Slashdot Mirror

Consider further that the oldest known human structures are about 5000 years old (in central America, IIRC.)

No, the world's oldest structure is off the coast of Japan.

No, it's a on Malta

I mean Egypt.

Actually, it's north of Tokyo.

Or, is it a wine jar?

-rt
======
Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS

-rt
======
Now, I think it would be GOOD to buy FIVE or SIX STUDEBAKERS

Some private individual [...] having casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun decorating first his house, then his slaves, then his Father, his Sons, and Grandsons, lastly himself. The convenience as well as the beauty of the results commended themselves to all. [...] The fashion spread like wildfire. within two generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women and the Priests. The Art of Sight Recognition [which is difficult in a monochrome 2D world] was no longer practised [...] Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to assert -- and with increasing truth -- that there was no great difference between them and the very highest class of Polygons, now that they were [...] enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, by the simple process of Colour Recognition. [...] Soon, they began to insist that the Law should follow in the same path, and [...] all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights.

[...] The Circles hastily convened an extraordinary Assembly of the States; [...] the Chief Circle Pantocyclus arose to find himself hissed and hooted by a hundred and twenty thousand Isosceles. But he secured silence by declaring that henceforth the Circles would enter on a policy of Concession; yielding to the wishes of the majority, they would accept the Colour Bill. The uproar being at once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of the Sedition, into the centre of the hall. [...] Then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied nearly a dayin the delivery, and to which no summary can do justice.

[...]With a grave appearance of impartiality he declared that [...] it was desirable that they should take one last view of the perimeter of the whole subject, its defects as well as its advantages. [...] Turning now to the Workmen he asserted that their interests must not be neglected. [...] Many of them, he said, were on the point of being admitted to the class of the Regular Triangles; others anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves. [...] With the universal adoption of Colour, all distinctions would cease; [...] the Workman would in a few generations be degraded to the level of the Military, or even the Convict Class; political power would be in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say the Criminal Classes. [...] "Sooner than this," he cried, "Come death."

At these words, the Regular Classes [attacked supporters of the revolution]. The Artisans, imitating the example of their betters, also opened their ranks. [...] The battle, or rather carnage, was of short duration. [...] the rabble of the Isosceles did the rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leader-less, attacked, [they] raised the cry of "treachery". This sealed their fate. Every Isosceles now saw and felt a foe in every other. In half an hour not one of that vast multitude was living; and the fragments of seven score thousand of the Criminal Class slain by one another's angles attested the triumph of Order.

The Circles delayed not to push their victory to the uttermost. The Working Men they spared but decimated. [...] every town, village, and hamlet was systematically purged of that excess of the lower orders. [...] Henceforth the use of Colour was abolished, and its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting Colour, except by the Circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. Only at our University in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes it is understood that the sparing use of Colour is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems of mathematics. [...] Elsewhere in Flatland, Colour is now non-existent. The art of making it is known to only one living person, the Chief Circle for the time being; and by him it is handed down on his death-bed to none but his Successor. [...] So great is the terror with which even now our Aristocracy looks back to the far-distant days of the agitation for the Universal Colour Bill.

Why does every mission have to be to Mars? What about Pluto, Titan, Europa, or Mercury , none of which we have explored properly yet, but should have! Why go to Mars when we know so much about it already? We have better maps of Mars than we do of the Earth!

Why does every mission have to be to Mars? What about Pluto, Titan, Europa, or Mercury , none of which we have explored properly yet, but should have! Why go to Mars when we know so much about it already? We have better maps of Mars than we do of the Earth!

Why does every mission have to be to Mars? What about Pluto, Titan, Europa, or Mercury , none of which we have explored properly yet, but should have! Why go to Mars when we know so much about it already? We have better maps of Mars than we do of the Earth!

Why does every mission have to be to Mars? What about Pluto, Titan, Europa, or Mercury , none of which we have explored properly yet, but should have! Why go to Mars when we know so much about it already? We have better maps of Mars than we do of the Earth!

• At last week's IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Bill Arbaugh presented a very interesting paper on trend analysis of exploitation, as represented by CERT incident reports. Summary: most attacks exploit known security vulnerabilites that a site admin did not patch.
• Jim Reavis at Securityportal.com did this great study examining the "days of recess" for each of Red Hat, Solaris, and Windows NT. "Days of recess" is the total number of days that an exploit was known but no patch available, summed over all vulnerabilities for that platform.
• At WireX, we are working on a related concept that we call "Relative Invulnerability". Here, the idea is to consider the number of vulnerabilities for a "base" system (e.g. unpatched Red Hat 7.0) that appear over a period of months, and then consider how many of those unpatched vulnerabilities are successfully mediated by some protective technology such as SELinux or Immunix. The fraction of vulnerabilities stopped is the "relative invulnerability" of the defensive technology. This is written up in a paper that is currently being reviewed.

He pushed legislation which opened up the NSFNET to businesses, etc. AFAIK, he never claimed to have invented the technology when speaking about his involvement. In a sense, the legislation did create the network we now know as the Internet.

What we are waiting for is XQuery, that will hopefully make a big difference :-)

You might want to have a look at Kweelt which claim to (and I quote) "implements a query language for XML that satisfies all the requirements from the W3C query-language-requirements"

Is this what you're waiting for?

Along these lines, you might want to check out a scientist bold enough to consider the non-3+1-dimension alternatives and attempt to explain why they wouldn't 'work' for universes containing observers. I wouldn't consider it proof, but I found it to be a cool provocative paper explaining perhaps why we have 3 spacial and 1 temporal dimension. --LP

Sorry. Had to say it.

But seriously... it's old stuff, but many may not be familiar with George Gilder's interesting articles, particularly Into the Fibersphere, on the implications of really, really fast networks. Like the notion that computers may become the bottleneck in the network, and that a packet would be better routed to the other side of the world and back through pure fiber, rather than though the computer next door and back. And how compression becomes passe when it's slower to decompress something than to send the thing uncompressed.

Interesting observation: when computing power was expensive, programmers were paid to conserve it, writing very tight assembly code. Now that it's cheap, programmers are expected to "throw switches at the problem". But bandwidth is expensive, so they write to conserve it. On an all-fiber network, they may be expected to "throw bandwidth at the problem".

Lots of good stuff here, especially considering it was written in 1995. Hope you like it.

Sorry. Had to say it.

But seriously... it's old stuff, but many may not be familiar with George Gilder's interesting articles, particularly Into the Fibersphere, on the implications of really, really fast networks. Like the notion that computers may become the bottleneck in the network, and that a packet would be better routed to the other side of the world and back through pure fiber, rather than though the computer next door and back. And how compression becomes passe when it's slower to decompress something than to send the thing uncompressed.

Interesting observation: when computing power was expensive, programmers were paid to conserve it, writing very tight assembly code. Now that it's cheap, programmers are expected to "throw switches at the problem". But bandwidth is expensive, so they write to conserve it. On an all-fiber network, they may be expected to "throw bandwidth at the problem".

Lots of good stuff here, especially considering it was written in 1995. Hope you like it.

BAH!

Don't let THEM assimulate US.

WE should assimilate THEM. Stick to your values, geeks!

We don't need to be rich. That's what THEY tell us, because they want us to buy their STUFF.

Being a geek isn't about having the latest T-shirt with a witty saying; it's about being witty. Being a geek isn't about having the latest greatest hardware; it's about doing neat things with the hardware you have. Being a geek isn't about letting the world romp all over you; it's rising up to the challenge and telling corporate america where to get off.

DO NOT SUBMIT

Don't want to work for "The Man"? Don't! Take his money just long enough to find something else to do. If you're bright and talented, there are plenty of other things to do. Go to graduate school. Get some grants and go into research. Work for a non-profit. Start a non-profit.

If you need more ideas, send me email.

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has." -- Margaret Mead

(I'm reminded vaguely of Theodore Sturgeon's To Marry Medusa , which you should all read since it's a fantastic book. ;-))

As a few people have said, this has been done before:

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/18/2232258.shtm l

Recently, I attended a programming contest at Penn University and besides walking away with a full copy of Visual Studio 6.0 for my efforts, I got to talk with one of the programmers on the Tele-immersion project (Hi Raj!). Everything about it seemed really cool. Although personally, I think I am going to hold out for a Neural Interface :)

Penn's Tele-Immersion Page
National Tele-Immersion Initiative

Although am interested in SETI, Art Bell and all things alien, I'm far more concerned about what corporations and the government are doing to our human rights right now.

I'm sure whatever aliens arrive will be screwed in turn, just like the natives.

Bureaucracy is blind.

You might want to take a look at the Unison file synchronization mechanism.

I use CVS on my Unix boxes, and keep my Windows laptop synchronized with Unison. I synch to my main development Unix box. The chain looks like this:

Repository <-cvs-> Unix box <-unison-> Windows laptop

I find that Hogan Books (http://hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html) lists quite a lot of free books on the Web. The search engine makes it even more useful.

Many of the entries come from InformIT (http://www.informit.com/), which has a pretty good free library.

Then there's the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.linuxdoc.org) for Linux-specific things.

Of course there's also all the other documentation on the Net. Search engines are wonderful.

Not quite computer-related but also worth checking out are Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/), the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/index.html) and the UPenn Digital Library (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/lists.html ). Mostly classics and other things whose copyrights have expired, but you have a couple of new books here too. General reading material - bookworm fare. =)

Yes, I know, you were looking for paper copies, and a lot of interesting information isn't available online. But it's worth checking out anyway. =)

I find that Hogan Books (http://hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html) lists quite a lot of free books on the Web. The search engine makes it even more useful.

Many of the entries come from InformIT (http://www.informit.com/), which has a pretty good free library.

Then there's the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.linuxdoc.org) for Linux-specific things.

Of course there's also all the other documentation on the Net. Search engines are wonderful.

Not quite computer-related but also worth checking out are Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/), the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/index.html) and the UPenn Digital Library (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/lists.html ). Mostly classics and other things whose copyrights have expired, but you have a couple of new books here too. General reading material - bookworm fare. =)

Yes, I know, you were looking for paper copies, and a lot of interesting information isn't available online. But it's worth checking out anyway. =)

Oh. Here it is: www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/ucita200.htm (duh -- it's the same in all states, hence the UNIFORM)

I am the "Eldred" in "Eldred v. Reno." I ought to correct a few misstatements here. Mr Hart says:

Sadly to say, the US Supreme Court just ruled against the case I was supposed to be in [Eldred vs Reno]. . .but at least it was mostly on technical grounds. . .which leaves me possibly to still bring another totally separate case. . .but the lawyers would never let me get a single word into my own case [Hart vs Reno] so I made them take my name off of that case, which then became Eldred vs Reno].

1. It was the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, not the U.S. Supreme Court. See the 2-1 decision under http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno. We are going to appeal the case, eventually to the Supreme Court, and we need your support.
2. Mr Hart was never "supposed to be in" the case. He refused to become a plaintiff when he was asked. He is welcome to get his own attorneys to file another challenge. In fact, a group at Stanford might be looking to get somebody else to file a challenge in another district, but it won't be Eldred or Hart for that one. Let me know if you are interested.
3. "[T]he lawyers would never let me get a single word into" the challenge to the CTEA--meaning the pro bono attorneys discovered that Mr. Hart, although not an attorney himself, wished to tell the lawyers what to do. Mr. Hart, you will soon learn when dealing with him, has his own mind. It so happens that his project is not the only one that is concerned about the public domain, and the attorneys found another plaintiff to replace him.
4. "I made them take my name off of that case"--meaning he refused to go forward with the case unless he personally controlled everything. He has yet to explain what he would have argued differently.

JimCYL says:

1. Mr. Hart is partially correct when he mentions that copyrights run for 95 years as of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. In addition to the other two elements Jim mentions, the 95-year term applies to works first published after 1922, renewed, and under copyright in 1998. (This "retrospective" or "retroactive" extension of term is primarily the basis for the dissent in the appeals court decision. It applies to Project Gutenberg as much as the rest of us, because it more or less sets up a dam for the flow of works into the public domain at January 1, 1923. Project Gutenberg for the most part has refrained from reprinting any works first published after 1922. Eldritch Press and some others do copyright research to find out works that were not renewed and so entered the public domain. For further information, see http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.htm l as well as the new book, "The Public Domain," by Stephen Fishman, at http://www.nolo.com
2. "Eldred Press"--it has become "Eldritch Press."
3. "The author of a work (or his heirs) can "recapture" his copyright after 35 years by notifying the copyright office of his intent to do so." Unfortunately, the Copyright Term Extension Act did not follow previous copyright acts, and failed to allow this recapturing when it extended term. As Mr. Hart properly notes, renewal is no longer necessary. Consequently, publishers now have many rights that neither previous laws nor the Constitution ever gave them.

DG asks: "If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain (specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?"

It should be noted that not all works in Project Gutenberg are in the public domain. For example, Michael S. Hart retains copyright for some. (BTW, the attempt at copyright notice at the bottom of the head is not proper: (C) is not valid, only a "C" inside a circle, or "Copr." or "Copyright" written out. But, anyway, notice is no longer necessary for copyright, only for collecting attorney fees and damages in cases of infringement, and even then the work must be registered (not necessary for most works online, which are under copyright the instant the expression is fixed).

But if you want to put in your request for books to be scanned, you can do so at the On-Line Books Page at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/in-progress .html#requests

Mr. Hart also says: Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us. It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. . .though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of copyright."

Mr. Hart claims to do his own copyright research, but he is not apparently cognizant of current U.S. copyright law. The underlying text of a work in the public domain is in the public domain, no matter if a site such as Eldritch Press claims copyright on the introduction, notes, added punctuation, editorial corrections, layout, and so on--none of which are creative enough for a copyright infringement claim to be asserted against Project Gutenberg. See, for example, "The Public Domain" for more information about what is under copyright and what is in the public domain.

I ought to say that I don't see Project Gutenberg and Eldritch Press as competitors, the way Mr. Hart appears to to. In fact, I have attempted to donate some of my works to Project Gutenberg, only to have Mr. Hart find some excuse to refuse them. So I instead pay for my own web server and publish my own work. I stand behind them and make my own corrections. The format problem that questioners raise to Mr. Hart is fairly irrelevant today, since it is fairly easy to filter texts from ASCII to HTML or back, or to other formats, as long as the tags apply to the structure and not the layout. (Project Gutenberg texts could use some more standardization on what constitutes italic and so on, I agree.)

We "bookpeople" who publish books on the net could use a little help--see the On-Line Books Page at the link above for more information on what you can do, besides becoming a Project Gutenberg volunteer.

We also see ourselves in alliance with all those who treasure freedom--the same freedom to code a program or to read a book--and so we join with those who oppose the DMCA or the NET act or any other attempts to censor the net or make it safe for e-commerce by excluding those such as Project Gutenberg or others of us "bookpeople." Thanks for your support!

I am the "Eldred" in "Eldred v. Reno." I ought to correct a few misstatements here. Mr Hart says:

Sadly to say, the US Supreme Court just ruled against the case I was supposed to be in [Eldred vs Reno]. . .but at least it was mostly on technical grounds. . .which leaves me possibly to still bring another totally separate case. . .but the lawyers would never let me get a single word into my own case [Hart vs Reno] so I made them take my name off of that case, which then became Eldred vs Reno].

1. It was the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, not the U.S. Supreme Court. See the 2-1 decision under http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvreno. We are going to appeal the case, eventually to the Supreme Court, and we need your support.
2. Mr Hart was never "supposed to be in" the case. He refused to become a plaintiff when he was asked. He is welcome to get his own attorneys to file another challenge. In fact, a group at Stanford might be looking to get somebody else to file a challenge in another district, but it won't be Eldred or Hart for that one. Let me know if you are interested.
3. "[T]he lawyers would never let me get a single word into" the challenge to the CTEA--meaning the pro bono attorneys discovered that Mr. Hart, although not an attorney himself, wished to tell the lawyers what to do. Mr. Hart, you will soon learn when dealing with him, has his own mind. It so happens that his project is not the only one that is concerned about the public domain, and the attorneys found another plaintiff to replace him.
4. "I made them take my name off of that case"--meaning he refused to go forward with the case unless he personally controlled everything. He has yet to explain what he would have argued differently.

JimCYL says:

1. Mr. Hart is partially correct when he mentions that copyrights run for 95 years as of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. In addition to the other two elements Jim mentions, the 95-year term applies to works first published after 1922, renewed, and under copyright in 1998. (This "retrospective" or "retroactive" extension of term is primarily the basis for the dissent in the appeals court decision. It applies to Project Gutenberg as much as the rest of us, because it more or less sets up a dam for the flow of works into the public domain at January 1, 1923. Project Gutenberg for the most part has refrained from reprinting any works first published after 1922. Eldritch Press and some others do copyright research to find out works that were not renewed and so entered the public domain. For further information, see http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/okbooks.htm l as well as the new book, "The Public Domain," by Stephen Fishman, at http://www.nolo.com
2. "Eldred Press"--it has become "Eldritch Press."
3. "The author of a work (or his heirs) can "recapture" his copyright after 35 years by notifying the copyright office of his intent to do so." Unfortunately, the Copyright Term Extension Act did not follow previous copyright acts, and failed to allow this recapturing when it extended term. As Mr. Hart properly notes, renewal is no longer necessary. Consequently, publishers now have many rights that neither previous laws nor the Constitution ever gave them.

DG asks: "If you could pick any 10 currently copyrighted works, and have them placed in the public domain (specifically for inclusion in Project Gutenberg) what would they be?"

It should be noted that not all works in Project Gutenberg are in the public domain. For example, Michael S. Hart retains copyright for some. (BTW, the attempt at copyright notice at the bottom of the head is not proper: (C) is not valid, only a "C" inside a circle, or "Copr." or "Copyright" written out. But, anyway, notice is no longer necessary for copyright, only for collecting attorney fees and damages in cases of infringement, and even then the work must be registered (not necessary for most works online, which are under copyright the instant the expression is fixed).

But if you want to put in your request for books to be scanned, you can do so at the On-Line Books Page at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/in-progress .html#requests

Mr. Hart also says: Actually, more and more of our Etexts are available in more formats, it's just that very often those who reformat them want the be the ONLY places to get those formats, and thus don't share back with us. It's a little sad that way, but we have tried to honor the requests from other Etext sites that want to be the ONLY source for our Etexts in various formats. . .though we disagree with that philosophy. Some day, when I am older and crankier, perhaps I will just raid their sites against their wills for conversions that are non-copyrightable: though these days people even claim copyrights on the most trivial conversions. Someday that older and crankier me may even take them [some are major universities] to court for "misuse of copyright."

Mr. Hart claims to do his own copyright research, but he is not apparently cognizant of current U.S. copyright law. The underlying text of a work in the public domain is in the public domain, no matter if a site such as Eldritch Press claims copyright on the introduction, notes, added punctuation, editorial corrections, layout, and so on--none of which are creative enough for a copyright infringement claim to be asserted against Project Gutenberg. See, for example, "The Public Domain" for more information about what is under copyright and what is in the public domain.

I ought to say that I don't see Project Gutenberg and Eldritch Press as competitors, the way Mr. Hart appears to to. In fact, I have attempted to donate some of my works to Project Gutenberg, only to have Mr. Hart find some excuse to refuse them. So I instead pay for my own web server and publish my own work. I stand behind them and make my own corrections. The format problem that questioners raise to Mr. Hart is fairly irrelevant today, since it is fairly easy to filter texts from ASCII to HTML or back, or to other formats, as long as the tags apply to the structure and not the layout. (Project Gutenberg texts could use some more standardization on what constitutes italic and so on, I agree.)

We "bookpeople" who publish books on the net could use a little help--see the On-Line Books Page at the link above for more information on what you can do, besides becoming a Project Gutenberg volunteer.

We also see ourselves in alliance with all those who treasure freedom--the same freedom to code a program or to read a book--and so we join with those who oppose the DMCA or the NET act or any other attempts to censor the net or make it safe for e-commerce by excluding those such as Project Gutenberg or others of us "bookpeople." Thanks for your support!

a .sig how-to

Attack of the 50 foot Chromosome 17's. The Linux Pimp

The concept of graphical/visual programming languages is not new, and anyone who claims that it is similar to certain LISP projects are most likely correct, because the Lambda-Calculus has had graphical representations long before LISP was created.

Graphical/Visual programming languages have been a hot area of research for the past 20 years, at least. However, this current approach seems a bit naïve. With any language, you will have representations. To say that a language is representation independent is a paradoxical statement at best. Whether your language represents meaning with three-dimensional graphics, or it represents it with a symbol-string based method, you will still have the same restrictions that all languages share. One of the benefits to generalized graphical languages is that your code can contain far more self-documentation, without the use of additional comments. In a language like the C programming language, self-documenting techniques consist of a few basic constructs like descriptive identifier names (variable names, function names, etc...) and a healthy use of white space (carriage returns and tabs for code blocking, etc...). In fact, it is often considered a bad programming practice to not use a good amount of self-documentation in C. So why not take self-documenting code a step or two further?

Well, just imagine a generalized version of "white space" for a programming language like C from something, which controls a very rigid 2D orientation to a generalized Cartesian 3-space, and you start moving towards a graphical/visual programming language. Generalize the concept of "identifier" from just a plain string of text to a full color 3D graphical object.

There are other more fundamental differences that most visual programming languages have over this simple generalization of the C programming language to a Graphical C., and those fundamental differences deal with the representation of computation. They could choose a von Neumann model, a functional model (lambda-calculus), a mobile model (pi-calculus), or maybe a constructive logic, etc... all of which are popular (read widely used) mathematical models of computation.

So, besides cramming a bunch of buzz words into their language description, and coming close to stating a complete paradox... I don't know why this is supposed to be so exciting.

Don't get me wrong, I love alternative programming languages, such as PICT (based on the pi-calculus) and Haskell (based on pure lazily evaluated lambda-calculus), and whenever a new post is made about a language attempt like Eidola, I laugh and I cry - asking myself, "Why doesn't slashdot ever post news about serious alternative programming languages?"

Are not public libraries another dangerous idea of that revolutionary type Benjamin Franklin?

With rsync you have to remember where you last made your changes. Use something much smarter, but using the same diff/compression protocol, like unison

see subject.

I was doing research for someone on where I work, and trying to find out exactly how old Castro is now (75). Anyway, I came across this in my epic trek through google.

Enjoy.

Rami
--

• Generatingfunctionology, by Prof. Herbert Wilf. A must read for the theoretically-minded computer science nerd! It described all (well, most) the ins and outs of using generating functions (formal power series) to enumerate various combinatorial objects.
• A = B, by Petkovsek, Wilf and Zeilberger. This book completely kills the problem of simplifying nasty summations involving (for example) binomial coefficients, which often arise in combinatorial analysis.
• Algebraic Topology, by Allen Hatcher. A beautiful, though technical, subject. It has no immediate interest for compsci nerds (though it does have an important application to the theory of distributed computability), but I include it as an example of other quality math books available online.

• Generatingfunctionology, by Prof. Herbert Wilf. A must read for the theoretically-minded computer science nerd! It described all (well, most) the ins and outs of using generating functions (formal power series) to enumerate various combinatorial objects.
• A = B, by Petkovsek, Wilf and Zeilberger. This book completely kills the problem of simplifying nasty summations involving (for example) binomial coefficients, which often arise in combinatorial analysis.
• Algebraic Topology, by Allen Hatcher. A beautiful, though technical, subject. It has no immediate interest for compsci nerds (though it does have an important application to the theory of distributed computability), but I include it as an example of other quality math books available online.

As the author of a free book, worries about this kind of abuse are one of the most common reactions I get when I talk to people who aren't familiar with free information. The crucial point is that the internet is the perfect tool for publicizing free information projects and giving people a place to check whether the thing they're paying for might really be available for free. In the case of books, people should know to check the IPL, On-Line Books Page, Andamooka, and the site immodestly listed in my sig. I'm not as familiar with the equivalents for software, but I imagine SourceForge would be a good starting point.

Mills College's program isn't bad.

Penn's program is more of an IT type than a true computer science curriculum, but they have the computer sciency courses too.

I see too many limitations in end to end networking in anything but small groups.

So you don't hold out too much hope for this new-fangled "In-ter-net" thing, do you? Client-server is end-to-end; you have two machines at the end of a dumb pair of copper wires, a dumb piece of fiber, or maybe some dumb RF. Maybe you need routers or switches in between, but those are made just "smart" enough to do their jobs and no smarter.

This reminds me of an article that was posted to /. a while bag in praise of dumb fiber rather than the "smart networks" that the QoS folks/telcos continue to push. Here's the link.

PUENTE (Spanish for 'bridge') is a student run organization at the University of Pennsylvania that seeks to bridge the digital divide in low-income regions throughout the world. It's a very worthy cause and a highly credible organization. Link

The biggest problem is, of course, data entry. A lot of the texts pose a challenge for OCR for a number of reasons, including the large number of special characters often used.

Another problem is people who insist on copyrighting and refusing to freely share their collections of online documents in the older languages, which is a real shame, because it prevents me from creating all kinds of interesting derived works (e.g. web pages of Old English texts where you can click any word to get information about it). It basically means that all this work has to be repeated by anyone who wants to make those texts freely available-- never mind that we're talking about works over 1000 years old!

recalling some stuff about "dark fibre". Read the article, you know you want to, even though it is like 8 years old now, it addresses issues even more prevelant today.

Going on means going far
Going far means returning

The demo that has been mentioned happened at UNC in May 2000. However, do not forget that other schools and sites also took part in it.

The authors of the 3D real time acquisition system are researchers from GRASP lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia ( http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sequence/teleim1.html), and while Brown University did not have active role in the system we presented in May, they are very much part of the Initiative ( http://www.cs.brown.edu/~lsh/telei.html). They are now "responsible" for providing user interactions and having synthetic objects mixed with 3D acquisition data of real objects, so you may want to ckeck project web page soon to hear more about those developments (http://www.advanced.org/teleimmersion .ht ml). Advanced Network & Services provids founds and their own research staff.

best
Ami

Found via his web page, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber/

Written Testimony

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2000/2059.htm

Cross and redirect transcript AM

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcrip ts/dec98/12-08-am.asp

and PM

http://www. microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcripts/dec98/12 -08-pm.asp

the books by Niccolo Machiavelli may be found online here: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/searc h?author=Nic colo+Machiavelli+&amode=words&title=&tmode=words
--

Uh, it is true that PG publishes only texts first published before 1923. But it is not true that "nothing written in the US on or after January 1, 1923, will ever enter the public domain."

An explanation of this misstatement is long, but--many works (85%?) first published in the US after 1922, and before 1978, entered the public domain (and are still there) because the copyright was not properly renewed. It is perfectly legal to reprint them. PG does not do so because it is difficult to check copyright status for such works. The 1997 No Electronic Theft Act means a jail term of up to 5 years and up to $500,000 fine if a work with a retail value of $1,000 over a period of 6 months is even given away on the Internet.

The On-Line Books Page has a very useful guide to checking copyright on books, including some pages of renewals from the Catalog of Copyright Entries, scanned by volunteers including from PG.

Some of us do seek out post-1922 works in the public domain and reprint them online. However, the DMCA poses another problem: if the underlying work is in the public domain, it seems to be illegal under the DMCA to share information on how to "circumvent" encryption of an "eBook" such as in Microsoft Reader format. Thus these books do enjoy a de facto period of protection long after the copyright term expires.

If you are concerned about U.S. copyright term, please visit my web site for information about our lawsuit against the Bono Act, join in discussion and debate on the OpenLaw site, and please support Project Gutenberg and other online book projects. Thanks for reading!

Scientific test:

1. Go to http://ebooks.barnesandnoble.com and select "American Literature" from the free books in the left panel.
2. Download one of the free eBooks, let's say "The Big Town" by Ring Lardner.
3. Note that you don't have to activate your Microsoft Reader or Microsoft Wallet if you just want one of these free books--but you do need to download Microsoft Reader, so you must use it only on a Microsoft Windows machine.
4. Now visit the Eldritch Press site and download the same book in HTML form, http://www.eldritchpress.org/rl/bigtown.html --(note that the text and illustrations were produced by "circumventing" the Microsoft encryption scheme, demonstrating that it cannot work).
5. If you like, download the TrueType fonts Berling and Berling Italic.
6. Read the two books on your favorite computer and display.
7. Observe that the open book was actually proofread and errors corrected.
8. Help me make a table that compares the two, pro and con, feature by feature.

OPEN:

1. Blind readers can "read" it with text-to-speech synthesizers or Braille printers.
2. Reader can copy it and share it with a friend.
3. Since it's on one web page, searching and copying text is easy.
4. Text can be piped into another Unix-type program for word count, glossary, index, concordance, dictionary etymology or corpus, reformat for another computer program, computer translation aids, and whatever you can think of.
5. Cascading style sheets in HTML code make it easy to create a better layout, typography, or style.
6. It's possible to link to other works on the web such as other Ring Lardner stories or sites such as Eldritch Press's Lardner site.
7. ....what else?

CLOSED:

1. Works only on Microsoft Windows.
2. Have to have a credit card for Microsoft Passport
3. Locks book against blind readers
4. Proprietary user interface goes against all World Wide Web and Microsoft standards
5. Reader reveals private demographic information to publisher
6. Used bookstores go out of business if this technology widely adopted.
7. Encryption prevents fair use of a work in the public domain--not available to be cited in a student's paper, anthologized in a teacher's course book, and so on.
8. ....what else?

9. Note that I refuse to share any circumvention methods with others. I believe the DMCA makes such sharing illegal--at least until we can get that law overturned. However, the DMCA has been interpreted by Judge Kaplan in SDNY to mean that if you can figure out a way to circumvent, then you can do so in order to make fair use of the encrypted work.

   The reason I'm giving this information now is to warn authors not to believe what their publishers are telling them: that they should not publish online unless works are locked up in a format such as Microsoft Reader. Everybody should know now that there is no valid technology to prevent digital works from being read, shared, or copied. In fact, if it were possible, our civilization, built upon the open, real book, would be in danger of collapsing.

   But you knew that already, didn't you? After all, I pointed this out two years ago, in the 1998 interview with myself, Battle of the Books. But at the time, too many gadget freaks were willing to swallow Microsoft's line that the display technology was key to getting people to read books online. Okay, now that you've done the experiment, browse through the other 12,000 free online books NOT in Microsoft Reader format: The On-Line Books Page or Internet Public Library, just for the English-language ones. After all, you own them!

Oh, and I should point out that a leasehold interest isn't property. It is a "contractual interest".

The basis of the legal relationship between a landlord and tenant is grounded in both contract and property law. The tenant has a property interest in the land (historically a non-freehold estate) for a given period of time.

Check out this link for an interesting look at early electronic computers.

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

• MMM Group at University of Nijmegen [publications]
• Machine Listening @ MIT Media Lab
• Affective Computing @ MIT Media Lab
• Musclefish

• Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound, Perry R. Cook
• Music, Mind and Machine, Peter Desain and Henkjan Honing
• The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, Steven W. Smith
• Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Christopher M. Bishop

• Tracking Musical Beats in Real Time, Paul E. Allen and Roger B. Dannenberg
• A Model for Musical Rhythm, Jeff A. Bilmes
• Autocorrelation and the Study of Musical Expression, Peter Desain, Siebe de Vos
• A Beat Tracking System for Audio Signals, Simon Dixon
• Prediction-Driven Computational Auditory Scene Analysis for Dense Sound Mixtures, Daniel P. W. Ellis
• A Similarity Measure for Automatic Audio Classification, Jonathan Foote
• Representing Rhythmic Patterns in a Network of Oscillators, Michael Gasser and Douglas Eck
• Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms, and Audio Applications, Michael Mark Goodwin
• Recognition of Music Types, Hagen Soltau, Tanja Schultz, Martin Westphal, Alex Waibel
• Irrelevant Features and the Subset Selection Problem, George H. John, Ron Kohavi, Karl Pfleger
• Beat tracking with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Modeling beat perception with a nonlinear oscilator, Edward W. Large
• Automatic Transcription of Simple Polyphonic Music: Robust Front End Processing, Keith D. Martin
• Musical instrument identification: A pattern-recognition approach, Keith D. Martin and Youngmoo E. Kim
• Music Content Analysis through Models of Audition, Keith D. Martin, Eric D. Scheirer, Barry L. Vercoe
• Musical Sound Information: Musical gestures and embedding synthesis, Eric Metois
• A Machine Learning Approach to Musical Style Recognition, Roger B. Dannenberg, Belinda Thom, and David Watson
• Resonanc e and the perception of musical meter, Large, E. W., & Kolen, J. F.
• Music-Listening Systems, Eric D. Scheirer
• Tempo and beat analysis of acoustic musical signals, Eric D. Scheirer
• Content-Based Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton
• Classification, Search, and Retrieval of Audio, Erling Wold, Thom Blum, Douglas Keislar, James Wheaton

THe constitution only protects federally. While the courts have stated that certain rights encompass both national and federal lines, states/localities still have odd ways of being able to regulate this.. Usually by local puruient interest laws (for obscenity) where localities can decide what is offensive to them. This is GOOD folks. This is good, because isntead of the national government deciding what is good and wholesome for the kiddies, local entities can do so. And we all know, if we don't liek the local decisions, we can argue with our feet (leave).

These topics are always interesting to me... we oftentimes forget that the libraries and schools have been banning things for years. Frankly folks, not only is none of it good, but it completely destroys the information flow.

Write your politician. GEt the facts. Be coherent. Don't flame. Make a statement and move on. Remember, if it doesn't stop here, it'll just get worse.

...they did it. On a CMOS chip.

ENIAC-on-a-chip

I salute their magnificent insanity!

---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .