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Well, here's the obligatory Snow Crash reference.. but figured might as well mention a couple of other Wearable Computer stuff.. kinda reminds me of the stuff at CMU and the More Gargoyle-y MIT one. I personally think the MIT one is neater, but hey.

Also of interest is An article at Planet IT that delves into some of the same issues.

Yeah.
---

--Grey

Here's an answer.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice /nr/2000/machinebrain.html - The MIT news page on the project.

http://zig.ini.unizh.ch - The Zurich Institute of Neuroinformatics homepage.

Here I found links to the home pages of Sebastian Seung and Rahul Sarpeshkar, two guys mentioned in the Yahoo article. A quick look doesn't reveal much specific to this story but, not surprisingly, all there research is in this area.

Here I found links to the home pages of Sebastian Seung and Rahul Sarpeshkar, two guys mentioned in the Yahoo article. A quick look doesn't reveal much specific to this story but, not surprisingly, all there research is in this area.

I am at least one US citizen who has heard of The Meaning of Liff (and, indeed, The Deeper Meaning of Liff). In fact, a quick Google search turned up an online Liff site. It isn't clear if that's an authorized web transcription, although I noticed that Borders lists only the second book, and calls that one "hard to find."

Fundamentally, the problem you describe is this:

How do I trust a user is who they say they are?

If you can count on that, then you have any number of access/content control mechanisms. This is exactly what PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) addresses.

Fundamentally, you don't want to validate the machine, you're interested in the user. So forget network id, et al.

As others have pointed out, the obvious solution is Kerberos, from MIT. It was specifically designed to solve the problem you have. However, you have to build kerberos into your application, so it's not simple, and neither is the setup.

The second most popular solution are Personal Digital Certificates (NOT SSL Certificates). These are tied into Web Server authentication (for the most part), but can be used as a generic authentication mechanism. Depending on what you want, they can be relatively cheap and uncomplicated, or it can get pretty hairy. Look at Thawte for a decent example - also, check out the iPlanet Certificate Server for some relevant info. Honestly, this is probably the easiest way to do what you want, IF you can do a web-based service. It won't be free, but if you scrape around, you can probably get it in place for a modest amount.

You can also look at things such as TIS or SecureID: these are more hard-core, since they're hardware token-based authentication schemes, and generally require custom software (though SSH supports TIS/SecureKey).

As a last resort, you might investigate VPN solutions, since, while they're not PKI in a true sense, they can provide network validation. S/WAN for Linux is a good, free thing here, and you might look at an IPSec implimentation, too.

Best of Luck.

-Erik

I know of two.

• http://accounter.mit.edu
• http://fncentral.com

I have not used either of them.

If you like this pad idea, you'll love Chaffing and Winnowing, by Rivest!

Here is another solution.

But [you] can count the number of sites that actually use [PNG images] on one hand, can't you?

For a set to be counted on one standard human hand, there must be thirty-one or fewer elements (all five fingers up = binary 11111 = 31). Here's a short list; can you think of more?

1. Pinocchio's Brother and redpinocchio (my homepage)
2. Every other site I've designed (can't name them; confidentiality)
3. PNG headquarters
4. League for Programming Freedom
5. Burn All GIFs Day
6. Campaign for Real Ale
7. AuctionBeagle
8. University of Puerto Ricto Institute of Neurobiology
9. Eressea Fantasy PBEM
10. several clip art sites (here or here)

Hell, this project at the MIT Media Lab wedged a camera, speaker, and enough compute power to recognize and translate 40 words of American Sign Language into a baseball cap. In 1997!

I give it five years, max.

I was also disappointed not to see a symbolic logic algorithm such as the Resolution Theorem Prover (Robinson, 1965) or Circumscription (McCarthy, 1980). I'd like to have been able to point to something of Jon Barwise' Situation Semantics, but couldn't think of a specific algorithm to highlight.

There's an MIT class, Network and Computer Security, that has all its problem sets online... a good thing to make you think about some basic theory would be to go through them, write up a page on each, like the students do, and compare to the answers the TAs and prof came up with.

This may not be what you're looking for; I find the questions interesting, and plan on taking the class sometime in the next couple years.

Hehe, my new Summer model billboard just showed up in the mail today. In the few minutes I spent opening it and trying it on, 5 more people learned a bit about the patent office.

For a VERY on-topic link, try here.

Oh, and for those of you that don't know...the T-Shirt Economy is coming. Soon. When it's ready.

--

"It's true enough that Shakespeare was the MTV of his day (...) but that doesn't necessarily mean the reverse is also true." - Steven Johnson, Interface Culture

It borders on grave ignorance to post an article on this issue that is but a mediocre plug for a single 3yr-old, much hyped book and an average gaming site. I can only recommend doing some journalistic homework before proclaiming the re-invention of culture as we know it in full-mouthed wired-style. Considering the rich scientific discourse on this subject and the wealth of interesting contributions from the gaming community, such as gamasutra or EDGE magazine, this could mean quite a bit of catching up for Jon Katz.

And to get back to the starting quote: Nicht alles was hinkt ist ein Vergleich. Please drop that "next Shakespeare" polemic! This is neither a good comparison or metaphor, nor does it touch the core of the subject in any way, even - actually especially - if it happens to be the transformation of literary culture!

Things people should be trying out include:

• VSTa
• Hurd
• MIT Exokernel
• SpinOS
• OSKit
• EROS
• Some variation on Wirth's Oberon systems

Even if you look at these, and go back to a UNIX-like system, there is benefit to seeing the extra abstractions they offer.

... someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so ...

When Ted Ts'o came and spoke at the local Linux User Group a couple weeks ago, he seemed much more optimistic about the ext3 filesystem making it into Linux for 2.5/2.6. He did indicate that there is little to no chance of it making it into 2.4. He also expressed concerns about ReiserFS and XFS being pushed in too quickly, though. (The argument basically being: Filesystems are damn important, so you have to make real sure you do 'em right.)

1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:

• Here's a Richmond Law Review (Va.) article suggesting unified approaches to cyber-defamation.
• Here's a Harvard Law Review article on cyberlaw.
• Here's a Georgia State review article of Alabama cyber defamation law (for details and contrast with Utah)
• Blakeley v. Continental Airlines is a 1999 case involving a private company-only BBS
• Rindos v. Hardwick was a famous case where an American was successfully sued in Australian courts for defamation on a e-mail list. [Summary] [Judgement]
• A CyberLibel FAQ -- primarily non-US 'British tradition' (Australia, Canada) useful as a basis for further understanding.
• Here's a 1994 Australian review of Defamation laws in cyberspace.
• Here's a course reading list (with links to cases and other resources embedded in the course outline) for a comparison of in the US and Australia with references to other law (Roman, English, Dutch, etc.) It hits some very relevant points in vey few words.
• Here's a review of British cyber-defamation law (incl. BBS and e-mail)
• Similar US Criminal Libel cases against students have been reported widely in the media for years (names are not cited, because they are minors): [Colorado, 1997 (ACLU) and verdict, 1998]
• Nervous? maybe you should be Here's a (English language, published in Denmark) peer-reviewed law journal article on 'Defamation Havens' ('peer-review' is when articles are reviewed by experts before publication)

2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists . One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.

• Criminal Libel use.abuse is often cited in the annual US State Department Human Rights reports on each country. [Gabon, 1999]
• In Ireland, journalistic websites get away with a great deal that print journalism can't.

3) To address another of Katz's points, here are mini-case studies in dysfunctional human behaviour on the net

Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.

I heartily agree with the preceeding posters' recommendations. They all have very valid points, and I suggest you listen to them.

A couple more on my own:

• As was stated before, being a true Software Engineer is less about coding, and more about project management, interpersonal relationships, human management, and other fuzzy details. For you, I wouldn't worry; the best way to pick up on these skills is by working in the industry, and observing your superiors. Some will be good, some horrible, and a few amazing. I've gotten lucky and have worked with more than my share of amazing.
• What your question really is asking has to do with software design. I agree that this is critically important - a huge amount of what the industry deals with today is shoddy design. Besides doing small projects yourself (as a previous poster suggested), I would look at some other people's code. I suggest the GNU code, in particular. Several packages have been long stable (such as bison), and are really solidly designed. I would look at some of the pre-1.0 Gnome code (it's still floating around) to see some messy stuff (I like Gnome, but hey, it was really early code). Look at how they put the stuff together, and try to improve it (not functionality-wise, but style-wise). Learn by doing.
• My final recommendation are several books I've found really helpful:
  • Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Abelson and Sussman) - this is the intro CS book at MIT. While it concentrates alot on programming methodology (and uses Scheme), it's really a great refresher on stuff.
  • Abstraction and Specification in Program Development (Liskov and Guttag) - this is the core Software Engineering book at MIT. It's great - covers all the random things you should be thinking of when starting a project. It uses CLU as a language, but the concepts translate directly to other languages. Unfortunately, it's out of print, but you can still pick up copies all around. The replacement for it (Program Development in Java: Abstraction, Specification, and Object-Oriented Design (liskov)) won't be out for another couple of months.
  • Finally, read Introduction to Algorithms (cormen, leiserson, rivest) - this is both a great book on all sorts of algorithmic methods, but a good software design book as well. It's used as the core CS algorithms book at a large number of colleges (like, maybe in 40% of all CS people I know used it in college).

The books above can be found at the MITPress, including how to get out-of-print stuff.

Handouts and other stuff for classes at MIT that used to above books (6.001, 6.170, and 6.046J) can be found from the MIT Course Catalog here - you might explore a couple of the other 6.0xx series (ie, look at the web pages associated with them) as they have useful stuff there too.

Best of luck!

-Erik (an MIT dude, if you missed that...)

While in the process of working on MPEG-2, MPEG requested another work item to cover high-definition television standards. However, when MPEG-2 was finished, it was found to satisfy the requirements and MPEG-3 was cancelled.

OggVorbis (.ogg) is to MPEG Audio Layer 3 (.mp3) as Deflation (.png) is to LZW (.gif).

There was a protest when Unisys laid the smack-down on free use of LZW compression in GIF. If the League for Programming Freedom wants to get involved, burnallmp3s. org is available.

Thanks, two people called me on that one. I watched them all at the same time (about 6 years ago, except GitS), and between theme, mood and art style the FILMS look the same. I have Shirow's manga, but not Kishiro's, which is where I went wrong, apparently.

Side note for Taco: The best place to start for info on anime is The Anime Turnpike. I was able to verify your correction at Rei's, those crazy MIT kids have/did have(?) a fan club and screenings and stuff.

-jpowers

I agree that field of view is very important for many applications, such as pharmaceutical design.

But rest assured, people are working on it...

This is a biased response -- our firm has developed (and is finishing up the next generation model) volumetric 3-D display with a 360-degree field of view: Actuality Systems

That is, the imagery takes up a real volume, and multiple people can walk around the display to see it from anywhere in the room. We even have a demo set up that lets you pick up a joystick and fly a helicopter over a moving terrain.

Anyhow, if you are interested in background information on 3-D displays in general, let me suggest: SIGGRAPH overview

and (by a team of students in Germany): Survey Article

-Gregg Favalora

You can find a list of similar products here. Another interesting link is the Spatial Imaging Group at the MIT Media Lab.

You can find a list of similar products here. Another interesting link is the Spatial Imaging Group at the MIT Media Lab.

Everything I know about MP4s I learned through Google. Try M.I.T. for the standard document.

I love search engines...

First off, best of luck to you. I honestly hope you are succeed where so many have failed but I cannot resist some loaded questions.

Some groups believe that the lack of issue focus in American politics is the direct result of the structure of the electoral system in the United States. In other words, a electoral system demanding a majority causes bland, middle of the road politics and elections. In this view, the secret to electoral success is not offending people and mouthing popular ideas; not taking a stand on issues.

Do you believe this is true? Why or why not?

If you believe this is so, how do intend to overcome the structural resistance against issue based politics?

Do you believe most Americans vote for a canidate or against a canidate? Why?

If you believe most people vote against a particular canidate, who do think will dare take a stand as you are suggesting?

Do you see your cause as appealing to mostly "third party canidates" or having a wider appeal?

This Augmented Memory page is sitting right there on the MIT Wearables page.

This Augmented Memory page is sitting right there on the MIT Wearables page.

Two railroads completed the Transcontinental Railroad: The Union Pacific (East Coast to Utah) and the Central Pacific (West Coast to Utah).

The Central Pacific evolved/merged into the Southern Pacific. Interestingly as a side-note, one of the presidents of the SP was Leland Stanford, who founded a small school in California by the same name.

The SP had quite a few different divisions, including shipping, communications, et cetera.

Which finally brought us to the...

Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications

...one of the biggest three telcos in the entire world.


aka SPRINT.

There is this Dutch guy who made this drawing program called Drape. It's inspired by Logo and L-Systems. It's completely visual oriented. You "drag and drop" drawing actions (draw line, change direction, change color, go back etc) on a time line. You're able to define subroutines and variables. You can run your drawing in "debug-mode" (step by step).
It's freeware, it's very funny and it has a lot of basic concepts regarding programming, without the troubles of typing textual languages. You can find it at this guy's website.

Arleo

BTW, XP-LOGO implementations are still being made by the MIT, called Starlogo

Software patents threaten to devastate America's computer industry. Patents granted in the past decade are now being used to attack companies such as the Lotus Development Corporation for selling programs that they have independently developed. Soon new companies will often be barred from the software arena--most major programs will require licenses for dozens of patents, and this will make them infeasible. This problem has only one solution: software patents must be eliminated.

One reason is that any idea can be made look complex when analyzed to death. But another reason is that these trivial ideas often look quite complex as described in the patents themselves. The patent system's defenders can point to the complex description and say, "How can anything this complex be obvious?"

Although I support the LPF's point of view, I agree that there is room for argument here, especially on the side of small inventors who worry about getting ripped off by companies.

But I can never reconcile two of the fundamental flaws in the patent system:

Licensing: Currently, I am not obliged to license my patent to anyone. What good does it do to the public if I patent something and sit my ass on it, refusing to license it to anybody. Progress is stifled in the patented area for atleast 17 years. Shouldn't the system allow for mandatory licensing to whoever wishes to do so, of course in return for a monetary benefit to the patent holder? Of course, the license fees should have a cap on them, otherwise I could set the fees so sky-high as to make licensing impractical.

Independent invention: Currently, even if someone else independently invents my patented stuff, they are violating my patent. I don't understand the logic for this. Copyright system allows for a perfect reproduction to be possible, if I can show that it was done totally without reference to the original. Why should the patent system be any different in this regard? It seems very hypocritical and outright unjust to hold a true inventor liable in this case.

Sreeram.
----------------------------------
Observation is the essence of art.

http://fox.mit.edu/skunk/soft/fsv/

Available at http://starlogo.www.media.mit.ed u/people/starlogo/ as a Java interpreter (or, in what appears to be an older version, as a Mac application). Never played with it but appears to be a sort of LOGO implementation where you control a multitude of turtles instead of one. The purpose is to explore decentralized systems. Quoting the site: "With StarLogo, you can model (and gain insights into) many real-life phenomena, such as bird flocks, traffic jams, ant colonies, and market economies."

Anyway, I think it sounds kind of cool and their suggested ages are 13 and up.

As for LOGO, a starting point might be http://el.www.media.mit.edu/gro ups/logo-foundation/ which includes some links to various implementations including some for Windows.

Available at http://starlogo.www.media.mit.ed u/people/starlogo/ as a Java interpreter (or, in what appears to be an older version, as a Mac application). Never played with it but appears to be a sort of LOGO implementation where you control a multitude of turtles instead of one. The purpose is to explore decentralized systems. Quoting the site: "With StarLogo, you can model (and gain insights into) many real-life phenomena, such as bird flocks, traffic jams, ant colonies, and market economies."

Anyway, I think it sounds kind of cool and their suggested ages are 13 and up.

As for LOGO, a starting point might be http://el.www.media.mit.edu/gro ups/logo-foundation/ which includes some links to various implementations including some for Windows.

Anyone know if it still exists?

YES! It exists in many forms. The most interesting form I have seen is done by some folks over at MIT. It's called StarLOGO. It takes the LOGO concept to the extreme -- where you don't just control one turtle in the environment, you control an arbitrary number of them, into the thousands.

Each turtle has a duplicate set of instructions -- and interacts with the other turtles, and the environment that its in. This has been used in a number of graduate research projects, and it's most noted for exploring emergent systems. Higher levels of order coming out of relative chaos.
It is quite interesting.

It is more advanced than the LOGO us 20 somethings remember, but still may be good to start kids off with -- maybe after they've had a bit of experience with regular logo.

You can find it over at the MIT StarLOGO site.

Originally it was only for Macintosh, but just recently they released a Java version that seems to work quite well. The Java version works quite well under solaris, linux, and windows 98 (my experience with it).

As they quote it on their website, StarLOGO is a PG-13 rated LOGO, and the others are G rated LOGOs.

--Keithel

Don't you mean Logo?

Go to this MIT site and check out the background on Logo. There are various implementations.

Guys - think of it like the integrators used by Vannevar Bush in his Differential Analyzer built at MIT - you can see them in the third picture down. Now, these used a metal knife edge wheel turning a larger glass disk (set perpendicular to the knife edge wheel) to perform integration. The knife edge wheel could move radially in and out on it's shaft, varying the speed at which the glass disk turned (I think the knife edge wheel turned the glass disk - but it may have been the other way around, what with the torque amplifiers used on the shaft of the knife edge wheel - anyone know for sure?). To envision the flywheel system being imagined:

Replace the glass disk with the flywheel, and the knife edge wheel with a motor driven rubber wheel - allow it to move in/out via some mechanism (no need to move the motor, allow the motor to remain stationary, and move the rubber drive wheel along the shaft, radially to the center of the wheel).

That should make it clearer...

To a certain extend, I do see your point. Alot of what I posted is indeed in the article. Next time I will try to add alot more additional info.

Perhaps I should have noted some of the interesting research being done on this:

Physical Limits of Portable Power Storage

Batteries of the 21st Century

Hybrid Electric Vehicle research

In my defense, I do think I pointed out several things that were not obvious (and people were arguing about in the preceeding posts).

I'll try for more content in the future.

-Erik

For more information about the technical challenges faced in developing interactive 3D holographic displays, check out the MIT Media Laboratory's Spatial Imaging Group at http://spi.www.media.mit.edu/groups/spi/.

Regarding the recent tête-á-tête you guys are having with MS over their bastardised version of Kerberos, I would point out that in marked contrast, Apple is presently working WITH MIT to develop it for Mac OS X: MIT to bring Kerberos network security to Apple's Mac OS X

What the clever folks will take away from it all is that MS is doomed. Even after being pantsed so hard by the DoJ that Bill now coughs up K-Mart undies, they STILL haven't changed. In light of the court case and the much wider ramifications (including a new-found courage to stand up to the bully of Redmond on everyone's part), the same old tired and now ILLEGAL tactics will of necessity be their undoing.

Darwin, the core of the new Mac OS X is Open Source AND Apple has just compiled it run on Intel hardware -- Apple Releases Darwin 1.0 Open Source

Apple Releases Darwin 1.0 Open Source
New Mac OS Core and QuickTime Streaming Server Released to Tens of Thousands of Developers

INTERNET WORLD, LOS ANGELES -- April 5, 2000 -- Apple® today announced the release of Darwin 1.0, the advanced operating system core at the heart of Mac® OS X, and the release of an updated Darwin Streaming Server. Darwin's open source model allows the tens of thousands of registered Darwin developers to modify, customize and extend key Apple software, including the modern mach kernel and BSD layers found in Apple's next generation operating system, Mac OS X.

"The core of Mac OS X is the only mainstream operating system following an open source model," said Philip Schiller, Apple's vice president of World-wide Product Marketing. "The new Darwin 1.0 posting includes some of the most advanced operating system technology available, and it's open to our customers and developers so that we may collaborate on the future of the Mac OS."

The new Darwin kernel is based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies and supports the Kernel Extension Developer Kit (KDK) for developing drivers and loadable modules. Darwin 1.0 gives developers access to essential Mac OS X source code. This allows developers to enhance the feature set, performance and quality of Mac OS X products in partnership with Apple engineers. Darwin 1.0 is processor independent and is built for PowerPC and Intel platforms, enabling Open Source developers to work on Darwin projects on the widest choice of computer systems.

In addition to Darwin 1.0, Apple also announced an update to the Darwin Streaming Server, the open source version of Apple's QuickTime(TM) Streaming Server software, which is used to stream high quality audio and video over the Internet. The Darwin Streaming Server is the only open source, standards based and free Internet streaming server. This update makes the Darwin Streaming Server available for Windows NT-based systems, expanding support for developers creating streaming server products based on five different operating systems -- Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and now Windows NT.

Lest we forget, Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. I believe that about 90% + of their revenue comes from hardware, so I don't see any economical reason why they wouldn't make Mac OS X proper run on Intel hardware; they have nothing to lose and everything -- draws developer and therefore customer support for the Mac hardware platform as a whole, not to mention any bonus revenue and the overwhelming desire most people seem to have to knock Bed Bug Bill off his perch -- to gain.

Moreover, NeXT, the OS that Apple bought from Jobs to build Mac OS X in the first place runs on Intel. They have the technology, the talent, the experience and the will. My money is on an Intel release for Mac OS X.

Mind you, my money is on a secret "red box" environment (in addition to Classic, Carbon and Cocoa), to transparently run Windows apps in the Aqua environment.

Regarding the recent tête-á-tête you guys are having with MS over their bastardised version of Kerberos, I would point out that in marked contrast, Apple is presently working WITH MIT to develop it for Mac OS X: MIT to bring Kerberos network security to Apple's Mac OS X

What the clever folks will take away from it all is that MS is doomed. Even after being pantsed so hard by the DoJ that Bill now coughs up K-Mart undies, they STILL haven't changed. In light of the court case and the much wider ramifications (including a new-found courage to stand up to the bully of Redmond on everyone's part), the same old tired and now ILLEGAL tactics will of necessity be their undoing.

Well, sure it's cocky. But I think it's quite solid, factually (IANAL, of course). And if you want *really* cocky, see this link, which is attorney Jim Tyre's response to Cybersitter trying to threaten peacefire.org in 1997. Hilarious!

Just go to M.I.T and enter Kerberos in the search box. When I tried it, the top link that came up was "Kerberos for Windows"...

I didn't take it any further - is anyone actually using M.I.T's own Kerberos for Windows ?

Oh. You mean START? Ask it a serious question and will often give you the write answer. It can a few non-serious questions as well ;).