Conciousness

So I've been thinking about conciousness. What makes our experience of life work? Personally, I believe it's something external - the human soul, that is joined to our physical experience in a simular vein to how things work in The Matrix. The bit of us that makes us who we are isn't tied to the same 3 (4?) dimensional world that our bodies are. I like to think of it being like our brain is an interface that our soul is plugged into.

However, I was thinking about conciousness as a product of merely a physical brain, and I can't resolve some ideas. These all revolve around the experience of the person rather then external person looking on. For example, if conciousness was purely physical, I should be able to walk into a room, copy myself exactly (technology permitting) and have the clone walk out and go on with my life as if they were me - because from their perspective, they ARE me (with not much gramatical sense either). However, even though they feel as though their conciousness has been continuous, I know that they are a copy. To everyone looking on, I've walked into a room, and I've walked back out. So is it really me? Well, no - because I can then also walk out of the room. But while I'm in the room, doing nothing, experiencing nothing... say I'm asleep or unconcious or something... is the clone "really" me? It's the me having the experience of being concious, but my conciousness has stopped - I'm unconcious. Or if you'd like to argue that unconciousness is not really no conciousness, then say the me in the room dies. Is the clone, who wasn't the original me, now the real me?

You may note there's been movies that has explored this idea like The 6th Day, or The Island, and The Matrix does the most well-known job of exploring the idea of a reality above this one, although I'm personally rather partial to The 13th Floor. The ideas are around, but as scientific research moves forward I wonder if anyone has actually considered this to an appropriate level. Say you could deconstruct someone's matter and reconstruct it somewhere else - a common science fiction idea that is being worked on in real science. From an external viewpoint, there appears to be no adverse side-effects, as the person on the other end appears externally to be the person who was deconstructed. But who is to say that the person on the sending end didn't die - that is, their experience of conciousness stopped at the point they were deconstructed. How could you tell?

Just something I've been thinking about...

Quicktime is lame

This post was originally constructed in August this year, and was saved as draft. I've added the last paragraph and published. Trying to get rid of some half-written drafts I have. Expect some more soon-ish.

Just a short (edit: not short) Mac bash this morning:
So I turn on my PowerBook this morning, and Apple Software Update comes up with some updates for iTunes and Quicktime and stuff. So I take a look at the update for Quicktime and observe the following:

QuickTime 7.2 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for full screen viewing in QuickTime Player

Now, this is a feature that has been in, oh I don't know, EVERY other media player since forever. Apple has witheld it up until now, because they want you to pay for Quicktime Pro which DID have this feature. So, to sum up - a feature that has been in every other media player forever is finally introduced into Quicktime today (well, within the last week), negating the need for you to pay Apple extra for it. If you had bought Windows 95 in 1996, you would have got this feature for free, and it's been a staple in Media Player, and every other media player for Windows or Linux (or 3rd party for OSX for that matter) since forever. WHY this wasn't included in Quicktime boils down to greed on the part of Apple.

But hey - this is what I've come to expect from Apple. Upgrades to their IM client are advertised as features of their paid OS upgrade. As opposed to, you know, almost every other IM client which gives you feature updates FOR FREE and for the most part already have MORE FEATURES then iChat. But still, Apple users will use iChat. And this is where I get confused - WHY!?!? And this is not specific to iChat - an advertised improvement in Leopard is having stationary in Apple Mail. Again, there are free mail clients available that do this, and everything else Apple Mail does already - and they're FREE. And sometimes, they WORK BETTER. Just try doing a simple out-of-office notification in Mail. My boss does when he's out of town - I have to check it every day to ensure it hasn't gotten confused and started sending emails to itself.

The list goes on - and features advertised as revolutionary (*cough* Time Machine *cough*) are just the equivilent of pre-existing features in Windows/Linux with a pretty UI. Previous Versions, anyone? In Vista, they've even made it exceedingly simple. Right-click on any file, and:

You can do this on a folder, and actually open and work with previous contents of that older. And if you use Windows Backup, it will record the fact that there are previous versions on specific backups and display them in the list. Revolutionary! Next year's OS, today!

Anyway - this pargraph I'm now typing months after I originally created this post, and as it turns out the great Leopard is held by the Mac zealots in my office as being buggy and unreliable, and as such, no one has upgraded their work machines to it due to software incompatiabilities with Filemaker, which I believe have just recently been resolved with a second patch (that is, they patched it once to get it just to run, and now they've patched it again to get it to work properly). Good times.

Papillary Carcenoma

Papillary Carcenoma is a cancer of the thyroid. It is the most common thyroid cancer, and is 3 times more likely to occur in women then in men. It is very treatable via surgery and radioactive iodine treatment, and has a very high survival rate.

It also is, apparently, what my wife has growing in her neck. Well, we can't say for sure, but the doctor says it's the most likely scenario. As a result, she'll need her thyroid removed. This means she'll need to be on thyroxin for the rest of her life, and there's a small possibility the surgery could damage her voice.

While of all cancers she could possibly get, this is probably the "best" one to have in terms of treatment and survivability, we obviously would have much preferred that she didn't have cancer at all.

So those who know us and who pray, just some prayer that this will be easy, uncomplicated and quickly resolved would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Rachel wanted me to add an extra prayer point - The follow-up treatment for thyroid cancer is radioactive iodine. It's a very effective treatment, but it will require her to stop breastfeeding Campbell, and will mean she'll need to be isolated for a while, and then not have close contact with our boys for a while more due to the radiation. It will be very hard for all of us. Some prayer that this treatment will not be required would be awesome.

Ways I've Made Money Online

This looks like spam, I know. But I've tried several different schemes over the last I-Don't-Know-How-Many years, and I've found two of them that work. Both of them are getting paid for targeted advertising. They're by no means quick money, but considering they take about 3 minutes out of your day each day, and then eventually give you real cash, that's not such a bad deal. Here they are:

PureProfile: You fill out a profile, then go to the site each day to read messages. You can setup notificiation preferences if you want to email you when there's stuff to read.

EmailCash: This has been the most lucrative for me thus far. They email you, and you click on the link in the email to indicate you've read it. You get 5 points. 1 point = 1 cent. You can get a cheque at $30 or $100, and I've had several $30 cheques and am now well on my way to a $100 one. Just for reading emails. Not bad really.

Now my wife, on the other hand, came to me quite a while ago now and asked for some money (I think it was $65 from memory) to sign up with a crowd who would hand your name around to market research companies. She has made hundreds of dollars out of it, for very little effort.

Just thought some of you might be interested. Just btw, the links above give me bonuses if you sign up using them. ;)

SMH: Piracy not raiding CD sales

The enforcement arm of the Australian music industry has dismissed damaging overseas research that found illegal music sharing actually increased CD sales.

The study, conducted by two researchers at the University of London for the Canadian Government, found people downloaded songs illegally because they wanted to hear them before buying or because they were not available in stores.

Hasn't this been said before? Check the link for the story, and from there you can jump to the research. I love it that the music industry just dismisses the research because they don't like it.

The sooner we see some reform to copyright laws the better. If one of the major parties got up and started talking proactively about that, they'd certainly get my vote.