Wizard of Speed and Time

Perhaps you remember a movie from a long, long time ago called "The Wizard of Speed and Time"? If not, and like me you have an inexplicable desire to make references to obscure, obscure, funny, films, and you're into nostalgia like a crazy person, you should check it out, if at least to have something interesting to say to your friends instead of staring awkwardly at the ground while you pray for the moon to crash into the earth or something just so you'll have something to talk about. Created lovingly by a special effects technician named Mike Jittlov, over a period of about 5 years (!!) (and expanded from this short film) he uses stop motion to make himself appear to do things like appearing to walk on walls, and, uh, run really fast. The tone of the movie is like a mix between Disney and Monty Python.

Anyhow it's basically about how the creative spirit is awesome and hollywood producers are a bunch of assholes.

What brought this to my attention recently is having come across one of Jittlov's more recent works, "Darth Vadar's Psychic Hotline," which is basically Darth Vadar as Miss Cleo. You must be a giant Star Wars dork to enjoy this. Here's the short. Enjoy!

Where Satan is taunted by Hitler using a Sandwich

Just saw this sketch comedy show in the chicago land area by a group called The Comic Thread, and the show was called "God? Dammit!" At the end of the thing Jesus had a barmitzvah. Anyways, they usually put on a string of shows every summer, so if you ever have the occasion, I highly recommend it.

I bumped into this girl there whom I've met like twice and she had this look on her face like "....who the hell are you?" Perhaps all the hair on my face creates a mystifying effect upon the mind. I'm like a freakin' shadow

Security Through Randomization....is Now Less Secure

There's the announcement appearing many places today regarding IBM Information Security Systems' Mark Dowd and VMware's Alexander Sotirov claim that they've discovered a method for completely bypassing Vista's security infrastructure. What I thought was of particular interest is Dowd and Sotirov's claim that their method completely bypasses the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) scheme. For those unfamiliar, ASLR was created to make buffer overrun exploits much more difficult to accomplish, by relocating the contents of a running program into a random location. For an overview of buffer overflow based security attacks see here. 

Security through randomization was precisely the subject of my master's thesis. I wish I could find some technical write up of their method.

AI in the World: Avoiding Traffic Jams

Here's a link to a story about Clearflow, software from Microsoft Research being used to model and avoid traffic jams.

The research is partially described in a Microsoft Research paper linked here.

In uncharacteristically logical fashion for Microsoft, Clearflow is a good example of taking an extremely complicated problem of traffic data analysis, and presenting it to a user as the solution to a straightforward problem: How should I get there from here?

The Clearflow system will be freely available as part of the company’s Live.com site (maps.live.com) for 72 cities in the United States. Microsoft says it will give drivers alternative route information that is more accurate and attuned to current traffic patterns on both freeways and side streets.

What's nice is it sounds like the interface will be exactly the same as using any old normal route planning software.

I'd like to know how much of it's traffic data is being pulled from some live source, rather than predicted through some model.

Selling AI to People

Let's say you're somewhere in the field of AI. You are somewhere from AI researcher (only uses their keyboard to check their mail, every 1 minute) to AI developer (fingers rarely leave keyboard). You know what AI is. AI is simply the automation of things, under various circumstances. There are certain laborious, dangerous, prohibitively difficult tasks, so we make software or machines to do them.

If you utter "Artificial Intelligence" to a non-technical person, a completely different image appears in their mind. It's something a bit more like this:

or worse, this:

I've actually had people ask me if machines will one day "love".

The non-technical person has a completely different image of what constitutes AI than you do. The consequence of this for the entrepreneur is, if you tell someone "My software is revolutionary because it uses Artificial Intelligence!!", they will undoubtedly become excited, and then become utterly disappointed when you actually show them your software.

No where have I learned this lesson more bluntly than when I was pitching my startup to a venture capitalist.

Brief story. This was back when our software was something completely different, and we were pitching it as basically an intelligent task management system. We walked into the meeting, and by this point, all the investor knew was it involved artificial intelligence, and he was very excited. As we were giving the presentation, you could slowly see the man deflate. When it finally came time to give our demo. He watched the system assign unfinished tasks to time slots, and exclaimed "it's just putting tasks where ever there's free time." I tried to explain that no, the system is actually sorting through many constraints, and figuring out what the possible orderings there are for tasks given the goals that have to be accomplished, but he was having none of it. "This isn't...artificial" he said in disappointment.

AI is about solving problems that are too difficult to do by hand. It enables you to solve extreme, prohibitively difficult problems. For example, finding content on the internet relative to your query involves looking at TRILLIONS of pages and examining them. One person could not do it in his lifetime, so Google uses AI to do it for you. But you'll notice Google does not ever say "We use AI! Come use our search engine!" They just solved a problem no one else could nearly as well, and let this fact speak for itself.

A similiar sentiment has been expressed recently by the infamous Ted Dziuba, one of the creators of Pressflip (formerly Persai), a new content recommendation site:

How Does it Work?

That's a good question. After dealing with angel investors, VCs, users, and anybody who isn't an engineer, the answer in my mind is, nobody gives a shit. Really, nobody cares about your algorithm or how revolutionary you think it is. All people care about is a system that shows them things they want to read.

I'm here to tell you, man, that is right on.

Your software is not revolutionary because it uses Artificial Intelligence. Your software is revolutionary because it is able to solve a problem that was until this moment not solved. *That* is what you must pitch.

Uhh....words go here.

Needless to say, I've been away cooking up good things at Method in Mind. We're just about to enter testing phase for Operatus and do a test install at a company. Just as a note, I've been averaging approximately 9-10 cups of coffee per day. Actually, the other day I went to the eye doctor shortly after getting the intravenous caffein delivery, and I freaked the shit out of the lady checking my blood pressure. She didn't quite breathlessly mouth the words "You...are going.....to DIE" at me, but....she was concerned.

Next time you're at a meeting, it may help to conjure this image in your mind:

First and last political post (hopefully)

UN says there is absolutely zero evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

Place a wet blanket upon your mania.

IE users can signup now......yay!

Okay, you can now sign up for the Operatus mailing list at Method in Mind if you're using IE.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge

In the past few months I've exactly zero moments to write a post.  To serve as the vanguard post for many more to come, here is a silly you tube video:  

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