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A long read, but well worth it if you can spare the time. And, heck, it's Friday. You're not going to get any work done anyway.

Now, we may have it. Of course, he wasn't really a gadget man per se, nor were technology and gadgets his driving force. Founder of the NSF, he saw technology as an enabler to furthering the human condition, improving it's access to information, ultimately making us smarter...

Will this do it? No, but we'll be able to walk around for a bit and show how cool it is to have a $2000 wearables rig strapped to us that doesn't overfill a fanny pack.

On a diamond-related note:

As this article in The Atlantic ("Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?") points out - diamonds are only perceived to be worth anything because of the diamond cartel.

In the marketing coup of the century they've managed to convince the world that diamonds are rare and precious - both of which are completely untrue. Think about that the next time you hear "diamonds are forever" - it's advertising propaganda that people have been brainwashed into believing is true.

What to both Bushes, and Clinton have in common? All are members of The Brotherhood of Death, AKA The Skull and Bones Society. An evil secret society obsessed with power. All these Clinton vs. Bush flame wars are pointless. They are two sides of the same coin.

If you've read Code you probably already know why this kind of regulation by code is bad, but Lessig also wrote on this over At The Atlantic Monthly.
He says the picture of a world where one needs a license to read is discomforting.

Current laws represents a choice made by our democratic processes, and with copyright as code it's not clear how the same balance can be struck. The problem with regulation (And Law) through code is that there is no place for such a collective choice. If one kind of "trusted systems" software protects rights of fair use, a competing version will promise more control to the owner. This makes fair use a bug, not a feature.

The diamond industry is controlled by a global monopoly (DeBeers, who make Microsoft look like boy scouts); they have been known to use violence and intimidation against independent producers/sellers, with machete-wielding militias cutting off the hands of those who don't comply. In southern Africa, the diamond industry exploits miners in atrocious conditions. Those precious stones you may be thinking of buying for your girlfriend/wife/partner fund bloodshed.

The association of diamonds with romance is recent and wholly artificial. It was
engineered in the 20th century by DeBeers' marketing people. They did their job excpetionally well; in America (and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the West), many women are so conditioned to associate diamonds with romance that failing to pay the DeBeers Romance Tax can mean the end of a relationship.

If you're a Linux user, you have said no to the Microsoft monopoly. Why not extend this noble principle to an even more pernicious and murderous multinational corporation? Say no to diamonds, and tell your partner why.

The Eric Schlosser interview you're talking about is probably the one in the Dec 2000 Atlantic Unbound: Unhappy Meals.

There's also an article by Schlosser entitled "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good" was published in the Jan 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly that goes into some depth on the whole 'taste' industry. It's no longer online at theatlantic.com for some reason, but a Google search for the title will turn it up at all kinds of places (like here for example).

Definitely a fascinating and eye opening read.

Was it this article? Indeed -- that was a great read.

The site claims to be: "The number one Amateur Science page!" This is a bit depressing if true. I sure hope that amateur scientists are working more useful problems than blowing things up...
I can't help thinking about Vannevar Bush's article in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly in which he surveyed the possible uses for organized technological development and concluded that "Memex" - the source of the hypertext idea, was the most important thing to work on. What would a similar analysis uncover as the most important problem for technology and "Amateur Scientists" today? I don't think it would have anything to do with blowing things up...

bob wyman

"Many of my worst alcoholics tend to be sociopathic (though not necessarily outright sociopaths), noticeably more selfish than average, unable to take/admit responsibility, lack real insight into their own condition, and often have coexistant personality disorders. They often refuse to even consider stopping their drinking."

• 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
• Overreaction. Tendency to become imbalanced, to go to extremes (Bush's terms, "crusade", and "infinite justice" are examples. He was forced to retract these words. See the October 11, 2002 CounterPunch article, 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.")
• 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 Dry Drunk.)
• 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.

Those limeys probably got their information about air force phamacueticals from this article written by Marc Bowden The Atlantic Monthly.

The fact that fighter pilots take "go" pills and "stop" pills so they can withstand 9-hour sorties is common knowledge.

Anonymous Coward indeed.

Those limeys probably got their information about air force phamacueticals from this article written by Marc Bowden The Atlantic Monthly.

The fact that fighter pilots take "go" pills and "stop" pills so they can withstand 9-hour sorties is common knowledge.

Anonymous Coward indeed.

"Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value -- and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems."

Full article at The Atlantic

Diamonds are no longer rare, and are only worth anything for the same reason cabbage patch dolls once were: artificial scarcity.

Reminds me of this readable account of Australian research into more effective mousepox strains.

Imagine an air-borne influenza with the same kind of engineered ability to agitate and misdirect the human immune system response. It would make the 1918 influenza look tame by comparison.

what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and 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 and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

There is an interesting article in the current issue of The Atlantic (sorry, the actual article is not freely available online) that details the gun trade around the world. Quite interesting to see how insurgents and terrorists around the world are armed by legal, high volume gun purchases in small-time US gun shops (illegally exported, though). It's just really, really easy to buy guns in the US. Weapons like the sniper's Bushmaster were designed, of course, just for that market.

Also, the content on his content-related weblog The Nublog is pretty interesting.

He may be abrasive sometimes, but he usually gets it right. Moreso than Jakob Neilsen.

Also, the content on his content-related weblog The Nublog is pretty interesting.

He may be abrasive sometimes, but he usually gets it right. Moreso than Jakob Neilsen.

You're missing the point -- the JSF doesn't break the limits set by the F-22 either, nor is it intended to. It is intended to provide a cheap versatile platform suitable for common usage by a variety of services in a variety of nations, and with enough capability and punch to top anything it's actually likely to meet in combat. For hardcore air-superiority missions (if there are any), things like the F22, the new boeing daylight stealth designs, and other things now on the drawing board will serve quite well, thank you.

For a good piece on the design goals and selection process of the JSF, check out this piece from the Atlantic.

As for the Su-27, what of it? It's a nice trick plane, but aerobatics and raw platform capabilities have much less to do with modern air combat than targeting technologies and smart munitions -- check out, e.g. recent joint training sessions, in which Israeli pilots armed with 180 degree targeting capabilities and in-helmet HUDs won 220 out of 240 mock engagements against USMC pilots in identical aircraft, but without such toys. (and yes, unlike USMC, the USAF and to some extent the Navy have such toys and more...)

• http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/madcow.htm

Technologists have promised the digital library for decades. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, who was technology adviser to several US presidents, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine outlining how computers might one day augment libraries.

Those who find this subject interesting, but who may not be familiar with Vannevar Bush's work, might want to read the paper to which Brewster Kahle refers.

This article on canine genetics points out that
aggression is the most frequent problem for which dog
owners seek help. It also points out that biologists
classify dogs as "social parasites". One view I've
heard is that dogs have adapted to mimic the mannerisms
of small children in order to get humans to care for
them.

Perhaps we should cross that poodle with a rabbit?

Periodic table of the elements, (C) 1999 Microsoft

There's also a big profile on Fischer in December's Atlantic Monthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/12/chun.htm

The original article can be found here

Have you tried the shareware Zoot? James Fallows was an Agenda fan, and he was raving about Zoot five years ago in the Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere. Cold shower, Jimbo!

There is an article by Charles C. Mann in the September issue of The Atlantic Montly about Bruce Schneier which argues against security systems which fail poorly. Security systems that bring down the entire system when the break are a bad idea. In the case of centralized security, if the system breaking means that an intruder can compromise the data of every user than it is a bad design. Security should be modularized so that one intruder may be able to limit your access but not read your files for example. Authentication should be separate from encryption, etc.

True management can be simplified by haveing centralized servers, and this may improve security slightly, but what use is centralized monitoring if a single intruder can take down the entire system with one compromise.

• "[the leading / best face recognition] software has a success rate of 99.32 percent--that is, when the software matches a passenger's face with a face on a list of terrorists, it is mistaken only 0.68 percent of the time. Assume for the moment that this claim is credible; assume, too, that good pictures of suspected terrorists are readily available. About 25 million passengers used Boston's Logan Airport in 2001. Had face-recognition software been used on 25 million faces, it would have wrongly picked out just 0.68 percent of them--but that would have been enough, given the large number of passengers, to flag as many as 170,000 innocent people as terrorists. With almost 500 false alarms a day, the face-recognition system would quickly become something to ignore."
• "The most important element of any security measure, Schneier argues, is people, not technology--and the people need to be at the scene. Recall the German journalists who fooled the fingerprint readers and iris scanners. None of their tricks would have worked if a reasonably attentive guard had been watching. Conversely, legitimate employees with bandaged fingers or scratched corneas will never make it through security unless a guard at the scene is authorized to overrule the machinery. "

fwiw, I'm the 'Scott' with the Atari 800 mostly on the 4th & 5th pages of the excerpt.

Specifially, the idea that these standardized tests can be used to compare students of different backgrounds is thoroughly debunked.

They DO carry hard-to-find books. People love them and they get lots of customer loyalty.

Atlantic Monthly covered this very well a while back:

Let's run this through Bruce Schneier's two basic questions concerning security systems (as noted in the Atlantic Monthly article recently.)

1. What problem does it solve?

Identifying people is not a goal. Nothing is achieved by figuring out someone's true name (though psychologically speaking humans seem to think that finding identity is somehow useful. Most of the time it isn't.)

Identity does not imply motive. What type of criminals tend to have criminal backgrounds? Well, small time criminals, and your serial rapists/killers/et cetera. The pre-determined criminals usually will have no record (whether it's because they haven't done anything, or because they have escaped justice.)

The proposed system is designed to take individuals who have "community standing", ferret them out and mark them as low security passengers. (An interesting example of this already in use--if you don't have a photo ID, some airlines will take a combination of different documents, one of which can be a motor vehicle insurance card--which is a great proof of "community standing" or in other words "an identity well used." A photo driver's license does not imply that the identity is "in use." Either way, what does it solve? I will maintain nothing.)

2. What happens when the system fails?

It's hard to say...what was it achieving in the first place? But it seems like the biggest problem is that "community standing" will manifest itself as low-security passengers, and people will be waived through when more of these individuals should go through the higher security checks.

I don't know if this system really has much of a failure, since it doesn't seem to achieve all that much in the first place. That's what bothers me so much--it's an expensive farce that violates civil liberties.

Schneier says that only two new security measures make any difference whatsoever--reinforced cockpit doors, and passengers who are now willing to fight back.

This is a FANTASTIC book and I strongly recommend reading it, too. As we get farther and farther from Patient Zero for AIDS the whole "AIDS came from contaminated polio vaccine" theory gets more and more swept under the rug. It shouldn't. For an overview of ths book / topic, check out this article from The Atlantic magazine. What is really interesting is how the scientists are SO DRIVEN to disprove this theory - they are not objective at all. Check out, for exaple, this Nature article. These articles always say something like "Important Doctor X tested remaining polio vaccine sample Y and detected no trace of AIDS/chimp DNA" and the headline conclusion is that Hooper's theory has been disproven. Balony. There are not representative surviving samples for ALL lots of vaccines that were used and it would only have taken ONE SINGLE CONTAMINATED LOT to kick off the AIDS epidemic. Tests can NEVER prove there were NO containated lots of vaccine; it can only prove there WERE by FINDING ONE.

D'ho! Kudos to SirDude for catching this first. Also for finding the online version of the Atlantic piece.

There's also an interesting article here which has been previously mentioned on Slashdot, that might be worth a read. Cheers.

by Vannevar Bush, in As We May Think

Interesting article "Homeland Insecurity" from on how some of this national databasing can make systems more brittle security wise, rather than more robust.

It's called "Secrets and Lies". Also, see the article at The Atlantic.

With this article from the Atlantic Monthly about Bruce Schneier and bad security.

Furthermore, even if we were to throw the facts out the window and declare that all European diseases were deliberately passed to natives, Germ Warfare != Medical Experimentation. Get your facts straight buddy.

.

Indeed I do. It was offered by Oliver Wendell Holmes as a lame rationalization for suppression of free speech in Schenck v. United States .

The phrase, considering its source, should be understood as a metaphor for the old government scam of hyping a bogus crisis in order to justify tyrannical abuses.

Do you think stories could use fewer links so readers can just focus on the specific article instead of having to sort through every link under the sun? Most stories should have just one link (additional cool pictures excepted, of course).

I'd like to respond to some of your points, since plenty of what you're reporting is flat out wrong (and the mods should probably take note of that):

• we have "carpet bombed" plenty in Afghanistan -- nonsense. Even the Taliban didn't bother to claim this one, as it's obviously untrue, so why do you? We dropped many bombs on troop positions in the field, but always in close coordination with ground forces in the area to ensure maximal accuracy. See, among many other references this article for more.
• Carpet bombing is pretty much all a B-52 is good for -- your information is about two decades out of date. With modern GPS technology, a properly equipped B-52 can drop even a `dumb' bomb in a 10-meter diameter circle, based on coordinates radioed in from the ground realtime.
• Second, U.S. troops are not particulary in harm's way. -- wow, I'm floored by this whole paragraph of yours. You're complaining that US troops are too well equipped, and you're upset that they don't put themselves in more danger? How odd.
• What about the thousands [cursor.org] of civilian deaths in Afghanistan? -- these numbers have been discredited so many times, I'm getting tired of posting this link, but for one more time, see the section on civilian casualties at the end of this article for details.
• Do you think that the attacks on the World Trade Center were designed to maximize civilian casualties -- yes, I do. But don't take my word on it -- Mr. Bin Laden says the same thing in his tapes.
• I would argue that the World Trade Centers are a "dual use" target -- so it's clear for any readers who may not have realized the bankrupcy of your position -- are you really arguing that the September 11 attacks were acceptable?
• Casualties from that one eclipse 9-11, though it might not seem in since they occur over a generation, not in a single day. -- care to provide a reference to that one? No, I suppose not, since you apparently stopped reading after that article. As is well known, the plants in question have been rebuilt as part of the oil-for-food program which the US signed on to. But it certainly is true that there are people starving in Iraq -- what you miss is that they starve because Mr. Hussein diverts the relief shipments he receives to pay for palace-building and other megalomaniacal schemes. See this article for more on Mr. Hussein.
• My beef is people like you, who are ignorant about the fact that we have killed more of their civilians than they did on Sep. 11. -- ignorant of your half-baked conspiracy theories, sure. Again, please read the spectator.co.uk article above.
• Rationalize it all you want, civilians die in wars. We don't have any claim to the moral high ground just because we lost 3,000 civilians last year. -- no, we have the moral high ground because we are a free nation which was brutally attacked by terrorists, and are fighting to defend ourselves. The moral ground doesn't get much higher than that.

A little searching reveals: "At prices of 75 cents for matinees and $1 for evenings, the picture began its extraordinary first run. By the end of it, in June, 1940, over 25 million people had paid admission."

Interestingly, given the value for inflation used above people were paying the equivalent of $9 matinees and $12 for evening shows, more than we do today (at least at most theatres I go to.)

It doesn't say what the total sales were, but if we figure equal numbers of matinees and evenings it comes out to about $22 million dollars, or $264 million adjusting for inflation.

That's certainly impressive, but it's not mind blowing. The reason for the $192 million is because it kept getting rereleased. As you said, it's had 60 years to rack up that many sales and a 12:1 inflation does not apply over that whole period.

In fact another site used a different method of calculation and comes up with an adjusted value of $863,288 (In 1996 dollars)

As pointed out DVD and video releases hurt modern day box office sales as well. Disney was able to rerelease their movies every five or ten years right up until the point they finally gave in and started releasing them on video.

(Articles I got the quotes from are at The Atlantic Online and Entertainment Scene if anyone wants to see it)

Cool, but this is the guy I was actually talking about - he was featured on a TV show a few years ago, I don't remember which one. Note that Boggs never tried to pass of his hand-drawn bills as authentic money, that's why he calls buying things with them 'transactions'. Yeah, I know. Apparently the court didn't buy it either. ;)

I think a key point of the "Free as in Freedom" book was the description of the concept of the GPL as codifying a hacker culture of sharing. Certainly the GPL has been an effective and appropriate response to what Richard Stallman apparently saw as essentially the destruction of the MIT AI Lab (and elsewhere) as an academic home for cooperative sharing and collaborative construction. However, it is unfortunate Sam Williams in the book does not touch on the significance of the Bayh-Dole act of 1980 which perhaps unintentionally helped destroy the university culture of sharing in many other places than the MIT AI lab at about the same time. See an article called 'The Kept University' from the Atlantic Monthly: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.ht m Perhaps it was not entirely coincidental the AI lab exodus happened shortly after this law was passed (prior to the act there was not as much incentive for universities to withhold information or make special deals with companies directly). In a future edition, relating Richard Stallman's efforts to that larger legal context of the 1980 Bayh-Dole might be interesting (I didn't remember it mentioned and the Bayh-Dole act isn't in the index).

Of course, since the book is under the Gnu Free Documentation License, I guess anyone could make that change -- but then there would need to be somewhere to post updates -- like Savannah?

By adulthood, Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements is firmly planted in a typical mind either as a tool for study or proof of mystical forces at work in nature. There are alternative structures: some clever and others using alternate media, extensions to the table providing nuclear structure, fermi surfaces, and line spectra.

Still others are extraordinarily cross-thematic, merging chemistry with comic books, poetry or haiku. But only the grouping-nature of the columns is retained in rejected elements, condiments and beer. Eventually the elements and the periodic qualities have been lost entirely, reducing the periodic table to a design template for topical lists of funk and rock music, comedy and TV shows, famous mathematicians and presidents, even SGI products. Soon a complete breakdown of the scientific aspect yields no similarity to the original, becoming a glorified table, a marketing tool, or hype itself. There is mounting evidence of a conspiracy.

What do you know, they have the entire article online. Enjoy.

The Atlantic has a GREAT article about this effect:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/04/rauch.ht m

An exerpt:
"Every so often scientists notice a rule or a regularity that makes no particular sense on its face but seems to hold true nonetheless. One such is a curiosity called Zipf's Law. George Kingsley Zipf was a Harvard linguist who in the 1930s noticed that the distribution of words adhered to a regular statistical pattern. The most common word in English--"the"--appears roughly twice as often in ordinary usage as the second most common word, three times as often as the third most common, ten times as often as the tenth most common, and so on. As an afterthought, Zipf also observed that cities' sizes followed the same sort of pattern, which became known as a Zipf distribution. Oversimplifying a bit, if you rank cities by population, you find that City No. 10 will have roughly a tenth as many residents as City No. 1, City No. 100 a hundredth as many, and so forth. (Actually the relationship isn't quite that clean, but mathematically it is strong nonetheless.) Subsequent observers later noticed that this same Zipfian relationship between size and rank applies to many things: for instance, corporations and firms in a modern economy are Zipf-distributed."

It's one of the best articles I've read in a long time, demonstrating how they've managed to model not only extinct populations accurately (who knows how much after-the-fact tweaking went on, but...) but race riots and honesty in social groups.

Add to that, I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find it again, so someone had better read it. It's just under 10,000 words.

PS - I strongly doubt it'll get slashed, but if it does, here is the Google cached copy.

It's from 1998, but I found it fairly interesting at the time.