk during which it will probably be concluded that they'll gladly help me pretend to be a pretty little filthy, disgusting transsexual freak, but won't lift a finger to deal with the real issue at hand. This is what has happened before. This is what will happen again. At least I will have given them their last chance.
Is there really any help for a case like mine? Will I only get this help ten years from now when I'll finally have the money to afford it? Will I even live that long? Just living is becoming so bloody tough.
What only keeps me going right now are the things my intellectual side occupies itself with. Tidbits such as Pieter's new supervisor expressing interest in the FPGA/ASIC simulator I'm developing when he mentioned it recently was one thing which kind of put me back onto track. I must feel like I am in control, like there is something to live for. Not just a list of things I can't or never will do, including sexuality, friend- and relationships and other 'normal' things, or things I'm about to fail on, but some real, honest-to-god solid foundations to build a life upon.
I can't live my life in isolation, and yet this is actually the situation I find myself in. Maybe I'm just not good at being horrifically selfish like virtually everyone else and should have opted for something which is easier to sympathize with, such as horrific physical injuries or so. It's so stupid to only have people realize what the heck was going and express their regrets after one has committed suicide already. That's what makes it so pointless, and physical mutilation the more attractive option.
No threats, just observations. And a desperate cry for help.
Maya
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