Kireatic

I was browsing YouTube today, as I do, and looking at my recommended videos, which as per usual included some Miku Hatsune music. Those who know me will also be familiar with my fondness for the robotic singer, and her music videos. However, this video actually rather upset me, despite the song being quite pleasant to listen to.

The song details the end of Miku’s life, or existence as it were, and from what I can tell, is as she develops a fault in her program, and loses the the ability to sing, her thoughts and her memories, piece by piece. Brought a tear to my eye; but why so? She’s a robot, and not an intelligent one at that, the actual Miku is nothing more than a collection of voice samples. This was nothing more than the death of a persona, an avatar, of something which didn’t really exist in the first place. But it got me thinking.

Artificial intelligence, in my view, is an inevitability. The human brain is simply an organic computer, simply complex due to it’s inherently haphazard nature. Eventually electronics will be able to mimic the brain, and we will have digital conciousness. Putting a pause on the nature of conciousness, I’d like to focus on what a digital life would mean. Would it have the same rights as organic life? Or would that depend on the complexity of the consciousness? It probably would – we don’t all consider an ant to have the same right to life as a human, so a simple conciousness with only a small capacity to learn would probably be far easier switched off than one with a fully working personality on a human level.

So what if that Miku avatar existed like that. If she had feelings, and wants and thoughts on a level at least as complex as a human? If she developed a fault in her program, the obvious solution is to reinstall – like when you want to solve all Windows problems, you reformat, right? But that would likely mean removing her memories and personality development, and you’d be – for want of a better term – killing the entity that you started with and replacing her with a new one who just happened to have the same origin. Twins don’t turn out to have identical personalities. So how hard would that decision be? Should an AI have the same value to their life as a human? More importantly, could you do it?

When does a collection of computer algorithms start to be a person?

Come to that, when does a collection of instincts start to be human?

Going through the backup of the old blog, I saw my epic rant, spanning all the little bits and pieces that annoyed me a year ago today.

I think that this new incarnation should be christened with it’s very own rant, and so I shall endevour to let loose some of the steam I have had building up towards creation in general posthaste. So, without further ado:

Lack of 64-bit drivers
64-bit operating systems have been around a long time now, ladies and gentlemen of the hardware driver coding industry. There isn’t a large excuse not to have 64-bit drivers for any product you offer vista drivers for, at the very least! My poor scanner has been left berefit by you people!

The missing nView panel
NVIDIA used to have a lovely little control panel, key among it’s features was a great capability to deal with dual screens, even stretching the taskbar between them automatically. Was great. Then they moved to the Control Panel (with caps), and that feature vanished. I’m not sure who to blame, nVIDIA or Microsoft, but I want my dual screen taskbar back. Ultramon messes up explorer on 7 too often.

Chrome’s lack of Tab Preview
I read somewhere that Google Chrome dev builds had the tab preview enabled in 7, showing the tabs you had open on the start bar preview like Internet Explorer does. They either lied, or you have to enable them somehow. Neither scenario is good. Just make them go, Google!

Google Wave’s Alpha
I really like Wave. It has so much potential, and I can see myself using it a lot in the future. And the Alpha itself is fine, if not a little unfinished, but hey, it’s an alpha. Only thing is, I can’t test it properly when I only have two other contacts with Wave. Well. Damn, looks like I’ll have to wait till the end of the alpha! Great way to get testing, Google.

iPhone applications which auto-rotate
It’s fine if there’s a setting to disable it, but…take right now for example. I’m trying to write this lying down, but the damn screen keeps rotating. Stop it. Include a setting for the people who are lazy and want to use your software on the sofa or in bed. You are just making our lives awkward.

Demomen
I’m talking about Team Fortress 2 here. There’s something inherently wrong about a class that requires nothing more than an ability to wait for someone to walk past before automagically making them go kabloowy. They may well be counterable, and yes, there’s skill in placing the traps. Doesn’t stop them being freaking annoying.

People who cut sales assistants short
I work in a shoe shop, when I’m not coding. There is nothing ruder than a customer who doesn’t let you finish your sentance. Yes, we are trying to sell you stuff, but we are gracious about it. Where I work, we don’t get commission for how much we sell – we have targets, yes, but failing to reach them is just one of those things. If you don’t want to buy what we have, wait until you know what it is we are offering before you decline. Even better, don’t lie and say you have some. Just say, “no thanks”, or “not today”. And let the poor worker do their job. It’s retail, make it slightly easier.

Farmville
Casual gaming at it’s worst and most spammy. Facebook brings everyone down low, but the day I play farmville is the day I annouce to the world my undying love of PHP Syntax Errors. Which is never.

Facebook “Social Quizzes”
On the topic of Facebook, those annoying little quizzes which ask you about your friends? Please, stop filling them out. You are not only annoying everyone, but also feeding data about these people into a database somewhere. Which isn’t good.

Not being allowed Lie-ins
I want my rest. I’m sure you can understand.

That’ll do for now…you got any pet hates? Share any of mine?

…or at least, the return of Kireas’ blog. Rawr. Be afraid.

Yeah, so I decided that my blog should actually be used occasionally, and following my oh-so-sensible method of using blogs, I deleted it. And reinstalled it again.

So, what have I been up to? Well, I passed my A-levels, although not to my satistfaction, and am retaking a few prior to applying to university. This basically gives me a year off, minus the revision I have to do to get my grades up.

This year off is filled with working for Clarks Shoes and my aunt (coding, no less) and playing games. Until recently, ‘games’ meant Team Fortress 2 and a few others, but TF2 has grown stale for me, not to mention I can’t take the constant QQ of clans anymore. So I’m going to work my way through all the singleplayer games I own (about 50 of them), make sure I have finished – or reached the endgame, where finish doesn’t apply – all of them, and play stuff like Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Trackmania Nations where I feel the need for multiplayer. Yes, Trackmania Nations. Everyone needs some crazy upside-down F1 racing in their life.

Although, mentioning multiplayer games, I AM waiting for Left4Dead 2. Got it on pre-order, and it’s preloaded. Can’t pre-play it though, sadly. That’ll keep me occupied a week or so.

Anyways, expect updates every so often. I’ll try not to neglect the place this time around.