Interfaces

Maybe it's just because I work in software, but I often get distracted during movies by things like GUIs and user interfaces, particularly in near future sci-fi.  Sometimes it's something obvious and radical, commented upon by many like the user interface from Minority Report.  Other times it's barely an aside, as in the GUIs used by the cops in Tokyo Gore Police.  In some ways this is annoying, since something like the Minority Report interface is intended to be flashy rather than utilitarian, and in the case of Tokyo Gore Police is merely a facade to show you that they're accessing "a computer".

However, at the same time, having multiple instances of computer interfaces - in a variety of environments - helps to focus the mind on the various aspects of interface outside of what is normally encountered in real life.
At the time of Minority Report, the gesture based interface wasn't something I had seen before, and hence introduced me to a new means of interacting with the computer.  With Tokyo Gore Police, the interface itself was quite basic (and I'm not even referring to the three lines of pseudocode/logging that repeated on a projector in the background) but it's the presentation of information in a japanese environment that was exceptional to me here in Australia.

Film, as a visual medium, is well suited to showing us how things can be portrayed.  With sci-fi, it really brings to the fore the interaction between humans and technology.  Although plot and pacing can mean that flashy wins over functional, it nevertheless allows us an opportunity to consider why an interface could be detrimental and what benefits it adds, if any, over our current interfaces by exposing us to a wider range of environments without the requirement that it be functional.

On the Wetness of Burgers and the No Free Lunch theorem

Every burger has an inherent wetness.  This varies not only from burger to burger, but also for a particular burger over axes of time and user interaction.  The wetness value is not represented by a single value, however, for the purposes of discussion we will assume such a simplification.

The problem is that, devoid of user interaction, the wetness value will increase along the time axis.  Some burgers are quite dry and will increase only moderately.  Others, however, will leak out the sides, leaving the bottom bun soaking, and actively discarding liquified filling at worst.

The user interacts with the burger in such a manner as to reduce its wetness rating.  This often involves at least rotation of the burger on one axis, and often is elevated to non-symmetric consumption and rotation about multiple axes.  Eating time (volume minimisation efforts) may be traded off against the benefits of filling-redistribution for extreme cases.

The exercise essentially boils down to finding a continuous minimum along the time axis, for a particular burger, whilst manipulating the user interaction variable.  Note that while the limited ability to look ahead means that what produces a minimum wetness in the short term is not guaranteed to enable minimum wetness in the moderate or long term, gains made in the short term often convey significant advantages later on.

One thing to keep in mind is that all burgers are different, and excellent strategies for one burger are not necessarily excellent strategies for the next - or even good strategies at all.  This was summed up by the No Free Lunch theorem of Wolpert and Macready in search and optimisation.  Indeed, the theorem states that the strategy you employ that actually minimizes the wetness of one burger will in fact be the very strategy that maximizes the wetness for some other burger.

Think about that the next time your absentmindedness leaves you with a burger that's composed of six breadcrumbs floating on a sea of mayonnaise that drowns two lettuce leaves.  There's no free lunch when dry-cleaning is involved.

Blurb Impact

Usually half a sentence is enough to either motivate me to see something or suppress all interest.
For example:
Line: A nearby planet threatens to collide into the Earth...
Reaction: Yeah!
Line: Two sisters find their relationship challenged ...
Reaction: Next!

And then there are the movies that like to throw a curve ball:
Two sisters find their relationship challenged as a nearby planet threatens to collide into the Earth.
Um....?

The end result is likely to be two hours of tedium with cutaways to news and the occasional glance at a bright star.  So unless one of the two sisters has warped spacetime to induce the collision, or their relationship is more intimate than the blurb lets on (or both: I don't know why I don't write movie scripts) then it's going to get passed over.

Of course, a relationship drama can actually be a good movie.  It just can't have a good blurb, unfortunately, and needs other means to attract an audience.

Why A Game of Thrones Will Fail

I know, I know.  A lavish production based on a set of best selling books with big name stars, airing on HBO.  And one episode in and here I am predicting its untimely demise.  Why?

The problem is primarily one of scope.  The books, and hence series, are based on a large world with a vast cast.  Other series and movies have also had to deal with geographically diverse locations - I'm thinking of the Lord of the Rings, here - but they've only had to do so piecemeal.  Whilst the Lord of the Rings had to deal with the Shire (and its hobbits), Moria (and its dwarves), Lothlorien (and its elves) and Minis Tirith (with its men) it was able to do so in small, bite-sized chunks.  We get some time in the Shire, and only in the Shire.  Then, things move on, we forget about the Shire, and the film can go on to explore Moria.  We see, we enjoy, then we move on once more.
In other words, movies like Lord of the Rings can handle the large map by progressing through it in a linear fashion.  The Game of Thrones cannot do so, as the cast either communicates with one another across the distance, or actively jump locales in order to discuss events more intimately.
Which leads to the second and greater problem of having a vast cast all interacting pretty much simultaneously.  With so many characters being thrown at the screen, in varied locations, with multiple plots (current and historical) it is a non-trivial task for those not familiar with the source material to keep track of what's going on.
Which will lead to a rapid rate of attrition.
And, worse, those who haven't seen the initial episodes will be unable to jump in mid-season.  This problem will be familiar to the creators of many recent shows that evolved complex storylines and character relationships, though I doubt many had to endure such a viewer-antagonistic opening.

Finally, for those who are unaware of the *layout* of the series (no spoilers, not that I can, as I haven't read it), the later books famously drop an entire half cast off to go and focus on the other half before picking up again.  As the series is pretty much following the books (in a season-per-book manner) then it will be interesting to see how later seasons (should they get that far) translate such material.  You can't really tell half your cast to take 2012 off and come back in 2013.  And I don't think they can use the standard mechanism of just deviating far enough from the material that it's not a concern (a la True Blood / Sookie Stackhouse) as the Game of Thrones books are much more intricately tied together than other, more stand-alone books.

And of course it's made just that bit more difficult by the fact that the book series is still being written.

Upon the strength of the above arguments, I'm going to say that it will stave off a push for cancellation during the first season (based on money sunk, and against high costs per episode), but it will succumb to cancellation before the end of the second season.
Box sets and equivalent will do well, however.
Goodbye, Winterfell, it was good knowing you.
Call me in 15 months and tell me how close I was.

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 released

SP1 for VS is finally out.  Or tomorrow for non-MSDNers.
Doesn't mention if they've reduced the number of times that it crashes, but since the frequency can't go up, I figure it's worth installing.

See the following link for the announcement and bytes.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2011/03/08/announcing-visual-studio-2010-service-pack-1.aspx

Nudity on Book Covers

Having spent a bit of time recently sorting through various books, mostly of the sci-fi and fantasy ilk, I got to wondering: what is the impact of nudity on a book's cover?

Information regarding nudity on book covers is not that easy to come by on the web. The best I managed was discussion on some Jungle Book covers featuring a naked Mowgli.

http://www.p-synd.com/wild/picture.htm

And, in the end, all we get is speculation on how the publisher might have felt about the view of Mowgli's buttocks.

So does nudity on a cover raise sales? Or does it lower them?

Does it restrict the places that the book can be sold (such as a Target or Walmart store)?

Do publishers tend to have guidelines for artists (no full frontal)?

Do covers with nudity tend to prevail in certain countries? Most books do have different covers for different markets, and the styles do vary from country to country. Some prefer vivid, coloured covers whilst others have row upon row of books with just two tone shapes, a san serif title and the author's name.

Does the genre strongly affect its likelihood? Do publishers of hard sci-fi worry that having breasts on the cover would fail to attract the target market by misidentifying it? Do publishers of heroic fantasy worry that having a penis dangling on the cover would turn off the teenage male buyers?

Does it come and go over time? Am I likely to find a predominance of naked women adorning the covers of books from the 60s and 70s, but a dearth from the 90s?

I should probably datamine my own collection and see if any interesting stats turn up.

If anyone has any information on covers with nudity, by all means, chime in.

The Function of Commercial Media

We have a guest post today that I pilfered from the ether by a chap called Weaver.  The discussion was on why commercial networks do not provide intelligent shows to viewers.  

The function of commercial media is to sell audiences/readers to advertisers. The audience/readers are not the customers, they are the product. The advertisers are the customers, and they want a particular kind of product, i.e. they want the kind of audience/readers it's worthwhile advertising to:

1. people with money,

2. who are likely to spend that money, 

3. and who are, if possible, a bit thick.

These requirements may vary - slightly - depending on the things being advertised, but the business model does not change. You may think you are the customer, but you are not; you are the product (or you are chaff the advertisers don't care about, like a homeless person leafing through a copy of Forbes they found in the street).

The usual grift is that content is designed to keep audience/readers happy; the corollary is the oft repeated lie "but this is what our audience/readers want!" This is like a baker complaining "But of course I use rancid horsemeat - that's what the pies want!" The audience is formed by the content; not vice versa. What the audience/readers want is irrelevant; what matters is what the customers want and the customers of commercial media want the eyes or ears of people who are easy to shill to.

The phrasing, I think, really hammers home the message.  Hell, I'm starting to wonder how we ended up with anything that's intelligent - or questioning how, or perhaps even if that's really the case.  It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.