Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: Wesley Allison Clark, a revered computer engineer whose work from the 1950s through 1970s underpinned the revolutions in personal computing, computer graphics, and the internet, died Monday. He was 88. Among other things, Clark was one of the two people (Charles Molnar being the other) who created LINC, the first mini-computer.

theodp writes: K–12 computer science and information technology teachers head to Grapevine, TX this week for the 2015 CSTA Conference. A glance at the draft agenda shows a remarkable number of presenters employed by or tied to two-year-old Code.org, the tech-bankrolled nonprofit that coincidentally sprung up together with Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC just months after Microsoft called for the creation of a national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis to advance its agenda. Code.org's shaping of the nation's CS K-12 education began with the release of its tech-billionaire and celebrity-studded, slickly-produced What Most Schools Don't Teach video, which went viral on YouTube after being promoted by politicians, Facebook, Google, and a Microsoft-sponsored theatrical release, sparking a groundswell of interest in expanding K-12 CS education, succeeding where a similarly-themed-and-messaged but decidedly-amateurish National Science Foundation video of real-but-little-known computer scientists failed just months earlier (YouTube Doubler comparison). (More, below.) "The time is ripe to seize that opportunity," declared the ACM's and Code.org's Cameron Wilson, describing how Code.org was forming a coalition with Microsoft, Google, NSF, NCWIT, ACM, CSTA, and others with the goal of changing policy to support CS education. Computer science educators literally applauded Code.org's efforts, which have led to funding of a number of new K-12 CS projects, and may soon make No Child Left Behind Act funding available for K-12 CS education. Despite promises of transparency, details of the relationship of the National Science Foundation, now-NSF partner Code.org, the White House, ACM, NCWIT, College Board, and Code.org's corporate and billionaire backers — including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook — have never really been explained.

theodp writes: On the 51st birthday of the BASIC programing language, GE Reports decided it was finally time to give-credit-where-credit-was-long-overdue, reporting that Arnold Spielberg, the 98-year-old father of Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, helped revolutionize computing when he designed the GE-225 mainframe computer. The machine allowed a team of Dartmouth University students and researchers to develop BASIC, which quickly spread and ushered in the era of personal computers. BASIC helped kickstart many computing careers, include those of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, as well as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

mikejuk (1801200) writes "Linus Torvalds, the 'man who invented Linux' is the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award, '[f]or pioneering development of the Linux kernel using the open-source approach.' According to Wikipedia, Torvalds had wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of 'free,' 'freak,' and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server it was first hosted for download, named Torvalds' directory linux. In some ways Git can be seen as his more important contribution — but as it dates from 2005 it is outside the remit of the IEEE Computer Pioneer award."

isoloisti writes "An article by some Microsofties in the latest issue of Computing Now magazine claims we have got passwords all wrong. When money is stolen, consumers are reimbursed for stolen funds and it is money mules, not banks or retail customers, who end up with the loss. Stealing passwords is easy, but getting money out is very hard. Passwords are not the bottleneck in cyber-crime and replacing them with something stronger won't reduce losses. The article concludes that banks have no interest in shifting liability to consumers, and that the switch to financially-motivated cyber-crime is good news, not bad. Article is online at computer.org site (hard-to-read multipage format) or as PDF from Microsoft Research."

Diomidis Spinellis writes "Two USC researchers published a paper in the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Computers that describes a technique for p2p content poisoning targeted exclusively at detected copyright violators. Using identity-based signatures and time-stamped tokens they report a 99.9 percent prevention rate in Gnutella, KaZaA, and Freenet and a 85-98 percent prevention rate on eMule, eDonkey, and Morpheus. Poison-resilient networks based on the BitTorrent protocol are not affected. Also the system can't protect small files, like a single-song MP3. Although the authors don't say so explicitly, my understanding is that the scheme is only useful on commercial p2p distribution systems that adopt the proposed protocol."

chizz writes "Online learning provider Blackboard announced the other day that it has patented the Learning Management System (LMS). The very same day it went after Desire2Learn for Patent infringement in a truly Salt Lake City kinda way. A great many educators are a bit shook up by this, and are stockpiling prior art all over the place. "

bariswheel writes "In a paper co-authored by the Microkernel Maestro Andrew Tanenbaum, the fragility of modern kernels are addressed: "Current operating systems have two characteristics that make them unreliable and insecure: They are huge and they have very poor fault isolation. The Linux kernel has more than 2.5 million lines of code; the Windows XP kernel is more than twice as large." Consider this analogy: "Modern ships have multiple compartments within the hull; if one compartment springs a leak, only that one is flooded, not the entire hull. Current operating systems are like ships before compartmentalization was invented: Every leak can sink the ship." Clearly one argument here is security and reliability has surpassed performance in terms of priorities. Let's see if our good friend Linus chimes in here; hopefully we'll have ourselves another friendly conversation."

Rob the Bold writes "October IEEE Spectrum magazine (print and online) reports on worldwide developments in exoskeleton technology. Applications include mobility for the disabled, increased lifting power for cargo loaders and nurses, and faster running capability. Developments in the US, Europe and Asia are reviewed." From the article: "Today, in Japan and the United States, engineers are finally putting some practical exoskeletons through their paces outside of laboratories. But don't look for these remarkable new systems to bust bricks or spew lightning. The very first commercially available exoskeleton, scheduled to hit the market in Japan next month, is designed to help elderly and disabled people walk, climb stairs, and carry things around. Built by Cyberdyne Inc., in Tsukuba, Japan, this exoskeleton, called HAL-5, will cost about 1.5 million yen (around US $13 800)."

An anonymous reader writes "A Japanese-government sponsored research consortium that include five chip makers and 17 other Japanese high-tech firms, has announced that the T-Engine, a ubiquitous computing platform is ready for prime time. The engine is featured in a IEEE Computer Society article (PDF) and discussed more on Windley's Technometria. The system is based on the iTron real-time OS and includes multiple boards for different applications."

Kanagawa asks: "The last few years have seen a slew of new Linux clustering and blade-server hardware solutions; they're being offered by the likes of HP, IBM, and smaller companies like Penguin Computing. We've been using the HP gear for awhile with mixed results and have decided to re-evaluate other solutions. We can't help but notice that the Google gear in our co-lo appears to be off-the-shelf motherboards screwed to aluminum shelves. So, it's making us curious. What have Slashdot's famed readers found to be reliable and cost effective for clustering? Do you prefer blade server forms, white-box rack mount units, or high-end multi-CPU servers? And, most importantly, what do you look for when making a choice?"

museumpeace writes "Tired of fixing your computer? What if your system broke down two billion miles from the nearest spare part or human? NASA has just held a colloquium where Ulster University computer science researcher Roy Sterritt was invited to present his ideas on Autonomic Computing. In the last few years,the leading system vendors have realized 'There is no less than a crisis today in three areas: cost, availability and user experience.' There has been a fair amount of academic research since customers like NASA see in it the potential to make remotely operated complex systems sustainable. It all makes for some very cool systems design work and there are lots of further research opportunities. Just don't forget what it may do to your job."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Once again, technology is imitating nature with a new class of biologically inspired robots called "Biomimetic Robots." In this very long article, IEEE Computer Magazine looks at several projects currently underway. All these projects will have practical applications a few years from now. They include robotic lobsters for underwater mine research or flying insect-based robots for future spatial missions. Other projects are about cricket-inspired robots to be used in rescue missions or scorpion-like robots to be deployed in hostile environments for humans. and of course, there are the now famous and robust "sprawling" robots based on cockroaches. For more information, read the whole very well documented article. Or read this summary for a photo gallery and direct links to all the projects."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A new concept is emerging in networking: wireless grids. These grids connect all kinds of wireless devices, such as sensors or cell phones, with each other and with more traditional wired grids. IEEE Internet Computing has devoted a very long and thorough article about these wireless grids which can deliver new resources, locations of use, and institutional ownership and control patterns for grid computing via ad hoc distributed resource sharing." (Read more below.)

"The article says that applications for wireless grids fall into three classes: the ones which aggregate information from the range of input/output interfaces found in nomadic devices, those which focus on the locations and contexts in which the devices exist, and those that leverage the mesh network capabilities of collections of nomadic devices. The authors add that these grids "emerged from a combination of the proliferation of new spectrum market business models, innovative technologies deployed in diverse wireless networks, and three related computing paradigms: grid computing, P2P computing, and Web services." If you're interested in the future of wireless networks, the original article is a must-read, but check this summary if your time is limited."

YetAnotherGeekGuy writes "IEEE Computer has an article this month, "The Zen of Overclocking" by Bob Colwell. In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders (which, in my personal experience, are two sets with a significant intersection). More importantly he talks about the phenomenon, the culture, the attitude, and the natural tension between them and the industry in the quest for the right balance between performance and reliability. Thought-provoking, and some good one-liners. Enjoy!"

bitkid writes "I recently run across techniques that can be used to watermark program code. While I yet have to see some source code for this to play with, the authors claim that the watermarks can be introduced into the source code and can be found in the compiled executable. My question for the slashdot-crowd is: Do you think free software (GPL or other viral licenses) should be watermarked? This could help to find GPL violations (think Everybuddy or Linksys) or can be used in court someday against the next SCO to prove authorship. What might be the ramifications of this?"

A random reader writes "IEEE is carrying a story about how 'extended space missions' may require a little forced evolution, or BORGIFYING. Humans must have additional abilities via implanted technologies (repair bones, monitor radiation levels). Machines must become more organic (fixing themselves, etc)."

silkySlim writes "EETimes has a short article about a combination data goggles and earpiece device to replace big manuals and reduce training time for assembly line workers. 'In one possible scenario, a technician with data goggles bends over the engine block of a luxury car and removes the covering. He is receiving instructions through an ear piece telling him what to do next while his data goggles mark the screws and bolts on which he must next place his tool.' Apparently, it's already in use by several automotive companies. There's some additional papers also available."

An anonymous submitter writes: "Stumbled upon a pretty interesting article considering the idea, 'What would machines do if they did achieve sentience?' It's by a sci-fi author I haven't heard of but worked with Kubrick on AI, he takes the whole AI or sentient machine idea a little further than we normally see in film."

lwbecker2 asks: "Warren Harrison has written a thought-provoking editorial piece on The Software Developer as Movie Icon. He explores the fact that new entrants to Computer Science curriculum are typically clueless about what 'real' developers actually do. While researching the issue of why this is the case, he determined that some potential CS degree seekers are forming opinions from portrayals in movies and cinema. He describes what he asserts to be inaccurate portrayals of developers in War Games, TRON, and The Net, and asks for input and opinions on 'the impact of the cinema and television on new software developers' expectations, as well as learn of any films that do a better job of portraying our profession...' I am sure Slashdot readers have some input on this, and I am curious if people believe _any_ movie has acurately portrayed software developers?"

lwbecker2 writes "IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine has a free story online about scientists try to solve the mystery of where all the missing comets are going. Do they go Poof? Interesting information on the modelling and simulation of the Universe including the use of Mathematica and Beowulf clusters."

An anonymous reader writes "This Stippling effort wins best paper at IEEE Boston conference. Could real time medical rendering be whizzier than Id?"

Raiford writes "Students can now take fully guided field trips in a VR environment. An article in the newsroom section of the IEEE website describes a trip to an historic Virtual Harlem setting in the 1920s and 30s. The article gives a description of the VR technology and programming and states that the simulation is supported for both Silicon Graphics and Linux platforms"

LarryWest42 writes: "This article lists a number of sobering security problems with SOAP (not only the avoidable one of tunneling through HTTP). I found it thanks to Bruce Schneier's latest Crypto-Gram newsletter."

Rayban writes: "From the Freenet Project homepage: IEEE Internet Computing has an article (pdf) entitled 'Protecting Free Expression Online with Freenet.' It provides an excellent technical introduction to the core ideas behind Freenet."

DecoDragon writes "Betty Holberton, one of the original ENIAC programmers, died on December 8th. An obituary describing her many achivements as well as her work on the ENIAC can be found in the Washington Post. Her accomplishments included contributing to the development of Cobol and Fortran, and coming up with using mnemonic characters for commands (i.e. a for add). She was awarded the Lovelace Award for extraordinary acomplishments in computing from the Asssociation for Women in Computing, and the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society for "development of the first sort-merge generator for the Univac which inspired the first ideas about compilation.""

DecoDragon writes "Betty Holberton, one of the original ENIAC programmers, died on December 8th. An obituary describing her many achivements as well as her work on the ENIAC can be found in the Washington Post. Her accomplishments included contributing to the development of Cobol and Fortran, and coming up with using mnemonic characters for commands (i.e. a for add). She was awarded the Lovelace Award for extraordinary acomplishments in computing from the Asssociation for Women in Computing, and the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society for "development of the first sort-merge generator for the Univac which inspired the first ideas about compilation.""

DecoDragon writes "Betty Holberton, one of the original ENIAC programmers, died on December 8th. An obituary describing her many achivements as well as her work on the ENIAC can be found in the Washington Post. Her accomplishments included contributing to the development of Cobol and Fortran, and coming up with using mnemonic characters for commands (i.e. a for add). She was awarded the Lovelace Award for extraordinary acomplishments in computing from the Asssociation for Women in Computing, and the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society for "development of the first sort-merge generator for the Univac which inspired the first ideas about compilation.""

stefaanh asks: "With the recent MS Passport concerns, I remembered an 'IEEE Expert' 'JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1997 article called 'Managing your privacy in an on-line world' written by Michael McCandless. It talks about why you would hand out private information (on the Net), and proposes a personal agent that manages your info, in a way that you control, what, who and when to give out a selection of your sensitive data. Who benefits: you, and the companies that don't pay for outdated or inaccurate data anymore, but [pay you] for accessing correct data. Since I consider Passports 'security' not as serious as the potential of consumer tracking, what sits in the way for this personal agent to challenge the threat of Passport's centralized approach? Isn't the time right for such an implementation?"

pedestrian writes: "Computer.org the IEEE site has an excellent, quite detailed, article about using 'a flexible piezoelectric foil stave to harness sole-bending energy and a reinforced PZT dimorph to capture heel-strike energy' and its potential to power 'wearable microelectronics'."

pedestrian writes: "Computer.org the IEEE site has an excellent, quite detailed, article about using 'a flexible piezoelectric foil stave to harness sole-bending energy and a reinforced PZT dimorph to capture heel-strike energy' and its potential to power 'wearable microelectronics'."

Updates and revisions for you on various and sundry stories you've seen here recently, from Parrot to Linux on handhelds to the recent judgement against MP3.com and more. Read on below to find them.

At least the jurors don't get to set the value of Pi. openbear writes: "According to a story at c|net the jurors meant for MP3.com to pay $3 million and not $300,000 in the court decision made last week. This may sound bad for MP3.com, but considering that TVT was originally going for $8.5 million I suppose that $3 million still looks like a good ruling. Espically since they have $42.9 million set aside for damage awards in pending suits."

(Here are some other articles about MP3.com as well.)

Parroting the (ORA, ActiveState, etc.) company line: rjoseph writes: "Perl.com's managing editor Simon Cozens has written a quick article on O'Reilly.com that explains the April Fools joke of the faked colaboration between Perl and Python to produce Parrot. He explains how the most interesting aspect about the whole affair is the fact that, to pull it off succesfully, the Perl and Python communities had to work together more than they had in a long time!"

Humor may suffer from analysis, but this is a cool explanation of what it took to pull off what turned out to be probably the most convincing Fool of the year, at least for those in the very small Venn diagram with the background and motivation to care about open-source programming languages and their creators;) Of course, now no one will believe it when the two do actually merge. (For a while I thought that the talk of "Python 3000" was a joke, too.)

Small steps on tiny machines n7lyg writes: "IEEE Computer has an article this month about a prototype PDA developed at Compaq's Western Research Labs: Itsy: Stretching the Bounds of Mobile Computing. Itsy has been through two implementations and has several unique features, including using MEMS accelerometers to implement a gesture interface (Rock'n'Scroll). This is all just research, but it does show promise for Linux-based PDA's. Itsy runs the X Window System and Qt Palmtop. The WRL website for Itsy is here."

This is really cool background material; now the earlier Itsy work has led to Linux on the iPAQ, I wish Compaq would actually sell a PDA with the size and shape of the Itsy itself. And tiny accelerometers for gesture-control would be welcome on my visor as well, and surely for small video game systems.

Big Blue, Big Blue, your transmission is fading, please say again, over. An Onymous Coward writes: "This sucks. At LWCE there was a big display at the KDE booth using ViaVoice to control KDE apps through Qt. Now it looks like the project is dead in the water, according to this article at Newsforge -- maybe lack of interest from IBM?"

What with the billion dollars that IBM has pledged to spend on Linux-related projects, and the fact that ViaVoice has shipped for a while with the high-end boxed version of Mandrake, hopefully this is just an oversight. ViaVoice is a cool technology -- but if things don't work out between Qt and IBM, perhaps KDE (and GNOME, and others, level playing field here!) can work on integration with Sphinx. An Apache-style license should be all-around friendly, right?

Updates and revisions for you on various and sundry stories you've seen here recently, from Parrot to Linux on handhelds to the recent judgement against MP3.com and more. Read on below to find them.

At least the jurors don't get to set the value of Pi. openbear writes: "According to a story at c|net the jurors meant for MP3.com to pay $3 million and not $300,000 in the court decision made last week. This may sound bad for MP3.com, but considering that TVT was originally going for $8.5 million I suppose that $3 million still looks like a good ruling. Espically since they have $42.9 million set aside for damage awards in pending suits."

(Here are some other articles about MP3.com as well.)

Parroting the (ORA, ActiveState, etc.) company line: rjoseph writes: "Perl.com's managing editor Simon Cozens has written a quick article on O'Reilly.com that explains the April Fools joke of the faked colaboration between Perl and Python to produce Parrot. He explains how the most interesting aspect about the whole affair is the fact that, to pull it off succesfully, the Perl and Python communities had to work together more than they had in a long time!"

Humor may suffer from analysis, but this is a cool explanation of what it took to pull off what turned out to be probably the most convincing Fool of the year, at least for those in the very small Venn diagram with the background and motivation to care about open-source programming languages and their creators;) Of course, now no one will believe it when the two do actually merge. (For a while I thought that the talk of "Python 3000" was a joke, too.)

Small steps on tiny machines n7lyg writes: "IEEE Computer has an article this month about a prototype PDA developed at Compaq's Western Research Labs: Itsy: Stretching the Bounds of Mobile Computing. Itsy has been through two implementations and has several unique features, including using MEMS accelerometers to implement a gesture interface (Rock'n'Scroll). This is all just research, but it does show promise for Linux-based PDA's. Itsy runs the X Window System and Qt Palmtop. The WRL website for Itsy is here."

This is really cool background material; now the earlier Itsy work has led to Linux on the iPAQ, I wish Compaq would actually sell a PDA with the size and shape of the Itsy itself. And tiny accelerometers for gesture-control would be welcome on my visor as well, and surely for small video game systems.

Big Blue, Big Blue, your transmission is fading, please say again, over. An Onymous Coward writes: "This sucks. At LWCE there was a big display at the KDE booth using ViaVoice to control KDE apps through Qt. Now it looks like the project is dead in the water, according to this article at Newsforge -- maybe lack of interest from IBM?"

What with the billion dollars that IBM has pledged to spend on Linux-related projects, and the fact that ViaVoice has shipped for a while with the high-end boxed version of Mandrake, hopefully this is just an oversight. ViaVoice is a cool technology -- but if things don't work out between Qt and IBM, perhaps KDE (and GNOME, and others, level playing field here!) can work on integration with Sphinx. An Apache-style license should be all-around friendly, right?

n7lyg writes: "Xerox PARC has come up with a way to embed data in printed images that involves using something called DataGlyphs. A DataGlyph is essentially an oblong pixel that takes the value of zero or one depending on whether it is printed angled to the left or right. Printed at sufficiently fine resolution, this is no different from ordinary offset printing effects using circular pixels, but when scanned by a computer allows recovery of arbitrary data embedded in the images or text of the printed page. An article in this month's IEEE Computer contains a lot of interesting applications of this technology, including a system to allow teachers to create printed tests and lab assignments with embedded DataGlyphs to allow automatic generation of graded and annotated results." I think we've done an article on this before, but I don't see it in the archives...

hansley writes: "Microsoft has extended its source code licensing program. Is it for distributed debugging purposes ? hmm ..." As the article points out, this limited and NDA-ridden disclosure is an expansion, rather than a wholly new idea. And remember, it has "nothing to do" with Linux or other Open Source software.

eheien writes: "The IEEE currently has an article detailing SETI@home, written by the project founders. The article goes into a great deal of detail on how SETI@home works, how sensitive the search is to signals (it can detect a cell phone on Saturn's moons), how successful it has been, and so on." It's a good read, and has some impressive numbers about the project that most SETI@home participants may not have realized.

Last week you asked online activist Scott Reents about his organization The Democracy Project, about online political action, about the worth of political involvement in general. He's obliged with some lengthy, thoughtful answers. If nothing else, his words should give you pause when you vote -- or don't.

Query
by Modern_Celt

Considering the speed of internet communication is this going to make it even more difficult for those in the Western states to care about the election? After all, most of the networks already predict a winner LONG before the poles out west close.

Scott Reents: Internet or no Internet, your individual vote is mathematically meaningless in determining the outcome of an election anyway, and exit polls already exist to remind you of this fact.

Still, the speed of the Internet is an important factor in our overall participation in politics. For example, MoveOn was able to organize and channel millions of people opposed to Clinton's impeachment in a matter of weeks. Normally, organizations can't mobilize their membership around pending legislation or regulations, because the window of opportunity before they are enacted is too small. This makes a truly grassroots organization an impossibility without the Internet, because there must always be organizational management to serve as proxies to (hopefully) represent their members interests.

How does the medium change the message?
by Squirrel Killer

I think most of us have a pretty good understanding of the ways in which the Internet affects the method of political communications. Instead of phone banking and lit drops, you can use e-mail lists and Web sites, to cite just two examples.

However, the more interesting question, in my mind, is how the Internet, as a medium, affects the message. How do you view political content changing as a response to the new methods available? Will political content move more to the extremes, since politicians can target more effectively, or will it move more mainstream, since more people are brought into the political arena.

Beyond the message, how will the internet affect political outcomes? Are there any potential policy options that become possible with the new methods available?

Scott: Will the Internet affect the "message" of political communication? Absolutely.

The medium is the message, which is to say that the characteristics of the Internet imply that certain messages work and certain messages do not work. The fact that there is so much choice on the Internet means that messages that are pure rhetoric and are not informative do not work; users can and will click elsewhere. The fact that hyperlinking is so common means that messages that don't link to supporting material are assumed to be hiding something. The fact that online publishing is so inexpensive means that users won't accept superficial explanations of positions and values.

Politicians CAN continue to make Web sites that are nothing more than glorified brochures, but who will visit them? Right now, I think that people visit them for the novelty, and because they don't really know what to expect, but that will not last if they continue to treat their users like fools.

Now, you raise an interesting point about the impact of politicians being able to "target" more effectively. To talk to most Internet marketers/campaigners these days, you'd think that "targeted" communication was the essence of the Internet, and was the highest form of interactivite communication. Wrong. Targeted communication is not of the Internet. It is of direct mail. It's a method used to improve response rates (like, from 3% to 4%, a 33% improvement!), to save money on postage, to hit the right hot buttons, blah, blah, blah. And it's not interactive; the communication is essentially as one way as broadcast television -- just more accurate.

Which is to say that I agree with your suggestion that targeting results in more extreme messages and a more stratified electorate, and I think that's dangerous.

It's also the way that the Internet politics space will move if left to develop by itself. In the last 12 months, sites like Grassroots.com ("Your political action network"), Voter.com ("Delivering democracy to your desktop"), Speakout.com ("Speak Out. Be Heard."), Vote.com ("Your vote will always be sent where it counts"), have all started with the premise of being able to aggregate site users and then sell targeted access (via e-mail, banner ads, etc.) to political campaigns, a prospect that I think is unhealthy for democracy.

That's why I wrote the essay -- to describe the way that political campaigns SHOULD be using the Internet for communication, and to try to set a higher standard for what people expect online. I don't think that an Internet of primarily targeted political messages is an inevitability, but it certainly is a possibility.

Will candidates ever really do this?
by El Volio

Interesting article. As a fairly neutral U.S. citizen, it occurs to me that, to many, the ideas expressed here are applied versions of general democratic ideals. Most voters would like to see more information about what candidates actually are proposing, and many want objective comparisons from unbiased sources.

But that's not politics. Never has been, and probably never will be.

So here's the question: Do you think that candidate sites are ever actually likely to provide objective data? Or do you think there will ever be a truly unbiased, trusted source (perhaps like the way the media should be) where specific information about tax cut proposals and so forth will be located?

Scott: You've exposed the dirty little secret of my essay, which is that I expect that 90% (at least) of politicians currently running would ignore my advice, should they read and understand it. So you're right in once sense; there are very few candidate sites today that remotely do what I prescribe, and most political advisers would consider such steps suicide because they violate the most important rule in their book: don't give up control.

But I don't think that means that it won't happen, any more than the fact that Microsoft hasn't supported open software means that open software isn't happening. My argument is simply that the traditional mode of campaigning doesn't work very well on the Internet, and so those that continue in the traditional mode will have to do so somewhere other than the Internet. And as important as this medium is becoming, that is a more and more unsustainable strategy.

And there are examples of candidates who are doing the right things. Ventura took some baby steps in the right direction with his e-mail lists. This Congressional candidate in Idaho is doing a very good job of running a citizen-centric campaign on the Internet, and so far succeeding. I'm sure there are others, though they are still few and far between. You will see more and more of them, and if you don't, you should consider starting your own. There are also 6,700 unofficial candidate sites put up by individuals that could potentially do things that the candidate would never allow his official site to do.

Let me also clarify one point, which is that I'm not suggesting that candidates build sites that are purely unbiased presentations of information. No, there is clearly still a role for opinion and leadership and values, but the best sites will present these in the context of information that people are looking for.

Candidates would be smart to try to emerge as reliable framers of issues -- the ones that attempt to set the scope of the problem, identify relevant evidence, outline competing values, etc. This is one of the most powerful positions to be in, but you can only do this if respect opposing viewpoints and treat them fairly. Frames are never the Congressional and state level, that people will be able to demonstrably say that the Internet had a measurable impact on the outcome of elections.

More importantly, the 2000 elections are key because they will begin to set the standard for political communication on the Internet. Millions of dollars is being invested in building online political resources -- campaign-oriented, commercial, nonprofit, government, etc. -- and the way that that is invested will have a tremendous impact over the way the political Internet develops over the next 20 years.

Will it be a commercial Yahoo model of aggregating lots of users and then auctioning off access to them to the highest bidders? Will it be a broadcast model, trying to attract as many eyeballs without giving up any real control? Or will it be a civic model, empowering citizens to take a more meaningful role in the running of the government?

If it is the latter, I believe that it could have far-reaching impacts on many facets of politics, from the two-party system to the role of soft money and PACs to the types of legislation that gets enacted.

detailed content
by geekpress

One reason, in my opinion, that politicians don't provide detailed content on their Web sites about policy proposals is the concern that what they say will come back to bite them, a la "No New Taxes." Concrete policy proposals can be used against them once in office, for it is easier to measure someone's actions against written statements than soundbytes and speeches.

So, given this strong incentive to keep proposals vague, what other incentives can we offer politicians to pony up the details of their plans for us?

Scott: You're absolutely right, that politicians are wary of detailed proposals coming back to bite them, although I'd say "no new taxes," was missing some of the elements of a detailed proposal (like, detail).

Getting politicians to offer more detail requires that citizens have a way of demanding more. Imagine if there were a forum open to all candidates who agreed to abide by the rules of the forum -- citizens ask the questions, are allowed follow-up questions, and candidates can answer or not, but the entire forum is aware of what you answer and don't. Well, no candidates would come, because candidates insist on control over the information they have to give up. What if, however, the forum contained 10%, 20%, or even 50% of the likely voters. I bet you'd see a lot more interest. There would be the credible threat that at least one candidate (particularly the one who was trailing in the polls) would show up, and then all candidates would be forced to show up. I propose that that forum can be built on the Internet, and I bet some of you are smart enough to come up with a way to figure out which questions to ask.

Politicians are opportunistic; they will do what they need to do to win. So, the answer to getting them to pony up more information is to make it a necessary component of winning.

The truth is, there is a subtle collusion between politicians and traditional media. Traditional media want to make money from politicians showing up on their talk shows, buying ads, granting interviews, participating in debates, and they don't care deeply about making these things particularly meaningful. Thus, politicians hold the upper hand -- as long as they can deliver entertainment (ala sound bytes, debate one-liners, etc.) -- they do not have to give up any real control. Politicians give media what they want; media gives politicians what they want.

Is Internet driving a societal shift?
by Noel

In your essay you say, "the expectations of people on the Internet are different and more demanding than citizens' expectations in general."

Are these higher expectations a result of being on the Internet, or does Internet access self-select people that have higher expectations?

Will the influx of people onto the Internet raise the expectations of the general populace, or will it dilute the expectations of the Internet community?

Scott: It's a little bit of both. However, I believe that higher expectations is more a result of the medium than of the particular people who have chosen to use the medium. I'm not saying that the Internet improves people -- makes them more critical, more involved, more interested in learning, better judges of argument -- but I am saying that on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users.

In my research into Internet behavior, I've found that there is about am 18-month period of acclimitazation online, after which people are much more likely to do more "sophisticated" activities (e.g., personalizing information, registering, purchasing, changing default start-up pages, etc.), and this observation holds true as much for the people who first went online in 1996 as it does for the people who just went online last year.

This suggests to me that people's expectations and use of the medium is not set when they come online, but rather evolves over time. I believe that this increased sophistication comes with an increasing degree of impatience: people understand what types of sites work and what type don't, and they leave sites that don't.

Why are libertarians better represented on the net?
by Russ Nelson

So why do Internet political polls always generate results which are more skewed towards the libertarian philosophy? Is it because they don't "count" and so people feel more free to vote how they feel? Or is it because people who are drawn to the net value freedom more than security?

Scott: Most Internet polls do a very poor job of being scientific, so I would be very wary of concluding that Harry Browne's apparent popularity among Internet users is real. The most important factor, in my opinion, is that non-mainstream parties like the Libertarians do better in Internet polls because these marginilized groups feel a greater desire to participate in these polls, as a way of generating awareness for their movements.

Still, there is certainly a more libertarian ethic on the Internet, and in the same way that I think that people become more sophisticated with time, I think that people begin to value the freedom of the Internet with time. In my experience, the strongest advocates of regulating speech on the Internet are those who have the least amount of experience with it. However, if you look at party affiliations, voting behavior, etc. of Internet users, it's what you'd expect from a group of people with above average education and income (Pew Research has done some nice, though a bit dated research on the subject).

Realistically, does the net matter?
by neowintermute

Can we realistically say that the Internet is making a difference in the political process? Can a basically unknown candidate like Ralph Nader get a resonable number of votes thanks to just his web site? Or are people really just going to the Web sites of the candidates they hear about on television? In the closed capitalist mind space we inhabit, big monetary interests determine the range of possibilities people think are viable.

According to a recent IBM/Altavista study, even on the net the big money sites like Yahoo "basically control the flow of information". So can we really think that the net is going to suddenly bring us democracy despite the nondemocratic nature of our entire economy/political system?

Scott: I wouldn't go so far as to say that our economic-political system is nondemocratic. I'd be the first to say that there are aspects that don't work as well as we'd like, but these are easily outweighed by the institutions and processes that are democratic.

Still, the degree to which information is controlled by corporate interests is disturbing. Ralph Nader is unlikely to get many votes just because of his Web site, and he's someone with actually quite a bit of promotional muscle behind him. One of the main reasons is that the traditional method of finding information on the Net, the search engine, tends to reinforce the hierarchies of offline power structures

To me, this says that the Net will not matter if left to develop in its "natural" commercial fashion. Because this is an election year, there is a unique opportunity for efforts that define the political Internet outside of this commercial environment. Millions are for the first time looking for political information and interaction, which means that it's not nearly as difficult (ie, expensive) as it has been/will be to get a site that captures a fair amount of this traffic. And if done correctly, ie, in a citizen-centric fashion, such a site should be able to use this jump-start to create a community that endures and matters. Anyway, that's the bet I've taken in leaving my .com job (and stock options) to start the Democracy Project.

I'm sure most of you are cognizant of the power -- commercial, political, spiritual, whatever -- that slashdot has. In pitching the Democracy Project to foundations and other "civicly-minded" folks, I almost always point to slashdot as an example of the potential power of the Internet.

Slashdot gives the average person the ability to address a forum of hundreds of thousands of people. I contend that that is unique in the history of the world, and that development is revolutionary in the way that Gutenberg's printing press was revolutionary.

What about a Slashdot for politics? Is there a space for something like this? Absolutely. In fact there is probably room for many Slashdots for politics. In its own way, Slashdot is arguably already a Slashdot for politics, with the discussions about Columbine, digital copyright, CDA, etc. Now, I know that the idea of Slashdot as a political forum is a controversial one, so I'm not saying that Slashdot should be more political. I'm just saying that the model has already shown that the Internet has the potential to effect meaningful change on the way our political system works.

noted
by jbarnett

It has been noted that Al Gore is popular among geeks for many reaons, for example he invented the Internet, runs Linux on his Web site and hides cool little things in his HTML source. What do you think other Presidential candidates have to do or are doing to "compete" with Al Gore for the Geek vote?

Bill Clinton raised a lot of votes by "reaching out" to the Youth of America, do you think Al Gore will continue to "reach out" to the Geeks of America in the same aspect as Clinton did a few years back?

In your personal opinon who is the more 31337 hAx0r: Gore or Bush? And Finally the question everyone is dying to know the answer to: If pited against each other in a roman style caged deathmatch, who would win, Gore or Bush?

Scott: I certainly hope that geeks will base their voting decisions on more than what operating system a candidate's Web site is running. In all likelihood, Al Gore had nothing to do with that decision, and the fact that his Webmaster hides cool things in his HTML will not have any impact on what Gore might or might not do as president. These things are almost entirely symbolic, which isn't surprising since the majority of discourse among the presidential candidates is symbolic rather than substantive.

Of course, Al Gore will "reach out" to the youth of America, but the question is, will he do it in a way that matters or will it be mostly about posting pictures of Al in front of a computer on his Web site? Bush, too. I see them in a dead heat for last in truly reaching out to the YOA.

Now, as for the roman-style caged deathmatch, do you mean Catharginian or Syracusean rules?

'Ender's Game'
by ZetaPotential

A system very similar to what you advocate has been described in some detail in Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game. In that book, Card describes online bulletin boards where people "share information, organize and build consensus around issues," to quote your essay. A central part of this book is that two genius pre-teens write intelligent posts and counterposts in a way that manipulates public opinion on crucial political issues, for their own advancement.

So, my question is this: If someday the majority of people formulate their political opinions based on what they read in forums similar to Slashdot, will it be possible for individuals or organizations to manipulate the "public discourse" in such a way that advances their own agendas? If so, what type of steps would you advocate to reduce this type of "political trolling"?

Scott: A friend showed me Ender's Game, and I agree that what I'm advocating has a lot in common with that vision of political discourse. Clearly, there are some very difficult questions about how you preserve the sanctity of an online "townhall," and I'd be lying if I said I knew all the answers, but I do have some thoughts.

One thing they didn't do in Ender's Game was to verify that each participant on the boards was unique. There should have been a way to verify that people were unique individuals in such a way that still allowed them their right to anonymity. This would have kept Peter and Valentine from using fake identities to serve as foils and practice posters. This kind of anonymous authentication would be an important feature of an online townhall.

Ultimately, however, the real threat they posed is was a result of their geniuses and proclivity to manipulate. There will always be demogogues, and keeping them from masquerading won't keep them from manipulating. Caveat emptor.

There are lots of other vulnerabilities in an online townhall, but I think the most dangerous is the power that the "management" has to use the rules of the townhall to serve their own interests. Absolute vodka, er power, corrupts absolutely, as they say. There need to be safeguards to ensure that the people who set the rules are ultimately accountable to the people who use the site. For example, at the Democracy Project we are designing our site to have as little management involvement as possible. There are certain management powers that exist on Slashdot (e.g., bitchslapping) that we don't think belong in an online townhall. We have also organized ourselves legally in such a way that we will allow registrants on our site (after it has critical mass) to remove the management in a vote of no-confidence. We don't expect this to be a regular event, but it's a safeguard that provides a last resort of accountability.

Candidates and their records
by Remus Shepherd

You talk about what the political parties should do to improve their Web sites, but don't mention what people outside political circles can accomplish. The Web sites you list in your article do *not* have what everyone says they want: An unbiased checklist of issues referenced to the candidates and their voting record.

Forget the political parties for a moment, as I don't believe they'll ever report unbiased information. That leaves us, the people.

Do you think there is room for a grassroots organization to collect the voting histories of candidates and publicize their records? If so, why doesn't such an organization already exist? Could such an organization thrive, or would it be besieged by political candidates who don't want their true voting histories known?

Scott: First, there are already sites that collect and report the candidate's records. I recommend USA Democracy, Project Vote-Smart, and THOMAS as excellent sources of info on candidate positions, voting records, and public statements.

But your broader question is important, because I think that as valuable as these and other political information sites are, they leave a gap that could (should) be filled by a grassroots effort.

The unbiased checklist of positions is a good, but incomplete way to make voting decisions. It's unlikely to include references to the most current, relevant issues. It overly reduces the complexity of how legislators make voting decisions (the best policy makers are generally not dogmatic and are good compromisers). And the list of issues is defined and arbitrary, which makes you wonder who got to decide which issues to include on the list.

So, the gap to me is the open, online townhall, an alternative source of information and political deliberation, an example of which we've described at our Web site, and are currently developing. This would allow everyone the opportunity to offer their own checklists, or point to others who have developed checklists that they agree with. But in addition, it would allow discussion of the most current events, and more importantly, the competing values that underlie policy proposals, neither of which will ever be adequately addressed by a position checklist.

Can such an organization thrive? I believe so. Grassroots organizations draw their strength from their membership, and so are not dependent on the approval of candidates in order to exist. So long as such an organization could provide a valuable service to its membership, it could endure. In fact, I'd say that such an organization would HAVE to be grassroots, because it must be independent of the political players in order to be effective. Lack of grassroots support is one of the reasons why it's unlikely that USA Democracy, Vote-Smart, THOMAS, and the commercial sites discussed above will realize the full vision of the Citizen-centric Internet.

Thanks all. If you want to be alerted when we launch our site, sign up here

Scott

www.democracyproject.org

Shuga-Buga writes "Ken Thompson, father of Unix, has some critical things to say about Linux. Otherwise an interesting article. " (CT:Sorry about the unsteady posting. Hemos is on vacation, and I'm moving so things are really crazy right now)

Baggio writes "According to the Unofficial UltraHLE Project, Nintendo is not sueing or trying to sue the authors of UltraHLE and UltraHLE is and will be continued by RM and E." This is obviously just rumor. But its interesting.

Norman Lorrain writes "This month's Computer magazine is running an article by Ted Lewis in which he predicts Open Source software will hit a brick wall. "

khizard writes "IEEE Software special issue about linux is out. It's very high level (no kernel intrinsic or any clue on linux 2.2 architecture :-) and try to place linux in the current computer industry. So sad you have to be IEEE member to have full access to the pdf file, but you can still read the abstracts. "

A new book is out The Anatomy of a High-Performance Microprocessor, A Systems Perspective (Interactive Book & CD-ROM) which uses the AMD K6-2 3D as the case study or discussions on microarchitecture issues. From the contents it looks rather interesting for anybody needing to understand the internals of an x86 processor, or wanting to build their own.

Maro Shim writes "After Oracle and Informix, IBM will announce support for their DB2 database under Linux. Sybase and Caldera will announce Sybase for Linux "

Jason Murray writes " Wired has an article that talks about a free Java OS. They say it openly developed and freely distributed." I'm amazed by how much People are still hammering on this JavaOS thing. Anyway the article talks a bit about BeOS and Linux as well. It's worth a skim.

Edwin wrote in to tell us that the latest version of XFree86 is out. New features and bug fixes are in, but the web page hasn't updated yet so I haven't got a good list of major changes. I want Neomagic support and fixes for the Millenium @24bit, but beggers can't be choosers.