The right fucking decisions

Posted by lemiffe in Life, Literature, Politics, Society on Nov 4th, 2011 | 0 comments

The right fucking decisions. That’s what people should learn to make.

If people made the right fucking decisions, the world would not only seem better, it would be better. Less car crashes, less time wasted, less unemployment, less abortions, less suicides, less disasters, less stupidity.

• Action-reaction: you decide to marry the wrong person, you have a child, you divorce, the child grows up. The child either becomes l/g/b/t, kills someone, becomes a criminal, commits suicide, or in a few cases, lives a “normal” life.
• Action-reaction: you are skilled in arts but pursue a career in finance to become an investment banker, your ego outshines your skill, you make bad choices, the market collapses, you lose everything, you kill yourself.
• Action-reaction: you are bullied in school, you feel you are being bullied for life, you feel so much better than the rest inside, you feel powerful, you take a gun, you go to school, you shoot everybody.

It’s not hard to make the right decisions, just think before you act, measure your options, make the best choice.

When it doesn’t work out, you know you tried your best, and it will probably turn out better next time.

If you lose your money, break your mobile, crash your parents car, befriend the wrong person… think, measure, then act… Next time. Tomorrow never comes when tomorrow is all you wait for. Today is the only time, this moment.

Lets stop acting like mindless fools and get our act together, lets make the right fucking decisions, for the sake of humanity.

How Police could effectively pre-empt riots

Posted by lemiffe in A.I., Computers, Life, News, Politics, Society, Technology on Aug 10th, 2011 | 0 comments

Over the past few days we have seen violence escalate dramatically in different cities across England, with London being the primary location. Acts of violence, rioting, looting, and arson have taken place at night for several days.

I have been attached to the BBC News coverage through their website and I saw an interesting tweet posted there:

At first I thought. Pre-empt where the next bout would take place? How on earth would they manage that?

But it actually isn’t that hard. They have a mountain of CCTV data, they have a good amount of servers, all they lack is a bit of artificial intelligence.

The best way I can think of to determine where possible bouts of violence could sprout in what seems like an apparent random non-deterministic method of choice is as follows:

The IT team of the police should annotate the direction of each CCTV camera, including which streets are in view and the coordinates.

Afterwards, the CCTV cameras should be plotted on a 2D map, as vectors (pointing in the direction they are facing, with the length of the vector being the distance the camera covers).

Additionally, all points of interest should be mapped, such as shopping centres, residential areas, commercial areas, shops with high-value items, and shops with low-value items. Most of this data can be readily obtained from Google Maps, amongst other online maps. This data can be extracted and annotated with the values we require (such as the value of the goods sold per area, etc.)

If you think this is a very hard task, it is not. A very simple way of doing this would be to go to the website (or ask by phone) of each major retailer and chain for a list of addresses of their shops. Google Maps can plot them on a map using a spreadsheet as input. There you go, simple as that!

A Machine Learning program could be developed using WEKA (for instance), in which an SVN is programmed to take data from the map-plot, where priority spots include places where high-value items are sold. Additionally, it would take data from each CCTV camera.

Now, how do we represent the data from CCTV cameras? One way would be to take a selection of pixels from each camera, measure the amount of change for a second, and wherever there is a large enough change in different areas of the same camera, we might have a lot of movement going on. So we automatically annotate the data per CCTV camera as having “movement” or “no movement”. Additionally, a range from 0-1 would produce better results (hopefully).

So now we run an SVN machine on the data and hopefully come up with some interesting results.

What could essentially be obtained from this is a vector describing the movement of as mass of people from camera to camera, this vector would be projected on the 2d map. Multiple vectors could be plotted at the same time if there were multiple riots taking place at the same time in the city. A confidence level can be given to each vector (assuming we have built in a few mechanisms to differentiate people from cars, etc). The places of interest could be mapped as hotspots, and furthermore we can predict paths to possible places of interest, derived from the speed and direction of each vector.

So there you go. If you belong to the MET, please share this blog post with your boss (or the IT team) and get working on a system to perform such actions, it would certainly help prevent further stupidity in the future. 6,000 police officers should be able to deal with outbreaks of crime provided they knew where the rioters would be gathering and where they are heading.

Credit is NOT bad

Posted by lemiffe in Economy, Life, Society on Oct 3rd, 2010 | 0 comments

Credit is not bad

But the way we use it IS

Edilberto Salazar, 35, married, with one daughter, is a man that I met over two years ago while working for an IT firm in Mexico. This man owed over $200,000 (£10,000+) pesos to the bank, more than $100,000 (£5,000+) pesos in taxes, plus his mortgage and personal credits at department stores. He is one of those guys that saturates one credit card, then applies for another to which he transfers all his overdue credit from his other card, and so on.

He is just one of many people I have met in several years that has the same problem. Endless calls and letters, harassment, and bad looks from friends and family. The truth is that he is just one in millions caught in the same situation.

Credit was created as a way of obtaining something we want *now* and paying for it later, at an interest, of course. Interest rates and other surcharges are the building blocks of banks, lending companies and other financial institutions. In fewer words: Banks charge for the “benefit” of lending you the money you need right now.

But it’s not just money nowadays, is it? Back in the old days it was mostly about a means to purchasing the home you’ve always wanted, or paying for a costly operation, or buying something you really need urgently. Nowadays the amount of things you can do by credit is enormous: Clothes, home appliances, cars, luxury items, handbags, mobile phones, phone contract payments, payments for other debt you may have in other financial institutions, education, even a haircut for goodness sake. Just about anything can be “purchased” on credit, and if the store doesn’t have its own credit line, you can probably still pay with your Amex, Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, etc.

But the concept of “free money” is what has started the massive wave of debt. We saw it recently with the credit crunch, but we’ve seen it previously countless times. And it’s not about individual people any more, it’s about entire countries indebted to others.

Why did this last credit crunch occur? Because of the sub-prime mortgages, the ratings of CDO. MRS, ABS and other deals, the lending, selling and packaging of these deals amongst banks and world-wide financial institutions, etc. They thought the gold mine would never end, and when it looked like it was depleting they found another way of marketing and selling the same deals as new products to investors, creating new indexes in the stock market, and eventually tying everything up in a way that a credit crunch became unavoidable.

But it’s not the banks fault, nor the investors, they are just looking for ways to make more money. The fault lies within the general public, as described by Tetsuya Ishikawa in his book “How I caused the credit crunch”. Credit allows you to have a house before you can pay for it, clothes without any money on you, and more importantly, operations and medical care when you do not own enough money to pay for them.

We all need money for certain things in life, but we also ought to have some decency (or put more straightly: intelligence) and analyse all options into consideration. Credit is a tool, an aid through difficult times, it is not free money, and it often results in a much higher cost than what you could have paid originally for it. Interest is a killer.

So if this opened a wound in you, try to sort out your problems, and lay off credit for life unless REALLY needed.

Culpa

Posted by lemiffe in Life, Society on Jul 5th, 2010 | 0 comments

Otro claro ejemplo que detalla como somos los Méxicanos. Siempre buscando quien fué el de la culpa.

The Difference Between Living and Living Right

Posted by lemiffe in Life, Society, Technology on Jan 5th, 2010 | 0 comments

When you die you won’t dream of gold, electronics and new clothes. When you die you won’t dream of reaching that new position in your company, you won’t dream of becoming the best guitarist in the world, you won’t dream of finding treasure, becoming a famous banker or being the president. When you die, what will make you pull your hair out, what will turn it grey? What will be the cause of your stress, what will keep you sleepless? The thoughts of injustice? The thoughts of a lost child?

Well, who ever said the world is good? You can’t bring back those who are gone. You can’t live on memories, you can’t live on dreams. When you’re dead none of that matters.

What does it feel like to live right?

Does it feel like having extra time and stopping by for an ice-cream without feeling the rush of getting back to work? Does it feel like spending Christmas with your family and having a nice roast turkey for dinner? Does it feel like lying down on a distant beach, turning off your blackberry, and watching the children play while enjoying a tequila sunrise?

Well, it certainly doesn’t feel right to feel bad about being stuck in traffic, with the pressure of arriving at work on time every single day. It certainly doesn’t feel right to feel peer pressure while awaiting a promotion that might be given to someone else, someone less capable. It certainly doesn’t feel right to feel the world depends on you, and if you do a single wrong move, if you say something you shouldn’t in front of a TV camera, or do something stupid, the world would crumble down on you. It certainly doesn’t feel right.

First of all we must acknowledge that even though life does not have a sole aim, and we don’t know entirely why we are here, we are already here, and we’ve got to do the best we can with our time.

My second point is that we are here to help. This was something my best friend, my girlfriend, told me. We are not here because we MUST be. Even though a company’s success may lie upon us, we should not be the sole factor in that success in the first place, and if it fails it was meant to fail. A business can’t rely on one person, just as a nation can’t rely on one man.

Decision Stress

We are not to be held accountable by other people’s decisions. If someone takes a decision involving you, and it fails, we are not to blame. If the blame falls upon you for someone else’s actions, take action if it can be proven, if it can’t then don’t stress about it. After all it’s only a job, a car, another person, an animal, a house, an important document, a material object, etc.

Death and Work Stress

If your cat dies, sure, you probably should be sad for a couple of days, sure you should feel the stress of losing a loved one. But if you still feel that stress years later, something is wrong. If you get thrown out of work, sure, you should probably feel a bit bad about losing your job. Maybe for a day, maybe for a week, and that’s where it should stop. Once I read something similar to this: Pain is inevitable, suffering is unnecessary. After all, we can feel a blow to our head, it causes us pain, but to suffer over it for years would be stupid. That’s life.

And talking about material things, the reason I write this post is that a cartoon inspired me a few days ago with some ideas concerning technology and its link to stress.

Technology Stress

Imagine you are a pirate in the 16th or 17th century, you live on a boat, you are barely in contact with technology apart from the one that forms part of your ship. You suddenly find a place in the ocean that takes you up in a whirlwind towards the sky. You land in this mystical world in the clouds, a place where civilisation seems to have advanced at much greater strides than it did in the lower world.

So you and your men get down from the ship, meet some people, and are invited to have tea in one of their houses. Then you find out about Dials. They are devices like seashells that perform different actions. There are many types of dials. Ball dials release a puff of air that forms into a cloud. Breath dials are capable of storing air, functioning as propellers for vehicles. Flame dials absorb and release fire. Flash dials absorb and release light. Flavour dials can absorb and release smells. Lamp dials release light, usually used in households. Tone dials record and play sound.

Imagine people live in this way, using devices to communicate, devices to see, devices to fight, devices to move, devices to smell, devices to feel connected. And you as newcomer are astonished at the marvellous powers of these dials.

The problem is education

But you also become aware that these dials can be used for good as well as evil. And you also become aware of how addicted the people from this nation have become to these devices. They need them to move, to talk, to see at night. What would they do without them? What would we do without them? It clicked instantly, we are these people, we are people who have evolved, to a point in which newer generations have lost understanding of the value of knowledge and curiosity, and have become dependant on technology for everything.

My father would walk so many miles every day to get to the train station, then he’d travel 40 or 50 minutes to get to the city to be able to go to school. Now everyone wants everything to go faster, better, safer. Everything must be more comfortable. But with these commodities prices have gone up, so people use credit to buy them, and then money seems to become irrelevant, so people spend non-existent money on technology that seems to last less every time, and buy new items when they get broken.

This made me aware of how many things we have on earth, and how instead of us owning them, they have started to own us instead.

This is the world we live in, a world in which we have so much to do, so much to use, so much technology. We have become so used to technology that we have stopped appreciating it as something that helps us, and we have started taking it for granted, as something we need. This is partially the reason why the new generations have stopped wanting to know how things work, like cars, radios, computers, and they take their existence for granted… expecting them to work, and if they don’t, they will take them back for warranty, and if it has expired then they will buy new ones.

So what does this have to do with stress?

Everything and nothing. Technology doesn’t need to be a stress-factor. The reason why it causes stress in some of us, and none in others is how we use it.

• Your blackberry doesn’t have to be on 24/7.
• You don’t HAVE to check your email before leaving the house, on your mobile just after you left, right after getting off the car, arriving at your desk, constantly throughout the day till lunch time, etc.
• You don’t have to see your daily commute in your car as a mere stressful travel session.
• You don’t have to see going to use the toilet as a waste of time.
• You don’t have to watch TV a certain amount of hours at night to get your mind off what you did in the day.
• You don’t have to be up to date on all the news at every single moment when the news only brings information about destruction, problems, death, murder, etc.

All of these factors are important. I figured it out myself a few months ago when I started taking a break on Sundays from using the computer. The first 2 Sundays were pleasant, in which I took a stroll around town and felt amazing. The 3rd Sunday I started to feel like it was a chore, to stop using the computer, and I felt the urge to get back to it.

Then I stopped viewing it as a necessity, to release the need to use the computer. I started viewing it as something that could be done, but wasn’t needed to be done. So whenever I had free time I didn’t rush to the computer, I could choose. And when I did use it, I did not feel the pressure of needing things to be done. You advance at your own pace, you can do a bit of email, but if it’s killing you then do something else.

Don’t feel like everyone is on top of you. You do what you can, you help people with what you can, you optimise time, but you keep things at your own rhythm. Most importantly you should remember that you are helping people just as you are helping yourself, there is no need, everything is not on top of you, you are merely someone that can help ease things a bit for someone else and for yourself.

So when you are feeling really bad, like the world has turned against you, think about how many people are in situations that are worse by far. Think about the people that can’t hear, talk or see. Think about those that lost their limbs while fighting for their country. Think about those that are lying comatose, without a chance of life. Think about your children, and their children, will they appreciate the value of a computer?

Will they appreciate the value of a lightbulb? Or is it too late? Can we still teach them the value? Can we still teach ourselves?

Then think about technology, think about the following items, think about what they represent to you, how you use them, not how they use you. Ease your pain.

Remember who built them, remember how much they cost, remember why you use them, remember to maintain them, have you checked the oil in your car? Have you bothered in calling the plumber? Leaving things till too late often creates more damage, and more cost. Don’t spend too much on credit, try not to use it at all. Don’t stress about needing too many things, you only need water, food, and a home after all.

Metallica once said: Nothing else matters.