Memorable quotes from Portal

Memorable quotes from Portal depicting the characteristic humor –

Once the tests are complete – and the AI plans to kill you –

(GLaDOS): [near the end of the nineteenth and final test chamber] "Congratulations. The test is now over. All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin. Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence. [the moving platform the player is standing on is sinking into a fire pit] Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye."

Once you figured your way into the main chamber of the AI, and attempt to shut it down by destroying parts of it –

(GLaDOS): Have I lied to you? [pause] I mean, in this room? Trust me, leave that thing alone.

Portal 2 –

(GLaDOS): Okay look, we both said a lot of things that you are going to regret. (Combined with the characteristic evil and pseudo-cheerful voice in which it is said, this one is a gem!)

(GLaDOS): This next test involves the Aperture Science Aerial Faith Plate. It was part of an initiative to investigate how well test subjects could solve problems when they were catapulted into space. Results were highly informative: They could not. Good luck!

(Wheatley): Most test subjects do experience some cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you've been under for... quite a bit longer, and it's not completely out of the question that you might have a very minor case of serious brain damage. But don't be alarmed, all right? Although, if you do feel alarm, try to hold onto that feeling, because that is the proper reaction to being told you have brain damage.

(Wheatley): They say the old caretaker of this place went absolutely crazy. Chopped up his entire staff... of robots; all of them robots. They say at night you can still hear the screams... of their replicas; all of them functionally indistinguishable from the originals. No memory of the incident. Nobody knows what they're screaming about. Absolutely terrifying. Though obviously not paranormal in any meaningful way.

(Wheatley): You two are going to love this big surprise. In fact, you might say that you're both going to love it... to death. Love it until it kill- until you're dead. [chuckles] All right? I don't know whether you're picking up on what I'm saying here, but …

(GLaDOS): Yes, thanks. We get it. [Chell and GLaDOS enter a elevator] All right, he's not even trying to be subtle any more. Or maybe he still is, in which case: wow, that's kind of sad.

Inception movie review

Rating: 60/100

TLDR: Nice but too many inconsistencies in the script spoil the fun.

Nice idea (though not original, there have been other pieces with main plot revolving around people sharing dream), and fast paced. The movie keeps you engaged throughout. It also succeeds in making you talk about it while you are leaving the hall, but mostly because of questions that were left open.

The script has many holes however, which result in many inconsistencies throughout the movie -
1. Why does the effect of gravity not flow through levels of dreams?
2. How come the infinite staircase sometimes suddenly become disconnected? (This was probably thrown in just to show how a staircase may look infinite from a certain angle in real world - but is completely inconsistent with the storyline.)
3. Fine, they have invented a machine through which you can connect people together in a dream. How come the dreamed 'dream sharing machine' works, when you are already in a dream?
4. How does the 'limbo' retain what was built there before, may be by a different person?? (Cobb's creations are there in dream initiated by someone else.)
5. Why does the top fall when the old man spins it when the movie begins?
6. Why couldn't Cobb's wife simply spin her top to test if it is real life or a dream?
7. How did Cobb wake up from limbo?
8. Why does Arthur not wake up by the Van's freefall (the 'kick') but instead simply start experiencing zero gravity in the dream?

The movie also seems to throw a lot of ideas just for the effect, most of which are irrelevant or have no consequence to the story. Eg. Penrose staircase, and bending of the road in the constructed dream world by the student.

I liked a few of them though - for example the puzzle of creating a maze in two minutes that cannot be solved in one minute, or the idea that someone thinks the real life is a dream and wants to wake up from it.

Lots of room for improvement. At most this is comparable to Matrix 2, but not anywhere near as perfect as Matrix 1. With the concept, I feel they could have done a better job if they thought it through.

Addendum:
Leo's role was pretty much the same as Shutter Island. For others too, there was hardly any scope of showing acting in the movie, as it was mostly a chase.

I was actually debating whether to rate it 50% or 60%. I decided with 60% since it atleast kept me engaged, and the acting did not completely suck.

The movie was essentially a bunch of things thrown together to confuse people. This serves two purposes - people talk about it, and also people may watch it again in case they missed something, in the hope of some getting answers (which are not there).

Chris Nolan's imagination falls plain short of the idea of a dreamworld. If I were to implement it, it would not be lucid and perfect world with guns, explosions and zero gravity etc - it should be more like something that makes you feel you are dreaming. May be with a lot of computer generated images, imaginative creatures.

The reason it is being compared to Matrix is that clearly the intention was to copy Matrix. And it manages to fail in all levels in doing so.

Do you have a son born in a Tuesday?

Here's a very nice probability puzzler -

For a scientific experiment, I walk upto a random person in a mall. I ask, "Do you have exactly two children, and one of them is a boy who was born in Tuesday?" The person answers "Yes". Assuming that he is telling the truth, what is the chance that he has two boys?

Assume all necessary clauses, eg. I don’t know the person, I can’t see his children, etc. Also note that exactly two "one of them" here means "atleast one of them", just as in normal English.

In so many ways the solution conflicts with intuition, that I can’t help feeling that this question has been designed to show that our intuitive ability fails when it comes to conditional probabilities.

If there was nothing mentioned about Tuesday

The first thought that comes to mind is that if one is a boy, surely we must find the probability of the remaining one being a boy - so the answer must be half. Well that’s simply not true, even forgetting the ‘Tuesday’ condition, the chance of both being boys is 1/3. It’s because we have 3 equally likely cases given there is atleast 1 boy –

BG, GB, BB

Hence P(2 boys | atleast 1 boy) = 1/3, simply by counting cases.
Note however, this would change, and intuition would be right, and the probability will be half, if the question was framed in slightly different manner – “Do you have exactly two children? If so, if you choose any one of them at random, is he a boy?”

The original problem with one boy on Tuesday

We have to find P(both boys | atleast one boy on Tuesday).

Again intuition says, being born on Tuesday doesn’t change the question – atleast one is still a boy, and given that, the chance of both being boys is still 1/3. Wrong again – Tuesday is very relevant to the problem in an interesting way. It makes the boy being asked about special, and almost identifies him. Solution is given below .

By enumerating all equally likely cases

There are in total 196 cases, which are all equally likely. The table below lists them all.


The answer can be simply counted off the table, it’s 13/27.

Using conditional probability

The solution above is fine, but the approach breaks down if the problem was complicated – by increasing the number of children to 3 or 4. We then wouldn’t have the luxury to visualize the sample space (i.e. all possible outcomes) easily. Fortunately, another way of solving it which does not depend on a table exists, which is in nature and so will still carry forward in more complicated cases with ease. For the mathematically inclined, the solution using laws of conditional probability is given below.

We will use some abbreviations to remove the clutter -

BT = Boy born on Tuesday
BnT = Boy not born on Tuesday
G = Girl

So for example, (BT,BnT) means first child is a boy born on Tuesday, second is a boy not born on Tuesday.

P(both are boys, and atleast one boy on Tuesday) = P(BnT,BT) + P(BT,BnT) + P(BT,BT) = 1/2*6/7*1/2*1/7 + 1/2*1/7*1/2*6/7 + 1/2*1/7*1/2*1/7 = 13/196

P(atleast one boy on Tuesday) = P(BnT,BT) + P(BT,BnT) + P(BT,BT) + P(BT,G) + P(G,BT) = 1/2*6/7*1/2*1/7 + 1/2*1/7*1/2*6/7 + 1/2*1/7*1/2*1/7 + 1/2*1/7*1/2 + 1/2*1/2*1/7 = 27/196

So P(both are boys | atleast one boy on Tuesday) = P(both are boys and atleast one boy on Tuesday) / P(atleast one boy on Tuesday) = 13/27.

General case

Here the added condition was of being born in Tuesday. It can be seen that if we replace this with any other random condition (e.g. “Is his name Jacob?”), having probability p, the answer will turn out to be (2-p)/(4-p). This can be worked out easily if you replace all 1/7 with p, and all 6/7 with (1-p) in the solution given above.

Wikipedia has some more on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_or_Girl_paradox#Third_question

Nokia N79 vs N82

I recently got my hands on an N79. Before buying, I already had a preconception of what to expect based on the reviews and specifications I gathered in the Internet. S there were many more changes than what I had mapped in my mind. It was a more or less a nice surprise.

N79 has almost all features that are there in N82. In short, what I had in mind was the following equation:

N79 = N82 - Xenon Flash + FM Transmitter.

While that is more or less true, I found that there is a lot more in there about it.

N79 Pros

1. FM Transmitter - It can be accessed and turned on from the menu of the music player on the phone. It can then transmit the song to the frequency you want instead of playing in the phone. It also works with GPS - if you're listening to a song over FM and using GPS navigation, the instructions will be audible over the song. Although there were some hiccups with one of the beta version of the Maps, it now appears to be fixed.
   
2. Comes bundled with many commercially licensed applications - SMS Timer is a special mention. It pops up a message whenever you click the send button after composing SMS, which lets you send it immediately or choose a future date and time when it will be sent. Also worth mentioning are the Oxford English Dictionary, Indic SMS and Wavesecure apps.
3. The Radio now has Internet Radio built into it - a feature can be added to N82 free of cost from Nokia site.
   
4. Can read out SMS - an ability added to the Feature Pack 2. This facility cannot be added to N82 through additional software as of now.
5. Has better 'GPS Data' - where instead of seeing bars for each satellite you see all of the simultaneously, and even where they are positioned relative to you
   
6. Has two led flash lamps - while not as bright as the Xenon, they have specific advantage because Xenon flash cannot be kept permanently on. For example, you can now keep them on while videos, or use a third party software (eg. Brightlight) to use them as flashlight
7. Camera now has record location feature for videos as well.
8. [Need to check if side scrolling is allowed in the RSS reader now]
   
9. Naviwheel - You can now move your finger around the d-pad to navigate menus - iPod style
10. FP2 adds effects to the menu which are pleasing to the eye - eg. menu interactions and auto rotate features are now animated
11. Has stronger battery - 1200mAH verses 1050mAH of N82
    
12. Comes with 4GB card while N82 comes with 2GB card

N79 Cons

1. In N82, you could zoom in and out a picture by using the 5 and 0 keys. So far I could not find any keys for doing the same in N79 in the gallery. However it is there when you Edit the picture, but it is definitely inconvenient to first go to edit menu and then use the zoom keys. If there is no workaround, this is probably the most annoying omission in N79. Update: You can use the Volume Up/Down buttons to zoom out/in a picture in the gallery.
2. Absence of Xenon flash - Disadvantages are you don't get as bright flash as Xenon, and you cannot take high speed pictures anymore (Xenon lamp burst lasts for about 1 millisecond allowing you to take still picture of high speed objects in the dark). However this disadvantages are partially (or totally depending on your judgment) balanced by the advantages of a LED lamp discussed on the previous section. (If you want more reasons why the LED flash is better, you can read the article here.)
3. Internal storage and RAM - N82: 100mb storage, 128mb ram, N79: 50mb storage, 72mb ram. What that means is you are more likely to see the 'out of memory' message when you are running too many apps simultaneously - though 72mb should be more than enough. However only 50mb storage means you have to be choosy while installing applications to the phone memory. Unfortunately this might be a problem, many Nokia applications (eg. Ovi Maps 3 with 5mb footprint) do not give you the option and by default install on the phone memory. However, with 50mb you should still have enough storage to load these apps, especially if you remove the useless ones that come with the phone - eg. all the N-Gage demo games which take up a lot of space.
4. N79 does not have inbuilt 3D Accelerator - all the 3D games you play will have to be rendered directly by the CPU through software and hence are likely to suffer in performance. Also N79 has a single processor (albeit little faster clockspeed of 369MHz) while N82 has two processors (of 332MHz each). So the N82 will be better at multi-tasking, whereas the N79 will outperform N82 while running a single app with high demands on the CPU.
   
5. Does not have Barcode reader, though it can be installed separately free of cost.
   

Firefox 3 without Tab Mix Plus

Tab Mix Plus is one of the most popular addons for Firefox. Also it is among the most popular ones that has still not been upgraded to work with FF3.

Now it is a very powerful addon providing many features - like duplicating tabs, session management, undoing closed tabs, modifying the opening behavior to open new tabs to the right of originating tab.

Since I could not upgrade it with FF3, I was disappointed at first. However, it is not a good enoug reason for not upgrading to FF3, moreover after browsing a while I got to know certain features and workarounds - which surprisingly let me have all the features of Tab Mix Plus which I loved this addon for!

So without further ado, here's how to live without Tab Mix Plus.

Undo Closed Tabs
I was surprised to learn Firefox can already do it. However, if you had selected Tab Mix Plus to manage the sessions instead of Firefox, you won't be able to do it.

To enable Firefox session management, point your browser to about:config, ignore any warnings that Firefox may give - the warning is for novice users only which you are not - but needless to say don't screw around with the settings too much.

Find browser.sessionstore.enabled, and set it to true.

That's it, now restart Firefox, and you're done. To undo closed tabs, you can either go to History -> Recently Closed Tabs, or press Ctrl+Shift+T. If you really fancy, you can also install the Undo Closed Tabs addon which will add a menu item and a button for the same task.

Additional Tip: You can set browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo to something like 99 to remember more history.

Duplicate Tab
Well here you go: Duplicate Tab. This addon provides exactly the same functionality.

Maintain Tab Order
Here it is: Tab Control. This will arrange the newly opened tabs beside its parent instead of far right.

These are the main features that I have been using from Tab Mix Plus. Also I'm fairly sure that if there is anything else that you've been using, you'll find a workaround for that too if you google a bit. So happy surfing with Firefox 3!

N82/N95/N81 PuTTY - Remote Control for Symbian Smartphones

Requirements:
1. A wireless router (Eg. Netgear dg834g)
2. An SSH server (which comes auto installed with Ubuntu, and can be downloaded for Windows if you really want to)
3. A phone with Symbian OS which supports wifi (Eg. Nokia N82)

If you meet the above Here is an amazing little file for those who have a WLAN at home and a PuTTY server:
http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/

Hell, I now have complete remote control on my system on my system over Wifi from my N82. It can even act as a remote control for media player - just start mplayer in screen, and connect from the PuTTY terminal in the phone.

Doesn't matter if ControlFreak - which is an excellent software and must download for anyone using Windows and having a S60 v2 phone, by the way - doesn't have a S60 v3 binary yet. I have got something much better now, that too for Linux ;-D

Nokia N82: Beats all expectations!

After having taken a long time in research, I have finally bought the Nokia N82. If I hadn't got that, I would have taken the Cowon A3 (which is the media player you should buy if you want one). Main reasons not to buy the Cowon A3 is that there's no camera in it, and the support would not be easy at all since it's made in Korea, and I'm gonna get it from US.

Anyway, here follows my initial opinions about N82. It's a marvel - everything packed into a small box! I had some expectations in mind about things that it should be able to do. It does definitely meet those expectations - and does a great deal more. However when your expectations are met they always have a tendency to rise... so there are points which I would have liked Nokia to provide, or upgrade in the future firmwares.

I got a black model - you can see how it looks the Nokia site itself. Without further ado, here's my opinion on the phone.

1. Camera

Probably the strongest camera in a mobile that you get today. This mobile comes with a 5mp camera, the camera lens being provided by Carl Zeiss. Carl Zeiss is a leading German manufacturer of optical systems, which has recently partnered with Nokia to provide lenses for several of its phones. There is a lens shutter that covers the lens when not in use. When you open the lens shutter, the phone automatically starts the camera application, when you close it, the camera automatically stops.

Also the mobile comes with a xenon flash, which means that it uses the noble gas xenon for producing the flash light. Which means, that the flash is comparable to flashes in digital cameras. Any other mobile available with a flash at this time (Mid 2008) has an LED flash. The camera has auto-focus ability, so that it can shoot anything which is 10cm away to objects at infinity.

The images are tagged in the .jpeg file with current time, and optionally the location information which the phone can automatically get from GPS. The GPS lock seems faster than N95, based on some reviews I read, and also based on my observations on a brand new N95 (without 8GB) that my friend has got.

Overall, you'll be hard pressed to find any difference in quality between Nokia N82 picture and the same picture taken with a digital camera of similar resolution!

2. Sound & Media
I am not an audiophile, so when I talk about sound quality it won't be accurate to the last decibel. However, with the provided earphones I could listen to my mp3 files and the radio with excellent sound clarity. The phone has a 3.5mm jack, i.e. any normal earphones/headphones will fit into it. Needless to say I have tried my headphone at home and it does work.

The Nokia PC Suite allows you to transport files from your comp, automatically converting and compressing on request to AAC+ (for sound) or MP4 (for videos). However, I do not use the PC Suite as I found it just wants to take over my computer - hence I use the MediaCoder software which is an opensource project that organizes many conversation formats and does a better job than Nokia's PC Suite.

The screen resolution is QVGA, or 320x240, which you can think of as the only drawback. Although the picture clarity is good enough, you will have to lower the resolution of your favorite movies to watch here.

3. WLAN & Internet Features
The mobile asked for my WEP key, and that's all it required to connect to my router. The inbuilt browser is solid, supports javascript and displays full pages (eg. Digg.com) with every bells and whistles with ease.

It has a Webfeeds section where you can subscribe to RSS feeds like Lifehacker and ReadWriteWeb for instance. However the only problem I encountered with the Webfeeds is that for some reason it does not allow you to scroll right.

In the music section it also has full support for downloaing and listening to Podcasts, which was a little surprise awating for me! In my opinion the Podcasts application is more polished than the webfeeds itself. That lets you to subscribe to Podcasts, which are like recorded radio shows, for listening to them later. It has a directory which allows you to choose from many popular podcasts, as well as allows you to enter your own podcast URL. Both webfeeds and podcasts can be updated and downloaded when you have a connection, and viewed or listened to later.

4. GPS
The GPS software provided downloads once from the WLAN to get the map of your city automatically, and then onwards doesn't require the Internet connection (unless you want to use Assisted GPS). It can even search for places like nearest fuel station from the stored database without the connection. In the interface you can choose to display how many satellites are visible. It requires four to establish a lock, three to maintain a lock, although it can connect to five simultaneously.

Despite my apprehension, I found out that this works quite well in India. I'm using it in Bangalore now, and all the major cities are supported.

5. Storage, speed and others
The phone comes with a 2GB memory card. It supports hot-swapping (i.e. you can change the card without having to switch off the phone) and can support upto 8GB of memory.

Despite common fear about the Symbian OS, the speed is quite high for booting well as operating. Also thanks to the Symbian OS you get goodies like Adobe Acrobat reader, and MS Office readers in the phone.

Also it has a Bluetooth chip, but the infrared is notably missing (though I don't miss it myself). The cable that comes with it can connect the phone to a computers USB port as an external storage without having to install the Nokia PC Suite.

Negative Points
Following are some glitches I found in the phone:
a. When I subscribe to a web-feed, there is no way to scroll horizontally even when the HTML is formatted in such a way that there's text or pictures to your right. However, this problem doesn't exist with the web browser. Hopefully they will fix this in the next firmware release.

b. The camera makes a sound and indicates with a red beam from the flash whenever a picture is taken. You cannot turn the camera sound off unless you bought it from Europe. However, you can change the sound to a mere beep if you want to. The sound volume is not affected by the profile you select, so reducing volume or selecting silence mode will not stop it. As a workaround an application called Panoman that comes with the phone can be used to take photograph without the sound. Also here's a page that describes a risky procedure (that voids warranty) for those who absolutely need to turn it off. As for me, I am happy with it the way it is.

c. The organizer/calendar does not support, for example, events repeating on the 1st Wednesday of every month. Any event that repeats monthly has to be repeating on a particular date on the month only. Hopefully, they will improve the software to support this feature later as it is an useful feature allowed by the iCalendar standard.


Conclusion
I definitely got more than I expected, and I feel you'll not regret if you buy this phone as well! For more information check out the features in GSM Arena, or read the review there.