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• Absense of deep or sophisticated thinking (If anyone has any information about George W. Bush showing evidence of sophisticated thinking, please write to me.)
• Polarized thinking (Bush's "you are either with us or against us" is an example. Another example is his statement, "Look my job isn't to try to nuance. I think moral clarity is important... this is evil versus good.")
• Rigid thinking
• Lying (A June 18, 2002 article in Salon says, Losing the "trifecta" says, "It takes a brazen politician to make up a story that can be proven false and then to keep lying about it after being busted repeatedly." Also see the October 8, 2002 CounterPunch article, Bush's Leaps of Illogic Don't Answer People's Questions About War.
• Anger ("... why is Bush so eager to engage in violence and so incapable of explaining why?" See the Sept. 24, 2002 American Politics Journal article and Addiction, Brain Damage and the President -- "Dry Drunk" Syndrome and George W. Bush )
• Obsessive repetition (On August 7, during his "working vacation" at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, Bush used the word "home" six times in a minute of conversation with reporters: "It's nice to be home ... This is my home ... It's good to be home ... This is where you come home ... This is my home," etc. In a five-minute speech later in the month, Bush mentioned values at least seven times and "neighbor" or "neighborliness" or "neighborly" six times. In a twenty-minute speech the next day he used "character" eleven times. -- Some of the examples here are drawn from a September 6, 2001 article in The Atlantic magazine, The Bumbling Communicator. Not only was Bush repetitive, he was lying. The article says, "Bush lived in the Texas governor's mansion and vacationed in swank resorts and at Kennebunkport before the campaign began.")
• Inability to perceive the needs of others, inability to understand someone different from oneself
• Grandiosity, believing that one's own ideas are all-important. (Bush, and the oil and weapons people who support him, say the U.S. has the right to take military action before the adversary even has the capacity to attack.)
• Impatience ("If we wait for threats to fully materialize," President Bush said in a speech he gave at West Point, "we will have waited too long.")
• Incoherence. Things don't make sense in the mind of an alcoholic. An alcoholic's pattern of speech sometimes reflects his or her inner chaos.

You mentioned morality, honesty and traditional values... I thought you were talking about Bush? Bush's Accomplishments

There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve teaching and learning, yet school districts are cutting programs -- music, art, physical education -- that enrich children's lives to make room for this dubious nostrum, and the Clinton Administration has embraced the goal of "computers in every classroom" with credulous and costly enthusiasm

This is a real problem. When Vannevar Bush conceived the Memex system, his goal was to facilitate the exchange of scientific research. Later, Doug Englebart built on Bush's ideas as did Ted Nelson (the guy who coined the term "hypertext") and Tim Berners-Lee. While the web today has become a vast sinkhole of pop-up ads, crappy web stores and inane blogs it is important to not forget that its inception was in aiding scientific research.

Yet, that is not possible without some kind of permanence. Probably what is needed is some way to integrate the web into university library collections. If there was some way of indexing web pages the way libraries currently use the Library of Congress scheme to index their physical collections, then web pages could be uniquely numbered with this number incorporated into the URL. If then universities and the Library of Congress itself were to mirror (permanently) these pages, if the original URL were to become unavailable, one could try just about any manjor university or the LOC and retrieve the page. Of course, with the current political climate here in the US I don't forsee this ever happening.

• As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush. Bush was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, basically the precursor to NSF and DARPA. In this magazine article, he observed the problem of disseminating information, and noted that electronics may be a better medium (keep in mind that this was written in 1945). He also outlines what he calls the Memex, the first description of a hypertext machine. Bush's theme is that we need to create devices that will make it easier for us to store and access information, and ultimately solve problems better.
• Sketchpad, by Ivan Sutherland. Couldn't find a link to a video, but this truly is one of the seminal papers in computer science. This paper introduced the first graphical user interface (graphical as in graphics, not windows and mouse), the first object-oriented system, the first zooming interface, and the first constraint solver. Best quote:

  "I once asked Ivan, 'How is it possible for you to have invented computer graphics, done the first object oriented software system and the first real time constraint solver all by yourself in one year?" And he said "I didn't know it was hard." -- Alan Kay on Ivan Sutherland.

  The embarassing part is that, although this was done in the early 1960's, Sketchpad still looks cool and useful today.
• Doug Engelbart's 1968 Demo. The link points to a video collection, which is easier to read than his papers. Engelbart is not the most exciting speaker, but keep in mind that in 1968 that people were still stuck using terminals and punchcards. What does he show them? The first mouse. The first hypertext implementation. The first use of video-conferencing. The first online help system. The first interactive word processor. Obviously a mind-blowing experience if you were there. As many people have said, this is the mother of all demos, and we still have not achieved many of his visions today.
• The Computer for the Twenty-First Century by Mark Weiser. Although this was written in 1991, I think that this might be the most important paper of the 1990s. Why? Keep in mind that in 1991, people were still using desktop PCs, that wireless had not achieved momentum, and that sensors were very few and far between.

  So what is the basic idea? That computers should not be constrained to the physical desktop, but should become an everyday and seamless part of our lives. And in this paper, Weiser and his team at Xerox PARC introduced location-based computing; devices of all form factors, from small PDAs to tablet PCs to electronic whiteboards; sensors for integrating the physical and virtual worlds; wireless networking to make it all connected no matter where you were (in their office building anyway). Weiser's vision is so influential, that there are now (literally) thousands of researchers working on what he called ubiquitous computing, as well as several research conferences devoted to this theme, not to mention the direction that the commercial world has already taken with PDAs, WiFi, sensor networks, and so on.

Interesting view you have of Berkeley, and publishing secrecy. Berkeley professors have been placed in tough spots before, and I don't see any reason why this would be different. Absolute secrecy may not be needed for this sort of project, but the Homeland Defense group isn't the only people concerned about publication. You can expect that any paper to be published must be sent to the Homeland Defense and the NSF groups and approved, with about six months delay, depending on the scope and severity of the discoveries made.

On the other hand, if the Dept of Homeland Security doesn't like it for whatever reason, they'll likely try to stop publication, reguardless of what the grant says and doesn't say.

The diamond cartel has successfully enforced scarcity for over a hundred years in order to maintain the viability of an industry threatened by abundance. With a little bit of foresight, they managed to keep their genie in the bottle, to use de Jager's analogy.

Now the entertainment industry is trying to do the same thing with DRM; they want to clamp down on the scarcity that is threatened by new technology. Although the odds seem to be against them, it's worth remembering that it is possible to hold back the tide.

In short, Judge Rich didn't change his mind.

This is the same Judge Rich that authored the Benson panel decision. In Benson, Judge Rich concluded that claims to pure mathematical algorithms are not patentable subject matter under 35 USC 101 (which is still good law). However, where that mathematical algorithm is tied to an otherwise patentable process, the mere fact that an algorithm is cited in the claim does not, in and of itself, render the claim as a whole unpatentable.

In the Diehr Supreme Court footnote that you cite, the "form of the claims" was not in regard to the question of the patentablilty of an algorithm per se, but rather whether Benson applied only to claims in the form of a process, as opposed to those in the form of a machine. In other words, does the proscription of a process claiming nothing more than a pure algorithm (as opposed to an alorithm as just one element of the claim as a whole) extend to claims to a machine with the same inclusion. Judge Rich, rightly, said "Yes", the proscription of Benson to pure algorithm claims holds regardless of whether the claim is drafted as a process or a machine. That is, if the claim is drafted toward either a process or a machine, it is non-statutory if the claim as a whole is merely directed to a mathematical algorithm. This is not inconsistent with his views expressed in Benson that the claim as a whole is not rendered unpatentable by the mere inclusion of a mathematical algorithm.

In the Alappat majority decision, again authored by Judge Rich, the CAFC concluded that:

The Supreme Court has never held that a programmed computer may never be entitled to patent protection. Indeed, the Benson court specifically stated that its decision therein did not preclude "a patent for any program servicing a computer." Benson, 409 U.S. at 71, 93 S.Ct. at 257. Consequently, a computer operating pursuant to software may represent patentable subject matter, provided, of course, that the claimed subject matter meets all of the other requirements of Title 35. In any case, a computer, like a rasterizer, is apparatus not mathematics.

As a related aside, this view was also expressed in Charkrabarty , where the Supreme Court cited "... The Committee Reports accompanying the 1952 Act inform us that Congress intended statutory subject matter to 'include anything under the sun that is made by man.'" Judge Rich was the chair of that committee. Note the "made by man" part. That is the overriding restriction on patentable subject matter that Judge Rich consistently held, be it a novel microorganism or a machine or process. Neither a natural microorganism, untouched by man, nor a law of nature as expressed by a mathematical algorithm is patentable. But once the hand of "man" alters the "natural", the subject matter may become patentable.

Stop beating down bright, but anxious boys in school. Let them do what they love instead of forcing some idea of "social adjustment on them". Allow them more time for science and engineering. Devote less time to "teaching" them how to bullshit their way to a 6 page term paper about nothing. Give them less Ritalin.

Some may not like to hear this but boys are the primary source of young engineers and right now, public education is taking a big dump on them.

I have several friends in the industry that are good engineers, but without degrees. Public education pushed them away. They are the kind of people I'm talking about. What's a PHB going to do when he compares them with someone from another country that has his degree?

There's some other stuff here:

The War Against Boys

"In a poll taken last year, US teachers ranked computer skills and media technology as more 'essential' than the study of European history, biology, chemistry, or physics... than reading modern American writers such as Steinbeck and Hemingway or classic ones such as Plato and Shakespeare."

Where? In my school system, and apparently generally as this article suggests: A New Deal For Teachers

An article from the atlantic on this subject. I'm not sure if it contradicts what you are saying, but is interesting.

"1491", an intriguing article in the Atlantic magazine last year claims this may be so.

Bush's essay is really fascinating to read: he envisions a magical desk that could record all a person's thoughts & encounters, and provide the ability to browse that library through a special screen on the device. Keep in mind that this was in 1945, right at the beginning of the computer era, when these machines were the size of buildings, far more complicated to operate, and nowhere near powerful enough. Now, half a century later, Bell feels that the technology is finally at the point where Bush's ideas can be implemented. Think what you will of Microsoft, or of the "big brother" implications of such a machine -- the very fact that this sort of thing is being put into practice is quite impressive.

Anyone working on such omnipresent recording & retrieval systems needs to be aware of this prior art.

when can we see the development of a national air taxi system as described by James Fallow in The Atlantic monthly? i'd like to travel like Steve Jobs.

You may be interested in reading about Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits Project for Microsoft Research.

It's an attempted implementation of a concept that was described in the article As We May Think by Vannevar Bush in 1945.

Quoting from the MLB home page:

MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. It is the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex vision including full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks.

Gordon Bell has captured a lifetime's worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and stored them digitally. He is now paperless, and is beginning to capture phone calls, television, and radio.

MyLifeBits software leverages SQL server to support: hyperlinks, annotations, reports, saved queries, pivoting, clustering, and fast search. It includes tools to make annotation easy, including gang annotation on right click, voice annotation, and browser integration. Its browser tool records a copy of every web page visited.

And there are links to papers published about it, articles written about it, etc.

Set aside the fact that from MS's point of view this is just a demo of SQL Server, and MLB is a pretty interesting piece of research -- and more to the point, it sounds like a more developed idea of what you're suggesting here.

Not a problem. A good article on Japan in general that touches on the subject was published by The Atlantic in 1998. Two books that I would recommend are Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr, and Embracing Defeat by John Dower. Dogs and Demons explains the current corrupt system that has emerged in Japan, and Embracing Defeat (won a Pulitzer too) chronicles how it got that way after Japan's defeat in WWII.

Basically, the problem is that the bureaucracy that exists now is exactly the same one that existed in the pre-War government. The U.S. only replaced the politicians. After the war, many of the top-level bureaucrats were the same ones that had been appointed by Emperor Hirohito before the war. Today the bureaucracies are enormously unresponsive to public sentiment. Their main organizational purpose is to maintain the same percentage of funding as a part of the budget that they had just after the war. So they invent things for themselves to do. Pointless building projects, that kind of thing. Kerr relates a couple of projects that were simply so stupid (tearing up historical neighborhoods for no reason) that the public was able to stop them through dedicated protests - only to find out later that the projects simply got quietly rescheduled a couple years into the future and proceeded apace. The current breed of Japanese politicians are even worse. You hear about corruption scandals every week that only take place in other Western democracies once a decade. Organized crime owns a substantial part of the economic and political pie (again dating back to reconstruction under the Americans). Basically, the politicians only exist to peddle influence. They have almost no real power. The real power lies in the hands of bureaucracies, organized crime, and corporate leaders. In that order.

...about how De Beers essentially invented the global diamond market by both controlling the supply and creating the demand:

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

Not sure how things have changed in the last 20 years since this article came out, but here's an interesting piece on how dimaond engagement rings are an invented tradition that only started 60 years ago. (It's comes in three parts b/c it's pretty long.)

part 1

part 2

part 3

Not sure how things have changed in the last 20 years since this article came out, but here's an interesting piece on how dimaond engagement rings are an invented tradition that only started 60 years ago. (It's comes in three parts b/c it's pretty long.)

part 1

part 2

part 3

Not sure how things have changed in the last 20 years since this article came out, but here's an interesting piece on how dimaond engagement rings are an invented tradition that only started 60 years ago. (It's comes in three parts b/c it's pretty long.)

part 1

part 2

part 3

Nearly everyday traffic on the 6 lane interstate suddenly comes to a full stop. When you get going again and drive up a little ways, there was no reason to stop, no accident, no debris in the road.

Ah, it's time for a little MLP...
A layman's description of why traffic backs up for no apparent reason and how to stop it.
An article about an actual German study on the the physics of gridlock.

I posted this article, Have you ever tried to sell a diamond in the previous discussion on diamonds. It is a thourough history on the DeBeers cartel and how they created the myth that "A diamond is forever". It should be required reading for any young man about to be duped into blowing a big wad on a "cheap" rock.

The $5 synthetics are "industrial quality" diamonds and are used in manufacturing tools and products, not for being inset in jewelry. DeBeers is in the jewelry business and until the $5 synthetics can meet the same level of visual quality and appeal of a natural diamond, they aren't sweating it.

The real reason why DeBeers is sweating is the $1.5 billion worth of diamonds sitting in Israel which, if released into the market, could send diamond prices spiralling down.

Yes, they are. Or rather, it is: De Beers is the only one of any significance. This article about the "Diamond Invention" has been posted to Slashdot before, and despite being written in 1982 is just as true today. The myth that diamonds are valuable was created by De Beers early last century, and they have been able to maintain that myth through the virtue of being a thuggish monopoly.

Don't buy diamonds. For our wedding bands, we chose unadorned titanium. :)

I think this link has been around before, but The Atlantic published a very well written piece on the diamond industry a few years back (entitled: "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?").

Given how cutthroat (and cruel) they've been in the past, I think you're very right about De Beers - they're going to attempt to do everything they can to control or shut down artificial diamonds to protect their monopoly.

I think this link has been around before, but The Atlantic published a very well written piece on the diamond industry a few years back (entitled: "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?").

Given how cutthroat (and cruel) they've been in the past, I think you're very right about De Beers - they're going to attempt to do everything they can to control or shut down artificial diamonds to protect their monopoly.

This lengthy article gives a fascinating history into how the DeBeers cartel has created artificial scarcity in the diamond market and convinced the western world that a "Diamond is Forever". Before the 19th century, no one ever had to spend 6 weeks salary on an engagement ring!

"I don't trust Michael Powell."

You didn't read the article. This has nothing to do with Michael Powell. The article regards comments made by Tim Muris, chairman of the Federal Trade Commision. Michael Powell is chairman of the Federal Communications Commision.

After caving in to media interests and allowing further consolidation

That is a strange article to site in support of your belief that government should regulate broadcast communcations, which makes me think that you did not read it either. If you had, maybe you would have noticed the excerpts of congressional testimony. Democrats Byron Dorgan and Barbara Boxer site their own concern about the growing popularity of conservative political ideas in radio and TV broadcasting as justification for government regulation. It gives a good sense of their horror that the free speech permitted by under-regulation will allow conservative ideas to become even more popular. Boxer specifically uses the Fox News reference to France and Germany as the "Axis of Weasels" as an example of an undesirable political statement. Regardless of how the the public conceives of this issue of goverment regulation of communication, on the political level is not really about media consolidation, it is about censorship and free speech.

You're quite right.

There has to be a concentration on the demand side of the equation.

Clients of the spammers need to feel it in the pocketbook for a solution to really work.

Unfortunately, a 98% effective boycott of the spamhaus clients by recipients of spam won't do much, considering that response rates are less than 1% already. Rather than attack the spammers directly, the clients should be made to pay big time if they've employed a spammer for advertising.

I don't trust Michael Powell. After caving in to media interests and allowing further consolidation in the face of absolutely zero public support for such measures (and widespread opposition once the results of his hearings became known), his current position on spammers seems to be an attempt to position future policy to insure that there is no possible anonymity on the Internet. I dislike that solution to that problem because whistleblowers, politic dissidents in repressive regimes, etc. would be silenced alongside the despicable spammers.

BTW, along the same lines of supply and demand, there's a recent article about current and former law enforcement officials that want a different approach to the "war on drugs" than what's been not working for the last number of decades.

Since diamonds have a much higher thermal conductivity (ie they can take the heat), they'd make better chips than silicon if only they were more affordable. Industrial diamonds are expected to make the whole industry's prices fall drastically by increasing supply and breaking the De Beers cartel .

More about the De Beers cartel:

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Everything2 link

Personally I think these are awesome feats of engineering, and a way to give your significant other a stone without feeling morally, and literally, bankrupt.

Since diamonds have a much higher thermal conductivity (ie they can take the heat), they'd make better chips than silicon if only they were more affordable. Industrial diamonds are expected to make the whole industry's prices fall drastically by increasing supply and breaking the De Beers cartel .

More about the De Beers cartel:

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Everything2 link

Personally I think these are awesome feats of engineering, and a way to give your significant other a stone without feeling morally, and literally, bankrupt.

Since diamonds have a much higher thermal conductivity (ie they can take the heat), they'd make better chips than silicon if only they were more affordable. Industrial diamonds are expected to make the whole industry's prices fall drastically by increasing supply and breaking the De Beers cartel .

More about the De Beers cartel:

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Everything2 link

Personally I think these are awesome feats of engineering, and a way to give your significant other a stone without feeling morally, and literally, bankrupt.

For example, if someone hijacks or otherwise poisons some DNS servers, then all the traffic to windowsupdate.com will make it through to windowsupdate.microsoft.com anyway.

Or, a future worm could be written to target & attack a variety of Microsoft servers.

Or a future fowm could be written in such a way that the target is not part of the worm's code, but rather can be directed remotely somehow. This way, even if Microsoft tries to switch addresses, the person[s] directing the attack can just change the target.

The real solution isn't to keep trying to dodge the bullet.
The solution to become bulletproof.

Even after all this time, Microsoft still doesn't seem to get that.

Part of the reason Microsoft is such a prominent target is of course because it is so, well, prominent. Taking down (say) an FSF server doesn't raise nearly as many headlines (as this week's headlines will attest to). But I don't think that all of the problem here can be traced to how widespread Windows is -- while the Internet's clients are nearly all running Windows, a large fraction of the server architecture is running some Unix variant, and while there is of course some malware that targets *nix (Linux, Solaris, MacOSX, BSD, etc), the results never seem to be as catastrophic as the typical Windows outbreak

To rip of Bruce Schneier's analogy from his security article in Atlantic Monthly a year ago, it seems to me that the what security mechanisms Windows has tend to be brittle, while those that the *nix etc world have tend to be pliable. That is to say, when a problem comes up with (say) Apache, the damage tends to be isolated. This is partly because each installation will be configured differently, with different features enabled or disabled, and partly because the server runs on a variety of systems, each of which may have different mechanisms for providing underlying security protections. On the other hand, IIS installations tend to be pretty homogeneous, and a flaw with one very well could be a flaw with all.

That's not to say that IIS couldn't be just as secure as Apache, if not much more so. But part of Apache (etc)'s strength is it's heterogeneous nature -- people are able to tinker, adapt, mix & match components to suit their needs, and in the process this will also tend to protect them from catastrophic failure. Microsoft has actively resisted this kind of diversity -- witness their howls about having to come up with "thousands of versions of Windows" if some of the firmer antitrust penalties were put into force. Those thousands of permutations are, arguably, exactly what is needed: this will give their users greater choice, and it will make emergencies like this more rare.

I don't get why they're so opposed to the idea.

Maybe they've got cleverer plans than anything I can think of. I certainly wouldn't claim to be any kind of security expert. But if the best they can come up with is a change of address card, I can't help but wonder if they're fumbling in the dark here...

...such a massive amount of freshwater pouring into the open seas from this hypothetical ice-melt would paralyze the salt sea heat transfer and actually COOL our planet.

There was a fascinating article on the multitude of tactics that DeBeers uses to prop up and control the diamond market published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, which I believe was referenced here on /. about a year ago.

It was quite long, but it's definitely a very interesting read which will probably change your perceptions of the true value of giving diamonds as important gifts...

De Beers needed a slogan for diamonds that expressed both the theme of romance and legitimacy. An N. W. Ayer copywriter came up with the caption "A Diamond Is Forever," which was scrawled on the bottom of a picture of two young lovers on a honeymoon. Even though diamonds can in fact be shattered, chipped, discolored, or incinerated to ash, the concept of eternity perfectly captured the magical qualities that the advertising agency wanted to attribute to diamonds. Within a year, "A Diamond Is Forever" became the official motto of De Beers.

diamonds are not really forever

at the bottom there is a link to the next part...

I found this article by Jonatham Rauch in The Atlantic to be a big "aha" for me.

My name is Khendron, and... I am an introvert <applause>

Yesterday I read in The Atlantic. (I find the timing of finding that and then this book review interesting...)

It was like seeing myself fully explained for the first time. If you're not interested in buying the book, the article will probably do just as well.

Caring for Your Introvert

I'm an introvert and I like what the author says about needing to recharge after a few hours of socializing. I find long stretches (ie 6 hours straight) of conversation totally exhausting... I wish I didn't, but that appears to be the way I'm built.

I disagree with all the 'more intelligent', etc. stuff, but maybe some of you will find the article interesting at least...

And you do realise that Christian Science has nothing to do with scientists who are Christian but refers to a sect founded in Boston in the 19th century, right? That Christian Scientists believe that the key to all health problems can be found in the Bible, and that therefore they refuse any medical treatment - and indeed are happy to let their children die of perfectly treatable diseases. If you don't believe me, read this.

It seems to me that this is about as far from believing in stem cell research and cloning as being effective, let alone moral, as you can get.

"...what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson November 13, 1787

Where did the platinum go?

1. Did it evaporate?

2. Did it rub off on the guy's glove when he weighs it each year?

3. Is there something else going on?

sPh

People like Rees better get used to the fact that we aren't going to get off this planet in significant numbers any time soon and that colonization of space is a pipe dream for now.

You might enjoy this article from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/07/benson .h tm"

The individual patented the 'web' before the web was even heard of outside of universities.

He patented it all the way back in 1944 you say?

Anonymous Coward said: ...I almost can't believe this. Read the mother of all demos link - demo'd mouse, word processing, hyperlinks, and a host of other stuff back in 1968! Is this for real? How come I've never heard of anything like this before?

Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

...which was featured in /. a little bit ago here. br>
The original article is quite a good read about the diamond industry and how *not pricy* actual diamonds really are. The true price seems to be paid in marketing, inflated costs, monopoly of the industry, and exploitation of indiginous people. Hell, you can make diamonds from the ashes of your dead greatgrandmother!

Actually, it goes back a bit further than that. I wish more computer people would understand their history. At least it might keep them from repeating mistakes...