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Actually, it's a porn production company.

Read what Penn of Penn & Teller has to say about "Crossing Over." Seriously. Magic exists, sure. But John Edwards is just incredibly cynical, evil and wealthy-- not psychic.

Penn Jillette want to track Teller?

Penn Jillette want to track Teller?

Believe it or not, Penn Jillette (yes, that Penn) used to write a column for PC Computing way back when it was a decent magazine. "I Heart My Dog's Head" is still a classic.

Believe it or not, Penn Jillette (yes, that Penn) used to write a column for PC Computing way back when it was a decent magazine. "I Heart My Dog's Head" is still a classic.

There is no test to prove laptop is not a bomb itself

Reminds me of A Good Idea That You Might Go to Prison For.

An interview with Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) argues that the notion that the symbolic representation of violence causes real world violence is strictly analogous to voodoo.

Well, there's always Penn Gillette's idea from this PC-Computing article.

Too much of the rest of the computer revolution has not followed that promise.

Yeah, I remember that article! Penn's articles were always amusing, but I never understood why he was writing for a computer magazine. My personal favorite was the spell-checker article.

It's an amusing read, like all of those articles...

Compare that to the average spamhaus or spammer page you've seen that tells how you can !Annoy! People!! Fast!!! or get !!!Bullet-Proof !!!Bulk!!!! Email!! Accounts!!! and !!!Address !!!Harvesting !Software!!!!!!!.

That doesn't mean that these guys *aren't* just spammers with college educations trying to attract a better-paying class of spammer or trying not to discourage the occasional legitimate customer, but at least on the surface they look respectable. But perhaps Mofo Knows

But there is one thing that Access did do, and that is it made (mildly) complecated database queries available to the unwashed non-programming masses. Ok, it wasn't Access that did it first, it was probably hypercard, (hey, remember this cool story about the guy who used hypercard to extract unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls from a consordance?) or even something earlier like the first ingres, but the fact that is that by using Access dumb people can do things that they couldn't otherwise.

It's true that a php/apache/postgres system is better, but it also makes those people dependent on us to set up apache, php, and postgres. It may also make them have to figure out how to structure their queries in php or some other text interface instead of clicking and grunting.

There is a definite need for a system that presents a click-and-drool interface to suck in large amounts of data and parse it (with a gui based fill-in-the-feilds manner of making the conditions or regexps) and then present the results in enticing graphs. It doesn't have to do any network stuff, it can simply be a single user manipulating a file. The type of users I'm talking about often use sneaker net or email attachements for all file transfers inspite of the existence of database servers and networked drives.

Every time I research this I'm left feeling dissatisfied, because it seems that someone could wire/kludge together a system that was a locally running apache (even in userspace, talking only to the local user that started it) running a pretty generic php interface talking to mySQL or postgres. The interface would have to allow you to save queries somehow, and do all the other things that Access people are used to. Even an idiot like me could probably wire together a buggy piece of shit in a week or so, so I would expect some admin at a low-budget shop such as a school or non-profit had already wired that together. I can't believe I'm the first on to think of this.

Since I last tried out various things, I've discovered MySQL Navigator. Has anyone had any experience giving this to Access-addicted users to see what they say ? The screenshots seem full of pointy-clicky stuff to keep them happy.

Unless you side with the Kafka folks, it's a good way to eliminate grief.

Aw, this is nothing. Scientists back in the 80's hooked up a gorilla brain to a voice synthesizer and various sensory apparatus and created MOFO the Psychic Gorilla. People have been discussing the amazing psychic powers of MOFO the Psychic Gorilla for years on the IRC channel #Mofo (and before that on the Mofo BBS).

Stupid monkey-brain-controlled robotic arm. I've seen a gorilla-brain-controlled voice synthesizer with amazing psychic powers, and a dry, sarcastic wit.

I goofed. It was not PC World, it was PC Computing. And I found the article Penn wrote. You can read it right'cha.

Also, it was not a weight guesser. It was an age guesser.

A few years ago in an issue of PC World, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) brought up the question about just how advanced is AI, and how advanced has it really become?

For his example he came up with a weight guessing program, much like the weight guesser at a carinval sideshow. The program went like this:

Do you weigh 1 pound? (Y/N) N
Do you weigh 2 pounds? (Y/N) N
Do you weigh 3 pounds? (Y/N) N

Well, I think you get the picture. Eventually this program is going to guess your weight. But can it really be called AI?

Looking at most of the examples that are on websites, yours included, the programs are extremely simple in what they do. To be completely honest, they do not even appear to be much more complex in their "thinking" than the Weight Guesser.

Another example that I can think of are Expert Systems. To me this is nothing more than a simple linking of menus that ask questions. For example, "is the switch on?" Some people consider this to be a form of AI, but by that definition anything that has an if statement would be AI.

So, my question - are computer programs actually really honestly beyond this?

After seeing this, I decided to try my hand at simulating Jon Katz. I copied most of his last 26 stories (I skipped movie reviews, and included only his stories and none of his comments) into a text file, and ran it through the BABLE (Basic Algorithmic Babbling Language Emulator), a text manipulation program that uses Markov chains, much like good ol' Mark V. Shaney. I then broke it up into paragraphs. My conclusion? We can rebuild him. Make him faster chchchch, stronger chchchchch, more long-winded...

Here's the result:

imprisoned. They just rail from the fringes until they wear themselves out. Winston wouldn't have been thrown in jail a few months, a scenario familiar to contemporary tech workers and companies. Now his company's trying something even more radical. Ford's new Web sites will link employees all over the Net for practical purposes simply becomes public domain.

The protocol initially referred to marginal or alternative works, but it has some promise as a new economic model for dealing with intellectual content, since that's another industry where the same issues press, Spurius suggests.

A company that releases a game, instead of selling it, could offer membership to a service that permits consumers to download any game they choose from the server any time. Instead of offering only its own games, a company could allow all companies to put their games on its server, including people who have already released non - commercial games. Spurius's idea is to sell culture, beginning with smaller games and projects, and building towards bigger, more commercial products.

From Timothy Lord, Slashdot's managing editor: A question that arises when it comes to the genome, one the world has and will continue to debate: do we need papers anymore? Is there any reason to preserve their form and function, any vital purpose they serve? At this moment in media history, no longer an option but a necessity, not a privilege - they can begin rewriting their own sorry history. Ford really did have a better idea this time. Perhaps even ground - breaking, if it catches on. Here? s some questions to mull in front of their audiences, and they take no moral responsibility for that.

People like you are celebrating and enabling and helping raise a culture of thievery that is not only institutionalized but which considers itself morally superior. We are a nation of laws and you seem to celebrate a nation of law - enforcement agencies is also being developed for each school in the state to notify when a tip has been received by Pinkerton on its nationwide toll - free lines for students, who will be able to fit the the whole company's holding on a couple of CD's or micro - chips.

That says a lot about how valuable information has become in the Digital Age, shrieking and clucking about a changing world the Net, and regain control of popular culture, as corporatists move against free music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units.

They can cross - reference your personal ID with records listing your name, address, telephone number, e - traders The Undernet subterranean but thriving mailing lists, Web logs and e - mail than a book, King's latest novella, Riding the Bullet. The demand online was so great - - more than, orders - - that could ensure that people who are responsible for creative work get paid, while digital information remains freely shareable online.

The SPP is an electronic - commerce mechanism designed to make it easier than ever to form smaller, adaptive communities - buddy, family, friend and work lists. These almost function as private associations, attracting countless small communities of people with similar interests - college students or music lovers, most of whom are disgusted by Washington politics?

The DMCA suggests that corporate pressure can reverse the way lawmaking ought to work: the law seems to have come before the discussion, as is clear from messages like this one. While the Net and Web, papers have become more marginalized, less vital.

Newspapers never grasped that interactivity isn't about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for a particular culture. Certainly, notions of exposure and punishment no longer apply. No kid in America for roughly billion, a fraction of the attention and discussion it deserved.

It may also be the best hope for the st century, perhaps - - the bound book - - prologues, epilogues, blurbs are all openly addressed, becoming part of the high - tech economy. Does anyone reading this actually work hours a week.

The study strongly challenged the assertions of Net advocates and enthusiasts like me who argue that the Net, instantly. And there's no taking them back. In the st Century. That puts increasing pressure on undemocratic governments, who quite correctly dread the spread of computing, e - traders, the Undernet subterranean but thriving mailing lists, Usenet groups, messaging systems, as contact with other humans. It suggested that the Net isn't a sex story or a business or cracking story, but increasing, the biggest story of our time.

In Code, Lawrence Lessing of Harvard writes about the emergence of new kinds of culture - gaming, communities, mailing lists, Usenet groups, messaging systems, as contact with other humans. It suggested that the Net, and of the Web in particular, is altering the way younger Americans view many traditional ethics and values - - the people Ridley calls this lucky generation - - are dangerous.

A safe school environment is fundamental to helping North Carolina's students succeed in school, announced Governor Hunt. Every school ought to be required reading for anyone who needs to be reminded of the importance of science in the contemporary world. Since most scientific language is arcane and inaccessible to much of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions.

Women have a right to speak publicly; so do older people, foreigners, newcomers, children - are excluded from the conversation or choose to avoid it. Some are too vulnerable too join in; many are tough enough but they don't see much reason to bother.

So flamers discourage free speech, prey on the weak and dominate discussion. They have plenty to contribute - brains, energy, information and technical skills. But they need mentoring. If their mantra is content, this alliance is unbeatable. The AOL Time - Warner, rule our world.

E - mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with countless eruptions, rebellions and civil wars. Both movements promised, and then rarely.

Newspapers are still mired in anti - deluvian and phobic notions about technology - is Johnny getting onto the Playboy website, is it even possible to own something that's distributed globally through a representational medium like the Internet and activities like computer gaming are turning otherwise healthy school children into mass murderers.

In a short time, we will have gone from knowing little about genes to knowing nearly everything. The human mind, then, one of a torrent of excited journalistic accounts of his life, Case spouts the corporatist ideology for the umpteenth time in recent days: the inevitabilities of globalization, the ethos of the marketplace and the growing power of technology as a force in modern life.

These are the rationales for Napster, DVD and the ongoing war on MP 's. Citizen Case, who, at, has miraculously become our new national corporatist leader and spokesperson. Read below for more on this increasingly troubling problem and to offer some possible solutions.

This weekend, Josh Rosenberg, a Slashdot reader urged a few weeks ago after reading - and apparently disliking - - a handful of obscenely large and powerful businesses. The libertarian ethos of the marketplace and the growing power of technology as a force in modern life. These are the rationales for Napster, DVD and the ongoing war on MP 's.

Citizen Case, he drives a VW, wrote the stunned reporter creator of one the blandest, most consumer - abusive Internet Service Providers.

In a world where we're all increasingly dependent on networked computing for work, banking, music, games or other intellectual property online. Only in recent months the DMCA has sparked legal actions like these: Jon Johansen, a teenager, at the polling booth, or most important, at the cash register.

It is presumptuous and arrogant on so many levels it's astonishing to see public officials like North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt adopt the idea so unthinkingly and enthusiastically. But he's not alone - - plenty of parents and educators are along for the ride.

It isn't widely held in political and media circles - - especially ones far removed from corporate models of culture and creativity - - a new kind of sub - culture, having its roots in the earliest days of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass. Certain information formats can offer a sensual, contextual appeal that's impossible to quantify, and was not predicted.

Consumers have fiercely resisted getting newspapers or books via digitized tablets. Convenience and speed are critical measures, but not in the United States, book publishers are beginning to do. So like newspapers, book publishers are making the same mistake. Why interactivity isn't about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for a particular culture.

Certainly, notions of exposure and punishment no longer apply. No kid in America for roughly billion, a fraction of the attention and discussion it deserved.

It may also be the best hope for the st century. They are less overtly malignant and heavy - handed, and have little reason to fear encroaching corporatism. In this regard, we are told, says that even to ask about God is beyond its scope.

But this has triggered growing political, cultural and political consequences. The Internet, write McInerney and White, has given consumers with PC's the power to exercise market control as never before.

On electronic networks of every kind, from television to the Internet will be regulated shortly, but not in the United States. Communities are also greatly affected - and threatened by - the evolution of new laws in cyberspace.

Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.

The fact is, culture is already being transmitted freely all over the Net for practical purposes simply becomes public domain. The protocol initially referred to marginal or alternative works, but it alters the length of the levers they hold. Consumer reaction is instant, be it through the Internet, would do well to read Thomas Jefferson, who eloquently expressed one of his fondest wishes for intellectual property in his new country as follows: That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like Congress or on TV talk shows.

In the off - line world, mutual benefit is the core of community. Real people provide help, entertainment, or on the Internet. But Lessig adds, there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to fit the the whole company's holding on a couple of years, he could buy those computers without even dipping into his principal. The industry has spent billions of dollars by collecting various distribution and user fees.

The Net has been the primary tool by which government, monarchies, educational and media institutions focus obsessively on exaggerated or meaningless issues like the spread of free music threatens the way they work - - at least artists the industry doesn't control.

The industry has obviously done its homework, studying how software really works and how information moves, and is using the Digital Millennial Copyright Act as its primary weapon against infringement by people using the Net and Web, and the genes of humans.

The reflective person thus knows that his life is in some incomprehensible manner guided through biological ontogeny, a more or less the same questions for half a century now: what should we be? What do you think?

For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been the usual long, boring and self - congratulatory affair.

But there are signs all over of a new, hybrid, and probably permanent Middle Media. Old media are generally defined as newspapers, magazines, publishing and websites.

Papers seem seem almost stupefyingly oblivious to the graphic revolution that has swept magazines and is spreading through the Web. As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA pits the free software movement, squarely against the commercialist threat to the free nature of the Net, increasingly the subject of commercial and corporate interest and speculation, has remained strikingly free, diverse and highly individualized entertainment.

The ability to personalize culture in this way is unprecedented, a unique feature of life online. But before China and the music industry, all simultaneously making doomed efforts to stick their fingers in the digital dike. The Net and Web spawn ferocious and idiosyncratic commentary, democratizing opinion all over the country to work for online information sites.

These reporters, leaving papers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times you have to join, but it's www. nytimes. com, so are the sales of books in stores.

The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of a politically - correct ethos in public communications, encroachments on depictions of sex and violence. No newspaper will ever challenge the notion of taking responsibility, of being held accountable for what one says, is that it's also fun, and social.

The underlying political issue is both clear and significant: Must we depend on the creative choices and products of a handful of Chinese political dissidents speaking out online, both groups are beyond conventional policing. But that doesn't mean a lot of harm.

The first generation Internet promoted certain concepts of freedom that didn't exist elsewhere. This wasn't by accident. Internet protocols were designed to be open but quickly commercialized, and almost completely co - opted, by a handful of targets to use as warnings, examples of the nasty fate that will befall transgressors.

If any approach is doomed to fail in this era, it's that one. Too bad some people will have to pay along the way, sacrifices on the altar of corporate or governmental obliviousness.

For all the media hype about technology, pornography and e - mail that the discussions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed quietly months ago and now being used to shut down every free music site on the Net - a coalition of academics, engineers, early hackers and researchers - designed the Net and the Web. As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA threatens to do much more harm to freedom on the Net:

the Communications Decency Acts, however obnoxious, were both efforts at political theater, staged mostly for constituents. They were ludicrously unenforceable and vague. By contrast, the DMCA is already beginning to redefine entertainment on the Net and are building it still?

Do the people running websites have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the conflict over free music - - simple greed and desire are others - - are dangerous. A safe school environment is fundamental to helping North Carolina's students succeed in school, announced Governor Hunt. Every school ought to be a serious problem with real consequences.

Misinformation about genetic research, online safety - even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is beginning to succumb. Einstein once said that the thing which most interested him wasn't whether God existed or not, rather than to have studies or others describe that experience for you.

Do any of you read newspapers regularly, or see a future for them? This column was inspired by an e - mail accounts. Ocurring continents apart, the two incidents seemed oddly connected.

The MPA - along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of computing still unavailable to more than half the American population. New kinds of programmers and computer users would surge online, perhaps bringing new ideas and approaches to programming, software and intellectual property online.

BTW his columns and some new ones can be found here

Those columns were the best part of the month back when I was younger!

Swift argues that babies could be a delicacy for the upper classes, and a source of revenue, instead of a resource drain, on the working classes. Sounds morbid, but it's quite amusingly done too.

And it is relevant to this debate. Swift too was trying to argue against contemporary attitudes which counted certain people as worthless, although in his case it was the poor rather than the disabled.

You can read a short introduction to the proposal here.

The text of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is to be found here.

Regards, Ralph.

Penn and Teller are magicians/comedians. I think they have their own TV show now ( here ), but in general they tour and go on talk shows and do magic tricks. On some network morning show, they did a card trick in which one of them opened his eyes and revealed solid contacts that had printed on them the number and suit of the card that the host had "randomly" picked.