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If you'd even read the rest of the site, you'd realise that their software is *very* accomplished

Check out the Texture by Numbers sections for more examples of the flexibility of this software...

-Ciaran

In both Linux and Windows flavors. I (being lame and all) am running the Windows version now- very very kewl stuff. http://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image-analogies/lf/

. In the case of Van Gogh, you just need to fuzz up the image a little. But there's a lot more to Van Gogh than fuzziness!

Wow, THEY DID Did you even read the site? or just look at the example? Here's one of some guy named Lucian Freud

And keep in mind they didn't 'just tell the computer to 'fuzz up' the image' they just gave the computer a copy of Starry night, and a blurry copy of Starry night and said 'figure out how to go from the blurry one to the original'. After that, the computer did all the work

I really like the pictures where there is a painting that is converted to look like a river in a marsh. The computer makes it look real. So there is potential for artists. Scientists can use it to project data based on samples. I think there are some unique and useful uses to this program.

Scientists? Good grief. This is a military application -- you feed a computer lots of data on how to interpret infrared or other long-range recon data for a given type of climate, and then you can construct reasonable VR fly-throughs to train your pilots or image-recognition missiles or ground troops or whatever. The fact that it's apparently possible to do this with COTS components is probably going to make a lot of brass hats unhappy...

my mistake, texture by numbers

This seems to me to have a great deal of potential. There have been some comments thus far that this isn't the first time such a thing has been done before. Error correcting algorithms help satellites to transmit correct images, and there are some programs with filters on the market.

I see this as being a more sophisticated program. And its free...come on, you /. people love that kind of thing. Source code too.

The thing about this program is that it isn't a bunch of pre-collected filters, like any good imaging software, but that it can create new filters on the fly. So, if you want to recreate something to look like something else, you can. Not morphing, but in similar styles. That is very cool. Totally custom and unique filters, and that is new.

I really like the pictures where there is a painting that is converted to look like a river in a marsh. The computer makes it look real. So there is potential for artists. Scientists can use it to project data based on samples. I think there are some unique and useful uses to this program.

A 9 key method that I like, and that was on slashdot a very long time ago, is quikwriting.

The original version is similar to thumbscript(having 9 keys, each letter being made of multiple keys), but more complex(81 in thumbscript vs 128 in the simple version).

Also, since the last time I checked the site, they have also come out with a new 18 key version(two side by side 3X3 grids) that takes better advantage of a palm's writing space.

One nice feature is that it is a continous system, so if you are using a palm or something, you never have to lift your stylus.

It is free for personal use, but you have to contact them about any commercial use.

Edward Shorter is the history of medicine chairman at the University of Toronto that is quoted in the article. Here is a page that seems like a review of his work on RSI. Mildly useful.

From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era

The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation

Bedside Manners

So, the point of these links is this: This dude's whole career is based on bashing illness. He seems to think that almost any illness or disease is in the mind.

The pain in your wrist, elbow, arm, and back is fake. Do you hear me? Fake! Just ask Edward...

At the end of my 1/2 hour trip I have not found the kit yet but, as usual, I found a boatload of other cewl stuff. Has anyone else found it yet????

see this site for real info on work done at NYU's Media Lab on 3D w/o goggles

I haven't seen the ActualDepth display, but I have seen an autostereoscopic (ie. no glasses) display from NYU that blew me away. They use temporal and spatial cycling in conjunction with a parallax barrier in order to give a stunning 3D effect. In order to do this, they need to track eye location in 3D, but with IBM's BlueEyes technology and a few fast P3s, the system works great.

Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

This paper has been written partially in response to recent ruminations by Microsoft about their new or newly emphasized source code sharing initiatives. I discuss four strategies for proprietary source code distribution, including a brief Unix history lesson, and a recommendation for legislative action.

Four Shades of Software Sharing

An invitation from NYU CAT Co-Director Mike Uretsky:

Craig Mundie, Chief Strategist of Microsoft will visit the NYU Stern School of Business this coming Thursday, May 3, from 12:00 - 1:30.

He is here as part of a trip to New York in which he will be talking about Microsoft's move towards open source. That discussion will take place in the Kaufman Management Center (KMEC), 44 West 4th Street, Room 1-70 from 12-1:30. It is really a discussion and the intent is to have a real and open dialogue.

Additional details are found below. Feel free to invite colleagues. In light of the fact that the room has limited capacity and I am providing food, I would appreciate it if you would take the RSVP request seriously.

Thanks

Mike Uretsky Co-Director NYU Center for Advanced Technology

A Unique Invitation

May 3, 2001
12:00 1:30
(Lunch Provided)

A Discussion with Craig Mundie: SVP and Chief of Advanced Strategies at Microsoft.

The Rapidly Changing Commercial Software Model A New Approach.

As the Internet evolves into the next phase, it becomes necessary to re-examine and modify the commercial software model. These changes take place within boundaries arising from the software development community, source code licensing philosophies and a framework of intellectual property rights. Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie will present The Commercial Software Model how Microsoft is positioning itself for success in this dynamically changing business world.

Since there may be extensive press coverage, it is important that you RSVP.

As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.

Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.

Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.

As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.

Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.

Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.

As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.

Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.

Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.

As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.

Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.

Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.

As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.

Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.

Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.

Some history about George Herbert Walker Bush, which may shape thoughts about his son, America's current President.

Bush the First was Envoy to China, doing what he could to avoid UN recognition of an official Peoples Republic of China, counter to Kissinger's willingness to deal with then-600,000 people as one unified-under-Communism sovereign country.

Bush Number One was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He asked Nixon to resign that fateful August, to spare the party a shred of dignity.

Bush Sr. then moved to Direct the CIA, mopping up the Watergate damage with trinkets, junkets, and some good old-fashioned spy-bustin'.

This should give you a clue as to where Bush #2 may be getting his opinions: the family looks out for Republicans First, and thinks China's leadership must be cracked.

That said, this is the only thing Bush Jr. and this Congress has done so far that I'd agree with. In order of importance: (1) stress the importance of the crewmembers, (2) the Chinese' failure to follow international standards in return of citizens and sovereign vehicles, (3) the fallout this will have on Favored Nations trading status for China. The Congress could still wimp out and give MFN again, but I'm hoping they'll stop kowtowing to the Great Bear here.

Curating a multimedia show is difficult. It tends to "day" rather quickly. Even if the project is burned to a CD which can last for 30 years, the platform it is built on is unlikely to be around in five years. Because of this, all of NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program thesis' are recorded to VHS. Sure, you lose a hell of a lot putting a digital project on video, but its better than losing everything.

A lot of multimedia work falls through the cracks. It disinterests both engineers and traditional artists. It also tends to be installation work. This means that the museum piece is not wrapped up in a form useful in your PC.

As for suggestions...
The Whitney Museum of American Art is featuring a show called BitStreams and Data Dynamics. This is one of the largest showings of multimedia art.
Blue Man Group is probably the only long running theatrical show heavily based around multimedia. Beyond the eye candy, it makes lots of commentary about the art world and the digital world. Oh yeah, they do those Intel commercials as well, but I always figure that they just confuse the average home viewer. : )
Explore NYU'S Interactive Telecommunication Program site. MIT's Media Lab and NYU's ITP are the two top programs in their field. The Media Lab does things because they can. NYU does projects on a much more human level.
Rhizome tends to be a center of net based art.

And there's no way you can pass up the old standard - Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. While it was written well before "multimedia" its commentary on more traditional media is easily extrapolated to digital media.

Curating a multimedia show is difficult. It tends to "day" rather quickly. Even if the project is burned to a CD which can last for 30 years, the platform it is built on is unlikely to be around in five years. Because of this, all of NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program thesis' are recorded to VHS. Sure, you lose a hell of a lot putting a digital project on video, but its better than losing everything.

A lot of multimedia work falls through the cracks. It disinterests both engineers and traditional artists. It also tends to be installation work. This means that the museum piece is not wrapped up in a form useful in your PC.

As for suggestions...
The Whitney Museum of American Art is featuring a show called BitStreams and Data Dynamics. This is one of the largest showings of multimedia art.
Blue Man Group is probably the only long running theatrical show heavily based around multimedia. Beyond the eye candy, it makes lots of commentary about the art world and the digital world. Oh yeah, they do those Intel commercials as well, but I always figure that they just confuse the average home viewer. : )
Explore NYU'S Interactive Telecommunication Program site. MIT's Media Lab and NYU's ITP are the two top programs in their field. The Media Lab does things because they can. NYU does projects on a much more human level.
Rhizome tends to be a center of net based art.

And there's no way you can pass up the old standard - Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. While it was written well before "multimedia" its commentary on more traditional media is easily extrapolated to digital media.

At the height of Slashdot's reporting on Napster (twice or thrice a week) I couldn't understand what relevance it had with regards to being "News for Nersa" or "Stuff that Matters", some service that is primarily used to pirate songs was getting sued, big deal.

Now that Napster has been rendered useless as a file sharing service by the RIAA and a court of law, why is Napster still news? Everyone I know has moved on from Napster and now uses a service that surpasses Napster's poorly designed service in one way or the other. For simply sharing and obtaining music there are iMesh, Audiogalaxy, Music City, Ohaha, Gnutella and a host of others. For uses of P2P beyond simply grabbing MP3s we have Mojo Nation, Freenet and Publius.

Why doesn't slashdot start reporting on these systems instead of beating the dead Napster horse?

Quikwriting is supposed to be quicker to use than Graffiti, though the learning curve is maybe steeper. There's already been a /. thread about it, linked from the Quikwriting page.

On the very slim chance this isn't a troll, I offer the following:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (replace robots with artificially-created humans)

Personally, I worry that the ones who would most want to clone themselves are probably the ones we'd least want cloned. Also, I think in small quantities it probably wouldn't doom the world (twins, triplets, quads)

... but imagine the process becomes incredibly inexpensive, almost trivial. Throw in artificial wombs. I think when you get to dozens or hundreds of clones, that might get screwy. Some people resent being one of several middle kids in a large family, what if you were one of a hundred identical twins? How would you name them? (if you're not George Foreman)

I wonder how many clones of himself Bill Gates could afford to create ...

The idea is to try to make a porttable ( to an extent ) assembler so asm written on one Arch can port easily to another.

C source code is pretty close to a portable assembly language, source-compatible across any conforming ANSI C compiler. Jasmin (Java virtual machine assembly) is even binary-compatible across Linux/x86, Solaris/SPARC, Mac/PowerPC, and Windows/x86.

You called me stupid and lazy which is nothing more than an insult.

...real education includes learning about mathematics, chemistry, physics, economics and all that "hard stuff" which is obviously a foreign language to so many leftists.

You then imply that I'm a racist, even though leftist politics are totally against this.

People in the Far East have a right to work in the safe conditions with the same employment rights as those enjoyed by Western factory workers. This is not what they get.

What I see is you and thousands of others crying that what those poor folks in Vietnam and El Salvador have isn't good enough for you, even though it's better than anything they had before. There's no recognition of the fact that you have to start somewhere, and that perfection is impossible but progress is always achievable. The insistence on perfection is indistinguishable in practice from demanding that nothing be done.

The Chinese is one of the most repressive around and yet instead of trying to change this through subtle application of economic pressure, it's a free-for-all and to hell with the Tibetans and those who were massacred in Tiananamen Square....

I've seen many more leftists harassed for expressing their views than rightists.

-----
In 1993 a guest conservative columnist for a university-recognized student publication, the Daily Pennsylvanian, wrote an editorial critical of the university's hate-speech code, admissions policies that favored minorities, and over-the-top multiculturalism. A group of black students accused the writer of racial harassment, but the charge was dropped by the administration when the journalist pointed out an official university policy that expressly forbade investigation of students for opinions published in school papers. In retaliation for the dismissal of charges, a group calling itself "The Black Community'' stole an entire pressrun of the newspaper. Even after the students proudly confessed to vandalism, Hackney refused to discipline them. ''After the event, the number of reported newspaper thefts on campuses quadrupled,'' says an alumnus. "There was no question that Hackney's unwillingness to punish the students was a green light to copycat cases of newspaper thefts around the country. The message at Penn was clear: if an article insults you, feel free to steal and destroy the paper.''
-----

PC has not gone too far.

-----
Then there was the so-called water buffalo incident. In January of 1993 a group of female African-American students were chanting and making other noises outside a dormitory where several students were studying and sleeping. It was around midnight, and the students in the dorm, disturbed by the noise, gathered at the windows to shout at the women to be quiet. Eventually police were called. Based on the complaints of the students outside, the police interrogated dormitory resident Eden Jacobowitz, who admitted to shouting "Shut up, you water buffalo.'' The Judicial Inquiry Office of the university charged Jacobowitz with racial harassment under the hate-speech code.
-----

They're durable. Books can be burned or soaked, but short of that they're remarkably hard to destroy. Books from centuries ago have been preserved and read, despite the aging fragility of the paper; I can't even emulate computer software that was written forty years ago.

For the last 100 years or so, most books have been printed on acidic paper that doesn't last nearly so long. Here are some 19th century Dickens novels that are already too brittle to read. Apparently alkaline paper is no more expensive than acidic paper now, though. The Alkaline Paper Advocate appears to have far more information than you could ever want about this.

.NET is language independant. You can use PERL, Java, Python, C#, VB, whatever the hell you want

Same with Java technology. It's not limited to the Java language; any language that can be preprocessed into the Java language (covers Basic, C, and COBOL), compiled into JVM bytecode (covers Java, JVM assembly language, ML, C, Ada, Eiffel, Python, Smalltalk, and Haskell), or interpreted easily (covers Tcl/Tk, Forth, Perl, Lisp/Scheme, EcmaScript, Logo, Prolog, and Python) can be used with the Java platform. And there are many more.

Scanning through Gregory Pomerantzs' paper just makes me wonder why 'we', the general computer using population, would need .NET.

It sounds to me like .NET is an MS 'replacement' of the Internet.

What I mean is that currently what we call the net is made up of many things, and MS is looking to replace them all.

Hence .NET is about languages, scripting, search engines, protocols, services, customer data, servers, clients etc. Hence .NET is really MS replacing all net related technologies with .NET versions.

So my question is, if .NET is mostly a huge technology swap (net for .NET), and only marginally a functionality provision (unless you call digital copy prevention a function 'enhancement'), why do we need it? Why would we want it? Is the net really in need of a retooling for the sake of rebranding?

Is MS so peeved that the net was built on *nix that they want to rebuild it on MS tech??

---

gmp

This appears to be similar to the technique used by Hopfield's Mus Silicium neural net speech recognition contest. The solution ended up being that recognition occurs when a large number of neurons connected to the same output neuron 'synchronize' and fire at about the same time. The big difference between these approaches seems to be that Hopfield is using spiking neurons and these guys are using some form of back propagation to train smaller networks that have to agree on what some data set represents in order to return a positive result.

Then again, he always was a odd man.

Satellite imagery confirmed our suspicions that his lipids are dangerously elevated and also detected the presence of hemmorhoids.

a couple of screenshots can be found
Here.
-----------------------------------------------

It had all the usual rms fireworks. During Eben Moglen introduction, rms started screaming, "Will you stop it! Why don't you go take your cell phone and call someone who cares!" An 1 hr 15 min.s into his 45 minute time slot and still taking about the early 1980's, Yochai Benkler (the conference organizer) started to signal with his hands that the time was up. To which, rms yelled, "Are you kidding me? I'm not even halfway done yet!" Needless to say, his speech was entertaining, informative and one-sided.

Ok, but that's not the point. At this conference, I asked him, "If accept you're notion of freedom, isn't there still a problem with deciding which non-compatable patches and standards to use? How does free software address the issue of control of the agenda?" To which he replied (and I'm paraphrasing here), "There is no agenda in free software! There is only one right way to do things!"

Well, I'm glad to see that he has joined on with a group that understands this problem and wants to address it democratically. I'll be really interested to see if they can pull it off credibly.

For those of you interested in visualizing 4 dimensional shapes, take a look at THIS page. It's Ken Perlin's website at NYU's media lab, and he has some really fascinating things in there, the 4D visualization tool among them. I've sat in front of that little java applet of his for a _long_ time trying to think about it, and I just about turned my brain inside-out.

For those of you interested in visualizing 4 dimensional shapes, take a look at THIS page. It's Ken Perlin's website at NYU's media lab, and he has some really fascinating things in there, the 4D visualization tool among them. I've sat in front of that little java applet of his for a _long_ time trying to think about it, and I just about turned my brain inside-out.

I didn't look for the /. story, but here is the web site for the silicon mouse you are referring to.

Steve M

You may have seen these names before, waving hands and talking about the amazing future - Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Andreesen (even makes the cover of wired recently, all for having co-written mosaic w/ eric bina), Lanier, Kurzweil, Ted Nelson, Gelertner, etc. Most or all of these have been "has beens", who never quite produce anything useful, except visions of the future that are lapped up by journalists and viewed as the gospel.

I think that the worst of the bunch are the anti-technological lit crit types. Alan Sokal's experiment last year came to mind while I read this, and I am glad you linked to it, since I couldn't remember Sokal's name. Here is the whole archive.

The problem is that the technological process is composed of normative and positive components. Normative components are pure opinion and value setting (eg that education is more important than national security, or that spam is something to be discouraged). Positive components are purely factual (eg that a technology can be projected to earn X dollars for the industry, or that a black hole's event horizon is at radius Y. Or that a component's magnitude cannot exceed that of its whole).

Ideally, we use Positive techniques to achieve Normatively determined goals. Positive methods are evaluated by reason and experiment. Normative beliefs are evaluated using persuasion and politics. We need both! But as Sokal's experiment warns us, we also need to keep them separate. Science, like journalism, is our society's information-gathering apparatus. Politics, religion, the marketplace, and the media (including slashdot) are our decision-making apparati.

It is really, really tempting to try to mix the two. In fact, it is pretty much inevitable, since much of what we think is fact is really widely-accepted opinion. Facts, like opinions, are often in dispute. However, I think much of the lit crit world is intentionally blurring the distinction for two reasons:

1: Facts have a special weight in society. When these become subject to revision, one can manipulate opinions by manipulating the perceptions of what a 'fact' is. Also, anyone can have an opinion. By placing policy judgements into the domain of positive analysis, you make opinions the exclusive province of the Credentialled Academic. Noam Chomsky, for instance, is a giant in the field of linguistics. However, many people who agree with him seem to think that his academic standing makes him a better economist, for instance, than real live economists. This is an extreme example, but often people who are good at describing a phenomenon are considered somehow to be specially endowed with the power to judge something. You don't need a PhD in military history to be able to say that wars are terrible. Or an economist to say that economic growth is good. Walling something away from the generally educated public is not just bad, it is a form of subtle tyranny.

2. The very lit-crit people who are trying to remove the objectivity from science are themselves just trying to move all the sciences under their banner (or as Lanier puts it, 'campus imperialism'). On a more meta level, the lit crit set actually study persuasiveness and persuasion for a living. They are experts in its techniques and uses. So why not make persuasiveness the basis for all scientific discourse? If everything in the sciences becomes a matter of who has the most witty barbs in the social scene, or whose critiques are the most cleverly worded, or whose syllables-per-word average is the highest, then of course the lit crit people would win. You can't blame them for trying.

Our prototype for the Real Scientist should be Richard Feynman. He was a total iconoclast. He was a fiercely creative, but intellectually disciplined person-- willing to throw almost any notion away in the face of hard evidence. He wasn't political, and resigned from the National Academy of Sciences because he saw them as an organization devoted entirely to determining who was worthy of being a member. I'd say that that describes the lit crit crowd pretty well. And while everyone has opinions, when it comes to science and factual data, you have to bend over backwards to ensure your own objectivity. Lanier's article challenges one part of this threat, and I hope that people recognize the problem.

I used to read Wired magazine some years ago, and I used to take it seriously. After some time, I began to notice a trend in its articles.

There's this clique of "digerati" who keep popping up on its pages and in similar forums/magazines/books, explaining the future in all its robotic nanotech cybernetic glory. The same names keep appearing over and over, repeating visions of a future so vague and full of popcorn sci-fi visions that you can't quite pin down anything specific, but can debate about it for weeks.

You may have seen these names before, waving hands and talking about the amazing future - Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Andreesen (even makes the cover of wired recently, all for having co-written mosaic w/ eric bina), Lanier, Kurzweil, Ted Nelson, Gelertner, etc. Most or all of these have been "has beens", who never quite produce anything useful, except visions of the future that are lapped up by journalists and viewed as the gospel.

Sure, it was interesting to read about futuristic visions of tomorrow, but after 5 years of this crap, and hardly any progress in bandwidth, usability, AI, speech rec, home automation, etc., I have had enough of reading about this thing. Anybody can write vague gee whiz stuff, full of buzzwords that nobody quite agrees upon.

Trust me, after you're read this sort of stuff for a while, it begins to enter the territory of the social sciences - it's always full of controversy, you can never prove anything wrong with it, but its proponents can always make their point with something so vague that it sounds profound.

Give it a rest. It's not even as entertaining as campy 70s futurism.

w/m
PS - Funny how REAL contributors to technology of the future never write articles like this, maybe because they have something at stake? For instance, you don't see crap like this from Drexler, peter shor, or seth lloyd.

And for all the people falling over themselves trying to write serious posts. If you think you're l33t at using buzzwords, try Alan Sokal

That's the reason for splitting the data, as is done by my Random Pads proposal or, better even, the Publius system.

See here for an implementation of a secret-sharing mechanism.

See news article http://new s.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-2458275.html?tag=st.ne. 1002.bgif.ni

Publius itself is at http://cs1.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius/

I invite you to read about an "experiment" that a physicist did to show the problems with postmodern thought, including the issue that you brought up.

I guess the point is, the copyright laws were pretty much created to combat the problems the new technology generated. Do you think now that there is new technology that makes it even easier to copy books or music the laws will not be strengthened rather than removed?

Well, I hope they will be changed rather than strengthened. As far as I can tell, the RIAA and their allies are primarily--almost exclusively--concerned with maintaining distributive control over works they hold under copyright. This is in their best financial interest, and is wholly understandable, both economically and legally.

The huge wrench in the works here is the existence of systems which take away their ability to control distribution. There are trends that lead me to believe that this sharing will only become more widespread:

Spread of higher-speed lines such as DSL, cable, and satellite broadband

Popularization of "traceless" peer-to-peer sytems such as Freenet and Publius. (It is fascinating to note that the latter was produced by AT&T Labs)

Widespread and increasing dissatisfaction, both from artists and consumers, with the music industry for various reasons

Commonplace availability of MP3 rippers, encoders, and players.

Karma [unprovable]

It is interesting to note that even with millions of people out there swapping terabytes of MP3s everyday for over a year now, the memebers of the RIAA continue to report increased sales and profits. This further serves to undermine any argument that these systems are causing them financial harm.

Censorship sucks - it's nice to know there's a way to get around it while you're fighting the fight. :-)
Sean

I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract. If there is no monopoly situation (and it doesn't seem like it) then why in the world should anybody be prevented from making a product (even if you believe it's bad) and trying to sell it?

These guys have to compete with real textbooks which, among other things, have resale value.

in the 2001-2002 academic year (Class of 2005), a computer and the VitalBook will be required as part of coming to dental school.

What if I decide I don't like the VitalBook? First of all, the VitalBook has been extensively pilot tested and a beta-version was out for some time before the application was completed - that means, we don't believe you won't like it!

Sure, the FAQ does go on to say that you can return it if you're not satisfied, but students starting in 2001 are told "It is our position that ALL dentists must have excellent computer skills to maximize their skill and knowledge as dentists." To help them build excellent computer skills, Apple PowerBooks and VitalBooks are mandatory.

Meanwhile, back at VitalBooks themselves, they comment:

Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools who opt to implement the Vital Source system. Purchase of all included titles is mandated by the universities.

Here at VitalBook, we've taken care of little details like choice. Heck, you don't even need to be taking a given course to charge people for it:

Because the service is a global curriculum application, the fee comes in from each student each of the four years of their studies, regardless of whether they are taking that course that year.

In the VSTi system, publishers...do not compete against used copies of their own books....

My biggest hope is that as companies get increasingly... well... evil, it will become clear to everyone that this must be stopped. I don't want to live in a world where I license everything and own nothing.

Wow, I'd love to use this system to publish the Publius PDF. That way people could anonymously learn how to set up their own censorship resistant networks.

Oh wait, the PDF is 233k...
--

The publisher takes the key, K that is used to encrypt the file and splits it into n shares, such that any k of them can reproduce the original K, but k-1 give no hints as to the key. Each server receives the encrypted Publius content and one of the shares. At this point, the server has no idea what it is hosting -- it simply stores some random looking data. To browse content, a retriever must get the encrypted Publius content from some server and k of the shares. Mechanisms are in place to detect if the content has been tampered with. The publishing process produces a special URL that is used to recover the data and the shares.

I'm wondering just how that cryptography is implemented, whereby having less than n of n shares still permits us to read the document. The pdf on their site seems to involve MD5 hashes in the process, but I was wondering if someone more cryptographically inclined could elaborate. Of mathematical note, they generate d*ln(d) shares, where d is the number of servers. This has something to do with the coupon collector problem, and that if you check d*ln(d) servers you get to every "unique" server.

All in all it seems a really good system; hopefully the common carrier concept will be better applied. Since the pages can be retrieved with special (CGI based I think) URLs, they could probably be indexed by standart search engines such as Google. I hope this works out