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Mine dont last 10 seconds... in the microwave.

2)What about a toilet that 'knows' to flush automatically when I insert 'media'?

Is that what people are doing with their AOL cd's these days? Gosh am I behind the times... I've been using my microwave.

In case anybody needs instructions, here's a nice concise HOWTO

In case anybody needs instructions, here's a nice concise HOWTO

CD's need to be dissolved in acid to be truly unrecoverable and Zip disks are relatively difficult to break into.

Acid? All you really need is a microwave.

You can find a closeup image of a microwaved CD here, which accompanies further instructions on microwaving CD's here.

In addition, this site has a page dedicated to microwaving CD's with numerous photos - the link is on the left navigation bar, but the server seems to be a tad slow.

You can find a closeup image of a microwaved CD here, which accompanies further instructions on microwaving CD's here.

In addition, this site has a page dedicated to microwaving CD's with numerous photos - the link is on the left navigation bar, but the server seems to be a tad slow.

A nice demonstration of this is microwaving CDs. I have already zapped a dozen. If you wanna know how a microwaved CD looks like, check here and here for more info.

Well, that seems like the point...
Would I sit at my desk today, staring at a picture of a coffee pot? No. Did I, in 1994 or 95, find myself really struck by the fact that a cheap little Mac was showing me (almost) real-time images from England? Yes, I did.

Was I, after watching the coffee pot for a while, happy to realize there were people all over the world who were interested in what you could do with these machines, and didn't care whether the end result was "important" or not? Absolutely!

Did I then spend too much time visiting the Web-enabled refrigerator, the site that let you display messages on an LED board, the Abductalizer, and Web cams in a wide variety of uninteresting places? Well...yes. And I'll admit, that part was a little pathetic.

Oh, well. I for one will be sorry to see the coffee pot go...

* * *

You should have read the article instead of posting as fast as you could. He states that AI is already here in different forms.

The little Microsoft Office2000 Cat that answers all my questions is a form of AI (1st category according to article).

Microsoft might eventually have a NT-assistant...
You can select from a paper-clip, office shredder, or cartoon 2-year-tech-degree System-Administrator to answer all of your questions. With a little more work, this NT-Assistant might replace the real thing! For a little realism, the NT-assistant could get frustrated when you showed it a CD that you stuck in the microwave and said that the CD-burner wasn't working.
;-)

-

Sure, we could do this - I'm not a laywer, but this is similar to the way NDAs work. NDAs just work on a much smaller scale.

But why would we want to submit to this? The DVD-CCA and the DMCA already seek to limit (and to a good extent succeed at limiting) the rights of consumers to use the product they purchased as they see fit. The movie studios and copyright enforcers have some pretty big delusions that consumers are buying "licensed intellectual property". Granted, commercial redistribution should be illegal, but a VHS or DVD purchase is a convienence purchase, not a $15.95 homage paid to their creativity and intellectual property. IMHO, DVDs (and software for that matter) are more like toasters than contractual agreements - you buy it, its yours. If you want to microwave it or something, feel free.

By restricting the DeCSS code with a NDA, we'd be a logical extension of exactly what we're trying to fight - illogical and unfounded restrictions dictating what we can and can't know about our property. The problem is because its in source code form - the DVD-CCA is afraid of the knowledge of their "technology" rather than use of it. It's the fact that they possess the sole knowledge of the encryption scheme that gives them power over consumers and smaller corporations - the power to region-lock movies, the power to artificially drive up prices, the power to extract thousands of dollars from a business for a "key" which offers no benefits.

They fear OpenDVD because it reduces their monopoly and cuts into their already gargantuan botton-line. It's a classic power struggle.

This is an interesting innovation - at those speeds, you can cook your food with the radiated RF energy, the dissipated heat, or both. Finally, a computer that's *really* an appliance!

I can see it now, the new CPSC/FCC/DOE microwave PC warning label:

WARNING - Do not remove this tag under penalty of law!
(This isn't a matress or pillow, we mean it.)

DANGER! Microwave Microprocessor Unit! Do not ever, ever open the case of this computer!

RF Radiation Hazard inside. Opening this computer will let cancer-causing microwave
frequency photons jump out and eat their way through your retinas on their way
to your brain, where they may impair your judgement in selecting an operating system.

• You've been warned.
• Factory sealed for your protection.
• This computer contains no user-servicable parts.
• Like you could get it apart anyway, since Compaq uses these goofy screws...
• Do NOT warm strawberry Pop-Tarts in the Zip disk drive slot.
• Coffee cups on the CD-ROM drive "cup holder" may be heated, but drive
  must be closed when no coffee cup is present, or it's your retinas, baby.
• Digital/Compaq is NOT responsible for funny little fractal patterns on your CD's.
• Discontinue use if rash, irritation, redness, or swelling develops.
• Do not use an apostrophe to indicate the plural form.

Contrary to some posts, this was not a content-free article. So, rather than critiquing the over-academic writing style, I'm going to try to respond to the content.

We bring our built-in apparatus for seeing and perceiving to the world on a computer monitor, where we build a simulation in its image.

Stating The Obvious #1: "Look, ma, I can use my eyes and brain to look at a computer screen!"

Bogus Claim #1: What I see on the computer monitor makes up a "world."

No, Richard, what you see on the computer monitor is little glowing dots of colored phosphors. When you're using a computer, these dots are lit up in particular patterns by computer programs. When you're using a program known as a "web browser", those patterns are determined by the HTML code and graphics files stored on or generated by a computer somewhere, created by the web site designer.

That's a pretty narrow "world" there.

Chips are disappearing into every aspect of our lives - communication, transportation, physical environments, clothing, and - ultimately - ourselves.

Stating The Obvious #2: "Look, ma, there are a lot more embedded CPUs out there these days!"

Bogus Claim #2: I know the future, and it holds biochips.

"Ultimately"? Where does he get this prophetic knowledge?

This is nothing other than technological determinism. "What can be built, shall be built." Says who? If biochips happen, it will be because people first choose to research the technology, then implement it, then use it.

The imaginary gardens on my monitor often seem more real than the trees in my back yard. Most of the time I don't even notice the real trees.

This speaks volumes about Richard Thieme, but the trees in his backyard remain real regardless of whether or not he chooses to believe in them.

I suggest quite seriously that Mr. Thieme get up from his computer, walk into his back yard, and beat his head against the trunk of one of those trees, to refresh his mind on the reality of the natural world.

I will accept his claim of the "reality" of his imaginary gardens when he can serve me a tasty, nourishing, imaginary-garden-grown tomato from them.

We don't yet live in the world constructed by computers that way, but we will.

More technological determinism.

It's also patently false. None of us are going to live in any other world than the world we live in. Even Mr. Thieme, unless he figures out that tomato-growing trick, and how to relieve himself virtually in cyberspace.

Now, we may spend more and more of our time living in the world staring into computer monitors. This might be a good or a bad thing, and is certainly worth discussing rather than assuming. But it will not be a world "constructed by computers," it will be the world that has tomatoes and toilets in it, and it will be the world that either (1) just happened to coagulate out of a nebula about 4.5 billion years ago, or (2) was created by God, depending on which origin story you subscribe to.

The world created and disclosed by computing is becoming an essential dimension of who we believe ourselves to be. And who, therefore, we are.

Translation: Theime believes the internet is becoming an essential part of who he is. And he thinks that, because he believes it, it is so.

Of course, this overlooks the possibility that Theime might be mistaken about what is essential, or that it might be possible to be wrong about ourselves. Now, for a (hypothetical) new-agey, middle-aged journalist/writer this shouldn't be surprising. From a Christian priest, this is not quite blasphemy, but is definately apostasy. The essential dimension of who we are is found in our relationship with God, not in our relationship with a myriad of web pages. Either he's forgotten what he learned in seminary, or he should ask for his money back.

Most of us who love online life remember the first time we tumbled into the rabbit hole, falling headlong into a domain as magical as Alice's underground. I remember downloading the first browser around ten o'clock at night. When I next looked up it was four in the morning.

Stating The Obvious #3: "Look, the internet is an addictive time-waster!"

Yes, I loose track of time too when I'm surfing the internet or just this close to getting a program to work. Maybe I'm just dull, but I fail to see a cosmic significance in this fact.

That knowledge engine rearranged data into forms that coupled effortlessly with my perceptual apparatus. It was a world of digital symbols filled with projections of my self as it moved among them, thinking it was leaving the room and extending itself "out there." The exploration was really, of course, inside the consensual space we agree to hallucinate together.

Methinks he doth read Neuromancer too much.

I hate to break this to him, but a book is a collection of digital symbols that "couples effortlessly with the perceptual apparatus," and allows me to leave the room and extend myself "out there."

What is it about this domain that compels such a response? What seduces us to stay up all night, fooling around for hours as we build communal worlds or play with these symbols, using them as levers to turn gears in the "real" world?

Last I checked, while there is that hot tub in Ypsilanti, Michigan connected to the Web, there are very few levers turning gears in the "real" (why quoted?) world. Unless you mean psychological hot buttons that can be pushed. It seems quite a stretch to call email, Usenet postings, /. comments, or even a personal website "levers to turn gears."

(Levers don't turn gears anyway, gears or pulleys turn gears ...)

McMoneagle discovered that the world is not what he thought it was. He had to reinvent continuously the images he used as maps of reality as his psychic adventures exploded the consensual reality he had been taught to believe.

Statement Of The (Hopefully) Obvious #4: "The map is not the territory."

Anyone who is continually learning, who is growing in life, experiences the same "remapping" of reality as McMoneagle. Our maps get exploded as we learn that Mommy and Daddy aren't perfect, that there is no Santa Claus, that there are otherwise normal-seeming folks who believe in supply-side economics, etc.

What does this have to do with being online? Sure, this process can happen while you're logged on. It also happens when you're not, if you're living with your eyes open and your mind and spirit engaged.

The images of the world we internalize from life online also become obsolete each time we turn off the computer.

Horsefeathers.

Sure, it's theoretically possible for the entire look, feel, and content of the Web to change between now and the next time I log in. I understand the physicists also claim it's theoretically possible for all of the atoms of the chair I'm sittin in to tunnel Somewhere Else and for me to fall through it to the floor. I'm not worried much about either possibility.

Why? Well, why does every major browser have a bookmark feature? Could it be that there's enough stability in this online "world" that "landmarks" don't become obsolete every time?

I notice that Slashdot looks pretty much the same every time I visit, except for this week with Rob making so many changes. Even so, I expect (and am generally right) to find an article on "Changes to Slashdot" when the look and feel changes, to clue everyone in.

If everything I saw online became obsolete the second I turned my computer off, I'd throw it (or at least the modem) into the dumpster immediately, and stop wasting my time.

McMoneagle has difficulty talking about "reality" with people who have not experienced what he has. He has to build a modular interface that somehow connects both his experience and the experience of someone who has never gone diving.

Statement Of The Obvious #5: "People who have different life experiences will experience a 'communications gap' that needs to be bridged."

In the same way, building a computer interface that lets ordinary users couple with the many levels of the digital world is more than "usability." It is participation in a revolutionary act of mutual transformation.

Yes, but transformation into what?

McMoneagle's description of exploring the deeper waters of consciousness is a template for learning how to move with clear intentionality among the nested levels of symbols that fold into one another in the digital world.

This is simply backwards.

The "digital world" is, in general, a simplification of the real world. Anyone who can move with "clear intentionality" offline should be able to do so online as well. And I don't see much "nested symbolism" online -- symbols are generally a single level of indirection, with a one-to-one correspondance to what they represent. Consider "icons" (a word ripped from its religious root and stripped of most of its meaning). "Icons" are simply pushbuttons with pictographs. Contrast this with religious icons, which do contain "nested levels of symbols that fold into one another."

I have yet to see anything online that begins to approach the "exploring the deeper waters of consciousness" and "nested levels of symbolism" that is inherent in the Christian liturgy. Something that Thieme claims to have passing familiary with. I suspect the same is true of other human, offline systems of symbols that exist, but I'll leave it to those more familiar with those traditions to make the comparisons.

Remote viewing is a function of the intentionality of the viewer, not the so-called "physical" world. Nor is a computer network fully defined by chips, switches or code; the network is defined above all by the intentionality of the users.

If McMoneagle is more than a crank or deluded, then his remote viewing, though directed by "intentionality," must eventually ground itself in something outside of his intention. Otherwise, what's he viewing besides his own imagination?

Same thing with a network. First, the technological infrastructure must be there, and second, there must be real content out there, put into place by real people, or else all I am doing as a user of the network, no matter what my "intentionality," is staring at my navel. Or perhaps some other part of my anatomy.

We define ourselves as a spectrum of possibilities, choose one, and do it. The symbols we think we use as tools disappear, the nested levels built of those symbols collapse, and we see in that moment our responsibility for what we are building instead of pretending we're merely technicians or just along for the ride.

Up to the last paragraph, the iron determinism of technological advance and of a "new reality" has been trumpeted, and now all of a sudden we are supposed to see our "responsibility"?

This is nothing more than the television broadcasters' defense of "TV shows are crap because the public demands crap," dressed up in academic language and techno-mysticism and applied to the Internet.

Sorry, I'm neither impressed nor overcome with an longing to leave the real world for the virtual. In fact, planting a real garden sounds even better right now. And I'm even more eager for Sunday to get here -- it's Palm Sunday, and the nested levels of symbols are wonderful.