Slashdot Mirror

Very Jerry asks: "Here's my problem. I'm currently in the middle of unifying all of our logins here at my place of work because of all the usual reasons (users forget passwords all too often, leaving them more resistant to setting up more complex passwords). Now we have an Active Directory domain setup here, and I was hoping to have all the users authenticate to that. SFU 2.0 is out of the question because it still leaves you to define extra attributes on the user in Active Directory Users and Domains. After a bit of searching, I've found out that pam_krb5 and pam_ldap have been used with success for authentication, but wherever I turn, there are no specific details. I'm currently 2 weeks deep in to this with no progress and a looming deadline. If anyone could point me to some good, specific instructions (specific to Active Directory, not just OpenLDAP) or help me out with a couple tips, it would be much appreciated."

Slashing back tonight are bits and pieces on optical transistors; a genuine linux toaster; words from Nintendo's president on the real status of the Gamecube; and another potentially nice push in the world of digital archives. Please enjoy.

Larry Ellison, watch your back. meforpc writes: "More on LTSP (Linux terminal server project): Riverdale (www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux) decided to make a 'poster child' to get the word out on their project; to do this Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven. The idea behind the toaster is to show the ease of setting up a Linux terminal/server network. It's really cool and looks great. (I want one)."

"Oooh, that's one hot system! If you sell it, I hope the buyer doesn't get burned. Might this sort of thing have a Dark Side? Nice rack -- Smmmmmokin'!" Sigh. I've stopped now. The worst pun you can come up with will be rewarded with an official Slashdot groan of derision :)

Soon all will be optical. BdosError writes: "Scientists in Japan seem to have developed an optical transistor, as explained in this article, which I snipped from the Rapidly Changing Face of Computing newsletter. This could go nicely with the optical switching technology mentioned earlier, as it would eliminate the need to convert the electrical signals to/from optical. Plus, it would be a huge benefit for building fast systems which generate less heat in general.

Let's have no comments about the possibilities for a Beowulf cluster."

Well ... no more comments. But actually, why not? This sounds like a good thing for clustered research computers, no?

Of course, we'll see what hits shelves ... TheZalm writes: "The article about Gamecube being in danger is a misrepresentation of the facts. Hiroshi Yamauchi said only that he would reconsider his launch plan, and possibly place a small delay on the launch. See this article at IGN."

Of course, that's what Sega repeatedly said about the Dreamcast, too. The gamecube sounds cool, so I hope it arrives, but it's obviously coming into a hotly contested market.

Commemorating the banal and the momentous. fizban writes: "According to this AP news story, CNN plans to spend the next few years digitizing its entire video archive and making it available to the public over the internet. Excellent! Just think of the multimedia reports the kids of tomorrow will be able to make for their class projects..."

The article skirts the issue of licensing and payment; hopefully CNN will see fit to make at least some of its content free, but I'd be surprised it that's more than a sampling.

The progress may be mind-numbingly slow, but thanks to things like Project Gutenberg, ibiblio and the Internet Moving Image Archive, more and more free content is arriving for us to read, watch and use. ("And, he groused, "it would be nice if all images made with our tax dollars would be available online as well.")

Robots have been around in concept for longer than the word itself has been used to describe them, and for most of this century they've had a fair hold on the public imagination as either Utopian saviors or inexorable villains. Reader mtDNA sent in the evaluation below of a book called Robo sapiens: Evolution of a new species which may be the basis for a more realistic and neutral understanding about Robots, especially well suited to non-experts in that field. (I also found the other books in the series excellent.)

Robo Sapiens author Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio pages 240 publisher MIT Press rating 8.5 reviewer mtDNA ISBN 0-262-13382-2 summary A coffee-table survey course in words and pictures on the state of robots at the turn of the century.

Robo sapiens is the latest offering in the "Material World" series produced by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, which includes Material World: A Global Family Portrait (1995) and Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects (1998). On the outside, Robo sapiens is an ordinary coffee table book. On the inside, however, is something different. Robo sapiens sets out to document the state of the art in robotics and artificial intelligence by talking to over fifty active researchers and photographing them with the tools of their trade. The book succeeds brilliantly. With sharp, beautifully reproduced photographs and engaging, well composed text, Robo sapiens provides an overview of robotics research that is simultaneously surreal, comically entertaining and dead serious.

The book is motivated by two main questions: What are robotics researchers working on? and Where are robots headed?

The book attempts to answer these questions through a sequence of profiles. Each profile is roughly two to three pages long and includes an interview, a description of a specific robot of interest and one or more relevant photographs.

The interview with Cynthia Breazeal, the creator of Kizmet (a robot that specializes in communication through facial expression), is typical. It includes Kizmet's basic specifications, photos of Kismet partly disassembled, a photo of Breazeal working on Kismet and several photos of Kismet in action. An interview with Breazeal discusses the general motivations for making a robot use facial expressions and her general approach to artificial intelligence.

Menzel is a terrific photographer, and every shot reflects attention to detail. Menzel tried to capture each robot with its designer (preferably while they were interacting) but there are plenty of photos of bots on their own. Some of my favorites were of BIT (a baby-doll-bot), Kismet (a face-bot with expressions) and Robopike (a fish-bot that swims). Several of the pictures, like the face robot on the cover, the surgery robot in the front pages and the baby (BIT) robot on the back cover are nightmarish or psychadelic, but these are the minority. All of the photos are at least slightly staged, but for the most part they are documentary and stylized only for added interest. Several photos from the book can be found on the Robo sapiens web page.

Research-based approaches to robotics vary widely, and the range of interviews in Robo sapiens varies accordingly. Many of the major players in robotics and artificial intelligence are represented: Ronald Arkin, Rodney Brooks, Raymond Kurzweil, Hans Moravec and Marc Raibert are there, to name just a few. A number of people not usually considered to be roboticists, like Robert Full and Paul McCready, are positive additions to the book's broad scope.

The interviews are surprisingly candid and telling. At one point, Rodney Brooks concedes that he could be wrong about behavior-based subsumption being fundamental, and that he might just be "a grumpy old asshole." (his words, not mine). At another point, two researchers (Eric Baumgartner and Terry Huntsberger) scramble to explain why their Mars rover is tethered, which would seem to be a problem on an interplanetary mission (it's to allow emergency shutdowns during testing). An inspiring feature of every interview is the enthusiasm that shines through. These people are having a darn good time and they make you want to join in the fun.

The answer to the first question posed by the book, "What are robotics researchers working on?", is well answered. In a series of six chapters (Electric dreams, Robo sapiens, Bio logical, Remote possibilities, Work mates and Serious fun), Menzel and D'Aluisio document a diversity of approaches that is truly remarkable in both behavior and mechanism. They range from Mark Tilden's primitivley elegant analog BEAM-bots to Honda's computationally brutish P-series. Robots that swim, walk, crawl, roll, swing and fly are all described. The conclusion is that research in robotics and artificial intelligence is far more diverse than most people would expect: applications range from human-bot social interactions to dynamic prosthetics to meteorite hunting.

The answer to the second question posed by the book, "Where are robots headed?", is less clear. This question is asked in many of the interviews explicitly and answers vary across a spectrum. Some interviewees, like Hans Moravec and Kevin Warwick, seem convinced that robots will eventually supplant or subsume the human species. Others, like Rodney Brooks and Mark Tilden, are more skeptical. One of the funniest interviews is with Tilden, who describes how he built a robot butler that ran into trouble with cleaning. The butler-bot couldn't tell the difference between dirt and cat food, so it vacuumed up the food and the cat went hungry. Tilden's point isn't that nobody can build a bot that can distinguish dirt and cat food, but that endowing bots with the kind of abstract intelligence that comes naturally to humans is a serious problem. It is clear that future directions include the development of new forms of intelligence, but it is unclear what forms these intelligences will take.

My main critism of Robo sapiens is its treatment of points of disagreement in the field. The question of whether robots will take over the world is presented as central, but in reality that question is only of marginal (if any) real interest to professionals. More important controversies, such as about the best way to implement artificial intelligence, are easy to find. One question that could have been asked is, "How is intelligence constructed?". Hearing the perspectives of people who actually design and build serious bots would be interesting. For example, some discussion of the differences between traditional sense-model-plan-act models of intelligence and newer behavior-based subsumption models by the people that actually use them would give a good idea of the practical constraints of each approach, as well as possible compromises. It would easily have been possible to discuss some of these issues without going over the heads of ordinary readers. One simple, illustrative observation would be that increases in the performance of artifical intelligence have not been described by Moore's Law. Why not? Speculation on the answer could only be informative.

Other minor shortcomings of the book are its lack of attention to the roles of history and non-professional researchers in the field. For the ordinary person, the mention of robots and artificial intelligence evokes images of HAL, Rosie, C3PO or even Frankenstein's monster. These images are an important consideration in the development of the robots we see today and in their general role in public life. Why isn't an airplane autopilot called a robot pilot? These issues are mentioned, but only briefly. Discussions with academicians and industry specialists dominate the book but sophisticated hobbyists are a significant presence in the real world. It's a shame not to give them some space.

Most of the deficiencies of the book are resolved by a quick look on the internet. Many of the researchers profiled in Robo sapiens have homepages that provide online versions of their technical articles and further information. Information about the work of amateurs and hobbyists is abundant online as well. Fred Martin's Handyboard, for example, has been integrated into all kinds of interesting projects. While Robo sapiens is directed at the educated layman and thus not a good source of technical information by itself, the book could be a useful starting point in finding robots and researchers in specific categories.

If you're propeller-head to the point of pathology, be warned: Robo sapiens isn't a technical document and may be disappointing. For the rest of us Robo sapiens is outstanding and at $29.95 (USD) it's a bargain. I heartily recommend Robo sapiens to anyone who even has a passing interest in who robotics researchers are, what they are doing, or where robots are headed.

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

AntiFreeze writes "There is an interesting article from the Economist about the future of consumer electronics. The article seems to tie together a lot of loose strings generated on slashdot, specifically from the Playstation and Deep Blue article. The most important claim it makes is that consumer electronics are not being made in a monopolistic industy, and the fears of people like Eurodef (expressed here) are probably not as large as they seem at first evaluation." This is a really worthwhile article discussing convergence and the difference betweent he traditional consumer electronics and computing companies. Worth a read.

AntiFreeze writes "There is an interesting story on MSNBC about Intel's attempts at producing chips capable of running at faster than 10 gigahertz. There was a previous /. article in early December about this here. This article from MSNBC is much more detailed (both technically and non) than the original article referenced from December, and provides a very intriguing look at what Intel's planning to do over the next four years, and what they'll have to show the general public as soon as April 1st. And as always, there's the heated /. argument about Moore's law buried in there, too."

AntiFreeze writes: "The Economist has a very interesting article about Microsoft's plans for .NET and how it would effectively remove most damage caused by a government orderred breakup. The article is written towards the layman, but is very clear and sort of scary." He cites this excerpt from the article, as well: "Even so, it is remarkable how effectively .NET could insulate the firm in the event of its being divided into an operating-system company (which would own Windows) and an applications company (owning Office)."

The ever illuminating Cliff Lampe returns, this time with a book and topic which continue to hover in the background. What sort of a life has information taken on in our brave new world? It sounds like a balanced account with a wide-ranging approach.

The Evolution Of Wired Life author Charles Jonscher pages 279 publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. rating 8.5 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN 0471357596 summary My analog dad could beat up your analog dad.

The Scenario There are actually two subtitles to this book, which is why we are not including them in the above summary. Both subtitles initially made us nervous about bringing this book to the attention of all. The first subtitle is "From the alphabet to the soul catcher chip" and the second is "How information technologies change our world." Both titles make one nervous. Cries of "Sweet melting pogo sticks, not another book about how technology is changing the way we live." This reviewer, in particular, was dreading this book after a summer chock full of such heady titles. It seemed from the titles above that the reader was being offered a watered down version of The Age of Spiritual Machines. Suprisingly, pleasantly, nothing could be further from the truth.

The suprising part is that the answer to "How information technologies change our world" is "Not as much as you may think", and the pleasant part is that the treatment of "From the alphabet to the soul catcher chip" is as pleasing a description of the basic blocks of information theory that one could hope for. Far from an echo paean to Ray Kurzweil, Jonscher offers what most biologists could already tell us, that it is harder than one thinks to replicate a neuron. For example, the chemical signals between axons and dendrites are not as binary as most would lead you to believe. Neurotransmitters are of different flavors and varieties, and very analog. The author points out that each neuron itself is hugely sophisticated, more complex than most single celled organism, which are able to do many things on their own that computers are not able to.

This book points out that rather than analog being worse than digital, in many cases it is actually better, and no, not just for vinyl freaks either. After all, how much effort is spent trying to make the digital look or sound more analog? Consider when you sample a wave of sound denoting music to try and put it onto a CD, or into an MP3 format. Even with 44,100 samples of a single curve, the simple fact remains, you are not getting the entire thing. You are letting things go, because as it happens our ears aren't very good at detecting that difference anyway. The book takes a tour of those sensory limitations, and how it has affected a range of instruments we have developed to store and transmit information, literally starting at 8,000 B.C. with the start of the first crude alphabets and going to the idea of placing a chip behind the retina to record all of the events of a life and reconstruct that life from them. Which is a terrifically bad idea, but we'll not go into that now.

Jonscher cuts a wide swath through information science. He himself is an old time computer user, and affiliated with Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy. In other words, this is no Luddite. Chapters on the history of information, development of the chip, the difference between analog and digital and information economics are tight, with some notable exceptions mentioned below.

What's Good? Particularly, the chapter on information economics, entitled "Computers and Economic Progress" is very good. Jonscher's current position as president of the investment firm Central Europe Trust Company lends him a particularly strong voice here. For instance, we've accepted we've moved past the Industrial Age, but think of the wonders our grandparents saw. Consider the progress between 1900 and 1950 compared to 1950 and now. As an example, most places in the world in 1900 still relied on horses for transport, whereas in 1950 the jetliner had been invented and transcontinental air travel was established. Those same jets have not really changed significantly in the past 50 years. The point being, that the Information Age has not changed our world nearly as much as did the age that came before it. If you read any chapter of this book make it this one.

Which is not to say that there is not a lot of other great material here. Very rarely has a book delved as thoroughly, yet concisely, into some of the core principles of information science that we so take for granted today. The descriptions, whether they be mathematical, biological or organizational, are all quite clear and followed well with cogent examples and analysis.

Check out also the author's Further Reading section, which has some very good material in it, some of which has been reviewed here in the past. While some of these "sociology of information technology" books can be a pain in the fundament, this is as good a list as any for looking at this issue, with recommendations from those the author both agrees with, and those with whom he does not.

What's Bad? Frankly put, the chapter on "Multimedia and the Internet." Take a Sharpie and just cross out the pages, it will be kinder than accidentally catching a phrase as you skip to the next chapter. If you do read this chapter, and want to unleash some whoop-ass because we recommended this book, please see either Hemos or Timothy c/o Slashdot.org.

It really points to a question of audience for this book. This is a solid overview of the history, present and future of information technology taken from a solid, unapologetic stance, but for whom is it written? The terrible Internet chapter seems to indicate it was not meant for those already Net savvy, but it is hard to imagine Ma Kettle picking up this book and enjoying it. Like so many books these days, it mistakenly seems meant for that juicy middle demographic, people who have to use computers, but may not necessarily be thrilled about it. Ignore that though, and read this book.

So What's In It For Me? If you've used computers for a good long time but have never stopped to consider how they did not appear out of thin air one day, then you should probably read this book. This book definitely has a place on the shelf between The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Social Life of Information as a good pointer to the way information technology works in a larger framework than the oft opened box sitting on your desk.

It's also well written enough to be an easy, quicker read than some other books in the same genre. This look at technology and the overinflated opinion it has of itself is more thorough and complex than the recent articles by Bill Joy, while approaching the subject from a thoughtful, well informed perspective that you are sure to enjoy.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Cliff Lampe sheds light again on a subject you may be all too aware of whenever you open a desk drawer: complexity. Specifically, this review of Harnessing Complexity, which Cliff assures us is not of the "shallow business guru" variety, sounds like a great way to get a bird's eye view of a fascinating topic.

Harnessing Complexity author Robert Axelrod & Michael D. Cohen pages 184 publisher The Free Press rating 9.5 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN 0684867176 summary Become a professional Complexity Rassler!

The Scenario

Complexity science has grown increasingly popular in the past few years, with increased tools available for modeling, and increased examples of successful interventins in complex systems. Unfortunately, books on complexity have remained mostly crap, until now. In this slim book is a framework for not only understanding complex systems, but for doing something besides standing at the sideline and watching them unfold.

Axelrod and Cohen are founding members of the BACH group, which has been very influential in complexity research. They have been long standing members at either the Santa Fe Institute, which is the premiere complexity research facility in the world, or the University of Michigan's Study for Complex Systems, which has also had a large effect on the science. In other words, these are two cats who know their bidness. Now here's the good part. Axelrod and Cohen are solidly academic, but this book is not. The weakness of books on complexity is that they have either been written for other complexity theorists, making them inacessible, or for the general population, making them insipid. Even though both researchers have been studying this field for decades, and could have written something brillant yet obtuse, but instead they wrote something brilliant and useful.

The authors describe the characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems in terms of the three main elements of those systems: variation, interaction and selection. The book is divided into roughly three parts, each dealing with one of these aspects. The systems described have many different components, and one of the contributions of this book is to provide a common vocabulary for these elements. Here's a sample bit of text that the authors claim would give you a rough summation of the book:

"Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system."

There are many examples of complex systems that the authors use to bolster their explanations of complexity theory. How a disease spreads, how the military makes far reaching changes in philosophy, and of course evolution all drive home concisely crafted observations about complex adaptive systems. There's even a little gem that talks about the development of an open source project, specifically Linux. The authors discuss some conditions under which an open source development model might thrive, or at least make sense. As a favor to the authors, we'll make you read the book to find out what those are.

Complexity theory is not the same as chaos. Complex systems are not chaotic, though they do depend on variation in order to adapt, or change the equilibrium point. The important message here is that complex systems are not beyond our understanding, though it may be tough. Also, because complex systems depend on churn, if we can arrange ourselves at that point of churn, and try to direct we can affect systems that have been previously thought unalterable.

What's Good?

The tone of this book is killer. Combining lucid explanations with meaningful descriptions makes this very readable without diminishing the topic at all. The final chapter even outlines the rest of the book for you, boiling it down to the bare bones points that you should really take from the text. It might be helpful to read it first, and then go through and read the rest of the book.

The other strength of the book is how the authors manage to follow a strong academic tradition of supporting points with evidence without succumbing to making the book sound like the usual academic crap. All of the points made are supported not only with the great examples, but with evidence from a large body of research, mostly academic. The bibliography for this book would be a great place to start for any person or group interested in delving deeper into issues surounding complexity theory.

This assertion that we can understand complex systems, and exert influence over them is an important concept for a new paradigm for thinking. The systems being developed, computer or otherwise, are mostly examples of complexity in action. Whether it is an open source project being created or a new design team you are putting together, they are rarely systems that can be boiled down to simple cause and effects. The Newtonian view of a mechanical universe has polluted the very way in which we think about systems, the way in which we understand the universe. The people researching complex adaptive systems are working against that, and this book is a definitely volley in the right direction.

What's Bad?

This question is a matter of audience in the case of this book. It is definitely written for laymen, so if you are into the math of complexity research, or the modeling, then seek on crazy diamond. The intended audience here is the person who has to deal with complex, adaptive systems, but is not an expert in math. This book is intentionally short and brief, designed for those without a lot of leisure reading time. If you're after the uber compendium of complexity theory, this is not your book either.

While it is a minor point, the title of the book is annoying. It is understandable for marketing reasons, but it could turn off some smart people to reading the book, fearing it might be of the "Business Guru" shallow variety. Do not listen to these fear, buy this book.

So What's In It For Me?

If you've been interested in complexity theory, or need to work with complex adaptive systems (which everyone must) then this book has quite a bit to offer to you. Practical advice on how to exert influence in a complex environment could be invaluable to the reader. Besides the practical good it can do the reader, this book also has something to teach you about how you think about the world in general. Being aware of the complex systems around you, and thinking more deeply than black and white, or even gray, about these systems has benefits that far exceed your current job or project.

This book could also become valuable for the open source movement in general. Understanding complex, adaptive systems will also increase the chances for success of a number of possible open source projects as well as how to position them in software markets, which are themselves great examples of complex systems. It would be great if people involved with open source could champion this method of worldview both for its intrinsic and extrinsic benefits.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

This is Slashback. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. But if you want to, read below some interesting bits on: the first digital computers (who sez?!); neural nets with the ability to whip your behind; your chance to bring your ideal OS to life, under adult supervision; and Yes, a note on Mir, which has so far failed to hit my new loft.

(This item ceremonially closer to orbit) pcidevel writes: "According to this page at Mirstation.com there is no plans to down Mir and in fact a launch has been approved to make sure Mir has a long stay in orbit." I'm sure everyone with plans to visit (James Cameron on down / up) will be cheered to the cockles. I think I'll wait till the .1 release;)

To hell with anyone who won't help out ;) jonathan_atkinson writes: "The V2_OS (www.v2os.cx) that you featured twice a while back is currently undergoing a kernel rewrite. Having taken on some of the criticisms that Slashdot readers threw at us at the time (it hurt back then... but this is our baby :P), the kernel is being rewritten from scratch, using a fully modular architecture. An interesting project to be involved with ... So, any Slashdot readers who have wanted to get involved with a cool project like this, contact one of the project leaders in #v2os on EFnet or visit the website. Plenty of you had criticisms and ideas the last time this story was posted, lets see if anyone wants to put them into practise!"

"I was here first! No I was here first! Mom!" afrop writes: "Like Tesla vs Marconi in the field of radio, history seems to have already sealed the fate of ENIAC vs ABC. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is almost always overlooked when people say 'first digital computer', despite the 1973 court decision invalidating the ENIAC patents, and declaring Atanasoff the inventor of the first digital computer. History may have forgotten the ABC, but we shouldn't."

Similarly, An unnamed correspondent writes: "You've posted several things recently about the computing history, and you always claim the ENIAC or whatever was first. You really should post this link to the first electronic digital computer, from which the creators of ENIAC got some of their ideas. http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml"

Interesting links, both. Of course, there are a lot of interesting devices which predate both of these, including the mysterious bronze computing device found aboard an Agean wreck.

And if you feel like turning over the rocks of history to find those little bugs that curl into balls, and wondering what the ancients would have called them, wonder, if not no more, at least a bit less -- GE Bickford writes: "While there is certainly a distinction between various individuals who hack, I have found a very early usage of "hacker" that demonstrates that the artificial semantic distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is a vain conceit. This citation proves that the term "hacker" from the very beginning involved an implicit violation of 'territory' (trespassing) and threat to system integrity (vandalism). It also shows that hackers were considered at least a potential threat from the earliest days of the internet (then ARPANET). I note that the term 'cracker' didn't come into use until at least the late 1980s if not 1990s:
"We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage "hackers", although it is obviously insufficient to protect a node against a determined and malicious attack." - RCF521."

Bring me the head of Michelle Pong! You may have thought it was cool that a neural net could be taught to recognize the spoken word "one," but how about one that does useful work instead? Specifically, LinuxBand writes: "http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/~watta/MM/pong/pong5.html this thing is pretty cool, teach it by hitting the ball for awhile and then try playing against it and watch it kick yer arse."

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The latest issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing has a paper by Bradley Dilger called The Ideology of Ease. Dilger writes that making computers "easy" may also make them less useful. 'Ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof,' he says." Some of the allusions seem a little stretchy (I'm not sure that Marx has much to do with user interface design) but Dilger makes an interesting case for re-thinking the motives behind some moves toward "easiness." Especially as GUIs for Linux proliferate, it makes sense to think about exactly what constitutes ease.

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The latest issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing has a paper by Bradley Dilger called The Ideology of Ease. Dilger writes that making computers "easy" may also make them less useful. 'Ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof,' he says." Some of the allusions seem a little stretchy (I'm not sure that Marx has much to do with user interface design) but Dilger makes an interesting case for re-thinking the motives behind some moves toward "easiness." Especially as GUIs for Linux proliferate, it makes sense to think about exactly what constitutes ease.

Cliff Lampe wrote this thoughtful piece about one interesting societal intersection -- the one where free / Free software meets the millions of volunteers worldwide who give of themselves to make the world a better place to live in. It's intriguing to note as Cliff does here that the benefits promised by Application Service Providers -- ease of use, low overhead, painless transitions to new software -- are ones that apply just as much to low-budget nonprofit organizations as they do to large businesses. Perhaps some major ASP (like USinternetworking) could also see the public relations boon of offering what would be a drop in the bucket of their application bandwidth to host OSS applications for local, voluntary organizations.

This May, the University of Michigan held a conference on how Application Service Providers and Open Source Software could help community serving nonprofits achieve their goals. Participants from the nonprofit world, open source projects, ASP's (definitely not Active Server Pages here) and foundations attended several days of intensive talks on how OSS could be applied to help smaller nonprofits realize the benefits of information technology. For a full list of participants, please refer to the conference website. This was a small group, thirty people total, who met in intensive sessions designed to bring them together for the first time. Remarkable for a conference, it seemed to energize rather than enervate, and conference members have kept in contact over the months that have followed.

Community Serving Organizations

Obviously, there are several sizes and varieties of nonprofits, ranging from the mega lobbying organizations of the NRA and AARP, to three people sitting in a kitchen trying to clean up a local river. The Michigan conference was mostly concerned about such smaller organizations that are trying to make a change in the world on small budgets. Typical organizations of this kind include local environmental groups, community theaters, food gatherers, advocacy groups, individual churches and so forth. Basically, nonprofits who do not have the benefit of a huge infrastructure driving their efforts to engage in some community-serving activity.

These groups could benefit from the blessings of information tech as much as their private sector friends have, but see expenditures on technology as drawing money away from their core missions. After all, a Big Deal has been made in recent years about how much donated money actually goes to direct service, so people in nonprofits have been reluctant to increase the money they put into this thing called 'administration,' which includes money spent on computers. The problem is, information technology might be able to help some of these people with their missions -- and in many cases, it's vital.

A computer is unlikely to directly feed a homeless person, but it could certainly connect a nonprofit to a broader range of opportunites to find food and housing for that person. One of the commonalities of most nonprofits is a need to communicate -- either to solicit funds for future activities, or to disseminate information on their particular cause. Use of the Internet and computers in general can go a long way in helping nonprofits seek and maintain a group of supporters, as well as the typical office tasks that all organizations need to deal with.

For most of the community service population, coding their own applications in unfeasible. These are people who want and need to deal in their specialties, and if they have little or no money for computers, they have less to spend on programmers who can work out proprietary apps for the nonprofit. It would suck pretty hard if a homeless person got to the shelter and heard, 'Sorry sucka, we sold the beds so we could hire this programmer.'

Application Service Providers (ASP's)

Lately, a deluge of ASP's have popped up to serve organizations without the money to install of the technology pieces they might want. The idea is pretty simple. For an honest fee, the ASP provides server-side applications available to anyone with an Internet connection. The most common type of ASP offers data storage, but others allow one to use office style products (though pared down for efficient transport). Some very clever ASP's have even popped up that allow people to create forms and collect data, super simple style, over the provider's server.

The problem is, there really aren't any ASPs designed for nonprofits specifically. This is weird, since the nonprofit sector is worth hundreds of billions of dollars in spending every year. Some of the conference members are working towards creating such a business -- ASPs aimed at nonprofits will emerge -- but the question becomes whether that will happen under a proprietary model, or under one of the Open Source style licenses. There is still so much money to be tapped in the private market, where it is easier to find funding, that most ASP's will not turn their attention to nonprofits for a good long time. Finally, the ASP market has become volatile since April of this year, and it would be unlikely for a private company to take on the risk of starting one without more of a measure of success than most people find in the nonprofit sector.

The Role of Open Source for Nonprofits

The obvious connection is that many open source projects are nonprofit, community-serving enterprises themselves. However, there are many positive interactions available between the open source community and the nonprofit sector, and not just free coding for the nonprofits if that is what you are thinking. If there is one thing that the nonprofit sector has learned how to do, it is to get the message out there. Their experience with advocacy combined with the communications experience garnered by the Open Source movement could do wonderful things for both players.

Also, the list of successful Open Source projects is limited in many ways. The best known successes, Apache, Linux and Sendmail, were coded by the people most likely to use them. This is not bad, obviously, it's just that the Open Source community needs to decide if they are going to remain forever in the shadow of a niche, or if they ever want to move into more mainstream endeavors. Working with the nonprofits, developing applications that would bridge that gap between helping ourselves and helping others, would be a great way to burst self imposed bonds. Scratch someone else's itch, as it were.

This isn't high school, so there will be no lecture on how helping community serving organizations is good for the soul, or how one should devote their talents to help those who have not been blessed. Bugger that for a box of rocks. However, it is true that males between 17 and 24 are the group of people least likely to volunteer their time. It's also true that an organized attempt to code an ASP for community serving organizations could allow people to hone coding skills for future personal use. Besides, it's a damned good feeling to be part of something that makes the world better, that makes people better. Not better in that way that they can get their job done a little bit faster, or that their computer crashes less often. Better in the way that they eat, or that get medicine to save their lives, or that there is air for your kids to breathe. It's a very good feeling indeed. OK, that got a little close to preachy, but suffice it to say there are reasons for the Open Source community to consider creating an ASP for the nonprofit sector.

What needs to be done next

There are several steps that need to be taken before the Open Source movement can mesh well with the community serving organizations.

Education

Most people in these community serving organizations are unaware of the potential of ASP's, much less of OSS. We'll need to do some basic advocating for open systems of development. Most of the nonprofits will see the inherent wisdom of the open source method of application development, having a culture much more used to cooperation than does the private sector. On the other hand, they will have the same newbie style questions about a decentralized system of software development. Who is responsible in case it doesn't work? How do I get changes made? How does anything get done with no one calling the shots? Whom do I call for help? Basically, these organizations are a little gun shy about being abandoned with buggy software, and it would be a coup for the open source movement to not only convince them to follow an open strategy, but to make sure they are not hurt by that decision.

The Open Source movement also has some things to learn. Assume that the people in the community serving organizations are not able to change the code themselves, which is a pretty safe assumption. What does open source matter to them at that point? Also, the software will have to be as transparent as possible, something not only uncommon in most open source projects of the past, but rather frowned upon as "un-leet". It would be interesting for someone to manage a successful open source project where the end user is not also the major developer. The nonprofit sector provides a beautiful guinea pig for developing under this slight alteration of past open source success.

Standards

There are few standardized apps that are currently used by the community serving sector. This includes both the very macro types of software, like client trackers, or more subtle things, like XML standards for the community. These will be necessary if we want to make the whole schmeckis fit together. Later, there will be a diagram that will discuss the various elements that all need to work together to make an entire system revolving around an open source ASP that serves this target population.

Secondly, it will need to become apparent that sharing these tools will lead to a stronger overall "market" for community serving organizations. Past attempts at sharing tools often became mired in bureaucracy that would cause anyone to start popping Excedrin like Pez. Not only do the benefits of sharing the information need to be made plain, but the security of that information needs to be guaranteed. Nothing is more precious to a nonprofit than their lists of contacts, client information or advocacy materials. They walk a fine line between the proprietary and the open, and need to be helped to draw that line based on the experience of the open source movement, which will in turn learn from the nonprofits own struggles.

Connectivity

A community serving organization obviously needs to get to the Net in order to reap benefits from it. Connectivity for these types of organizations is more essential than for individuals, which has been the main focus of the widely touted "Digital Divide". There is no easy solution to getting the nonprofits to the Net. Many can afford it, especially if their funds are freed up by having access to a good Open Sourced ASP, but some still will not be able to. For some the telecom infrastructure where they are from will not be good, especially for those community serving organizations in poorer parts of the USA, or in less developed countries. All we can do is advocate for increasing ubiquity of the Internet, which should not go against the grain for any person who believes that technology can make a positive difference.

The time is now

Someone out there needs to jump on this. The potential gains, for open source, for the community serving organizations, and for the individual themselves are great. In the coming six months, more nonprofits are going to be pressured by the apparent successes of the private market to seek out more and more information technology. Many are going to turn to ASP's, which do not currently support the special needs of those community serving organizations. Many are going to turn to proprietary software, either out of misunderstandings of the power of open-sourced applications, or out of sheer ignorance that such things exist. Think of this as a few separate open source projects, enough for many of the bright people here. One is the creation of the open source ASP to serve the nonprofit sector. A few more open source projects will devolve out of the infrastructure that will need to spin out of that ASP-OSS project. And one more, that everyone should be involved in, is thinking of open source like advocates, if it is something you do believe in, and trying to recognize how it could be exposed to a broader world. This problem is one area where we can combine self interest with advocacy.

The paper at the the conference web site includes many possible steps that could be taken in the next months. There is also some money possibly available for someone taking this on. Many foundations were present at the conference, and all made committments to see that this thing happened, or more to the point, that if someone tried to make it happen they would not be flying alone. The opportunity here is rich, and it would be a Good Thing (tm) if someone from this population were to make some action happen. You could not find a better time or a more worthwhile enterprise.

The diagram below is something of a summation of the conference proceedings, which, again, are available here. Yes, the diagram is ripped directly from the site, with permission of course. It was initially drawn out by Brian Behlendorf, and immediately became a community property creation, like a center point that created a common vortex for the different working groups. For more information on the subject, you can contact the author of this article at cacl@umich.edu.

fleener writes: "The BBC reports and SiliconValley.com comments on the Rosetta Disk, a 2" nickel nano-analog, optical storage disk that records text and images at densities up to 350,000 pages per disk, designed to last 10,000 years. It will be unveiled at the 10,000 year Library Conference, in a discussion of how to store our history and culture for the future, given that current digital storage formats degrade quickly and are platform dependent. The prototype contains the first three chapters of Genesis, in 1,000 languages. What information do you think is valuable and relevant to give future archaeologists?"

Dman33 writes "This Cnet story details how Intel hit another bump in the road with its i820 motherboards. This defect is in the memory translator hub which allows for the use of standard DIMMs as opposed to Rambus. Intel is planning on just replacing the standard memory with Rambus memory, but will replace the entire board at the user's request. " The estimated cost would put a big hurt on Intel's bottom line -- several hundred million dollars worth of it.

Does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act cover electrical religious artifacts? Apparently the Church of Scientology thinks so. eBay has been yanking auctions of e-meters because of complaints by the CoS. In response to queries by a collector, eBay said "the Church of Scientology is giving us Notices of Infringement, which we are legally required to honor. These items are being ended for that reason." Does the DMCA really prohibit the sale of these boxes? (more)

The short answer is: "No" -- as far as I can tell -- I'm not a lawyer. But this is just one more data point in the disturbing trend of the DMCA being used as an all-purpose club to remove material from the Internet.

On hearing of this, my first thought was that perhaps the devices in question are actually licensed somehow, instead of being sold outright. But I spoke to two former members and the spouse of a current member of the CoS, each of whom assured me categorically that the devices were purchased outright, with no license required to be signed. A staffer at the Lisa McPherson Trust found a catalog where anyone can buy an e-meter; the "public price" is a little higher than the price to CoS members, but there are no apparent limitations to the purchase. A credit card is all you'll need.

The device itself is just an electrical mechanism, somewhat like a fancy multimeter or oscilloscope. It's patented, but of course thousands of patented items are sold on eBay every day.

To members of the Church of Scientology, however, it's more than just an electrical device. It's used in "auditing," which apparently helps new members advance in the program. Members of the CoS who have become experienced in this process are licensed by the CoS to audit others (but, again, the purchase of the items themselves is not under license).

Some e-meters apparently have Intel Inside (an 8-bit microprocessor which performs some rudimentary functions). But ever since a 1963 raid in which the FDA took exception to the marketing of the device as medically beneficial, e-meters have carried a disclaimer which begins: "By itself, this meter does nothing. It is solely for the guide of Ministers of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counselling."

I'd hard-pressed to think of why copyright could apply to a piece of electronic gadgetry which "does nothing." So why is eBay refusing to allow its sale?

Because DMCA is such an effective club.

Rod Keller, a Scientology critic, noticed that e-meter auctions were being taken down, and wrote eBay to ask why. The response was:

Hello,

These items are not prohibited due to their nature, but the Church of Scientology is giving us Notices of Infringement, which we are legally required to honor. These items are being ended for that reason.

Regards,

[...]
eBay Community Watch Supervisor

(Emphasis added.) That explanation, by the way, is a little facile: eBay is "legally required to honor" such notices if it wants to remain lawsuit-proof about the item. They would be well within their legal rights to leave the auctions up. More on this later.

When Mr. Keller expressed surprise at this, the next message went into a little more detail:

Hello,

There is a procedure under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act whereby someone who claims to be an owner of Intellectual property can send a notice sworn under penalty of perjury that an item is infringing. The internet provider must then remove the item. The seller of the item (not a third party) can request and fill out a counter notice. If he/she does so, the complaining party who filled out the original notice has a limited period of time to file suit, or the provider can go ahead and relist the item.

This is set up under the statute so that the interested parties will be the ones doing any litigating.

Regards,

eBay Customer Support

In response to my requests for more detail on exactly how the DMCA was being invoked by the CoS, an eBay representative promised that someone would get in touch with me. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from them by press time.

Here's what I think happened, based on the above -- feel free to follow along in the full text of the DMCA if you like.

The DMCA is an unusual regulation in that it principally protects service providers from litigation and then rigidly defines the steps they must follow to stay under its umbrella. It puts eBay in a position a little bit like Bart Simpson's, when Sideshow Bob announces:

"The following people will not be killed by me: Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson, Lisa Simpson, that little baby Simpson.... That is all."

Title II of the DMCA, otherwise known as the "Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act," is what seems to be relevant. It describes under what conditions a service provider is not liable "for infringement of copyright." My guess is that eBay is looking at section 202(c): "Information Residing On Systems Or Networks At Direction Of Users." The system is ebay.com; the users are the sellers; presumably the information is, in this case, the item being auctioned. Or the text and graphics used to describe the auction? I'm not sure.

Section 202(c)(1)(C) indicates that eBay will not be subject to liability as long as it, "upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity."

Paragraph (3) describes the elements which must be present in a notification, including: "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

Based on eBay's statements, the Church of Scientology has sworn under penalty of perjury that it has an "exclusive right" to copyright on the material that was posted in the auction.

To me, that seems obviously wrong. An e-meter is an electrical device, or a religious artifact, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it's sold to customers who may or may not be members of the Church. Once they've bought the items, they should be able to do with them what they wish, including reselling them to whoever they wish.

But to enjoy the protections of the DMCA, service providers must remove any material as soon as they're told it infringes on copyright. Once material has been challenged, the service provider must act "expeditiously" to remove it. Only when the material is gone can the accused user make a case to defend it.

The carrot for service providers becomes a stick for users.

Meanwhile, I'd like to see the statement that the Church of Scientology made, under penalty of perjury, that an auction of an e-meter infringes on their copyright in some way. Any spokespeople for the CoS reading this are welcome to contact me to discuss it.

But, as Declan McCullagh wrote in an unrelated DMCA story yesterday, we are moving toward a two-tier copyright system on the internet -- at least in this country. If you don't host your own content, the DMCA's censor-first, ask-questions-later mandate effectively strips you of your rights.

Jakob Nielsen is no Web-designer-come-lately. He's a respected, thoughful researcher and educator. When he speaks, (smart) people listen. The first review below is one of more than five hundred by reviewer Danny Yee. Likely to interest Slashdotters are reviews in the categories popular science, science fiction, and computing. Our second reviewer is Cliff Lampe, who brings his own expertise in human-computer relationships to the table. Readers may also want to read the Slashdot interview with Nielsen.

Designing Web Useability (The Practice Of Simplicity) author Jakob Nielsen pages 417 publisher New Riders 1999 rating 8/10 reviewer Danny Yee, Cliff Lampe ISBN ISBN 1-56205-810-X summary Down-to-earth, practical advice on making Web sites work at all levels.

Review One: Danny Yee

Designing Web Usability is the most important book on Web publishing yet to appear. While it contains little that is novel, at least to those who have read Nielsen's www.useit.com Web site and other such resources, the lessons it teaches have not reached widely enough: there are all too many Web sites that are a continual source of frustration and stress to users. (Nielsen begins by explaining why he chose to write a printed book on Web design: for comprehensive, sustained arguments online reading is not yet as effective as print. Another consideration is that, going by the utter un-usability of so many corporate Web sites, there must be many web site managers who don't actually use the Web: some of these might read a printed volume.)

At the core of Designing Web Usability, and two thirds of it by page-count, are chapters on page, content, and site design. The first covers cross-platform design, the importance of minimizing response times, how to use links effectively, and the advantages and disadvantages of style-sheets and frames. The second covers writing for the Web, micro-content (titles, headlines and so forth), and multimedia content (images, animation, audio, and video). The last covers navigation, home pages ("splash screens must die"), search support, and "URL design." Other chapters cover special usability issues with intranets, accessibility for users with disabilities, and internationalization and localization; in a final chapter Nielsen takes a stab at predicting the future of the Web.

Because Designing Web Usability addresses underlying ideas rather than specific technologies, it will date far less rapidly than most books on Web publishing. It doesn't contain as much as its 400 pages would suggest, since a lot of space is used for screen shots of example Web pages. (These are not, however, gratuitous, as is often the case with books on HTML.) Web publishing is very different from paper publishing, but Designing Web Usability is a high quality, usable book -- only a few minor things got past the proof-readers. Check Danny's Other 500 Reviews

Review Two: Cliff Lampe

The Scenario

In Designing Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen codifies his ideas and wisdom on user-centered design. This is the first book in a two-parter, to be followed by Ensuring Web Usability, which will be more analysis centered.When I first was reading through this book, the irony of reviewing a usability book for Slashdot absolutely thrilled me. A common complaint about Linux, whether deserved or not, is that it is completely unusable. Except for a few shots at both the Windows and Mac OS, Nielsen obviously stays away from this topic. On the other hand, his advice on Web design is well researched, sensible, and right on target. Since human/computer interaction is what may be referred to as my "bag," I found this book impressively concise and comprehensive.

For those who may have missed the usability boat, Nielsen advocates user-centered design. This is the radical idea that a computer is a tool for managing information, not an end in itself. As many of us know, this concept is remarkably easy to lose in the rush to make everything work in the first place. When it comes to usability, everyone has their ideas about what they like, and tend to include them in their own designs. The problem is, we creators of Web sites may be too far removed from our users by experience or some other perspective to be designing in their best interest.

Eminently practical, Nielsen gives step-by-step advice on how to design with your user in mind. His examples are backed by screenshot examples and extensive user studies. The first section deals with page-level design, with advice on colors, layout and use of special features. Further sections of the book deal with site and intranet design, usability issues surrounding various disabilities and the future of Web design. One especially welcome chapter deals with actual creation of content in a Web environment. Writing for the Web is vastly different from writing for other media, like newspapers or magazines, but this is rarely recognized.

Once Nielsen has dispensed with the advice that is applicable to the Web environment we all deal with today, he spends the last section discussing the future. As the author says, we tend to overestimate the short-term effects of technological change and underestimate the long term effects. Keeping this in mind, Nielsen makes some stabs at predictions of his own (like the gradual erosion of the Post Office) that seem accurate and eerie at the same time. He makes the good point that most of the user interfaces we deal with today are descendents of the 1984 Mac. That's like using your little aquarium net to snare salmon. With the eventual dissolution of Web browsers will come a need for user interfaces that more capably deal with a glut of information.

I have some advice for reading this book. Treat it like a computer manual, and don't necessarily read it from cover to cover. Read the section on content design for sure, but depending on your familiarity with human/computer interaction principles, you may want to poke around a little more. Fortunately, and in typical Nielsen fashion, the book is laid out perfectly to make this kind of browsing convenient. That being said, if you do read straight though it, you won't be disappointed.

What's Bad?

There are a couple of concerns I had with the book. One is that the layout is wacky, though I understand this is more the fault of the publisher than Nielsen. There is a straight narrative, like in any other manual, but it is broken frequently by screenshots and pull-out comments that attract attention away from the main narrative. The integration is good enough that you can pick up where you left off easily enough, but a tighter bundling of content with the visuals would have been welcome.

Secondly, the last chapter should have had some content stolen for the preface. Many of the limitations mentioned by Nielsen immediately beg the question of higher bandwidth on the horizon or more powerful computers. The book is so practical I almost found myself playing devil's advocate in response. At the same time, the advice is so well backed up by research, that to rail against it feels a little bit like yelling at your mom for telling you vegetables are good for you.

What's Good?

This book is so efficiently packed with tons of great advice that I read some sections again and again to make sure I didn't miss anything. Nielsen does not waste time over-elaborating his points, which is a welcome change from most books of this sort. The data from actual user studies are important to prove to a skeptical web developer that these considerations are real, and the actual examples of the Web pages and sites give incredible insight to the point being made. One of the pages captured even has a Jon Katz article on it.

So What's In It For Me?

If you are responsible for developing Web sites, or just a duffer who makes his greeting card collection available on the Web, read this book. The advice is sound, researched and proven over and over. If you are a usability engineer, this book may be on the general side for you, but otherwise it is the best introduction to these concepts assembled in one place that I have even seen.

As I was reading through this book, I kept thinking of various pages and sites that I had designed. What would be said if one of those pages had been captured and displayed? Would it be an example of what to do, or what only an idiot would do? These are good questions for any of us.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Cacl, a PhD student at University of Michigan in their School of Information Divison has written a feature addressing the concerns and problems of preserving digital information. This is an area of study of his - and interesting to read about.

Preservation of Digital Information

Recently there was an Ask Slashdot about the the problem of preserving digital material. The basic idea was that we are creating a massive wealth of digital information, but have no clear plan for preserving it. What happens to all of those poems I write when I try to access them for my grandkids? What about the pictures of my kids I took with that digital camera? Can I still get to them in time to embarrass them in the future?

Obsolescence of digital media can happen in three different ways:

• Media Decay: Even when magnetic media are kept in dry conditions, away from sunlight and pollution, and hardly ever accesses they will still decay. Electrons will wander over the substrate of the media, causing digital information to become lost. CD-ROMs luckily do not have this same problem with electron loss. They still are sensitive to sunlight and pollution though. Many people mentioned last week that distributors of blank CD media often make claims of an hundred years or more for the duration of their products. Research seems to indicate the truth is closer to 25 years,which seems like a long time, until you consider the factors below. Besides, information professionals often think in terms of centuries rather than decades.
• Hardware obsolescence: Far more dangerous than the degradation of the actual information container is the loss of machines that can read it. For instance, the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research received a bunch of data on old punch cards. The problem was they had no punch card reader. It took a decent chunk of time, and a good deal of money to eventually be able to read the data off of these cards, even requiring some old technicians to come out of retirement to help tweak the system. Hardware extinction is hardly a foreign topic to Slashdotters. It happens, and as technology increases its pace of change, it will happen more quickly.
• Software obsolescence: The real stone in the shoe of digital preservation is obsolescence of the software needed to open the digital document. This can include drivers, OSS, or plain old application software. We all have piles of old software that were written for older systems, or come across an old file the bottom of a drawer where we can't even remember what application it used.

There are several strategies for preserving digital information. People mentioned some last week:

• Transmogrification: printing the digital document into an analog form and preserving the analog copy. An example would be printing out a Web page and archiving the print of that Web page. This, obviously, takes out the main strength of a Web document, hyperactivity, and may also ignore important color and graphical content. An alternative form of this is the creation of hardcopy binary that could later be data entered into the computers of the future. The media suggested have ranged from acid free paper to stainless steel disks etched with the binary code. The two major problems with this idea are that any misrepresentation of the binary could have disastrous results for the renewal of the document, and transformation to hard copy limits the functionality of many types of digital documents to the point of uselessness.
• Hardware museums: preserving the necessary technology needed to run the outdated software. There are several weaknesses to this plan. Even hardware that is carefully maintained breaks and becomes un-usable. In addition, there is no clear established agency that will be responsible for maintaining these machines. Spare parts eventually become impossible to find and legacy skills are required for maintenance. There must be technicians with the requisite skills to service these preserved machines. Finally, it does not create efficient use if all possible future users must bottleneck to just a handful of viewing sites to have access to the information.
• Standards: reliance on industry-wide standardization of formats to prevent obsolescence. Market place pressures for software produces create an incentive for a company to differentiate their product from their competitors. While unrealistic in a capitalistic marketplace, standards such as SGML have proven successful for large scale digital document repositories, like the Making of America archive hosted by the University of Michigan. However, many of these large repositories also receive information from donors that is not in a standardized format, and do not feel comfortable turning away those documents.
• Refreshing: moving a digital object from one medium to another. For instance, transferring information on a floppy disk to a CD-ROM. This definitely seemed to be the preferred method of most Slashdotters. While this takes care of degradation and obsolescence of the media, it does not solve the problem of software obsolescence. A perfectly readable copy of a digital document is useless if there is not software program available to translate it into human-readable form.
• Migration: moving the digital document into newer formats. An example might be taking a Word 95 document and saving it as a Word 97 document. Single generation leaps are usually not a problem, so large volumes of information could be saved. Unfortunately, migrations over several generations are often impossible, as is migrating from a document type that was abandoned, and did not evolve. Also, information loss is common in migration, and may cause the document to become unreadable. While this may be the best single method available, it is very labor intensive, and some knowledge of the nature of documents would be essential to determining which information containers to migrate. For instance, often you lose aspects of a document (good and bad) when you migrate it, but which of those aspects are important?
• Emulation: creating a program that will fake the original behavior of the environment in which the digital object resided. This is another very intriguing method that could be used. It's actually already pretty common. For instance, most processor chips include emulators for lower level processors. There also aleady exists on the Internet a very active group of people who are interested in emulating old computer platforms. Still, we need to do a lot of research yet on the cost of this method, and what sorts of metadata are necessary to bundle with the digital object to facilitate its eventual emulation. Another problem is the intellectual property hassle caused by emulation. Reverse engineering is a big no no, and there is no point in making the lawyers rich. This area is actually where Open Source can be of biggest help to preserving the longevity of different kinds of applications.

Many people in the discussion last week seemed to believe that simple refreshment or migration of the data would be a sufficient answer to the problem. At a personal level that may be true, but for anyone responsible for large amounts of digital information, neither is a completely convincing method. Here are a couple of reasons why:

• Not all documents are the same- In the digital preservation literature, most people talk as if all digital information is in ASCII format. Au contraire. As computing becomes increasingly robust, so do the documents we create. Multimedia games, three dimensional engineering models, recorded speeches, linked spreadsheets, virtual museum exhibits and a host of other documents spurred by the development of the Web have cropped up. How are they going to be affected by migration to a new environment?
• It's so darned expensive- It's a little gauche to talk about, but the Y2K bug caused what ended up being a huge migration of digital information. How much did the US alone spend on that fiasco? $8 billion? For smaller organization who do not prepare for the preservation of their digital information, the cost of emergency migrations could cause all sorts of budget trouble.

There is some belief that there is no reason to preserve information at all. Most of what is created is just tripe anyway, and we should be more focused on creating content than preserving it. There are two reasons why some sort of preservation is important. First of all, it is inefficient to recreate information that already exists. Human energy is better spent on building upon existing knowledge to create new wisdom. How much do we already spin our wheels as several people collect the same data? What more could we be doing if we spent the energy instead on new pursuits? Secondly, there is some data that is irreplacable.

Which is not to say that we should keep everything. In a traditional archive, only 1% of documents received are kept. Ninety nine out of one hundred documents are destroyed for various reasons. A similar ratio is not unreasonable for digital documents. Consider that 16 billion email messages are sent each day. It seems ridiculous to keep all of them, but how do we weed out the ones we do want to keep? Appraisal of digital documents for archival purposes is going to become a major issue in the not distant future. There are already examples of data that have been lost, or nearly lost. NASA lost a ton of data off of decayed tapes. The U.S. Census nearly lost the majority of the data from the 1960 census. These huge datasets are important for establishing a scientific record that reveals longitudinal effects.

Increasingly, the record of the human experience is kept in a digital format. The act of preserving that information is the act of creating the future's past, the literal reshaping of our world in the eyes of the future. Nobody knows the best answer yet. There is probably not a single answer that will fit absolutely all situations. Information professionals are just beginning to do research in the form of user testing, cost-benefit analysis and modeling to answer some of the thornier issues raised by the preservation of digital information. There are things out there worth saving, we just need to figure out the best way to do it.

Some links of interest in case you would like to read more:

• a really good bibliography of related sources by Michael Day
• an article by Jeffrey Rothenberg outlining some of the issues
• a site at Leeds University with many related links

Cacl, a PhD student at University of Michigan in their School of Information Divison has written a feature addressing the concerns and problems of preserving digital information. This is an area of study of his - and interesting to read about.

Preservation of Digital Information

Recently there was an Ask Slashdot about the the problem of preserving digital material. The basic idea was that we are creating a massive wealth of digital information, but have no clear plan for preserving it. What happens to all of those poems I write when I try to access them for my grandkids? What about the pictures of my kids I took with that digital camera? Can I still get to them in time to embarrass them in the future?

Obsolescence of digital media can happen in three different ways:

• Media Decay: Even when magnetic media are kept in dry conditions, away from sunlight and pollution, and hardly ever accesses they will still decay. Electrons will wander over the substrate of the media, causing digital information to become lost. CD-ROMs luckily do not have this same problem with electron loss. They still are sensitive to sunlight and pollution though. Many people mentioned last week that distributors of blank CD media often make claims of an hundred years or more for the duration of their products. Research seems to indicate the truth is closer to 25 years,which seems like a long time, until you consider the factors below. Besides, information professionals often think in terms of centuries rather than decades.
• Hardware obsolescence: Far more dangerous than the degradation of the actual information container is the loss of machines that can read it. For instance, the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research received a bunch of data on old punch cards. The problem was they had no punch card reader. It took a decent chunk of time, and a good deal of money to eventually be able to read the data off of these cards, even requiring some old technicians to come out of retirement to help tweak the system. Hardware extinction is hardly a foreign topic to Slashdotters. It happens, and as technology increases its pace of change, it will happen more quickly.
• Software obsolescence: The real stone in the shoe of digital preservation is obsolescence of the software needed to open the digital document. This can include drivers, OSS, or plain old application software. We all have piles of old software that were written for older systems, or come across an old file the bottom of a drawer where we can't even remember what application it used.

There are several strategies for preserving digital information. People mentioned some last week:

• Transmogrification: printing the digital document into an analog form and preserving the analog copy. An example would be printing out a Web page and archiving the print of that Web page. This, obviously, takes out the main strength of a Web document, hyperactivity, and may also ignore important color and graphical content. An alternative form of this is the creation of hardcopy binary that could later be data entered into the computers of the future. The media suggested have ranged from acid free paper to stainless steel disks etched with the binary code. The two major problems with this idea are that any misrepresentation of the binary could have disastrous results for the renewal of the document, and transformation to hard copy limits the functionality of many types of digital documents to the point of uselessness.
• Hardware museums: preserving the necessary technology needed to run the outdated software. There are several weaknesses to this plan. Even hardware that is carefully maintained breaks and becomes un-usable. In addition, there is no clear established agency that will be responsible for maintaining these machines. Spare parts eventually become impossible to find and legacy skills are required for maintenance. There must be technicians with the requisite skills to service these preserved machines. Finally, it does not create efficient use if all possible future users must bottleneck to just a handful of viewing sites to have access to the information.
• Standards: reliance on industry-wide standardization of formats to prevent obsolescence. Market place pressures for software produces create an incentive for a company to differentiate their product from their competitors. While unrealistic in a capitalistic marketplace, standards such as SGML have proven successful for large scale digital document repositories, like the Making of America archive hosted by the University of Michigan. However, many of these large repositories also receive information from donors that is not in a standardized format, and do not feel comfortable turning away those documents.
• Refreshing: moving a digital object from one medium to another. For instance, transferring information on a floppy disk to a CD-ROM. This definitely seemed to be the preferred method of most Slashdotters. While this takes care of degradation and obsolescence of the media, it does not solve the problem of software obsolescence. A perfectly readable copy of a digital document is useless if there is not software program available to translate it into human-readable form.
• Migration: moving the digital document into newer formats. An example might be taking a Word 95 document and saving it as a Word 97 document. Single generation leaps are usually not a problem, so large volumes of information could be saved. Unfortunately, migrations over several generations are often impossible, as is migrating from a document type that was abandoned, and did not evolve. Also, information loss is common in migration, and may cause the document to become unreadable. While this may be the best single method available, it is very labor intensive, and some knowledge of the nature of documents would be essential to determining which information containers to migrate. For instance, often you lose aspects of a document (good and bad) when you migrate it, but which of those aspects are important?
• Emulation: creating a program that will fake the original behavior of the environment in which the digital object resided. This is another very intriguing method that could be used. It's actually already pretty common. For instance, most processor chips include emulators for lower level processors. There also aleady exists on the Internet a very active group of people who are interested in emulating old computer platforms. Still, we need to do a lot of research yet on the cost of this method, and what sorts of metadata are necessary to bundle with the digital object to facilitate its eventual emulation. Another problem is the intellectual property hassle caused by emulation. Reverse engineering is a big no no, and there is no point in making the lawyers rich. This area is actually where Open Source can be of biggest help to preserving the longevity of different kinds of applications.

Many people in the discussion last week seemed to believe that simple refreshment or migration of the data would be a sufficient answer to the problem. At a personal level that may be true, but for anyone responsible for large amounts of digital information, neither is a completely convincing method. Here are a couple of reasons why:

• Not all documents are the same- In the digital preservation literature, most people talk as if all digital information is in ASCII format. Au contraire. As computing becomes increasingly robust, so do the documents we create. Multimedia games, three dimensional engineering models, recorded speeches, linked spreadsheets, virtual museum exhibits and a host of other documents spurred by the development of the Web have cropped up. How are they going to be affected by migration to a new environment?
• It's so darned expensive- It's a little gauche to talk about, but the Y2K bug caused what ended up being a huge migration of digital information. How much did the US alone spend on that fiasco? $8 billion? For smaller organization who do not prepare for the preservation of their digital information, the cost of emergency migrations could cause all sorts of budget trouble.

There is some belief that there is no reason to preserve information at all. Most of what is created is just tripe anyway, and we should be more focused on creating content than preserving it. There are two reasons why some sort of preservation is important. First of all, it is inefficient to recreate information that already exists. Human energy is better spent on building upon existing knowledge to create new wisdom. How much do we already spin our wheels as several people collect the same data? What more could we be doing if we spent the energy instead on new pursuits? Secondly, there is some data that is irreplacable.

Which is not to say that we should keep everything. In a traditional archive, only 1% of documents received are kept. Ninety nine out of one hundred documents are destroyed for various reasons. A similar ratio is not unreasonable for digital documents. Consider that 16 billion email messages are sent each day. It seems ridiculous to keep all of them, but how do we weed out the ones we do want to keep? Appraisal of digital documents for archival purposes is going to become a major issue in the not distant future. There are already examples of data that have been lost, or nearly lost. NASA lost a ton of data off of decayed tapes. The U.S. Census nearly lost the majority of the data from the 1960 census. These huge datasets are important for establishing a scientific record that reveals longitudinal effects.

Increasingly, the record of the human experience is kept in a digital format. The act of preserving that information is the act of creating the future's past, the literal reshaping of our world in the eyes of the future. Nobody knows the best answer yet. There is probably not a single answer that will fit absolutely all situations. Information professionals are just beginning to do research in the form of user testing, cost-benefit analysis and modeling to answer some of the thornier issues raised by the preservation of digital information. There are things out there worth saving, we just need to figure out the best way to do it.

Some links of interest in case you would like to read more:

• a really good bibliography of related sources by Michael Day
• an article by Jeffrey Rothenberg outlining some of the issues
• a site at Leeds University with many related links

CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?

CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?

CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?

CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?

Slav writes "We've known for a while that tracking of Web users was possible and a few companies have been experimenting with it on a small scale. Now DoubleClick, Inc. has confirmed that it's tracking Web surfers [by name and address] with the help of the databases of its newly acquired Abacus Direct." Every site that you visit which has a DoubleClick ad - all 11,500 of them - can be notified of your name, address, phone number, etc., as soon as you visit the site. Or to look at it another way, your consumer profile in the gigantic Abacus database (hundreds of fields of data for essentially every person in the United States) will now include information about what Web sites you visit.

CACL, oh he of the great name, has given us a nice review of Gates of Fire. Gates of Fire is historical fiction set during the Greek Golden Age, historically accurate, with stomach-wrenching battle scenes. Click below to learn more if the thought of being a Spartan gives you great joy. Gates of Fire author Steven Pressfield pages 442 publisher Bantam Books, 10/1999 rating 9/10 reviewer CACL ISBN 0553580531 summary An adrenalin rush that makes you want to be a Spartan The Scenario

In 480 BC, The Persian Empire under Xerxes sent two million men into the Greek peninsula intending to incorporate the territory into their ever expanding realm. 300 Spartans, trained since childhood that the only thing worth being was a warrior, met the Persians at Thermopylae with only a handful of allies. The place was carefully chosen so that the Spartans could not be surrounded and just swept from the field. They still lost. They went into it knowing they never had a chance, but they managed to kill hundreds of thousands of the enemy, and buy time for the rest of Greece to rally and drive the Persians out of Europe. This battle is consistently rated in the top five most influential of all time. The Spartans literally managed to save western civilization as we know it.

Steven Pressfield manages to weave a convincing narrative told through a squire of the Spartans, who narrates his story to Xerxes after the Spartan defeat at Thermopylae. Xerxes wants to know what it is about the Spartans that made them stand the field, and is worried about what 5,000 Spartans could do when only 300 nearly beat his best army. The squire, Xeo, was the guy who carried your extra spears into battle, and would pull your dead body out if things went poorly. Telling the story through him rather than a Spartan allows Pressfield to keep a distance from the inner working of the Spartan mindset that allowed him to reveal that world view one piece at a time.

What emerges is a story that is sure to make your testosterone pump up a few levels. Not that women cannot enjoy this story. The female characters in the story are, if anything, tougher than their Spartan husbands. This is also not a tale of gratuitous physical violence, despite the subject matter. War is hell, and Pressfield spends alot of time discussing why that is, and what sorts of courage it takes for a man to go into it again and again, and the courage a woman has in watching him go.

What's Bad?

The biggest thing that is bad is that Spartans are now a cheesey mascot for the Michigan State sports teams. But still, this book does have it's weak points. The beginning is slow to build, but once you get through the first chapter, you're in clear water. I also found some of the personal details surrounding the life of the protagonist to be gratuitous, and not meaningfully enhancing the story itself.

The book can also be brutal. An early scene involves a boy who receives a beating, but rather than cry out and admit weakness, he allows himself to be beaten to death. The battle descriptions are also pretty rough, but no more than what they really would have been at the time. It's not these are bad features of the book, just something you may want to know if you have a weak stomach.

What's Good?

Pressfield has done his research. His acknowledgments at the end of the book cite some historians, including John Keegan, who are the best alive today. He's also done his own reading of ancient texts and historians, allowing him to paint a picture of ancient Hellenistic society that is fresh and accurate. You will really stop thinking of the classics as boring when you finish reading this book. The details of everything, from the set up of a Spartan farmhouse, to the lush detail on hoplite battle practices, in this book are well researched and rich.

Also, there is a lot of thought behind this book. The Spartans are not mindless fighters, they have deep rooted philosophies that Pressfield tries to project. The nature of courage is discussed intelligently and at length. The idea of polis, those things that make a city more than a group of bricks, is discussed in a better way than a hundred pompous community building papers I've read lately. This book deserves its status on the bestseller list.

So What's In It For Me?

"Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.'" Herodotus, The Histories

You will get a glimpse into a life you will probably never have, of men the type you will never meet and leadership that you will never see. You will look at your own arms and imagine them clad in bronze armor and carrying a spear in defense of your people. You will look at your friends and wonder how they would fare at your side shielding you against maddened attackers. You will be, for only a passing moment, a Spartan.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

CACL, oh he of the great name, has given us a nice review of Gates of Fire. Gates of Fire is historical fiction set during the Greek Golden Age, historically accurate, with stomach-wrenching battle scenes. Click below to learn more if the thought of being a Spartan gives you great joy. Gates of Fire author Steven Pressfield pages 442 publisher Bantam Books, 10/1999 rating 9/10 reviewer CACL ISBN 0553580531 summary An adrenalin rush that makes you want to be a Spartan The Scenario

In 480 BC, The Persian Empire under Xerxes sent two million men into the Greek peninsula intending to incorporate the territory into their ever expanding realm. 300 Spartans, trained since childhood that the only thing worth being was a warrior, met the Persians at Thermopylae with only a handful of allies. The place was carefully chosen so that the Spartans could not be surrounded and just swept from the field. They still lost. They went into it knowing they never had a chance, but they managed to kill hundreds of thousands of the enemy, and buy time for the rest of Greece to rally and drive the Persians out of Europe. This battle is consistently rated in the top five most influential of all time. The Spartans literally managed to save western civilization as we know it.

Steven Pressfield manages to weave a convincing narrative told through a squire of the Spartans, who narrates his story to Xerxes after the Spartan defeat at Thermopylae. Xerxes wants to know what it is about the Spartans that made them stand the field, and is worried about what 5,000 Spartans could do when only 300 nearly beat his best army. The squire, Xeo, was the guy who carried your extra spears into battle, and would pull your dead body out if things went poorly. Telling the story through him rather than a Spartan allows Pressfield to keep a distance from the inner working of the Spartan mindset that allowed him to reveal that world view one piece at a time.

What emerges is a story that is sure to make your testosterone pump up a few levels. Not that women cannot enjoy this story. The female characters in the story are, if anything, tougher than their Spartan husbands. This is also not a tale of gratuitous physical violence, despite the subject matter. War is hell, and Pressfield spends alot of time discussing why that is, and what sorts of courage it takes for a man to go into it again and again, and the courage a woman has in watching him go.

What's Bad?

The biggest thing that is bad is that Spartans are now a cheesey mascot for the Michigan State sports teams. But still, this book does have it's weak points. The beginning is slow to build, but once you get through the first chapter, you're in clear water. I also found some of the personal details surrounding the life of the protagonist to be gratuitous, and not meaningfully enhancing the story itself.

The book can also be brutal. An early scene involves a boy who receives a beating, but rather than cry out and admit weakness, he allows himself to be beaten to death. The battle descriptions are also pretty rough, but no more than what they really would have been at the time. It's not these are bad features of the book, just something you may want to know if you have a weak stomach.

What's Good?

Pressfield has done his research. His acknowledgments at the end of the book cite some historians, including John Keegan, who are the best alive today. He's also done his own reading of ancient texts and historians, allowing him to paint a picture of ancient Hellenistic society that is fresh and accurate. You will really stop thinking of the classics as boring when you finish reading this book. The details of everything, from the set up of a Spartan farmhouse, to the lush detail on hoplite battle practices, in this book are well researched and rich.

Also, there is a lot of thought behind this book. The Spartans are not mindless fighters, they have deep rooted philosophies that Pressfield tries to project. The nature of courage is discussed intelligently and at length. The idea of polis, those things that make a city more than a group of bricks, is discussed in a better way than a hundred pompous community building papers I've read lately. This book deserves its status on the bestseller list.

So What's In It For Me?

"Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.'" Herodotus, The Histories

You will get a glimpse into a life you will probably never have, of men the type you will never meet and leadership that you will never see. You will look at your own arms and imagine them clad in bronze armor and carrying a spear in defense of your people. You will look at your friends and wonder how they would fare at your side shielding you against maddened attackers. You will be, for only a passing moment, a Spartan.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Masem writes "Amazon has gotten a preliminary injunction placed on Barnes & Noble due to the fact that B&N used Amazon's patented 1-Click method for ecommerce. This does not bode well for those fighting against business model patents, and if Amazon does turn out victorious, this could deal a lot of damage to e-commerce." Now, at this point it is only a preliminary injunction, however, it does not sound the tone we'd like to hear.

cacl, who's racheting up the ranks of book reviewers, has returned with a review of the latest Neil Gaiman work Sandman: The Dream Hunters. He and Yoshitaka Amanos produced this work together, which is Gaiman's first return into the Sandman story in several years. You may remember the name recently from our review of Princess Mononoke, a recent anime film. If you've read Sandman before, you know the art of it - and if you haven't, you should. Sandman: The Dream Hunters author Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano pages 96 publisher DC Comics, 11/99 rating 10/10 reviewer cacl ISBN 1563895730 summary A beautifully written and illustrated fairy tale The Scenario

In researching his writing for the movie Princess Mononoke, Neil Gaiman ran across an old Japanese fairy tale called "The Fox, the Monk and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming" in a compilation by Rev. B. W. Ashton. For the tenth anniversary of the first edition of the Sandman graphic novel series, Gaiman had been asked to write something, and he decided to retell this old story in his own way. The twists of fate that combined the desire to write this story with the artistic talents of Yoshitaka Amano need to be roundly thanked for the beauty of the work that resulted.

As I greedily unwrapped this book, a little like one of the bad children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the illustrations on the inside of the cover presaged the treat that was going to be the reading of this book. The inside covers and fly pages are illustrated with these simple, elegant ink drawings that at one time flow and define the pages between them.

After starting the book, I did not stop. I walked on sidewalks, slamming into people, stubbing my toes, stopping in my tracks occasionally, until I could find a bench to finish the reading. I sat there, with my rear growing cold, and my hands red from the chill, devouring this lovely story. When I finished, I sat for several minutes, watching people walk by, until I shook my head and resumed the dirty details of my daily life.

These pages are an archetypal story of love, heroism, evil, magic, faith and revenge. A fox sacrifices herself to save the monk with whom she has fallen in love. The monk, in turn, sacrifices himself to save the fox, who then seeks revenge on the evil mage who caused the death of the one she loves. "The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox."

Several characters from the Sandman universe appear here, old favorites like Cain and Abel, Fiddler's Green and the Gryphon, among others. Gaiman wisely chose not to saturate the story with other characters, even though a part of me cries out for Death to have at least made a cameo. Still, having tried to squeeze too many recurring characters in would have detracted from the original beauty of the tale, and I was glad to see such wisdom in this writing.

What's Bad?

If you don't like mythology, folklore, fairytales, or art, you may not enjoy this book. Because there are so many illustrations, as one might suspect, the price of the book is fairly high. If you've read Gaiman before, and absolutely hated him, avoid this book. If you've seen Amano's work before and hated it, avoid this book. If you meet either of these two prior conditions, go to your doctor and ask for enough drugs that you become human again.

What's Good?

The most impressive part of this book is that Morpheus becomes a central character without overbearing the framework of the original tale. This makes sense, since Gaiman had picked this story carefully for having a Sandman type character already in it. His inclusion of other Dreaming elements is also relatively smooth and they take on an Eastern tenor that is convincing and elegant.

Amano's illustrations are breathtaking. I'm not a serious fan of Japanese animation. I watched Voltron religiously, but that was pretty much it. I realize now I just wasn't seeing the right Japanese artwork. Amano has created a series of images that are as varied as they are beautiful, and the depth they add to the story is irreplaceable. Stark grey images with flat, monochromatic landscapes can appear on one page, while the next is a brightly colored, magical hodgepodge of elements that quicken the pulse. Delicate strokes and dainty pastels make way for violent brush marks with somber, solid colors on the next page.

So What's In It For Me?

A great book. This is something to give to the next idiot who says, when you tell them you sometimes read graphic novels, "Oh comic books." It's not a computer book. It will not explain how to hack Perl code or tell the difference between GPL and SCSL. However, as a human, you need to grow, and this is food for the brain and soul. This is the type of work that will help you in ways that you cannot measure, but are perhaps more important than those you can.

Buy this book and read it. Buy a copy for a friend, or a family member. This is a great tale with gorgeous art. You cannot lose by having this around you.

Other important links...

Buy this fine text at fatbrain.

You should also read Good Omensbecause both Hemos and I think it is one of the funniest books out there.

Visit the Vertigo Site

And for good measure, spend some time again with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

cacl, who's racheting up the ranks of book reviewers, has returned with a review of the latest Neil Gaiman work Sandman: The Dream Hunters. He and Yoshitaka Amanos produced this work together, which is Gaiman's first return into the Sandman story in several years. You may remember the name recently from our review of Princess Mononoke, a recent anime film. If you've read Sandman before, you know the art of it - and if you haven't, you should. Sandman: The Dream Hunters author Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano pages 96 publisher DC Comics, 11/99 rating 10/10 reviewer cacl ISBN 1563895730 summary A beautifully written and illustrated fairy tale The Scenario

In researching his writing for the movie Princess Mononoke, Neil Gaiman ran across an old Japanese fairy tale called "The Fox, the Monk and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming" in a compilation by Rev. B. W. Ashton. For the tenth anniversary of the first edition of the Sandman graphic novel series, Gaiman had been asked to write something, and he decided to retell this old story in his own way. The twists of fate that combined the desire to write this story with the artistic talents of Yoshitaka Amano need to be roundly thanked for the beauty of the work that resulted.

As I greedily unwrapped this book, a little like one of the bad children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the illustrations on the inside of the cover presaged the treat that was going to be the reading of this book. The inside covers and fly pages are illustrated with these simple, elegant ink drawings that at one time flow and define the pages between them.

After starting the book, I did not stop. I walked on sidewalks, slamming into people, stubbing my toes, stopping in my tracks occasionally, until I could find a bench to finish the reading. I sat there, with my rear growing cold, and my hands red from the chill, devouring this lovely story. When I finished, I sat for several minutes, watching people walk by, until I shook my head and resumed the dirty details of my daily life.

These pages are an archetypal story of love, heroism, evil, magic, faith and revenge. A fox sacrifices herself to save the monk with whom she has fallen in love. The monk, in turn, sacrifices himself to save the fox, who then seeks revenge on the evil mage who caused the death of the one she loves. "The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox."

Several characters from the Sandman universe appear here, old favorites like Cain and Abel, Fiddler's Green and the Gryphon, among others. Gaiman wisely chose not to saturate the story with other characters, even though a part of me cries out for Death to have at least made a cameo. Still, having tried to squeeze too many recurring characters in would have detracted from the original beauty of the tale, and I was glad to see such wisdom in this writing.

What's Bad?

If you don't like mythology, folklore, fairytales, or art, you may not enjoy this book. Because there are so many illustrations, as one might suspect, the price of the book is fairly high. If you've read Gaiman before, and absolutely hated him, avoid this book. If you've seen Amano's work before and hated it, avoid this book. If you meet either of these two prior conditions, go to your doctor and ask for enough drugs that you become human again.

What's Good?

The most impressive part of this book is that Morpheus becomes a central character without overbearing the framework of the original tale. This makes sense, since Gaiman had picked this story carefully for having a Sandman type character already in it. His inclusion of other Dreaming elements is also relatively smooth and they take on an Eastern tenor that is convincing and elegant.

Amano's illustrations are breathtaking. I'm not a serious fan of Japanese animation. I watched Voltron religiously, but that was pretty much it. I realize now I just wasn't seeing the right Japanese artwork. Amano has created a series of images that are as varied as they are beautiful, and the depth they add to the story is irreplaceable. Stark grey images with flat, monochromatic landscapes can appear on one page, while the next is a brightly colored, magical hodgepodge of elements that quicken the pulse. Delicate strokes and dainty pastels make way for violent brush marks with somber, solid colors on the next page.

So What's In It For Me?

A great book. This is something to give to the next idiot who says, when you tell them you sometimes read graphic novels, "Oh comic books." It's not a computer book. It will not explain how to hack Perl code or tell the difference between GPL and SCSL. However, as a human, you need to grow, and this is food for the brain and soul. This is the type of work that will help you in ways that you cannot measure, but are perhaps more important than those you can.

Buy this book and read it. Buy a copy for a friend, or a family member. This is a great tale with gorgeous art. You cannot lose by having this around you.

Other important links...

Buy this fine text at fatbrain.

You should also read Good Omensbecause both Hemos and I think it is one of the funniest books out there.

Visit the Vertigo Site

And for good measure, spend some time again with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Something that we all strive for and pride ourselves on is our intelligence. But are there things that can make us smarter then the machines we've made? Clampe takes a look at Donald A. Norman's book Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine to find out. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Ag author Donald A. Norman pages publisher Perseus Books rating 8/10 reviewer Clampe ISBN 0201626950 summary Hey, it turns out that we are smart! The Scenario

Many people may be familiar with one of Norman's other books, "The Design of Everyday Things". Well, the good news is that this book is as engaging, and the bad news is that it isn't all that much different. Norman, the uber-advocate of person centered design, uses this book to debunk the motto of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair "Science Finds, Industry Applies, and Man Conforms".

Things That Make Us Smart has a double meaning. Norman spends a decent chunk of this book explaining how humans have very defined cognitive abilities, like pattern recognition. Not only do we have these cognitive abilities, but we're good at them. If you are ever at a cocktail party (which most geeks avoid) and someone says your name, you are likely to pick it up out of a host of other ambient noises in the room. So the first meaning of the title of this book is that humans have abilities that prove we are smart. The second meaning is that we have created cognitive artifacts to extend the limits of our mentalities. These are the "things" that make us smart. Now, we are used to thinking of tools expanding our physical abilities. We use a hammer so we don't pulp our hands while smashing them against the head of a nail. We use a car because we can't run that fast. What Norman explains is that we have also created a ton of tools that help us expand our mind's capability.

It starts with cuneiform. We have bad memories for facts, so when we wanted to remember facts we started writing them on clay tablets. Books were great innovations, since they help us not only remember stuff, but allow us to write down our thoughts and share them with people we'll never meet. Computers have developed as the latest tool we use to expand our cognitive abilities. They do things we can't do very well, and vice versa. We can only hold about 5-7 things in our memory at any one time. Computers can handle lots more. Still, before you start looking for your personal Hal, there are important things that we can do that our computers cannot. Even computers running un a Linux OS. A computer sees a picture of a butterfly as just dots on a screen (yes, I know they are working on this at Bellcore) while we are immediately able to apply meaning to those dots. My favorite example that Norman uses is shooting a free throw. The very things that for us are easy, like identifying the hoop, are incredibly tough for the computer. However, whereas we have big troubles with accuracy the computer can shoot all day once it has figured out the calculation.

Now this would be a great situation if we were intelligent about it. Technology helps us to do the things nature did not wire our brains to do. However, so much of the current market of technology is centered around what the machine needs or can do that we are expecting humans to conform to the technology, making us the tools to the machines. It's an easy trap to fall into. Humans can tolerate a lot of ambiguity. It's one of those things that makes us smart, but Norman argues that we should be designing in a way that augments our lives, not living in a way that validates our design.

What's Good?

This is a great introduction to Donald Norman for those who have not read him. A great bathroom book, you can skip around alot and the examples are engaging. The early part of the book also does a great job of teaching cognitive psychology, with sensical examples and descriptions of human cognitive processes. Also, the theory of user centered design is extremely important, and Norman does a wonderful job of supporting its tenets.

What's Bad? If you already know a lot about Human Computer Interaction, or are pretty good with cognitive psychology, this book may seem to slow. Also, it's only a mild variation on other Norman books, though if you've not read any to this point, start with this one. The second half of the book is light on quantative evidence, but that's more because you've entered the land of large statements about the meaning of life from the author rather than that he doesn't know how to quantify results.

So What's In It For Me?

If you do any programming, or put together sites for general viewing, this is a valuable book for the argument towards user centered design. Almost anyone can find something out of this offering, from the defense of lowly human cognition, to the descriptions of how we can use technology more intelligently.

Other important links... Buy this book at Amazon .

Buy Norman's latest book, The Invisible Computer, which we'll review soon. If you're interested in serious usability engineering, this is the book to get, Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen.

Something that we all strive for and pride ourselves on is our intelligence. But are there things that can make us smarter then the machines we've made? Clampe takes a look at Donald A. Norman's book Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine to find out. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Ag author Donald A. Norman pages publisher Perseus Books rating 8/10 reviewer Clampe ISBN 0201626950 summary Hey, it turns out that we are smart! The Scenario

Many people may be familiar with one of Norman's other books, "The Design of Everyday Things". Well, the good news is that this book is as engaging, and the bad news is that it isn't all that much different. Norman, the uber-advocate of person centered design, uses this book to debunk the motto of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair "Science Finds, Industry Applies, and Man Conforms".

Things That Make Us Smart has a double meaning. Norman spends a decent chunk of this book explaining how humans have very defined cognitive abilities, like pattern recognition. Not only do we have these cognitive abilities, but we're good at them. If you are ever at a cocktail party (which most geeks avoid) and someone says your name, you are likely to pick it up out of a host of other ambient noises in the room. So the first meaning of the title of this book is that humans have abilities that prove we are smart. The second meaning is that we have created cognitive artifacts to extend the limits of our mentalities. These are the "things" that make us smart. Now, we are used to thinking of tools expanding our physical abilities. We use a hammer so we don't pulp our hands while smashing them against the head of a nail. We use a car because we can't run that fast. What Norman explains is that we have also created a ton of tools that help us expand our mind's capability.

It starts with cuneiform. We have bad memories for facts, so when we wanted to remember facts we started writing them on clay tablets. Books were great innovations, since they help us not only remember stuff, but allow us to write down our thoughts and share them with people we'll never meet. Computers have developed as the latest tool we use to expand our cognitive abilities. They do things we can't do very well, and vice versa. We can only hold about 5-7 things in our memory at any one time. Computers can handle lots more. Still, before you start looking for your personal Hal, there are important things that we can do that our computers cannot. Even computers running un a Linux OS. A computer sees a picture of a butterfly as just dots on a screen (yes, I know they are working on this at Bellcore) while we are immediately able to apply meaning to those dots. My favorite example that Norman uses is shooting a free throw. The very things that for us are easy, like identifying the hoop, are incredibly tough for the computer. However, whereas we have big troubles with accuracy the computer can shoot all day once it has figured out the calculation.

Now this would be a great situation if we were intelligent about it. Technology helps us to do the things nature did not wire our brains to do. However, so much of the current market of technology is centered around what the machine needs or can do that we are expecting humans to conform to the technology, making us the tools to the machines. It's an easy trap to fall into. Humans can tolerate a lot of ambiguity. It's one of those things that makes us smart, but Norman argues that we should be designing in a way that augments our lives, not living in a way that validates our design.

What's Good?

This is a great introduction to Donald Norman for those who have not read him. A great bathroom book, you can skip around alot and the examples are engaging. The early part of the book also does a great job of teaching cognitive psychology, with sensical examples and descriptions of human cognitive processes. Also, the theory of user centered design is extremely important, and Norman does a wonderful job of supporting its tenets.

What's Bad? If you already know a lot about Human Computer Interaction, or are pretty good with cognitive psychology, this book may seem to slow. Also, it's only a mild variation on other Norman books, though if you've not read any to this point, start with this one. The second half of the book is light on quantative evidence, but that's more because you've entered the land of large statements about the meaning of life from the author rather than that he doesn't know how to quantify results.

So What's In It For Me?

If you do any programming, or put together sites for general viewing, this is a valuable book for the argument towards user centered design. Almost anyone can find something out of this offering, from the defense of lowly human cognition, to the descriptions of how we can use technology more intelligently.

Other important links... Buy this book at Amazon .

Buy Norman's latest book, The Invisible Computer, which we'll review soon. If you're interested in serious usability engineering, this is the book to get, Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen.

Given the recent well deserved critical acclaim that surrounds Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon , we thought it would be good to also remember that he's written other great books as well. Clampe has graciously offered to review Stephenson's prior book. Click below for more details. The Diamond Age or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer author Neal Stephenson pages 499 publisher Bantam Books rating 9/10 reviewer Clampe ISBN summary Interesting offering from everyone's new favorite The Scenario

First off, let me say we know that Diamond Age came out 1995. It is not our intention to review every book ever written, but Stephenson has received so much attention lately from Cryptonomicon that it is of some use to show that he did not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. For those old school fans of Stephenson, this review will allow them to sit in renewed righteousness, while helping the new fan pick their next Stephenson read, assuming they managed to pound through all nine hundred plus pages of Cryptonomicon.

I'm going to spare you the book synopsis other than to say that this is a science fiction novel set in the not too distant future. It is heavy into nanotechnology, and treats the subject with insight and forethought. The real glory of this book, however, is in its examination of the nature of intelligence, human social interaction, and culture.

Stephenson crafts a very believable story centered around a genius nanotechnologist who breaks the rules of his tribe to help his daughter, and the young girl from a poor background he inadvertantly helps. The development of Nell, the tortured child who rises above her early experiences, allows the author to dive deeply into the differences between knowledge and intelligence, offering up a richly detailed conversation with the reader.

What's Bad?

There are passages in the book where the protagonist is in a computer story of sorts, engaged in a fantasy setting. While these pieces aren't bad per se, I treated them a little like the poetry fragments in Tolkien. They're OK sometimes, but I skipped them maybe more than I should have. There is also a very annoying character named Miranda who seems superfluous to the story to me.

The other trouble I have with the book is the way it ends. Now Stephenson, like Orson Scott Card, seems to have a damned tough time ending a book. For Card it stems from deep personal philosophies, but I'm not sure that's the case for Stephenson. Still, while the last five pages of the book slide, it does not detract significantly from the rest of the book.

What's Good?

Alot. First of all, this is a very believable view of life after nanotechnology hits its stride. It's also a great forecast on future geopolitical tensions, and how the next century will deal with group identification when physical distance is overwhelmed by omnipresent communications.

Still, the most enjoyable part of this book is the examination of what makes people both intelligent and driven. Stephenson seems to say that a rough childhood can sometimes create an adult who is super intelligent. Many Slashdotters may agree with this sentiment. Though it's not a completely convincing argument, it is good to see a book treat it not in just a singular character sense, but as a larger social phenomenon.

So What's In It For Me?

Reading this book will not only satisfy that craving for quality science fiction, but will make you think also. Very few writers are able to do that, and Stephenson seems to have it down. It's one of those books where a few weeks after finishing it you'll still turn some of its ideas around in your noggin. It's probably not as good as Cryptonomicon, but it's pretty darned close.

Go buy this book. Do whatever it takes to convince Stephenson to continue writing quality science fiction.

Other important links... Check out the Slashdot review of Cryptonomicon .

Buy this fine text at Amazon

Thanks to Cliff Lampe for his review of Ed Regis' book Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology. The author of Who Got Einstein's Office?, and similar books, Regis' takes a look at the personalities and social history behind nanotechnology. Click below to read more. Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology author Ed Regis pages 340 publisher Little, Brown and Company rating 8/10 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN summary Nice narrative about everyone's favorite fringe... The Scenario

Ed Regis, in this 1996 offering, makes the comparison between the believers of the advent of Nanotechnology and cults. K. Eric Drexler plays the role of charismatic leader, there is a belief in an utopian Breakthrough and a nearly blind faith in the correctness of their vision. The Nano faithful look at each other as if they are in on a grand joke of some sort. What Regis attempts to do with his book is to convince the non-Believing among us. By painting a human face on the technology through a description of Drexler himself, Regis converts by making this seem like a story of humanity rather than technology. It's much the same technique that Matthew used to convince people of the validity of Christianity in an earlier text on a novel idea.

Chances are that you are already in one of two camps. If you are already a Believer, you know that the inevitable march of molecular nanotechnology is knocking on the door. If you are a Doubter, it sounds like a load of steaming hooie that this drastic a change of technology could happen in our lifetime.

Whether you are a Believer or a Doubter, Regis is trying to speak to you with this engaging and readable book. By outlining the history of atom level research, and creating a parallel story related to Drexler's advocacy of the technology, Regis is able to blend a human story with a description of nanotech that is more engaging than Engines of Creation and less techy than Nanosystems.

What's Bad?

There is definitely a paeanistic edge to this book. Regis takes some pain to paint Drexler in the most positive light possible. He even seems to minimize Feynman's contributions, painting the physicist as a curmudgeon to prove that while he may have mentioned the idea twenty ideas ago, it took Drexler to get the ball rolling on manipulating matter on the molecular level.

While Regis does a good job of analyzing fuller aspects of the implications of nanotechnology, especially in the latter half of the book, he often doesn't go far enough in his analysis of these effects. "Slant" by Greg Bear is a better picture of the World After if you are interested in the topic. One last caveat is that the three year time period since publication of the book has seen some exciting changes in the field which are of course not covered therein.

What's Good?

This book has a lot going for it. The narrative voice is engaging and makes for an easy read. Regis also does a good job of balancing a plausible description of the technology with succinct scientific descriptions, avoiding some of the super techno speak of previous books on nanotechnology that threatened to cross the eyes of the simple geek. Also, it does a good job of addressing how the technology has been surprising in it's progress, moving less quickly than expected at some points and more quickly at others.

So What's In It For Me?

You get an entertaining read that, while biased, presents a view of nanotechnology that is vastly more satisfying than the smattering of magazine articles or usenet posts that have described the development of the technology so far. It's also a good book if you are a Believer dwelling amongst the unfaithful, to describe what precisely it is that gets you so excited to your friends and loved ones. I had my spouse read excerpts to prove that I wasn't coming up with this crap on my own.

The other thing you hopefully get from this book, especially if you are a Believer, is a renewed sense of vigor and excitement about the possibilities of this technology. Personally, as a Believer I came back with a strong sense of the future, and of the role this emerging technology will play in it.

Other important links... Check out the Foresight Institute and tell 'em Hemos sent ya.

Buy this fine text at Amazon

Thanks to Cliff Lampe for his review of Ed Regis' book Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology. The author of Who Got Einstein's Office?, and similar books, Regis' takes a look at the personalities and social history behind nanotechnology. Click below to read more. Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology author Ed Regis pages 340 publisher Little, Brown and Company rating 8/10 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN summary Nice narrative about everyone's favorite fringe... The Scenario

Ed Regis, in this 1996 offering, makes the comparison between the believers of the advent of Nanotechnology and cults. K. Eric Drexler plays the role of charismatic leader, there is a belief in an utopian Breakthrough and a nearly blind faith in the correctness of their vision. The Nano faithful look at each other as if they are in on a grand joke of some sort. What Regis attempts to do with his book is to convince the non-Believing among us. By painting a human face on the technology through a description of Drexler himself, Regis converts by making this seem like a story of humanity rather than technology. It's much the same technique that Matthew used to convince people of the validity of Christianity in an earlier text on a novel idea.

Chances are that you are already in one of two camps. If you are already a Believer, you know that the inevitable march of molecular nanotechnology is knocking on the door. If you are a Doubter, it sounds like a load of steaming hooie that this drastic a change of technology could happen in our lifetime.

Whether you are a Believer or a Doubter, Regis is trying to speak to you with this engaging and readable book. By outlining the history of atom level research, and creating a parallel story related to Drexler's advocacy of the technology, Regis is able to blend a human story with a description of nanotech that is more engaging than Engines of Creation and less techy than Nanosystems.

What's Bad?

There is definitely a paeanistic edge to this book. Regis takes some pain to paint Drexler in the most positive light possible. He even seems to minimize Feynman's contributions, painting the physicist as a curmudgeon to prove that while he may have mentioned the idea twenty ideas ago, it took Drexler to get the ball rolling on manipulating matter on the molecular level.

While Regis does a good job of analyzing fuller aspects of the implications of nanotechnology, especially in the latter half of the book, he often doesn't go far enough in his analysis of these effects. "Slant" by Greg Bear is a better picture of the World After if you are interested in the topic. One last caveat is that the three year time period since publication of the book has seen some exciting changes in the field which are of course not covered therein.

What's Good?

This book has a lot going for it. The narrative voice is engaging and makes for an easy read. Regis also does a good job of balancing a plausible description of the technology with succinct scientific descriptions, avoiding some of the super techno speak of previous books on nanotechnology that threatened to cross the eyes of the simple geek. Also, it does a good job of addressing how the technology has been surprising in it's progress, moving less quickly than expected at some points and more quickly at others.

So What's In It For Me?

You get an entertaining read that, while biased, presents a view of nanotechnology that is vastly more satisfying than the smattering of magazine articles or usenet posts that have described the development of the technology so far. It's also a good book if you are a Believer dwelling amongst the unfaithful, to describe what precisely it is that gets you so excited to your friends and loved ones. I had my spouse read excerpts to prove that I wasn't coming up with this crap on my own.

The other thing you hopefully get from this book, especially if you are a Believer, is a renewed sense of vigor and excitement about the possibilities of this technology. Personally, as a Believer I came back with a strong sense of the future, and of the role this emerging technology will play in it.

Other important links... Check out the Foresight Institute and tell 'em Hemos sent ya.

Buy this fine text at Amazon

Masem writes "The last produced episode of MST3K, which will wrap up all 10 years of it's run, and tell us the fates of Mike and the bots, will be airing Sunday at 11pm EDT on SciFi. The episode itself is called "Danger: Diobolik!", a German spy-non-triller. (There's a episode that's been held back until Sept from this season, but it's not the final final episode). "

hooligan writes "This is an annoucement from Adaptec for support for their new transfer speed for Linux. Check the press release."

Scott Johnson writes "This Wednesday at 2pm, EDT, ABC News will be having an online chat with Linus Torvalds. This should be very interesting compared to some of their previous guests... :-) "

Blank Space wrote in stating "Someone claiming to be representing a corporation has demanded that Segfault and UserFriendly remove parodies using its trademarked name from their sites." Anyone know which corporation? In other nonsense today, Niels Provos writes "Theo de Raadt, OpenBSD Project leader, is being threatened with legal action if he does not turn over his domain theos.com to the Theos Software Corporation (the proud makers of a new 32-bit OS that can support more than 200 users at the same time!). The said company only needed about three years to find out about it and are so gracious to offer $35 as compensation, so that he can register another domain." Theo de Raadt provides contact information on his website.

selanna writes "In The Journal of Electronic Publishing (March, 1999 : Volume 4, Issue 3) Red Hat's Bob Young writes about "How Red Hat Software Stumbled across a New Economic Model and Helped Improve an Industry". Looking at it, it reads much like the Young article in Open Sources.

Paul Moore wanted some help on TV Tuner cards. He writes: "I have a few questions that I was hoping you or the slashdot community would be able to answer. Basically I am looking into picking up a TV card for my machine, but I had a few questions about the capabilities of the bttv/video4linux stuff and didn't want to waste the developer(s)' time by mailing the video4linux list..." There's more! You know what to do... "...Here are my questions (any help is greatly appreciated) :

1. Which card is best supported (which is easiest to setup and get working)? I am currently looking at the Hauppauge WinCast/TV-radio (model 401), but I remember hearing that it had a slightly different chip on it, has this been taken care of yet? Do people have this working?
2. In the future (read when I am able to save up some $$$) I am thinking on slapping another monitor on my system - how does the TV card handle multiple heads?
3. I am currently running 2.0.35, what do I need to get it running bttv? When 2.2 is released will I still need bttv or is video4linux built in? Also, what programs do people recommend to watch TV?
4. Lastly, anybody know where I can get a real deal on the Hauppauge card :)

Thanks for all your help!"

Those of you who've poked around with Netscape 4.5 have noticed that wacky little What's Related button on the location bar. (yeah, there's some controversy about that too, but thats not what this is about). Did ya know its actually an XML App? Check out this Davenet article where you can see the truth. It's pretty cool. Thanks to Archimedes for sending this our way.

Mark Corner was the first among about 50 people to write in to tell us that Colgate Palmolive has decided to leave ajax.org alone. Nice to see the little guys win one.

Masem writes "The first single off the South Park album, due out before Xmas, is available from Comedy Central's web site This is about a 30 sec clip of the Master P rap "Kenny's Dead" for downloading, but the download server seems slow (gee, wonder why), while the RA sites are working fine. "

hRothGar writes "Here's s ZDNet article with Microsoft's Steve Ballmer paying lip service to Linux, and how he doesn't think free software is necessarily good (big surprise there)." He admits that they're worried, but shrugs it off. Says that Free isn't a customer plus.

luke sent us this link to what he describes as "a site containing a gigantic, documented, cross-linked collection of articles and personal commentary regarding the year 2000 'problem.'" Hype or not, it's sure generated a lot of steam. Update if you're looking for an even better Y2k site, check out Duh-2000, sent in by Adam Bisaro, which tracks the stupid things folks have said about y2k.

Cyrrin has written in with a killer update from Siggraph 98. He's got notes about everything from Alpha to Antz, as well as a ton of juicy nuggets from the Linux 3D SIG. Click immediately below and read this if you're at all into graphics! The Following was written by Slashdot Reader Cyrrin

The pace has really picked up since the Exhibition booths opened on Tuesday. Pixar, one of the most popular booths in the center, was graciously handing out free copies of "Geri's Game" (the Academy Award winning short) which included the trailer for the very promising "A Bug's Life".

And speaking of bugs, keep an eye out for "Antz", and "Prince of Egypt" from Dreamworks and P.D.I.. Prince of Egypt boasts twice as much computer rendering as Titanic... and it looks great!

Digital expects the 1GHz 21264 chip to be released next summer, or alternatively, as their banner reads, "1 Gigahertz by 2000". Meanwhile, their 600Mhz 21264 workstation chews through anything you can toss at it. And Sun, while advertising their 3-D workstations as price/performance competitive to SGIs, has split their marketing pitch 50/50 to include plugs for Java.

CMU has a booth where they've been demonstrating a high-level 3-D web authoring system, called Alice . And the Lego Corporation has been showing off their microprocessor-imbedded, programmable robotics packages. Man, I wish I had this stuff to play with when I was younger! Okay, the Linux3D SIG. Brian Paul (author and maintainer of the Mesa package) opened the discussion with news that Mesa 3.0 release is due out in the next few weeks. Among other things, it will include the OpenGL 1.2 API, a revised GLX extension, and a few new texture functions.

Darryl Strauss (maintainer of the Linux Glide port) announced that version 3 of the Glide 3 drivers will be available soon and will access more of the Voodoo 2's capabilities. He also said that he has begun work on the soon-to-be-released-and-blow-everything-else-out-of-the-water Banshee card, a 2-D/3-D combo card scheduled for Q3 release.

Also, it would appear that the Obsidian 2 from Quantum 3-D is running in Linux under the Glide drivers... and the people from Quantum didn't even know it. Finally, Darryl said that there is now a Glide library for Alpha Linux that will be available very soon.

Next up was Metrolink, announcing their latest X server release, which includes the OpenGL extensions for use with Permedia, GLint, and more chips. Basically, it appears that hardware vendore are becoming more interested in supporting Linux, but only feel secure with NDAs with commercial companies like Metrolink. Metrolink stated that they feel that the XFree86 and Mesa can cooexist with commercial servers and extensions and that there will continue to be a demand for each, depending on the situation.

The important thing is... requests for Linux support are having an effect, and companies that are traditionally Windows-only are turning their heads.

Three more companies had reps there to answer questions. Precision Insight had a short blurb about their interest in Linux, and said that they fully support direct hardware rendering, instead of incurring overhead by going through the X server.

3DFX gave a little presentation on the new Banshee (which can have up to 16MB video memory not including texture memory, up to 1920x1440 resolution, and blazing 2D and 3D performance). They also said that they'd really like to hear back from Linux developers about what people are doing with the Glide-based software. You can mail them at devprogram@3dfx.com if you have a nifty application that you want to tell them about.

Finally, SGI came to the front of the room, and was immediately inundated with questions about Farenheit and the future of Open GL. Farenheit is a spec that is being "published" by SGI and Microsoft and is a hybrid of Direct3D and OpenGL, and will allow for faster 3D on Windows systems. Unfortunately, that leaves the Linux community out of the game. This is even more true with the SceneGraph API that is being developed concurrently, and when finished, will be completely owned by Microsoft. HPUX, IRIX, and a couple others will be supported, but a port to any other systems will require a license from Microsoft.

SGI did make sure to stress though, that for cross-platform 3D apps, there is not substitute for pure OpenGL, and that they, in no way, will discontinue support or develeopment of the OpenGL that we all know and love.

One more thing. It was suggested at the meeting that there is an engineer for a "company that is VERY well known in 3D modeling and animation" who has ported their complete software package to Linux. No names were mentioned, just the suggestion that we "harass them all politely" until we can convince them that a commercial release of the product would be a viable business move.

My opinion? I'd have to place my bets on Softimage. They already have their product on NT and IRIX. So go and evangelize... just remember... it's just a guess.

Cyrrin has written in with a killer update from Siggraph 98. He's got notes about everything from Alpha to Antz, as well as a ton of juicy nuggets from the Linux 3D SIG. Click immediately below and read this if you're at all into graphics! The Following was written by Slashdot Reader Cyrrin

The pace has really picked up since the Exhibition booths opened on Tuesday. Pixar, one of the most popular booths in the center, was graciously handing out free copies of "Geri's Game" (the Academy Award winning short) which included the trailer for the very promising "A Bug's Life".

And speaking of bugs, keep an eye out for "Antz", and "Prince of Egypt" from Dreamworks and P.D.I.. Prince of Egypt boasts twice as much computer rendering as Titanic... and it looks great!

Digital expects the 1GHz 21264 chip to be released next summer, or alternatively, as their banner reads, "1 Gigahertz by 2000". Meanwhile, their 600Mhz 21264 workstation chews through anything you can toss at it. And Sun, while advertising their 3-D workstations as price/performance competitive to SGIs, has split their marketing pitch 50/50 to include plugs for Java.

CMU has a booth where they've been demonstrating a high-level 3-D web authoring system, called Alice . And the Lego Corporation has been showing off their microprocessor-imbedded, programmable robotics packages. Man, I wish I had this stuff to play with when I was younger! Okay, the Linux3D SIG. Brian Paul (author and maintainer of the Mesa package) opened the discussion with news that Mesa 3.0 release is due out in the next few weeks. Among other things, it will include the OpenGL 1.2 API, a revised GLX extension, and a few new texture functions.

Darryl Strauss (maintainer of the Linux Glide port) announced that version 3 of the Glide 3 drivers will be available soon and will access more of the Voodoo 2's capabilities. He also said that he has begun work on the soon-to-be-released-and-blow-everything-else-out-of-the-water Banshee card, a 2-D/3-D combo card scheduled for Q3 release.

Also, it would appear that the Obsidian 2 from Quantum 3-D is running in Linux under the Glide drivers... and the people from Quantum didn't even know it. Finally, Darryl said that there is now a Glide library for Alpha Linux that will be available very soon.

Next up was Metrolink, announcing their latest X server release, which includes the OpenGL extensions for use with Permedia, GLint, and more chips. Basically, it appears that hardware vendore are becoming more interested in supporting Linux, but only feel secure with NDAs with commercial companies like Metrolink. Metrolink stated that they feel that the XFree86 and Mesa can cooexist with commercial servers and extensions and that there will continue to be a demand for each, depending on the situation.

The important thing is... requests for Linux support are having an effect, and companies that are traditionally Windows-only are turning their heads.

Three more companies had reps there to answer questions. Precision Insight had a short blurb about their interest in Linux, and said that they fully support direct hardware rendering, instead of incurring overhead by going through the X server.

3DFX gave a little presentation on the new Banshee (which can have up to 16MB video memory not including texture memory, up to 1920x1440 resolution, and blazing 2D and 3D performance). They also said that they'd really like to hear back from Linux developers about what people are doing with the Glide-based software. You can mail them at devprogram@3dfx.com if you have a nifty application that you want to tell them about.

Finally, SGI came to the front of the room, and was immediately inundated with questions about Farenheit and the future of Open GL. Farenheit is a spec that is being "published" by SGI and Microsoft and is a hybrid of Direct3D and OpenGL, and will allow for faster 3D on Windows systems. Unfortunately, that leaves the Linux community out of the game. This is even more true with the SceneGraph API that is being developed concurrently, and when finished, will be completely owned by Microsoft. HPUX, IRIX, and a couple others will be supported, but a port to any other systems will require a license from Microsoft.

SGI did make sure to stress though, that for cross-platform 3D apps, there is not substitute for pure OpenGL, and that they, in no way, will discontinue support or develeopment of the OpenGL that we all know and love.

One more thing. It was suggested at the meeting that there is an engineer for a "company that is VERY well known in 3D modeling and animation" who has ported their complete software package to Linux. No names were mentioned, just the suggestion that we "harass them all politely" until we can convince them that a commercial release of the product would be a viable business move.

My opinion? I'd have to place my bets on Softimage. They already have their product on NT and IRIX. So go and evangelize... just remember... it's just a guess.

Cyrrin is at SIGGRAPH 98, and is going to try to send us some updates from the trenches. Hit the link below to read his first report... Cyrrin writes " As a student volunteer in the trenches of SIGGRAPH 98, I'll be updating Slashdot on all of the new, hot, roolio products and developments of the computer graphics world. The main exhibition opens Wednesday, but I've already gotten a peek at some of the rockin' interactive projects, like VR Air Hockey where the puck and board is superimposed on the a real image of the table through a headset. Or Table Tennis with a twist... a modified Pacman game is projected onto the table, and the players can win or lose points by hitting fruit, ghosts, etc. People tend to get a little too involved with the graphics and forget to keep their eyes on the ball though.

MIT Media Lab has a 3-D interface to sheet music that allows the user to listen to the composition and navigate the either the pages or parts in any number of perspectives or follow modes.

So this is the fun stuff... what about the practical? Well, the best thing I've seen so far is a force-feedback armitron pen from Sensible Technologies. The freedom of the arm allows the user to twist, tilt, push, and pull a stylus around a 3-D space, and when the cursor touches an object, the surface texture of the object is transmitted to the user via force-feedback. The use of the stylus is completely intuitive and it has such a great learning curve that people were able to move objects around in 3-space comfortably in a matter of minutes. Imagine the possibilities for interface to a 3-D window manager!

Finally, Larry Gritz (author of the BMRT raytracer) taught part of an Advanced Renderman course today, introducing some of the new features of the Renderman Interface... a whole bunch of neat stuff that you can't find in the Renderman Companion.

More soon... just don't ask about the remote sensing booth involving a butt naked man and woman, and a robotic arm controlled by conference participants... freaky. "

Cyrrin is at SIGGRAPH 98, and is going to try to send us some updates from the trenches. Hit the link below to read his first report... Cyrrin writes " As a student volunteer in the trenches of SIGGRAPH 98, I'll be updating Slashdot on all of the new, hot, roolio products and developments of the computer graphics world. The main exhibition opens Wednesday, but I've already gotten a peek at some of the rockin' interactive projects, like VR Air Hockey where the puck and board is superimposed on the a real image of the table through a headset. Or Table Tennis with a twist... a modified Pacman game is projected onto the table, and the players can win or lose points by hitting fruit, ghosts, etc. People tend to get a little too involved with the graphics and forget to keep their eyes on the ball though.

MIT Media Lab has a 3-D interface to sheet music that allows the user to listen to the composition and navigate the either the pages or parts in any number of perspectives or follow modes.

So this is the fun stuff... what about the practical? Well, the best thing I've seen so far is a force-feedback armitron pen from Sensible Technologies. The freedom of the arm allows the user to twist, tilt, push, and pull a stylus around a 3-D space, and when the cursor touches an object, the surface texture of the object is transmitted to the user via force-feedback. The use of the stylus is completely intuitive and it has such a great learning curve that people were able to move objects around in 3-space comfortably in a matter of minutes. Imagine the possibilities for interface to a 3-D window manager!

Finally, Larry Gritz (author of the BMRT raytracer) taught part of an Advanced Renderman course today, introducing some of the new features of the Renderman Interface... a whole bunch of neat stuff that you can't find in the Renderman Companion.

More soon... just don't ask about the remote sensing booth involving a butt naked man and woman, and a robotic arm controlled by conference participants... freaky. "

It might not be as big as the CETI deal, but Jeff Fifield writes "Microsoft has made a deal to install NT on every state government computer in Pennsylvania link ". Truly unfortunate. It sounds a little to me like Microsoft leveraging its OS unfairly, but I could be wrong...

Evan Zacks writes "John Romero, who left ID to form his own company ION Storm, is nearly finished with a new game, Daikatana. The review sounds promising. " Nice looking screenshot.