Slashdot Mirror

Anyone remember the Tom and Jerry show? No matter how much Tom tried to kill (and eat) Jerry, that elusive mouse managed to escape unharmed.

Seems strinkingly similar to this, no? ; )

Check out this link for more information about the two animals that couldn't get along.

-BBoy doodles
C is for cookie

But the truly sad part of this whole debacle is that DND does have the literary depth that those video games lack. Solomon's movie apparently didn't use any of it.

TSR owns enormous worlds full of stories the movie could have drawn upon, such as the Forgotten Realms. Anyone who's played any of the Bioware games has already been there. For example, some of the Icewind Dale novels made the NYT bestseller lists. I bet their author, R A Salvatore, would have been happy to write a decent screenplay instead of the neophyte hacks that Solomon hired.

I suspect the problem boils down to licensing. The movie probably didn't have rights to anything except the DND name. The question is whether TSR was unwilling to provide more, or did Solomon not bother to ask for help?

Ever wonder why all EULAs look the same? Try the EULA Generator and find out!

Security through obscurity works, in the end.

Sorry, but that's exactly wrong - security through obscurity doesn't work .. not longterm anyway.

There have been many programs in wide scale use, with no source, that have been exploited by [ch]rackers - all it takes is one knowledgable person, and a dissasembler.

I've spent many a happy evening at home reverse engineering communications protocols, and the like - theres a fine example of something thats not automatically secure just because the details aren't published.

But the only way the hackers find out is by reading bugtrak

Granted some script kiddie[sz] will find details of exploits from reading SecurityFocus, and BugTrack - but if those sites didn't exist they'd be talking about them on IRC anyway.

A talented [hc]racker isn't going to need somebody to spoonfeed him/her exploits - they will sit and discover them by examining source code, or binaries.

Here's an example:

After I testified before the House Subcommittee on Space on my participation in the passage of a couple of laws to reform NASA's rather nasty attitude toward private launch services I was pretty close to being out of money. Civic responsibility will do that to you if you don't watch it. Even so, a company whose rocket technology I liked was on the ropes -- a couple of weeks from closing their doors. The CEO gave me an impressive sounding position with the company, offered me a percentage in the company and I maxed out my credit flying around to see what I could do to help salvage the business with no guarantee of compensation.

The first day I arrived at HQ, a strange call came in to the CEO. Some guy claimed to have been referred by NASA because he wanted to find out how to obtain certain kinds of permits that the company had obtained. It turns out the guy wanted a permit to let a device he had made go into space. He said he had constructed a high power vibration stimulator as a diagnostic aid in his business, which was vibration isolation in some mechanical systems, and the damn thing malfunctioned. The problem is this particular Damn Thing, when it malfunctioned, started vibrating off to the side of the table and then it fell off -- but before it hit the floor, it turned in mid air and went up at an angle, hitting the ceiling of his shop where it hit so hard it left a dent in the metal conduit -- and it didn't just bounce off and fall to the floor, it stuck there until he unpluged the infernal contraption.

OK, well the obvious questions were asked like: "Was the conduit a feromagnetic material?" etc. "Are you sure it actually accellerated up to the ceiling or did it just jump up and somehow stick there?" -- you know, the standard Skeptics Society stuff.

This character got my curiousity, not having ever run across one of these conservation-law-violating-sonofaguns before, so I took one of his phone calls and started asking him innocent questions -- like, "How many tests have you run on the device since that time? Have you taken any quantitative measurements? What are the numbers? What did you to do get these numbers?" etc. The interesting thing was he gave me two sets of numbers from two tests, with different weights attached, he said he conducted on a playground with a fishing line attached to the thing to pull the plug on a cellular phone battery at a given height. The numbers he gave were distance traveled vertically vs time. In one test the calculus told me his upward force was less than in the other run by a big margin. So I asked him if he had changed anything else between the two runs other than adding the weight to one of them. He said no. So I asked him to describe his test procedure very carefully. He went through the process verbally, and at one point he said he "turned the variable resistor down until the thing started to lift off -- then I backed off". "Was the resistor in the same position both times?", I asked. "I don't think so because the heavier test run required more power."

Oh, gee whiz -- here is a guy who is not only imagining he ran a levitating device straight up in the air from a playground, but he fabricated results that were inexplicable except from an error in his experimental procedure that he himself seemed not to have thought about. He also told me that on the third run he had some friends of his with him to help and the thing lifted off but then exploded leaving a "line of metallic powder across the playground asphalt". This is either one hell of a smart sociopath playing mind games or he is a covert operative or he is some sort of genius at dreaming things up on the spot that even his conscious mind couldn't have fabricated or he is, in some important sense, telling the truth.

I admit it -- he had me hooked. I invited him to dinner and even though he was a couple hundred miles away, he drove his company truck up to meet me. I won't say what the company name was, because that would give a bit too much information away but it was a company name that was like a double-entendre or pun on his activities that reflected both his mundane business and this weird business of levitating infernal devices -- just the sort of the thing that your dream state would make up and Jung would analyze for you or maybe something that Jaques Vallee would report in one of his weirder "encounter" reports or maybe something that some covert operative would do to mess your mind up or maybe something a complete psycho would do because the little man in his head told him to. So anyway, I had dinner with him and he seemed genuinely worried when I told him that if this was real, he should take precautions by placing a disclosure with an trusted accounting firm to be put in the public domain upon his death or disablement. I don't think he thought I was going to kill him but he could pick up from me that I thought he should be more cautious.

So now what? OK, so he says he is going to build another version of it, because he thinks he knows the principle of operation, but he wants it to be lower power and lower frequency so it doesn't explode and hurt someone. He tells me how his experiments are going but he never seems able to get the original, unequivocal, levitating performance -- all his reports are closer to the rest of the legendary reactionless drives that always end up with marginal effects.

Finally, I tell him to send me a video tape of the thing either accellerating upwards or in a pendulum test and if he doesn't I won't be interested in talking to him any more, but if it shows an unequivocal force, I'll fly him to SV to talk to guys with some capital. He sends me a video tape. It is a short tape with some sort of noise on it. A friend of mine said it had been degaussed but with some sort of external magnetic field -- not by a tape recorder. So I call the inventor and tell him it really isn't OK to send me an erased tape. He seems at first incomprehending and then a bit afraid but then composes himself and starts speculating on how it might have been degaussed in transit. So he says he'll send me two tapes, one via UPS and one FedEx. I never received any packages, his phone is disconnected and I never hear from him again.

To wrap up the story, sort of, he did tell me the electric motor make he used, so I went to an electric motor place -- an old one that had been around since the early 60s. I asked for the specific motor and the proprieter turned around to the assistant and said "Do you remember that guy from the Apollo program at NASA Ames back in the 60s who was building the flying saucer? Where did we order that motor from?"

OK, that's enough weirdness for now...

The article was a fairly decent description, but (like the article in the MSF newsletter) it leaves out a crucial part of the picture: how do people overcome the tactics of division and discipline in these places?

The intensification of work in call centres is part of a long and dishonourable tradition. In Henry Ford's factories, for instance, the imposition of the assembly line (designed to regulate the pace of work of the workforce) was combined with barracks style accomodation for workers, and a rule which forbade conversation while on the line.

A feature of factory work in the 1950s and 1960s was the struggle over intensity of work - an example of such a struggle can be found in 'Counter Planning on the Shopfloor' by Bill Watson. 'Autonomists' have examined these struggles, not just as a study in being disgruntled, but as examples of a way beyond control, domination, and the endless imposition of work.

In contrast to unions, who want 'more humane' working conditions in this shitholes, some 'autonomists' (like the people from Undercurrent in Brighton, UK) have been examining how the 'refusal of work' operates in 'call centres'.

As Watson's essay shows, the 'refusal of work' is a collective process, a process of people covering for each other and building an alternative way of operating. It also gives those of us who are call centre users as handle on the process - it poses the challenge of how to link our own struggle against the imposition of work (a process which is hardly critiqued, and often embraced by IT workers) with theirs. In a sense, the origins of the open source movement - in programmers who would rather use code they create and control, and who would rather spend time coding a creative solution (an activity considering 'innefficient' by management) - are an aspect of the 'refusal of work' in IT.

Lets not pretend that call centres are an exception here - a minor 'blemish' whose inhabitants are too stupid or too different from us non-call centre types in some way. They're just the 'best of breed' example of how to impose work on IT workers.

Fuck that! Never work! Monkey-wrench your network today! :)

Wow, that was stupid. I apologize to the room at large and will now go sit in a corner, writing on a blackboard "always proofread your code" 50 times.

The correct link should be http://www.geocities.com/villageid1ot. So much for the new window addition.
Phyrkrakr "Always be yourself, regardless of state or federal laws."

Um if HTML is so easy why cant you construct a simple link to your site? http://www.geocities.com/villageid1ottarget=_top doesn't work.

(pure HTML 4.0 is a nightmare to code by hand)
As a webdesigner who prides himself on doing all of his coding by hand, I'd like to ask what the basis for the above comment is. I learned to code HTML at the age of 14, by myself, with the NCSA and the W3C pages my only guide. (here comes the shameless self plug) See the results at The Village Idiot . But in response to your question, the reason LaTeX could never replace HTML is stated in your question. "so the only big feature missing for LaTeX to be supported in browsers would be linking, perhaps object embedding." Linking is the very thing that makes the web work. IMO, it would be incredibly hard to redesign the web around a language, especially if that language doesn't carry at least some crossover in coding, much like javascript. My $.02
Phyrkrakr "Always be yourself, regardless of state or federal laws."

See Steve Gibson's comments at his Web site about this. (Sorry, too lazy to give an exact URL.) He debunks M$ quite effectively (and has some quite nice examples, which I'd love to see on a laptop).

No, he doesn't.

See Ron Feigenblatt's website for a more balanced (and informed) view on this.

And here's what ClearType is from the Microsoft Research team:

Brief overview
IEEE paper on the technology
Paper for the Society for Information Display Symposium

Try reading those. Gibson literally does not know what he's talking about here. For a start, what the Apple II does is NOT sub-pixel rendering. It's not even pixel-color splitting, as all the color splitting occurs in the NTSC signal, not at the phosphor level (you'll see more than one green phosphor per green pixel).

Simon

Images HERE and
HERE
Not that great IMHO

Images HERE and
HERE
Not that great IMHO

www.linuxgod.net/uptime.py

Ooops you can't view that, It requires you have python. Because everyone knows python on winblows sucks, and no one can get it to work because it doesn't exist for the M$ platform.

Flash works fine on here, I don't have any problems with it. It may run slow on your machine, but it runs as fast as Quake3 (130fps) on here. Too bad winblows can't run Quake3 that fast with a V3.

And you don't have the choice to modify your driver so your fucked.Windows doesn't even have as many drivers as Linux 2.4. No, not even your 2000. Count them. Learn a thing or 2. Windows lacks software, and hardware support. You are digging your own grave by going there. Why not back up your claim with facts instead of shooting into the wind? You have no facts for your claims. You are living in your own little dream world, I believe everyone can see that just by looking at your idiotic posts. While your living in your home|network world, and wondering why the hell your OS is taking up 111 of your 128mb of ram with LITTLE or NO network utilities, and 3 days uptime, im sitting here running an entire site with over 130 visitors a day running off 64mb ram and a 200mhz processor with 11 services running, and an uptime of 107 days. Thats somthing that M$ can't even beat. Much less you.

Just a Notice to you. You will not be able to reply to this account any longer because you are now blocked to myself and other readers starting at 3:00am CT, (1 1/2 hours from now) today. This account will be frozen and used for profile, and having-the-account-just-for-the-hell-of-it-because -linuxgod-is-the-name-of-a-machine purposes. I hope you can figure out the nick I will be under from now on, ( which is my gaming NIC, and was created on this site a year ago ), it will be fun as hell. GoodBy


The willingness of humanity to follow without question is the fall of them.

www.linuxgod.net/uptime.py

Ooops you can't view that, It requires you have python. Because everyone knows python on winblows sucks, and no one can get it to work because it doesn't exist for the M$ platform.

Flash works fine on here, I don't have any problems with it. It may run slow on your machine, but it runs as fast as Quake3 (130fps) on here. Too bad winblows can't run Quake3 that fast with a V3.

And you don't have the choice to modify your driver so your fucked.Windows doesn't even have as many drivers as Linux 2.4. No, not even your 2000. Count them. Learn a thing or 2. Windows lacks software, and hardware support. You are digging your own grave by going there. Why not back up your claim with facts instead of shooting into the wind? You have no facts for your claims. You are living in your own little dream world, I believe everyone can see that just by looking at your idiotic posts. While your living in your home|network world, and wondering why the hell your OS is taking up 111 of your 128mb of ram with LITTLE or NO network utilities, and 3 days uptime, im sitting here running an entire site with over 130 visitors a day running off 64mb ram and a 200mhz processor with 11 services running, and an uptime of 107 days. Thats somthing that M$ can't even beat. Much less you.

Just a Notice to you. You will not be able to reply to this account any longer because you are now blocked to myself and other readers starting at 3:00am CT, (1 1/2 hours from now) today. This account will be frozen and used for profile, and having-the-account-just-for-the-hell-of-it-because -linuxgod-is-the-name-of-a-machine purposes. I hope you can figure out the nick I will be under from now on, ( which is my gaming NIC, and was created on this site a year ago ), it will be fun as hell. GoodBy


The willingness of humanity to follow without question is the fall of them.

www.linuxgod.net/uptime.py

Ooops you can't view that, It requires you have python. Because everyone knows python on winblows sucks, and no one can get it to work because it doesn't exist for the M$ platform.

Flash works fine on here, I don't have any problems with it. It may run slow on your machine, but it runs as fast as Quake3 (130fps) on here. Too bad winblows can't run Quake3 that fast with a V3.

And you don't have the choice to modify your driver so your fucked.Windows doesn't even have as many drivers as Linux 2.4. No, not even your 2000. Count them. Learn a thing or 2. Windows lacks software, and hardware support. You are digging your own grave by going there. Why not back up your claim with facts instead of shooting into the wind? You have no facts for your claims. You are living in your own little dream world, I believe everyone can see that just by looking at your idiotic posts. While your living in your home|network world, and wondering why the hell your OS is taking up 111 of your 128mb of ram with LITTLE or NO network utilities, and 3 days uptime, im sitting here running an entire site with over 130 visitors a day running off 64mb ram and a 200mhz processor with 11 services running, and an uptime of 107 days. Thats somthing that M$ can't even beat. Much less you.

Just a Notice to you. You will not be able to reply to this account any longer because you are now blocked to myself and other readers starting at 3:00am CT, (1 1/2 hours from now) today. This account will be frozen and used for profile, and having-the-account-just-for-the-hell-of-it-because -linuxgod-is-the-name-of-a-machine purposes. I hope you can figure out the nick I will be under from now on, ( which is my gaming NIC, and was created on this site a year ago ), it will be fun as hell. GoodBy


The willingness of humanity to follow without question is the fall of them.

At present, it appears this situation will continue until not only are virtually all languages, cultures and peoples replaced by the spiritual equivalent of urban blight, but to the point that the very living systems upon which all depend are rendered inoperative. The best hope is that we can rid the planet of technological civiliation; preferably so as to disperse life allowing true diversity to survive on the earth while enjoying an evolutionary explosion throughout the solar system.

Is this American dollars?

If it was, then no matter who it was - unless he was endangering others lives (like if he had one other car around him at any time - or he had another person in his vehicle) - this seems excessive.

Not too long ago, I was caught speeding outside of El Centro, CA - I was doing 10 mph over the speed limit (75 in a 65 zone). To be honest, I didn't even realize I was speeding until I looked out the rearview mirror and seen the cop (I had gotten a severe sunburn the day before at Oceanside - and probably shouldn't have been driving - wasn't feeling very good). I pulled over, got the ticket, and went on my way. I later paid the fine, attended an online traffic school (to keep the points away) - in all, spent about $130 - plus my time.

Do I still speed - no - I realize now it isn't worth it - 65 vs 75 doesn't shave much time off in the end.

What gets me about the whole incident is the situation - I was speeding - yes - but I was outside of El Centro (about 25 miles outside), and anyone who has been out there knows it is flat, open land (desert?) - there wasn't a SINGLE car around me - my car is well tuned, the tires at proper pressure - the highway I was on was well maintained with a smooth surface, on a straight section. It was a VERY sunny and hot day (good grip on the road). I wasn't weaving, the road was empty around me (well, aside from the cop who probably pulled out from under an overpass to pull me over).

I guess what I am trying to say is that I realize that I broke the law - but that in the whole scheme of things I was really a danger to nobody, including myself. It wasn't like I was cruising at 120 in a 60 mph zone.

The final thing that irks me about all of this is what I know of an American citizen's constitutionally protected "Right to Travel" - if you really want your eyes opened, check out this link:

The Right to Travel

Essentially, the argument is (excerpted from the link above):

The forgotten legal maxim is that free people have a right to travel on the roads which are provided by their servants for that purpose, using ordinary transportation of the day. Licensing cannot be required of free people, because taking on the restrictions of a license requires the surrender of a right. The driver's license can be required of people who use the highways for trade, commerce, or hire; that is, if they earn their living on the road, and if they use extraordinary machines on the roads. In other words, if you are not using the highways for profit, you cannot be required to have a driver's license.

For further info, check out these links:

Vehicle Manufacturer's Certificate/Statement of Origin

Vehicle Registration in California

If you are an American driver/"owner" of a vehicle, you owe it to yourself (as a supposedly free individual) to be aware of this information...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Is this American dollars?

If it was, then no matter who it was - unless he was endangering others lives (like if he had one other car around him at any time - or he had another person in his vehicle) - this seems excessive.

Not too long ago, I was caught speeding outside of El Centro, CA - I was doing 10 mph over the speed limit (75 in a 65 zone). To be honest, I didn't even realize I was speeding until I looked out the rearview mirror and seen the cop (I had gotten a severe sunburn the day before at Oceanside - and probably shouldn't have been driving - wasn't feeling very good). I pulled over, got the ticket, and went on my way. I later paid the fine, attended an online traffic school (to keep the points away) - in all, spent about $130 - plus my time.

Do I still speed - no - I realize now it isn't worth it - 65 vs 75 doesn't shave much time off in the end.

What gets me about the whole incident is the situation - I was speeding - yes - but I was outside of El Centro (about 25 miles outside), and anyone who has been out there knows it is flat, open land (desert?) - there wasn't a SINGLE car around me - my car is well tuned, the tires at proper pressure - the highway I was on was well maintained with a smooth surface, on a straight section. It was a VERY sunny and hot day (good grip on the road). I wasn't weaving, the road was empty around me (well, aside from the cop who probably pulled out from under an overpass to pull me over).

I guess what I am trying to say is that I realize that I broke the law - but that in the whole scheme of things I was really a danger to nobody, including myself. It wasn't like I was cruising at 120 in a 60 mph zone.

The final thing that irks me about all of this is what I know of an American citizen's constitutionally protected "Right to Travel" - if you really want your eyes opened, check out this link:

The Right to Travel

Essentially, the argument is (excerpted from the link above):

The forgotten legal maxim is that free people have a right to travel on the roads which are provided by their servants for that purpose, using ordinary transportation of the day. Licensing cannot be required of free people, because taking on the restrictions of a license requires the surrender of a right. The driver's license can be required of people who use the highways for trade, commerce, or hire; that is, if they earn their living on the road, and if they use extraordinary machines on the roads. In other words, if you are not using the highways for profit, you cannot be required to have a driver's license.

For further info, check out these links:

Vehicle Manufacturer's Certificate/Statement of Origin

Vehicle Registration in California

If you are an American driver/"owner" of a vehicle, you owe it to yourself (as a supposedly free individual) to be aware of this information...

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Yeah, so am I a verified member. All that means is that you have a bank account.

--
Make Money on the 'Net

I hope this works, my connection sucks, so it took me a half hour to uplaod this. I didn't feel like waiting for a test:
http://us.share.geocities.com/sanloublues/slashdot _effect/Vcsclip.mov

• A list of links for arcade cabinents, especially about building your own.
• A M.A.M.E cocktale project, looks closely like the machine I want.
• Another build-your-own cabinet page (using consoles, not M.A.M.E)
• A great faq on how to build an arcade console, a must read for anyone thinking about it. Includes stuff like the problem of keyboard ghosting and encoders.
• Another build-a-cabinet page, with pics and diagrams
• Diagrams for a dual keyboard circuit and automatic joystick switch + other fun stuff. Another must read.
• Keyboard Matrix Help
• Happ Controls, the source of arcade quality joysticks, buttons, and other controls. They also sell keyboard encoders and other neat stuff. If you look around on the web page, you can find a place to order a free catalog, which can give you an idea of prices. (Please though, only ask for a catalog if you're interested, I hate to see the /. effect decend on this nice company)
• A source for emulators, and emulator news.
• An emulator front-end.
• English translations for NES & SNES. The reason why I became interested in emulation in the first place.

• A list of links for arcade cabinents, especially about building your own.
• A M.A.M.E cocktale project, looks closely like the machine I want.
• Another build-your-own cabinet page (using consoles, not M.A.M.E)
• A great faq on how to build an arcade console, a must read for anyone thinking about it. Includes stuff like the problem of keyboard ghosting and encoders.
• Another build-a-cabinet page, with pics and diagrams
• Diagrams for a dual keyboard circuit and automatic joystick switch + other fun stuff. Another must read.
• Keyboard Matrix Help
• Happ Controls, the source of arcade quality joysticks, buttons, and other controls. They also sell keyboard encoders and other neat stuff. If you look around on the web page, you can find a place to order a free catalog, which can give you an idea of prices. (Please though, only ask for a catalog if you're interested, I hate to see the /. effect decend on this nice company)
• A source for emulators, and emulator news.
• An emulator front-end.
• English translations for NES & SNES. The reason why I became interested in emulation in the first place.

If you want to go several hundred feet, transmit RS-232 with a laser pointer.

I believe This is what you're looking for. Although it's not really suited for multiple sources and you need some kind of RS232 hardware on the acquisition end...

Here is the intro:

The future of the Internet is in what I call "rational programming" derived from a revival of Bertrand Russell's Relation Arithmetic. Rational programming is a classically applicable branch of relation arithmetic's sub theory of quantum software (as opposed to the hardware-oriented technology of quantum computing). By classically applicable I mean it is applies to conventional computing systems -- not just quantum information systems. Rational programming will subsume what Tim Berners Lee calls the semantic web. The basic problem Tim (and just about everyone back through Bertrand Russell) fails to perceive is that logic is irrational. John McCarthy's signature line says it all about this kind of approach: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."

Here is the intro:

The future of the Internet is in what I call "rational programming" derived from a revival of Bertrand Russell's Relation Arithmetic. Rational programming is a classically applicable branch of relation arithmetic's sub theory of quantum software (as opposed to the hardware-oriented technology of quantum computing). By classically applicable I mean it is applies to conventional computing systems -- not just quantum information systems. Rational programming will subsume what Tim Berners Lee calls the semantic web. The basic problem Tim (and just about everyone back through Bertrand Russell) fails to perceive is that logic is irrational. John McCarthy's signature line says it all about this kind of approach: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."

Not fully related to this story, but ontopic. Slashdot refused to publish this true story, so go find out yourself: http://www.geocities.com/decs str uth/decsstruth.txt

(end comment) */ }

wow.. you really should publish this and have conferences on it and maybe a few court cases for publishing false history. Just because you lived under a rock until the Information Super Hypeway jumped into the limelight and conviced you to part with a few grand doesn't mean you know anything about the "home computer market".

Why don't you tell us all how the television set really wasn't popular until the VCR came about?

clickity

You see, he suffers from the same problems that so many other authors of his time did. They were all very nuts, and right-wing nuts at that. Almost to a man they supported Vietnam, guns, and other very un-HUMAN things (since that seems to be the theme of lots of these posts, the humanity of science-fiction).

Science fiction, and much fantasy, hinges on the notion that the future is a utopia because we overcame war and famine and all that. Of course, it was replaced by a society dependent on machines, and with a highly centralized government. I'm sure that most of us would love to be on a starship, based on Star Trek, but Kirk's bravado was, after all, the exception and not the norm. All other Captains were good little soldiers.

Sorry to rant here, but after reading Michael Moorcock's brilliant essay, Starship Stormtroopers, I just can't look at most sci-fi/fantasy in the same way. Be warned that while I encourage all of you to read this article, Moorcock spares no one, going after not just Heinlein, but also Asimov and Tolkein.

that was my two cents, and you owe me change....

A system serial number with bits reversed, and packed against the top of the 64 bit word.
An object creation counter for that system serial number -- under localized control/increment.

I had to continually fight off people who wanted to subdivide the 64 bits into fields, the way IP was. The primary discipline I wanted people to follow was to keep routing information out of the object identifier so that object locations could be changed dynamically. It was amazing how many times I had to explain this to people who should have known better.

Unfortunately, I didn't explain it to the right people at DARPA, although I did have a couple of meetings with David P. Reed about it when he was still at MIT's LCS.

I touch on some of this history in a couple of documents, one written recently and one written at the time.

Until I read the article about Kahn, I didn't realize that DARPA chose the IP nonsense at almost exactly the time that the AT&T/Knight-Ridder project that was funding me made a bad choice of vendors that resulted in my resignation from that particular high-profile effort and try to strike out on my own turning 8MHz PC's into multiuser network servers (which I actually succeeded in doing after a lot of blood letting, but that's another story).

A system serial number with bits reversed, and packed against the top of the 64 bit word.
An object creation counter for that system serial number -- under localized control/increment.

I had to continually fight off people who wanted to subdivide the 64 bits into fields, the way IP was. The primary discipline I wanted people to follow was to keep routing information out of the object identifier so that object locations could be changed dynamically. It was amazing how many times I had to explain this to people who should have known better.

Unfortunately, I didn't explain it to the right people at DARPA, although I did have a couple of meetings with David P. Reed about it when he was still at MIT's LCS.

I touch on some of this history in a couple of documents, one written recently and one written at the time.

Until I read the article about Kahn, I didn't realize that DARPA chose the IP nonsense at almost exactly the time that the AT&T/Knight-Ridder project that was funding me made a bad choice of vendors that resulted in my resignation from that particular high-profile effort and try to strike out on my own turning 8MHz PC's into multiuser network servers (which I actually succeeded in doing after a lot of blood letting, but that's another story).

If hitler ran linux, he wouldn't have been able to review these great games.
---

As for the other issue, dark fiber is a lot more limited resource (and vulnerable to sabatage) than is line-of-sight wireless. Further, the cost of replacing an Intersat will start to approach the cost of replacing an optical switch as launch sevices exit their domination by governments and enter the industrial world. As I point out in "The First Inforb" at some point the launch costs are low enough that office-environment information systems can be put into orbit by containing them within (unmanned) environmental controls. Industrially reasonable launch prices are below the $100/lb figure that is typical of current office environment information systems.

You mean an open standard like Macromedia's Shockwave Flash format, complete with an open implementation. It's not a W3C standard, and hence sites shouldn't use it exclusively (there should always be a non-flash option), but the specs and a reference implementation are freely available. Ideally, the W3C would adopt it as an official standard, but it would need work on accessibility issues first (e.g., for those using text-only, or braille or voice browsers).

The vulnerability and high cost of cables is one reason the infosphere wants to be in orbit. Hardening satellites against nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks has, however, been inadequately addressed outside of military satellites. The bulk of the hardening can occur with a relatively light-weight faraday cage enclosure so it shouldn't add too much to the mass budget of the satellite.

Semantically, digital signatures have the same benefits and disadvantages as chinese chops.

This idea was based in part on a vision I wrote up in a 1982 white paper when I was "Manager of Interactive Architectures" at a major videotex startup -- some of the ideas for which are starting to take shape, such as an implementation of a more flexible voting scheme.

Back in the common law days, if the laws weren't simple enough for the common man to remember, they were discarded, primarily via jury nullifcation (yes, not only did they have juries back then, but juries originated among the "pagans" who didn't particularly like one guy from somewhere else telling them how to run their communities). Then the lawyers took over and made laws so complex you couldn't operate as a competent adult unless you had a law degree. Then the laws got so complex not even law degree qualified you to operate as a full citizen. Then things got _really_ corrupt, and you have to have been a political appointee to a Federal bureaucracy like the SEC, in order to just go do something that appears a bit out of the ordinary.

It looks like being a former head of the SEC, while it wasn't absolutely necessary to try the experiment in GPL software organization, was most definitely helpful in avoding the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt factors that accompanied my attempts to placate such fears with lawyers fees 15 years ago.

Having looked at the problems with my original ideas, I'm quite skeptical of the approach these guys are taking -- particularly focusing as they are on government contracting -- although I suppose this is consistent with their drawing an analogy to the kibutzim. The kibutzim received a lot of help from the Israeli government.

Another well-known spin-off of the original series is the Dune Encyclopedia. Impossible to get nowadays, but well worth a read if you're a fan. You can sometimes come across it at swap meets or library sales.

There's also a core of fine fan fiction, such as Revenant of Dune, and some pretty good stuff at Usul's fandom page.

And for those of you old-skool enough to be into MU*s, there's an excellent Dune-based MUSH at dune3.fremen.org 4201, with an informative webpage at www.fremen.org/muds/dune3/.

THS
---

Choose One as we still have to choose....

The idea that progress is going through a sharp turn upward is not supported by the Kurzweil's reference to the "exponential", a curve that looks basically the same at any scale -- but on a more radical mathematical formulation that goes to infinity in finite time -- specifically by Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (give or take). No, this isn't just some New Age eschatology -- it was actually arrived at by looking at historic data and extrapolating into the future.

Here is an excerpt from "Spasim (1974) The First First-Person-Shooter 3D Multiplayer Networked Game" that discusses the origin of the Transhumanist conception of "The Singularity":

They were trying to realize a man-machine cybernetic vision of this magical little gnome named Heinz von Foerster and needed an email system to go along with it.
...
When the semester was over, I threw a few things into my '64 Chevy Impalla, and headed east on Interstate 80 across the Illinois border for Urbana and CERL. It was my first paying job as a programmer.

Arriving at the Mecca of networking and meeting the magical little gnome who founded second order cybernetics (symbolized by the Ouroboros) in his Biological Computer Laboratory was an amazing experience.
...
A vital side note: Heinz von Foerster had published a paper in 1960 on global population: von Foerster, H, Mora, M. P., and Amiot, L. W., "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D." 2026, Science 132, 1291-1295 (1960). In this paper, Heinz shows that the best formula that describes population growth over known human history is one that predicts the population will go to infinity on a Friday the 13 in November of 2026. As Roger Gregory likes to say, "That's just whacko!" The problem is, after he published the paper, it kept predicting population growth better than the other models. (see section 4.1 "Systems Ecology Notes") One of Heinz's early University of Illinois colleagues was Richard Hamming of "Hamming code" fame. Once while visiting the Naval Postgraduate School, I asked Dr. Hamming what he thought of Heinz von Foerster. Professor Hamming's response was "Heinz von Foerster: Now there's a first class kook!" I suspect Heinz's publication of, what Transhumanists call, "the singularity" had really gotten to Hamming -- not that Heinz wasn't eccentric enough get Hamming's goat in any case. Well, to continue this digression so as to give the damn Transhumanists a much-deserved keyboard lashing: It's one thing to be a guy like Hamming and denounce Heinz as a "kook" for following his formulae where they lead -- it's another to turn Heinz's formulae into a virtual religion, call it "the singularity" and totally forget where the idea came from the first place. I suggest the Transhumanists cite Heinz in the future whenever they refer to "the singularity" and think about his assumptions -- the primary one being that societies success varies directly with population size. It might be good to see if his model fits the data subsequent to the last check of which I am aware -- 1973 -- which just happens to be right at the point high population density societies decided to abandon their forward progress toward the space frontier.

With the release of the GeForce 2 Ultra, NVidia's fastest "gamer" board is now faster than their fastest "pro" board. There's no Quadro product corresponding to the GeForce 2 Ultra. It's not clear if the Ultra is crippled, like the older models, to maintain the gamer/pro distinction. Does anybody know for sure? (Asking NVidia and ELSA (the last remaining Quadro board maker, now essentially a unit of NVidia) produced no useful response.)

In any case, it's very clear that the gamer/pro distinction has very little life left in it. The low-end chips are now better than high end stuff of two years ago. The high end guys don't get enough sales volume to pay for the IC design needed to keep up. So most of the pro-only graphics board companies have dropped out.

oh, that was me. you can download my mp3's here.

...has upgraded it's 5-processor Multics system to multiple handheld devices to "stay ahead, technologically.

Info about said devices is available here.

Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

the original link in the original story had instructions on how to build one? been working on building one in my spare time since reading the original story...bought 2 2600 units the day after the story ran for $5 bucks each from salvation army, so i guess i beat YOU to it...

Here is a web page that talks about to do this for a Palm Pilot:

Palm Notes - Free ISPs

Netpliance's business ethics left much to be desired. After discovering that "hackers" were adding hard drives to the iOpener and not buying the service, they held up shipments to, as their own memo calls them, "suspect hacker customers." They sent letters to Circuit City customers threatening to charge them $499 if they did not subscribe to the service for at least three months. The modified the "Terms and Conditions of Sale" such that it claimed that they could cancel your service and charge you $499 for having done so. They made it a contractual breach to disassemble or modify the device. They gave themselves permission to "disable" your service or iOpener (using a bad BIOS download?). The ran a multi-page ad in the Washington Post that showed the $99 price but neglected to mention that there were shipping charges -- $35 worth to be exact! They offered toll-free numbers for those not local to any of their ISP access numbers. Then, after people had been using the appliance and had given out their e-mail, they retracted the toll-free access.

In closing, Netpliance has been a disreputable player in the technology community and one that should not be missed when they close their doors for good.

Fred Maxwell

Netpliance's business ethics left much to be desired. After discovering that "hackers" were adding hard drives to the iOpener and not buying the service, they held up shipments to, as their own memo calls them, "suspect hacker customers." They sent letters to Circuit City customers threatening to charge them $499 if they did not subscribe to the service for at least three months. The modified the "Terms and Conditions of Sale" such that it claimed that they could cancel your service and charge you $499 for having done so. They made it a contractual breach to disassemble or modify the device. They gave themselves permission to "disable" your service or iOpener (using a bad BIOS download?). The ran a multi-page ad in the Washington Post that showed the $99 price but neglected to mention that there were shipping charges -- $35 worth to be exact! They offered toll-free numbers for those not local to any of their ISP access numbers. Then, after people had been using the appliance and had given out their e-mail, they retracted the toll-free access.

In closing, Netpliance has been a disreputable player in the technology community and one that should not be missed when they close their doors for good.

Fred Maxwell

Netpliance's business ethics left much to be desired. After discovering that "hackers" were adding hard drives to the iOpener and not buying the service, they held up shipments to, as their own memo calls them, "suspect hacker customers." They sent letters to Circuit City customers threatening to charge them $499 if they did not subscribe to the service for at least three months. The modified the "Terms and Conditions of Sale" such that it claimed that they could cancel your service and charge you $499 for having done so. They made it a contractual breach to disassemble or modify the device. They gave themselves permission to "disable" your service or iOpener (using a bad BIOS download?). The ran a multi-page ad in the Washington Post that showed the $99 price but neglected to mention that there were shipping charges -- $35 worth to be exact! They offered toll-free numbers for those not local to any of their ISP access numbers. Then, after people had been using the appliance and had given out their e-mail, they retracted the toll-free access.

In closing, Netpliance has been a disreputable player in the technology community and one that should not be missed when they close their doors for good.

Fred Maxwell