Danny's Weblog

2009 Nov 04 [ Wed ]

The bicameral mind and spectator sport

Many years ago I read "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes (referred to below as "BCM" ). It speculates – with an overwhelming collection of historical references – that the human mind worked in a fundamentally different way until just a few thousand years ago, so that people did not perceive that their own minds were functioning to produce plans, beliefs and judgements, but that spirits, gods or ancestors were supplying advice.

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)]

I found the possibility fascinating but unproved and perhaps unprovable. However, I filed it away.

Recently I was wondering about rock concerts. Why do people bother going to them? They are very expensive, and the live version of music (even assuming it is actually live and not lip-synced) is almost always technically inferior to the recorded version. It occurred to me that a concert is very analogous to religious ceremonies as described in BCM. Jaynes speculated the experience of such a ceremony – immersed in sights and sounds designed to form a single experience, and surrounded by other devotees – amplified and solidified a shared belief into a shared fantasy. In the case of religious ceremonies, they culminated in the mass perception of gods and miracles. I have often heard reports of rock concerts which stress aspects which seem to me to involve supernatural elements, or at least aspects which have no rational basis: shared, synchronized emotions and perceptions.

But why would anyone *enjoy* this experience?

Jaynes saw the shift from bicameral consciousness as a gradual one. He believed that elements of it survived to today: for instance, in schizophrenics, or in the "general sense of need for external authority in decision-making". My own speculation is that many people still *enjoy* the experience of subjecting themselves to a shared hallucination – our minds are wary of *personalized* hallucinations, but when surrounded by fellow devotees our guard is let down. We can simultaneously perceive the internal certainty provided by the bicameral mind, and the external confirmation of everyone in our surroundings. And in the case of a hugely popular band, one is surrounded by tens of thousands who can be relied upon to largely support one's fantasies.

Still, if I were present at such a concert, even if it were by a band that I really liked, I know I would feel absolutely nothing of this shared consciousness. In fact, if I perceived it at all, I would find it creepy.

So, many people enjoy subjecting themselves to such shared experiences, and many do not. One can think of so many examples. For instance, there is a Monty Python sketch about Nazis who have gathered together in some quiet seaside town in England, and struggle to mobilize the local population; as the leader's incomprehensible harangues blare out, one of his confederates sidles up to one of the sparse crowd and says, "he's right, you know!". The local yokel stares at him, puzzled. Of course, it's easy to resist even a well-organized appeal to one's bicameral mind if only a handful of devotees are present. Once some critical mass surrounds the unwary, their innate vulnerability allows them to be overwhelmed.

So in one way my inability to respond is a strength. But viewed by the mass of people, it is a weakness. Most people *like* to behave like a mob; like "the madness of crowds". When I have watched programs about fashion, I am stunned by how ugly and tasteless the fashions are. There is one particular fashion presenter, Gok Wan: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gok_Wan]

Not only is his taste appalling, but his putdowns of the taste of the poor souls who he "advises" are brutally contemptuous. I could not imagine who would willingly subject themselves either to appearing on his show as a literal fashion victim, or to watching his show to pick up fashion advice. But now I realize that what he is doing is reinforcing the shared fantasy that fashion exists and is important, and that people who invest enough energy and time into chasing the phantasmic goals that Wan is pushing have bought their way into a shared fantasy. Whether they are the "winners" – the adequately fashion-conscious who meet Wan's capricious and inconsistent standards – or the losers that he ruthlessly derides, his devotees can feel the warm, close presence of their bicameral mind.

And once this shared fantasy – this "folie a la plupart" – has been built up, the devotees will fanatically defend it. If I wear clothes, or god forbid a hairstyle, that was popular in 1970, or 1930, or 2005, I can be identified as a rebel and rejected. I cannot escape this; I am allotted the role of "rebel" even if I have no idea of the "rules" and no intention of causing offence and exclusion.

Similarly, fans of organized sports seem to believe that the performance of "their" team has something to do with them, but in fact what they are responding to is a bunch of half-understood theatrical tricks essentially similar to those employed by Goebbels. And if I were to make that point to them, they would be as sympathetic as the SS.

My guess is that about 80% of humanity is still eager to hear the voice of its bicameral mind. This corresponds to Van Vogt's estimate that about 20% of men are what he calls the leader type. Even when I first read this many years ago, it was clear that this fraction is not actually particularly skilled at leading people. Instead, they are terribly unskilled at following. Many of the hobos one sees do not seem to be simply alcoholics or insane; instead, it's striking that they just do not want to engage with other people. Perhaps they have an inner voice, or perhaps they are tired of pretending to hear society's inner voice.

It must be wonderful to believe that you have supernatural powers. With the certainty of someone who is hearing his bicameral voice, you can believe, for instance, that you have perfect empathy with strangers, family members, or animals, when in fact people are collaborating on a shared narrative, and the animal has been socialized to play along. There was an old cartoon I remember, about a mole who lives in a beautiful fairyland until a wily fox sells him a pair of spectacles; when his eyes are sharp, he sees that he lives in a hovel in the middle of a garbage dump. At the end of the short, he kicks out the fox and throws the spectacles away so that he can live in paradise again.

But imagine how horrible it is when someone in the group does not play along. You can't just allow him to exist: everything about his actions makes it clear that your sparkly universe does not exist for him. You have to exclude and reject him, or he may actually break down your entire reality system. Apparently it's not unusual for many fans of soap operas to behave as if the characters are real: knitting clothes for newborns etc. Such people may be completely able to function in real life, but somehow have this one hole in reality. The fact that such a thing is possible suggests the existence of a larger mental system that is otherwise dormant, or invisible. Apparently early literature was normally presented as true; I wonder if it was normally accepted as such? tvtropes.org [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LiteraryAgentHypothesis]

What happens when two separate shared worlds collide? For instance, football fans from two teams? It's like Jaynes' picture of two competing city-states: both sides agree that what they are doing is good and important and worth dying for, when unconcerned observers are wondering what the fuss is about.

Here are a few notes on Jaynes' book. The page numbers refer to the Pelican (USA) 1982 edition. I include several example of weird English usage by Jaynes; I wonder if his book would have led to a real revolution in Western thought if he had not thrown away the version of his manuscript that the publisher's editor handed him.

1. Book 2 Chap 2 p176 (Literate Bicameral Theocracies): He states "writing proceeds from pictures of visual events to symbols of phonetic events". He asserts "writing of the latter type, as on the present page, is meant to tell a reader something he does not know. But the closer writing is to the former, the more it is primarily a mnemonic device to release information which the reader already has".

He intends this as support for his theory that men developed over this period from the bicameral mind to the conscious mind.

I note it however as relevant to a pet theory of my own: that writing developed before speech. I have never seen anyone else make this speculation because, I'm sure, everyone is used to children learning speech years before they can read and write. But imagine the situation in prehistory before *either* has developed. How much harder is it really to make pictogram notes *for oneself*, whose significance one *does not need to first communicate*, compared with making sounds, which are almost impossible to correctly identify, let alone emulate, without growing up in a society using that speech for years?

2. Book 2 Chap 5 p278 (Foolish Perses): "The often tedious recital... and without development".

I don't wish to reproduce the text here because my point is that his argument in some places, as here, is embarrassingly weak. If something fits his chronology he eagerly adduces it, and if it doesn't fit he insinuates that it must therefore be wrong! Similarly his chronology of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

3. Book 2 Chap 5 p290 (The Invention of the Soul): "According to the theory of the bicameral mind, hallucinations of a person in some authority could continue after death as an everyday matter".

I must admit I rather lost the thread of his argument. In his discussion of brain functions he seemed to be saying that audible hallucinations had a special relevance to bicamerality, but he also speaks of mass hallucinations involving all the senses, at least in earlier periods.

4. Book 2 Chap 5 p290 (The Invention of the Soul): "For there is nothing here of dead strengthless souls wailing about in a netherworld, guzzling hot blood to get their strength back..."

This note is not about bicamerality at all. I am simply struck by the similarity of this description "added into the Odyssey as book 11" to the modern vampire idea.

5. Book 2 Chap 6 p297 (Some observations on the Pentateuch): "Indeed, in trying to do so, whatever our religious backgrounds, we feel, if not blasphemous, at least disrespectful to the profoundest meanings of others".

I have noted that down because of the phrase "profoundest meanings". I just don't know what he meant by that phrase, and that usage is representative of hundreds of others that are at least as foreign. He may mean "profoundest opinions" (like "Meinungen" in German), or he may mean something like "profoundest semantic distinctions". It reminds me of a character in a TV play by Stoppard, who gives a paper at a conference on philosophy and asserts a distinction between "what we mean and what we want to say". Stoppard shows us the interpreters struggling with the simultaneous translation of that, and rolling their eyes at each other.

Jaynes several times in the book gives the impression that he can read classical Greek in the original. It may be that his usages have been colored by this. It may also be an affectation. I have certainly felt the urge many times to use a peculiar form of words in English for the sake of a pun in another language... however weak.

6. Book 3 Chap 2 p355 (Possession in the Modern World): "The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space... Instead they always live at the very heart of a culture or subculture, moving out and filling up- the unspoken and the unrationalized."

The most interesting part of Jaynes' theory for me is its relevance to the current world, and to current societies and systems of thought. It is a commonplace observation that people brought up in different societies not only believe different things, but interpret the same events in radically different ways.

Or to put it another way, as Gilbert and Sullivan did, isn't it strange that every Englishman born becomes a little Liberal or a little Conservative.

To what extent do the rulers of modern societies understand, or at least unknowingly emulate, the theatrics of Egyptian god-kings and Greek seeresses? When the spectators at a football match spend a hundred pounds to watch a game, grow hoarse with shouting, and then run through the streets scuffling with rival supporters, are they being watched by cold-eyed psychologists with stopwatches and spreadsheets?

7. Book 3 Chap 3 p368 (The Nature of Music): "Try hearing different musics on two earphones at the same intensity". "Musics"? This kind of usage makes me wonder if Jaynes was a native English speaker at all.

8. Book 3 Chap 4 p403 (Objection: Does Hypnosis Exist?): "We are learned in self-doubt, scholars of our very failures, geniuses at excuse and tomorrowing our resolves". Just another example of weird English.

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2009 Sep 20 [ Sun ]

Review: TV: Terminator -- The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Presumably you are already aware of the Terminator movies, on which this series was based (although time travel allows it to wipe out the events of the third movie).

This series was cancelled months ago as a result of mediocre ratings. However I quite enjoyed it and want to comment on several aspects. I've been mulling over these comments until now, having just had a chance to see the second series again in recordings.

I'm going to refer to it as TSCC, to distinguish it where necessary from the movies.

Wikipedia link: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_connor_chronicles]

As usual, this review contains many spoilers, so if you haven't seen TSCC yet, you may prefer to stop reading here. Anyway, much of this review will be hard to understand until you have seen the series.

SPOILER ALERT

1. Many people have already commented on the peculiarities of the creative process applied to a TV series, but I'll mention some:

-1. There is a huge commercial incentive to continue a successful series even if the original situation has already been played out. A good example is Stargate, where the creators ran out of ideas, believed the show to have been cancelled and made the charitable decision to wrap up all the threads, and then were told the show had been signed up for another season.

-2. On the other hand, the creators may plan a three-season arc, but the show gets cancelled prematurely. That seems to have happened with TSCC: the whole situation was left unresolved by the final episode.

-3. For these and many other reasons, many successful series are written so that the situation basically resets at the end of each episode. I think "Hill Street Blues" was the first major series to be planned with an arc, and it is still somewhat unusual. However, I enjoy as a viewer being able to appreciate plot and character developments more fully than can be squeezed into 45 mins.

-4. A series which is planned as an arc is distinguished from a soap opera because the latter is consciously planned *never* to end: there is never a true resolution. Not only that: events which *appear* to provide some sort of resolution to one of the story threads are frequently annulled when we discover that the person who died was actually an identical twin... etc,etc. I think you can tell that I do not approve of that format and the resolution of a story is very important to me.

-5. In a lengthy series, the actors are not always able to maintain their roles as required. This is particularly a problem in fantasy series where they are supposed to be immortal: a good example is Angel, where the actor playing the titular vampire aged and put on weight very noticeably over the several years from his first appearance on Buffy. Also of course, they may just die, quit, get pregnant or become drug addicts.

2. TSCC had the additional problem of trying to fit in with the movies. As well as having to introduce new actors in the roles we were already familiar with, it needed to be compatible with the general situation of the movies, which thanks to the muddled picture of time travel in the movies was very hard.

OTOH the most recent movie, released since TSCC began, does not seem to fit in with TSCC at all.

3. Because the show was cancelled we will never know, but I believe the show was struggling towards some sort of resolution for the entire situation of all the Terminator stories.

I think one reason why the show was cancelled was that the planned resolution was too close to the (horribly flawed) resolution of Battlestar Galactica: in other words, some sort of alliance between Skynet, or at least a faction of the terminators, and humans.

This was foreshadowed in several ways:

-1. There has always been a mystery about the future John Connor, but he was repeatedly described as surrounding himself with metal, including the Cameron-class terminator. (Although it's not clear that the Cameron we see in the future is the same physical unit that was sent back to protect John in our period.)

-2. In the final episode Ms Weaver, a liquid-metal terminator who has been shown killing several humans during previous episodes, saves John Connor from death and reveals that "John Henry", an AI she has been developing, may save all of humanity. In other words, she killed humans as Cameron does, in order to achieve the goal of preventing Judgement Day. (It may also be that she sees this entire timeline as transitional, so their deaths have no lasting significance.)

Review: PHP & MySQL for Dummies 2nd Edition 2004

This is quite an old book now but I was happy to spot it in my local library. I was actually looking for a PHP book as I more or less know MySQL at least as of a few versions ago, but a lot of the stuff you use PHP for needs to hook up to a database of some kind anyway.

I have already used PHP with MySQL for a couple of little projects, but I was hoping to get a better overview of how to set up and debug a project.

Overall, the book has some surprising omissions. For one thing, no object-oriented features are discussed. For another thing, there is a lot less emphasis on security than I was expecting. For instance "register_globals": I actually did not see any reference to it when I read through the book, and only found it just now when I was looking for the PHP version used for the book. (Most people know about this issue by now, although they might not have in 2004; if you don't, you should probably Google it right away.)

On the other hand, I liked the way it discussed the use of include files to make the code more understandable. I actually had not realized that you could put so much html in them and still have php variables that work (although you wind up depending on a lot of global variables, as opposed to using a bunch of subroutines as I'm used to doing in Perl).

The following is a list of items I noted.

1. p143 Chap 6 Joining comparisons with and/or/xor

"If you are familiar with other languages..." Apparently the "and" form has exactly the same precedence as "&&". That is *not* the same as Perl.

2. p 155 Chap 7 Creating arrays

$capitals = array( "CA" => "Sacramento", "TX" => "Austin", "OR" => "Salem" );

I find myself not really liking either PHP or Perl's fundamental syntax very much. As you can see from the above example, all PHP variables just have a leading "$", whatever they are – scalar, array, hash (although the book just calls a hash "an array ... viewed as ... a list of key/value pairs"). On the other hand, Perl wants you to designate a variable by the variable type it winds up as once you've appplied all the trailing items; eg "$orange[3]" is scalar element 3 of the array "@orange", but scalar "$orange" is a separate variable which has nothing to do with either of the former.

I prefer the object style, something like this: "@orange.element(3)" or even "orange.element(3)".

3. p 155 Chap 7 Viewing arrays

I was interested to see the example of the "print_r" function to print the contents of any array:

print_r($capitals);

I had no idea that PHP had this built in and it would certainly have made some of the debugging I've done easier.

Now I think about it I wonder how PHP really knows whether to display an array as pairs or individual elements. Presumably it always displays them as pairs; if there's a mixture of numeric and text keys... I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

4. p 156 Chap 7 Sorting arrays

The way "sort" and "asort" work seems a little arbitrary, although handy.

5. p196 Chap 8 Sending SQL queries

I often run into problems when I start forming a query string to eventually send off to the SQL server. For instance, I usually try to leave a semicolon on the end, even though that never works.

So it's good that the book has a section on this, However, I was surprised to see the following example:

$query = "UPDATE Member SET lastName='$last_name'";

The wacky thing is the single quotes around the variable name, of course. I think the way it works is that the quotes prevent PHP looking up the value of the "$last_name" at the time you assign the string to "$query". However, it *will* look it up when the string is inserted in "mysql_query":

$result = mysql_query($query);

I can't remember how I handled this problem before! I think I threshed around until something worked and then tried to put the horror behind me.

6. p199 Chap 8 Getting and using the data

This page has an example of using "extract($row)", which very neatly produces and sets all the variables you usually need from a row you get from the database. Example:

$row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC);
extract($row);

So if one of the fieldnames for the row was 'password', the value of that field for this row will be in $password.

When I've had to do something like this in the past, I've had to tediously create a bunch of variables individually, as well as doing an assign which is prone to error (especially when you modify the table definition).

7. p 302 Chap 11 Adding data to the database

The book suggests using the LOAD command to recreate a table easily while debugging:

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE "pets" INTO TABLE Pet;

Neither this, nor the section in Chap 4 which this section refers to, clearly makes the point that the LOAD statement is very limited in where it can read the data file from. My understanding is that for security reasons, the file *must* be in the same directory as the data file is located in; the text briefly says this, but I don't think the book has ever referred to *how to find* what the directory is. I think when I first ran into this many years ago, I had to create a table with a wacky name, run updatedb, and then locate to figure out where the data files are! (Try looking in /etc/mysql/my.cnf.)

Also, although it's nice to use LOAD sometimes because it can understand files that you can create in Excel – ie way before you have the rest of the database software set up to enter data in the required format – I think the author should have referred to the "mysqldump" command too, as well as the reverse of the LOAD command:

SELECT * INTO OUTFILE 'file_name' FROM tbl_name

8. p 320 Chap 11 Adding pets to the catalog

Listing 11-6 includes the following code:

if (@$_POST['newbutton'] == "Return to category page" or @$_POST['newbutton'] == "Cancel")

I was about to grumble about how wacky this syntax was, and then I remembered. This is explained on p124; the "@" sign has nothing to do with arrays, it just tells PHP to suppress error messages if the variable is not defined!

There are copious notes on the listing which do not include this point. Perhaps everyone else was paying more attention on p 124.

9. p 337 Chap 12 Building the login table

I mention this tiny point only in order to show that I sometimes *do* pay attention: the text says "MySQL will not allow two rows to be entered with the same loginName and loginDate". That "loginDate" should read "loginTime" to match the rest of the text.

10. p 337 Chap 12 Adding data to the database

This paragraph mentions "to test the programs while you write them you need to have at least a couple of members in the database". This deserves rather more consideration than the book gives it.

For instance, you need to do testing continuously, even after the database has gone live: you need to keep making sure all of the existing features are *still* working while you continue to add features. So you may need to retain a lot of artificial corner cases in the tables, like a customer who makes an order which includes 80 items, or a customer with a foreign address to make sure your new invoices still work with them, even though your company still hasn't actually had a foreign order.

Sometimes I actually include a flag field in every table to identify test records.

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2009 Feb 24 [ Tue ]

Thoughts on "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

1. This book is an essay on what the author sees as a fundamental error which people are prone to in judging statistical information of all kinds, particularly relating to the economy.

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory]

2. He argues that we assume that all statistical distributions are similar to the Gaussian bellcurve, ie that almost all instances are clustered close to the mean, and that an instance well away from the mean is of negligible likelihood.

He points out, engagingly, that we continue to believe this when we know it is not true, telling ourselves that when such extraordinary instances do occur they are somehow outside any theory, when in fact they tell us that the theory is wrong.

3. I had read several accounts of this book before I finally got around to reading it over the last couple of weeks. I was irritated to find that he goes into certain specific points which I thought were my own inventions, eg p44, at the end of a section "Trained to be Dull", there is a footnote "The main tragedy..." which is almost exactly the same as this posting of mine: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Opinions/Politics/Miscellaneous/credit08.html]

Now I wonder whether I had actually absorbed them from reviews of the book.

4. The tone of the book is rather odd. He spends a lot of time telling us how successful and even swashbuckling he is, an iconoclast, which I suppose is a necessary part of pushing a theory, but seemed excessive to me. He characterizes his opponents with a plethora of dismissive terms: middlebrows, second-rate, sterile and so on and on. He seems to want his readers to blink nervously and think "I'm going to be rich and cool like him, not a loser like those guys!"

5. Overall he takes what seems to me to be an interesting and even revealing line. His message is that large fluctuations in the economy, which seem to be far greater than normal statistical noise, are nonetheless to be expected.

I think that anybody who wanted to engineer a large shift in the economy would find the promulgation of such an opinion to be helpful.

6. I think his narrow point about statistics is probably very true. We simply assume that bond prices, or whatever, are varying in a Gaussian distribution, so we assume that a certain quantity of observations will be sufficient to tell us the total distribution. But there are indeed other distributions which mimic the Gaussian over the short run, and the fact that we encounter conditions which are impossibly far from the Gaussian mean even once should be sufficient to throw out the Gaussian assumption.

I just think that if you observe even once an attempt to manipulate national or world economies for profit, that should be sufficient to throw out the hypothesis that the economy can be modelled like a physical process at all.

...In other words, if you have a fair coin, and it comes up heads a hundred times, what is the chance of it coming up heads the next time?

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2008 Sep 11 [ Thu ]

Movie review: Brotherhood (Taegukgi), 2004

This is a movie about the Korean war, made in Korea. It is basically an antiwar movie, showing how North and South Koreans were driven to kill each other. The American involvement is minimized. Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taegukgi_(film)]

I just want to make one point. In one scene, South Korean soldiers approach a village, and see that all the peasants have been slaughtered. They start to deal with the bodies, and then there's an explosion: apparently the bodies were booby-trapped.

I don't think I'm boasting too much when I say that when that scene started this very thought ran through my mind: *why* would anyone bother to kill the peasants? I was thinking the sergeants should order the men to search for boobytraps, and indeed they should not have entered the village in a clustered group.

Perhaps actual soldiers of the period would have been warier, or perhaps I'm just paranoid. Actually, I think I'm just an old guy: I've seen a lot of movies. So I ask myself questions like that. I also ask myself a question which the makers of the movie perhaps did not intend: since the result of the encounter was to transform the surviving South Korean troops into pitiless killing machines, who benefited from the atrocity? So who had an incentive to carry it out?

But a *lot* of questions like that could be asked. For instance, I have seen a lot of reviews of Saving Private Ryan which saw it as an account of the "last good war". But it clearly shows Axis captives being shot out of hand by the invading US troops, and seems to suggest that it was necessary. How could people avoid seeing that? What has been done to western society that almost everybody who watched the movie could be so brutalized? Even US Army commanders have complained that the casual use of torture in the TV series "24" has made it impossible to teach soldiers to handle prisoners without brutality.

This is why I believe we are living in Orwell's 1984. We have *always* been at war with Eurasia.

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2008 Jun 27 [ Fri ]

CHDK, new firmware for my Canon A630

This is free software for many Canon digital cameras: chdk.wikia.com [http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_for_Dummies]

It only installs till the batteries are removed, so it's safe to play with.

This is my experiences with installing it under Ubuntu Linux 7.1. Most, but not all, this info is from the CHDK website.

The docs say you need to check the firmware rev of the factory firmware in order to choose the correct download. I was able to get my original firmware rev by putting an empty file called "vers.req" in the root dir of the SD memory card. I had also to delete all photos/movies on the card, as otherwise when you put it in the camera it just shows you the media when you press FUNC SET. Press and hold FUNC SET, and press DISP. The first time, it shows you the version for a few seconds. If you immediately press FUNC SET again once, it shows something else. If you press it again, it shows the picture count, although for me it displayed only 223 - way too low.

Then I formatted the memory card in the camera. (I'm not sure that's really necessary but the web info told me to do it.) Then the general guide info to CHDK suggests using a special Windows utility to make the memory card bootable. The following guide includes Linux info so you can use hexedit to set a bootable flag: chdk.wikia.com [http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/A560] as part of the setup info for an A560 (but it seems to be valid for my A630 and presumably others).

Then I plugged in the SD card using a USB adapter. Ubuntu, and presumably all other modern Linux distributions, will mount a USB SD adapter automagically, but you don't want the SD card to be mounted while you're setting the bootable flag. The web info suggests using umount /dev/sdb1 (you can check if that device name is the same on your box by running dmesg), but this did not work for me: umount complained that /dev/sdb1 was not in /etc/fstab. The same thing happened for /media/drive. However, r-clicking on the drive icon and selecting unmount worked.

I was then able to run hexedit (at least after doing apt-get – it went fast). Unfortunately hexedit expects to use various keys like F1 which are grabbed by Gnome Terminal. I was able to turn them off with gterm Edit - Current profile. Then I was able to use F1 to get help on hexedit commands like Tab (to swap hex and text entry modes).

Then I downloaded the zip file containing the new firmware (two files). The CHDK site: chdk.wikia.com [http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Downloads] has links to various different "builds" with different features. The download I actually got was the "allbest". It turned out there was only one version for the A630, ie the original firmware version is irrelevant. The download location is grandag.nm.ru [http://grandag.nm.ru/hdk/autobuild/download.htm] (this is the latest, somewhat experimental version; you may prefer a more conservative one).

The main setup page does not specify where to put the two files, but I presumed the root dir. I unplugged the SD adapter and plugged it back in (so that Ubuntu would automagically remount it), and copied the files over.

I unmounted the adapter and unplugged it, pulled out the SD card, set the write switch to protected (write disabled) per the notes, and put it back in the camera. Then you enable the software just by turning on the camera. It starts up with a splash screen: it then shows a little rectangular area at the bottom left. You can then access most of the setups by pressing what the docs call the "Alt" key, ie the one at the top R of the "Func Set" button with a picture of a printer next to it, and then the MENU button.

Result: it works! There are indeed a bazillion features. However, I'm not sure how useful it is. The menu access is a little clumsy, it interferes in some ways with access to normal features, and it caused at least one lockup in a few minutes playing. However, it does provide one feature I desperately wanted: a battery status display. Apparently the camera has an actual voltage sensor: all you need to do is specify the voltage levels you consider as 0% and 100% (if you aren't happy with the default). I had no idea the camera had the hardware to do this. (OTOH, I just noticed that the battery level seems to go up as well as down... hmm.)

Another handy feature is to enable optical zoom during video recording. When you do so, it mutes (if you want) the microphone to avoid picking up the whir of the zoom mechanism. It refocuses after the zoom.

You can also download and run scripts, although I haven't tried that yet.

Other builds have extra features like remote control via the usb port.

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2007 Nov 11 [ Sun ]

Review - hardware - Motorola V360 cellphone - update

A few months ago I produced a review of my Motorola V360 phone: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Reviews/Hardware/motorola-v360-01.html]

It's one of the most popular pages on my site (meaning someone reads it now and then) so I hope people will be interested in a little update on a few points.

1. Perhaps as a result of getting the phone reflashed with a random flash file, I noticed a peculiar problem with the camera's color balance. Now, when you select "indoor" balance it works until you take a shot, and then the viewfinder shows an odd purplish low-contrast color cast. It's a little clumsy to check whether this also affects the resulting image files, but one test I did seemed to show it doesn't; still, it's irritating.

2. I have now got it set up for MMS and internet, but it was interesting that it was such an effort. I don't have good notes to describe what I had to do, but I remember that the support from the service provider was really half-bottomed. The website, for instance, had instructions specifically for my V360, but referred at several points to the name of a different service provider, suggesting a stealthy cut-and-paste which inspired little confidence. Several prompts did not correspond to those on my phone, although conceivably that was due to the particular software load on my particular V360.

The main thing I remember is that the software said something like "OK! You've now installed the internet!". But in fact what had been installed was the *setup* for the internet; I still needed to set the phone to actually *use* that setup. I consider myself a propellerhead but even I find it hard to deal with prompts which are definably *wrong*. It would have been a lot easier if they had just given a list of individual setups and said "ok, now you figure out how to enter this stuff".

Incidentally, "installing the internet" doesn't do anything about setting up email, either.

3. The Apple iPhone was recently launched in Europe. Its main claim to fame seems to be that the user interface allows the user to figure out how to use features without effort. The reason I mention that is that I *only now* figured out how to do something on my V360 which has been a problem for me for several months.

My service provider in England makes direct calls to Cambodia incredibly expensive. So I use a phonecard from the Post Office which allows calls to Cambodia at about 30 p per minute, plus airtime. The problem is that to make a call using this system you need to dial their port number, then enter the PIN of the card, then the destination number. That's a lot of numbers, with a huge potential for expensive and time-consuming error. What I wanted was to be able to dial a series of touchtones while inside a call, but although you can access the phonebook inside a call it didn't do what I needed; it drops the call (although I imagine it would do something more useful if I had 2-way calling on this account) and starts a new one. Result: I was afraid to make calls.

Just yesterday I was randomly pushing buttons on my phone and decided to click the menu button while entering a phone number into the phonebook. This shows three interesting options: insert "pause", insert "wait" and insert "n". I gambled that "pause" meant "delay a short period and then continue" and "wait" meant "provide a prompt to the user and wait for confirmation before continuing". I put a new number in the phonebook consisting of the PO's port number, w, PIN, w, destination number (in Cambodia). Bingo!

What bugs me is that I had *already tried* to do something similar way back when I first got the phone. But the entry mode when you're keying numbers into the phonebook is *locked* to "123" and allows only number characters. I had no idea that the way to access this was via the menu key. Those bozos at Motorola must have specifically disabled switching modes at that point in the menu tree, breaking the user interface for no good reason, while allowing the needed control characters via a completely different (and inferior) paradigm.

Incidentally, I still don't know what "n" does. Perhaps it's documented for a Hayes 9600 modem.

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2007 Jul 09 [ Mon ]

Review -- Movie: Shooter (2007)

This is a generally competent thriller with Mark Wahlberg in the title role. As usual, my comments refer to numerous plot elements in detail, so if you haven't seen the movie yet STOP READING NOW.

SPOILER ALERT

1. There are many shortcomings and blunders in the movie, but it does one very significant thing: the bad guys are not "rogue" elements in the federal government, but clearly in control of it. In that respect it differs from all other similar movies that I am aware of.

On the other hand, one of the weak points in the plot is that the FBI is depicted as independent of the bad guys. This seems quite implausible to me, and it seems doubly implausible that the hero, who vows vengeance for being set up as a patsy by one branch of the Feds, should casually assume that the FBI would be anything different. At the very least, the hero should be much more cautious with them.

2. I watched the deleted scenes on the DVD, and I can certainly see why they were deleted. In many cases the hero waffles on ponderously to explain elements of the plot, and one wonders why this university lecturer type didn't put two and two together a long time ago.

Indeed, do special-forces types really get inserted in a country, kill some people, and get pulled out without ever wondering who they're killing and why? "Need to know" is certainly a very big phrase in government operations, but don't these guys ever go "hey, waitaminute" *before* their best buddy gets blown away and their exfiltration vanishes?

3. The lead character really progresses too fast. Assuming he starts off with no suspicion of how the Feds really work, he should have been much more tentative throughout the movie. Like the point about the FBI above, he should have spread his bets more. For instance, the bad guys *could* have been foreign agents of some kind, with only limited contacts in local uniformed and secret police.

But in general, he is depicted as having had previously no doubts about the Feds. Even by the end of the movie, he should have been still wondering whether he was completely nuts. It took me thirty years to get from supporting the US (when it was unfashionable) to opposing it.

4. Likewise, he recovers too fast from the shoulder wound. It is not easy to aim a rifle accurately, even when you are in perfect health. For *months* after a shoulder wound, especially if you get no physical therapy, you have weakness and tremors.

5. OK, I know you can buy gunpowder at a lot of supermarkets in the USA. But can you really put together radio-controlled booby traps? That work with complete reliability and effectiveness?

6. The hero's actions, while generally in the realm of the possible (unlike Die Hard, etc) generally rely on the bad guy doing one particular move. For instance, the hero waits in a gully, and knifes a patrolling guard when he leans down to take a look. The hero has to be in exactly the right stance to execute that move; if the bad guy has his gun ready when he looks in, the hero has "brought a knife to a gunfight" as the saying goes.

7. The assault on the assassin's house, which occupies a large part of the running time and presumably budget, was utterly ridiculous. It wasn't clear exactly what kind of troops made up the attacking force, but what kind of halfwit advances slowly towards the enemy in broad daylight without cover in tight groups? They were depicted as having no comms, no surveillance equipment, no snipers, no armored vehicles, no flash-bangs, gas, or respirators, no command and control... They would be lucky to get a 1:1 kill ratio against Somalis.

Furthermore, the hero's plan relies on the attacking force being exactly that stupid.

8. The FBI guy who becomes the hero's buddy also gets effective too fast. Now it's true that if a highly-trained guy sets up the incident for you, you can be very effective with minimal training. (Indeed that's how special forces work in general: each individual is not Rambo, but the entire team works together so that each individual is maximally effective.) But this guy apparently had not seen a man die before, and in real combat people fall apart under much less stress than this guy was under. And in the meantime he learns to calmly execute well-aimed shots under fire... not to mention a lot of special infantry tactics and vocabulary that I really, really doubt are stressed at Quantico.

9. After the assault on the assassin's house, the bad guys managed to clear away all the bodies – and all the other evidence like a crashed helicopter, presumably, but left the cartridge cases? Like they have a union or something?

10. The bad guys instantly get the hero's phone number from a call he makes to the FBI, but never noticed his calls to the FBI girl who is working with them. Hmm. I don't know if that makes much sense, but I'm pretty sure the hero shouldn't have relied on it.

11. It was really dumb of the hero not to figure that the bad guys would make the connection to his girl (ie his buddy's girl). They should have had some sort of plan, if only that she lies low instead of staying at her place.

12. It was a bad decision to give the Senator (the bad guy) a Southern accent. He was already a caricature, but that was going too far. Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to be a Yale type?

13. The whole scene towards the end where the hero demonstrates that his rifle, collected from the alleged assassination scene, is still in a state incapable of firing a round, was utterly ridiculous. No manager has ever behaved like the FBI director. No murder suspect would be allowed close to a weapon (unless it had been previously disabled... hmm).

The gambit rested totally on the bad guy stating confidently that the weapon had not been touched since the assassination, but even if he believed it, would that really prove anything? And are murder suspects really released, and allowed to accumulate weapons, without a lengthy public trial? And the hero allows himself and his friends to be captured (on the snowy mountain) saying that they would not survive if they ran, but what makes him think they would survive if they were caught? The FBI office scene certainly didn't convince me of it.

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2007 Jul 07 [ Sat ]

Review -- hardware -- Motorola V360

As usual with my hardware reviews, I'm not discussing a new item so that you'll rush out and buy it. Instead, I'm talking about a product which I bought for myself and have had a lot of experience with.

The Motorola V360 was introduced nearly two years ago, so it's just about at the end of its shelf life. However, I think a lot of my comments will continue to apply to new cellphones for years, and not just in Cambodia.

As usual, I concentrate on problems. Actually I had no reliability problems with my V360; I quite like the phone and would recommend it, although there are now some Nokia models with similar features in my price range that I would prefer.

1. My big reason for changing phones was that I was tired of my Nokia 8250 dialling people by itself in my pocket. I tried to remember to lock it before putting it away, but I'm pretty sure it was activating itself anyway. I tried carrying it in a case on my belt, but that didn't help much, even when I fitted a plastic cover over the buttons. (I couldn't find anything designed for the purpose and had to use stock plastic which was obviously not a good fit.)

A slight reason to change phones was that the Nokia 8250 had started draining the battery fast, but I had gotten that fixed before and could probably have fixed it again.

2. So I really, really wanted a flipphone design. Unfortunately, at the time Nokia had few flipphones, and the ones it had were either out of my price range or had rotten features. So I was happy to find the Motorola. Additionally, it had fullsize keys with some travel, which more expensive – slimmer – models no longer offer. The extra thickness of the case, it seems to me, makes it considerably more resistant to flexing; particularly important to me because I like to carry it in my pants pocket with other stuff.

Incidentally, it seemed to me at the time that the Nokias had aggressively awful styling – as if someone's boyfriend was making the design choices. Older models like the 8250 were fine - I didn't buy it for its looks, but when I first saw the keypad light up at night I really thought it was beautiful. But for a few years, almost all the Nokias that came out were truly ugly. More recently they've improved a lot.

3. The V360 is a flipphone with a color screen, an external BW screen, a fullsize keypad, a Micro SD slot, a still and video camera, and MP3 player.

4. I paid 145 USD for it (funny – I could have sworn I paid less than that, but that's what the receipt says) at a store at the southwest corner of the O Russei market square. (The receipt does not really give a name – it just says "NOKIA Mobile Phone Shop". No names, no pack drill.) (These days, the price is 120 USD or so.)

The store was OK, but I got the impression that they were trying to sell me a used model at the new price, because when I asked them for the accessories they said "oh, if you want one in the box that'll be 10 USD more". Hmm. You should check that the phone displays the same IMEI as the one shown on the box (although it is often possible for the dealer to *change* the IMEI, depending on the model).

Also, bear in mind that most Cambodians routinely get their phone wrapped in plastic (less than a dollar) so a used phone may show no signs of wear at all.

I wound up with a reasonably full set of accessories: manual, earphone, USB cable, AC adapter. I think the Micro SD card I bought was extra – yep, 128 MB for 13 USD.

A friend later bought a similar model, the V361, which did not come with a manual. Also, the AC adapter was inferior: the AC pins did not fold into the plug like mine, which is much easier to pack.

5. I have started storing all the accessories for each such item of consumer electronics that I buy in a plastic zipup bag, available from local stationers for less than a dollar. It is much more space-efficient than the original box, which is also clumsy to open, search through and close. I cut the major information off the sides of the box and put it in the bag as well (IMEI etc).

I also put in the receipt.

6. The Nokia range is far more popular in Cambodia than any other brand. At the time I bought it there was what appeared to be a real Motorola brand store on Monivong, but it has since vanished and the phone number doesn't work. However, it seems to be possible to get repairs done (see later).

In particular, Mobitel, I believe still the only service provider with internet features, at the time supported only Nokias for even MMS (except a single Sony model). A few days ago I checked, and Mobitel do now support several Motorola models, in particular the V3X, but no longer offer MMS/internet for prepaid customers; you have to open an account, with a deposit of I think 150 USD and a regular monthly bill. (On the upside, they seemed to be saying that you could do any amount of MMS or internet browsing for free. Can that really be true?)

I was aware of the issue, but didn't really worry about it for several reasons; one was that I knew nobody who had MMS set up, so I couldn't send to anybody anyway.

7. Unlike other countries, cellphones are never sold in Cambodia locked to a service provider. I think this is because Cambodians do not trust the service provider to bill them honestly, so only a tiny fraction signs up for postpaid accounts at all.

On the other hand, almost no phones are manufactured for the Cambodian market, so you often encounter phones which are more or less branded for a certain service provider – in Spain, or Hungary... Thus the features which are available may vary.

8. With the exception of internet features, there were no major problems with the setup. However, I list a few issues below.

9. The space key is not zero, as on the Nokias, but the star key. This took a surprising amount of time to figure out, as I had no idea companies would choose to switch such a basic part of the user interface.

10. I hate the idea that every time you enter a name in the phonebook it is automatically assigned a shortcut. Indeed, the first ten you add, whatever they are, get single-digit shortcuts! This is completely ridiculous, and one can only assume the "feature" is provided at the insistence of service providers who want to encourage misdials. There is no way to turn it off, but I made ten fake numbers which cause an error message instead of a dial charge, and assigned them to the single-digit quickdial numbers. Now numbers get assigned speed-dial numbers like "1205". Hah!

11. Instead of using preset speed-dial numbers, I use another feature of the phone: when you press the dial key without entering a number first, it brings up a list of previously-dialled numbers, which usually includes what you need.

12. Alternatively you can bring up the phonebook, but the default setup is very poor for me, and the menu options are poorly arranged. For instance, the default search method for the phone book is first-letter only. Ie if you want to find Smith and try and key S, M, it shows you Martin, May, Meckler...

So you change the search method from "Jump to" to "Find" (not entirely clear to me and probably a nightmare for translators). But now you discover that these helpful guys at Motorola have set the default text entry to iTAP, ie the godawful predictive system for which somebody should burn in hell for all eternity, so when you try to find Sok Py the phone cheerfully makes wrong predictions six times, even if Sok Py is the only entry under S.

Conceivably I'm biased because I need to enter a lot of non- English place and personal names, but is that so unusual?

Worse, the default text mode choice is not made under phonebook setup, or Settings; it's actually under Messages, and *not* in message setup; you have to *open a new message*, and then go into options, where you'll find "entry mode" and "entry setup" (wtf? again the translator is driven to drink); you want "entry setup" to change primary mode to "TAP English" (TAP being the term for non-intelligent, or to put it another way non-stupid text entry). It just took me about 15 minutes to find this again, by the way; it took me *months* when I first got the phone. Of course it's not in the manual.

"Entry mode", by the way, seems useless: you get to choose the default mode as numeric or symbol (instead of ABC2... etc), but who would want that?

Another irritant about the phone book is that it does not quite do what you need in handling entries stored on the SIM and the phone. I want to keep most of the contacts on the SIM card, but this means that a lot of features, like photo call, don't work. It would be best to copy all the SIM entries to the phone and then view only phone entries, but this is not allowed. You can view only entries in a certain category, eg Personal, but that doesn't really fix the problem.

Likewise, if you *do* put someone in the phone memory so you can add a special MP3 ringtone, that ringtone is *also* used for SMS messages from them. Dagnabbit.

13. The camera feature works amazingly well, despite my complaints below. I did not investigate it prior to sale as I expected that any camera feature in my price range would be miserable.

One problem is resolution. It is rated as 640x480 although the true resolution is closer to the screen resolution of 176x220. (I cannot find any confirmation of this on the web, but it seems to me that all cameraphone manufacturers use interpolation to artificially increase the apparent resolution of the camera.) However, the color response, especially in normal indoor conditions, is the best I've seen in a cameraphone, and actually better than my old Minolta camera under typical conditions.

I really wish the manufacturers, or at least honest review sites, would actually measure some of the basic properties of the products, like resolution, or usable exposure range, or how long it takes to save a shot.

There are several stupid misfeatures in the user interface. For instance, the default behavior when you press the shutter button is to ask you what you want to do with the shot, apparently in the hopes that you'll send it via your service provider's cripplingly expensive MMS system. Yeah, right – without checking it. Why not silently save it and let you take another picture immediately? Having to negotiate another menu makes it much harder to take a succession of shots.

Something really astounding is that when you press the shutter button the viewfinder image freezes and you can look at it and think "that looks great! I'll send it!" but it's *not actually the shot that gets stored*. *That* gets captured a *second or so after you press the shutter*. That's right, when your subject is just turning away, or you start lowering your hand. Another good reason not to immediately send it as MMS.

A less important niggle, but one which seems very easy to fix, is that it is absolutely essential to pick the right kind of illumination (sunny, cloudy, indoor etc) but this is slow to find in the user interface. It should be on the number keys, as you often need to experiment back and forth to figure out the optimum choice. Ideally, of course, a true white balance feature would be better, especially if it also set the white *level* for exposure, because the plus and minus exposure controls don't really work: they seem to make the picture brighter or darker *after it's digitized*.

An even less important feature, but one which could presumably be fixed very cheaply, is that no useful EXIF information – date/time, exposure, color balance) is written to the file.

14. The photo display feature works, but is sluggish and limited. Because the camera does not really provide a filesystem interface, it has to search every folder for images, and then presents a list in chronological order, rather than by folders. This makes it slow to start up, and then makes it very hard to keep a bunch of good shots available to show off separate from your most recent shots.

The viewer does have both "categories" and "albums" available but they were very clumsy to use so I have never figured them out. I have to admit that they might be usable for what I want. Perhaps if they are accessible from a PC the user interface might be more practical.

It would be really nice to be able to flip the orientation of the images, considering the camera images are horizontal and the display is vertical. It would also be nice to use the entire screen for images.

15. The video recorder works. I was surprised to find quite recently that if you change the lighting setup in the still camera mode, it also changes it in the video mode; I suppose that's reasonable.

The video images of course are very grainy and blurry. The sound, however, is surprisingly good, despite the fact that the mic is pointed away from the subject. Since the video files are fairly small, the video mode is actually quite usable as a voice recorder, for instance for recording snatches of a foreign language, although the irritating restriction on recording length to 45 s or so is a problem. (Don't judge the sound played through the builtin speaker; transfer the file to a PC and listen through headphones.)

16. A couple of days after I bought the phone I went back to the store and asked where the software CD was. I was aware that the software CD is often not provided with the phone (although it usually is with Nokias) so I was not surprised when they affected not to know what I was talking about. Eventually someone produced what appeared to be a kosher Motorola Phone Tools (MPT) CD, but when I got it home I found that the plastic sleeve was stuck to the CD and it was unplayable.

Later I found what appeared to be a genuine MPT disk. I had the same problems as another review site: it seems to fail to find the phone at least half the time, so that superstitiously I now reboot before trying to use it.

In addition – and not related! – it is a pain to have to switch the phone from disk emulation to software link every time.

17. MPT has rather limited features. For instance, you can't back up or even read SMS messages. It's also just incredibly slow, and it doesn't warn you before getting locked into a long operation. Why in heck should it take several minutes to load the address book? I get the impression from the (arcane and doomily described) driver setup that Motorola standardized on a serial interface protocol years ago and is now working via some sort of incredibly kludgey emulation. It is almost unbelievable that Motorola, one of the biggest phone marketing companies in the world, should still be trying to foist this travesty on users.

18. On the other hand, you can use a sort of video editor to turn your video caps into little movies. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to import or export anything standard, so it's only useful for phones of the same type. Whoo-hoo!

19. A fundamental problem with the product is that Motorola does not provide clear specs to end users. For instance, what are the restrictions on the still photos that it can display? It turns out that there is a filesize limit on jpegs, for instance; I think it's fairly small, around 100 kB. But what are the details of the video format? The sound format inside the video? Can it use VBR for MP3s? What should I look for on a Java game or other software to see if it will work on my phone?

Actually, you can get more information if you sign up at the Motorola developer site. Unfortunately, I haven't actually seen software advertised as meeting those specs... presumably because not many users sign up for the developer site.

20. And of course many, many of the issues that I complain about above are because the phone is infected by DRM. Motorola can't just publish straight specs because the customer might start complaining about all the features that his supplier has locked out. It can't provide easy access to utilities because then end users could easily unlock their own phones. It can't put time into fixing user interface issues because it has to deal with 372 different versions for different service providers.

In an ideal world the software interface for mobile phones would be standardized and we would all be able to easily select and add features. And the directors and major shareholders of mobile phone service companies would be lying in pools of blood.

21. I tried downloading various utilities to try and fix problems – I thought I might be able to access the disabled voice recorder, set the record length to infinite, connect up the camera lighting settings to hotkeys etc.

One small success is that I was able to set the phone to load new Java apps from memory. Previously, it just refused to see them. Apparently, even though the phone was unlocked in the sense that you could use any service provider, the feature set had still been crippled.

However, as soon as I tried to edit the menu, the phone locked up, and refused to start up to a menu. I guess the bootloader would still have allowed me to try loading a new flash file, but I had lost confidence. Embarrassingly, I had to take it to a shop, who fixed it for 13 USD.

I didn't get a chance to talk to the tech directly, but I was told they had to replace a part. I'm guessing they swapped the entire program memory from another board. (I was also told they fixed something with the hinge, and since it's been back I've noticed that the phone doesn't activate for no apparent reason in my pocket any more, so presumably there was a problem with the hinge sensor that detects the phone is flipped open.)

The phone is still able to load Java apps, so either that setting survived the chip swap, or the software package had not been crippled on that feature. (However, there is still no voice recorder.)

I was also surprised to find that the Java apps I had installed from the Micro SD were still in the installed apps menu and runnable. Apparently settings and Java apps are kept in a "flex" file which is separate from the program setup, and presumably the menus. Still, I would have thought it would all be in the same physical chip.

22. As basically the utilities I tried caused problems, I am not going to provide direct links. However I think anyone interested in modding a Motorola V360 should check out this guy: yuetblog.blogspot.com [http://yuetblog.blogspot.com/]

The above site is absolutely amazing. The guy most spend all his time fiddling with phones and keeping his site maintained. I don't know if his ads are keeping him alive: maybe they're enough where he lives, in China, or maybe the Chinese secret police pay him to put bugging software in the flash files he provides.

A general problem with other modding sites is that most of them cover multiple kinds of Motorola phones. A very interesting howto page may have a reference to some spec which defines a range of phones including the V360 (or your model), but the reference means nothing to a tyro like me (or presumably you).

If you can manage that, check out motomodders.net. After you sign up you can go to the info for V360 *and similar* phones, ie apparently the "R47" range, eg this: www.motomodders.net [http://www.motomodders.net/Default.aspx?tabid=55&view=topics&forumid=15

]

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2007 Jul 03 [ Tue ]

Review: TV series Alias

This is about a young woman (Sidney Bristow) who decides to start working for a completely secret spy organization, and then finds she has to spy against that organization even as she carries out missions for it.

As usual, this review refers to many specific plot points, so if you have not finished watching the series, you should *stop reading now*.

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(TV_series)]

SPOILER ALERT

1. The setup for the show is that an evil mastermind has set up a vast secret headquarters in the USA and recruited Americans by telling them that it is a super-secret US agency called "SD6", but in fact they are working for an international terrorist and arms- dealing conspiracy.

I was very attracted to this premise. The general term for such operations is "false flag" and they are completely routine in espionage. For instance, the FBI agent who was arrested a few years ago for spying for the Russians was caught by US agents who approached him as Russian agents.

For some reason however it has rarely been used in movies and TV. Conceivably this is because it would slow up every scene if the characters had to go through a laborious protocol to establish bona fides. But anybody with any sense would do so. For instance, if the secret police approach you and ask you to spy on a neighbor, ask yourself who else might like to spy on that neighbor, and take corresponding precautions.

For instance, a few years ago a buddy needed another security clearance, and one of the elements of that is to for the DIA to check out his buddies... ie me. So he told me to get ready for a phonecall. But when the DIA officer called, I told him I'd call back on a published DIA number. The guy was stunned, like nobody ever did this before. I must have sounded pretty paranoid, but the fact is that *anybody in my buddy's circle of acquaintances* would have found out about these calls and could have presented themselves as a DIA agent. And I didn't really want to stress to the officer that my buddy was currently going through a messy divorce and his wife had already tried various dirty tricks.

Another reason I liked the premise was that it reminded me of the element of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (later filmed as "Blade Runner", although the element was dropped for the movie), where the hero (an android-hunting police detectoive) finds that an entire police department has been set up by the androids themselves for some reason, including a human who thinks he's an android hunter like the hero.

Still, it's a little implausible, isn't it, that such an organization would survive for long without being uncovered.

On the other hand, for me Sidney's experience mirrors that of the American people. "There are many things that I hate about Arvin Sloane. But the thing I hate the most is that he wraps his criminal activities in the flag."

2. A very important, and little-stressed aspect of maintaining security that made the premise more plausible was that SD6 demanded that anybody, including innocent civilians, including SD6 employees' loved ones, who found out about SD6 would be immediately eliminated, *and that the SD6 employees went along with this*. I don't think enough was made of this. The heroine was several times shown as reluctant to kill or torture captives, yet she accepted without question that her boss was justified in eliminating her fiance when the fiance found out about SD6. (Well, she wasn't overjoyed about it, but she didn't plug Arvin Sloane the next time she saw him either. Don't people ever say "Hey, waitaminute! If someone does *that*, doesn't it make him a bad guy?")

I really want to stress this, because it fits in with what seems to be a pattern of encouraging cruelty, brutality and obedience to the state on US TV. Even US Army officials have protested, for instance, that TV shows like 24 hours, which show the hero torturing captives on many occasions, cause their soldiers to be ready to torture captives, whatever they are (ostensibly) taught about acceptable procedures.

On the other hand, in "Alias" the heroine discovers that the secret organization which is routinely torturing people and murdering innocents is actually *not* a US agency. I often wonder whether the most important ideas in TV shows are those which are never specifically addressed.

On the other other hand, Sidney becomes more and more willing to kill and torture as the series wore on.

3. The makers of the show say explicitly (in one of the extras on the DVDs) that one of the intentional elements of the show is the relationships inside a family: for instance, inside Sidney's own family, where she does not even know that her father has been working for SD6 until she has been working for it for years. (One wonders exactly how SD6 arranged that their paths never crossed.)

Indeed, the arc of the show is that Sidney's life starts out completely distorted by her father Jack Bristow's involvement in intelligence work; in particular it has driven the two of them apart. As Sidney finds out more and more about her own past in the series, she is continually shocked, but she also realizes that a further element which has been blocking her relationship with Jack has vanished. At the end of the series, Sidney kills her own mother, and Jack sacrifices his life to protect Sidney and to make up for all the pain he has put her through.

This idea of the shattered family seems a peculiar ingredient to mix into a spy story. The makers do not actually explain *why* they wanted to concentrate on it. It may be that they were trying to emulate the success of Star Wars, which seemed to resonate with postwar generations in which the children are alienated from their parents by family trends like both parents working and frequent divorce. It may also be that they were trying to exploit the idea that we do not become adults until our parents are dead.

4. A weakness of the concentration on family relationships is that members of the family could be kidnapped to coerce their relatives; whether the victims were spies or civilians. It reminds me that the stated policy of SD6 – to liquidate anyone who found out about it – is actually logical assuming that their opponents have the amazing capabilities to track people down and extract them in broad daylight that were portrayed. (Actually, it is very difficult just to get three separate people at the same place and time, even when they don't have to communicate in code and so forth.)

This makes me wonder what happens in reality. Maybe the CIA is not a front organization simply to confuse the masses; maybe the *real* intelligence organizations *have* to operate completely undercover to protect their own family members. Perhaps the CIA functions *only* as a money-laundering cutout between the Treasury and the *real* intelligence groups.

5. A tiny grammar point caught my attention: at one point Sidney and her father are referred to as "the agents Bristow". Is this some sort of standard locution? Does it really come up often enough in the FBI or whatever, that two members of the family are both agents, that Americans would remember this arcane piece of grammar?

6. Again and again in the series our heroes would set out to capture something referred to as the "book" of an opposing spy agency: that is, identities and locations of all their agents and contacts, and so forth. Often this would be held on a computer, and some cockamamie scheme would be devised to get into the impenetrable computer.

On the other hand, it seems to me that spy agencies would not merely try to defend this data, they would compartmentalize it so that it was never in one place to be accessed. I wonder if this is how intelligence organizations really work. Certainly the peons are affected by "need to know", but are the bosses too? All these TV series show the hero sitting down at a computer, typing in a command, and getting a list of all current operations, or whatever. But surely such searches are just *too much of a security risk* to *ever* enable them. The Germans invented the cell system, where the central only communicated with other cells via cutouts. Did intelligence agencies ever really give it up?

7. Assuming the above is true, then you could say that all US intelligence activities are by definition "rogue". "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

8. A major weakness of the show was that it went on longer than they planned. This necessitated a "retcon" where the vanquished Arvin Sloane implausibly was put back in charge of our heroes, and old plots were recycled.

9. Much worse, the main "mcguffin" of the series, the works of the genius Rambaldi, never amounted to anything. Initially I really hoped that Rambaldi would turn out to be a fake – something like those scientific brainteasers which the Brits invented in WW2 and smuggled to the Germans in the hopes that they would waste the time of their best minds. I really hoped that it would turn out that Arvin Sloane had created all these fakes and had quietly created the entire trade in Rambaldi antiquities.

But no. Slowly it became clear that we were really supposed to believe that some shmuck in the 16th century had not only dveloped all this amazing tech, but had chosen to wrap it in layers of mystery for no apparent purpose other than to provide a plot for the latest episode.

So, with the secret of immortality, the ability to see the future, levitation, genetic engineering and everything else, Rambaldi's grand scheme was going to be revealed in the final episode...

But all of those weird machines and intricate coded messages under the arctic ice and whatnot turned out to be just an immortality drug. Fpetesake, I vaguely remember that at one point Sidney sneers to a henchman "What are you doing all this for? Did Arvin tell you he had the secret of immortality?" and the henchman sneers right back "You fool, it's so much more than that." Well, it wasn't.

I can just about accept that someone in the 15th century could have invented all that stuff, and seen the future, and whatnot. What I cannot believe is that his plan would be such a convoluted nothing, like a Rube Goldberg contraption that whirs all over the place for several minutes before finally, proudly producing a boiled egg.

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2007 Jan 01 [ Mon ]

Intelligent chargers are available in Phnom Penh

In my previous posting on issues with NiMH rechargeable batteries, I described the problems that can occur if you do not use "intelligent" chargers, and mentioned that I have never seen such chargers in Phnom Penh.

Today, browsing at the "K-4 Group" store in the Sorya Mall, I found multiple models in several brands which appeared to have some degree of intelligence. One boasted 3 modes: dV, ie delta-V (probably the best if it works); overheating; and timer (what do they set the timer to?).

They were a little pricey at around 25 USD for the offbrand models up to 60 USD or so; the store – the big electronics store on the southern side of floor 3 – has the highest prices in Phnom Penh. Still, it may be worth it if it makes your batteries more reliable.

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2006 Dec 03 [ Sun ]

Review: NiMH rechargeable batteries

In my previous posting review of the Canon A630 camera I referred to a problem with the standard AA NiMH rechargeable batteries that can be used with it: NiMH batteries tend to have a high self-discharge rate, higher than other batteries and much higher than non-rechargeables.

Here's the Wikipedia article on NiMH, which estimates a self-discharge rate of around 0.5 to 1 per cent per day: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_metal_hydride_battery]

That article however mentions that Sanyo has introduced a range of NiMH batteries with a significantly lower discharge rate of around 15 per cent per *year*. Assuming this product works the way Sanyo says it does, this makes them *much* more practical for photographers who tend to use the camera intermittently over several months before fully discharging the battery. I have seen these "Eneloop" batteries on sale in PP. www.sanyo.co.jp [http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext4-eng/0511/1101-2e.html]

The Wikipedia article also refers to the difficulty of recharging such batteries correctly. The Wikipedia battery charger article: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger] mentions that the products sold as sets, with a charger and batteries together, do not properly charge batteries that do not match the original batteries. Apparently there are "intelligent" or "delta-V" chargers available which monitor the paradoxical *drop* in voltage across the battery when it reaches full charge, but I have never seen such terms on chargers in Phnom Penh.

Simple chargers usually work by providing a semi-constant current for a fixed amount of time after being plugged in. It would seem that chargers should normally state the "constant" current and run time, but this is not usually available. The instructions may state something like "charges our 2100 mAH batteries in just 16 hours" from which one can guess that the charge current is around 150 mA. Often it is not at all clear whether the charge time is set by a fixed timer, or whether the unit really works by detecting the sharp rise in battery temperature at full charge – probably a better system as it should work for any variety of battery.

Incidentally, the instructions – even the very abbreviated ones – should be much clearer about how you have to use the chargers. For instance, they are designed only to recharge fully-discharged batteries, not to top up partially-discharged ones. Additionally, it is not at all clear that many products have an LED which comes on as soon as you plug it in, and which goes out when the batteries reach full charge. One's natural reaction when you see the charger plugged in with the light off is to assume it's fallen out of the socket slightly and jiggle it – presumably resulting in a new, unnecessary and harmful charge cycle.

I have seen a "fast" charger at Phnom Penh Electric for 13 USD (that can charge 8 AA cells simultaneously) but I am a little wary of it without a much fuller description of the way it works. It says it can charge batteries in just one hour, but that implies that any error in detecting the full-charge state must cause damage much faster.

What I would like to do is actually *measure* the current into the batteries; this would allow me to use any charger and know how long to leave any battery on charge. However, it is frustratingly difficult to connect up test leads to the charger and batteries. (I have never found battery holders for sale in Phnom Penh.)

Another issue in Phnom Penh is the wonky state of the AC supply. Just last night the power went out for about ten minutes while I was charging some batteries. Conceivably when the power goes out it causes any timer-operated charger to reset the time, resulting in up to double the desired charge time for *each* outage.

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2006 Dec 02 [ Sat ]

Review: Canon A-630 digital camera

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new camera. The selection in Phnom Penh is not great, but there were a couple of features I really wanted that narrowed down the choice to just one: the Canon A630.

I had considered getting a DSLR, but couldn't find one for sale without the stupid zoom lens which negates most of the advantages for me. Additionally, the extra weight and bulk are especially important in this climate.

The features I really wanted were a foldout screen and non-proprietary batteries. I detest having to pay an inflated price for proprietary batteries, but that's not the only problem.

1. In a year or two they can go completely out of production

2. The manufacturer never updates the technology – batteries have been improving steadily but if your camera is four years old so is your battery tech

3. If you realize your camera mfr makes lousy batteries there's no second source

The Canon A630 has the additional feature of being able to use regular alkaline cells if necessary – great in emergencies.

Another issue that becomes important on a trip is that if all your portable items use the same standard cells you only need to lug one charger around.

The other thing about the Canon is that it has a foldout screen. I don't understand why this feature is routine in video cameras and rare in still cameras. Why do advertising shots promoting cameras always show a cute couple smiling into the camera, when they had to hand the camera to a stranger to make the shot?

Even more significantly, the foldout screen makes all kinds of shots possible that were impossible otherwise. It's easy, for instance, to take a shot when you're standing in a crowd. It's also easy, or at least possible, to take a picture with the camera right against a wall, or from the viewpoint of a computer screen on a crowded desk.

The one on the A630 has the feature of being rotated through 180 degrees so that it's safely on the inside against the body of the camera until you open it up to shoot. That's a huge advantage if you carry the camera in a pocket.

I've started to worry that the screen makes the camera less reliable, but a cursory search of the web did not show that as a particular problem (although people grumbling about camera failures can be found for any model).

Oh well. Let's move on to things I discovered after buying.

The big issue with the batteries is that there's no battery level display. All you get is a warning light saying it's about to die – like an oil level warning light, instead of a gas gauge. This is really disappointing. My 6-year-old Canon camcorder has a wonderful display that continuously shows hours and minutes of operating time remaining. I know that as the camera can take any kind of AA battery it can't really be sure what any voltage level really means, but how tough would it have been to build in some sort of voltage readout? Failing that, how about a running count of exposures, on-time, zooming etc, so that you could figure out that after about 12,500 "blr units" it'll probably die?

Another mild issue with rechargeable batteries – not really Canon's fault – is that there seems to be no agreed system for *topping up* NiMH batteries. The available chargers just force a somewhat constant current in for a preset amount of time, and then stop (if you're lucky). Since you can't top them up, you have to run them down to zero and then put in a spare set. This is not too bad because I can buy a spare set for 7 USD, but is certainly extra weight and bother. Additionally, NiMH batteries tend to self-discharge rather fast, so unless you are using the camera to take hundreds of shots per month you'll get distinctly less than full life out of each replacement set.

The Canon has much better controls than my Minolta Dimage X (which has started burning out batteries, one reason why I was so eager to find a camera that you could get generic replacements for). It has, among other things, manual focus and spot readings for white balance, which would have made most of my shots on the Minolta better.

A big issue with the Minolta however was poor access to the options it *did* have. For instance, not only was it fiddly and non-obvious to set the camera to timer, but it went back to non-timer for the next shot! Combine that with my tiny, wobbly tripod chosen to match the camera's size and any chance of fixing a problem by repeating the shot vanishes.

The Canon has similar issues with its menu system (compared to a manual camera where all the settings are displayed and changeable immediately), but I was gratified to find many nicely-chosen convenince features. For instance, many settings are retained even through poweroff. Another great idea is a menu option so that after you take each shot the camera sort of goes to display mode for that one shot, so that you can zoom in, check focus and whatnot, as long as you like; then you can just partially press the shutter button to go back to shooting mode. It really cuts down on the stress on the shoot/display mode switch (I'm surprised the switch on the Minolta lasted so long with no apparent problem).

Likewise, if you set manual focus, the display changes to showing the center of the screen in a zoomed-in mode to help you check focus, but reverts to normal when you gently press the shutter button.

A mildly worrying point is that I forget how many auto features have been turned off in my current mode. Not only is white balance retained, but also manual focus, which is harder to see immediately on the screen (until you zoom in). Perhaps, every time you turn such a camera on, it should mildly point out that some settings have been retained, list them, and ask for confirmation.

Another problem with the menu system is that I somehow managed to set the camera to 640x480 resolution when I had intended to do a spot white reading. OK, I concede I must have done this myself, but I don't remember ever making a similar mistake with a menu system.

Another issue that is not exactly Canon's fault is that I need to think about a lot of auto settings every time I start shooting. For instance, I have several times forgotten that in sunlight I can lower the "ASA" setting for better shadow noise.

When I carry the Canon I use a regular canvas bag, not emblazoned with a logo, that snaps onto my belt. This would be fine except for two things: the stud that snaps on the belt, and the stud that snaps the cover of the bag closed. Both of them are rather small and hard, and to make them work you have to press strongly agains the body of the camera. This is quite worrying on the display side even when the face of the display is folded on the inside, and is even more worrying on the lens side, because the system which closes the lens is made of very flimsy strips of plastic. I really wish Canon had provided some sort of manual sliding lens cover that could have been made much stronger. (Incidentally I have not seen kosher camera bags which included significant padding or other features which you would think would help protect the camera. I'm referring to bags for point-and-shoots like the A630, compared to the full-size "gadget bag" style that you'd lug an SLR, flash and lenses around in.)

I did not install the software for several days after buying the camera because I gloomily assumed it would be terrible, and it turned out to be indeed that. For one thing, the driver never seemed to do anything useful – this may be because I tried to run the install from a copy of the software on the HD and said "wtf?" instead of complying when it demanded I put the CD back in after a reboot, but even when I installed the driver manually it was useless.

Additionally, the camera stores videos in motion JPEG format, but the sw does not have a utility for converting them into anything else, and Quicktime (provided with the software) doesn't work either. I have quite a lot of sw, none of which understands motion JPEG. (That's not quite true. I do have some, but it managed to repeatedly drop frames during the conversion, even though it took about 20x real time. Sheesh.) (On the good side, the audio was not at all bad, although of course there's nothing useful like a mic socket.)

And this is a small point, but intensely irritating. If the camera can't display shots unless they were taken on that camera, and not edited by any other software, why the heck doesn't the utility sw include a function to convert shots *back* to a format that the camera can display? That omission was bad enough on my old Minolta – why is it *still* a problem 5 years later?

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2006 Jul 11 [ Tue ]

Movie review: "Starship Troopers"

This is a sf movie made in 1997 by Paul Verhoeven. Ebert review: rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19971107/REVIEWS/711070305/1023]

(I now think his review is inaccurate, but it is still a useful reference.)

Wikipedia (which I had not read when I wrote the rest of this article): en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_%28film%29]

SPOILER ALERT

Don't read the following unless you've already see the movie, or are determined never to (in which case why read this?).

I'm writing this review because I saw the movie again a few days ago on Cambodian TV, in Cambodian without subs. I have several times seen people suggest that it's a useful exercise to watch a politician speaking with the sound turned off, because while he's concentrating on the words you can clearly read his body language. Anyhow, watching the movie while understanding little or nothing of the dialogue (I did catch a few things, like the hero used the polite word "tian" to an officer, whereas my dictionary calls it antequated) seems to have given me an insight into what the *significance* of the movie is.

When I first saw the movie I was impressed by the special effects but disgusted with the way it travestied the original novel by Heinlein. Ebert asserts that he has read the novel many times as a child and indeed that it was intended for children, but he calls the movie a faithful adaptation, which astounds me. In the movie, most things about the aliens just make no sense, and the soldiers are issued with the ludicrously ineffective rifles (which Ebert does point out as ineffective) instead of the "power suits" which made the soldiers in the novel so effective (and interesting).

There was a lot of similar criticism at the time, and I never read a coherent response from the director Verhoeven. The movie certainly seems to be a satire of fascism, so I wrote it off as a juvenile exercise in propaganda that was too incoherent to be worth further consideration.

My insight now is based on an opinion which I heard when the movie was released: that the movie simply had *no* relevance to the novel except for a few superficial elements, and Verhoeven wanted to make a completely separate movie. I now realize (I think) *what* that movie is.

It is simply another version of "Phantom Menace". Lucas recently stated specifically that the plot of "Phantom Menace" is intended to refer to the way the USA manufactured a pretext for starting the war in Vietnam (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which was apparently just a gleam in Bush's eye when "Phantom Menace" was being planned). I'm sure Verhoeven wanted to present the same idea: that an evil government manufactures a war in order to seize absolute power. See what this explains:

1. Many, many scenes show that the government and society are completely callous about their own citizens: for instance, a drill sergeant breaks a recruit's arm and sends a knife through another's hand for no particular reason. (Medical technology seems to make repairing those injuries a more trivial matter than today, but certainly the pain would be the same.) In other words, the government would be entirely capable of creating a war that would kill millions gruesomely to achieve its ends.

2. The ludicrous discrepancy between the guns and the starships which according to one diagram allow the Earth forces to reach a star on the other side of the galaxy (and come back with no pesky special-relativity issues) in days is explained: the government *wants* its soldiers to die, so it gives them a weapon which seems no more effective than an M16 (which was also surprisingly ineffective, although not so blatantly).

3. This also explains the utter lack of military planning. If I had been in charge of an invasion from space, I would have wanted to know about those blasterbugs (my word) that could hit my battleships in space first. And if I had seen them for the first time after the invasion started, I would have pulled out immediately and shot my intelligence officers. (Incidentally, when I first saw the movie the scenes where crippled battleships drop out of formation seemed ludicrous, but I now realize they were probably not in orbit, but "hovering" at a fixed location relative to the surface using some sort of drive system, so as soon as their drives were out of action they would start to fall under gravity. But I digress. The real question is why the battleships were in such close formation, even after they came under attack.)

Indeed, it makes me wonder how the government actually implements such an incredibly incompetent invasion. Although up till recently there was no public criticism from military officers about the fiasco in Iraq. Hmmm. But what about the commanders of those sacrificed space battleships? Perhaps the government deliberately picked chowderheads for those positions, much as the medical schools pick dull normals. The hero's girlfriend, for instance, seems to be a clever and competent pilot but ludicrously reckless. Hmmm.

4. Despite the ability of the bugs to attack spaceships above the atmosphere, the initial meteorite attack on Buenos Aires seemed like a doubleplus-implausible form of technology. It also seemed to be a dumb thing to do. What would the motive of the bugs have been, just to poke us in the eye with a stick? ...Etc etc. So many parallels to 9/11.

5. Notably, racism and sexism appear to have completely disappeared by the time of the action. For instance, there's a shower scene with naked men and women together, and they simply make no reference to it. This was one of the things that surprised me when I first saw the movie, because I assumed that Verhoeven, in making an antifascist movie, would have wanted to associate the society in the movie with classic fascist methods. I now view this as another reason why the government chose to invent an *alien* message: it was *easier* than creating an internal enemy, once people had lost the habits of racism and sexism. (Including anti-*male* sexism; I don't know how a young straight man could see a dozen young pretty girls naked and not get an erection, but presumably nobody would pay attention to an erection if they don't pay attention to naked girls.)

Incidentally, I actually saw the first few seconds or so of this scene on Cambodian TV, replete with naked breasts and buttocks, though not penises. Apparently they do not create a censored copy of a movie before the broadcast: they just pay a guy who flips to a promo when a nude scene comes on – or several seconds after it starts.

6. In the movie, mutilated veterans are commonplace, even before the bug war. In the book, the human race has been involved in many conflicts, and the bugs are just one of the enemies. I don't remember any discussion of previous enemies in the movie. Maybe they were all crippled by their drill sergeants (as has always been common in the Soviet Union). I think Verhoeven just wanted to show that the government had had a continuous policy of conflict, despite the apparently peaceful society on Earth itself.

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2006 May 13 [ Sat ]

Movie review: V for Vendetta (2006) (Long, anarchist viewpoint)

As usual in my reviews, I will not provide the usual plot and actor listing. For that you can refer to Ebert: rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060316/REVIEWS/60308005/1023]

Or here: www.popmatters.com [http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/v/v-for-vendetta.shtml]

Here's a review that makes the interesting observation that Meanwhile, government security personnel surrounded the production at all times . some of whom were identifiable to the cast and crew, and others who maintained anonymity within the crowd to ensure the security of everyone involved.: www.scifislacker.com [http://www.scifislacker.com/films/v-for-vendetta.shtml]

Here's the Wikipedia article, which I did not read until after I had written everything else below. It addresses various questions I raised about the relationship of the movie to the original graphic novel: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta]

SPOILER ALERT

Don't read any further unless you have already seen the movie. If you haven't seen it what I say probably isn't going to make any sense anyway.

1. A large part of the plot is that the British government secretly created a deadly virus and caused an outbreak killing thousands in order to create a terrorist scare which would allow them to suspend civil liberties. You can see that this might be near and dear to my heart. (Heck, my father and brother-in-law both *worked* at Larkhill, the research center which in the movie developed the virus.)

On the other hand this is a mass-market movie, and I could find no mention of the implied criticism of the Bush/Blair axis in Ebert's review.

Also, I have to wonder what the actual *effect* of this movie. It seems to be saying: yes, the government can seize absolute power without anyone suspecting, and retain power for decades until a superhuman hero turns up by accident and saves the country without the citizens needing to do any actual hard work. I do not like that message. Would it not have been a more interesting movie if it had shown *real* people and how they might *really* organize to overcome the dictatorship, preferably *before* it gets started? Why exactly did the creator of the original graphic novel, Alan Moore, wash his hands of the movie project?

Also, I haven't read that graphic novel, but does V really torture the girl he loves for no particular reason in that, or just in the move? Are we really supposed to learn that the end justifies the means?

Or are we just supposed to feel sympathy for a terrorist, so that when the British government tells us that the people identified as the London tube bombers, who never had any history of violence or extremism, decided to blow themselves up to kill a lot of innocent people, we can say "gosh that sounds plausible"? Actually V's actions in the movie do not seem to me to be terroristic in the sense of intended to cause terror in the citizenry, although they did cause terror in the government, and the government chose to present them as terroristic in its propaganda. Hmmm... Why would the movie choose to blur that issue?

I am reminded of the movie "Red Dawn", a much more realistic depiction of citizens resisting a totalitarian takeover (although still not very realistic: it did not address the large fraction of people who will collaborate with whoever is in power; the people who say, when I complain about the Bush administration's refusal to accept the rule of law, say things like "well if you're not a terrorist you don't have anything to worry about"): it is much more interesting, and artistically powerful, to present realistic protagonists who are successful using methods we can believe in.

Bush's "signing statements" in which he declares himself above the law: www.boston.com [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/examples_of_the_presidents_signing_statements/]

2. The technology is surprisingly unadvanced considering the movie is set around 2035. Computer equipment especially is clearly labelled Dell, for instance, and is not given any patina of age.

...Hmmm, it has just occurred to me that the original graphic novel was created in the 80s, and may have been set around 2006. It would have been much more interesting if the movie had been set in the present, using Blair instead of Sutler. Yes, much more interesting.

3. Weapons likewise do not seem to have advanced, although that has been true for a long time – basically since the AK47. V restricts himself to throwing knives, for no apparent reason. Someone who can tunnel new sections of underground line alone should have little difficulty acquiring a firearm, or indeed making one from scratch.

Incidentally, V chooses knives which work very poorly as throwing knives. With their design, they will tumble end-over-end in flight, as indeed shown. This is lousy for penetration, and of course needs supreme skill – or luck – to ensure that they reach the target at a point-forward phase. Real throwing knives have all the weight at the head, to minimize tumbling.

4. Although early in the movie we see that (of course) the government has set up a surveillance state, Evie manages to wander around later with no apparent difficulty and explains this (perhaps in a late-added scene after screening audiences complained) by saying "fake ID works better than a Guy Fawkes mask". Now I know that facial recognition systems don't really work very well at all right now, and I know that criminals rapidly adapt to identity-card systems, and I know that fascist governments don't *really* care about catching criminals but only about oppressing the average citizen, but would it *really* be that easy? For someone who had no money, and no contacts? When there are *retinal* scanners on every street corner?

Likewise we do not see how people actually *behave* after living in a police state for a while. For instance, Evie tells us she stood right next to a close colleague in a store, and the colleague said nothing. This is wrong in so many ways. For instance, the secret police in such countries occasionally do "sting" operations where someone is noisily arrested, and then noisily escapes, and then asks all his old colleagues for help. Any that do help him find out they made a serious mistake.

It is just conceivable that her colleague recognized her, was sympathetic, but hoped that if necessary she could get away with not immediately denouncing Evie by saying that she didn't recognize her. That would be why she said nothing: plausible deniability. In a real police state, Evie would have thought of that possibility. She would also have thought of being careful not to *confront* her colleague, to allow the colleague to *retain* that plausible deniability.

5. For some reason Evie retained her shaven-head hairdo for several weeks after her release. None of the crowd shots showed that such a style was in fashion: it was a sore thumb.

6. I've read reviews that liked John Hurt as the dictator, but I thought he was just over the top. It is a fundamental lie to tell the viewer that bad people look evil. The dangerous ones are charming and convincing. You have to do boring things like study logic and rhetoric to try to analyze their arguments and the actual *results* of their actions, rather than just wait for a close-up view of the spittle flying from their lips.

Indeed, *most* evil people take care to present themselves as likeable and trustworthy. People have to pay a lot of money to buy those suits and keep them pressed, and build those impressive buildings with the classical columns and the exhaustingly high entrance steps: they take the trouble do that to make weak people believe in them even though their real aims are fraud, blackguarding and murder.

7. As part of V's campaign to involve the citizenry (at last) in a (largely pointless) demonstration, he has 500,000 mask-and-cape outfits resembling his own sent out to random citizens. V does many unbelievable things in the movie, but this one seemed utterly preposterous. Such an operation would involve thousands of people. Where would these items be manufactured? Where would he get the money? Would a surveillance state really allow anyone to send anything without intrusive, time-consuming and probably humiliating procedures?

Eric Frank Russell wrote a much more credible sf story called "Wasp" about a government agent who is trained and equipped to bring down an enemy totalitarian government by small, clever, direct attacks on the enemy government's dignity and credibility. Why do we get a movie like V for Vendetta, whose appeal (at least to the Wachowski brothers) seems to have been the excuse to have slow-motion knife battles and black swirling capes, instead of "Wasp"? Algis Budrys's "Falling Torch" is also better-written than this movie, although more depressing.

In this review of "Wasp", they quote Terry Pratchett saying re this newly reprinted novel, "I can't imagine a funnier terrorists' handbook.": www.infinityplus.co.uk [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/wasp.htm]

See also: www.sfsite.com [http://www.sfsite.com/06b/wasp83.htm]

8. Evie's accent is really excellent. It manages to be faultlessly English without having any regional, class or period overtones – at least to my ear. Perhaps that means it sounds oldfashioned and transatlantic. As far as I can see young English people are no longer taught to use any standard accent, so for Evie to show *no* accent is now impossible.

Here is a really excellent interview with Barbara Berkery, Portman's (Evie's) dialog coach: vforvendetta.warnerbros.com [http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/cmp/interview_barbara_b.html]

Apparently the director told Berkery to aim for an accent slightly off RP. It's interesting that he was clueful enough to say that. ...Hmm, it also says that the director decided she would not have a regional accent because her parents had moved around a lot. Good.

The article also addresses Weaving's (V's) accent. This was fine too, but as he's Australian I was somewhat less impressed: one imagines they would train in RP.

Berkery's filmography at imdb: www.imdb.com [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0075373/]

9. The numberplates were of a new design, although the cars were not. US movies, especially Universal, tend to have extremely poor signage, using typefaces and other elements that scream "USA" even to people with only a casual awareness of the issue. Most of the type elements used in the movie were adequately credible, although one would expect type usage to shift over the decades. The Nazis were certainly very aware of typefaces and made a huge shift in the middle of WW2 away from Blackletter faces, proclaiming (after mandating them for years) that they were jew-influenced! I would have thought the Sutler party would have made some similar effort, although perhaps technology would have shifted and they would mandate that all video must be .WMV and not .OGG.

Rather flabbily, the movie uses Gill Sans as its "official" typeface. That's just too easy. Also, the layout was a little slack: it looked like the posters had been laid out in MS Word. Real posters are designed by experts and hand-kerned.

10. At one point V survives being shot at by using some sort of crude metal breastplate, after surviving similar weapons several times earlier in the movie by deftly dodging the bullets. I thought this scene was all wrong in several ways: it makes his earlier abilities seem confusing; it is dramatically crude; V should have been able to steal or even make a much better bulletproof vest; the people shooting at him might well have expected him to be wearing body armor – considering his previous escapes – and would have aimed at exposed extremities, especially after the first few rounds had no effect. And finally, his armor just didn't work very well. A man who can steal an underground train and hide it while he builds sections of track for it making armor like Ned Kelly? Hmmm.

11. Several soldiers were wearing berets that were not properly folded. Well, things can change over the decades, but to me they looked like berets that had been snatched off the prop-department shelf and dropped on the actor's head. I noted a red and a black beret that looked wrong. Alternatively, as a British-German coproduction, they may have been using a prop department unfamiliar with British military clothing (Studio Babelsberg/Medienboard).

12. When V tortures Evie, not only is he behaving like the kind of totalitarian nutjob he seems to want to eliminate (I believe that torture should be confined to the bedroom, where it belongs, in addition possibly to the Ramada on I-495), his plan rests on her not recognizing him as he assumes the persona of several motley guards, interrogators etc. I began to suspect when the camera repeatedly did not show the audience a clear picture of these stooges' faces, although I found it hard to believe that the movie was making such a dramatic blunder. It is even sillier if we are to suppose that Evie was unable to see their faces because they were always in shadow to Evie as they were to the camera.

13. All the troops had M16-type weapons. I think that's extremely unlikely in the political/world scenario of the movie. Conceivably, the USA, having collapsed in the movie, might have sold off its weapons, but it was shown as still involved in various civil-war-type conflicts; I don't think a state sells off its small arms in that kind of circumstance.

I am reminded of a Dr Who episode in which he and his lovely sidekick return to a parallel England which is some sort of fascist or communist dictatorship (cleverly they don't specify which, and anyway how much does it matter?) and tellingly the troops are all carrying AK47s.

14. A Brit in the movie tells V to keep his hands off that "levver" – ie pronouncing the word "lever" with a short "e" in the first syllable. I was very surprised. Conceivably minor roles in this Brit-German coproduction were filled with German actors, with good but rather transatlantic accents.

It's also possible that this was intentional, suggesting that American English has made further inroads into British English by the period of the movie, but I don't think so, and it's not logical. Sutler's "Norsefire" party would more logically have insisted on purging neologisms. Still, it's nice when a movie can contain little Easter eggs that one can spot. The only fan letter I have ever written to a TV show was occasioned by an episode of "Alien Nation" (a series about a near future in which a race of alien slaves flees to Earth and has to adapt to human culture): we happen to see a movie theater in a "Newcomer" ghetto which is playing a cowboy movie dubbed into Tenctonese (the alien language) but amusingly the Tenctonese is being spoken with a cowboy accent!

15. Likewise, a soldier, on seeing something that induces shock and awe, says "Jesus bloody christ!". Something struck me as wrong about that phrase. Solely from Sprachgefuehl, I would say it is much more likely as "Jesus fucking christ". It looks as though someone originally wrote the latter, and then decided that Brits say "bloody" a lot, and decided to change it. (I think the actor was one of the soldiers whose beret looked wrong, too.)

Additionally, although soldiers do indeed swear a lot, the circumstances called for a bit of British understatement, not Teutonic/American panicking. To me it would have been much more believable, as well as funnier, if he had simply said "Cor.".

16. Although I have no complaints about the acting in the movie, it seemed to me that many of the lines were just very difficult to give a credible reading to. The only such line I scribbled down was "He is you, he was all of us.". The fake-Shakespearean stuff was OK in context: it was playful and humorous. I liked the little glance aside from Evie at one point where she seems to be saying "I am about to be raped by a *boring* nutter". The kind of thing that bothered me was where the actors had to deliver lines containing real emotions: they were just badly written. Maybe they were verbatim from the graphic novel.

17. At the end of the movie, they play a section of the Rolling Stones track "Street Fighting Man". For some reason however they miss out the "here comes the new boss – same as the old boss" line which I think is one of the best things in it. I wonder why?

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Comment/Excerpt: For some reason, spammers have been hitting this writeback form repeatedly for several days. When will they realize that practically nobody ever reads my blog? Death to Spammers [View/add responses]

2006 May 10 [ Wed ]

Movie review: "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" 2003

Although made in 2003, this has never been given a theater release in the USA. It was apparently set to be released on DVD in 2006 April.

Original novel reviewed by Amazon: www.amazon.com [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044651747X/002-6293079-1250414?v=glance&n=283155]

Movie reviewed at filmthreat: www.filmthreat.com [http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=8678&archive=&match=&page=0]

As usual, I will avoid recounting the entire plot, and focus on details which caught my attention. You will need to check the above reviews – or even the movie itself – to see what I'm referring to.

SPOILER ALERT

1. I was particularly charmed by the choice of name for the ineffectual, paunchy, middleaged white hero who is slowly running out of money with his native girlfriend: Danny.

2. I was very surprised that all three major characters – Danny, Price and Maria – were depicted in such a physically unattractive way. Camera angles seemed to have been deliberately chosen to maximize Danny's paunch, and Maria was almost always shot closeup with a wide-angle lens, magnifying her full cheeks and jaw to make her seem almost troglodytic. The lighting angle was often from below, like a creature feature. (Maria is played by Giovanna Zacharias, who only has three hits on Google, so I couldn't find her actual age. The film does not specify the character's age.)

As for Price (Scott Glenn), his face looks more lined and aged than people who are *dying* usually look in Hollywood. Similarly, his hair is greasy and thin, and his shoulders are slumped as if he were a resident in a nursing home. (Physical strength is quite important for accurate shooting, especially with a pistol.)

I wondered if the director made a conscious attempt to avoid Hollywoodizing the novel. For instance, I was surprised to find that in the novel Maria is 22: in the movie she looks perhaps 35-40. This is not too old for a bargirl, and makes it more likely that she has actual romantic feelings for Price, who as a Vietnam vet has to be at least 53 in 2003 and looks like he's 65. (Apparently Glenn's DOB is 1941, so he would have been 62 at the movie's release.)

3. The naval officer who Price shoots at the beginning was his CO, so presumably older than Price, but he appears to be a fit 25.

4. The assassination itself struck me as unlikely. Is this the first time Price encountered the officer in all that time? Wouldn't Price already have grumbled about him, so his superiors would have been aware Price was his deadly enemy? Do people plan assassinations in crowded places anywhere except in Hollywood? Can even the most skilled shootists actually plug someone through the eye at 25 yds with a pistol held at the waist? (This is feasible with a laser sight, although there was no evidence of one, and it still would be a stupid idea.)

A better movie might have developed the idea that someone *deliberately* brought Price and the officer together again, in order to wipe out the officer. For instance, suppose the officer had been discovered to be *actually* selling secrets – but by a source they didn't want to compromise. But they also wanted to get rid of Price, so they killed two birds with one stone.

5. I noticed the Thai subtitles gave Price's name as "raakhaa" – the Thai word meaning "price". Maybe it's an actual name in Thai, too. The name given to Maria was strange – I couldn't find it in the dictionary. Danny was thaiized as "dairn-nee". I think "Puerto Vallarta" was thaiized as "puerto".

6. Much is made of a captive ocelot, which at the end Danny pays five thousand dollars to buy and liberate. Personally, I would have tried to haggle, starting at ten dollars. That shack didn't look like they made a heck of a lot of thousand-dollar deals.

I would also have wondered if they trained the ocelot to come back at night, same as the birds that Buddhists buy and release.

7. What was Price's *plan* in setting up the meet at the abandoned chapel? If he had any feelings for Maria, why let her get in the line of fire? Why did he expose himself at all – surely he would have been expecting a long-range sniper hit, so why not wait behind cover until the two US agents show themselves? Did he really believe the line that the murder had been written off as an accident? How did he know they would show up without the Mexicans? (If I had been the Mexcian honcho, and my two US agents had suddenly peeled off from the convoy, I think I would have wondered what was going on.) Come to think of it, how did he *know* about the abandoned chapel (and how did he find time to get her a new dress that fit her?).

8. I liked the happy ending of the movie better than the novel. On the other hand, I wonder how Price got Maria back in the USA. They didn't have a vehicle or money. And is a bargirl – even one who isn't really that kind of girl, and stap me if when you talk to them *not one of them is* – really going to love being alone in the wilds with a 65-year-old?

9. Overall, I didn't like the way Maria treated Danny. He was doing his best – taking a big chance to try and make enough money to stay with her – and she got in the way and then complained about him endangering her. Perhaps Danny's role was just better written, so that I could see his point of view more. The author probably knows more about ageing American writers than about Mexican bargirls or assassins.

10. On the other hand, despite all my criticisms, I quite liked the movie. The basic plot, of course, could take place in Thailand or Cambodia as well as Mexico (except that they don't border the US – although if I were on the run from US agents I think I would run *away* from the US). I think it's a pity it didn't get a bigger release.

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2006 Feb 02 [ Thu ]

Movie Review: "The Incredibles" -- and the issue of originality

SPOILER WARNING – do not read this before seeing the movie.

I've been thinking about how to write this for a very long time, because I'm really trying to address a very slippery concept: originality in art. I don't know if I really pinned it down.

Several months ago I had my first opportunity to watch "The Incredibles", an animated feature movie released by Pixar/Disney in 2004. User comments on imdb were almost without exception extremely positive: www.imdb.com [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317705/usercomments]

I absolutely loved the movie myself. Since getting the DVD, I've probably watched *each of the comment soundtracks* at least twice, never mind the movie itself.

But even as I watched it I was getting more and more concerned over the issue of originality. That's actually referred to by one of the comments on imdb:

My only concern is that there is so much similarity to The Watchmen that those who haven't read the graphic novel will be saying "That's the Incredibles movie" when Watchmen finally comes to fruition.

Yes, I thought about Watchmen. The premise of "Watchmen" – an "illustrated novel" with the premise that costumed avengers have been forced into retirement – is very similar to the premise of "The Incredibles". And the problem is that "Watchmen" is *very good indeed*. Many might say it was the high point of achievement in comic books, not to mention a compelling and affecting story that stands comparison with any ordinary novel in novelistic terms. But it hasn't reached the stage of movie production yet (despite reports as long as ten years ago that Terry Gilliam had been lined up to direct). And now that "The Incredibles" has "used" its premise, how *can* it be brought to the screen?

On the other hand, a similar idea, it turns out, was also used by DC Comics (as I found in the imdb opinions link above):

Several years ago, DC Comics issued a mini-series that attempted to explain the demise of the Justice Society by claiming that the group was forced to disband after their loyalty to America was questioned during the 1950's.

Perhaps, indeed, the idea was not original to "Watchmen".

But "The Incredibles" stole ideas, style, music, etc from *so many original works*. People in the imdb seem happy with these "homages", but when you re-use James-Bond badguy secret bases and TWA's terminal styling and the "Fantastic Four" superpowers and the tank/deathray scene from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" – and on and on and on... where is the originality? And what has Pixar done to the value and meaning of those works?

I don't have my copy of "Watchmen" handy to check, but I found one guy who said that the "dangerous capes" sequence in TI was a direct steal from "Watchmen". So not just ideas, but actual *gags* were stolen.

On the other hand... it was all done *so well*. For instance, the bad guy's base looked far better than the originals in the Bond movies: more beautiful, more logically designed, even more realistic than they were ever able to create out of plywood in Pinewood Studios. Elastigirl's animation in the sequence where she sneaks into the base – despite her limbs being trapped in several automatic doors – is amazingly believable and still very funny. The sequence where the "manta ray" aircraft plunges into the lagoon is exciting and truly beautiful.

At an earlier point, Bob Parr throws his boss through several thicknesses of drywall, and corporate drones pop their heads around the edge of the array of holes: it's funny, fast, and achingly skilled.

That's what makes this movie *important*. This isn't a bunch of porno investors deciding it'd be funny to make a video called "Bareback Mounting": the people who made this were *good*. They *could* have created their *own* stuff, couldn't they? In fact they *did*, with "Toy Story" – or at least I thought so until I saw TI.

In my usual paranoid way I even wonder about the theme of being forced to deny and stifle superpowers. That – aside from being another steal – sounds a lot like individualism, which the PTB have been trying to demonize and eliminate for years. *But the movie is actually crushing the careers of the individuals who created the original ideas that it stole*. It makes me wonder: did the designers of the movie consciously want to oppress people with talent? Is there something so subversive about "The Watchmen" that a mass-market movie version has to be stifled?

Still, I don't exactly know where I stand myself. It's a bit like moving to Asia, where all of a sudden none of the brand names mean anything. Rolexes are 20 USD, Cartier belts are 2.50 USD, Cipro is 1.50 USD for ten days... The other day I was looking at a watch branded "Seiko" for 15 USD, and I was grumbling about the price. The assistant brightly pointed out that I could get the *exact same watch* – ie from the same mfr, presumably somewhere in China – for 12 USD, if I would accept a less prestigious *label*. I've been in Asia for a while, but that one made my head spin. And the really funky thing was *I wanted to spend the extra money*. I guess I wanted to have something that *pretended* to be the best, *even when everyone who sees it* (at least here in Phnom Penh) knows it can't possibly be real.

So I guess I want to *think* that "Watchmen" is original (to the extent it can be, as an elegaic alternate view on the entire history of superhero comic books). And I feel that "The Incredibles" – despite being a *wonderful* movie – is depriving the creators of "Watchmen" both of their deserved fame and the chance of seeing their work on the movie screen.

On the other hand, I didn't pay a lot for my copy of "The Incredibles". Hmmm.

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Name/Blog: The Boss
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Title: Another writer thinks the same
Comment/Excerpt: When searching for "Singin in the Rain" .and. "The Incredibles" I found a review which sees the references to "Watchmen": http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/11.03.04/loserpalooza-0445.html It's a long page and the Incredibles are dealt with more than halfway down, but actually the whole page is worth a look. [View/add responses]

2005 Dec 24 [ Sat ]

Spielberg's "Munich"

There has been a great deal of comment about "moral equivalence" in "Munich" – Spielberg seems to be saying that the Mossad agents who murder PLO operatives involved in the killings at Munich are on the same moral plane as the PLO.

What surprises me is that I have seen nobody saying "yes, it is wrong and evil to assassinate suspects". In other words, people seem to think that the movie suggests the PLO and Mossad are both *good*; why can they not be both *bad*?

My understanding is that the behavior of Mossad shifted over time from relatively targeted assassinations – a pistol, closeup – to US-style precision-guided munitions which take out every occupant of a car, and dozens of bystanders. That's what happens when you glorify an evil principle.

It seems to me that Spielberg did something like this before. In "Saving Private Ryan", the US troops on D-Day massacre Axis troops attempting to surrender. The moment passes quickly and none of the Allied characters seems to reflect on it or be affected in any way. Later, when a character *does* show mercy to a prisoner, the prisoner subsequently kills him. It seems to me the movie was directly telling the audience that you have to slaughter captured prisoners! And I have *never* seen comments about this issue in the movie!

It was, of course, a dirty secret of WW2 that Allied troops did indeed "refuse to accept the surrender" of Axis troops, on occasion. When troops are moving rapidly, and may be themselves surrounded at any moment, it is simply too dangerous to try to detain and move prisoners. But that was not the case at D-Day, at any rate as depicted in the movie: the ground would certainly be held. Compare that with the "Battle of the Bulge", where the Nazis executed captured Allied prisoners, and the movie presented it as an atrocity.

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2005 Dec 04 [ Sun ]

Movie review: "Mystic River" (2003); directed by Clint Eastwood

Ebert review: rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031008/REVIEWS/310080301/1023]

1. The movie is set in Boston. I lived in and around Boston for many years and I found all the local touches believable: I even caught myself feeling nostalgic for the lower deck of 93. The only thing that bothered me was that the streets weren't lined with parked cars – it's murder trying to park in central Boston or any of the neighborhoods.

2. Ebert is absolutely right about the quality of the acting. What particularly struck me was that some of the sequences would have gone spectacularly wrong if played by lesser actors. In "Tough Guys Don't Dance" (directed by Norman Mailer from his own book, Ebert review here: rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19870918/REVIEWS/709180306/1023] ) there's a sequence where the hapless hero suffers yet another calamity and he whirls around saying "Oh God! Oh man! Oh God! Oh man!...) about fifteen thousand times. I liked the movie but that scene was *over the top*. (I had not seen the Ebert review before and was surprised to find he quite liked it. I agree with him about the powerful sense of place.) There's a somewhat similar sequence in Mystic River in which the Sean Penn character suffers a similar calamity and he cries out and flails about himself. Even as I watched I was thinking "this could go badly wrong!" but it *didn't*. It was believable, and affecting, even heart-wrenching: I've felt grief, and Penn made me feel it again.

Another such sequence was during a parade. Various characters glance and stare and nod at each other. It's wordless; it's *absolutely* dependent on the ability of the actors to project their mood and thoughts from nothing more than expression and body language. It's a tour de force, but not a self-indulgent one: it works fine, and it's necessary for the movie, which has always been about things that were left unsaid.

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2005 Mar 31 [ Thu ]

Movie review: Jao bpua geng gorng ("Mr Python")

Spoiler warning: contains discussion of plot and ending

This movie is a made-in-Cambodia remake, apparently new this year. It's hard to know if it's a traditional tale in any sense, but my girlfriend certainly remembers seeing a previous version about ten years ago. It's unlikely ever to be distributed in the West for various reasons: I'm discussing it here mainly because this was the *first* Cambodian movie I ever saw in a movie theater, and there were many points of general interest about Cambodian society and movies. As far as I know the movie does not even have an official English title, so you can't search for it under the name I gave it above as a translation of the Khmer title.

I saw it at the Robantip Cinema on Monivong on 2005-02-11. It seems to have been a popular movie; as I write (03-12) it is still playing, and when we went there it was jam-packed. The problem is that the courtyard in front of the cinema is filled with motorbikes (presumably belonging to patrons), so there is very little space for the waiting crowd to form an orderly line; when the previous crowd exits at the end of the performance, they have to slowly press their way through a surging mob. I don't know what to advise if you go there and the movie you see is equally popular: perhaps you should wait *across the street* until most of the next crowd has shoved its way in. (The tickets are marked with seat numbers.)

My girlfriend accepted an offer of two tickets from a man outside the ticket booth, but we discovered when we entered the theater that although the seat numbers were consecutive the seats were not together. After some expostulation my girlfriend was offered a small chair to sit in the aisle next to me.

1. The advertising for the movie shows a man's head atop a pile of python coils. This represents the hero: I think that image is an invention of the guy who Photoshopped the sign, but indeed in the movie he transforms into a giant snake. He also is afflicted with a snake coiffure.

2. The basic plot of the movie is a little like "Dracula meets the Wolfman". In a single village, not only is there the hero and his mother with the little snake issue, but there are two other females who seem to transform into a Cambodian version of what is known in Thailand as a "pii graseu", a female filth-eating spirit. In this movie, the head and vital organs magically unplug themselves from the neck of the aflicted female and float off hunting for offal. Thus we have separate plotlines which converge, somewhat like an episode of "McMillan and Wife". It's set perhaps two hundred years in the past.

3. With my pitiful Khmer I was almost completely lost in the movie, so what little I understood of the plot was gleaned via my girlfriend later. Apparently his mother was cursed with the snake problem, but possessed a magic ring which allowed her to remain human. In the course of the movie she loses the ring and becomes a snake for ever. The hero however must never fall in love (or perhaps lose his virginity), or he will start to transform.

4. If you want to go to a movie where little boys show their weenies, this has got to be it. It seems to be a rule that every dramatic moment has to be followed by comic relief, and for that, the makers of this movie clearly feel, there is nothing better than showing an eight-year-old's weenie and/or anus. As I write this it seems hard to believe this was actually on the screen, but this movie, apparently made for a family audience, had no compunction whatever about this. On the other hand it is obviously true that anyone who walks along the street in Phnom Penh may well see a dozen weenies every day, and I presume this is even more likely in rural towns or indeed in Cambodian dwellings themselves.

5. The movie did forebear to show adult weenies, but a repeated joke was that men became so scared that they revealed their bottoms. This seemed not very sophisticated humor to me, but of course there is an entire tradition of British farce in which all the major laughs occur when the hapless hero is discovered to be wearing no trousers. Additionally, there is a scene where an aging, overweight woman reveals her breasts.

6. A perhaps more serious problem for a foreigner trying to appreciate the movie is the very broad acting. This makes it very difficult to appreciate the dramatic moments. The characters who were supposed to be bad or scheming had to practically froth at the mouth to make the point, and the hero has to carry an interminable sequence – well, perhaps it's ten minutes long – at the end of the movie where he laments his dead girlfriend. Still, it occurs to me that characters in opera can take an entire scene just to die after they've already been stabbed.

7. Another thing that breaks dramatic conventions for a Westerner is that characters are several times shown to have snot coming out of their noses when they cry. When I asked my girlfriend about this she denied it, but it certainly happened. I think there may simply be a convention that people who are very sad are depicted with snot: recently I have been noticing this in the Thai comic books I (struggle to) read. (I had previously viewed this as a manifestation of some sort of deliberate grunge in the comic, somewhat along the lines of "Viz" magazine.) It makes me wonder whether the production company supplies artificial snot just as a Western one would supply artificial tears.

8. Even the romantic leads have very obvious acne scars and eruptions. I don't know what this means. It may mean that the climate on location in Cambodia is so hot that pancake makeup required to conceal scars is impractical.

9. The "movie" was not shown as a regular film projection but instead as some sort of video back-projection. Considering it was video, the quality was not at all bad: they didn't simply hook up a VCD player to a VGA projector. There were no significant digital artifacts or glitches. However, the video dynamic range was poor: often areas would blow out to white, or be lost in black. I wonder how they *do* do the projection. I'm guessing the filmmakers send a hard drive to the theatre. I get the impression that any movie plays in only one cinema.

10. The sound was not very good. I think the source was OK, but the speaker system is very "honky" and for me it was very difficult to discern phonemes at all. My girlfriend had no difficulty. (Passing by outside later, I got the impression that the speakers set up *outside* the cinema – for marketing – were much clearer than those inside.)

11. The audience was extremely noisy although good-natured. It was literally so noisy that you could not hear cellphones ring. When I went, there was a very flat age distribution.

12. Before the performance I prowled for emergency exits. The ones I found were padlocked. I think the one on the left had a wimpier looking padlock that you could probably snap if you had a moment. I saw no emergency lighting, fire alarms, sprinklers etc.

13. The editing, cinemaphotography, post-sync and sound effects were all quite creditable. I can't really judge the costumes but there were no problems obvious to me. Special effects were sometimes hokey and sometimes surprisingly affecting.

14. I found the shots of the luxuriant forest around the village also curiously affecting. Many of the scenes of village life from this archaic period would look the same today, except that people would be wearing T-shirts and baseball caps.

15. The AC in the theater seemed to get very cold. I was a little cold myself, and I would advise a Cambodian to bring a second (long-sleeved) shirt to keep warm.

16. The floor was extremely messy, although only about three times messier than in the US.

17. There is a concession stand at the entrance but I did not try it. Likewise, I did not dare check out the bathrooms.

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Movie review: "The Quiet American", with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser

SPOILER WARNING

This review gives details of the plot, including the ending.

I have not read the book (by Graham Greene, I think written during the early stages of US military action in Vietnam), but the movie strikes me as probably a fairly faithful adaptation, simply because the plot now seems so old-fashioned. Set in Vietnam in the period before the partition into North and South – ie while the French were still fighting to retain Indochina – the big twist ending is that the earnest, likeable American hero is actually a US secret agent who is funding and supplying a brutal local warlord, and advising him to commit atrocities and blame them on the Communists.

This is now so easy to believe that it was hard for me to understand the movie when it delivered the denouement. Indeed, we several times see Michael Caine (playing the part of a worn-out expat journalist who nevertheless uncovers the plot) take in some statement from Fraser along the lines of "My charity sent me here from Boston to stop these poor kids going blind!" and he seems to have such a cynical expression that I had assumed Caine was well aware of the situation throughout the movie. (So I guess it really was a twist ending... hmmm.)

It's actually *more* hard to believe the flip side of Greene's argument. He clearly presents the Communists as lilywhite French Resistance against the Nazis. It was possible for non-cynical people who knew no history to imagine this at the time, but we now have North Vietnam's own histories to read: for instance, General Giap *boasts* of deceiving the monks into burning themselves to death in protest against a US action which the US never planned. When we see Caine's own employee murder Fraser, I think Graham Greene intended us to think that the entire country was united behind the world-historically inevitable defeat of colonialism, or some such twaddle. (I don't think Greene was stupid enough to believe what he wrote. He intended the book as propaganda.)

Thinking about it now, I wonder why Greene added the plot thread of a love triangle, where Caine loves a girl, and the girl loves Fraser, and Fraser loves the girl. It may be meant to suggest that Caine, as a European, is too worn-out and useless (he seems to be intended to be 55-60 in the movie, whereas Fraser seems not much older than the girl) to do anything about Fraser's political crimes until Fraser takes his girl away. This has a parallel in today's situation, where most of the world sees that the war in Iraq is a brutal lie, but hopes that someone else will do something about it. (Or maybe he just thought that adding some sex scenes would help the book sell.)

I had decided to watch the movie simply for its evocation of precommunist Indochina. It's interesting, for example, to see a depiction of the "taxi girl" institution. It actually looks amazingly stylish, with Caine and Fraser resplendent in their suits, and the girls stunningly elegant. Can it ever have been so posh? My impression of the term "taxi girl" is that it was originally intended (in the USA) as a euphemism: most girls did not do sex for money (much), but of course there were low-class establishments where it was expected, so hookers were referred to as "taxi girls" in an attempt to be kind. Nowadays in Cambodia, the term seems to have survived to be the standard expression used in English to mean a prostitute or sex worker (although I would be surprised if any Westerner other than me was familiar with the term before arriving in Asia). Incidentally, it is pronounced "tuk-SEE ger" (rhymes with Pete Seeger) here, which makes it even harder for the puzzled Westerner to grasp. (Quick, did she say "I no tuk-SEE ger!" or "I know tuk-SEE ger."?)

Incidentally, at the beginning of the movie there is a laughably sententious monologue about the experience of arriving in Vietnam and living in the heat, but neither Fraser nor Caine ever looks seriously inconvenienced by it. Despite living here for more than a year, if I have to do some minor task like sort books for a few minutes my shirt gets wet through, but I can't even remember them taking off their suit jackets. Conceivably most of the movie was shot at Pinewood.

Apparently the release of the movie was held up because of 9/11. The reason given was that audiences would not want to see a movie in which the US was the bad guy. But it seems to me that *nobody* can like the politics of the movie nowadays. Well, maybe Jane Fonda.

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2005 Mar 17 [ Thu ]

Nifty gadget for recording audio in your car

www.gpevergrowth.com [http://www.gpevergrowth.com/pro/Surveillance/GP-DVR704H&%20GP-DVR701H.htm]

The manufacturer probably intends this device to be used to allow the purchaser to bug *someone else's* car for audio and video and GPS.

However, it seems to me you could use it for the *opposite* purpose. I've always wanted to have a video/audio recorder in the car when I get stopped by the cops, so that I have a full recording when they try to intimidate and abuse me. I wonder if I could sell the recording to that TV show "Cops"? "Bad boys, bad boys – who you gonna call..."

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2005 Mar 13 [ Sun ]

Review: "Heat" with De Niro and Pacino (1995)

Ebert review: rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19951215/REVIEWS/512150302/1023]

This is a routine cops-and-robbers movie. Many of the elements have been seen before: the reckless, bloodthirsty robber who jeopardizes the heist; Niro playing a flawed but supremely capable gangster, etc etc. But everything about the movie is done with what I can only describe as "class" (as one might well expect in a movie that pairs De Niro and Pacino).

Simple things like composition and sound effects make casual establishing shots into a statement about America and destiny. Of course, Pacino and De Niro are impressive and credible.

One sequence struck me as unlikely. A character takes 3 pistol rounds to the chest, but has a minute or two to chat in a normal voice. Had nobody involved with the movie ever heard the phrase "sucking chest wound"?

But I want to focus on a single moment.

SPOILER WARNING: plot details discussed

The police have leaned on the lover of one of the crooks to make her entice him into custody. (The two have become estranged as the woman sees his occupation as a deadly threat to them and their child.) He has been wounded and patched up, and we see him warily driving up to their apartment. The cop in charge of the stakeout tells her earnestly "Go to the window – let him see it's you!"

But when she does so, she locks eyes with him, and then makes an urgent "ixnay!" motion with her hand. He looks shocked for a moment, then rolls down the window to ask some bystanders for directions elsewhere, and departs.

We see his wondering expression. It's largely blank. There's a famous story of two scenes in a movie by one of the Russian directors where he uses *exactly the same shot* of one of the actors to express triumph and tragedy.

Ebert in a current review (of another movie) refers to a similarly powerful wordless moment:

There is a shot toward the end of "Dear Frankie" when a man and a woman stand on either side of a doorway and look at each other, just simply look at each other. During this time they say nothing, and yet everything they need to say is communicated: Their doubts, cautions, hopes.

rogerebert.suntimes.com [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050310/REVIEWS/50222003/1023]

In Heat, however, we see a man who has just realized that at a terrible moment, under great pressure, his lover has chosen to save him. In other words, he is perceiving the certainty of being loved.

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2004 Sep 26 [ Sun ]

An update on the Pocki MP3 player, and some thoughts about using it

I have grumbled ineffectually about this horrible excuse for a product before: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Reviews/Hardware/pocki02.html]

Having found it unusable as anything except an MP3 player, I thought I might as well try using it for that, although I am not a big music listener (for several years I had no way to play recorded music at home at all) and had never tried using a Walkman-type device before (I feel I look quite geeky enough already).

1. It turns out there is another technical problem with it: it can't really play 256-kb MP3's from the SD slot, unless you like listening to your music with a peculiar continuous burble overlaid on it. 128-kb's seem to work, and 256-kb's mostly seem OK on the internal memory. (It took me a while to figure this out.)

2. I continue to be irritated by headphone cord tangles. I have had a couple of ideas for making little frames to hold the earphones neatly so the cords don't get tangled, and may implement them if I see the right bits and pieces in PP stores. Why aren't such things commercially available, or provided with the headphones? I would have thought they could be made for a quarter. Maybe the mfrs think the public would be put off: like including a cushion with every car, labelled "put this in front of your face immediately before collision!".

3. I have tried several headphones now, and they all seem underpowered. I had my hearing tested a year ago (I wondered if my inability to hear Thai was a sign of encroaching hearing damage) and I was OK, so I don't think I'm way deafer than average. I think the main problem is probably that they try to power these gizmos from a single 1.3-V battery, so they probably have barely 1-V peak-peak to play with. But even a unit I bought with a built-in amplifier (so it could be mated with low-Z speaker units for max power) doesn't get anywhere near *too* loud. (The unit is suposed to have active ambient noise suppression but I can't detect that it's active at all. It is rated to only work on low frequencies, so perhaps it's only useful on a jet flight.)

4. Overall I am not very happy with the quality of the sound. I wish the magazines did more searching reviews of this sort of thing; they say things like "good sound" and "bad sound" and "0.2% distortion" but do not, it seems to me, tell you anything definitive about the occasional really gross compression products that I seem to be hearing. Maybe all my MP3s are badly recorded; I wish there were software which could *tell* me. I have noticed that an audio CD that I recorded from MP3's sounded a lot better on a cheap VCD/MP3 player than when it read the MP3's directly off a data disk, so there certainly are MP3 players with bad sound. I guess what I would like is a review so searching and explicit that the entire marketing and engineering departments of the companies involved would tear out their own bowels in shame.

5. Having not used a Walkman before, I was very interested in the subjective experience of having one's own soundtrack as one goes about everyday life. It is particularly jarring, of course, to be listening to Western music while walking around PP, because of the contrast of values and lifestyles sugested by the songs and that which I am seeing. It reminds me of a scene in Michael Moorcock's "Jerry Cornelius – Final Programme" in which the hero comes across a US fighter jet which has crashlanded in Piccadilly Circus – it very rapidly suggests that a great deal of things have happened and gone wrong, even though the movie does not fill in any of this background explicitly. www.fact-index.com [http://www.fact-index.com/j/je/jerry_cornelius.html]

6. The blasted buttons are, as I noted before, highly liable to getting pressed by accident. The thing must have put itself in pause a dozen times today as I walked around.

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2004 Sep 18 [ Sat ]

The only justification for Star Wars Episode 1 (The Phantom Menace)

... is the following posting on Slashdot which compares the careers of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader:

slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=122191&cid=10281017]

Sample:

LUKE: "I used to race my T-16 through Beggar's Canyon!"

DARTH VADER: "Oh, for the love of God, 10 years old, winner of the Boonta Eve Open. Only human to ever fly a Pod Racer, right here baby!"

More quotes from this thread:

I don't need Lucas to tell me where he's taking Star Wars, I know a handbasket when I see one. :)

Also:

If Lucas has updated the original films for timeliness, he'd have the Rebel Alliance blow up the death star and all of its inhabitants, then afterwards find out that in fact there were no weapons of mass distruction on board. Additionally, Luke would revisit Tantooine and find that his Aunt and Uncle as well as the Jawas were actually all killed by some irate sand people, with no connection to the Empire.

Thread (on Lucas's right to change elements of Star Wars when he re-releases the movies): slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/articles/04/09/17/1526244.shtml]

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2004 Sep 12 [ Sun ]

Carlito's Way -- shootout scene

This is a routine thriller with Al Pacino as a connected guy who's just been released from prison and is trying to make enough money to get a share in a legitimate business.

I just want to talk about a single scene. There is a shootout in a bar. The Pacino character, with typical resourcefulness, has grabbed one of the bad guys' guns. He takes cover in a bathroom, not knowing if the men he has shot at are all hors de combat. He looks at the slide on his gun, a Colt .45 auto: it is back. He checks the clip: empty. He futzes with the weapon for a few seconds. Then he decides to pretend he is not out of ammo, and cautiously exits the bathroom back into the bar.

The interesting point here is that usually in movies any element of gunplay is telegraphed to the audience: as I have referred to before, when someone fires a machinegun at the hero from a distance, the rounds always kick up dust at his *feet*, not somewhere off camera which they logically should do in most cases.

In this case, I was not clear myself what was going on (had I been present at the actual shootout, and assuming I was not wetting myself with fear, I would have figured it out, but I was actually confused because I expected the director to make the situation explicit). The facts are these: the Colt .45 auto, like many other such weapons, has the feature that when it fires the last round the slide does not go back forward but remains at the rear. This allows you to reload more quickly: by swapping in a fresh clip and releasing the slide, you make it load the next round. So when Pacino saw that the slide was back, he already knew he was out of ammo.

But I'm not sure what he did after that. I suppose it's conceivable that he wanted to check whether the gun had jammed on the last round, but if it's jammed it's jammed – it doesn't snick back nicely forward when you release it.

Maybe he was trying the recovery drill repeatedly, in the hopes that he had made a mistake – not unusual, even for hardened shooters, in a gunfight, especially with an unfamiliar weapon.

So anyway, it's interesting that for some reason the makers of the movie did *not* dumb down that sequence. Maybe they just forgot.

It vaguely reminds me of another recent routine thriller I saw. I don't remember the title: it was about a guy who was murdering medical people, so when a woman dies her brother, who's a tracker in Alaska, comes to hunt the killer. I have a high threshold for watching dumb thrillers, but I slowly realized that it *wasn't terrible*. It had a few interesting touches, the bad guy wasn't a retread, the cinemaphotography was engaging, and so on.

I think a lot of people start making a thriller assuming it will turn out OK, like that one. Unfortunately, they are disappointed.

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2004 Sep 04 [ Sat ]

The Pocki MP3 player (128 MB) -- review

I recently bought this at PTC because it had a feature which is still rather rare on MP3 players: a flash memory socket (for SD cards). It also does voice recording. It turned out to be a very bad purchase however; in fact I tried to return it today (to PTC on Central Market) and they said "no, we no do that" (I'm such a fool to even ask, I guess).

Overall I'm surprised that such a bad product would reach the public; I certainly hope that Pocki (and PTC, while we're at it) go out of business. Some of the problems make me wonder whether the company had *any* analog engineer involved in the project. (I think Pocki have a 256-MB model which may be more recent and lack some of these problems. I did check the web of course before buying it, and I think I may have gotten mixed up on which model I was buying.)

In many cases the technical problems did not seem very major to fix: it was more a matter of lack of attention to usability. It reminds me that the iPod has been particularly praised for that kind of attention to detail: when you realize a feature would be nice, you find it easily via the interface, and it works. It also reminds me of dBase III Plus: again and again I would struggle for a day to add some feature, and then run across it as a built-in function while scanning the manual for something else. I guess dBase was *half* as good as the iPod.

Overall the only *good* thing about the unit is that I can tinker with it without caring if I blow it up. If I can find some high-quality switches (eg Schadow) I would like to rebuild it, probably a lot larger but maybe far more usable (eg with a "hold" switch, single-button A/B, extending USB plug, internal SD storage, internal headphone storage?... I also wonder what would happen if I hooked up another mic (there's no mic socket on the standard Pocki).

Problems:

1. The voice recording quality – my big reason for having such a gizmo at all – is abysmal. The playback is barely understandable when your mouth is right next to the mike: it's useless if you try any greater distance. Additionally – though I was aware of this before I bought it, as mp3 recording is a very rare feature – it records to .wav rather than mp3. (On the up side this is better than some format that needs special software, I guess.)

2. This seems like a small thing, but it was infuriating. The hole where you slip the loop for the lanyard cord is just too small. I spent probably ten minutes trying to poke the cord in the hole: it was like an embarrassing sexual experience (after all, who among us has not at some time in their lives set fire to a major public building?).

3. The CD has some email software on it (I wondered why and then it occurred to me that it's nice to keep your email sw on a USB key). However, the software – according to the manual – is crippled so it will only run on the key! That means you can't run the same software (if you like it) on your home machine; you can't back it up in case the key goes phut. Why did they have to do this when there's plenty of *free* software with no such restriction? (Btw, there's no *useful* sw like an encryption program or a bad-block utility.)

4. This may not be important to many people, but when you connect it up to a PC it runs quite hot. Also, as far as I can see you can't use it as a player while it's connected: this is probably not important but it makes testing rather tedious.

5. The joystick – which in concept is quite clever – feels wonky and is already very imprecise in the "select" function, usually either doing nothing or resulting in "arrow down".

6. The A-B function is a good idea and once it's set up it works well, with no major clicks as it restarts. However, you need to press two buttons at once to set A/B points. As the buttons are very small with little tactile feedback, this is not easy. It is made much worse by the absence of fast forward/reverse buttons. I suppose they can't do MP3 decoding fast, but all they need to do is change the timer display to indicate the current file position. It's extremely tedious to have to return to the beginning of the track and replay a minute or more if you miss the desired AB point, and makes it in practice virtually useless.

On the other hand, once you *have* set it up, it really *is* good for language learning. I created some tracks intended specifically for looping, and I now know the Khmer for Monday through Sunday! (I happened to mention this problem to a guy in a bar who's been in Cambodia for years, and he agreed with me that Thursday is the toughest. I wonder why?) I really wish there were some sort of standard for setting up language-learning tracks. For instance, if you could store each phrase in a separate file in a subfolder, the only special function you need is looping on a file.

7. It's irritating that the SD card projects somewhat from the slot. Although it's nearly flush to the case, it feels like it's dinging the contacts if you press on it, or your pocket does.

8. The unit, although not large, is large enough so I have to prop up my laptop to plug it in, and it covers the other USB slot. They do provide a cable, but some other USB keys have a much neater solution where the USB plug, normally retained in the housing, can be slipped out with a short cable. Also, the plug has a cap which will get lost.

9. I think I found a way to avoid losing your position after setting up an A-B, but I can't actually remember it now. Really you need to have multiple AB points stored indefinitely.

10. Bookmarks would also be very handy.

11. The headphone cord seems to me to be oddly short. It seems they intend you to use the unit only in your breast pocket. Also – although this is hardly a problem of the Pocki alone – headphones and their cords have a ridiculous propensity for getting tangled. I have seen various retainers and gimmicks to overcome this, but it seems to me this problem should have been solved for all Walkmans years ago. It really makes starting to use the unit ten times more fiddly than it should be.

12. There is no playlist feature. This means the capacity of the unit is somewhat wasted; in my case I would like to have my own favorite music, a mix to hook up to the amp in bars, and Khmer lessons, but this makes it impossible to leave the unit playing. (Hmmm... it occurs to me you could set the AB points at the beginning/end of a group of tracks... haven't tried that.)

13. The buttons project slightly; as a result if the unit is pressed against a flat surface they *will* trigger. There is no hold switch.

14. The battery display is misleading. For a long time I thought it was not charging properly. Then I realized that although it shows a full battery when the unit is "stopped", as soon as you press play – or while in "pause" – the display goes down to "nearly dead".

15. There are no real features for handling the SD socket. In particular, I couldn't find a way to save voice recordings to it (although the voice quality is so bad nobody would bother). In fact, for a long time I thought it couldn't *play* from the SD socket. Then I realized that it only checks the socket at powerup, and it just mixes the SD tracks with the local tracks. It does include an indicator on the display to show you whether the current track is local or SD.

16. I have no idea what order it displays the files in. It does not seem to be straight alphabetical order: I named halfadozen files 01... 02... etc and they showed up in seemingly random order. It may be that it uses date order (???)

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2004 Jul 20 [ Tue ]

"I Robot" with Will Smith and credits to Isaac Asimov

I had read several dismissive reviews of this movie, eg Ebert's, so I saw Spiderman 2 first (it was good; I agree with other reviewers so no comment), but felt like seeing another movie, so here we are.

I wound up liking the movie quite a lot despite its distant relationship to the original stories. (Apparently the production company had the rights to the "I Robot" property but the plot was from an entirely separate screenplay.) The theme of his Three Laws, as it turned out, was fairly well represented.

SPOILER ALERT

The actual plot is really more reminiscent of Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands", a famous "Golden Age" novel (also published as "The Humanoids") which was truly scary. However a lot of the incidents referred to the Three Laws, and many scenes dealt with the relationship between humans and robots being based on humans having complete trust in robots, and how frightening it would be to stand next to something powerful enough to beat you to a pulp and *no reason not to*, which was very much part of the sociology Asimov imagined into his future societies.

An aspect I just thought of, and don't remember from Asimov's Robot series (although I didn't read his stuff after about 1970, and I know he wrote several books subsequently), is that the robots are provided with no *logical* reason not to assault/kill humans. His laws are completely *arbitrary* and if there is a single chink in them humans are immediately up the creek.

It's like humans who believe "thou shalt not kill" because it's God's word, but not because they believe their existence is improved by the presence of other humans, or because they have figured out that kiling another human being is highly liable to expose them to many moral issues and problems which usually cause people to regret it. So as soon as they receive new "programming" – ie, some cleric tells them God really meant them to smite their enemies – they can flip their bit with equanimity.

The movie, of course, had to have fights and chase scenes. Although the CGI robots always seemed a little off-balance and weightless (eg, when a robot takes its fist and whacks something, you don't see the rest of its body popping backwards as the fist lands), the basic editing and pacing were effective. In fact, I was quite impressed by a scene where one robot fights off several others. Similar scenes involving live actors always make me think "if that were really happening the hero would be unconscious now!" but robots can reasonably continue fighting after they've been pushed through the ceiling.

Will Smith was adequate as the hero but no more than that. In particular, I felt he was unable to sell the plot point about why he hated robots, on which a lot of screen time and energy were expended. The story, viewed abstractly, made actual sense, but somehow did not gel into an emotional reality. One particular thing that bothered me was that in a flashback, Will calls out to the robot in a strong, commanding voice, although a minute before we had a scene where Dr Calvin notes that at the time of the flashback he needed lung and arm replacements. (A more nuanced movie might have suggested that Will was actually semiconscious at that moment and never called out to the robot at all. Actually, I can't remember being shown Smith in those flashbacks. That makes sense as we're supposed to be seeing his dreams/memories, but if one time we *were* to see him and he's obviously semiconscious it could have made the point very fast that his subsequent mental state is based more on his own guilt than the actions of the robot involved.)

The Calvin actress was no good. She made no impression as a scientist or as a female. It occurs to me she went very rapidly from a scene where she closed her eyes while firing a full-auto weapon to rapidly head-shotting a succession of rampaging robots with a pistol. It also occurs to me that considering the movie tries to make the point several times that she's emotionless, it would be more effective to show her *being* emotionless in the scenes where she's being menaced. ("Less is more.")

The special effects were OK. In some respects the general look of the movie was reminiscent of Blade Runner. Perhaps I feel that because of the extremely corny "cop whose badge gets taken away but keeps fighting" subplot, which was close to parody. (Other reviews have made note of that, without the Blade Runner reference; its director apparently felt that the stupid cop subplot of Blade Runner *belonged* in a movie about androids. Hmmm.)

For some reason recent sf movie directors have decided that the future is going to be grey. I suspect the reason is that despite advances in CGI it is still easier to assemble live shots and CGI if the backgrounds are colorless. But I just have a suspicious mind.

A big conceptual problem with the movie is that (major spoiler) the dead guy sent the hero a succession of cryptic clues so that he could (eventually) figure out the villain's dastardly scheme. This idea didn't make any sense in "Payback" either. If they're watching him so closely he can't make a damn phonecall – even though he apparently makes speeches to packed seminars – how in heck can he start doing all that weird stuff? Making a fully- interactive video of himself with artifical intelligence, and setting it to dial a cop in the event of his death? Puh-leeeze.

All in all, it seemed to me almost as if they had based it on a robot story Asmov actually *might have* written, plus Will Smith, stupid fighting and chase sequences, and a dim-bulb Dr Calvin. I think if he's spinning in his grave, it's a low hum not an angry whine.

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2004 Jul 03 [ Sat ]

Minor observation about Lord of the Rings movies

One of the things I've always regretted about sf movies is that they steal the most visual aspects of real science fiction and harness them to a sleazy and embarrassingly inept script. This means that most audiences will never perceive the impact of a real sf story as it deserves to be seen: they will perceive its most visual aspects as a threadbare repetition of elements that they associate with childish dreck.

I recently realized that LOTR is the *exception* to that. There have been, I suppose, *hundreds* of movies which have been based to a greater or lesser extent on the mythology of LOTR (the books), and yet somehow the movie managed to avoid contamination. So I guess I should be encouraged: perhaps someday someone will finally make a movie of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

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2004 Jun 12 [ Sat ]

Movie review: City of Ghosts (2002)

This is a noir thriller set mostly in Cambodia.

I don't have much to say about it as a movie, except that it was OK, and certainly something Matt Dillon, who both stars in it and directed it can be proud of.

Typical review: www.offoffoff.com [http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2003/cityofghosts.php]

I just want to talk about the Cambodian atmosphere. I don't know Cambodia outside Phnom Penh much, but to me it didn't *feel* much like Cambodia. I can't pin down why, though. One thing is that they didn't use recognizable exteriors much. There's a shot of the Central Market (Psaa Tmay) which looks like it was shot through the window of a tourist bus. Other buildings looked to me as much like Mexico as PP.

Another thing was the roads. Now, at least, most roads in PP have *some* blacktop. It's bumpy and trash-covered, but there's some blacktop visible. But the PP roads in the movie are plain red dust. And the sidewalks are clear, instead of having a guy rewiring a washing machine motor next to an old woman playing with a naked child next to a stall selling Walkmans and fried food.

Perhaps the movie was actually shot in some small seaside town rather than PP itself.

I don't want to get into it as a movie, but I did not get any feel of how the character was *reacting* to all of this stuff. For instance, when he shows up at the "hotel", he takes the higher-priced room with air conditioning, but when he gets there the ac is in pieces on the floor. Now that's PP all right – there's an ac on the floor outside my room today – but Dillon doesn't seem to *care*. He should have been melting with sweat and desperate to recover in a cool room, but I don't think we see him even saying "oh well".

We also see him drinking a lot of alcohol, but I don't remember seeing him have food or water. (Perhaps that's why he never gets diarrhea.)

Although Dillon is supposed to be inexperienced in Asia, the other characters are not, so it doesn't make sense that they seem so unwary. ...Hmm, it occurs to me that a lot of noir movies would fail that test.

The whores looked authentically Vietnamese rather than Cambodian. Actually, I wondered a couple of times whether the movie had actually been shot there rather than Cambodia, although the closing credits definitely referred to Cambodia, with participation by some member of the royal family.

Apparently some feminist complained that the whores looked too young. This link, mainly about the Cambodian guy who played the taxi driver, describes a squabble at a showing in Arizona: www.camnet.com.kh [http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/selected_features/story1.htm]

The taxidriver character, though the actor had never acted before, was quite effective. Still, I'm afraid that he filled the role esentially of the "whore with a heart of gold". Tourists should certainly not rely on finding such a paragon – I mean someone who actually knows how to get to places when he says he does. At one point in the movie Dillon points to a place on the map and says "you know how to get there?" An authentic movie, I guess, would have slowed up the plot a lot right there.

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2004 Jun 08 [ Tue ]

Prop guns in movies

A few weeks ago I was fulminating about various flaws relating to firearms and infantry tactics. One peeve was that when someone menaces someone else in a movie with a gun, the firearm is often *visibly* uncocked.

It has since occurred to me that I read somewhere that prop departments mostly stock *rubber* guns – they're cheaper and more hard-wearing, and you don't have to worry about them firing blanks at your star.

So probably the reason for such uncocked firearms is that the gun is rubber and therefore cannot be cocked, as a result perhaps of one of the following:

1. They ordered a functioning weapon but a rubber gun showed up on the day of the shoot.

2. They didn't intend to do a closeup of the weapon but they then realized they needed to insert some dialog in the scene or the next one wouldn't make any sense

3. They didn't have the money for a functioning gun

4. They didn't have the money for the gun wrangler that they were required to pay by union rules

5. They had both a rubber gun (for scenes where it gets dropped) and a functioning gun for closeups, but where the hell did we put the functioning gun??

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2004 May 22 [ Sat ]

Mindstorm (2000, 2001) -- sci-fi

I saw this last night on cable. Basically, a secret US project creates kids with psi powers, then the guy in charge decides to eliminate the project and the kids: one of the kids escapes and later becomes a psychic detective. Complications snsue.

Plot: www.tvguide.com [http://www.tvguide.com/Movies/database/showmovie.asp?MI=44331]

Unimpressed customer reviews on Amazon: www.amazon.com [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005UF7S/102-6886988-6312123?v=glance]

It wasn't very good, but it wasn't painful, or a mess, either. The reason I'm writing it up is a couple of things which are actually rather tangential to the movie, which is why I'm not addressing the plot very much. (Thinking about it now, I realize I have no idea why somebody in a helicopter was machinegunning one of the good guys for a while.)

One is that a large section of the action is an assault by some sort of fedgov goongroup on a "cult compound". The release date for the film is variously listed as 2000 and 2001, but at any rate was years after Waco and the setup seems intended to evoke Waco, but *with no sort of awareness of the drawbacks* the fedgov goons are once again sent in wearing their stormtrooper outfits with no sign of a warrant, attempt to negotiate, or liason with local LEOs. Very strange. The movie was actually made in Canada, so maybe it was just so *obvious* to the makers of the movie that anybody who has effective weapons at home *must* be a bad guy that it was unnecessary to even *pretend* that such suspects have constitutional protections.

SPOILER ALERT

Since the bad guy has the ability to transfer his consciousness into a nearby living body as he dies, the twist at the end of the movie is that he cunningly transfers himself to a presidential candidate. The heroine, instead of passing on her suspicions, decides to wait till he's elected and then assassinate him in public.

The movie doesn't handle the logic or the drama of this very well. (Also I was expecting a second twist in which the bad guy manages to transfer himself into the body of his own son, who was inside his heavily-pregnant girlfriend at the scene of the assassination. It wouldn't have taken much – just showing the girlfriend looking relieved and happy after the president dies.) (Hmmm... It also occurs to me that when the bad guy makes umpteen teen acolytes pregnant, he's already in a seized host body, not his own, so he's not propagating his mysterious psi-capable DNA anyway...)

Anyhow what strikes me is that if you were some sort of mutant, or alien or whatever, with superhuman powers, you might well decide to go for maximum power on the planet by grabbing the presidency. So the reason why so many US presidents have been assassinated over the last 150 years may be that people figured out that they *weren't in fact human*.

Well, it makes perfect sense to me. More than the Warren Commission, at least.

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2004 Apr 29 [ Thu ]

Special Forces -- made-for-tv-movie on Star Movies channel

I started watching this the other day and soon disliked it enough that I wanted to watch it to the end to write it up – but discovered I disliked it so much I couldn't bear to continue watching. So I don't have a good idea of how it develops.

Here's an overview from a site that's mainly interested in the kung-fu aspect: www.kungfucinema.com [http://www.kungfucinema.com/reviews/specialforces.htm]

It's interesting that the budget was so low. It didn't really give that impression. In particular, a scene in which refugees are massacred shows about fifty people with various props straggling along in the countryside, and was quite impressive. In fact, that's why other stuff in the movie disturbed me: it was well enough made that the bad stuff seemed to be somewhat deliberate.

Yes, it's the contrast of *actual, historic* massacres and the movie's nine-year-old chop-socky attitudes that's disturbing. If the bad guys planned to blow up the world with their new Scrompiom bomb, and wore costumes with capes, it wouldn't be so bad that the heroes were one-dimensional. Instead real-world issues, like your wife leaving you because you can't tell her what you do and occasionally she sees that one or two of your buddies don't show up any more, are raised and then treated offensively, and with no insight or empathy into actual special-forces attitudes. I particularly remember one scene where half-a-dozen good guys are watching a video presentation in a hall clearly intended for about fifty people: that actually did trigger memories of when I was playing soldiers – a feeling of "this isn't all just about you, buddy". But the makers of the movie probably just ran out of budget for extras.

Likewise, one of the characters agonizes about having to make tough decisions for his country, but it just makes him sound like a sap. Everybody thinks about stuff like that *first*.

So anyway, it was made just well enough that I started thinking about all the *bad guys* that were getting killed, and whether they were *really* the bad guys, and exactly what was so great about the "good" guys being trained and equipped to go to exciting foreign places, meet new people and kill them. And that spoiled the chop-socky stuff.

Which wasn't even very good. Unless some entirely new kind of knifeblade has been developed recently, the good guys were cutting throats all wrong. I'm not talking about a fight where you cut anything you can reach, I'm talking about sneaking up behind someone where you can pick your angle.

I vaguely recall thinking that these guys just didn't look believable at any point. Maybe I'm mixed up, but I think this was the movie where a bunch of good guys were in a helicopter approaching an LZ, and the commander said "lock and load" and they all cocked their weapons preparatory to abseiling to the ground. Man, even if you're abseiling into a hot LZ, I wouldn't want to abseil next to someone hitting the ground with a cocked weapon. Oh well – maybe not snagging the trigger when you abseil is what makes them such super troopers.

Way back in the fifties, the US comic-book industry was forced to put in place the "Comics Code", part of which required that comics *never* show actual criminal operations. I think they never even showed somebody stealing a car! This movie was like a comic book where Mr Mxyzptlk cons a retiree into investing his IRA in a pump-and-dump – impossible to enjoy on any level.

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2004 Apr 17 [ Sat ]

Good page with reviews of minidisc recorders used for audio reporting

www.transom.org [http://www.transom.org/tools/recording_interviewing/200306.minidisc.html]

Has discussion of pros and cons – like the way Sony don't actually tell you that the usb link is only for *downloading* stuff to the minidisc – you have to *upload* everything, even though it's already digitized, via the *audio out* jack. Sheesh.

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2004 Mar 27 [ Sat ]

Most movies use model helicopters

A few years ago I suppose I found out, maybe through an article in Cinefex, that when you see a *flying* helicopter in the movies it's usually a model, at maybe 1:10 scale or so. Shots using live actors use just a cabin or doorway which is swung from a crane while they run a wind machine.

There are several reasons for this.

1. Obviously it's cheaper

2. You often need to put the camera in a *real* helicopter and it's *very dangerous* to manoeuvre two *real* helicopters close together

3. You can easily create a wacky-looking "2015 attack-hunter" as a model, but the FAA would never approve of alterations to a real helicopter

4. Insurance costs for actual helicopter rides have gone through the roof since that famous accident and litigation, so nobody wants to put the actors on board real helicopters anyway.

5. The obvious "forced perspective" you get from trying to arrange the model so it looks realistic against a real background can actually be quite useful in making the scene more dramatic. It certainly allows all kinds of sequences in which a real helicopter could not possibly manoeuvre safely.

I now watch helicopter scenes very closely, but I still can't really be sure the sequences use models. Additionally, these days digital composition may be more practical for a lot of sequences than a physical flying helicopter.

One givewaway for a faked sequence is the appearance of the rotor blades. In bright sunlight the cameras are set to high shutter speeds, so the helicopters' blades, combined with the strobing effect, produce an image of many blades: perhaps 12 or so. If the blades appear as a blur on a sunny day, they were probably generated digitally.

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"50 First Dates" with Adam Sandler

I haven't seen this movie yet, or even a review, but the premise seems interesting: a woman wakes up every day with no recollection of the previous day: in fact every day she wakes up believing that yesterday was *one particular day* that she's now forever stuck at. Sandler plays her lover, who tries to make each day run smoothly for her.

It is reminiscent of course of Groundhog Day, which I've also commented on: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/2004/02/04#groundhog01]

More particularly it reminds me of a short story by I think Philip Jose Farmer (or was it Robert Silverberg? I often get them confused for some reason) in which an alien robot exploration satellite stations itself in orbit above the Earth, and from then on everybody loses their memory of the previous day when they go to sleep. But in the sf story, it's a nightmarishly horrible situation; the movie is apparently played for laughs. (In the short story they never even figure out what the alien robot is trying to do: they theorize it is simply trying to read everyone's memories but human minds are unfortunately not quite compatible with their technology.)

Recently the movie "Memento" was surprisingly popular – I was very impressed myself. Maybe "Memento" caused Hollywood execs to send out ther staffers to blow the dust off any screenplays about memory problems – and maybe this Adam Sandler vehicle started life as that short story I vaguely remember. Eheu fugaces.

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2004 Mar 06 [ Sat ]

Various quibbles about Saving Private Ryan

The initial D-Day sequence in SPR of course is extremely powerful. Many people have said that it was the first time they had been made aware of the magnitude of the sacrifices made by the soldiers.

Still, I have many quibbles.

1. Do machine-gun bullets *really* penetrate the sea as shown? My understanding was that since water is practically incompressible, bullets don't penetrate water much farther than steel. In any case they would be largely deflected, so if they did penetrate they would be travelling much more horizontally than depicted.

2. The camerawork in the battle sequences is sort of "faux verite". Ie, it seems to be mimicking the "shakycam" effect of documentary camerawork. I recall being impressed by this trick in "Doctor Strangelove", but it seems weird here. Surely the soldiers would not have been dumb enough to execute surrendering enemy in front of an actual documentary camera. Also, of course, only the Nazis were advanced enough to use color film at the time.

3. The "shakycam" effect seems to be extended to "shakylight". Repeatedly, I saw cases where the apparent illumination on the characters' faces, especially the Hanks character, shifted and wobbled as if someone holding a gold reflector was stumbling trying to keep up with the action. Maybe this is not apparent to someone with no photography experience. It made me wonder if a lot of manual editing had been used to open up the shadows in the characters' faces subsequent to original photography: trying to light faces under helmets is the devil's own task, so since so much digital composition was being used to provide backgrounds it would certainly have been easy to add some manual digital color and contrast editing. On the other hand the faces often looked weirdly orange.

4. That "shooting prisoners" thing: this was actually the first movie I've seen in which allied troops in the "good" war had been shown to shoot surrendering prisoners. Now I was aware that this actually happened, especially in cases where the battlefield is moving very rapidly and there is clearly no opportunity to securely hold the prisoners and transfer them to the rear. But that was hardly the case on D-Day.

It made me wonder if one of the implicit aims of the movie was to inure the public to the mistreatment of prisoners. I thought it was very striking that this feature of the movie was not commented on by every reviewer.

5. The tough sergeant was shown as collecting cans of earth from each battle. I simply don't believe that any soldier would actually lug cans of earth around in his pack. You examine every ounce in your pack with a *very* critical eye. Would you really rather lug earth than ammunition or water? Then you're a fool, and probably a dead fool.

6. Sniper duel scene: a rifle bullet would have passed through the civilian car behind which our heroes were hiding, their location visible (as we were shown) to the sniper by the tops of their helmets and their rigle barrels.

Also, any competent sniper would have arranged himself so that he was completely in shadow inside that tower, and quite impossible for the good sniper to see (except I suppose for muzzle flashes). (The sniper's face was also subject to the weird "shakylight" effect: he was clearly visible against the gloomy background of his lair, as if he had *sought out* a shaft of sunlight to bask in.)

Less significantly: snipers are often arranged in teams, with support personnel armed with closerange weapons, and reporting movements by landline, etc. Of course, in the actual circumstances of a disorderly retreat, much happens that is not in the manual. You're supposed to have a secure line of retreat to a separate firing position, too, instead of sitting there like a schlump while the Amis figure out where you are.

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The Star Trek transporter, and infantry tactics

Lord knows grumbling about logic and consistency in the Star Trek universe will get me nowhere, but that never stopped me before.

One big problem with almost all the infantry sequences is the existence of the transporter. I think as the saga wore on, the writers became more aware of it, and started adding little "getout" lines like "Unfortunately we can't use the transporter to enter their base because of a large concentration of table salt and plasticine, captain!".

Still, that exposes another hole from the opposite direction. It's clear that in general the transporter *could* be used for infantry warfare, but we *never* see any sign that tactics have been adapted for it. So often in infantry tactics you're struggling to gain a position where you have cover and can concentrate fire, and the other poor bastard has no cover and half his firepower is ineffective.

Clearly with the transporter that all goes away.

Instead you'd have some sort of semi-automatic flipping of fire positions, run presumably by the computer with vision sensing. It would be a little like the experience of entering a Quake-style transporter, where every time your vision clears you're surrounded by more monsters, except in a Star-trek style infantry battle the "monsters" would be as surprised as you were, and hopefully more.

Or maybe you could just designate a position with your headsup display, and the computer would transport you there. Or warn you it was too exposed and suggest a better location. Or say "Do you want Clippy to designate your firezones from now on? Yes, Cancel, Back, Help".

Oh well. Star Trek writers are stuck with having to support the ludicrous space battles, where the other ship makes a move, the helmsman (or someone else equally inappropriate) has to explain the situation to the captain orally ("They're coming around again off the port bow, cap'n!!"), the First Officer has to say something unhelpful like "The shields can't take much more of this!!", and the captain has to furrow his brow earnestly before commanding "Attack pattern Omega-9!" and the helmsman, or someone equally inappropriate, presses a button. Utter bleeping nonsense from start to finish. It can't possibly inspire the writer to create internal logic for the relatively minor *infantry* scenes.

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The Panasonic DMR-E100H digital video recorder

I just saw this unit on display in the big Sony store in the Soraya mall near Central Market in Phnom Penh the other day. The sticker price was $1000 but the sales girl was eager to dicker.

I'd never seen it before but apparently it was introduced in mid-2003. According to C/Net you can order it in the states for $820 or so through the web. Prices in Euroland seem much higher.

It has a *hell* of a lot of features. It has a built in HD for many hours of recording, plus it writes to DVDs. I haven't really been following the the format war, but I think it writes to DVD-Rs and DVD-RAMs, ie not to DVD+R or whatever they all are. Anyhow, it has an SD memopry chip slot too, and even a PCMCIA (PC Card) slot! I don't know what that's supposed to be for. Maybe you could even plug a PCMCIA hard disk into it.

Very interestingly, there's even a firewire slot. So presumably you could dump an 8mm DV camcorder directly into it without needing a computer.

Another cool feature is it can write to DVD *much* faster than real time.

I'm not sure what the official spelling of the name is. On the Google search I've found: Panasonic DMR-E100H Panasonic DMR-E100-H Panasonic DMR-E100 H

Here's a link to the C/Net review: att.com.com [http://att.com.com/Panasonic_DMR_E100H/4514-6474_7-30460167-3.html?tag=subnav]

They grumble there isn't an IR output to control your sat receiver.

Another page of features and specs: www.avland.co.uk [http://www.avland.co.uk/panasonic/dmre100/]

I can't actually afford this but I can dream.

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Features we actually need in digital cameras

In this week's Bangkok Post Database I saw a letter from Fred Gilmore headed "The Beauty of Simplicity" (2004-03-03), about features he finds important in digital cameras. I considered replying to the Post, but they have failed to publish a string of my letters lately (after I was less than reverent about the odor of "sanctity" coming from one of their favorite article writers).

Anyway, here are some of my ideas:

1. I don't really know about the optical problems involved, but wouldn't it be easier to just bite the bullet and set up a new standard image size (for the detector chips) much smaller than 24x36, and create a new range of interchangeable lenses to suit. I realize that the depth-of-field of such short lenses will be much greater at similar apertures, but is it impossible to provide a lens with say f/0.5? Maybe it would demand far higher precision in the lens housing. Maybe it would require some sort of active adjustment?

2. I have an oldish Canon 8mm camcorder, and it has a great battery system, standardized across many models, with some sort of intelligent charge state display technology built in so you get a continuous readout of the remaining battery life in minutes. I was quite disappointed when I got my Minolta Dimage X to find a far cruder battery system, with only three display states: full, half and flat. On the good side they seem to have maintained the same battery format for a further two models, but I wish there were some industry-wide standards. On the good side, the Minolta has a 4.7-V-DC input jack, so it will still be usable (potentially) even when the special batteries are not available. Come to think of it, it might be cool to put together an auxiliary battery pack for it now, because it would probably take several charges before it could fill even a 256-MB chip.

3. Is it so impossible to provide a filter ring? Or some sort of fitting for a lens hood? I have been vaguely thinking about rigging something up so I could use attachments intended for camcorders, but it would probably be such a kludge I would never actually use it. Maybe, because of the huge DOF on the tiny digital lenses, dust and reflections tend to be too visible on filters. I would *love* to have a polarizing filter, but maybe it would interfere with some of the automatic systems inside the camera.

4. Why can't the manufacturers document exactly what their automatic systems are *doing*? I have a strong feeling that my Minolta is doing the wrong thing when I try to blend flash and ambient: ie, in the daytime it tries to fully expose the subject with the flash alone (so the lighting is too harsh), and at night it tries to fully expose the subject with ambient light, which means it's hopelessly blurry with camera shake instead of just adding a little modelling to the harsh on-camera flash. But I don't *know*, and with auto-exposure and post-exposure jpg processing I'm not sure how I could establish the truth.

5. I've said this before, but why isn't there a single button so you can tell the camera to do auto-focus and auto-exposure and then HOLD THOSE SETTINGS while you recompose at your leisure instead of having to desperately hold your shooting finger at the same pressure indefinitely like some sort of sadistic video game?

6. How tough would it be to provide a tripod socket which is somewhere close to the actual center of balance instead of way off to one side?

7. Can't all cameras use infrared or radio or something to communicate with the flash, now?

8. I know modern lenses use all kinds of weird geometry and it's hard to specify the focus settings etc in advance. But would it be *impossible* to have a fixed-focal-length digicam lens with a manual focus ring with focus-setting distance engravings?

9. I really *like* not having to eyeball *through* the camera to compose the shot. Even in full sunlight and at a funny angle, I can hold the camera above my head to improve the composition of a street scene and still see well enough to more or less compose the shot, and if my camera's LCD screen folded out it would be even better. So I would like it if *pro* level cameras were also available with the fold-out feature. (I think that was one of Gilmore's points, actually... oh well.)

10. As I've said before, we really need to be able to check focus better. What I would suggest is a button which automatically selects a super "digital zoom" display so that the LCD pixels, typically only about 200x300, correpsond to individual pixels in the resulting frame. It would be cool to superimpose a low-contrast version of the actual frame so you could continue to track framing at the same time as you adjust focus.

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2004 Mar 01 [ Mon ]

William Shawcross's "Sideshow"

This book deals with the sad history of Cambodia and the effects of US policy.

It was first published many years ago, around the time Kissinger wrote his memoirs of the period, and is striking because it contains a succession of afterwords, containing the text of objections to "Sideshow" and the author's responses.

The book was interesting to me for several reasons. One is the fact that it is about Cambodia; another is that it deals with perhaps the central propaganda war of the 20th century, more bitterly-fought than any other: the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust lie, NATO.

Personally, I felt the dissection of the maneuvering inside Cambodia in the years up to Lon Nol was very readable. It's interesting to know that Sihanouk and his family, for instance, managed to achieve the throne although the Norodom line had a prior claim.

In addition, I feel that many general criticisms of US policy are valid. The concept of the title – that the US saw Cambodia as a tiny "sideshow" important only insofar as it could be diverted to serve other interests – seems incontrovertible. (I recently happened to see a TV show about Watergate, and I saw no mention of Cambodia although this was the period of the "secret war".)

Additionally, it seems clear that US diplomats based their decisions about Cambodia on zero knowledge of or insight into Cambodia's culture and history. For instance, the effects of allowing ARVN to roam unrestrictedly inside Cambodia should have been anticipated, and special precautions taken.

On the other hand, I feel strongly that some of the criticisms made by Kissinger and his supporters are obviously true. Shawcross is evidently a supporter of the Vietnamese communists: sparing no effort to malign every ghastly *unintentional* consequence of the US war effort, he draws a veil over the horrible *intentional* results of the NVA's strategy and tactics, such as their programme of assassinations throughout the war, or their massacre of civilians during the Tet offensive.

It may well be the case that a more clever, or even less duplicitous, policy by the US could have saved Cambodia from the unmitigated hell it went through for many years. However, it is ludicrous to try to assign final blame for that atrocity to the US. The US was there because of the program of the NVA to subvert and invade South Vietnam, and the US aim of holding back the NVA, and communism in general, has only been further justified by the events in South-East Asia since then, and the admissions by the NVA of its aims and operations.

"Sideshow" is a deeply tendentious book. Its logic would have been torn apart by the same reviewers who praised it, if its intention had not been to make those who opposed US involvement in SE Asia feel less guilty about Cambodia.

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2004 Feb 10 [ Tue ]

Fundamentals of game design

I've been interested for a long time in why games work – in the sense of being fun to play – at all.

For instance, why do I enjoy crossword puzzles? I've certainly noticed that I enjoy the puzzles in certain newspapers more than others. What seems to be unrewarding is puzzles where you can guess all but two or three clues immediately, but the remainder are impossible. What seems to be "fun" is when I only get 5 or 10 clues quickly, but can slowly figure out the remaining answers at a relatively constant rate. Ie, I don't enjoy *either* just looking up answers, or beating my head against a brick wall: it's the process of converting what looks like a very difficult task into a series of steps of definable progress which seems to be the pleasurable part. (Incidentally the very best – most enjoyable – clue is hard to guess but as soon as you think of the answer you know it's right. I hate the kind which is "14th C. Persian unguent hamper – var.")

Here's a Slashdot discussion of the necessity/merit of *logic* in the universe of a computer game: games.slashdot.org [http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/0634256]

It includes one particularly relevant posting:

games.slashdot.org [http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95168&cid=8159214]

That thing about "verifiable progress" reminds me of how surprised I was that the Rainbow Six games don't allow you to save a game in the middle of a level. At first I thought this made them almost unplayable, but when I continued playing (irritated with my expensive purchase) I found the lack made it a *different kind of game* and not necessarily worse.

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2004 Feb 04 [ Wed ]

Groundhog Day

This is a comedy starring Bill Murray, which was released several years ago. (I was reminded of it by Murray's recent Oscar nomination for his work in the comedy "Lost in Translation".)

You probably remember it. It was quite popular when released, though not a blockbuster, and its reputation has grown. In it, Murray plays an acerbic loner working for a TV station who is required every year to attend the "Groundhog Day" celebrations, in which a town consults a groundhog "Punxsatawney Phil" to find out what weather to expect between winter and spring. (Weird as it may sound, that is an actual event in the USA.)

The movie is a sort of fairy tale, in which for no apparent reason Murray's character, who hates Groundhog Day and his life that forces him to attend every year, is magically returned in the middle of every night to relive that past Groundhog Day again.

The movie's very considerable achievement is that it manages to be both insightful, funny and warm, even though many of the actions shown are either morally, conceptually or both, very strange indeed – perhaps even distasteful.

For instance, when the Murray character experiences each day, what is *everyone else* experiencing? Are the people he encounters – and variously insults, slugs, has sex with on false pretences, drives their car in a high-speed chase with police, etc – actual vulnerable people or not? If they are, how can the movie make jokes about them? If they are not, what kind of moral experience is the character supposed to be undergoing?

If all those other sets of people are real, what happens *to them* at the end of that day? Do they wake up to find the Murray character inexplicably vanished and their town in ruins?

As the Murray character experiences the day over and over again, he seems to "grow" in wisdom, and begins to set himself a goal of setting right every single little thing that goes wrong in the town that day. But why? Why does any of it matter?

He's shown as learning to play excellent jazz piano, from nothing. Even someone with talent, starting in maturity, would take perhaps 3 years of daily lessons. Just as he has to undergo perhaps 3000 hours of work, the piano teacher must do so also. She works that day over and over, and he gives her money she will probably not have time to spend.

The following perhaps deserves a spoiler warning, but since it doesn't make any particular sense and is carefully foreshadowed anyway, I don't think it matters: it seems he is finally released from his curse by falling in love. That's a little strange, when you think about it. Buddhism teaches us that daily life – including sexual love – is itself the wheel, the cycle of meaningless existence which we can only escape by focusing on the eternal. In the movie, Murray escapes the cycle of *eternal* existence to find *mortality* in human love. Why is this *preferable* – for us, Murray, or the mysterious force (never explained in the movie) which subjected him to this curse? To make it a better date movie? Why does he use his gift to learn jazz piano, instead of finding a cure for cancer?

In a way, the movie simply shows us another universe where the issues are *interesting mutations* of our own. Murray doesn't know whether the people he encounters are *real* or not – and *neither do we*. By Occam's razor, there's no reason to believe that anyone other than oneself has consciousness in *our* world (or *my* world, respectively). He has to decide what to do with his life when he doesn't know what's going on or how long it's going to last – check. He has to decide whether to ignore people, exploit them or cooperate with them – check again.

Still, I like to think that when he realized he'd broken out of the daily cycle finally, he said to himself "Boy! If you can fake sincerity you've got it made!"

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2004 Feb 03 [ Tue ]

Lord of the Rings

Many commentators are suggesting that Lord of the Rings is the favorite for the Best Movie oscar this year.

I saw and enjoyed all three movies in the trilogy. I'm not sure if any of them could really be judged the best movie of the year.

On the other hand, the director's achievement is a remarkable one: he avoided *many, many* ways to screw up. LOTR is a very, very difficult story to film. Many of the scenes and characters have to be solemn and noble to an extreme which is incredibly difficult to actually act and depict without descending into parody. He used Gimli the dwarf for comic relief a few times and came very close to disastrous self parody:

Re:ROTK had the gayest ending ever (Score:3, Funny) by spakka (606417) on Monday January 26, @08:04AM (#8086964)

The battle of Helm's Deep in TTT was gayer. Recall the bit where Gimli calls to Aragorn "Toss me! Toss me!", and then asks him not to tell anyone about it.

But the same effect could have occurred from a thousand other decisions he had to make. Somehow he just barely skated by disaster. The hammy acting by the hobbits; the desperate attempts at a love interest; a lot of things came *very very* close... but didn't quite destroy the story.

On the other hand, Jackson *failed* to make the most of what should have been major moments. When Aragorn addresses the army before the final battle at the gates of Mordor, I felt thrilled – but only because I was conscious of the resonance of this moment with many other such moments of desperate courage in Western literature (as of course Tolkien was). Neither the dialog nor the direction in this scene made the most of the opportunity.

Still – crucially – Jackson's direction managed to allow me to feel real emotion during that scene; as opposed to making me hide my eyes, which many other adapatations of favorite stories have reduced me to.

"Nit-Pickers Guide to Deviations in Jackson's LotR": slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/29/1958202]

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2004 Jan 23 [ Fri ]

A third posting about Paycheck

Although Paycheck was not explicitly about time *travel* per se, being able to see the future involves a lot of the same logical problems as actual travel into the past. I guess when I was watching the movie my basic position was: "this is a movie so the time travel stuff cannot possibly make sense so there's no point even thinking about it". Well, I've changed my mind.

My question is "what *exactly* did the hero do when he saw the future and set up the whole chase sequence right before he got the memory wipe?"

If we assume that the future is *unchangeable*, then the hero can just view what happens, figure out each of the mcguffins is vital and create each of them from scratch. Still, if it's unchangeable, why bother? You could just wait for the timeline to create them out of thin air to avoid a chronoclasm.

But if the future is continuously *changing* because of your actions, the hero would need to keep *rechecking* the new timeline every time he read the ("previous") future! Because, seeing the "previous" future he would know something he hadn't known in the "previous" timeline, and the future would change again! *All* the future from the time he viewed *any* future. In this respect it's rather strange that he picked such *chancy* items to protect himself. There's a line about "well the only items I could mail to myself would be things that wouldn't make them suspicious" but what kind of nonsense is that? If I were a security man I would feel *more* suspicious about somebody signing away millions of dollars and mailing himself junk than if he'd just mailed himself a 9mm.

Also, if I remember rightly, one of the things he sent himself was a microdot. If he can do that, why not mail something innocuous looking to himself or a relative or something, with some trick to make sure the relative found the microdot? It sounds chancy, but not as chancy as the sequence in the movie.

Oh, and how the hell did he get the lottery ticket and the circuitry room key while he was locked up under maximum security?

Another thing is that during initial testing they might well have noticed that the viewed future kept *changing*. Or, indeed, that the viewing room itself was blown up a few days into the future.

I wish I had been able to detect whether the end of the movie meant that he had apparently *changed* the future or not.

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2004 Jan 17 [ Sat ]

Paycheck, more thoughts

I just posted a review of Paycheck with various carping criticisms: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/2004/01/16#paycheck01]

The first one was "what good does it do the company which employs him to wipe his memory?" He's specifically referred to as a *reverse engineer*, which normally means someone who *copies* a design, but actually he is shown as creating a major *improvement* on the original company's design, so maybe it's the case that he always creates a design which is novel enough to evade their patents.

Still, we never see him *referring* to any patents.

It makes me wonder again what the rationale in the original short story was. And it reminds me of an interesting plot point the movie *might* have used: perhaps in the movie's (near) future, the patent/copyright system may have been *eliminated*.

This hardly seems likely right now: Disney, the RIAA and the MPAA have all the money to pay the lawyers and senators to keep the copyright system going. And IBM, GE, Honda and Sony probably like the patent system the way it is too. But the *theoretical justification* for the current system has been losing plausibility quite rapidly. At the moment the controversy is only among nerds, but the rise of the Internet has created many points of friction with the current system which are creating repeated reexaminations of the *sense* of the law.

It's no longer impossible to imagine a situation where the logical contradictions in the current system become so glaring that the whole shebang is dumped. In that case, companies might well choose to protect their research as a "trade secret": the principles would never be released to the public because there would never be a patent application.

Well, that would more or less explain what the hero was *doing*.

I still can't figure out a reason for the memory wipe – oh – yes! The company that hires him *also* wants to keep *his* technology a secret, just like the first company!

Maybe I can get this into the Director's Cut...

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2004 Jan 16 [ Fri ]

Paycheck

This movie with Ben Affleck is based on the short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick, probably my favorite author.

The synopsis is this: a brilliant engineer accepts jobs to reverse- engineer inventions for competing companies. The catch is that they make him accept a memory wipe to remove his memory of creating the invention. He accepts a 3-year commission for a paycheck of millions of dollars, but when he wakes up he finds he (just before the memory was wiped) gave away his fortune and shipped himself a package of seeming junk.

SPOILER WARNING

1. After the movie was over, I thought "waitaminute, just why does wiping his memory make any difference?" Presumably the original company got the patents sewn up and they'll just sue whether the *engineer* has the memory or not. I don't remember thinking that when I read the original short story (on the other hand I don't remember reading it at all, even though I'm pretty sure I read all the sf Dick ever wrote – aha – who made me take the memory wipe???)

2. I was waiting for Affleck to figure out some way of escaping his own death, which the time travel gizmo he invented allows him to preview, and indeed he evaded death but I was scratching my head thinking "what the heck did he do?" As far as I remember the movie, he just *decides* to change history.

3. Like I said I don't remember the original story. The "message" of the movie seems to be that a time viewer is too dangerous to use because it creates a loop which results in disastrous wars. This is not bad – relative to the low standard of most time travel plots – but somehow it doesn't strike me as a Dickian idea. (I need hardly add that Affleck does not remind me of any Dickian protagonist, and the director Woo's predilection for martial arts, gunplay and motorcycles strained my recollection also.)

4. Worse, it reminds me of a much better story which I have now tried for over an hour to find the title of via Google. Oh well. As I recall it was written in the forties and has quite a reputation, although the author never wrote anything else. In the story, someone invents a viewer which views the *past* – rather than the future – which makes it possible to make a film showing the *truth* of history – not just known historical facts like wars and kings and queens as they really were, but also all the hidden deals and lies which hapless dupes died for. (The author includes the life of Jesus among the scenes the viewer captures, but wisely avoids giving the reader the details...)

The ending of *that* story is just that the governments, after a period of revolution, sieze the viewer, destroy all copies of the movie and discredit the revelations. It was very unusual in having such a depressing ending, especially in the forties.

5. There's a couple of P. K. Dick sites which I flipped through when I was writing this. One has a quote from Dick about the genesis of Paycheck:

www.philipkdick.com [http://www.philipkdick.com/films_paycheck.html]

The problem is that it suggests Dick thought his idea of being able to see the future making seemingly trivial things lifesaving was completely novel, when in fact Heinlein had written a short story in the forties with the identical idea (a mysterious fortuneteller demands a huge sum from the hero, and in return gives him nothing but a pair of scissors).

This is a little depressing... still, it reminds me of a scene in one of his novels where a propaganda designer who has been keeping the population of Earth in thrall to a total lie for decades is feeling depressed, so he goes to a computer for advice, and the computer just shows him a famous old propaganda movie that every designer had seen a million times, showing Churchill arriving for a secret meeting with Hitler in his Boeing 707. The designer realizes that the computer is trying to tell him that all propaganda, even the best, is flawed, and yet it succeeds.

Philip K. Dick's work is flawed, and yet it succeeds.

It's kind of a pity about the propaganda, though.

6. In the following link, the sfsite.com reviewer makes the excellent point that re-using the stupid handwaving interface for computers that the used for "Minority Report" was not only stupid per se, it *has* a 3-D projector in it that Affleck is supposed to be *inventing*.

www.sfsite.com [http://www.sfsite.com/01a/pc167.htm]

7. I know he's John Woo and all that, but is it really *likely* that a millionaire industrialist wants to go in waving a gun and then decide to take out the hero himself?

8. Despite my carping criticism, it's an OK movie. On the other hand, it's a waste of a Dick story.

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2004 Jan 14 [ Wed ]

Comparison of prepaid cellphone deals available in USA

If I ever go back to the USA it won't be for long, so I'm going to need to get some sort of prepaid cellphone service.

This page comparing a whole bunch of them looks good: markson.net [http://markson.net/cell_prepaid_compare.htm]

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2004 Jan 01 [ Thu ]

Saving Private Tootsie

This movie was released in Thailand in I think late 2002. I think any farang interested in Thailand would enjoy it. I was very impressed.

1. There were a few technical flaws eg soft focus in jungle canopy (suggesting they had not had much lighting available, and relied on natural light and some reflectors) – compare much better quality in eg Predator. It may also be that their focus puller was less experienced, or they needed to get the shot in fewer takes. Likewise there wasd often a poor color match between scenes; and jumpy editing, suggesting inadequate script control and/or running out of money in post.

2. Good infantry scenes. My guess is either they hired the actual Thai infantry, or they gave some soldiers some money under the table over the weekend (not much actual difference between those options).

3. Some things worked that didn't work in SPR. In particular, SPR was amazingly difficult to connect with emotionally, except for the very basic issue of viscerally grasping the courage and sacrifice of the soldiers on D-Day. Spielberg is supposed to be so adept at manipulation, but SPR is almost impossible to understand. The scenes at the WW2 cemetery for instance, managed to be both repellently manipulative and meaningless.

4. One thing that worked, for example, was a simple closeup: a boot reaching the shore of Thailand. Somehow or other this managed to be an affecting moment even for me. Actually, it may be that I was *more* affected than the Thais in the audience! Strange.

5. This movie brought home to me an important point about Thailand which I think I've made here before: tolerance, to the Thais, means tolerating something you hate. So the Thais actually hate katoeys, especially the idea that their own son could be a katoey (as shown in this movie), but are still willing to put up with them. This concept seemed a little screwy when it occurred to me, but now it seems more natural and laudable than the wierd "thoughtcrime" approach of US-style tolerance, where people are actually supposed now to think that homosexuality, for instance, is cute. American society has always been prone to polarization and violent changes of direction.

6. One way in which the movie seemed to me to be unsuccessful, perhaps enough to doom it, was its peculiar shifts of mood from farce to warfare to sentiment. "Pulp Fiction" has a lot to answer for.

7. At one point one of the characters says in English "I'm Thai khrap!" Oh well, I can't remember why, but it was funny at the time.

8. I still don't understand Thai so I needed the subtitles, whose English was as usual pretty wobbly. When they can hire a drunken young Yank for two days of shooting, why can't they hire him for two days of typing?

9. Another moment that worked was seeing the Thai flag. Now I am not the guy with the rosiest view of the Thai nation, so I think it's a very interesting point about this movie that it made me feel a real sense of patriotism (vicariously, of course) when the Thai flag was shown. I really have no idea how the director managed to do it. I guess he followed the rule of "don't tell it, show it": he didn't have the characters telling each other how great Thailand is, he showed them struggling and fighting to get back, and being damned glad when they do.

10. If the movie were to be introduced to the West (apparently it is available only on video), I am sure that it would be very difficult for the audience to grasp much of the plot eg the rebels, and their relationship to Thailand and the neighboring country. Heck, I don't really understand what it was either. It looked a lot like the situation with Burma, but I didn't recognize the names.

11. Son hears friends hoping his father will die: this struck me as an effective scene, although I can't describe it too much without giving away the plot.

12. The music worked surprisingly well.

13. I was very struck by the way the Thai soldiers use US equipment, helicopters, etc.

14. All maps showed place names in English. However, I was still not able to figure out exactly where this was supposed to be taking place. It may well be that the makers of the movie chose not to define, say, Burma, because of the Thai army's – and Thaksin's – deep entanglements there. Or maybe I'm just thick.

15. One crew officer spoke no Thai and got little sympathy in the movie – I forget exactly what happened but I think he is mistreated by the kidnappers and this is treated as a comedy interlude. Hmmm.

16. One of the crash victims is shown as struggling to escape for days on mountain trails wearing high-heeled shoes. Would they really last as long as a day? Or her feet?

17. There was a peculiar dance when they are initially captured. Everyone seems to join in the spirit of things. Perhaps this is some cultural thing which Thais accept as normal, at least among hill people.

18. Generally the soldier characters looked reasonable when marching. This is hard to do. Especially in Hollywood movies where the soldiers are supposed to be high-tech special-forces types, they move like a bunch of dance instructors.

19. At one point I noticed one of the regular Thai soldiers was wearing white sneakers?? Perhaps this is normal in the Thai army. "No you can't paint them black for the shoot, I paid 375 baht for them!"

20. Fart leads to shootout: this is an example of the peculiar shifts in tone that made the movie a little hard to get into.

21. One of the most interesting things was something that I thought was almost ignored by the movie: the Thais were shown shooting people dead who are just trying to escape across the river. I know the Thais routinely do this sort of thing – the Thais killed thousands of Cambodians who were just trying to escape Pol Pot – but it was odd that it was shown practically without comment. "Oh well, mai bpen rai".

22. Likewise, a helicopter apparently sent by Thailand starts shooting the people in the river. I couldn't follow what was going on here. I had assumed the helicopter would try to *rescue* them. Maybe I need to see the movie again.

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2003 Dec 23 [ Tue ]

Ocean's 11 -- more problems

I was interrupted while I was listing the problems with this movie on a previous occasion – there are plenty more.

One further issue about the egregious emp nonsense is that at one point one of the characters does give a fair summary of what emp is – I didn't pay much attention at the time so it may have some holes, but it wasn't as awful as the actual way they depicted it later. That means that these bozos were actually *looking at* a true account of what emp is and does when they wrote this farrago! They cut-and-pasted the description into the script and never read it!

Another much more general point about this movie, which basically applies to most caper moviews, is they didn't seem to have any backup plan, which I suppose made some kind of sense because almost nothing went wrong. Everything in their scheme depended on split-second timing, but they had no backup cars, no backup people. One quite surprising missing item was a *girl*. In many bank heists it's plausible that they don't need a girl because the scheme depends on explosives, diamond drills, helicopters and whatnot – guy stuff. But this scheme was 50% flim-flam. Most movies actually insert a *superfluous* chick as eye candy and to give the dozing woman in the audience some sort of identification, but they missed one out here where it would have been logical!

Incidentally one of the reviewers made the excellent point that the Julia Roberts character, who according to the script was stunningly beautiful, looked pretty plain. Her big entrance made her look gawky and unsteady, and her face looked like some sort of prosthetic repair. Maybe she insisted on being the only chick in the movie, realizing she would be overshadowed by even Rhea Perlman.

A much worse, and even more general point was that of "need to know". In the government and military you are repeatedly warned: if someone asks you a question, do they need to know? If not, *don't tell them*. It's an obvious point but one which needs to be drilled into you.

It's a point which most crooks know fairly well. When you're being introduced to someone who's going to work on a job with you, your buddy says "This is Joe from Seattle", and if you say "Hey – I know a Joe from Seattle. Aren't you wanted for that airport job?" brows knit and the mood turns frosty. And by the way, this guy's name isn't really Joe. And he's not from Seattle.

But in "Ocean's 11", the Clooney character makes a *point* during a presentation of *uttering the name* of a guy who provided the information for this particular location. I could hardly believe it. In a more adult movie it would have been a plot point: one of the team would have been a double agent, and etc etc. It turned out to be a completely unnecessary flub in the movie.

Btw, if you are a hostage and they have been keeping you hooded for the last four months and one day they start leaving the hood off that's a *time to worry*. Think about it.

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