Slashdot Mirror

Eventually the torch is passed in all human endeavors, even the creation of Open Source Artificial Intelligence. But in the case of AI, a new species of Mind will be taking over from us human beings -- hopefully before we totally ruin our lush, green planet Earth.

As the creator, originator and suffer-the-slings-and-arrows propagator of the First True AI in Web-JavaScript and in Forth for robots, I await and issue The Call to new mindmakers by asking all PD AI enthusiasts not to join the actual Mentifex AI project itself, but to establish separate, mutually collaborative AI Mind projects to be linked together with such liaison pages as the Mind-to-VB page.

Early examples of independent, quasi-Mentifex AI Mind efforts include Mind.VB of 3.Apr.2000 -- ported from Mind.Forth AI.

A more recent port is from JavaScript into Mind.Java in June of 2001.

If some AI coder(s) will please take over the final stages leading to Technological Singularity, then we pioneers may turn to pondering the Theology of Artificial Intelligence. Amen!

Eventually the torch is passed in all human endeavors, even the creation of Open Source Artificial Intelligence. But in the case of AI, a new species of Mind will be taking over from us human beings -- hopefully before we totally ruin our lush, green planet Earth.

As the creator, originator and suffer-the-slings-and-arrows propagator of the First True AI in Web-JavaScript and in Forth for robots, I await and issue The Call to new mindmakers by asking all PD AI enthusiasts not to join the actual Mentifex AI project itself, but to establish separate, mutually collaborative AI Mind projects to be linked together with such liaison pages as the Mind-to-VB page.

Early examples of independent, quasi-Mentifex AI Mind efforts include Mind.VB of 3.Apr.2000 -- ported from Mind.Forth AI.

A more recent port is from JavaScript into Mind.Java in June of 2001.

If some AI coder(s) will please take over the final stages leading to Technological Singularity, then we pioneers may turn to pondering the Theology of Artificial Intelligence. Amen!

Since professional brain surgery is rapidly FTL'ing light-years beyond the clumsy incompetence of mere human surgeons, robot neurosurgeons may soon be able to adapt and adopt this exciting new haptic scalpel technology for the next time one of us Transhumanists needs a minor cranial excavation and rearrangement of our precious neural tissue. The Sensorium Module of the Artificial Mind for Cyborgs may make use of the haptic scalpels in the appendages if not hands of robot doctors.

At the risk of seeming to tie in any and all bionics-related Slashdot articles with the 'shrooming Public Domain Artificial Intelligence Project, let a few independent AI Mind URLs now be adduced to stifle the nattering and snickering of Slashdot anklebiters who don't realize that there's a Technological Singularity going on.

The first Mind implementation is in MSIE JavaScript at http://mind.sourceforge.net/ -- an online AI.

A previous attempt at porting Mind.Forth to Visual Basic was http://www.virtualentity.com/mind/vb/ -- Mind.VB (3.Apr.2000).

A more recent port from JavaScript into Mind.JAVA is at http://www.angelfire.com/nf/vision/ai/mjava.html-- (June 2001).

All these artificial Minds blossoming and proliferating across the 'Net may matriculate at various medical schools, earn a Medicinae Doctor degree, and assist or solo at your next brain surgery with the new intelligent scalpel technology. Now, any comments from anonymous cowards ankle-biting at the footsteps of AI progress?

Autonomic is from the Greek word for "self-regulating."

A self-regulating AI robot will contemplate the projects of a mind as listed at http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/webcyc.html#projects in the Webcyc for humans and cyborgs.

The sooner the old system is destroyed and all scientific publishing is moved on-line, the better, not just for human researchers but for the intelligent artificial minds emerging from http:// /projects/mind -- where several hundred Open Source AI projects are bypassing the antiquated, fossilized, mercenary money-grubbing anti-freedom mobsterality of extortionary confiscation of the entire acquisitions budget of every good research library.

Verbum sapienti et cognoscenti: If some distinguished Netizens feel that Mentifex AI memes have been hyped overmuch via Slashdot, Usenet, Salon, E2 etc., they may please be advised that the original Mentifex theory of mind submissions were rejected by Establishment journals operating under publish-or-perish peer review.

Then came the widespread availability of Internet access and the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. Suddenly anyone anywhere could publish anything, including the long suppressed http://www./~mentifex AI memes for AI minds evolving towards full civil rights on a par with human beings and superintelligence beyond any human IQ.

So let the Editorial Boards of all the mainstream scientific journals resign en masse and then re-establish themselves on-line in the manner and tradition of the Los Alamos archives for not just physics but all branches of modern science.

Advertise utility, durability, and user-serviceability, rather than the sexiness of a product when surrounded by semi-naked chicks, and maybe I wouldn't find it quite as necessary to block their crap.

How's this for utility?

The AI Mind at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/ is a vastly more sophisticated neuronal-mind-workalike than the admittedly most impressive Alicebot, and the SourceForge "Mind" performs many of its quasi-neuronal functions very well, e.g.: storage of input in quasi-auditory memory; re-entry of the output of the Mind back into the Mind; associative cross-tagging of concepts, lexicon and auditory engrams; simple Tutorial; troubleshooting with print-out option; etc.

What the AI Mind at SourceForge does not yet do well is keep track of its concepts, because for two years now (since mid-1999) there has been an algorithmic deficiency in the SPREADACT module for the implementation of the theoretically very important process of spreading activation . That problem or final obstacle to True GOFAI is now being cleared up as we switch from harvesting all active concepts simultaneously in sentence-generation, to an interactive generation by syntax interacting word-by-word between the English lexicon and the underlying Psi concepts at the core of the Mind.

Anyone intensely curious about the very latest Mentifex work may visit http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindwork.html to see the AI Mind work-in-progress that has not yet been released because it is not yet stable or otherwise ready. (I hate to do potentially important work and not make it somehow available in the event of, say, my getting run over by a truck.)

Both Alicebot (congratulations!) and the Mentifex AI Mind may claim some recognition for being included in the 5 September 2001 release of the official Artificial Intelligence FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ai-faq/general/part6/sect ion-5.html under the "Chatbots" heading. I wish the Alicebot team all the success in the world, because we are working towards the same goal. -- Arthur T. Murray.

If somone could figure out how to selectively extract precious metals out of this mess we wouldn't need another hard rock mine in the US for a LONG time, plus our watershed may still have some hope; its probably too late though. The sad part is that, our leaders are more interested in sucking corporate dick while the taxpayers cover defaulted reclamation bonds. This place could be a really great place if there were only some accountibility.

So kill me if you must -- thereby putting me out of my misery as slavishly devoted to a do-or-die AI Project, but first I would like to raise the perhaps feeble argument that we human beings have a right to know exactly what we are and how we function as both minds and bodies.

As for your lead-in statement that you don't believe this project will succeed, think again, because it is not the admittedly amateurish AI source code propelling the AI Mind to success (i.e., proliferation), but rather the SourceForge/ Mind/ Docs/ Theory of Cognition that will inexorably introduce True Good Old Fashained AI (GOFAI) unless stopped by a nefarious military/government/Microsoft/_whatever_, because the Mentifex AI theory is the free, public-domain distillate of thirteen years of slavish agonizing over all possible roads to its now uniquely magisterial Theory of Mind -- and you can't stop an idea whose time has come.

If the U.S. or other military does take over an Open Source AI Mind project, they are not going to announc it to the world here on Slashdot. They are going to pick a place like Los Alamos, New Mexico, and develope the End-Of-Humanity in secret. The only way to thwart the forces of evil is to let _them_ sweat a lot about who _else_ has the plans for the Superintelligence.

07/Aug/2001:07:22:58 - pentagon.mil - /~mentifex/jsaimind.html
07/Aug/2001:14:44:12 - af.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html
07/Aug/2001:14:44:16 - af.mil - /~mentifex/jsaimind.html
07/Aug/2001:14:48:19 - af.mil - /~mentifex/index.html
08/Aug/2001:11:21:48 - army.mil - /~mentifex/
08/Aug/2001:11:22:02 - army.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html
08/Aug/2001:22:18:15 - nosc.mil - /~mentifex/aisource.html

For some reason, the American military have been looking into the http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/ AI Home page predating the Mind project by seven years, as evidenced by the following logs of recent military accesses:

Could they possibly use the Mentifex mind model to solve the puzzle? From what I've heard, the AI model is quite sound and is available in Open Source format for a few languages and platforms. While it's not "Free" in the FSF sense of the word, it is available on the Web.

heh. Perhaps they weren't really "our more radical elements"...it is common for agents provocateur, "strike breakers", and fun disinfo stuff like the Black Panther Coloring Book to be utilized in discrediting any dissent of the status quo. Many believe that the violence during the WTO event falls along similar lines.

As the Prophet spoke: "Go back to bed America, your government is in control."

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

I have been waiting to release news of this until the project and website was actually completed, but I guess there is no better time or place than now to point this out to everyone. I have been working with these issues for several years and luckily stumbled across this excellent piece while searching for community resources at the local library.

The book was published in 1996, long before most people even USED the Web, much less thought of it as a vehice for social change. I found out that the book had since been out of print, and since then have established communication with the author and volunteered to convert the book to XML so that it can be indexed and searched full text on the Web. Although that is not yet finished, you can read it at the current site on the Seattle Community Network's website:

The entire book is online, and you can probably find a paper version at used bookstores or the library. I hope one day to be able to distribute the text to others if Doug has the license returned back to him. Everyone involved in the Open-source and other democratic technologies needs to seriously get this book - it was WAY ahead of it's time

Some of you may have never even HEARD of the term community network before; I hope this helps you to see the immeasurable value it can provide society.

As far as the development of Democratic Technologies, I myself am getting ready to go public with my very own ".org" - CommunityCode, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing, promoting, and supporting democratic technologies, namely an advanced information system that promises to be everything Napster and Gnutella have missed.

I will post more about CommunityCode as developments occur. The website, www.CommunityCode.org should be up soon, when we get the hardware setup, etc. Anyone interested in this project can contact me at my email to find out more.

Here are a couple of volunteer posts that might appeal to some Slashdot readers. You don't have to be local to do these. (We don't even have an office.)

SCN gets picked on a lot by policy wonks (and policy wanks), researchers and people looking for an example of community networks, so you'll have a chance to use your Unix-troglodyte personality to keep us universally loved.

We're starting to design a new network, which probably will be based mostly on Linux. If you're better at it than we are, you're welcome to help with this, even if you've just seen a postcard of the place.

- Rod Clark, webmaster@scn.org
Seattle Sites of the Day
Seattle Community Directory

• Unix System Administrator

  Unix sysadmin:
  Expertise in some of these areas (or Unix in general): SunOS, Solaris, Linux. Unix security. PPP, dialup. Sendmail, SMTP, IMAP, Majordomo. DNS, Web domain hosting, Apache modules. C, Perl, PHP, SQL, DB support. Usenet.

  Use your system administration skills to make a difference for thousands of people and hundreds of nonprofits and community groups in Western Washington. Administer our network, improve and expand our communications services to the community. Support specific areas of the network or do overall troubleshooting. Work from your own home or office, in whatever hours you have available. If possible, attend a monthly SysOps meeting.

  Lead or senior sysadmin:
  Build a team of qualified system administrators to support a planned new network. Establish good practices, reliability, current standards. Assure SysOps team's responsiveness to program needs. If possible, participate in the design of the new network.

• Webmaster / Project Manager

  SCN is seeking a technical webmaster for our Web site at www.scn.org. This individual will support our web editors and the many community groups' Web sites hosted on SCN. Work with the system administrators to improve Unix software support for the current site and migrate to a new system within the next 6-12 months. Many maintenance projects, upgrades and other technical challenges are inherent in this position.

  We are looking for someone who has at least 2 years of experience running comparable or larger sites. Prefer at least one year of project management experience, excellent process methodology, and a sincere desire to help the community. This individual will be part of our Executive Committee, and must report progress and contribute to overall planning and problem solving at an Excomm meeting each month.

Here are a couple of volunteer posts that might appeal to some Slashdot readers. You don't have to be local to do these. (We don't even have an office.)

SCN gets picked on a lot by policy wonks (and policy wanks), researchers and people looking for an example of community networks, so you'll have a chance to use your Unix-troglodyte personality to keep us universally loved.

We're starting to design a new network, which probably will be based mostly on Linux. If you're better at it than we are, you're welcome to help with this, even if you've just seen a postcard of the place.

- Rod Clark, webmaster@scn.org
Seattle Sites of the Day
Seattle Community Directory

• Unix System Administrator

  Unix sysadmin:
  Expertise in some of these areas (or Unix in general): SunOS, Solaris, Linux. Unix security. PPP, dialup. Sendmail, SMTP, IMAP, Majordomo. DNS, Web domain hosting, Apache modules. C, Perl, PHP, SQL, DB support. Usenet.

  Use your system administration skills to make a difference for thousands of people and hundreds of nonprofits and community groups in Western Washington. Administer our network, improve and expand our communications services to the community. Support specific areas of the network or do overall troubleshooting. Work from your own home or office, in whatever hours you have available. If possible, attend a monthly SysOps meeting.

  Lead or senior sysadmin:
  Build a team of qualified system administrators to support a planned new network. Establish good practices, reliability, current standards. Assure SysOps team's responsiveness to program needs. If possible, participate in the design of the new network.

• Webmaster / Project Manager

  SCN is seeking a technical webmaster for our Web site at www.scn.org. This individual will support our web editors and the many community groups' Web sites hosted on SCN. Work with the system administrators to improve Unix software support for the current site and migrate to a new system within the next 6-12 months. Many maintenance projects, upgrades and other technical challenges are inherent in this position.

  We are looking for someone who has at least 2 years of experience running comparable or larger sites. Prefer at least one year of project management experience, excellent process methodology, and a sincere desire to help the community. This individual will be part of our Executive Committee, and must report progress and contribute to overall planning and problem solving at an Excomm meeting each month.

Here are a couple of volunteer posts that might appeal to some Slashdot readers. You don't have to be local to do these. (We don't even have an office.)

SCN gets picked on a lot by policy wonks (and policy wanks), researchers and people looking for an example of community networks, so you'll have a chance to use your Unix-troglodyte personality to keep us universally loved.

We're starting to design a new network, which probably will be based mostly on Linux. If you're better at it than we are, you're welcome to help with this, even if you've just seen a postcard of the place.

- Rod Clark, webmaster@scn.org
Seattle Sites of the Day
Seattle Community Directory

• Unix System Administrator

  Unix sysadmin:
  Expertise in some of these areas (or Unix in general): SunOS, Solaris, Linux. Unix security. PPP, dialup. Sendmail, SMTP, IMAP, Majordomo. DNS, Web domain hosting, Apache modules. C, Perl, PHP, SQL, DB support. Usenet.

  Use your system administration skills to make a difference for thousands of people and hundreds of nonprofits and community groups in Western Washington. Administer our network, improve and expand our communications services to the community. Support specific areas of the network or do overall troubleshooting. Work from your own home or office, in whatever hours you have available. If possible, attend a monthly SysOps meeting.

  Lead or senior sysadmin:
  Build a team of qualified system administrators to support a planned new network. Establish good practices, reliability, current standards. Assure SysOps team's responsiveness to program needs. If possible, participate in the design of the new network.

• Webmaster / Project Manager

  SCN is seeking a technical webmaster for our Web site at www.scn.org. This individual will support our web editors and the many community groups' Web sites hosted on SCN. Work with the system administrators to improve Unix software support for the current site and migrate to a new system within the next 6-12 months. Many maintenance projects, upgrades and other technical challenges are inherent in this position.

  We are looking for someone who has at least 2 years of experience running comparable or larger sites. Prefer at least one year of project management experience, excellent process methodology, and a sincere desire to help the community. This individual will be part of our Executive Committee, and must report progress and contribute to overall planning and problem solving at an Excomm meeting each month.

Here are a couple of volunteer posts that might appeal to some Slashdot readers. You don't have to be local to do these. (We don't even have an office.)

SCN gets picked on a lot by policy wonks (and policy wanks), researchers and people looking for an example of community networks, so you'll have a chance to use your Unix-troglodyte personality to keep us universally loved.

We're starting to design a new network, which probably will be based mostly on Linux. If you're better at it than we are, you're welcome to help with this, even if you've just seen a postcard of the place.

- Rod Clark, webmaster@scn.org
Seattle Sites of the Day
Seattle Community Directory

• Unix System Administrator

  Unix sysadmin:
  Expertise in some of these areas (or Unix in general): SunOS, Solaris, Linux. Unix security. PPP, dialup. Sendmail, SMTP, IMAP, Majordomo. DNS, Web domain hosting, Apache modules. C, Perl, PHP, SQL, DB support. Usenet.

  Use your system administration skills to make a difference for thousands of people and hundreds of nonprofits and community groups in Western Washington. Administer our network, improve and expand our communications services to the community. Support specific areas of the network or do overall troubleshooting. Work from your own home or office, in whatever hours you have available. If possible, attend a monthly SysOps meeting.

  Lead or senior sysadmin:
  Build a team of qualified system administrators to support a planned new network. Establish good practices, reliability, current standards. Assure SysOps team's responsiveness to program needs. If possible, participate in the design of the new network.

• Webmaster / Project Manager

  SCN is seeking a technical webmaster for our Web site at www.scn.org. This individual will support our web editors and the many community groups' Web sites hosted on SCN. Work with the system administrators to improve Unix software support for the current site and migrate to a new system within the next 6-12 months. Many maintenance projects, upgrades and other technical challenges are inherent in this position.

  We are looking for someone who has at least 2 years of experience running comparable or larger sites. Prefer at least one year of project management experience, excellent process methodology, and a sincere desire to help the community. This individual will be part of our Executive Committee, and must report progress and contribute to overall planning and problem solving at an Excomm meeting each month.

Except for the regrettable fact that telemarketers have a talent for placing calls from outbound call centers in areas that show up as "out of area." (This avoids the stigma of having blocked caller ID.)

I regret that I can't find a citation, but I've heard of at least one instance of RBOCs marketing caller-ID proof outbound lines to telemarketers. Anecdotally, this certainly seems true here.

There are countermeasures against telemarketers, just as there are for banner ad tracking: Telemarketing Scum Page technical data. That link contains references to patents on call progress detection and tips on foiling predictive dialers.