VR as the next era's canvas-

Idea is an archetype of which a corresponding being in phenomenal reality is an imperfect replica. ~Plato

Human being has been actively looking for channel to express their idea efficiently.

In the renaissance era, artist and musicion express their idea through painting and ochestra respectively. In modern age, we have movie that combine both the motion picture and sound and this is called "multimedia" nowsaday. Last, with the born of information technology we gave birth to "interactive media".

Electronic game is the leading implementation in this field. It has been so widely spread that you can see electronic game as the new way for idea expressing. It use the combination of interactivity together with 2/3D image and music to immerse its audience (player) into the virtual world that setup by its creator.

However, all of the media channel above only play arround with the hearing and viewing senses. In secondary science class, we have learnt that human beings have 5 senses: view, hear, smell, taste and heptic that includes pain, touch, hot, cold and pressure. From here, we could easily predict that the ultimate canvas for an artist should consits of all of these senses!

The current technology that actively pushing us to this goal is the Virtual Reality. Some of you might say: Hey, I never been to Genting or Disney land before and from where I get intouch with VR technology? VR has affected alot of field in computer science and one of the deepest influences is the gaming technology.

Undeniable, all the 3D graphics technology came from VR research. Thus, one can says that game is a subset of VR. In fact, I believe most of the VR researcher is now working in game industry.

When we talk about VR, we will think how far it can go. Now, what is ultimate Virtual Reality?
I always like to use Hollywood movie: The Matrix as the example. The world where Matrix created could be called the ultimate virtual reality world. Once you plug in, you never know it is real or virtual. All your sensors can be prefectly simulated and that is how we immerse(trap) someone inside a virtual world. Anyway, this will be a very far things as we not even able to generate prefect viewing.

In current stage, most of the VR research is focusing on 3D graphic and interaction technic. A little bit on heptic feedback where user can sense limited feedback on touch sensors, such as temperature and surface texturing. Heard that research on smell generation is carrying out by perfume company.

Thus, we can be sure that art is no more an exclusive terms for graphic worker or musician. Programmer that using programming to code their virtual world out is an artist as well. They are even the greatest artist as art work that they created is far more immerse than plain graphic or sound.

Fighting against spam

The Internet's problems can be explained as a result of the widespread use of closed source software, particularly the products of the Microsoft monopoly. Most Internet-based attacks exploit bugs in software produced by Microsoft. Although bugs will be inevitable in any new software, in closed source software, they can only be corrected by the software producer itself. This last point is crucial to understanding how closed source software makes the Internet unsafe.

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1360/

SPAM is a product from commercial as well as "forwarder".
A commercial send spam for business advertising while a forwarder send spam mainly for human's nature behaviour.

Currently, my yahoo mail's inbox is mainly use for spam mail storing, while I have another folder that i store those "real and important" email. Most of the time, I leave my inbox full with SPAM mail without empty them or report them as junk mail to yahoo. I just don't wants to spend effort on this as my exprience tells me that doing so is time wasting and just plain useless: These message still keep coming and coming and coming!

Internet is the best platform for SPAMMER as it is a "nobody control domain". You could complain to your ISP and they will tell you to upgrade your mailbox by paying extra for spam filtering feature. Althought I don't agree with this as I think that combating SPAM is the basic feature that ISP should provide in no cost but I still accept that spam filtering services does cost as it required extra resources and efforts.

With the growth of mobile user, SPAM is now common on SMS too. My handphone inbox always get flood by this RUSH SMS advertisment. I can't use the same strategy that i applied to my Yahoo mail (ignore) on handphone anymore as sms can quickly fill up my handphone memory. It is the time where I wish for a SMS client that allow me to set my filter rules. Also, thanks to monopolize of Telco, I can't block junk message at the gateway level. This can get worst when they decided to charge SMS at the receiver side.

Shit! Why should I pay for message that i don't wants to read?!

Obviously, monopoly is the biggest reason for spammer to growth. It is not a fair play market. User have no right and choice in protecting their privacy. I have just send a feedback to my telco maxis regarding the matters... I not even dare to fill in my handphone number in the feedback form.... and I am looking forward for their reply.

End user that like to forward junk mail can be categorize in spammer group too. I was one of them where I like to forward interesting email that i received from friends to anothers friend group of mine. I thought they will like to read them as well until one day i got one of my friend that did the same to me. I started to realize how irritating it is and stop doing that anymore.

Forward email or message is one of the efficient channel where urban legend get to spread itself in lightspeed (even faster than electron move!). I believe that spreading news and info is something that planted inside human gene since long ago. However, spreading news without analyze on its truth and by not realizing its impact to the society is just a stupid act.

Chinese wisdom stated that "rumour stop by intelligentzia". This make me think of an incident that happends in MMU fews weeks ago during tsunami strike: Some of the students spreading message about the death of a former lecturer and his family when he was in vacation at pulau phuket. The university students are expected to be the intelligentzia by the society and yet they could be that dissapointed....

Information technology speed up the transfer rate of information. Too, it enable rumours, urban legend, junk message to spread faster and wider. Thus, the user should think twice before s/he clicking the forward or send button.

Life is all about finding similarity from differences & vice verse

You can categorize your daily activities into these two categories: finding similarity from differences and finding differences from similarity.

When we are praticing our math subject, we are doing these two things. The left hand side are so much difference than the righ hand side but they are both similar in the sense that they have the same value; yeap.. although in difference forms.

When you are making a choice, you are trying to find differences from similarity. For example: choose which game to play: RPG or RTS. Both are game, the differences is their genre.

When you try to group somethings, you are finding similarity from differences. Red Green Blue are all difference colour, but they are still color!

From my view, science tells us that everything in this world is alike: they are all atom in the basic elements. All of them have energy, and we know this energy is constant througout the whole universe. It wont be less or more by tranforming its form from one to another. Thus, you can just pick up anything in this universe and say that: they are all the same in the basic form.

My oppose still could disagree with me by viewing things from the upper level: Red and blue are still difference because they are just difference! Yeap, he is not wrong, neither me.

Thus, how we see things are very much depends on ourselve: Our mind, our emotion, our sense ...our common sense..... And if we wants to see it from a difference angle, it will be very much difference.

Most of the time, we just get blur up and not able to see the differences are actually similar. Just like working on math question, to prove the right hand side actually have the same value with the left hand side could be not easy.

However, sometime we seem to take everything the same and ended up unable to differenciate what is black and what is white. Although gray does exist, but unable to make a solid decision and with a unclear goal wont beable to make things happens, or even lead us to the dead end.

"finding similarity from differences" and "finding differences from similarity" just seem to be the idea of Taoism, where you have ying and yang(binary), and the mixture between this two fundamental elements (1 and 0 ) build up everything in this world. Whenever something go wrong, it is because of the unbalances caused by these two elements. Also, you can't just live with either one because both of them 'is' the one.

I cant tell you how the detail work as it is naturally an abstract things... Not even I know...
The answer to it might just be the ultimate answer to this world.

In conclusion, by understand this concept, it not only one can apply to math, but also the way s/he interact with people, the way s/he work with art(drawing, music...) or science (programming)...

Just make sure you think of it once a while so that you can ensure: differences and similarity do live together. It will helps you to be a person that is open and understanding.

Malaysian lack of a comman legendary world?

We all know Malaysia is a multiracial country with multiculture and having a multimedia super corridor.. opps.. the last things din seem related to what i going to talk here.

To the west, Loard of the Ring is their legendary world. Tolkien created this virtual world because he saw the arabian has "1001 Arabian Night", chinese has "Journey to the West" and these are what his Great Britain lack of.

To us, the Malaysian, we always find there is lack of a "symbolic-things / logo / theme / style / feeling" that can be use to represents our multi culture society when working with media. To make everybody happy, we often ended up doing rojak.

Lets say one days I get investsments to create an online game and I wish to create something that is local which is unique and yet represents this multiracial society (so that everyone in this country would be my player).. what will be my game world setting?

Hang Tuah + Puteri Gunung Ledang + Puteri Hang Li Poh + Orang Laut + Orang Bugis + Chinese Businessman + Indian Workers + Brithish Police + Japanese Army + ..... ????

I see great potential in Malay classic story; I see lots of chinese classic legendary too, which most of them have been used to create game by Taiwan and China; Same things go to Indian where most of their classic story might has already being developed to game in India. Sorry for the others native like orang asli (I don't know much about their culture backgrounds)...

In conclusion, I believe all races in Malaysia do has their own unique classic story, which will be very interesting if all of them are being transformed into virtual game world.

However, with limited resource (money & time), I can only have one from the 3 choices:

1) Use each of them saperately, this year do Hang Jebat, next year do Malaysian version of journey to the west.... and so on.

2) Rojak (mix) all of them together, this will bring up lots of contradict issues, such as a Malay that playing my online game where his avatar need to buy cha siu pau (which will be interprate as non halal pork food) for healing... Some might suggest I can change to pau emas, but for sure that will definately affects the storyline.

3) Come out a whole new virtual world that all of each races' elements are integrated but you wont know which is from what races as they have been tweaked so much. I will be facing challenge just like writing the LOTR for Malaysia.

What should I do? dunno... well... last, maybe... I will just ended up using those common setting.. king vs devil... maggot... space war....