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The window manager scwm is sufficently powerful that one can write a configuration file for it making the mouse superfluous.

I have a friend at MIT who swares by NAWM, a layer in addition to whatever window manager you run that can be set up to do all sorts of nice keyboard shortcuts. A Development Version and Stable Version are available. All the documentation is in the man page.

I have a friend at MIT who swares by NAWM, a layer in addition to whatever window manager you run that can be set up to do all sorts of nice keyboard shortcuts. A Development Version and Stable Version are available. All the documentation is in the man page.

Try Scwm. Not only does it let you do all WM-type stuff with the keyboard, it lets you bind keys to synthetic mouse events so you can avoid using the rodent even in apps that would otherwise require it.

Emacs was an editor made by RMS before he founded the FSF. (And in my opinion it's only fair to call it a Free Software project rather than an Open Source.) As to its developments after it was licensed under the GPL, make no mistake, it was very much a cathedral style project. It's developers were an elitist group, and most certainly did not accept patches from anyone.

I'm amazed at how far the disinformation campaign has come.

I am looking at the documentation for Emacs 20.3. The Acknowledgements chapter thanks over 200 people by name for their contributions to Emacs over the years. I am quite sure that those people were not all principal maintainers of Emacs. Most of them are credited with contributing only one feature, which indicates that they were not part of some rarified Emacs Clique but merely randoms who had good ideas.

Every piece of evidence I can find indicates that RMS recognized the technical value of free software from the very beginning. From the GNU Manifesto:

Once GNU is written.... much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided.

I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.

From Stallman's interview in BYTE in 1986:

Other people may use the GNU system simply because it is technically superior.

Even just the free support that consists of my fixing bugs people report to me and incorporating that in the next release has given people a good level of support.

I find it mystifying that Linus is getting credited with inventing these concepts.

[Linus] was surprised when people started turning in patches, his only ambition he'd only expected people to say good or bad. The development style came from nowhere, but make no mistake, it was new.

It was not new. Linus knew perfectly well in 1991 that people who liked the software they were using would contribute bug fixes and improvements. This pattern was, indeed, commonplace even then. What surprised him, as he's said before, was the enthusiasm with which people took to his project, not the mere fact that someone would choose to submit a patch.

Emacs was an editor made by RMS before he founded the FSF. (And in my opinion it's only fair to call it a Free Software project rather than an Open Source.) As to its developments after it was licensed under the GPL, make no mistake, it was very much a cathedral style project. It's developers were an elitist group, and most certainly did not accept patches from anyone.

I'm amazed at how far the disinformation campaign has come.

I am looking at the documentation for Emacs 20.3. The Acknowledgements chapter thanks over 200 people by name for their contributions to Emacs over the years. I am quite sure that those people were not all principal maintainers of Emacs. Most of them are credited with contributing only one feature, which indicates that they were not part of some rarified Emacs Clique but merely randoms who had good ideas.

Every piece of evidence I can find indicates that RMS recognized the technical value of free software from the very beginning. From the GNU Manifesto:

Once GNU is written.... much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided.

I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.

From Stallman's interview in BYTE in 1986:

Other people may use the GNU system simply because it is technically superior.

Even just the free support that consists of my fixing bugs people report to me and incorporating that in the next release has given people a good level of support.

I find it mystifying that Linus is getting credited with inventing these concepts.

[Linus] was surprised when people started turning in patches, his only ambition he'd only expected people to say good or bad. The development style came from nowhere, but make no mistake, it was new.

It was not new. Linus knew perfectly well in 1991 that people who liked the software they were using would contribute bug fixes and improvements. This pattern was, indeed, commonplace even then. What surprised him, as he's said before, was the enthusiasm with which people took to his project, not the mere fact that someone would choose to submit a patch.

Hey! That's interesting. I had not heard of Exokernels before. Anything that increases web server performance by half an order of magnitued is a Good Thing.

Read more about XOK and ExOS at http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/exo/ as the man said.

http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/exo/

• The Retinal Implant Project useful interesting background on this or a similar operation
• An article on the same at ABCNews (in laymans terms)
• More info here
• Finally, a paper on the chip.

• The Retinal Implant Project useful interesting background on this or a similar operation
• An article on the same at ABCNews (in laymans terms)
• More info here
• Finally, a paper on the chip.

this has some interesting info. on retinal implants etc.

Yes, this is a definite possibility. Microsoft has a lot of very intelligent people working for them, particularly in Microsoft Research. About two months ago, Microsoft and MIT announced a long-term collaboration for innovation in higher education. At the same time, they celebrated by holding a small technology fair for MIT students on campus. It wasn't a sales pitch or a recruiting event. It wasn't taken very seriously by a lot of MIT students (copies of Office 2000 raffled off were promptly thrown on the ground and stomped upon by many), but it did illustrate many new technologies that Microsoft Research is working upon. Among some of the highlights are voice recognition, image processing, video processing, facial recognition, 3-D graphics, audio technologies, and portable devices. One thing that they were showing that was very cool was an electronic pen that used tiny accelerometers to detect movement of the pen and record it as hand-writing recognition, available to pump straight into some PDA, if the pen isn't already a PDA. If you ask me, the real value of Microsoft is not in its browser, applications, or operating system. It's in the products from Microsoft Research.

This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results. It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch. Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results. It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch. Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results. It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch. Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

This is all practical research done at MIT right now with proven results. It's far more promising than trying to engineer something from scratch. Nature has millions of years worth of R&D to develop its solutions. Why not tap it?

The description says non-obvious to someone familiar with the art, not non-obvious to Joe Public.

What consitutes an invention worthy of a patent is a grey area. This thread originally started with a debate about whether or not gene sequences should be patented. A strong argument against this is that gene sequences are not an invention, but fundamentally exist. A similar argument is made against patenting algorithms, or mathematical truths. What would have been the consequences of Isaac Newton patenting F=ma? This has little to do with non-obviousness.

Obviousness is an issue with several software patents. Like the XOR patent(#4,197,590), or the one that covers saving to a buffer the portion of the screen that is being used to display another window(#4,555,775). RMS' seminal paper Against Software Patents says pretty much everything about this subject.

Then there is the issue of piracy - with companies trying to patent varieties of seeds, plants, medicinal use of natural plants, or, in a particularly egregious case - trying to patent curry.

That is _primitive_. Try http://www.microopticalcorp.com/egdemo.htm. There you get to see a really nice HUD.
And if you like wearables, the place to go has to be http://belladonna.media.mit.edu /projects/wearables/ - the MIT
wearables page. It's full of nutritious wearables information.

Savant

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

You're definatly right about the lack of a good interface and the lack of a killer app. I feel asthetics needs to enter into the mix as well when considering wearable computing. Right now they're big and kind of wierd looking. People don't want to look like a freak. (Of course this is the very thing people said about the walkman when it was introduced 20 years ago.)

As killer apps go, I'm a big fan of augmen ted reality and remembe rance agents. This could be the killer app once the technology improves.

Now for my spiel on interfaces. Each computing device, whether it's desktops, PDS, or wearables are used in fundamentally different ways. For a desktop, the desktop-document metaphore works because it's primarly used for "desk work". But for a PDA it doesn't make sense. That's why WinCE failed. People use a PDA like a notepad so a notepadesque interface is the best (like PalmOS). Same thing goes for wearables. People aren't looking for wearables to replace desktops any more than people looked for PDAs to replace desktops. Therefore a new interface needs to be developed. Personally I'd like to see something like the interface used in ohnny Mnemonic. You just need finger/head tracking. No real devices. That's the interface I think people want to use.

You're definatly right about the lack of a good interface and the lack of a killer app. I feel asthetics needs to enter into the mix as well when considering wearable computing. Right now they're big and kind of wierd looking. People don't want to look like a freak. (Of course this is the very thing people said about the walkman when it was introduced 20 years ago.)

As killer apps go, I'm a big fan of augmen ted reality and remembe rance agents. This could be the killer app once the technology improves.

Now for my spiel on interfaces. Each computing device, whether it's desktops, PDS, or wearables are used in fundamentally different ways. For a desktop, the desktop-document metaphore works because it's primarly used for "desk work". But for a PDA it doesn't make sense. That's why WinCE failed. People use a PDA like a notepad so a notepadesque interface is the best (like PalmOS). Same thing goes for wearables. People aren't looking for wearables to replace desktops any more than people looked for PDAs to replace desktops. Therefore a new interface needs to be developed. Personally I'd like to see something like the interface used in ohnny Mnemonic. You just need finger/head tracking. No real devices. That's the interface I think people want to use.

It seems that the development of such tools is more evolved than you'd expect. One of the research centers mentioned in the article is the MIT's Media Laboratory. You can find more information on the ML projects here. The lab is working also on some other futuristic projects: wearable computers, software algorythms for recognizing photographs and other.

Regards,

January

Your first point - worldwide agreement on what consitutes a patentable(sic) invention - is the most important issue.

Patents being more of an issue in software because things are developed more quickly is irrelevant. If things are developed more quickly, the original patent should soon become redundant. Its validity for an extended time period would be meaningless. A catalogue of ridiculous software patents is available at the LPF site. Many of these are quite old and still causing untold harm.

Your first point - worldwide agreement on what consitutes a patentable(sic) invention - is the most important issue.

Patents being more of an issue in software because things are developed more quickly is irrelevant. If things are developed more quickly, the original patent should soon become redundant. Its validity for an extended time period would be meaningless. A catalogue of ridiculous software patents is available at the LPF site. Many of these are quite old and still causing untold harm.

Excerpt:

The moniker--Information Highway--itself seems to be responsible for SB #040194. Introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, it's designed to prohibit anyone from using a public computer network (Information Highway) while the computer user is intoxicated. I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks that being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is. The bill is expected to pass this month.

There already are rampant arguments as to how this proposed law can possibly be enforced. The FBI hopes to use it as an excuse to do routine wiretaps on any computer if there is any evidence that the owner "uses or abuses alcohol and has access to a modem." Note how it slips in the word 'uses'. This means if you've been seen drinking one lone beer, you can have your line tapped.

Full version at http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/humor/drunk-on- infohighway

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny the historical fact that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

Who could forget the Star Wars R2D2 "hack" of the Great Dome at MIT right before the Phantom Menace came out? I think this counts as a hack, even if it isn't computer related (it certainly is geek related). Here's some links for those who forgot this one:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/19 99/r2d2.html

http://slashdot.org/ar ticle.pl?sid=99/05/18/193234&mode=flat

If you're interested in alternatives to crypto, you should also check out chaffing and winnowing -- it's a bit complex (and I don't claim to understand it completely) but basically it involves mixing real information with garbage in such a way that the receiving system will automatically be able to tell the difference but an eavesdropper won't. No keys required, ergo, no government-mandated "key recovery" schemes.

You still have keys, they're just used for authentication rather than encryption. The relevance of chaffing and winnowing to U.S. government export regulations is that encryption is regulated more strictly than authentication.

I really doubt there's a technological method to render key escrow impossible. Clearly, the recipient of a message, which can be intercepted without fear of the original messagee being recovered, must have some private information. If they didn't, either they couldn't recover the original message, or everyone else could too. Whatever guise this private information might take, the government can demand access to it.

It doesn't really matter anyway, because the whole point of key escrow is that the government forces you to transmit information in such a way that they can recover it. Traditionally, it means forcing everyone to use a method of encryption to which they have some sort of backdoor key. There are already plenty of methods not vulnerable to central key recovery. Under key escrow laws, you wouldn't be allowed to use these methods.

And steganography isn't the same thing as "security through obscurity". Steganography is the art of hiding one message inside another; "security through obscurity" is doing stupid things like XORing stored passwords with the programmer's birthday and hoping nobody notices. :)

If you're interested in alternatives to crypto, you should also check out chaffing and winnowing -- it's a bit complex (and I don't claim to understand it completely) but basically it involves mixing real information with garbage in such a way that the receiving system will automatically be able to tell the difference but an eavesdropper won't. No keys required, ergo, no government-mandated "key recovery" schemes.

I've not actually seen one, just the web site. Netscape has a long list of on-line watch dealers. The Beat series all seem to come in around the US$60 mark.

This has got to be an uber geek accessory. I claim no association with Swatch apart from owning one of the electric/automatics :-)

If you have a casual interest in this area of mathematics, good places to start might be Ireland/Rosen, A classical introduction to modern number theory, or Silverman, The arithmetic of elliptic curves (both Springer GTM). See also my bibliography of math textbooks.

Donald Knuth to comment on this.

Well, not exactly... we just need to make the pixels smaller than the resolution of the eye, and do so cheaply. Whatever happened to those 300-dpi displays I've heard about? (though we may need 600 dpi...)

I don't think raster displays will work for that. Mine can't even handle 100 dpi and still be sharp. (though I guess I can say my monitor does its own antialiasing ;-) )

Analog has been tried before -- they're called vector displays (ala Spacewar and early Atari arcade games). For some odd reason they didn't catch on permanently. Go figure.

Finally, if you want to know how to create a 3-D image, I've found a link to ways of doing it.

I really liked that link.

Here is another: classics.mit.edu

or start a seperate protest website for this stuff?

The League for Programming Freedom was once upon a time the chief organization that fought software patents. For a time they kind of dissipated, but can now be found at http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/.

The LPF now chiefly appears to be a news site. If there are Slashdotters who have financial, political or legal expertise to throw at this problem, contributing those gifts to LPF would be a wonderful and important thing to do.

• The Question. More or less content-free.
• Some info, some questions.
• Some answers to the above questions. Like, FreeSwan no longer supports plain DES; you have to use 3DES. And, "Manual-key setup has to be done on *both* ends"
• This guy is willing to pay for help.
• Assload of debugging data, from Interop setup.

• Here is a list of Checkpoint partners and things that work with a Checkpoint firewall. Not comprehensive.
• OPSEC ("Open Platform for Security")site. Stuff that works with Firewall-1 and other OPSEC-compliant firewalls. I don't know if there are any besides FW-1.
• IPSec for FreeBSD
• Some IPSec software from MIT
• The people who make SSH also have IPSec/IKE products.

mirror

try telnet

telnet's useful for things like a quick "HEAD / HTTP/1.0" on a given site.

Jezus, People still think text based stuff is all they'll ever need. Crawl out of your holes and stop blocking progress.

Things like the above really annoy me. Do you define "progress" as things like:

• jscript cookies
  
• cookies on objects other than HTML
  
• annoying animated GIFs (there ARE useful apps for animated GIFS; don't get me wrong)
  
• ActiveX
  
• VBscript
  
• misused javascript (status bar takeovers, etc)
  
• content that requires a browser/OS-specific plugin
  
• frivolous use of any content/technology that would otherwise be useful (java, jscript, animations, etc)
  

Now, seeing how lynx is very useful on more than occasion, here's how I use it:

• fetching pages for perl to munch on (lynx -source ...)
  
• Q&D downloads of files when I don't know the URL (if I DO know the URL, wget is much better fot this)
  
• I'm telnetted into someone else's box over a modem, and running a GUI browser is truly rude
  
• many other uses which I can't think of right now
  

I invite you to take off your blinders.

--

A long time ago I was reading through some GNU software and they were pushing another organization called "The League for Programming Freedom". I managed to find their web site at http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/ However it looks like the organization isn't doing to well. "Getting a domain name might not be a priority until the LPF has an actual committee to take it forward". The organization really is a good idea and we really should be pushing to turn it into a decent lobby organization, or perhaps the EFF should branch out. Though for letter writing/emailing you get your representatives address info here. I'd really recommend sending them something. Remember to be polite and to include the address you're registered to vote at. (If you're not registered you should be.) On the list of recent news that had this little tidbit "02 Sep 99: Lucent gets patent on sine/cosine table lookup" Hmm... hasn't that one being done by hand since, say shortly after sine/cosine were invented? diane

When I hear about some new attempt to force the church into the state, or to decrease protections against arbitrary search and seizure, I know the ACLU (of which I am a card-carrying member) will coordinate efforts against it.

There is widespread agreement that software patents are evil. But who's binding and guiding the outrage? The only name that keeps coming up is the LPF, but there doesn't seem to be much more there than a name - I can't even join or send money through their web site (http://lpf.ai.mit.edu).

Don't look at me - I'll give money, and write letters, but my organizing and people skills are zero. Maybe that's the problem, the old canard about how organizing geeks is like herding cats.

This just illustrates how inappropriate patents are for software. Even if this were an original idea (and as others have pointed out, it certainly isn't), it wouldn't be worth granting a patent on it, because it would restrict competition far too much and subject developers to legal harassment. It's also merely a combination of existing ideas - filling in templates, and caching data in memory - that would be obvious to any skilled programmer.

Of course Yahoo are free to copyright the code they are using, and that makes sure that they can get a good return from their effort. But allowing companies to patent particular ideas and then sue other developers is bad news both for the software industry and for consumers.

It's not too late to stop software patents being introduced in Europe - check out freepatents.org if you live in the EU.

The "reference software" (slow, user-hostile code to demonstrate how the standard is supposed to work) was completed in August and the source is available as part of the spec. Non-MPEG organizations are already building tools for user-friendly use of the standard.

The whole MPEG-4 Audio standard (not including Video or Systems) is about 1200 pages long. It is formally ISO 14496-3:1999 and is divided into 6 Sections:

• 1. Introduction and Overview
• 2. Parametric Speech coding
• 3. CELP Speech coding
• 4. General Audio (AAC/TwinVQ merger)
• 5. Structured Audio (audio synthesis)
• 6. Text to Speech Interface

The part that is most like MP3 is Section 4. Section 4 enables music and other wideband audio coding from 16 kbps to 64 kbps/channel. At the high end, the quality is nearly transparent -- most listeners will not be able to tell the difference between the coded and the original signal. MPEG-4 GA at 96 kbps (stereo) gives about the same quality as MP3 at 192 kbps (stereo) -- thus, files are half as big for the same quality.

There are no "layers" in MPEG-4 Audio.

Some of the sections of the standard (2, 3, 4) are protected by patents and cannot be freely implemented. Section 5 is not protected by patents and can be freely implemented without paying license fees.

Here is the hype from the beginning of Section 1:

ISO/IEC 14496-3 (MPEG-4 Audio) is a new kind of audio standard that integrates many different types of audio coding: natural sound with synthetic sound, low bitrate delivery with high-quality delivery, speech with music, complex soundtracks with simple ones, and traditional content with interactive and virtual-reality content. By standardizing individually sophisticated coding tools as well as a novel, flexible framework for audio synchronization, mixing, and downloaded post-production, the developers of the MPEG-4 Audio standard have created new technology for a new, interactive world of digital audio.

MPEG-4, unlike previous audio standards created by ISO/IEC and other groups, does not target a single application such as real-time telephony or high-quality audio compression. Rather, MPEG-4 Audio is a standard that applies to every application requiring the use of advanced sound compression, synthesis, manipulation, or playback. The subparts that follow specify the state-of-the-art coding tools in several domains; however, MPEG-4 Audio is more than just the sum of its parts. As the tools described here are integrated with the rest of the MPEG-4 standard, exciting new possibilities for object- based audio coding, interactive presentation, dynamic soundtracks, and other sorts of new media, are enabled.

Best regards,

-- Eric Scheirer
Editor, ISO 14496-3 (MPEG-4 Audio)

More info: http://sound.media.mit.edu/mpeg4/audio

Wouldn't that be the League for Programming Freedom?

Granted, they are primarily focused on patents, but it's a start.

That collective of ubergeekiness is actually here, not at the link above. Sorry about that.

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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

Silly rabbit! People will telecommute in the future, or just teleport around! ;)

... and when you pull into your driveway your porch light turns on and the vcr (or digital HD thigy that replaced it a few months ago) gets ready to play back the news of the day that you told it to from the office when you saw something of interest on slashdot.

This is happening already with such things as TV/DVD/Computers all coming together as one "information appliance". This could be the only real use for net enabled applicances and really, when we've already got most of the above with a puter with video cap card and DVD, *IS* the only net enabled appliance we've got right now.

The above idea does intrigue me though. Maybe I'll try doing some scripted video capture onto a new 27GB HD via my BTTV. I smell open source VCR replacement for those peeps with big HDs. ;)

As you get out of your car it begins to recharge itself form the docking station built into your garage and downlaods the audio notes you were dictating on the way home to your computer where they are converted to nice document form and ready on your desktop to do whatever you want with them.

Recharging: Not needed to be on the net.

Audio Notes: Another information appliance. Probably best handled by something like the upcoming cell phone/pager/palm pilot fusion dealies, or 'wearable computing' items which we've all been assured are coming Real Soon Now® from people like this collective of ubergeekiness.

I could see the transcription now:

... Persuant to our clients' interests, I recommend that we acquire JEEZEZ FUGGIN' CHRIST YOU MORON, STAY IN YOUR OWN GODDAMN LANE! Why am I always trapped on the road with DARWINIAN REJECTS!!!! God damn... now, where was I... oh, look, that figures. Some moron with an ancient cell-phone. TRY UPGRADING, IDIOT!...

...then you go inside, watch the news while checking your e-mail with the remote. then you set up a client meeting and tell the oven to make your favorite dish all without getting up from the cozy couch.

You're going WAY beyond simple net connectivity with that sort of idea. You're looking at a large scale robotics issue, which would be far more expensive, and not much faster, and almost certainly less palatable than simply ordering out. You don't have to get out of your chair then either.

sound good? no? well to assloads of ppl out there it does and that means $$$ for all the companies that do it first. when it comes down to it, it's all about the benjamins.

Sure. It's just highly impractical, and terribly expensive in the case of automation, and unless you're an engineer or humanity suddenly is able to produce flawless technology, rife with annoying and potentially dangerous breakdowns and glitches. I also don't see a compelling reason to enable my lightbulbs to talk to me on the net, unless perhaps I want to do my own interpreting when the aliens from Close Encounters come buzzing by my home.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand and agree that for information appliances (phones, puters, entertainment devices etc) there's a definate upside to being net-enabled. I just don't believe that there's a compelling purpose to tracking your toilet usage via syslog, or any real need to ping your blender.

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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

what you seem to be forgetting (or perhaps everybody is) is the need for a networked infrastructure for all these online devices. simply having a network accessible device is good and all as a toy, but it doesn't do it any good unless it can talk to your other networked devices for planning and coordination needs.

presumeably this infrastructure (whether it be jini-like, or hive-like) has to have the ability to manage all the devices on the local network. and once you have a way to adminstrate all the devices, think of an AutoRPM system or something similar to what RedHat now has for registered users -- let your infrastructure automatically update your applicances.

of course, this all assumes you buy upgradeable devices, whether it be in software or with FPGAs or something. i don't understand why anybody would by non-upgradeable devices if they had the choice anyway. in the worst case, if there is a bug in your "coffee machine", let your infrastructure take it off the network until a fix has become available.

networking everything is the way that we are moving. networking coffee machines, or microwaves is an interesting concept as toys, but the more interesting things happen when you network your whole house and have it have all these independant devices work together to form some emergent behavior (oh yeah - this had better not have a bug in it -- think of a house that is out of control and out to get you :)

sorry about rambling..........

I'd suggest donating the royality to The League for Programming Freedom. Especially if the patent in question is a software patent.