Why I hate everything Windows

These are just some issues that I simply can not understand how they can be allowed to stick around?!

• When I mount a USB stick, I get a note about that my monitor does not have the optimal resolution set.
• Then I compile a program using VS2010, or VS2015, domain name look-up does not work.
• Adding a network drive with other authentication forgets the authentication if it failed to connect one time (which of course it will since I have connected network drives from many local networks).
• The default (which I do not know how to sensibly change) timeout when trying to connect to a network drive is something like 30s. Now, the OS is stupid enough to verify these connections every time a file access is attempted by any software. And if the connection fails (after having being active, a not very unlikely scenario if I move my laptop) it will still try to connect EVERY time a file access is attempted. And this continues until the system is rebooted?!
• If I want to save a word-file using save as, I have to activate editing of the document - ridiculous!

The list will be extended as I find more craziness.

Update 2016-01

I should probably actually generalize this to Microsoft products in general. How about this one:

I have to use two Office 365 mail accounts on the web belonging to two different companies. But the system can not handle that, so I have to log in and out every time I need to do something on the "other" account...

A suggestion for a C++1z feature

This is probably quite a controversial proposal. And I am by no standards a very skilled programmer. But anyway, I think this feature could be rather nice to have.

The idea is to have some kind of Post-constructor automatically generated and executed member function. A suggested name for this function would be initializer. It is not entirely clear to me how it should be run, but maybe in reverse compared to constructors, so that derived classes initializers are run before base classes.

The rationale for this proposal is; How many times have you seen code like:

class A{...};
class B : private A{...};
B m(param p);
m.Init();

Or something like that. The reason for this construction (that is, why the code that goes into init does not go into the constructor) is that Init calls some interface function from a member of the base class A to the derived class B. Now this interface function for sure will need stuff created when B was constructed, and hence it can not go into A's constructor. It can also not go into B's constructor since, B does not know about all stuff in A.

For this, a really nice solution would be if all classes run Init-functions in reverse automatically. Then if this function is not user created, it does not have to be run. However, if the user created it, it should be run automatically at the end of the constructor. Maybe it could be done in a fashion similar to the init list in the constructor, but appearing at the end of the function declaration instead? Something like:
B::B(param p) : ...{
...
} : !A()
Where I named the function !A.

Infrasturktur igen

Jag har tidigare skrivit om att vi borde ha ett nationellt mobilnät. Jag har också skrivit och varnat för bankernas (då) nya betaltjänst Swish. Tack och lov har denna tjänst haft svårt att få fotfäste, men användningen växer tyvärr och det börjar märkas nu att det ibland är krångligt att inte använde detta. Så, snart kommer det börja kosta.

Men min uppmaning som en förening av tidigare blog-inlägg är då: Varför ska det inte finnas ett nationellt infrastruktursystem för digitala betalningar? Detta borde ligga på myntverket, nu när människor i allt mindre grad väljer att använda analoga betalmedel, borde man anpassa de nationella systemen för att serva dagens människor. Det är helt absurt att man lämnar över denna typ av kontroll till privata aktörer!

How on Earth could it hapend...

... that the Microsoft software sphere became so popular?!

Seriously, me nerves can not take working with this stuff! And the list of all faults is too long to repeat. After using this retarded software, I am now so exhausted I can not manage to write down a single thing as an example here. as they all require more than one sentence and I am just too tired! I just had to spell this out somewhere. It seriously is jeopardizing my health!

Super conductors at room temperature

I read this very interesting post about the new supra conducting material that actually works at temperatures above the lowest of what have been sighted on earth.

Now that got me thinking, as they speculate in the article, maybe one could have something actually working at temperatures around 20C, where we operates. But then I thought, but wait, if such a material exists, shouldn't evolution have found it by now?

Well maybe not? Then I asked my self, what we expect evolution to find? That is an extremely interesting question. If we can parameterize the space we can expect evolution to have found optimal solutions in, we can stop searching for stuff there. That would be something awesome,   no?

The only sensible reason for keeping humans in the Matrix

There have been many discussions on if humans are imprisoned in a simulated reality such as presented in the movie The Matrix. In the Matrix, the reason for imprisoning humans is to extract energy. A reason not very plausible, since it would be much less trouble to keep, say, pigs. They could perform the same function and cause much less razzling. In the book Under the skin from 2000 Michael Faber instead keeps the humans for meet production. Now, also this is something pigs would do better.

So, what reasons are the for aliens or machines or other humans to imprison humans. Well, I can only see one: for the computing power of our brains. It is reasonable to assume that there is something unique with the human brain. Unique enough that it could be worth the trouble of creating a simulation like the Matrix. What do you think? Any other reason?

Why are we still using Bluetooth?!

I have never used a pair of Bluetooth devices that works flawlessly. The latest addition to the set, is my new Windows 8/ASUS laptop which simply refuses to find my Sony Bluetooth headset.

Whys is this, and why is there no improvement. I have been frustrated with this now for 10 years, and the same issues still persist. What is the wireless community planning to do about this?

Guide to how to determine software companies buisiness area from their version numbers

A new answer to the Fermi paradox

I read a very interesting blog post about what the new big thing after IoT, drones and 3D printing will be. They name it the continuum. Of course, they are right. Further, recently, I also look at the two pod casts from Kurzgesagt about the Fermi paradox where the filter theory and other ideas about solutions to the Fermi paradox are discussed.

I have previously discussed an idea to a solution, and here is another one:

Maybe the transition for any species from "primitive" to "transcended" is of the order of a couple of thousand years. Thus, the time span is so short that the state we are now is only shared between one or very few intelligent species at a given time. Hence no one to talk to.

The "transcended" state could consist of us morphing into a single organism using the continuum as discussed in the above blog.

Is it time to skip the traffic signs?

Everyone has a personal navigator these days, so when can we start reducing the traffic signs? That would relax driving distraction, reduce cost and make the overall experience in terms of viewing the surrounding more pleasant.


Or maybe there should instead be something to help the GNSS systems, and in extension the autonomous cars, navigate?

Being an artist with focus on topology...

... really limits your audience.

But it also relaxes the requirements on drawing capabilities:

Could getting rid of sim-cards be a part of 5G?

SIM-cards are really outdated! People have been asking for years when they will be abounded. But it is not easy to replace such an integral part of the mobile systems. So, maybe do the right thing put as an item for our 5g systems to replace the sim-cards with something better?

About the structure of the transcend

Assume the human race has become what it is using evolution. Then that process should have optimized us as beings for the scenarios we encounter in our everyday lives. If we can conceive other processes, one can be inclined to believe that it is only a lucky coincidence that the structure of those processes is similar enough for us to grasp.

Thus, if we can assume that there is something that has a structure that has no resemblance what so ever with our reality. This will constitute the transcend and we will have no way to describe or understand that structure.

However, for this to have no resemblance with our reality, there can be no point of contact with our reality either. If there is, this point will have to have structure that is "compatible" with the reality we know of. And hence can be described.

With this kind of reasoning, if there is such a thing as the transcend, it is of no interest for us, since it does not interact with our reality at all.

This reasoning does not rule out that there are things in our reality that we can not understand, but it tell that if there is structure of the kind described above, it is of no interest for us. Hence, arguing that an entity such as god belongs to the transcend is only to argue that god is of no interest to us. Further, if it is claimed that god interact, or has done so in the past, with our reality, the god structure falls within the category of reality above.

On the limits of our knowledge, again.

By the way, I have to write another on. The talk I just discussed on limits of science. I have another interesting idea about the limits. There seems we are trapped within the big and the small. At large scales we are ultimately captured by the speed of light. On the small scale we are ultimately captured by quantum resolution. Now this to me looks like some tough limits on what we can know. Does it also indicate that someone trapped us...?

On scientific knowledge

I was watching this very interesting debate between some great thinkers of our time. And of course I was thinking: "no, that have to be wrong"!
The question at hand is: is all knowledge empirical? Kruass is strongly advocating thing line. Dennet and Pigliucci is a bit more vague, but at the end seem to lean to the same conclusion. I would claim that this is wrong. There is knowledge (if we even can define the term!) that is not empirical. My example of this is basically mathematical knowledge. Krauss is claiming also mathematical knowledge is empirical since the basis (the axioms) is empirical to their nature is not correct. There can be many axioms not at all connected to any empirical facts - in fact ZF is an excellent example of this. Even the designers of the damn thing did not like it since it was counter intuitive with all these axioms. Nevertheless we would all agree that "the integral of 1/x is ln(x)" is knowledge. Or an even better example, the properties of the monster group constitute knowledge.

I think I would rather go further actually and say that all knowledge is of non-empirical nature. Empirical stuff is what can be observed. However observations can never be trusted. Never. However, deductions (which might be based on observations) can be trusted and render knowledge. But all that knowledge is of the for "if a the b". If a is observed, that b can be deduced. Thus, the knowledge does not depend on the empirical fact, but is only claims something about logical consequences given the empirical fact.

On free will

There is an exciting talk by Daniel Dennet about free will. His take is a very interesting one, being a compatibilist. But I would like to take another stab at this case. Not that I know much of it, I must admit. But of course it is one of the tricky ones. So, my take, here goes.

I think one should be able to give a more detailed account for what free will is than with guys like Daniel Dennet is doing. The problem is that there is a quite large gap between discussing determinism and free will. Determinism can be described like
F = m a
or is many other ways ans mathematically well formed laws. This is not a consequence of determinism. It is determinism, and it is how we can understand it.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is randomness. This is just as nice as determinism. It can be described using pure mathematics. We can say that the random variable X obeys the distribution A(P₁, P₂, ..., P_n), where the P's are parameters.
Now, the problem is that non of these descriptions fit free will, and at the same time it seem free will is something similar to these concepts. Could it be that one can define free will as: An entity has free will if, via communication, it can be made to obey either a deterministic law or any stochastic. Thus, my definition require that the entity can communicate some way.

Anyway, back to work. Let's elaborate more on this later.

On " the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences"

There is allot of fuzz on this question out there. E.g. on fqxi. To me this is not so strange. If we assume nature has structure, and is not only chaos, then why would not any attempt to capture that structure succed?

The point is that any modeling structure that you can come up with will be sufficient to describe (that is, model) at least a part of reality (in  approximation). And from there it is just refinement. Science is an optimization process, or a search if you want. An optimization to minimize the error between model and measuremen.

Thus we (the humans) could have started from any mathematics and enevideble would have ended up with a physical model that will capture some part of reality.

Börja med det lättaste

När man ska ta sej an en uppgift ned flera delar har jag lärt mej en sak som ofta gäller: Börja med de delar som är lättast.

Det finns många anledningar till att göra så. T.ex så blir det lättare att avgöra hur mycket tid man har på sej å dom svåra. Sedan har man ju i alla fall något att visa upp. Och man blir nöjd över att fått något gjort. Och det svåra blir lite mer strukturerat när det lätta är undanstökat.

Men dessa insikter har tydligen inte nått stadsministern med tanke på att han bara tjatar om åtgärder till de som står längst från arbetsmarknaden.

Where are the ETs? And how to colonise another planet, the realistic way

There was a discussion on the Swedish radio the other day about why we have not seen any aliens since the Universe is so big with so many start and planets, and for all we know, if the right conditions exists, life do pop up.

To me the answers are mostly quite far fetched, and there is a much simpler one: To travel with the fastest vehicle the human race has created: the Helios-2 probe, travelling at 250 000 km/h relative to the sun, it would take a little more than 18 500 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the Sun. Conclusion: It is tricky to travel in space. Now lets' assume there is a moderate density of life in the Universe, say life in every 10th star system. Then it is not surprising that no one has come here; it is simply to much work to get here. There is for sure other intelligent life out there, and maybe they have worked out a way to move to other stars, but everything we know points at that this will be a difficult process, more aimed at preserving the human spices and exploring than a realistic replacement for Earth and the population living here.

If you were to send a crew to a new star system, with the purpose of using the planet(s) available there for expansion, and you can chose between a system which is already inhabited by a primitive race (us) or an empty one where you will not have to bother anyone else. Which one would you chose?

It should further be noticed, that no sensible communication will be possible once the new colony has been established: Signal propagation will take years and have very limited capacity. Thus, establishing a new colony will essentially be a permanent separation.

My take: to colonise a new exo-planet the steps needs to be.
1. Send a team of micro/nano-machines that can build larger machines that can build larger machines ... that can build large machines.
2. Terra-form or at least make part of the planet habitable.
3. Send human and other DNA (or the DNA information in some more robust form.
4. Grow life using the DNA and the machines on the foreign world.

Thus, one can send many space ships, cause they’re small and not so energy consuming. And maybe some will survive the trip. The immense time to travel will be less of a problem for the travellers since they will not be conscious.

När ska mobilnät ses som infrastruktur

Förr var televerket statligt och nu har man privatiserat det. Med den revolutions som internet och mobilitet har inneburit, borde det inte vara dax att fundera på en statlig nätverksleverantör igen. Där man, likt vägar, har en skattefinansierad leverantör av mobilt och trådbundet internet på samma sätt som annan vital infrastruktur?