Tetherd Cow Ahead

I don’t know about you, but when I read things like the above snippet from the Austin Business Journal, ((Notice how uncritically the ABJ just spouts the guff about the ShooTag ’emitting an electromagnetic frequency’ (and the rest of ShooTag’s completely unsubstantiated pseudoscience). It does nothing of the sort, of course, but this is how pieces of unfettered stupidity get lent ersatz credibility. Shame on you Christopher Calnan. Do some research before you spout such rubbish!)) my blood boils. There is a tendency, when it comes to silly pseudoscientific beliefs, for people to say ‘Well, OK, but what’s the harm?‘ I probably don’t even need to elaborate on what the harm is for a nation of poverty-stricken desperate people who face the very real possibility of death from mosquito-borne diseases.

In case it’s not obvious, let me simplify what is going on here: ShooTag is, in the name of ‘charity’, ((…and a little bit of advertising doesn’t go astray…)) sending bits of plastic that cost nothing and do nothing, to a country in dire need of real help. In addition, they are almost certainly displacing effectual disease-control methods by foisting their useless garbage on uneducated people whose lives depend on proper scientific medicine. The only thing for which we can be thankful is that they sent so few of the damn things. I mean, seriously – a hundred of each? What would that be in actual manufacturing cost? Say (generously) ten cents per tag… wow, 20 bucks. It gives a new definition to the word ‘cheap’. The ShooTaggers are, in fact, doing less than the average school kid who sent some pocket money to the Haiti Red Cross appeal. You really have to question their motives with such a flimsy gesture.

I note in passing that Mission Life International, the company distributing the ShooTags, is an organisation that appears to specialize in providing aid through the proselytisation of chiropractic, another flavour of pseudoscience that we haven’t, as yet, touched on here at The Cow. It’s unlikely that they’d have much discrimination when it comes to spotting flying pigs, then.

It is impossible to know how much damage these people and their superstitious beliefs cause in places like Haiti, but it makes me sad and angry to think that there is not some better control over these irrational intrusions into places that are in serious peril. ((I wonder if these people even know how dangerous malaria is. The line from the ABJ ‘helping Haitian refugees in a big way by ridding them of small pests’ has a flip jocular quality about it that makes it seem like the insect problems in Haiti are some kind of vague nuisance. Do the ShooTag people even have the faintest idea about the magnitude of this disease, which claims something like a quarter of a billion people every year?))

(Read the comprehensive Tetherd Cow Ahead investigations into ShooTag here.)

The Huffington Post is carrying an article at the moment which is headlined:

Japanese HOLOGRAPH Plays Sold Out Concerts;
Science Fiction Comes To Life

The caps are theirs. Needless to say, once again this is not a holograph. Or a hologram either. In its typical air-headed style, the HuffPo goes on to delineate the fizz of the story while entirely missing the interesting bits:

In what is surely a terrible omen not only for musicians but also the continued existence of the world as we know it, holographs are now playing sold out concerts in, where else, Japan.

Firstly, I’ll reiterate (because stupid journalists just can’t seem to understand this) – the Hatsune Miku performances are NOT HOLOGRAMS. As I’ve said before on The Cow, we currently have no technology to allow anything like this as a holographic projection ((You will notice here that I have used the correct forms of the words ‘hologram’ and ‘holograph’. You’d think journalists would take the time.)) The giant avatars are simply projections on a screen. There is nothing three dimensional about them, as would be the case for a genuine hologram. Here’s a still frame from Hatsune Miku’s video Romeo and Cinderella, in which you can plainly see the flatness of the character, and the screen on which it’s projected:

It’s an impressive technical display, for sure, but it’s just a very bright projector and a piece of clever animation. You could, if you were motivated, achieve the same thing in your lounge room.

Of course, the Huffington Post, could have carried a story about what is actually happening here, which is far more interesting than their stupid and inaccurate ‘Look at those wacky Japanese and their holographs’ fluff piece.

The ‘live’ Hatsune Miku concerts are in fact the culmination of what was originally a promotional concept for the Vocaloid 2 speech synthesis engine. Vocaloid 2 is software developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain with funding by the Yamaha Corporation. The application takes snippets of real human voice and arranges them in such a way that the many complex parts of human speech can be controlled, via simple programming, to make coherent speech and song. In 2006, Vocaloid 2 was acquired from Yamaha by a the Japanese company Crypton Future Media, who, with exceptional insight, packaged it for sale to consumers as a ‘personality’: Hatsune Miku, ‘an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost.’ The name Hatsune Miku is literally translated as ‘future sound’. Miku’s voice is generated from recordings of voice actress Saki Fujita. Using Vocaloid, musicians are able to program the Miku voice to sing whatever lyrics they choose along with their music.

When CFM released the software, they had the idea of creating several ‘mascots’ to anthropomorphize the Miku personality, and it wasn’t long before a programmer named Yu Higuchi released a freeware application, MikuMikuDance (MMD), which allowed users to easily create 2D and 3D animations based on the these mascots. A huge fanbase rapidly grew around this concept, with thousands of users interacting on Nico Nico Douga (a kind of Japanese YouTube) to produce videos of Hatsune Miku performances. The phenomenal success of Miku has spawned a family of new Vocaloids, such as Rin and Len Kagamine, Megurine Luka, Gackpoid, Megpoid and numerous ‘fan-created Vocaloids like Neru Akita and Teto Kasane.

Here is a video of Miku’s more sophisticated sister Megurine Luka, ((Megurine Luka is the first bilingual Vocaloid. Calm down Atlas – I said bilingual.)) singing ‘Just Be Friends’:

The live Miku concerts with the 12 foot tall all-singing all-dancing projections of the character avatars are a natural result of the extraordinary popularity of the Vocaloid characters and their music.

Now isn’t that a lot more interesting than the Huffington Post’s (and others, I might add) flippant dissing of this story as an oh-my-god-singers-are-going-to-be-replaced-by-holograms-bring-back-the-good-old-days piece of sensationalism? Their silly take on it does nothing more than expose their white-bread middle-American sensibilities, and make them look like the insular conservatives they really are. The Hatsune Miku phenomenon might be slightly oblique to Western sensibilities, but one thing is very clear – here are large groups of passionate music fans having a genuinely good time. What the hell is wrong with that?

And besides, the music was made by musicians, not robots, people. And it’s damn catchy.

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Thanks to Joey for the find.

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A few days ago in my post iPods Will Kill You! a couple of commenters thought I might be over-analyzing the current trend for the Fairfax media (among others) to be engaging in Apple-bashing. Naturally enough, my antennae have been quivering ever since, on the lookout for some further substantiation of my claim. Indeed, the ink was hardly dry on that post before Universal Head pointed out another instance in the Sydney Morning Herald the very next day.

And this morning, this, under the headline ‘Smart phone, pity criminals are proving even smarter’:

The global obsession with the iPhone is not only becoming a threat to security: an entire criminal industry has sprung up around it, says the head of the Australian Crime Commission.

The story goes on to detail how the head of the ACC, John Lawler, ‘said’ at an Australian Institute of Criminology conference, that Apple’s iPhone was a veritable treasure trove of criminal opportunity.

Only thing is, if you read the article carefully, Mr Lawler is never quoted once as having said anything of the sort. He never specifically names the iPhone in any of his attributed quotes. He certainly mentions ‘personal communication devices’ and ‘instant services’ but these are catchall phrases that cover a lot of ground

Now, I’m not saying that Mr Lawler didn’t actually mention the iPhone during his presentation, but there is no evidence of that in this article. The thing is, the piece is written in such a way that a casual reader could easily come away with the impression that he did.

Applying a little critical thinking to this story reveals it to be a wonderland of misdirection. Let me guide you through:

The global obsession with the iPhone…

The ‘obsession’ with the iPhone is no more an obsession than is the desire to own any other popular product. This so-called obsession is an invention of the media. People like their iPhones because they are useful and appealing. Why is that obsessive? Popularity doesn’t equal obsession, it just equals popularity. If anyone is obsessed with the iPhone, it’s the newspapers. They’re the ones obsessively telling us at every opportunity about how we’re obsessed with the iPhone.

This year Apple’s chief financial officer told a shareholder meeting that more than 70 Fortune 100 companies were either using or trying out iPhones, and it was rapidly replacing the BlackBerry as the must-have business phone.

This sentence follows quickly on the heels of Mr Lawler’s quote, deftly conflating the two paragraphs to give the inference that this was also said by him. The intention is obviously to imply to the reader that he also went on to say, in the next paragraph:

But unlike the BlackBerry and other smartphones, the iPhone does not allow a company’s IT staff to install and upgrade its own security software, leaving business networks at risk of penetration.

Whether nor not these are Mr Lawler’s thoughts (and this is far from clear), a discerning person can only respond SO WHAT? The banality of this statement is profound on so many levels. How many people with BlackBerries have security software installed by their IT department? I’d wager next to none. And, even if they do, what the heck does that entail? Some password protection? You can do that on the iPhone. Encrypted files? You can do that on the iPhone. A kill switch? The iPhone has that. What we’re supposed to believe here is that IT departments are the be-all and end-all of security – a myth kept in circulation largely by IT departments. The ultimate security on any system has to do with user responsibility. If the IT departments of corporations are really concerned about security they would do well to spend less time trying to solve problems with tech fixes and instead devote some serious energy to teaching their users some basic computer hygiene. My iPhone is secure. You can’t get my data if you find and steal my phone. And if you did steal it, I would remotely kill it (if you hadn’t already done it yourself by attempting to circumvent the security). Does the ACC think this is impossible on a iPhone? I don’t believe they’re that naive.

And anyway, let’s say the contention is true. Do we really want to compare it to the security of the open-system Android, or the plethora of Nokias, Samsungs and Sonys out there? Or perhaps the new Windows 7 phone? (Windows – now there’s a secure and virus-free environment!) The fact is that, as popular as the iPhone is, it is still well and truly outnumbered by other brands. This being the case, rather than be concerned with the security-catastrophe-that-is to-come when iPhones rule the planet, why is this story not about the security disaster that is already in place?

Mr Lawler also said the increasing ubiquity of the phone meant that criminals were finding more and more opportunities to use it to intrude, to steal and to defraud.

Well, DUH. I can’t even comment on this, except to say that once again this is not a direct quote from John Lawler. Why is the reporter giving us Mr Lawler’s non-specific-brand terms like ‘communications devices’ in direct first-person quotes and yet attributing anything about the iPhone at second hand? I’ll tell you exactly why – because if Mr Lawler didn’t single out the iPhone by name in his talk, it’s very easy for the reporter to say he intended ‘the phone’ in a much more general sense (as in ‘the mobile phone’). With that in mind, read that paragraph again and you’ll see what I mean. The English language is a sublimely slippery substance.

In fact, the next direct quote from John Lawler again mentions only ubiquitous technology:

”With the explosive uptake of personal communication devices there are certainly already opportunities that appeal to organised criminals,” said Mr Lawler.

That’s a sensible, if very general observation. Organised criminals use mobile phones! So do librarians.

Even the desire for the phone is creating a burgeoning black market, he said.

Yes, as has the desire for PS3s, Gucci handbags and cigarettes. Black markets spring up anywhere and everywhere that there is an item of value that can be produced without imprimatur and sold for less than a legitimate vendor’s prices. This is perhaps a point of interest, but hardly the stuff of news.

The most disturbing thing about this whole pile of non-news is that in the course of less than one day it’s been disseminated so widely that trying to search for any actual information about what John Lawler might really have said at the Institute of Criminology conference turns up only myriads of requoted versions of the Fairfax article. Pretty much all of them bandying around headlines like ‘iPhone Poses Threat to Security!’ Hundreds of dumb zines and tech blogs have just taken the Fairfax article completely at face value without an ounce of critical appraisal. Most of them quote the article word for word. Some of them get opinions from their own ‘experts’ expounding the crumminess of the iPhone’s security. Many of them plainly have vested interests or agendas. ((If you have time, go read some of the ones linked in the Google search. It is an astounding (and depressing) eye-opening example of uncritical re-mouthing of something that has low information and high titillation value.)) If this is not about trying to denigrate Apple products, then it has that sum effect anyway. Everyone who uncritically picked up this story did so because it felt good to put the boot in.

I would sincerely like to know what John Lawler said at that conference. Did he single out iPhones as promoting such a large and serious security problem? If so, what were his reasons, given that iPhones are no less secure than many other devices on the market? ((I’m not claiming that iPhones are the Fort Knox of mobile phones, by the way – just that as security risks go – as devices – they’re neither here nor there. They could be better, sure, but they are decent enough if you take the trouble to use their security features properly.)) Or did he, as I suspect, merely mention the iPhone as one of a growing number of mobile personal communication and computation devices that should take security more seriously?

I will continue to investigate this as I am able, but if anyone was at that conference, or has any more information, I’d love to hear from you.

Crikey those Japanese roboticists are goddamned determined. Without even missing a balance-threatening beat after the cyberclockwork embarrassments that were Asimo and Aiko, they’ve wheeled a new proto-Terminator out of the lab. Now, the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is presenting to the world their all-singing, all-dancing HRP-4C Gynoid ((Gynoid? Now there’s an expression that I don’t see catching on.)) Hmm. HRP-4C. Not exactly a roll-off-the-tongue kind of nickname, is it, really? I think I’m going to call it Harpy.

The YouTube clip above shows Harpy on stage doing a song and dance with some human girls as backup. ((These Japanese tech folks need a bit of a refresher in marketing methinks. Demonstration Tip #1: don’t display your product next to something that is visibly superior.)) Harpy’s creators have managed the build a robot so astonishingly sophisticated that it can move and correct its balance throughout an entire dance routine without faltering. They have, at the same time, demonstrated an impressive inability to get her body dimensions correct. Can anyone say ‘man hands’? Wait – can anyone say ‘orangutan arms’?

It’s not that the inventors haven’t given any thought at all to Harpy’s anatomy – she’s also done a little bit of modeling on the fashion catwalk, where it is obvious that the NIAIST drawing board wasn’t all doodles of just hydraulics and micro-relays.

Just look at that shiny titanium ass! I can hear what you’re thinking – she’s so sexy you want to marry her! Well, you can.

It’s OK – it’s a wedding. You’re allowed to cry. ((Billy Jean? Why? Someone please tell me why?))

That example par excellence of stellar journalistic accomplishment The Melbourne Age, tells us this morning that iPods and iPads are nothing less than the Typhoid Mary of the looming global apocalyptic pandemic. Well, they stop just short of putting it exactly like that, but it is hard to understand why they’re running an article headlined ‘Apple Store Teeming With Germs’, if not to warn good citizens about the looming plague.

Because they surely wouldn’t be doing it just to bash Apple…

The story, if you haven’t guessed, is that demonstration models of the abovementioned devices on display in Apple stores, can transfer germs from one prospective customer to another – a concept that seems to send the journalist responsible for this rubbish (one Asher Moses) ((Well, I guess he’s not entirely responsible. Like pretty much all modern journalism it’s just a story recycled from somewhere else – in this case, The New York Daily News.)) into virtual paroxysms of hand-wringing. The article give us all kinds of ominous facts and figures, with commentary by various and sundry ‘experts’, about how iGadgets in Apple stores (mentioned solely and specifically) are contaminated with various kinds of icky bacteria. It’s all so very ewwwwww. ((It’s hardly surprising that the bacteria mentioned are in evidence – they are among the most common on the planet.))

In a further attempt to give the story credence, Mr Moses happily goes on to conflate a completely separate dataset with his speculation. He breathlessly inform us that Britain’s Which? magazine, in consultation with a ‘hygiene’ expert, examined a sample of 30 (unnamed brand) mobile phones and found that:

…the average handset carries 18 times more potentially harmful germs than a flush handle in a men’s toilet.

O.M.G!

Aside from the fact that a study like that (even if it is executed properly) is completely irrelevant to this story, ((Consider this – the flush handle in a men’s toilet is probably cleaned at least once a day, if not more frequently. It is NOT a good benchmark against which to measure anything except other things that get cleaned as frequently. It’s irrelevant in respect to phones (inasmuch as you could choose ANYTHING which doesn’t get cleaned much with which to compare it – tv remotes, say, or car keys) and it’s certainly meaningless in terms of iPads in Apples stores unless you have some kind of tangible link. This is a journalist using data recklessly and indiscriminately to attempt to add weight to an article that is lighter than The Zero.)) please to note the journalistic weasel word ‘potentially’ in that quote. Let me give you a Tetherd Cow Ahead rephrasing of that:

•Experts find that stairs are potentially life threatening!

•Experts find that water is potentially lethal!

•Experts find that newspapers are potentially dangerous to your mental health! (Oh wait. That’s true no matter how you look at it).

This stupid piece of scare-mongering fluff is a shining example of why I will be happy to see newspapers go the way of the town crier, and hopefully, their owners and editors hauled off by tumbrel. Honestly – what is the point of such a story?

Let me ask you, Mr Moses, why isn’t this piece about the thousands of other things that are touched by human hands in the course of a normal day? Like escalator handrails? Or lift buttons? Or money? Or salt shakers in McDonalds? Or ATMs? Or public phones? Or demonstration products belonging to other electronics goods retailers????

Could it be, perhaps, that the mileage you would get out of that might not be so… convenient… to your purpose of trashing a successful company that makes products that promise to be the biggest threat to your livelihood since the advent of television?

What is is with techy people when they come across robots? It seems that a machine merely has to bat a servo-driven eyelid for normally sane, balanced geeks to completely drop their brains on the floor.

Take this recent article over at the usually-sensible Engadget.

The photo you see above is of Bina48, one of the most advanced humanoid robots around. Bina48 resides at the Terasem Movement Foundation in Bristol, Vermont, and while she doesn’t exactly excel at conversation, she’s far more coherent than many we’ve spied… her existence and nearly constant evolution is pretty impressive and we’re going to keep our eye on her as we move toward the future.

In case you couldn’t figure it out, Bina is the one on the left. I know, I know, the astonishing human likeness makes it tricky to pick the robot from the New York Times reporter, but you’ll have to take my word for it. The spastic wobbling head on a plinth is in fact a machine.

Engadget’s acknowledgement that Bina ‘doesn’t exactly excel at conversation’ is somewhat of an understatement. The New York Times reporter attempted to ‘interview’ Bina and the effect is less of a conversation than something like an attempt to interpret the ravings of a simpleton on peyote.

I encourage you to watch the video of the interview now, to experience the full effect of Bina’s striking humanness.

I fail to see how this is in any way more impressive than the numerous other ‘realistic’ robots we’ve examined previously on The Cow. Engadget really needs to get out more. Perhaps on a date with Aiko or Roxxxy, who, even if not as ‘anatomically correct’ as their makers would have everyone believe, at least have bodies.

The New York Times reporter starts out bravely with Bina, but realises in two sentences that she’s been sent out on one of those stories that has little salvaging.

“Hi Bina,” she says, cheerily.

“Er… so where were we?” asks Bina, like a junkie being roused from an opium dream.

“I’m Amy. I’m a reporter,” says the NYT girl, with the sinking feeling that she’d have been better off doing the kitten-stuck-up-a-tree story.

“There is probably more to you than just that,” interrupts Bina, with a sneer. ((Seriously – we are SO attuned to facial gestures that, in my opinion, it’s way better to just forget them than to take the risk that they will be inappropriate. Watch someone closely next time you have a conversation, and see how much of the intent is carried by facial movement. You may be surprised.))

Poor Amy cuts her losses by having the story go to a voiceover:

I had lofty goals for my interview with the Bina48 robot. I imagined me, the intrepid New York Times correspondent, communing on camera with a new kind of intelligent silicon species.

Yes, dear Amy, and I bet that’s just how your editor sold it to you. Well, you’ve learned your lesson about robots haven’t you? You could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you’d been a constant reader of The Cow. We’ve covered all this in depth on numerous occasions.

Amy persists, to her detriment. She asks Bina several times if she’s ready for a conversation while the robot wobbles its badly-wigged head around, doing an uncanny impression of Parkinson’s patient trying to get out of a straight jacket. It finally decides on the well-worn AI strategy of rephrasing the question, which Amy takes as an affirmation.

“Cool!” says Amy.

“Ambiguous,” replies Bina, in an astonishingly embarrassing 1950s ‘does-not-compute’ kind of way. “Cold weather or cold sickness?”

Oh dear. That’s a big fat ‘F’ for you on the Turing Test, Bina. ((Lesson Number 2: Make sure your robot knows the difference between literalness and colloquialism. My first question to a being who I suspected of masquerading as a human would be something like ‘How’s it hangin’ dawg?’))

After an hour of ‘exhausting’ rapport with Bina, Amy calls it quits. Bina has lolled her head around, ((Maybe if they programmed her to drool? It would complement the overall effect, that’s for sure.)) interrupted the conversation with baffling observations, misinterpreted questions, and advanced her ‘opinions’ on artificial intelligence in a completely unconvincing manner, all the while effectively demonstrating that she is anything BUT intelligent. Eventually, she attempts to explain her poor performance away on ‘having a bad software day’.

“You know how that is,” she pleads. ((The programmers are obviously going for wit here, but succeed only in bathos.)) NO WE DON’T, Bina. We are humans. We don’t have ‘bad software’ days. ((That excuse is going to go down really well when the first robot babysitter to drown someone’s child in the bath tries to blame it on ‘a bad software day’.))

As I see it, every day is a bad software day for Bina. I’m perplexed when things like this get wheeled out time and time again as evidence of how the robotic future is just over the horizon. Bina is really nothing more that a mechanical appendage of software routines that have been around for decades. There are a few ‘physical’ additions (Such as Bina’s attempts to smile which are so creepy that I think makers of horror movies would do well to take notes) but all in all Bina is no more impressive than Fake Captain Kirk or Eliza. Obviously Engadget has a very different idea to me of what the future with robots ought to be like.

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Thanks to Atlas for providing more robot-spotting fun.

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