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Highly recommended...

(Point of interest, I'm not trying to steer people to B&N or anywhere else, just borrowing their engine to list book details; tried Amazon first, and they were "temporarily closed" -- weird, huh?)

A lot things aren't obvious to you.

For example, that there are enormous hidden taxes applied to any physical wiring due to right of ways that exceed even the FCC's red tape by a huge amount.

That the first Cray supercomputer was built on Seymour's farm using guys from rural Iowa and Wisconsin.

That wireless will probably displace physical cable in urban areas once places like Iowa, Montana, Canada, China, Siberia, etc. make the advantages manifestly clear.

That the wireless revolution will relocate the infosphere to orbit.

Or, finally, an example of something that clearly is not obvious to you is the ranking of states by academic achievement.

1. Minnesota
2. Montana
3. Iowa
4. Wisconsin
5. New Hampshire
6. Oregon
7. Washington
8. Kansas
9. Nebraska
10. Alaska
11. Connecticut
12. Massachusetts
13. Maine
14. Vermont
15. Missouri
16. Colorado
17. Arizona
18. Utah
19. Virginia
20. North Dakota
21. Oklahoma
22. Wyoming
23. Illinois
24. New York
25. New Jersey
26. Maryland
27. Nevada
28. Rhode Island
29. Idaho
30. Ohio
31. Texas
32. Michigan
33. North Carolina
34. California
35. South Dakota
36. West Virginia
37. Kentucky
38. Delaware
39. Arkansas
40. Florida
41. Indiana
42. Alabama
43. New Mexico
44. Tennessee
45. Pennsylvania
46. Georgia
47. Hawaii
48. South Carolina
49. Louisiana
50. District of Columbia
51. Mississippi

Now, which state are you from? :-)

What's discussed there is quite relevant here; poor engineering or attempting to overextend what may have originally been a good design appropriate to simpler tasks will result in terrible software problems - security holes, safety hazards and the like.

Also recommended is the book Computer Related Risks by Risks Forum moderator Peter Neumann (ISBN 020155805X). It draws on material from the forum but discusses it in greater detail.

No geek's bookshelf is complete without this one. It's an approachable and practical coverage of encryption technology with a focus on application and use.

Use THIS LINK and you won't get stiffed in the end!!!

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they charged you more if your referrer is /. or if you were using a Linux browser. Those bastards! They killed Tux!

The bottom line is Amazon is not a monopoly, they have plenty of competition.

So they can charge any damn price they want, reasonable or not. If you don't like it, you can do two things with sound moral ground beneath your feet:

1) Stop doing business with them. (I have, long ago.)

2) Discuss it publicly to show your displeasure to Amazon, and to warn other consumers about the behavior.

Amazon is being assholes again. Is anybody surprised?

Stop doing business with them. Try buy.com or FatBrain.

Or even Barnes and Noble, unless they've screwed you too.

-

what are known as eco pencils. They are made from processed recycled newspaper. The newspaper is pressed into a wood-shingle like substance with glue/heat. There are other kinds made from recycled blue jeans too.
The pencil is a relatively new device (compared to the thousands of years man has been making a mark). It has a fascinating history, and the book The Pencil is definitive. It shows how the technology evolves in such a 'low tech' device. This is a must read if you're the least bit interested. Buy from Barnes and Noble because they respect your privacy. If you want more about technological evolution in everyday things, the Zipper is also good.
The sad fact of the matter is that the vast majority of pencils come from overseas, which in turn comes from a rainforest. The culture of ecological sensitivity is just not present in someplace like China. Unless it says that it comes from a renewable source on the box, it is tropical wood. Worse, they are alot cheaper than an eco pencil (thats the way it is with any natural resource until it's gone). You may think that it doesn't matter because the amount of wood in a single pencil is small, but the amount of wood that is used to supply the 2 billion pencils we use each year is staggerring.
I myself am partial to the old-tech fountain pen with all its messy implications. Because that's what the nuns taught me to write with, as ballpoints weren't "proper" (don't laugh too hard - the fountain pen does produce a nicer line).
I am continually amazed by the constant improvements in everyday 'low tech' things. There was a day that you needed to use a tool to take off a bottlecap. Somewhere along the way the rifinement was made so that they could be screwed off. Same with the pull top on aluminum cans. The pull top used to litter the landscape, until it was improved with a tab. See Scientific American September 1994 for an excellent article on the aluminum beverage container.
The best 'tech' is not 'high tech' or 'low tech', but 'usability tech'. Technology should not be seen as a means to an end, but as a tool to make lives better.

what are known as eco pencils. They are made from processed recycled newspaper. The newspaper is pressed into a wood-shingle like substance with glue/heat. There are other kinds made from recycled blue jeans too.
The pencil is a relatively new device (compared to the thousands of years man has been making a mark). It has a fascinating history, and the book The Pencil is definitive. It shows how the technology evolves in such a 'low tech' device. This is a must read if you're the least bit interested. Buy from Barnes and Noble because they respect your privacy. If you want more about technological evolution in everyday things, the Zipper is also good.
The sad fact of the matter is that the vast majority of pencils come from overseas, which in turn comes from a rainforest. The culture of ecological sensitivity is just not present in someplace like China. Unless it says that it comes from a renewable source on the box, it is tropical wood. Worse, they are alot cheaper than an eco pencil (thats the way it is with any natural resource until it's gone). You may think that it doesn't matter because the amount of wood in a single pencil is small, but the amount of wood that is used to supply the 2 billion pencils we use each year is staggerring.
I myself am partial to the old-tech fountain pen with all its messy implications. Because that's what the nuns taught me to write with, as ballpoints weren't "proper" (don't laugh too hard - the fountain pen does produce a nicer line).
I am continually amazed by the constant improvements in everyday 'low tech' things. There was a day that you needed to use a tool to take off a bottlecap. Somewhere along the way the rifinement was made so that they could be screwed off. Same with the pull top on aluminum cans. The pull top used to litter the landscape, until it was improved with a tab. See Scientific American September 1994 for an excellent article on the aluminum beverage container.
The best 'tech' is not 'high tech' or 'low tech', but 'usability tech'. Technology should not be seen as a means to an end, but as a tool to make lives better.

Lucifer's Hammer describes this very well, scientists/politicans try to tell people all the time that the comet is going to miss... You can guess the rest :>
J.

The 'look and feel' theft is going to be difficult to litigate should a battle like this go to court. An obvious defense to this might be to say that a website's interface is the same as a song. The actual recording of an artist performing a song belongs to that artist (or the behemoth record company). But for Weird Al Yankovic to do a cover, that's a parody and is protected by the first ammendment. Even if it's not Weird Al, but instead is Poison Idea doing a cover of 'We Got the Beat' by the Go-Go's, that's perfectly legal, too. Even though the words and song structure are exactly the same (read: the html formatting is the same), it's a different rendition because it's different musicians (read: the text / graphics of the website are different).

So if you're the Eddie Van Halen of the html design world, how do you turn your back to the audience during live performances of 'Eruption' so that those young upstarts don't steal your guitar riffs? I guess you could obfuscate things with javascript that does a server origination validation routine before outputting some page-critical component.

exisitance of the moon: OK, I'll give you that one.

death of the dinosaurs: its tough to say that dinosaurs would have prevented human evolution. Sure, the global impact of a huge asteriod probably kicked evolution in the ass, so to speak, but you can't say that humans and ergo technology couldn't have evolved with dinosaurs in place.

The "mutated intelligent apes" theory, and the "intelligent dolphins" stuff: first, don't assume intelligence is a random mutation. I (and most people IMHO) would maket the assertion that intelligence is a natural selection trait, encouraged by the survival of the smartest. Any learning system will become "more intelligent" as it continues to evolve. Second, who's to say that dolphins wouldn't have invented radio waves, the transistor, and eventually SlashDot too? Your assertions of "what if dolphins were smart instead of apes?" is no different from my statement about dolphins eventaully inventing SlashDot... pure speculation. Kurzweil asserts that techonology (and/or intelligence) is the main driving evolutionary force, and I agree. If we've got intelligent dolphins, then some dolphin is going to invent the digital computer.

Black death: again, I'd argue that this might have caused an evolutionary kick in the ass, speeding things up, but the evolutionary destiny of technology would still have proceded with or without this event. Another of Kurzweil's theories: the speed of the evolution of a system increases exponentially in relation to the system's complexity. Applied here, once the exponential curve of technology growth started, everything else was uphill. Sure, we might not be where we are today had the black death not occured, but I don't think you can say we'd be jousting on horses and fighting with swords still ;)

the "one intelligent person influences history" stuff: that I have to say is flat out BS. To quote Tyler Durden, "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake." The course of human inventions have always existed in parallel. Turing didn't invent the digital computer alone or in a vacuum. Several other people invented pretty much the same damn thing at the same time, apart from each other. It's a huge oversimplified generalization to say that if Gutenburg hadn't invented the printing press that we wouldn't have one. I'd assert that someone else would have invented the printing press, and maybe not too long after Gutenburg. I don't buy the "Einstein was one of a kind" theory... if not him, then someone else.

long period with no catastrophes: you mention the black death above, but then say there have been no catastrophes? The difference between us and the dinosaurs is that we have evolved and adapted to the catastrophes which have occured. we've beaten them back down, and evolution has proceded. Also, even if we had lost a battle, as long as life exists, intelligence and technology will continue to evolve towards dominance.

Lastly, you say:

"We may well be the only technological civilization in the galaxy - or even the universe. How sad, how terribly sad."

Anyway, I knew Linux had entered pop culture when I saw the book entitled: Linux! I Didn't Know You Could Do That... . As if the title wasn't bad enough, have a look at the cover. I don't care what the cliche says -- I still want nothing to do with this book. It may have an animal on the front, but it ain't an O'Reilly...

end comment */

"This trend toward greater integration of the media into the market system has been accelerated by the loosening of rules limiting media concentration, cross-ownership, and control by non-media companies*. There has also been an abandonment of restrictions -- previously quite feeble anyway -- on radio-TV commercials, entertainment-mayhem programming, and "fairness doctrine" threats, opening the door to the unrestrained commercial use of the airwaves."

- Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
Manufacturing Consent &copy 1988

* The Reagan administration strengthened the control of existing holders of television-station licenses by increasnig their term from three to five years, and its FCC made renewals essentially automatic. The FCC also greatly facilitated speculation and trading in television properties by a rule change reducing the required holding period before sale of a newly acquired property from three years to one year.
The reagan era FCC and Department of Justice also refused to challenge mergers and takeover bids that would signifaantly increase the concentration of power (GE-RCA) or media concentration (Capital Cities-ABC). Furthermore, beginning April 2, 1985, media owners could own as many as twelve televison stations, as long as their total audience didn't exceed 25 percent of the nation's televison households; and they could also hold twelve AM and twelve FM stations, as in the 1953 "7-7-7 rule" was replaced with a "12-12-12 rule." See Herbert H. Howard, "Group and Cross-Media Ownership of Televion Stations: 1985" (Washington: National Association of Broadcasters 1985).

Do the words MSNBC mean anything to you? (the original poster, not the AC)

My .02
Quux26

I'm working on it. Expect to see something about it November 1st or so (sorry, can't say any more than that for fear of getting Slashdotted before I'm prepped). But for the moment, you might want to check Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". A bit old but it still gives numbers that will make you say "hmmmmm."

My .02
Quux26

Tyrannosaurus said:
I love the fact that 2600 can legally print the URL, they just can't embed it within a link anchor. Does this mean that your telemarketer could use your phone number as long as a computer didn't dial the number for him?

Actually, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. What with more and more states using cameras on the highways to monitor my speed, cameras on signal lights to make sure I don't go through on yellow, microphone-networks in public neighborhoods to locate illegal activity, code enforcers fining me for not getting a city permit (with, of course, a clerical fee; ie more taxes) to have a garage sale on my "own" property.... I really see no important difference between my life and that of, say, Winston Smith.

It's taken two hundred years, but bureacracy has finally made the Bill of Rights (the only part of the constitution that really does much for We, The People -- though it was wrong not to have included universal sufferage and equal protection from the beginning) completely irrelevant. The river of human authoritarian bullshit flows ever on, finding new ways to bypass the temporary barriers we place in its path.

I think we should add another rights-of-the-accused amendment in between IV and V with provisions that roughly say:

"Although the course of recent history has shown that systems of power use technology to obliterate the People's Rights, direct judgement by one's peers is essential to the survival of freedom -- because while keeping the citizens honest it also, by providing personal accountability to the prosecutor, helps keep the State honest as well. It is self-evident that as social complexity increases the distance between free men and their governments, those governments use their bureacracy as foils for increasingly heinous violations of Liberty. Therefore, let it be decreed that no federal, state, or municipal agency shall directly infringe upon the People's right to be caught and prosecuted by another human being."

I mean it. I think speed limits are ridiculous (forethought and consideration are far more important to safe driving), but if I'm going to be caught, have Smokey pull me over. It is immoral to have a camera capture my license, collude with a computer for my radar-ed speed and then automagically generate a ticket mailed to my house in five working days without any human involvement other than maybe the Data Processing geek who runs the daily batches.

Our current problems will be as specks of dust next to the injustices that will be dished out if we allow our criminal justice system to become automated.

I am intelligent. I've always loved science, both as fictional entertainment and factual enlightenment. I generally support scientific research and the gadgets that result therefrom. However, if modern geeks: researchers, doctors, hackers, physicists, statisticians, programmers and the like continue to aid and abet the full merger of the Manipulative Technocracy with the Inhibitive Bureaucracy, you can bet grandma's sweet-tater pie that I'll be right at the forefront of the angry, uneducated mob that destroys all technology a la Player Piano and Canticle For Leibowitz

(oh, and please note that we are talking regulations on governments, not people -- private citizens may still automatically videotape their private property and ask to enter such recordings as evidence should their homes/service stations be burgled. yes, it would need some tweaking, but i think the basic idea is valid)


the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.

Tyrannosaurus said:
I love the fact that 2600 can legally print the URL, they just can't embed it within a link anchor. Does this mean that your telemarketer could use your phone number as long as a computer didn't dial the number for him?

Actually, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. What with more and more states using cameras on the highways to monitor my speed, cameras on signal lights to make sure I don't go through on yellow, microphone-networks in public neighborhoods to locate illegal activity, code enforcers fining me for not getting a city permit (with, of course, a clerical fee; ie more taxes) to have a garage sale on my "own" property.... I really see no important difference between my life and that of, say, Winston Smith.

It's taken two hundred years, but bureacracy has finally made the Bill of Rights (the only part of the constitution that really does much for We, The People -- though it was wrong not to have included universal sufferage and equal protection from the beginning) completely irrelevant. The river of human authoritarian bullshit flows ever on, finding new ways to bypass the temporary barriers we place in its path.

I think we should add another rights-of-the-accused amendment in between IV and V with provisions that roughly say:

"Although the course of recent history has shown that systems of power use technology to obliterate the People's Rights, direct judgement by one's peers is essential to the survival of freedom -- because while keeping the citizens honest it also, by providing personal accountability to the prosecutor, helps keep the State honest as well. It is self-evident that as social complexity increases the distance between free men and their governments, those governments use their bureacracy as foils for increasingly heinous violations of Liberty. Therefore, let it be decreed that no federal, state, or municipal agency shall directly infringe upon the People's right to be caught and prosecuted by another human being."

I mean it. I think speed limits are ridiculous (forethought and consideration are far more important to safe driving), but if I'm going to be caught, have Smokey pull me over. It is immoral to have a camera capture my license, collude with a computer for my radar-ed speed and then automagically generate a ticket mailed to my house in five working days without any human involvement other than maybe the Data Processing geek who runs the daily batches.

Our current problems will be as specks of dust next to the injustices that will be dished out if we allow our criminal justice system to become automated.

I am intelligent. I've always loved science, both as fictional entertainment and factual enlightenment. I generally support scientific research and the gadgets that result therefrom. However, if modern geeks: researchers, doctors, hackers, physicists, statisticians, programmers and the like continue to aid and abet the full merger of the Manipulative Technocracy with the Inhibitive Bureaucracy, you can bet grandma's sweet-tater pie that I'll be right at the forefront of the angry, uneducated mob that destroys all technology a la Player Piano and Canticle For Leibowitz

(oh, and please note that we are talking regulations on governments, not people -- private citizens may still automatically videotape their private property and ask to enter such recordings as evidence should their homes/service stations be burgled. yes, it would need some tweaking, but i think the basic idea is valid)


the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.

• And abruptly you realize, looking at these expressive dirt bands [caused by patron handling of cards], that even the libraries, like Harvard and the New York Public Library and Cornell, who microfilmed or digitized some of their cards prior to destroying them, have - by failing to capture any information at all about the relative reflectivity of the edge of each card - lost something of real interest, something eminently studiable. Who knows what a diligent researcher who photographed (from above, on a tripod) each close-packed drawer of Harvard's Widener catalog with a high-contrast camera might find out, were he to correlate his spectrographic dirt-band records with the authors that, as distinct clumps, exhibited some darkening? Of course the "Kinsey" cards would be thoroughly dirt-banded - but which others? This is, or was, a cumulative set of scholarly Nielsen ratings for topics at twentieth-century Harvard that is perhaps more representative than any other means of surveying we have. Instead of tossing its catalog out, Harvard ought to have persuaded a rich alumnus to endow a chair for dirt-banded studies.

As of July 31, there were 150,000 downloads of Stephen King's new work, of which 116,000 paid the $1 fee. He's made these $116,000 just because of his high reputation, but, he spent more than that just to market that book.

For a multi-million-seller like a platinum album or Harry Potter book, the "please donate a dollar" scheme just isn't going to work. On the other hand, if you look at the recent furor over the Harry Potter book, and all the pre-sales, and so forth, you can easily see that it would have been very easy to ask people to pay upfront, and very lucrative.

Also, I hate to say this, but most of the music being produced for free is worth every penny---i.e., it's just not that great. (Especially in the classical genres. The MP3 artists in the classical genres completely suck. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.) At some point, certain artists are going to become more popular than the others, and are going to be allowed to demand more.

If your next song gets you $400,000, rather than $400, then I know you'll start thinking to yourself, "Hmm, now that I've got a reputation for quality...."

A lot of people confuse my opinion that "prepay is inevitable" with the fact that I think "prepay is good". I don't think anything is good or bad. I download free things all the time. I started using linux in '94, when 0.99 was made official, and my experience with the 'net goes back way before then. I know all about free. I was a regular user of Gutenberg even before there was such a thing as the Web; and more recently, you could say I made a major contribution to the HTTP logs of the free book section of ebooks.barnesandnoble.com,due to my clever use of curl. :-)

But I'm also a grown-up, and I know all about the world works, and how bills need to get paid. My opinion is that prepayment is inevitable, not that it's good or bad, and that once an artist becomes famous and/or popular, they will start thinking "do I devote myself to this full time, or not? Do I get paid for it, or not?", and at that time, they will decide to convert from a donation-only model to a prepayment model.

I think that only time will tell, but I'm pretty confident that prepayment will arrive, one day or another.

P.S. Microsoft killed Netscape because they are a zillion-dollar company, and can afford to put out IE as a "loss leader". Also, because they were able to develop IE5 while Netscape spent their money on plastic dinosaurs and Corporate Headquarters With Waterfalls. There are lots of little software companies, but there's only one M$, and it's the M$s of the world who will demand the prepayment.

People think that artists like Van Gogh were "starving artists" who never sold their art. That's pure baloney. Van Gogh was the son of a rich industrialist, and had a brother who supported him. The "starving artist" is a myth. There isn't a one on the planet, and there never was.

Finally, unlike Mozilla, the various forms of artwork like music, art and literature absolutely do not lend themselves to open-source collaborative development. You can't "fix a bug" in a Picasso or "add a feature" to a Nirvana tune. It still takes unique people with unique visions, and some of those visions are going to be worth more than others.

If you put up a form saying "Prepay a required $1 for the next release of Metallica when it comes out", or "Pay a volutary $1 for Anonymous Artist to download their new music", I think Metallica will get plenty of $1 payments, regardless of the extreme vocal opinions on the subject at places like slashdot.

But hey, let's not argue. Let's test the theory. We're all scientists, right? Let's see if we can get a high-profile artist to try it. I really think people will be surprised.
--
Orlando, Paladin of Charlemagne

Here's some links to read before you post your questions:

• Short bio
• Books by Garbus

I'm not so sure. Take the invention of the television, for example. From what I understand, it was essentially developed simultaneously in several places at once. After inventing the TV, If the guy here in the U.S. had said "Ooh. I better just forget about this TV thing. It's going to be the next opiate of the masses," we still would have had the television that was invented in Europe.

I think invention tends indeed to happen in this sort of distributed way. Stone tools appeared on several continents at more or less the same time in societal development, even when the rates of development were quite different - see Guns, Germs, and Steel.

I really do have to agree that "technology can't be stopped." To stop it would be to have a society, a world really, where every member has a common will or a common set of goals. Due to chaos or evolution or whatever, this has never been the case and never will be. Given that as a basis for action, we have little choice but to attempt to adapt as technology races on.

If we were to "monitor" technology as it is invented, who is going to do the monitoring? The government? I think not. We wouldn't have a government for long. Industry? Which biotech company makes the final decision on whether to release the drug that cures AIDS?

Even if some government/multinational wants to stop freenet, if the will of the people is for it to continue, it simply cannot be stopped. Technology is like a river. You can struggle and fight to swim upstream in order to stay in place or you can use your energy to navigate the rapids and the falls and stay afloat much longer. The Zen of technology navigation.

The story is called Lifeline, first published in the August 1939 issue of Astounding.

You can find it now in The Past Through Tomorrow, a collection of (mostly) short stories, as well as in paperback editions of The Man Who Sold The Moon, The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, and others, I'm sure. There's even a hardcover Lifeline available from Barnes & Noble, and given that the title stroy is so short, there must be more than that in there, for $23.95.

Anyway, I've got Past Through Tomorrow at home, and will try to find the relevant quote, unless someone else can come up with it in the meantime.

Second, if you request a galley copy, it's considered quite unethical to sell it -- doubly so before the publication date. OTOH, if the seller received the copy unsolicited, I see no reason not to sell it. :)

--Tom Geller, Editor of Bisexuali ty: A Reader and Sourcebook.

One of the platforms of the Green party is that the largest corporations of the world should be carved up and taken over by the government. I believe that they have also proposed the idea of a "maximum wage."

Perhaps you need to go read Animal Farm again.

I wish someone had pointed me towards the Knuth when I was in high school. It is the ultimate source of CS projects, and the ultimate resource upon their theory.

The Knuth (aka The Art of Computer Programming) is available from all reputable bookstores. You can get the boxed set or just the first book from barnesandnoble.com.

You can also go to Donald E. Knuth's homepage, or to his TAOP page

Please believe, if there is a deep and magic tome of computer science, this is it, and if you will ever truly have the love for CS, then you will love these books NO MATER YOUR SKILL LEVEL! Every chapter is filled with projects ranging from in your head to graduate thesis level, and they are labeled by difficulty and mathematical requirements.

I wish someone had pointed me towards the Knuth when I was in high school. It is the ultimate source of CS projects, and the ultimate resource upon their theory.

The Knuth (aka The Art of Computer Programming) is available from all reputable bookstores. You can get the boxed set or just the first book from barnesandnoble.com.

You can also go to Donald E. Knuth's homepage, or to his TAOP page

Please believe, if there is a deep and magic tome of computer science, this is it, and if you will ever truly have the love for CS, then you will love these books NO MATER YOUR SKILL LEVEL! Every chapter is filled with projects ranging from in your head to graduate thesis level, and they are labeled by difficulty and mathematical requirements.

Any case in which the government has killed off large portions of the population. If they're not doing that, anything you could do would make things worse.

back when i was in high school we had "values clarification" where we were asked to think about and discuss situations like the Lifeboat Scenario in which you have seven passengers trying to take refuge on a lifeboat that only seats four -- we had to decide whether to leave the 80-year-old man to drown in order to save the 25-year-old pregnant woman and etc.

In that same vein, I wonder how many people would have to die in order to be a "large portion of the population":
5?
30?
273?
5,309?
144,000?
273,000,000?
7,134,258,000?
I believe it was historian Howard Zinn who made the obvious point that nobody ever consults those people to be sacrificed on the altar of Destiny as to whether they are willing to so serve.

Still, I admit that I find your arguments compelling (and very well put, you have a good "typing voice"). The principle of Scarcity seems to apply to any known dynamic system, and we may not be able to insure both uncompromised Freedom and the long-term stability of that Freedom. Therefore, we must carefully allocate our political concepts of Powers of Government (to protect us against bad people) and Rights of People (to protect us against bad government) in a sensible manner.
But what is the scale we should use to strike just the right balance?
What method would you have us use to decide how many People's rights can be violated before we institue a corresponding limitation of the government?

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about the notorious american placement of individual whims over the good of society at large, and I'm still stuck on this one idea:
Though official documents frame rights in the sense of belonging to and benefitting "the People", there are no rights in the aggregate.

Casually-Formally stated:
Definition: "There exists a set {thePeople} whose elements have properties according to the set {Liberties}, i.e. X is an element of {thePeople} implies that X has properties defined by {Rights}.
If we take an arbitrary member, JohnQPublic of {the People} and disallow its Rights then our whole assumption of the innate-quality of Human rights becomes false (T->F). And since we picked an arbitrary element, then ALL elements from set {thePeople} produce a negative truth value for the implication "x is an element of {thePeople} means that x has {Rights}"

Clearly, all rights are inherently individual rights. This is the irreducible concept upon which the American democratic system depends.

It still seems absurd to run off chasing one's own Moral Inviolability a la Atlas Shrugged. But what made Dagney Taggart bearable was that the other characters were drawn as incompetent, destructive and oppressive, so that her choices became progressively narrow, until eventually she chose to place her self-interest irrevocably above the "social good".
In my opinion, this "aneristic effect" is exactly what the UK law promotes and so to an extent it justifies even more effort by individuals to protect themselves from the given systems of power.


the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.

Any case in which the government has killed off large portions of the population. If they're not doing that, anything you could do would make things worse.

back when i was in high school we had "values clarification" where we were asked to think about and discuss situations like the Lifeboat Scenario in which you have seven passengers trying to take refuge on a lifeboat that only seats four -- we had to decide whether to leave the 80-year-old man to drown in order to save the 25-year-old pregnant woman and etc.

In that same vein, I wonder how many people would have to die in order to be a "large portion of the population":
5?
30?
273?
5,309?
144,000?
273,000,000?
7,134,258,000?
I believe it was historian Howard Zinn who made the obvious point that nobody ever consults those people to be sacrificed on the altar of Destiny as to whether they are willing to so serve.

Still, I admit that I find your arguments compelling (and very well put, you have a good "typing voice"). The principle of Scarcity seems to apply to any known dynamic system, and we may not be able to insure both uncompromised Freedom and the long-term stability of that Freedom. Therefore, we must carefully allocate our political concepts of Powers of Government (to protect us against bad people) and Rights of People (to protect us against bad government) in a sensible manner.
But what is the scale we should use to strike just the right balance?
What method would you have us use to decide how many People's rights can be violated before we institue a corresponding limitation of the government?

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about the notorious american placement of individual whims over the good of society at large, and I'm still stuck on this one idea:
Though official documents frame rights in the sense of belonging to and benefitting "the People", there are no rights in the aggregate.

Casually-Formally stated:
Definition: "There exists a set {thePeople} whose elements have properties according to the set {Liberties}, i.e. X is an element of {thePeople} implies that X has properties defined by {Rights}.
If we take an arbitrary member, JohnQPublic of {the People} and disallow its Rights then our whole assumption of the innate-quality of Human rights becomes false (T->F). And since we picked an arbitrary element, then ALL elements from set {thePeople} produce a negative truth value for the implication "x is an element of {thePeople} means that x has {Rights}"

Clearly, all rights are inherently individual rights. This is the irreducible concept upon which the American democratic system depends.

It still seems absurd to run off chasing one's own Moral Inviolability a la Atlas Shrugged. But what made Dagney Taggart bearable was that the other characters were drawn as incompetent, destructive and oppressive, so that her choices became progressively narrow, until eventually she chose to place her self-interest irrevocably above the "social good".
In my opinion, this "aneristic effect" is exactly what the UK law promotes and so to an extent it justifies even more effort by individuals to protect themselves from the given systems of power.


the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.

....is because of "Crouch End", from Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
God DAMN I love Stephen King.

I recently did an oral book report on the book "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler, so I am very familiar with it. This is exactly what he is talking about and he wrote it in 1970! He says that people will experience a "future shock" which is analogous to a "culture shock". Those who do not adapt will be left behind. Here are the links at amazon, Borders, and BN

Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin's regimes are identical to what is happening today.

I know you were being sarcastic, but what you are saying is at least partially true. The United States Government is slipping close and closer to totalitarianism by the day. Read The Ominous Parallels and be convinced.

What is your solution? Shall we put a direct hyperlink on Yahoo! to the Anarchist's cookbook so that script kiddies can stop their DoS attacks and start making napalm in their garage?

Bifurcation.

Everyone is awfully concerned about the black ops in the big bad government reading their email and flagging them because they say the word 'bong', but I haven't seen a single suggestion for how crime could be lessened.

Those who trade freedom for security shall have neither (paraphrased, but it's true). Personally, I think crime would be reduced if more law-abiding citizens would carry concealed weapons.

Come back to earth, Slashdot readers.

Ad hominem.

The government isn't secretly reading all of our emails to see if we like to wear pink fuzzy slippers and listen to Duran Duran.

Strawman. Then again, if someone in government were interested in that sort of thing, would you find it in the least bit offensive that some anonymous, government official could go quietly sifting through your private mail with no warning?

Have you considered that there are people working for the government who care about our country as much, if not more than, we do?

Yes, there are a few people in government who feel that way. Have you considered that there are also plenty of people in government that are as corrupt and sinister as anyone who is not a government employee? Have you considered that ther are also plenty of people in government who are more than happy to abuse their right to use force to achieve their goals?

How many executive orders has President Clinton signed? How is the seizure of property under drug laws consistent with the Constitution? What is the ratio of laws enacted to laws repealed in this century? Why should I be forced to pay money into a bankrupt income redistribution scheme (that can be either Medicare or Social Security)? What right does the government have to listen to what I'm saying in private anyway? Is it because I might say something "wrong" and the government needs to make sure that I don't?

For the real history of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, please read Distant Vision by the wife of Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of IEC.

A few details left out of the Farnsworth story:

Robert Hirsch left Farnsworth, became head of the government's fusion project and dropped IEC. Bob Bussard (an early associate of Hirsch in the Atomic Energy Commission's fusion program and the most prominent recent advocate of IEC) in his letter to Congress in which he describes the history of the fusion program (and recommended my legislative reforms of the fusion program be passed into law) stated that the Tokamak was seen by the early founders of that program, including Hirsch and himself, as a political tool to create an Apollo-style mentality to acquire funding, rather than as a viable technological direction. Unfortunately, Hirsch did not turn the funding he acquired to support IEC during these early years of the Tokamak while he was in authority, and then left government service to work for Arco. Bussard had a partnership with the Mediterranean mafias via connections provided by Hirsch initiated at a meeting held at the Isle of Malta (I got this directly from Bussard -- how Hirsch had these mafia connections I don't know and didn't really pursue in my conversations with Bussard) but this didn't prove ultimately fruitful as it was tied up with the Atlantic City developments of that era (the 1970s). This was written up by one of Bussard's investors, Bob Guccionni of Penthouse fame. Finally, circa 1990, Bussard went back to Farnsworth's original IEC concept upon which Hirsch had cut his teeth as a grad student with Farnsworth and Hirsch seemed friendly to the retreat to the technology of his youth.

It is interesting that Mrs. Farnsworth, in the above liked book about her husband, seems to imply that IEC was actually close to _working_ in the late 1960s, and that her husband was increasingly excluded from these developments as success was growing nearer.

That Hirsch abandoned his work with Farnsworth on IEC technology to become head of the AEC's Tokamak fusion project to the exclusion of IEC technology is certainly deserving of reflection -- particularly in light of his decades-later reassertion of IEC's value as a technical direction over Tokamak.

The people who can't make sense of the explosion of information are the people who need a good sense of what to pay attention to and what to ingore. What we don't need is people to sort it out for them - we need to give them the ability to sort it out themselves.

Sensemakers should be the people themselves. Carl Sagan already wrote about it in his excellent book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

What we end up with when other people make sense of the explosion for us is a nation of people with dependent brains - people who cannot think on their own. People can be their own sensemakers - already, the smartest and well-informed are. The people who cannot make sense will get trapped by pseudoscience, speculation, and oughtright lies (and flamebait *cough* *cough*). We have to make the sense of it ourselves, so that those who don't make sense - only feed us more misinformation - don't win.

The Risks forum should be read by:

• Anyone who uses or depends on computers in their daily lives
• Anyone who programs computers
• Anyone who makes policy decisions involving computers or software
• Anyone who ever depends on the correct functioning of computers for their lives or safety (flown on a modern airplane lately?)
• Anyone who operates computers that affect safety (piloted one?)

You might think such spy stuff as this article is about is out of your realm, but consider this example which likely could have affected most of us:

The scary MSWord residue feature

I recently received a legal document as part of a personal negotiation that I am doing. The document was e-mailed to me in MSWord format. As I was showing it to my lawyer (who happens to be my wife), we decided to put our thoughts inline using the track changes feature of word. After selecting Tools, and Track Changes, we clicked on "Highlight changes in document" and voila, suddenly a whole bunch of red appeared on the screen. We looked at it closely and realized that everything in red represented changes in the document that my counterpart's lawyer had written. We got a good look at the previous version of the contract, as well as a bunch of comments and justifications that the lawyer wrote to his client. It was an eye opening experience.

It appears that instead of selecting "Accept all changes" before sending it to me, the other party to the contract simply turned off the highlighting to the track changes feature.

This is obviously a case of an unsophisticated person misusing a feature. However, it is very dangerous. Lawyers send word documents around all the time, and many of them do not really understand all the features that they use, nor should they have to. I imagine that I was not the first person to see some behind the scenes conversation in an important word document, that I was never intended to see.

• http://www.fatbrain.com
• http://www.barnesandnoble.com
• http://www.amazon.com
• http://www.chapters.ca - in Canada

• http://www.wvWare.com/, maybe the best open source Word converter? Formerly "mswordview", it's a library and a front-end app, which is currently AbiWord's converter.
• word2x
• AbiSource, a company producing an open source, cross platform, comercial office suite. Their motto was "SHOW ME THE SOURCE!!!", which we had to scream at the March 1999 Linuxworld Expo in order to get their t-shirt.
• Adobe FrameMaker for Linux -- Not sure if it does Office, but it's a commercial word processor!
• VistaSource / ApplixWare -- Cross platform, partially open source, complete office suite and integrated development environment in the form of either a local app, or as a Java-based thin client plus app server architecture. Compare to StarOffice. My experience has been that you can send an un-convertable Office document to Applix's closely-monitored community support mailing list, and they will attempt to modify Applixware's import filters around it, and send you a patch. How cool is that?
• S un StarOffice. Very good as well. Complete office suite. StarOffice and Applixware are capable of replacing Microsoft Office for literally most people.
• Corel Wordperfect -- See also Corel's Linux distribution.
• KDE's KOffice -- Open source office suite.
• Freshmeat.net's index of office apps

• StarOffice for Dummies http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30490259 $14.99 (Save $1.00 over amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764505769/ ref%3Dsim%5Fbooks/103-4415661-32230 16

• Special Edition Using StarOffice, replaces htt p://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789719932/ref =sim_books/002-2291160-6260020.

• Applixware 5 Bible for Linux w/cd-rom http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30546347 $29.99 ($2 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764534033/ qid%3D959095708/sr%3D1-3/002 -2291160-626002

• http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30400392 $14.99 ($1 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672314126/ ref=sim_books/002-2291160-6260020

• Mastering Koffice for Linux w/ cd-rom http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/b ooksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=4LAQC2IL93&mscssi d=DLK6S46966S92MG1001PQUW78818A314&srefe r=&isbn=0782126529, replaces http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782126529/ qid%3D959095770/002-0803865-4820213

• http://www.wvWare.com/, maybe the best open source Word converter? Formerly "mswordview", it's a library and a front-end app, which is currently AbiWord's converter.
• word2x
• AbiSource, a company producing an open source, cross platform, comercial office suite. Their motto was "SHOW ME THE SOURCE!!!", which we had to scream at the March 1999 Linuxworld Expo in order to get their t-shirt.
• Adobe FrameMaker for Linux -- Not sure if it does Office, but it's a commercial word processor!
• VistaSource / ApplixWare -- Cross platform, partially open source, complete office suite and integrated development environment in the form of either a local app, or as a Java-based thin client plus app server architecture. Compare to StarOffice. My experience has been that you can send an un-convertable Office document to Applix's closely-monitored community support mailing list, and they will attempt to modify Applixware's import filters around it, and send you a patch. How cool is that?
• S un StarOffice. Very good as well. Complete office suite. StarOffice and Applixware are capable of replacing Microsoft Office for literally most people.
• Corel Wordperfect -- See also Corel's Linux distribution.
• KDE's KOffice -- Open source office suite.
• Freshmeat.net's index of office apps

• StarOffice for Dummies http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30490259 $14.99 (Save $1.00 over amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764505769/ ref%3Dsim%5Fbooks/103-4415661-32230 16

• Special Edition Using StarOffice, replaces htt p://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789719932/ref =sim_books/002-2291160-6260020.

• Applixware 5 Bible for Linux w/cd-rom http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30546347 $29.99 ($2 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764534033/ qid%3D959095708/sr%3D1-3/002 -2291160-626002

• http://www.us.buy.com/books/pr oduct.asp?sku=30400392 $14.99 ($1 less than amazon.com) Replaces: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672314126/ ref=sim_books/002-2291160-6260020

• Mastering Koffice for Linux w/ cd-rom http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/b ooksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=4LAQC2IL93&mscssi d=DLK6S46966S92MG1001PQUW78818A314&srefe r=&isbn=0782126529, replaces http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782126529/ qid%3D959095770/002-0803865-4820213

... why not try reading something by the inventor of the reaction itself, Kary Mullis? He wrote a book called Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, which is mostly just a large collection of stories, opinions, and anything else he wanted to put in there. As you should be able to see immediately, this guy is no ordinary scientist. As for the book, I loved it, and most of you probably would too. There's a lot of stuff in there that will make you challenge how you've been thinking about science, such as the chapter about HIV and AIDS. The whole thing is very not-politically correct, like the chapter on his experiences with LSD and related substances, and that makes it more fun to read. Pick up a copy, you won't regret it.

the book at bn.com - http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInqu iry.asp?isbn=0679774009

If you're a computer user, you need to read The Forum on Risks to the Public in Computer and Related Systems, available on the web at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ on on the Usenet news as comp.risks

The Risks forum is part of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy.

You should make a special effort to read Risks if you:

• Program computers
• Make policy decisions involving computers (managers, government etc.)
• Depend on computers for your life or safety (do you fly on airplanes?)
• Operate computers in situations where they affect life or safety

USS Yorktown dead in water after divide by zero

The Navy got rid of its more robust warship operating systems and replaced them with Windows NT. As a result of this, when a sailor typed a "0" in a data entry field, the whole shipboard network went down and the proud Yorktown had to be towed back into port.

Security concerns, viruses and the like are discussed extensively in Risks.

Do you use Microsoft Word on Mac or Windows? Do you use it to type confidential documents? Consider this post from a fellow who received a contract from an attorney in Word format:

The scary MSWord residue feature

I recently received a legal document as part of a personal negotiation that I am doing. The document was e-mailed to me in MSWord format. As I was showing it to my lawyer (who happens to be my wife), we decided to put our thoughts inline using the track changes feature of word. After selecting Tools, and Track Changes, we clicked on "Highlight changes in document" and voila, suddenly a whole bunch of red appeared on the screen. We looked at it closely and realized that everything in red represented changes in the document that my counterpart's lawyer had written.

We got a good look at the previous version of the contract, as well as a bunch of comments and justifications that the lawyer wrote to his client. It was an eye opening experience. It appears that instead of selecting "Accept all changes" before sending it to me, the other party to the contract simply turned off the highlighting to the track changes feature.

This is obviously a case of an unsophisticated person misusing a feature. However, it is very dangerous. Lawyers send word documents around all the time, and many of them do not really understand all the features that they use, nor should they have to. I imagine that I was not the first person to see some behind the scenes conversation in an important word document, that I was never intended to see.

New HDTV signal shuts down Baylor heart monitors

On 26 Feb 1998, WFAA TV (Channel 8) in Dallas turned on their new digital HDTV signal. As a result, 12 heart monitors stopped working in a Baylor University Medical Center heart surgery recovery unit; they happened to be on the same frequency. The monitors were made in the mid-1980s, and were slated for replacement. [But the patients weren't?] In the interim, WFAA has stopped transmitting -- because there are no commercial receivers yet anyway. [Source: * Dallas Morning News*, 5 Mar 1998. PGN Abstracting]

It has ISBN 020155805X and you can purchase it online from:

• http://www.fatbrain.com
• http://www.barnesandnoble.com
• http://www.amazon.com
• http://www.chapters.ca - in Canada

Mike

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

It has ISBN 020155805X and you can purchase it online from:

• http://www.fatbrain.com
• http://www.barnesandnoble.com
• http://www.amazon.com
• http://www.chapters.ca (Canadian bookseller)

Mike

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

p.s. Do you have any information where I can get a free counter for my website?

--

Sure. Our society has been moving in this direction for some time now. And there is a correlation between technology and society regarding "temporariness". If you want to read more about this than you ever had the stomach for ;-) check out Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. He wrote it in the late 1960s/early 1970s, but there's still a lot of truth in it!

In case you want to know how get this.

If and when quantum computing comes to pass, it will immediately outdate all of the encryption methods we have now. Would-be crackers would be able to break any standard (current) password or encryption in a matter of milliseconds with a quantum computer. However, there are some primative quantum encryption algorithms in existance now that prove decryption difficult even for another quantum computer without the proper information. In the Code Book there is a section about quantum encryption, not the best but it helps a little.

Am I the only one here who read Pirates of the Universe?

You might not. Then again, Someone else might.

Actually, pulling Occam's Razor into the picture, the evidence seems to indicate that it's a lot simpler to say that there is a God, than not. Just look at the whole causality problem (something outside the existing system (universe) must be the initiating cause of said system).

I have a great book on the subject, but it's at home and with the 80 hour weeks it's unlikely that I'll get around to posting more stuff.

Here it is... very theological, but very intersting issues that must be addressed.


You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

As you imply, this is not a new thing. This sort of thing has gone on for centuries. (Hell, likely millenia.) It is caused by the unfortunate tendency of the human animal to let optimism override good sense when it comes to profit.

Anyone wanting to invest in tech should read the above book. (Hell, perhaps I should have when I invested in Corel. Perhaps I would have sold instead of watching all of my profit vanish. But that's another story...)

What is really interesting about all this is that there are other areas of the market that seem undervalued, because all of the money is chasing tech stocks.

I'm really not sure what to make of this article. It's hardly controversial in this forum to say that corporatism is bad, but to say that it somehow contradicts the dreams of the Founding Fathers indicates that Katz's grasp on American history is tenuous at best.

The Founders were actually split on the subject; after the Revolution, they eventually split into two camps. The Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, had the philosophy of individualism that Katz speaks of; Jefferson wanted America to basically stay an underdeveloped nation of small-scale farmers. The Federalists, on the other hand, wanted to see America develop quickly, and were very supportive of corporate expansion through programs like the founding of the Bank of the United States, America's first central bank. The Federalists included powerful figures such as George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, and they basically controlled the government through the early days of the Republic until they overreached and tried to criminalize criticism of their programs through the Alien and Sedition Acts. (Read American Aurora by Richard Rosenfeld for a great treatment of the tyranny the Federalists tried to impose on us.)

So the tension between corporations and individuals is hardly new -- it's been with us since the founding of the Republic, and it will probably be with us forever. We can, and should, take steps to limit the power corporations hold over the public sphere -- but to claim that somehow America was an idyll of untrammeled individualism until big bad Time Warner came along is to demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of our common history.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

If you think that road construction is simply a matter of flatting some land and dumping some asphalt on it, you're deluded.

One of my favorite books is a copy of Highway Engineering , which goes into a LOT of detail (needless to say, as it's a Civil Engineering Textbook) on how roads are designed and constructed. It's a true geek read (geek as in people who like learning about cool tech, not simply the hopelessly monitor-tanned crowd)

It's also a bloody expensive book(sigh), if you can't find a used copy.

Large Scale C++ Software Design, by John Lakos. This book has done more to improve my coding and software design skills than any other book I have read. If you program in C++, you MUST read this book. Until you have, you don't know the language. The concepts described in the book apply to other languages as well (as long as you are using OOP).

------

CDNow, Amazon, etc, etc.

• Amazon: boycotting them because of their stupid one-click patent
• CDNow: Uses TroubleClick for banner ads, and they 404 me if I'm blocking ad.doubleclick.net in /etc/hosts
• Barnes & Noble: Oh, there it is! And with short snips of the first five tracks, there's hardly a chance that a fella will unwittingly buy a disc full of shit.

Verdict: BN.com rocks.