Wisedigs

Subconscious vs Subconscience

SVN Commit hooks should be easy to learn and understand, and they are. Its just always easier to work from examples. Here is a batch file for anyone who wants to use a python commit hook:

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An infant’s first heartbreak is complementary of the introduction of a sibling. The child does not grasp the concept of anyone being like him. His parents only paid attention to him. Had he not been deluded into believing this he would have never been heartbroken in the first place.

And that is what expectation creates for us. A delusion. We set our assumptions, manage our statistics and pull the money together to make it work. Expecting everything to work. And when our statistics fail us and our assumptions prove baseless, chaos ensues. The intensity of this chaos is directly proportional to our delusion. If we had believed the chance of success to be 100% our catastrophe would be mountainous. On the other hand, if we felt the chance of success was very minimal we would not give it a moment’s care if it fails. We might even become euphoric if it succeeds. Or if we believed it could go either way, we would be sleeping easy: content if it fails, content if it succeeds.

But what does this all mean. Should we become apathetical losers or paranoid control freaks?

The answer is, like with most things in today’s world, it depends. And that’s where we need to be wise.

As human beings, we should be thinking for ourselves. Not mindless creatures. Even animals think for themselves. Rather than be completely oblivious to the significance of our decisions, even the ones made in our subconscious, we should be taking the initiative. Not many would agree with what I’m going to say next; it is simply my own belief. The common good or the greater good is important to understand. Its interpretation varies among people, but I believe that there is only one way to Heaven. We won’t go into that right now.

Expectations should exist when they should. And when it’s wrong to have expectations then they should not. Easier to think then to explain…

To illustrate this point let’s take a scenario. It’s important for me to expect my friends to be trustworthy. If they were not it would defeat the whole purpose of friendship. And it still amazes when I find people who keep friends they don’t even pretend to trust. It’s important to have this expectation for a few reasons: you give your friend a reason and encourage them to be trustworthy, you think well of others, you develop a stronger relationship with your friend, you give yourself a reason to let go of friends you can’t trust, you can open up to your friends and expose yourself to them (proven to help psychologically), and I’m sure there are more reasons that I haven’t thought of yet.

But that is a case where you want this expectation. It is a good thing. Good for you. Good for humanity.

Raising kids is another one. You want to expect the best outcome for your kids, so you want to appear upset or distressed when they misbehave. It might not be a big deal now, but if it’s a repeat offense or it is something that might take them down a road no one wants his kids to go you want to reflect that disappointment in your body language and behaviour. The moment you don’t care enough to have expectations for your kids is the same moment we all realize we were better off with you not having kids in the first place.

I can give more examples but I would hope that everyone can come up with their own examples. Whether it is work related, family related, or anywhere else we need to be managing our expectations.

We already gave a good example of bad expectation at the beginning but we will mention one more. Expecting to not be injured after a trip on the highway. Might sound sadistic when I say that’s a ridiculous expectation. The harsh reality of it is no one wants to get into a car accident, especially not at high speeds, but the facts indicate that you might go from healthy to very unhealthy in a matter of seconds. Forget about your own mistakes, try to account for the reliability of your car and all the other cars around you, and the ability of your fellow highway riders to operate their vehicles at high speeds. So much can go wrong, and being ignorant of this fact won’t reduce the risk of being injured.

Millions of people drive on highways everyday and I find it strange that people enter an incredible state of panic when something serious happens. Yet if they know these things are going to happen, is there a reason for them to lose their head? When it happens it happens, we can’t change the past. You do what you have to do and you behave like a decent human being. Carry on then.

And there are more examples, ones to do with people’s fears, surprises, shocks and so on but we leave that as an exercise.

If we choose to have expectations we might as well choose when to have them and how to have them.

The service might be missing. Throw the following in an elevated command prompt:

sc create wscsvc type= share start= delayed-auto error= normal binPath= "C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalServiceNetworkRestricted" depend= RpcSc/WinMgmt obj= "NT AUTHORITY\LocalService" DisplayName= "Security Center"

sc sdset wscsvc D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWRPLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)(A;;CR;;;AU)(A;;CCLCRP;;;S-1-5-80-2006800713-1441093265-249754844-3404434343-1444102779)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)

Imagine you are in your car driving at 120km/h and you realize your brakes don’t work. Eventually you run out of road and you have to make a choice: smash into that tree or fall off the edge of a cliff to certain death? A functional human-being in full possession of their mental faculties would choose the tree trunk. Depending on how clever you are, you might only suffer from minor injuries or no injuries at all.

The driver is the law maker. Law makers have two primary objectives: a) ensure the country is secure enough to a level that corruption isn’t apparent or widespread, b) ensure the laws are ambiguous enough such that the final decision on any matter is left up to the judges. Why is this the case? Laws once in place are hard to change. As a law maker you know you are a human being and you know that one day you, your family, your friends, or someone you know might be prosecuted under this law. In order to protect yourself and the people you care about there has to be a fail-safe, a backdoor. This is where the ambiguity in laws comes in. Judges judge by the laws of the nation, if the law allows for multiple interpretations the interpretation most suitable to the case presented is selected by the judge in an unbiased and fair manner. Judges unfortunately are not unbiased, they are not always just. Judges are merely humans appointed by their leaders. The jury system? Oh please. Do not get me started.

Breaking news: This just in – judges can be influenced by others!

If you were a law maker, would you shoot yourself in the foot? Let’s say you are caught murdering or raping, would you want to be executed? Would you want to be sent to prison for life? As a law maker, you don’t ever expect to turn into a serial-anything because you are not a psycho path and the laws are strict enough to prevent these types of people from getting away. Supposedly. But you might find yourself breaking a law or two, as is common in human nature.

Should we really blame them? Yes and no. No: because if we were the drivers we would make the exact same choices. Yes: because they have chosen to accept man made laws to govern their lives.

Whether you are convinced of the above reality or not, never forget that the statement “ignorance is bliss” is only true for so long; this bliss has an expiry date.

If you want to build your own custom firmware for the Belkin N1 router this guide will explain how to do it for the F5D8232-4 v2. The others should be similar. I will explain this using the Debian distro. The reason for this is the cross compiling tools used by belkin are Debian only executables. You can create your own cross-compiling tools for Cygwin, Ubuntu, Suse, etc if you prefer them over Debian (or you happen to have a box setup) and then use this guide to assist you through the rest of the process.

Cygwin is not recommended as it is very slow and you will spend many minutes twiddling your thumb while it compiles.
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Everyone has heard of culture shock: a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment [dictionary.com]. Generally, it is assumed one goes through this upon leaving their country of residence. Or possibly upon discovering a strange tribe or rural village with unusual habits.

How about traveling from a smaller town, to a bigger town? The feeling shouldn’t really be described as a “shock”, its more like “disgusting”. What the heck am I on about?

In small cities, there is a higher chance of encountering a unique personality vs a personality witnessed before. Everyone is content, people are not too keen on outdoing each other in every department. The environment is relaxed and non-toxic.

Enter the big city mentality: everyone is better than everybody else, they will lie, cheat, steal, do whatever is necessary to protect their image of being the best. Too busy chasing after money to worry about correcting that mentality, or to worry about raising useful offspring. From this we can conclude that big city folks are dumber, in general, than their small city counterparts. It’s simple: when you use up precious brain processing power worrying about how to one-up your neighbour, you end up shutting down the rational and the logical part of the brain. Your brain is no longer giving enough time to other processing units, there is only one unit constantly active using up all the juice. “Oh look she just got a new car” “oh look he just got that $150 haircut” “oh look their house is shinier than ours” “oh look his kids are wearing designer diapers”… It never ends. Everything will be evaluated, judged, and compared to whatever they have.

I actually wouldn’t mind all of this, if people feel like they have to prove they are better than someone else, they have already proved to everyone observing that they clearly are not. What I do mind is the fact that you can’t befriend these people. How can you be close friends with someone who judges the colour of your socks to determine whether or not they are in a higher class than you? “Stop looking at my socks you fool!”. Or one who will lie to you to cover up their shortcomings? Or one who will say anything and everything to their friends, even if it means exposing all of your dirty laundry? I am talking about your best friend. So-called.

It does have its advantages though and supporters of the “big city” can you tell all about them.

It isn’t 100% of the population of a big city that thinks like this, you will find pockets of intelligence dispersed throughout. You just have to be picky. And careful.

1. Laptop/netbook
2. Power extension cord, preferably 30 feet. Funny how people end up surrounding wall sockets meant for vacuums and other janitorial purposes. Not sure on the max length allowed through security…
3. Earphones/headphones
4. Teabags – only if you are super cheap and/or starbucks doesn’t cut it for you.
5. Disinfectant spray – when you have to go
6. Cellphone signal blocker – for entertainment
7. Reading/viewing material (e.g. ebooks) – when you are bored with your signal blocker

If you are not mindful of these rules, bad things may happen.

Probability gives ridiculous people the opportunity to reduce events to numbers, then translate these numbers into laws and regulations.

Ever since I started thinking about probability I haven’t been able to get one sentence out of my head: this is flawed. The math behind probability is fun, easy to grasp if you have the right teacher, but is probability practical? Is it something that can be used to dictate the lives of people?

Examine this sentence: the chance of surviving a car crash improves by 30% when wearing a seatbelt. Let’s say the chance of surviving a car crash while wearing a seatbelt is 80%, that means 20% of the time I would not survive if I was in an accident. What’s wrong with what I just said? When speaking to a stats professor, he will explain to you it is not sufficient for you to flip a coin 10 or 20 or even 30 times to get that 50% probability figure. You must flip it a thousand times or more until you can be sure you have determined the correct probability of heads or tails for that coin.

Let’s apply that logic to surviving an accident. How many accidents am I going to be in throughout my entire life? What if that 20% of the time happens to be my first 10 accidents? (That’s a bit ridiculous given it is the chance of NOT surviving, but let’s stick with it just to see how ridiculous this is.) Now we have a problem. Unlike a coin, I don’t have the luxury of experiencing both outcomes indefinitely. This implies that given any accident I am in I may either survive, or I may not. It does not matter if it was a 90% chance of survival! As long as both outcomes are possible and can occur under reasonable circumstances (not 100%+/-0.0001%), what difference does it make to the one who just stepped outside their house that its 60-40, or 90-10?

There are obvious advantages to wearing seatbelts, especially for those with poor motor skills such as toddlers and young children. Seatbelts also provide peace of mind and a false sense of security. Making seatbelts mandatory on adult drivers? Airbags, for example, are another safety mechanism we find in vehicles. The harsh reality is, if the Canadian government truly cared about the safety of the public and their well-being and truly believed that airbags protect people’s lives, cars that are not equipped with airbags would have been banned from the streets long ago. How expensive would that be? Exactly my point. It is not about our safety, not out of concern for us, it is simply a way for them to shift the blame and shift responsibility. It all boils down to one thing: dollars and cents.

Probability isn’t Apple, it is safe to handle. But, as with anything taken for granted, we must be critical of it. It’s nice to be able to attach a number to anything, numbers are easy to understand, easy to manipulate. Numbers make nice pie charts and fancy curves. Putting your trust in numbers is like putting your trust in a piece of metal or cloth. It all amounts to nothing.