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Your post says nothing about how a political, social and logical problem ( hunger ), can be solved by throwing teraflops at it, nor do you have any coherent point about using supercomputers to solve civil wars, nor do you comprehend that this supercomputer set a record by simulating the effects of 16 million atoms, while an average cell contains 2.19 billion million*, so we are incredibly far off from being able to simulate even a tiny part of a cell. You'd best put down the bong, trade in the birkenstocks, take a bath, and do something constructive instead of bitching about how the world isn't exactly how you want it. Incidently, I'd advise the extremists on the right to do the same.

*6.54*10^-8cm^3 * 1g/1cm^3 * (1/18)*6.02*10^23 atoms/g = 2.19 * 10^15 = 2.19 billion million

Size of a cell ( 6.54*10^-8cm^3 ) from here
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/w3004/P roblem_set_2_answer.htm

Until 10.2-ish, OS X included the man page for bad144(8). I don't think the binary was there, though; too bad, as I would like to attach an RP06 to an iBook.

it's pity for slashdot, but SIP is already taken:)

FRANK'S COMPULSIVE GUIDE TO POSTAL ADDRESSES is probably the best resource you're going to find on the topic - it covers every continent and most countries, with details on postcodes, street addresses and more. Very geeky, but also highly useful.

At least, if you don't believe it was faked or something.

Side note: It alarms me how "natural" racism was back then. (Just read items 23 and 24 the bottom.)

What are the odds that the boat will end up being called the goldenpalacecasino.
1,
2,
3

Because that's the right that the law provides the copyright owner - to give permission (or not) as he sees fit.

Be careful about circular reasoning here, as this article is about research into whether there is a need to change the law. Part of the issue at hand is to what extent the copyright owner should be allowed to make that choice, whether such a choice "promote[s] the Progress of Science".

I guess there is a fine line when a monopoly is involved and everyone is dependant on the supply, but hey we are taking about books, movies and music, etc.

You seem to claim that copyrighted works either are not necessities or are not a monopoly. As for necessity, some form of entertainment is a necessity to preserve sanity. As for monopoly, music is in fact a cartel because of ubiquitous access to published works and the small space of distinct works. When you hear a song on the radio or in a grocery store, you are permanently barred from writing a similar song. There exist only a finite number of distinct melodies in the western musical scale. Therefore, any independent songwriter will likely unwittingly violate a copyright. Does a chilling effect on creating works "promote the Progress of Science"?

The dangers of this site have been well explained here, but how many people are going to find it and read enough to understand it? It's just sad that the general population is so completely clueless about the basics of cryptography.

But worse are the _retroactive_ extensions - works that are actually already public domain, are then suddenly taken away from the Public.

Only European countries re-copyrighted works whose copyright under the old term had expired. The United States and Australia, on the other hand, extended copyright but kept all works published before 1923 (in the USA's case) or whose last surviving author died before 1934 (in Australia's case) in the public domain.

(sure that hurts the industry with a legal monopoly on lawnmower copying, but is it stealing? If I buy a different lawnmower or don't use lawnmowers I also hurt them)

To continue the analogy to copyrighted works, if you buy a different lawnmower, you are buying from a rogue manufacturer who subconsciously copied the designs of the lawnmower cartel[1]. If you don't use a lawnmower, the local government slaps you down with a weed warning.

[1] Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 420 F.Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976)

When you can show a repeated pattern, then your argument will have some merit, instead of just a legal "one off".

In law, it's not called a "one off"; it's called a "precedent". Even so, finding of liability for copyright infringement by subconscious copying is not isolated; see Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton, 212 F.3d 477 (9th Cir. 2000).

The large portions who are using filesharing networks to infringe copyright.

Except sometimes you have little choice in the matter. If you perform the following steps:

1. walk into a grocery store where a copyrighted song is playing over the speaker system,
2. ten years later, write a song that coincidentally sounds similar, and
3. publish that song or a recording thereof on a file-sharing network,

then you are "using filesharing networks to infringe copyright." See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music . So how would you go about avoiding copying?

You don't like the idea of Microsoft stealing code that was written for Linux, or is owned and created by other people, do you? Music is just the same.

Copying music is most certainly not the same as copying code. It's possible to take steps to avoid copying code: don't look at anybody else's code. On the other hand, it is impossible to avoid listening to others' music because grocery stores play music in the background. A songwriter has been successfully sued for accidentally copying a melody that he had heard years ago, and many of us could see how this could lead to a chilling effect on songwriting outside the cartel.

As for recorded music, you may be more right.

Would you believe that there is a tool in Linux called normalize? It's a command line tool written by Chris Vaill. You may have to break up your wav file into different files. Here's the man page (sorry for the mashed-up text, but you get the picture):

NAME normalize adjusts volume levels of audio files. SYNOPSIS normalize [ options ][-- ] file... DESCRIPTION normalize is used to adjust the volume of wav audio files to a standard volume level. This is useful for things like creating mp3 mixes, where different recording levels on different albums can cause the volume to vary greatly from song to song. normalize operates in two phases. In the first phase, it analyzes the specified files as wav audio files, and computes the volume of each file. In the second phase, it applies a volume adjustment to each file to set each file s volume to a standard level. OPTIONS -a, --amplitude=AMPLITUDE Adjust the RMS volume to the target amplitude AMPLITUDE; must be between 0.0 and 1.0. If a number suffixed by "dB" or "dBFS" is specified, the amplitude is assumed to be in decibels from full scale. The default is -12dBFS. -b, --batch Enable batch mode: see BATCH MODE, below. -c, --compression Deprecated.In previous versions, this enabled the limiter,but now the limiter is enabled by default. --clipping Disable the limiter,and just clip any samples that are too large. Same effect as -l 0dBFS. --fractions Display all values as decimal fractions instead of in decibels. By default, volume adjustments are shown in decibels, and volume levels in dBFS, where 0 dBFS is the level of a square wave of max-imum amplitude. -g, --gain=GAIN Skip the volume computation phase: don t compute the volume adjustment from the current vol-umes of the files. Instead, just apply the given gain as a volume adjustment to all files. As a plain number this is just a multiplier applied to all samples, If a number suffixed by "dB" is specified, all volumes are adjusted by that many decibels. --id3-compat Use this option when adjusting MPEG audio files if your MP3 player does not recognize ID3v2.4 tags. See MPEG AUDIO ADJUSTMENT,below, for details. --id3-unsync Use this option when adjusting MPEG audio files if your MP3 player does not recognize ID3v2 tags and has trouble playing some ID3v2 tagged MP3 files. See MPEG AUDIO ADJUSTMENT, below, for details. -l, --limiter=LEVEL This controls the behavior of the limiter.By default, all samples above -6dBFS (0.5) are limited, but this option sets the limiting level toLEVEL.Setting LEVEL to 1 (or 0dBFS) does no limiting (clipping is done instead); setting LEVEL to 0 does limiting on all samples. The default value is recommended unless you know what you re doing. -m, --mix Enable mix mode: see MIX MODE, below. Batch mode and mix mode are mutually exclusive. -n, --no-adjust Compute and output the volume adjustment that would set the volume to the target, but don t apply it to any of the files (i.e. skip the second phase). If you use this option, your files will not be altered in any way. --no-progress Don t print any progress information. All other messages are printed as normal according to the verbosity level. --peak Adjust using peak levels instead of RMS levels. Each file will be adjusted so that its maximum sample is at full scale. This just gives a file the maximum volume possible without clipping; no normalization is done. -q, --quiet Don t output progress information. Only error messages are printed. -t, --average-threshold=THRESHOLD When averaging volume levels for batch mode or mix mode, throw out any volumes that are more than THRESHOLD decibels from the average. A high value here (say,50) will make sure that the volumes of all files are considered in the average. -T,--adjust-threshold=THRESHOLD If an adjustment to be made to a file is smaller than THRESHOLD decibels, consider the file already normalized and don t do the adjustment. This is 0.125 by default, or 0 if the -g option is given. -v,--verbose Increase verbosity.This option can be repeated

You mean this case for instance ?

Thanks for the reference, but uuh no, there's nothing formal, no strict guarantee that for instance a polish band that uploads its CD on jamendo hasn't copied the music from the latest bresilian hit. How could we guarantee ? Moderation is a mean to reduce this kind of problem, to avoid obvious cases. Like other website (eBay) we may always exclude bands when there is a problem.

2.6 gigs of musicians who want their music to be heard by the widest audience possible.

2.6 gigs of lawsuits from songwriters and music publishers claiming that your musicians ripped off their songs.

singer-songwriter

"More like singer-plagiarist." -- Bright Tunes Music legal representative

noone is going to argue with downloading legal Dave Matthews, Grateful Dead, Phish, and other bands.

Except possibly the songwriters. Even if you write your own songs, you may not be the lawful author, as George Harrison found out the hard way.

At the expense of shops who were using no computer at all. Or abacuses.

I would laugh if the situation weren't so serious for my company. We are on the verge of a disaster.

Chisembop manual sales have been flat for 5 years.

Adding machine sales are down 38%.

Calculator sales are down 52%, including the newest hand held models.

Slide rule sales are down 79%.

Analytical engine sales are down 93%.

Tabulator sales are down 98%.

Our abacus miniaturization project is running into problems with prior art by a "major" competitor.

To top it off, our hope for a Multitronic breakthrough appears to have dangerous side effects after four models that were outright failures.

Unless we can pump up our mentat outsourcing service, or complete development of our Make me a Rainman! kit, we're doomed! Doomed I tell you! :(

I believe you are referring to this.

No, this was different. They were actually diving in the ice block's "water caves".

I guess you didn't find the time to read much on RealClimate.org as you said you'd try to do? or do you disagree with what's said there?

how does one 'kerberize' a client
It has to be written to talk to kerberos.

Programmers Guide for Heimdal Kerberos.
Kerberized Kermit FTP Client

There are probably others.

"Vuoi" means "do you want" and wouldn't make sense in the context, "voi" means "you", so the sig is correct ("Abandon every hope, [you] who enter here").

DC/Inferno/03.009

shouldn't trust the hosts.

In "Routing in the Internet", Christian Huitma, when describing the Internet architecture, describes why hosts shouldn't trust the network to perform reliable delivery. Hosts have more of an interest in reliable communication than the network as ultimately they will suffer the most if the network isn't as reliable as it says it is; therefore hosts should take the primary interest in ensuring the network delivers data reliably. That leads to absolute reliablity mechanisms in the network being redundant, as the hosts will implement them anyway. This is why TCP is an end-to-end protocol, why the IP header checksum only covers the IP header, and why the network layer in the Internet is only "best-effort".

In a later chapter, regarding QoS, he makes the point that the network shouldn't trust the hosts. The network should provide generally equal service to all its "customers" - the hosts that are attached to the edge of the network. Therefore, if one host is misbehaving, the network should penalise it. That is what the default queuing algorithm (Random Early Dectection) for the Internet does. Some details are in Recommendations on Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet.

The same model applies to security. Security should be end-to-end when the host has the most interest in the consequences of lack of security. Hosts shouldn't trust the network to deliver data securely, as the consequences of secure delivery are most felt by the hosts (and therefore the users sitting behind them).

The network's security needs aren't quite the same as the hosts; the main thing the network has to secure is availability and the ability to continue to provide equal service to all its customers (the hosts.) Authentication in routing protocols, secure administration tools such as SNMPv3 and SSH, and traffic rate limiting mechanisms like RED are network security mechanisms that protect the network's service.

Security problems come about when attempts are made to implement host security in the network, and network security in the hosts. For example, a firewall's purpose is really to protect the hosts. The current location for most firewalls is inside the network. Unfortunately that doesn't fully extend the host protection a firewall provides up to the host itself. With the current model, it is easy enough to "unprotect" the host by inserting a device, for example a wireless access point, between the firewall and the host. The firewall may still protect the host from Internet based attackers, however it doesn't protect the host from war drivers. Ideally, a firewall should reside on the host itself, to protect the host from attacks from all (network) directions. Interestingly, that is happening already through evolution - most host OSes are coming with firewalls out of the box. Administration of firewall security policy is a problem with this model, due to the increased number of firewalls to now administer, however, mechanisms are being developed to apply distributed security policy. Distributed Firewalls by Steven M. Bellovin describes this model further.

shouldn't trust the hosts.

In "Routing in the Internet", Christian Huitma, when describing the Internet architecture, describes why hosts shouldn't trust the network to perform reliable delivery. Hosts have more of an interest in reliable communication than the network as ultimately they will suffer the most if the network isn't as reliable as it says it is; therefore hosts should take the primary interest in ensuring the network delivers data reliably. That leads to absolute reliablity mechanisms in the network being redundant, as the hosts will implement them anyway. This is why TCP is an end-to-end protocol, why the IP header checksum only covers the IP header, and why the network layer in the Internet is only "best-effort".

In a later chapter, regarding QoS, he makes the point that the network shouldn't trust the hosts. The network should provide generally equal service to all its "customers" - the hosts that are attached to the edge of the network. Therefore, if one host is misbehaving, the network should penalise it. That is what the default queuing algorithm (Random Early Dectection) for the Internet does. Some details are in Recommendations on Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet.

The same model applies to security. Security should be end-to-end when the host has the most interest in the consequences of lack of security. Hosts shouldn't trust the network to deliver data securely, as the consequences of secure delivery are most felt by the hosts (and therefore the users sitting behind them).

The network's security needs aren't quite the same as the hosts; the main thing the network has to secure is availability and the ability to continue to provide equal service to all its customers (the hosts.) Authentication in routing protocols, secure administration tools such as SNMPv3 and SSH, and traffic rate limiting mechanisms like RED are network security mechanisms that protect the network's service.

Security problems come about when attempts are made to implement host security in the network, and network security in the hosts. For example, a firewall's purpose is really to protect the hosts. The current location for most firewalls is inside the network. Unfortunately that doesn't fully extend the host protection a firewall provides up to the host itself. With the current model, it is easy enough to "unprotect" the host by inserting a device, for example a wireless access point, between the firewall and the host. The firewall may still protect the host from Internet based attackers, however it doesn't protect the host from war drivers. Ideally, a firewall should reside on the host itself, to protect the host from attacks from all (network) directions. Interestingly, that is happening already through evolution - most host OSes are coming with firewalls out of the box. Administration of firewall security policy is a problem with this model, due to the increased number of firewalls to now administer, however, mechanisms are being developed to apply distributed security policy. Distributed Firewalls by Steven M. Bellovin describes this model further.

Yea, right. Why do you republicans always have such a difficult time dealing with reality? If your leadership is not busy creating wars based on fantasy, they are creating policies and laws based on an ancient mythology.

WTF are you talking about? Fifteen seconds in, I'm sucking it down at 300 KB/s. Are you positive you're not throttled?

FWIW, I like my school's bandwidth quota system: "Internet traffic from any computer exceeding the 400 Megabyte per hour limit will be temporarily diverted into a narrow Internet 'pipe' for an hour." Sensible and broadly applicable.

he's saying that the people who give away their products under the Gnu license have absolutely no right to retroactively attempt to restrict the use and distribution of a product to which they have already waived their rights.

So tell me, how's the weather like in your bizarre alternate reality where SCO is winning all its lawsuits? And where Eben Moglen was kicked out of Columbia for academic fraud?

Not only are your arguments looney on their face, but they are also completely opposed to how business is actually conducted today in the real world. You make as much sense as claiming that Saddam Hussein has an arsenal of nuclear missiles.

In an unprecedented move, 16 labels sued the company today in court, claiming that the company violated antitrust laws by allowing the distribution of "all music not controled by the label cartel"

Unfortunately, the events of your satiric story are plausible. Instead of the record labels, it would be the music publishers, claiming that independent recordings are unauthorized covers of commercial songs. A music publisher even sued an artist over "subconscious copying" and won. In fact, with the finite number of possible melodies in the Western musical scale, we're bound to reach a point where nobody outside the music publishing cartel can compose and publish music at all. Then we get into this situation, which will make you think differently about Febreze Scentstories.

So software developers and publishers are able to purchase insurance against certain software patent infringements, and for purposes of this comment, we'll assume that's all well and good.

Thing is, it would appear that songwriters and music publishers would need an analogous form of insurance against copyright infringement claims, given that there exist a finite number of distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, and incumbent publishers like to sue startups for subconscious copying ( Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ). Has any company announced plans to offer this kind of insurance?

Suppose you record your own music, save it on your machine.

Who wrote the song? And how can you prove that it was entirely original? Perhaps you did subconsciously copy the work as in Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music (the "My Sweet Lord" case), and the original songwriter and music publisher deserve their cuts.

The MPAA claims that it's stolen, which implies that it's not yours go give away.

Nitpick: Music publishers make up the NMPA/Harry Fox Agency, not the Motion Picture Association of America.

I believe that Slashdot article from last Friday points to a paper that answers your question. Basically clients in the Skype network can become supernodes that are used to route traffic.

I know a couple. Weirdly, they both went to Columbia University.

And how do you help them develop a strong economy? Step one is to help them develop and maintain human capital. This is why the most brilliant social scientists on the planet agree that controlling disease and malnutrition are pretty much the best ways to help the developing world. I'd be surprised to see adoption of open-source software ranked quite that highly.

You might find these links interesting: one, two.

From the patent description:

"The invention based upon the fact that when a body made of magnetisable material is touched at different points and at different times by an electromagnet included in a telephonic or telegraphic circuit, its parts are subject to such varied magnetic influences that conversely by the action of the magnetisable body upon the electromagnet the same sounds or signals are subsequently given out in the telephone or recording instrument as those which previously caused the magnetic action upon the magnetisable body."

However, I think Joseph Jacquard deserves mention for his use of "punched cards" to store instructions for an automatic weaving loom, 200 years ago. Actually, even the written alphabet, which evolved out of arbitrary pictograms into a finite set of symbols several thousand years ago, could be described as a method for digital information storage, as the semantics of a written word normally doesn't change with the exact visual appearance of each glyph. I wonder if King Hammurabi ever awarded someone a patent on writing?

Youngster.

That's what the teletype is for.

Imagine how fun it would be to use this to send text messages!

No silly, that's what these are for.

other voip providers use a something called Session Initation Protocol which is an open standard, compatable with loads of clients even open source ones like kphone.
Even the routing can be done with open projects such as Asterisk. Skype is worthless proprietary tripe compared to these solutions.

If you are under 21, you have all the time in the world to pickup a musical instrument.

In fact, it's not as much the people under 21 who are playing but rather the people under 21 who are listening. Most establishments in my area where people of any age play live music are considered bars, and independent bands can't afford to get on commercial radio, so how would kids in high school learn that local indie bands exist? The way to reduce the RIAA's power to buy laws is to get the teen-age masses to stop buying its members' records; how can we go about doing this?

I do know how to read music - took some music composition in college

Yes, we have no original melodies. I used to write music; then I read about Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976), which held that subconsciously copying something you heard a decade ago is infringement. When were you studying music in college? Was it before Bright Tunes and other judicial decisions that expanded the scope of what is considered misappropriation of melody? Is it even possible to create an original melody anymore?

I'd really like to see more work along the lines of Columbia Newsblaster. I find that it presents more valuable information in a better format than Google News. If only it were updated more than once per day at best...

From their FAQ:

Every night, the system crawls a series of Web sites, downloads articles, groups them together into "clusters" about the same topic, and summarizes each cluster. The end result is a Web page that gives you a sense of what the major stories of the day are, so you don't have to visit the pages of dozens of publications.

Newsblaster is an academic project from the Natural Language Processing group at Columbia University's Department of Computer Science. It is designed to demonstrate the Group's technologies for multidocument summarization, clustering, and text categorization, among others. It is funded under DARPA TIDES and KDD and has been operational online since September 2001.

It might be old news to a lot of you, but I'm amazed at how many uber geeks I've run into who haven't heard of it. It's worth at least a look, if not a prominent bookmarking...

I'd really like to see more work along the lines of Columbia Newsblaster. I find that it presents more valuable information in a better format than Google News. If only it were updated more than once per day at best...

From their FAQ:

Every night, the system crawls a series of Web sites, downloads articles, groups them together into "clusters" about the same topic, and summarizes each cluster. The end result is a Web page that gives you a sense of what the major stories of the day are, so you don't have to visit the pages of dozens of publications.

Newsblaster is an academic project from the Natural Language Processing group at Columbia University's Department of Computer Science. It is designed to demonstrate the Group's technologies for multidocument summarization, clustering, and text categorization, among others. It is funded under DARPA TIDES and KDD and has been operational online since September 2001.

It might be old news to a lot of you, but I'm amazed at how many uber geeks I've run into who haven't heard of it. It's worth at least a look, if not a prominent bookmarking...

That's strange, my process more closely follows this flowchart!!!

Basically a bunch of speculation, that COULD happen. I COULD get hit by a bus ... Call us when it ACTUALLY happens.*

Had you taken the time to click the link, you'd see a bunch of cases leading up to one where it has happened. In Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music , George Harrison got sued and lost for inadvertently copying a song on his solo debut album.

You'd think they'd be pretty pissed given the money they've put into it. Dollars to doughnuts the University they mentioned talking to in the article is Columbia.

Thank you! That always bothers me.

In college I took a class on Gandhi's life and legacy (taught by the lovely Janaki Bakhle) and, come midterm time, fully half the students in the class spelled his name "Ghandi" on the exam. Honestly, what the fuck?

Janaki just about blew her lid the next day in class. It was really hot.

Coders spend a zillion hours of their free time to make a free open source game just so others can enjoy it but you can't do the same for a bunch of notes?

One major difference between a computer program and a musical work is that it's possible to consciously avoid copying a computer program. Under copyright law, "copying" a work into one's own work is defined as having ever had "access" even once to a given work and then producing a work that's "substantially similar". The desirable qualities of a computer program are behaviors, which are uncopyrightable, whereas the desirable qualities of a musical work are expressions, which are copyrightable. Thus, unlike a performance of a computer program, a performance of a musical work taints the listener with "access" to the work. Courts have ruled ( Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)) that a songwriter who writes and publishes a song that turns out to be similar to something he happened to have heard ten years ago on the radio or in a grocery store is just as liable of copyright infringement as "your friendly neighborhood pirate" who sells obviously copied CDs on a street corner.

Given precedent, how do songwriters avoid lawsuits from big publishers in practice? Computer programmers have the dirty/clean room method; what analogous method do songwriters have?

First, traditional electric typewriters were mostly mechanical beasts (electric, not electronic) actauted by springs and levers with the user's finger motion enhanced by a flywheel. Only the flywheel was driven electrically, all the rest was mechanical. This means that there are no electical siganls generated when the user presses a key, just a series of levers and catches that connect the flywheel with a typearm and some mechanism to advance the carriage. Even the carriage return and platen advance was mechanical: as the carriage advanced a spring was stretched. The carriage return released the carriage, which was pulled rapidly to the right by the carriage return spring. When the carriage slams into the stop at the rightmost end of travel, a pin or wedge caused the platen to advance to the next line. The driving force for the platen advance was the momentum of the returning carriage.

In theory, you could instrument the typewriters mechanics with sensors to detect key presses and carriage return events using optical or electronic sensors. The sensor states would be fed into a microcontroller which would format them for communication over the USB port. This would allow you to use the typewriter as an input device.

Using the typewriter as an ouput device, however, is more complicated. You would actually have to add a bunch of actuators (solenoids, for example) to the typewriter's mechanism. I can think of a few ways to do this, but they are all labor intensive (I'd mount the solenoids vertically beneath the typewriter and connect each solenoid to the actual key it drives by a wire or shaft. When the soleniod is activated, the key is physically pulled down, just as if the key had been pressed normally.) and power hungry. Again, a microcontroller would be used to accept data from the USB port and translate it into signals to actuate the solenoids. The MCU would need to keep track of, or be able to sense, carriage position and put suitable delays between keystrokes to prevent jamming the device.

It all sound quite fascinating, but of very little practical value. It is likely to be a bit costly as well, but that shouldn't stop the dedicated hobbyist. Of course, for a lot less effort and money you may still be able to find an old ASR-33 teletype with an optional RS232 interface (most ASR-33's used current-loop interfaces, which are not directly compatible with RS232). These old teletypes are pretty much what you are looking for, ready-made. You may freely substitute a DECwriter for the ASR-33 and I think there may be some versions of the IBM selectric that also fit the bill.

First, traditional electric typewriters were mostly mechanical beasts (electric, not electronic) actauted by springs and levers with the user's finger motion enhanced by a flywheel. Only the flywheel was driven electrically, all the rest was mechanical. This means that there are no electical siganls generated when the user presses a key, just a series of levers and catches that connect the flywheel with a typearm and some mechanism to advance the carriage. Even the carriage return and platen advance was mechanical: as the carriage advanced a spring was stretched. The carriage return released the carriage, which was pulled rapidly to the right by the carriage return spring. When the carriage slams into the stop at the rightmost end of travel, a pin or wedge caused the platen to advance to the next line. The driving force for the platen advance was the momentum of the returning carriage.

In theory, you could instrument the typewriters mechanics with sensors to detect key presses and carriage return events using optical or electronic sensors. The sensor states would be fed into a microcontroller which would format them for communication over the USB port. This would allow you to use the typewriter as an input device.

Using the typewriter as an ouput device, however, is more complicated. You would actually have to add a bunch of actuators (solenoids, for example) to the typewriter's mechanism. I can think of a few ways to do this, but they are all labor intensive (I'd mount the solenoids vertically beneath the typewriter and connect each solenoid to the actual key it drives by a wire or shaft. When the soleniod is activated, the key is physically pulled down, just as if the key had been pressed normally.) and power hungry. Again, a microcontroller would be used to accept data from the USB port and translate it into signals to actuate the solenoids. The MCU would need to keep track of, or be able to sense, carriage position and put suitable delays between keystrokes to prevent jamming the device.

It all sound quite fascinating, but of very little practical value. It is likely to be a bit costly as well, but that shouldn't stop the dedicated hobbyist. Of course, for a lot less effort and money you may still be able to find an old ASR-33 teletype with an optional RS232 interface (most ASR-33's used current-loop interfaces, which are not directly compatible with RS232). These old teletypes are pretty much what you are looking for, ready-made. You may freely substitute a DECwriter for the ASR-33 and I think there may be some versions of the IBM selectric that also fit the bill.

Clearly, it's time to update the old phonetic alphabet with something relevant to our modern wired world.

Alpha becomes Amazon, Bravo becomes Best Buy, etc. Foxtrot becomes FireFox; why, that's hardly a change at all! Hotel to Hotmail, X-ray to XBox...it's so simple to switch over.

I mean, who can remember that P is Papa? I'm much more likely to remember Paris Hilton.

Actually, mostly high-end music lessons: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/networks/advanced/

Even when you're suing yourself.

Read it Here. John Fogerty of CCR was sued for sounding too much like himself. Odd thing was, he woulda payed himself the money if he.... um... lost.

North America Population Density, 1995