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Check out his article, "The Tragedy of the Electronic Commons," on his old web site on the Well .

As Solomon (or somebody) commented a few thousand years ago, there is nothing new under the sun.

Check out his article, "The Tragedy of the Electronic Commons," on his old web site on the Well .

As Solomon (or somebody) commented a few thousand years ago, there is nothing new under the sun.

My question is, couldn't this technique provide realistic 3-d effects? If I could put the two images in a 60fps loop, wouldn't the eye be fooled into seeing both images at the same time and somehow giving the 3-d effect? If this works, I'm sure somebody did it before. Anyone has references? If it doesn't work, why not? Maybe I would just see a blurred image...

3d pr0n lite

There's actually a really cool page with some examples

I thought it was funny that there is an Ask Slashdot with Gaiman, since he is so open and responsive in his journal. I'm glad to see that somebody mentioned it.

Also, Neil used to post a hell of a lot (and maybe still does) on inkwell.vue, the Well's free, open-to-the-public conference. This kind of interaction with one's fans seems extremely rare.

In any case, I'm sure he's tickled to have been asked.

Forget about games. This could usher in a new golden era of pr0n.

Too late. Its been done.

(That isn't a work safe link by the way).

Will it be able to display hi-res jpg and mpeg images? Will they be better than these 3D jiggly pics?

The game Go, where computers have not yet come close to intermediate level players, mostly due to the huge search space.

More details.

The challenge for 3-D image display isn't blocking the "wrong" images from each eye, it's blocking the wrong images when they're displayed in the same space -- overlaid in a single frame.

the equations are all laid (ahem) out in Cryptonomicon by Lawrence waterhouse on p544.

that Stephenson has submitted a bug to Debian. (Read his In the Beginning Was the Command Line, it's excellent.) A skilled novelist who also participates in the open source process?

That gets him the same free pass that /. gives out to Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall. :-)

The United States has treaties with Mexico and Canada that lay out a framework for coordination of radio and television licensing. You can't just hop across the border and build a 1 MW radio station on any frequency you like.

Some people do it anyway.

He addressed both of these issues several years ago. From the Contact Info section on his homepage:

If you want to tell me about typographical errors in Cryptonomicon, thank you, but don't bother. I am aware that the book has many typos. The publisher and I are trying to fix as many as we can in a subsequent printing.

And from his Crytonimicon FAQ:

12. Why does the perl script on p. 480 have funny-looking line breaks?

The printed novel is one of several distribution media for the Solitaire perl script, and probably the least important; after all, it does no good unless you sit down and type it into a computer, which is a real pain. If you have a computer, you can probably just download the perl from the Counterpane site. Nevertheless, it was my intention to make it possible to type in the script "by hand" from the book and have it work. When I tried this myself, it turned out that line breaks in the script introduced ambiguities that caused it not to work. Therefore, I reformatted the script so that each line in the printed version ends with a semicolon, wherever possible. This removes the ambiguities and makes it possible IN PRINCIPLE to type it correctly, even if you don't know perl. But the result looks funny if you are a perl aficionado.

13. Hey, the perl script doesn't work! What's the deal?

The production people at the publisher tried valiantly to get the perl script typeset without any errors, but one error did slip in. It is located on the eighth line. Where the book says
$o=~s/.chr((

and so on, it SHOULD say

$o=~s/./chr((

and so on.

I have notified the publisher and they are going to fix it in the next printing. But all of the books in the first printing will contain the error. Perhaps this will make them valuable collectors' items one day, but for now they are useless as perl scripts.

He addressed both of these issues several years ago. From the Contact Info section on his homepage:

If you want to tell me about typographical errors in Cryptonomicon, thank you, but don't bother. I am aware that the book has many typos. The publisher and I are trying to fix as many as we can in a subsequent printing.

And from his Crytonimicon FAQ:

12. Why does the perl script on p. 480 have funny-looking line breaks?

The printed novel is one of several distribution media for the Solitaire perl script, and probably the least important; after all, it does no good unless you sit down and type it into a computer, which is a real pain. If you have a computer, you can probably just download the perl from the Counterpane site. Nevertheless, it was my intention to make it possible to type in the script "by hand" from the book and have it work. When I tried this myself, it turned out that line breaks in the script introduced ambiguities that caused it not to work. Therefore, I reformatted the script so that each line in the printed version ends with a semicolon, wherever possible. This removes the ambiguities and makes it possible IN PRINCIPLE to type it correctly, even if you don't know perl. But the result looks funny if you are a perl aficionado.

13. Hey, the perl script doesn't work! What's the deal?

The production people at the publisher tried valiantly to get the perl script typeset without any errors, but one error did slip in. It is located on the eighth line. Where the book says
$o=~s/.chr((

and so on, it SHOULD say

$o=~s/./chr((

and so on.

I have notified the publisher and they are going to fix it in the next printing. But all of the books in the first printing will contain the error. Perhaps this will make them valuable collectors' items one day, but for now they are useless as perl scripts.

for those interested in sec tools on mac OS X, here is a small list of tools to add :

rpg password generator
kismac a kismet equivalent that also includes a WEP cracker. very nice!
macanalysis a really good security tools suite

Looks like a pretty good resolution.

on building to last for a long time is How Buldings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. by Stewart Brand (See also here, here and here

The book covers everything about buildings after they are built from leaks, technological changes to changing styles. Have a look at the Amazon link for the samples pages to get an idea of the content and especially the pictures. The book covers modern homes, office buildings, castles, farm houses. small shacks and everything in between. It is definately the place to start if you want to build something that will be around and used in 50 or 500 years.

It's not a howto or builders guide except in the general sense. However it covers the general picture of the things you need to think about and provides links to other sources with more specific information. Overall it is one of my favourate books.

The author is president of the Long Now Foundation which is building the 10 ,000 year clock so he's very much into thinking about the longer term.

on building to last for a long time is How Buldings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. by Stewart Brand (See also here, here and here

The book covers everything about buildings after they are built from leaks, technological changes to changing styles. Have a look at the Amazon link for the samples pages to get an idea of the content and especially the pictures. The book covers modern homes, office buildings, castles, farm houses. small shacks and everything in between. It is definately the place to start if you want to build something that will be around and used in 50 or 500 years.

It's not a howto or builders guide except in the general sense. However it covers the general picture of the things you need to think about and provides links to other sources with more specific information. Overall it is one of my favourate books.

The author is president of the Long Now Foundation which is building the 10 ,000 year clock so he's very much into thinking about the longer term.

on building to last for a long time is How Buldings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. by Stewart Brand (See also here, here and here

The book covers everything about buildings after they are built from leaks, technological changes to changing styles. Have a look at the Amazon link for the samples pages to get an idea of the content and especially the pictures. The book covers modern homes, office buildings, castles, farm houses. small shacks and everything in between. It is definately the place to start if you want to build something that will be around and used in 50 or 500 years.

It's not a howto or builders guide except in the general sense. However it covers the general picture of the things you need to think about and provides links to other sources with more specific information. Overall it is one of my favourate books.

The author is president of the Long Now Foundation which is building the 10 ,000 year clock so he's very much into thinking about the longer term.

Stewart Brand was the author of "The Whole Earth Catalog" and also a founding member of The LongNow, how appropriate...

Halo, by Tom Maddox (1991 Tor books): $0.00

I'd assume that Niven was referring to Maddox's novel which takes place on a big ring in space; hence the comparison.

p.
eniac refugee

According to an interview he had on the Well (inkwell.vue conference, readable via well.com), Whuffie was something from high school, and to his chagrin he's pretty sure it comes from Arsenio Hall's "Woof woof woof!" noises.

The Center for Public Integrity has intercepted a sequel to the Patriot Act that is being called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Here are a few mirrors to the document... (we will need more): one, two, and three. A notable part of the prospective legislation is that a new federal felony is created for willfully using encryption during the comission of a felony and that a judge in a different part of the country can issue a search warrant for another part of the country for terrorism or "computer crime". Why should you care if this isn't even close to law yet? 1) It's written by John Ashcroft and 2) The Bush administration is great at getting these things passed during emergencies (wasn't the homeland color just kicked up a notch?)

Via mpt: metacrap.

I work for a nonprofit, so my science fiction writing income actually accounts for a substantial chunk of my living.

I have never written an "original" word in my life. Every idea I've had has been inspired by those who came before me. I just released my first novel, both as a hardcover book and an ebook under the terms of a Creative Commons license. The novel is set in Walt Disney World, and revolves around the efforts of preservationists in a transhuman future who strive to keep the rides true to the original Imagineers' intent.

I take a lot of flak for my genuine admiration for the Disney Parks and films -- people want to know why I've thrown my lot in with the corporate crooks who've stolen the public domain out from under us. The fact of the matter is that Walt Disney is the poster child for the public domain. Walt's greatest works were built by taking off-the-shelf parts and stories and remixing them in novel and useful ways. Lessig notes that Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey cartoon, was a remix of a popular film called "Steamboat Bill." Exploring the bonus material on the latest DVD release of the cartoon shows that not only did Walt thrive on the public domain, but that the Disney Company's interest is in closing off that domain to everyone else:

"Orchestra starts playing opening verses of 'Steamboat Bill.' Try doing a cartoon take-off of one of Disney, Inc.'s latest films with an opening that copies the music, and see how far your Walt Empire gets."

Any artist who claims that her work is 100% original is lying or self-deluded. Art is embedded in culture. Art is a web, and it is enmeshed with the art that came before it and comes after it. Deriding the public domain as the refuge of the unimaginative makes about as much sense as pissing on coders who don't write their own OSes (or invent their own non-Turing, non-Von Neumann, non-non-Von Neumann computing engines, for that matter).

This task will be a lot more possible as years pass. Why?

According to this, in 100 years, there will be about half as many species on earth as there are now. We're actually in the middle of the biggest extinction epidemic since the dinosaurs died out.

Scratch that - according to this other site, this is actually the fastest mass extinction in earth's history. The fact that most people don't know about this is made even more strange by the fact that this extinction epidemic is man-made.

offtopic i know, but has anyone else seen rheingolds shoes? he is known for wearing funky shoes that he often paints himself. enjoy :)

The WELL might not be as important or unique as it once was, and it may be true that it gets more press than it deserves, and it is true that at times it may be insular and navel-gazingly self-contratulatory, but to dismissively lump it in as one more BBS is completely unfair and even deeply ignorant.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was organized and founded at the WELL. The annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conferences were started and are still ran at the WELL. Wired Magazine was partially organized on the WELL. The infamous and frauduluent cyberporn Time cover story that made passage of the CDA a foregone conclusion was systematically demolished and exposed and opposition organized at the WELL. And these are just the most salient examples.

There's a discussion with a number of interesting comments here.

Neal Stephenson does have a web page; it's devoted to telling people to leave him the damn hell alone. :)

Mr Stephenson has a website athttp://www.well.com/user/neal/. It's not the most current, but it's still a website.

Employers already monitor staff's email etc, why is this any different?

Ease off the throttle there, Captain Capitalist. A few points to discuss:

• Your employer does not assume ownership of your rights of person during business hours. You can take a non-business related phone call and use the bathroom during business hours, and it is illegal for them to monitor any of those activities.
• While monitoring IM's doesn't yet fall under the protection of wiretap laws, there is something tragically ironic about a company which provides a free chat tool which will port scan your firewall to find a way out to the internet, and then sell the managers a tool to monitor its activities. If you think this is respectable business practice, I bet you can't wait to see the egress!

My favorite, the Personal Fabricator, ("a printer that outputs working things instead of static objects")

This bears resemblance to "Molecular Compilers" as imagined by Neal Stephneson in everyone's favourite nanotechnology novel, The Diamond Age, a device where you simply insert the program describing the object you want, plus payment, and return in an hour or so to retrieve your newly formed item.

Gives a whole new meaning to Internet Shopping...

I just made a similar switch after using every combination of desktop/window manager made over the last 10 years.

I run a SunBlade 100 with two heads, and a SunPCi Intel coprocessor card (since I need to dip into our the company exchange server). I use the ion window manager, which gives not only split-screen windowing, but multiple tabs per window. Monitor one is usually debugging output or programming reference material on the left, emacs on the right, console and email at the bottom (a second full-screen workspace gives me Oracle GUI stuff). Monitor two is my windows (Outlook, instant messengers, etc..) Eventually I'm going to integrate some more Afterstep/WindowMaker type applets, but no rush.

Anyway, for you screenshot junkies, check it out:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

I can't say exactly what's caused my frustration with the overlapped windowing metaphor, but whatever it is, it's gone now. I urge people to try it out before dismissing it as a joke.

ion is available here: http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/

I just made a similar switch after using every combination of desktop/window manager made over the last 10 years.

I run a SunBlade 100 with two heads, and a SunPCi Intel coprocessor card (since I need to dip into our the company exchange server). I use the ion window manager, which gives not only split-screen windowing, but multiple tabs per window. Monitor one is usually debugging output or programming reference material on the left, emacs on the right, console and email at the bottom (a second full-screen workspace gives me Oracle GUI stuff). Monitor two is my windows (Outlook, instant messengers, etc..) Eventually I'm going to integrate some more Afterstep/WindowMaker type applets, but no rush.

Anyway, for you screenshot junkies, check it out:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

I can't say exactly what's caused my frustration with the overlapped windowing metaphor, but whatever it is, it's gone now. I urge people to try it out before dismissing it as a joke.

ion is available here: http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/

... a reference to the awesome Meta Crap article which highlights very clearly the problems with relying on <META> tags for useful information.

Man, I think I am going to have to pull that book off my shelf this weekend and start it again.

Let me get you started in the right direction:

You don't need to "buy the rights to rebroadcast the songs from the record companies, song writers, and publishers". You merely need to pay royalties for the public performances of copyrighted compositions to ASCAP, BMI and possibly SESAC. The total of all these will be around 5-6% of your stations gross revenue.

Copyright law specifically exempts FCC-licensed radio stations from any fees for public performance of the "Sound Recording" (that is, the copyrights owned by the record companies).

As for the power you will need to cover a decent sized metro area - you sure don't need 50-100,000 watts. The FCC breaks the license classes down into 3 main groups, Class A, B and C. Class A are typically around 5kw, Class B, 50kw, and Class C, 100kw. But an important distinction here is that these amounts are not transmitter power, but ERP (effective radiated power). Also, depending upon your transmitter's HAAT (Height above average terrain), you may be authorized for a lower power than the class of license's maximum.

You would be surprised how well 1000 watts ERP on a hill into a good circular-polarized antenna system will cover a metro area. In fact, in Los Angeles, one station transmits a mere 600 watts from Mt. Wilson and covers all of the greater Los Angeles metro area. In their case, it's the height that gives them the coverage, not so much the power.

You can learn more about station coverage contours, power and classes from the FCC.

But before you get into all that, you should read the FCC's Broadcast Station Application Process. Did I forget to mention that you need to either buy an existing license or apply for a new one? And before you can even apply for a new license, you'll need to prove that you have the financial resources to complete the station and do a technical feasibility study - usually a spacing study for commercial FM (to make sure you can fit your station into the band without causing interference to existing stations) or a Interference study for noncommercial/educational stations (in the 88.1-91.9 part of the band. You can't do these yourself, you'll need to hire a company who specializes in this and has access to the FCCs databases. Dataworld is a company that has been doing this for over 25 years.

Before you get started on this, you should do a lot of background reading. An FCC licensed station is not a toy o hobby and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with it. Fortunately, the FCC has a How to Apply for a Broadcast Station section of their site. Unfortunately, it starts off like this:

Potential applicants for radio and television services should be aware that frequencies for these services are always in heavy demand. For example, the Commission received approximately 30,000 inquiries from persons seeking to start radio broadcast stations last year. Where broadcast frequencies remain available, competing applications are routinely received. Thus, you are cautioned at the outset that the filing of an application does not guarantee that you will receive a broadcast station construction permit. You should also be aware that in many areas of the country, no frequencies may be available on which a new station could commence operating without causing interference to existing stations, which would violate FCC rules.

There are so many other things you're going to have to think about before you apply for a license as well.

• Is the transmitter going to be at the same location as the studio? If not, how are you going to get the signal to the transmitter? (A STL, microwave band studio transmitter link, is a popular way - but you'll need a license for this too...
• If your studio is going to be co-located with your transmitter, you have to pay a lot of concern to keeping RF interference from your transmiter out of your audio signals. This means 600 ohm balanced audio feeds, not the typical RCA or miniplug consumer unbalanced audio lines.
• The minimum hardware you'll need is a transmitter/exciter, audio processor/stereo generator, antenna system, tower, Emergency alert system hardware, etc.
• You may be required to provide the FCC with a "Proof of Performance" - going out with a GPS and signal strenght meter, and proving that your transmitter and antenna system are operating as planned.
• You'll also need some monitoring instruments to make sure that your station isn't putting out too much power, or transmitting with too high of deviation (overmodulation).
• Last you'll need a way to feed audio. A Linux box playing MP3s probably won't cut it. At a minimum, you need to schedule the "legal IDs" at the top of the hour. There are commercial broadcast automation packages out there that cost under $2000, alas they all run under Windoze. There is no reason you couldn't write one for Linux.
• And I think you need at least a small mixer and a microphone so that when you need to, you can address the audience. (And aternatively play music when you're doing upgrades to the automation system.)

I suggest you subscribe or read online Radio Shopper, a radio tech centric newsletter that also covers things that small operators need to do to fufill their oblications to the FCC and the community. And of corse, it's a great place to find used transmitters and antenna systems.

Some places to get a feel for the prices of this equipment are Broadcast Supply Worldwide and Harris Broadcast. If you are on a budget and need used equipment, Mooretronix is a great place to start.

Here's a great pictorial of the installation of a new FM antenna system and 60kw transmitter for KPFK in Los Angeles. Just to give you an idea of what is required. KPFK is a non-profit.

I also suggest reading Bob Gonsett's CGC Communicator, a really great technical newsletter for broadcasters in the Southern California area. There are hundreds of his past newsletters online, and you can read about the saga of new stations in SoCal, as well as issues with construction permits (station upgrades). Lots of good info here.

I hope this has helped give you some good background on what all is involved in starting a radio station. I've worked at a couple small commercial broadcast stations in the past. I assisted in some upgrades to the transmitters and antenna systems, so I got to see all that was involved with just the construction permit with the FCC. I even got to assist in a proof of performance once, back in the days before GPS. We had to do it all using topo and street maps.

So don't give up hope - you CAN start your own radio station. But it's really hard to do with just one person. And it will take a bunch of money. Get a critical mass of people together in your town, form a non-profit, there is a really good chance that it you're not in one of the top 100 radio markets that you can get a license and start a station.

I encourage you to try!

--rusty

Hi Slowping. I'm writing a book and would like to chat with you briefly about this. Tried emailing you, but it bounced. Please respond to me here. Thanks!

This is a SF novel from 1994 which covers exactly this scenario. The long-term effects of global warming include the melting of the ice caps, as we know, but this book is about the shorter-term effects. An overall rise in the sea temperature, due to a huge release of clathrate methane, enlarges the hurricane-spawing areas of the ocean (areas above 27C). The result is larger and larger hurricanes, until, well, you can guess the rest from the title.

Reviews: here and here.

Ouch. Do you still want to touch those deposits?

...in "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling.

He proposed subsystems for handling the different parts of the building process. At the point in the story we encounter this, the characters are helping to put in the walls. They wear smart gloves and wrap tape (with embedded sensors and speakers) around pre-fab blocks. The blocks then tell them where to go and what to do according to the master plan. Sample: "I am a corner block. Put me in the northwest wall."

The agenda behind this system was to enable cheap labor to put up cheap buildings quickly.

Slightly OT, but...

I'm more interested in seeing someone write a strong Go opponent. It's pretty obvious that chess is rather simple for a powerful computer to brute force, but even the most sophisticated hardware and software can be beaten by an amateur Go player. The strongest Go programs rate at around the 8-kyu level (Go ratings start at 30-kyu for complete beginners, on up to 1-kyu, then from 1-dan to 9-dan for pro players).

There have been cash awards (on the order of a million dollars in at least one instance) put out on the table for developers who could write a Go program capable of beating a certain level player. So far, nobody's succeeded. MindZine has a nice (albeit a bit dated) article explaining why this is.

When a computer can play a really strong game of Go, I'll be impressed. :)

By all means, read it for fun... e.g. note Sterling's attempt at categorizing proprietary software company strategies as relationship headgames, where Linux comes in as this weird hippie chick that likes doing geeky guys... just don't expect too much of it.

Sometimes I think Slashdot may have painted itself into a corner... they ended up running a link to *this* Sterling rap, because it's about the sterotypic concerns of slashdot, not because it's a particularly interesting one. Try this one: Without Vision, The People Perish. There's at least a chance that he's on to something there.

lie in the way that the decisions are made and the differences in how they affect the playing field. The average game of Go actually lasts longer than the average chess game and is far older...
For starters, Go in its pure form is played on a 19x19 board as supposed to an 8x8 board. Chess's famous plays, games and styles have all been archived, whereas Go's strategies are largely abstract and can only be learned by repeated play. The game only begins to take structure after 30 to 50 moves. According to this site, Go has approximately 10 to the 750th power of possible board positions. This makes it a very hard game for computers to learn.
On the historical side, Go is a complex game that originated in China close to 4000 years ago and has remained constant to its' original form despite being introduced to many southeast Asian countries since.

Try this site.

It also has instructions on how to teach Go, if you're interested.

The Music Animation Machine display is a score without any measures or clefs, in which information about the music's structure is conveyed with bars of color representing the notes. These bars scroll across the screen as the music plays. Their position on the screen tells you their pitch and their timing in relation to each other. Different colors denote different instruments or voices, thematic material, or tonality. And each note lights up at the exact moment it sounds, so you can't lose your place.

A common misconception. Studies have shown repeatedly that the human eye is generally able to read quicker and comprehend more when the text is presented in narrow columns of about 65 to 75 characters each, or about as wide as you can actually read at once with no eye motion.

Optimum column width may also be affected by the 7-plus-or-minus-2 rule. Narrow columns mean that there are just enough words on a single line to be easily held in short term memory, thus easily 'digested' during reading.

Setting text on a computer display, however, is a different matter, especially when the display is configurable by the user. The assumption with the web is that the user will reconfigure both display size and text size to suite their circumstances. The fact that this guy thinks he knows better than his reads how they can best read text on screen, does not bode well for his qualifications as a user interface expert. (the first rule of user interface design is to listen to your users. This guy would rather dictate: it's no suprise that he worked for M$)

No disagreement there, I think hes been quoted along the lines of not being able to stop despite knowing that he will eventually get caught.(Link anyone? I could be wrong)

I have to disagree here. There were no real ties between him and the Shimomura attacks. I think he was the target that first popped up on their radar screen after the attacks and was lassoed. There are a lot of weird bits in the "official" version of the story (unsigned warrants, etc) and instead of detailing them I will say:

I strongly recommend reading both The Fugitive Game By John Littman and, to get the other side Takedown by John Markoff, I find Littman a much better read and does much more research into the story then Markoff. Littman presents the story from a impartial 3rd person, and scrutinizes both accounds (Mitnick, who he interviewed via phone while on the lamb, and Markoff's story from his book, NYT stories, and interviews.) I've lent Littman out to techie and non-techie friends and it always recieves high marks, and I think the "Something was Fishy with the govt's case" viewpoint usually results.

Have you seen Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design it's also similar and a very good read.