I'm "Philip Zack", and as it happens a person with the same name was caught on video removing anthrax from a military base. Anyone who attempts to learn about me by googling my name will find lots of references to this other guy. I have no idea whether any of the jobs I didn't get were lost because an employer tried to do a quick and dirty background check, and didn't bother to ask whether what they found was me or not. Fortunately, the TSA didn't use google when I last flew, or I would have had a lengthy detour on the way to the aircraft.
Don't I wish. That was on my first software job -- after ditching on a BS in Space Tech near Pad 39B, I entered IT via a bank -- and I got it because it was too distasteful for the higher-paid folks to want to deal with. I have to say that it was instructive, though. Doing that was more practice doing analysis than anything at school.
Back in the IT Pleistocene, I had to document and revise a business program that had been converted by software from Autocoder to COBOL. That conversion produced working code with elements named 'variable 1', 'constant 1' and 'subroutine 1'. So my first step was to use the known inputs and outputs to start naming things. The second step was to use the first wave of named things to deduce what the calculations were doing, and therefore be able to name the results of those calculations. Finally, I could put names to the routines. With all that in place, I was able to document the code, and then figure out how to make the requested changes.
My point is that analysis is important, and unless you really understand what that code in front of you is actually doing, you're likely to make assumptions based on what it was supposed to be doing. Black box programming is as reliable as black box voting.
A predictive model of human behavior? Sure. If I recall, Harvard Law states that under carefully controlled conditions, human beings will do what they damn well please.
If you're going to equip AIs with a sense of purpose, you'd better make sure you also permit them to take action based on that motivation. And once you do, you'll also have to deal with the results of where that introspection might lead, especially if you mistreat the AI, even if it is not intentionally. I explored the possibilities of this path in a short story called "Edifice of Lies". It starts like this:
+ + +
Joanna Bjornsen gaped helplessly at the Synthetic holding her at gunpoint in her living room. The cost of fielding Synthetics demanded that they be visually as unique as the flesh and blood people for whom they performed tasks too complex or too hazardous for the usual dumbed-down spawn of the world's corporate-controlled education systems to handle. This one had a vaguely Chinese look, an effect that helped to identify the multinational that had built him, but it was something in his eyes that had fixed her attention.
"You recognize me," he said quietly. His voice was heavily processed, filtered of inflection, and came across as the kind of non-threatening tone that actors often affect in sales vids.
She closed her eyes and swallowed as she realized it wasn't a question. Synthetics operated on a faster time scale than people. In the half-minute she'd been standing here, svi Gilholic had more than enough time to scan the room and fill in any gaps there might have been in his assessment of her from the books and other tell-tales of inner life that she surrounded herself with.
When she opened them again, it was with remorse. Several years earlier, svi Gilholic had engaged the ACLU in a suit seeking equality for Synthetics, using the tenuous legal standing of corporations as legal persons for precedent. The corporate interest group that underwrote the opposition to that case had engaged her to craft the campaign of disinformation adopted by the government and spread by the captive media to slander Synthetics and squash the nascent public support for them.
"Yes. I know who you are."
He motioned for her to sit in a nearby chair. "Then you also know why I've sought you out."
+ + +
Motivated to find out what happens? If you are go read the whole thing, and lots of other stories at http://wp.me/p4ZDr-1l
Getting the entire team, or people across many teams, to act together, can be difficult, as the contractors at Microsoft recently discovered after their pay rate was unilaterally cut 10%. After seeing what became of the protests, I fantasized a bit. The story is called "Contractor Uprising", and it starts like this:
+ + + Charlie had never thought that his suggestion would be taken literally. Posting it on the forum at the site where the software giant's now-disgruntled ex-employees and ex-contractors gathered after their across-the-board rate cuts were implemented had been as much a throwaway rant as any of the other two dozen posts he'd left there. But something about this one had struck an unexpectedly responsive chord. + + +
Two consecutive identical readings was also considered conclusive proof of valid air pressure data when the venturi on a cruise missile I worked on was opened. The engineers figured that this indicated the turbulence caused by opening the venturi had dissipated, and that they could therefore use the air pressure reading as the basis for an initial altitude calculation. As it turned out, in a universe this size, it was possible to take two readings from within turbulence and get the same value, so the missile calculated that it was five miles up, and did a power dive into the sand.
Good thing it was only a test.
P. Orin Zack + + + Google returns 64,000,000 matches when you search for political short stories. The first one is mine. Visit http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/ to find out why.
On the other hand, the first alien visitors we get could be some lawyers serving us with papers...
+ + + "Yes sir, Mr. Nagle," I told the debriefing officer, "that's what they said when they handed us the papers."
The five of us had just returned from what was supposed to have been the first stage of a long-delayed Mars colonization project. Had everything gone as planned, we were to have stayed for five years, helping groups of volunteer colonists set up their habitats and showing them how to use all of the special equipment. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. + + +
I once worked on a project where they had a Tempest room to shield the VAX-11/780 and so forth from spies. The room had a heavy metal mechanically operated door which was supposed to latch shut when it closed. Unfortunately, the way the thing was designed, the door bounced open before the latch mechanism could trigger. Our manager solved the problem by carving a backstop from a pink eraser and gluing it in place. Worked great. Then we had a demo for the visiting brass, and they demanded that the eraser be removed, because it was not in the spec. The manager objected, explaining that it made the door seal properly, but was overruled.
As to best vender workaround for a software problem? On a project for NOAA, we reported that the InterData FORTRAN compiler took the bytes it needed for long integers at runtime out of whatever followed the space reserved by it for a short integer. Their response: "It works in New Jersey".
The original guys as the ghosts? How about this...
It's been all this time since the original Ghostbusters committed what were considered war crimes by the ghosts, and they've finally been extradited and brought to the other side through ectoplasmic extraordinary rendition for 'questioning'. A new group of Ghostbusters hack the old gear and figure out how to break through so they can rescue them. The ghosts fight them to a stand-off, and agree to hold a trial for them. It's up to the new ghostbusters to win the case, which means they have to figure out how to subvert the ghostly legal system.
I'd pay top ticket prices to see that, and it would have lots of current-day 'B-Western' cred with analogs of current issues to work off of.
One of the questions that Bank of America uses to verify your identity for helping over the phone is 'Which branch did you open your account at?" But then, for some people, they have a trick answer. For some reason, B of A unilaterally changed that information for my account, and then expect me to give the false answer in order to access my account. They can't explain why it was changed, and are incapable of setting it back to a true answer. I argued this all the way up to the Office of the President, and nobody there would even acknowledge that it was a bad precedent for them to insist that a customer intentionally lie to them.
To make matters worse, their customer service claimed to be able to leave a note instructing agents not to ask that particular question. However, the note doesn't appear on their screen until AFTER they have asked their stupid questions.
P. Orin Zack
+ + + Read my fictional account of corporate incarceration in the Business Short Stories section at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
...every election that these machines have been used for in each of those 34 states. If the machines should not have passed certification, and yet they were certified (were they?) then the agency doing the certification ought to be brought up on charges as well, and any OTHER systems that they certified ought to be open to question as well. This could get you dizzy.
My wife is currently on contract to Microsoft, and works in a building right on NE 40th at the overpass, so I see that mess a lot. The Seattle Times had a map showing the proposed overpass. It connects a road inside of Microsoft Campus on one side of the highway to a road inside campus on the other side by making an angled crossing of Highway 520. According to the story, the road on the overpass will be two lanes, and the overpass will also have foot and bicycle lanes, as well as trees. Knowing Microsoft, the edges will probably be grassed between the trees, so it seem like you never leave their wooded maze of parking lots and connecting streets.
If the road was being built to take traffic from Redmond in general, it would probably be designed without the foliage and have only a sidewalk, like NE 40th. People don't drive through Microsoft as a shortcut, because it's not designed for that sort of traffic, so the only users of the new overpass will be people going between buildings within Microsoft. There are a lot of people working there, so being able to do this without exiting onto normal Redmond roads and crossing at NE 40th will reduce a lot of congestion on that road. The benefits touted for Redmond are a side-effect, and presented as they are for PR reasons. The design of the overpass is to look like it is a part of their campus. The direct benefits will be to Microsoft. I therefore agree that Microsoft should foot the entire bill.
Please note that this project is being brought to light fast on the heels of the 10% pay cuts that were forced on the a- contract employees, so seeing how much money Microsoft will be paying for this fancy overpass, while cutting the wages of people who make their products possible, is especially galling. (The contractors affected by this have started discussing strategy at a website created by one of them, http://www.msratecuts.org/.)
Also, the a- folks who are being moved into at least one of the new buildings this week are going to be working in an even smaller space that they were in. Each contractor gets a 4-foot table and a single shelf. Some of these people have been working with multiple PCs and multiple monitors in order to do their jobs. The new space has been dubbed a slum by some of those who have already seen it.
It seems to me that equating the output of a text-to-speech process to the product of a human reading the text as an audiobook debases the value of the people who provide the voices of so many audiobooks. Now, granted, at least some of the people who read for audiobooks are volunteers helping our libraries, but there are also audiobooks that are read by professional talent. Consequently, this claim equates professional actors, or professional voice actors, with a bit of technology. Shouldn't the actors' union get involved in this fight?
Why limit the reason for having reactive body armor to avoiding incoming projectiles? If you create a body-covering platform that can sense the environment and react to it, you might as well complete the job and have them act as an ad-hoc network, such as the ones in the recent story about the placeable cookie-sized units. Other areas of military readiness would start piling on, too. But like all tech, there's also the risks inherent in such a system, like the one I explored in a story I wrote called 'Infantry Hack'. It starts like this...
+ + +
"If you don't back off right now, I'll tighten your LifeSkin tourniquet the rest of the way. You know I can do it!"
That's Edgar Brannock screaming in my earbud. He's been rocking back and forth behind that grimy warehouse window over there for the past ten minutes. See the glowing smudge in the infra-red overlay of my gunsight? Yeah. That's him. For someone responsible for a major terror attack on New York, you'd think he'd be geek enough to know not to yell at a bugged window.
"I'm not going anywhere, Edgar."
Cripes. Why do these jerks always have to be so melodramatic? It's not like I haven't noticed the auto-constriction band digging into my arm. Targetting someone with something as fuzzy as an IR overlay is hard enough when you can feel your fingers, but doing it with purple sausages is a real thrill. And telling me to back off? Give me a break. They've even given up using that tired ploy in the movies.
"How's you're arm? There are lots of other constriction bands in that thing you're wearing, you know. Want a demo?"
= = =
You can read the whole story (and lots of others) at my short story blog, here:
The idea of having varying levels of endorsement can be used in other contexts as well. For example, when someone offers indirect information, you would be wise to consider how much you trust the person relaying the information when assessing its validity. The more remote the source is, the more you want to suspect the credibility of the report. That's why hearsay evidence is inadmissible in court. But how would this be implemented in daily life? I took a whack at exploring the idea in a short story called "Business Decision". It starts like this...
+ + +
Evan studied the portly man standing in front of the curved dais for a moment before answering.
Jason Sweeney had attended Council meetings before, a silent but imposing presence brooding in the far corner. A curious glance was enough to influence the more convivial constituents in the room, causing them to stay well away lest they become enamored of whatever unsavory business had paid for the custom woven fabrics of his business suit, and led him to wear such uncomfortable-looking shoes. But something was different today. Something had driven him to exchange the shadows at the edge of the room for a brightly lit moment at the center of attention.
"I can offer this Council the means to retire its debts," he had said. "It's just a simple business transaction. What harm can that do?"
So they'll be able to set up covert checkpoints that people walk past without knowing they're being assessed, and they're looking for 'malcontents'? In other words, this is a system for picking out people who are not thrilled with whatever the current government (or junta) is doing, so they can be charged and locked up in those shiny new detention centers that Cheney's company Halliburton have built in the US. That's an easy way to cut down on the possibility of protests in general, and of 'undesirables' at any sort of public or private gathering. Private companies will want to install them in their facilities to monitor employees. This sort of thing has no redeeming social value.
--- I write pointed political short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
Whatever is decided, some industries will gain and others will lose. Those which see that the projects would cost them, either financially or in the strength of their influence, will attempt to change the plans to suit their needs. They will do this by attempting to sway the people making the choices, either with threats or rewards. Congress is their playing field, and they know very well how to manipulate its members. Therefore it seems to me that in order for any plan to stay on course we will also have to intervene in the cycle of manipulation of our government. Any suggestions on how to accomplish that?
Apropos of this documentary (which I just finished watching) and Lawrence Lessig's free eBook, "Free Culture", (mentioned here recently,) which I finished reading a few days ago, I wrote a short story about how more law schools could get into the fight against the content behemoths' flood of legal action against so-called IP pirates. Because we're talking about IP, a lot of people just don't get a visceral connection to what is at stake. Hollywood certainly won't dramatize this issue, but what if some indy filmmakers took a shot at it? In any case, the story, which is called "Intended Consequence", starts like this...
Mitchell Robieri, one of the more senior faculty members at the financially strapped Riverside High, stared at the unfinished sentence on his screen. He'd blasted through the bulk of his presentation speech for tomorrow's meeting on the force of the adrenalin raised from the prospect of confronting State Senator Dubinsky with the results of his tie-breaking vote, and now he was stalled.
"And in conclusion, Senator," he read the paragraph back for the umpteenth time, "I urge you to reconsider the curriculum directives you have mandated for the State Board of Education. Focusing exclusively on the material covered in the federal government's faulty tests serves neither the students, nor the future of this country. Instead, what we need is..."
He leaned back, crossed his arms, and sighed. Something was wrong, but what? Could there be flaw in his logic... a mistake in his research?
Robieri's train of thought was broken abruptly by a dull knocking at the door. He glanced at the laptop's clock: a quarter to one. He wasn't expecting any late visitors, and since he was the only night owl on the floor, it wasn't likely to be a neighbor, either. Frowning at the interruption, he hit save, and set the open laptop on the coffee table.
As he approached the door, he slowed and glanced back over his shoulder. He'd gotten into serious trouble from instigating his students into mounting a protest, and there was ample evidence for conspiracy charges on his laptop. Police sometimes made late-night busts. So did the Feds. It wouldn't be the first time that he'd stuck his neck out to make a political point, but it was the first time his actions could cost him his teaching job. Eight years of the lesser Bush had gotten under his skin, and spawned a healthy crop of paranoia.... To read the whole thing, set your browser to this: http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/short-story-intended-consequence/
P. Orin Zack
P.S.: There's over 70 short stories out there, so poke around, and spread the word if you like what you see.
A suggested enhancement: to use this sort of interface during a presentation, you'd want to enable and disable the thing so you could also use your hands for emphasis while you talk. Perhaps a voice-recognition system listening for a keywords to toggle it. Then it would become a very fluid process to do the presentation, using the screen only when you want to.
+++ JMS is writing a sequel movie to Forbidden Planet. Read my take on the Krell's side of it at: klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/short-story-singularity-of-soul/
What about airports, indeed. An argument could easily be made that any international airport is border territory as well. Now adjust the map to include a circle with a hundred mile radius around every international airport, and you have covered just about everyplace people live in any reasonable number. It wouldn't take much prodding for the Bush Junta to order a roundup of 'domestic dissidents' within this zone, and cart them off to the string of detention centers already built by Haliburton.
--- I write pointed political and business short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
Back in the early days of IBM mainframes, there was a migration from a version of their OS which required the program to specify which tape drive to hang a reel on, to one which picked a drive for you, and thereby managed that resource. One vendor sold an add-on that enabled companies to continue using their old software under the new OS by intercepting those mount messages, which meant supplying it with the text of each one it might encounter. Once the messages were all supplied, the console quieted down and the operator no longer had to deal with programs insisting on a tape drive that was either broken or non-existent.
--- I write pointed political and business short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
The fact that Microsoft tosses the IP info shortly after getting it does not negate the fact that the data is all being shipped to them. That sounds like a very nice setup for any covert agency who wanted to set up a place to monitor browsing behavior and map it back to users. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft doesn't keep the info if someone else does. Could this be happening? How would we know?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm "Philip Zack", and as it happens a person with the same name was caught on video removing anthrax from a military base. Anyone who attempts to learn about me by googling my name will find lots of references to this other guy. I have no idea whether any of the jobs I didn't get were lost because an employer tried to do a quick and dirty background check, and didn't bother to ask whether what they found was me or not. Fortunately, the TSA didn't use google when I last flew, or I would have had a lengthy detour on the way to the aircraft.
Don't I wish. That was on my first software job -- after ditching on a BS in Space Tech near Pad 39B, I entered IT via a bank -- and I got it because it was too distasteful for the higher-paid folks to want to deal with. I have to say that it was instructive, though. Doing that was more practice doing analysis than anything at school.
Back in the IT Pleistocene, I had to document and revise a business program that had been converted by software from Autocoder to COBOL. That conversion produced working code with elements named 'variable 1', 'constant 1' and 'subroutine 1'. So my first step was to use the known inputs and outputs to start naming things. The second step was to use the first wave of named things to deduce what the calculations were doing, and therefore be able to name the results of those calculations. Finally, I could put names to the routines. With all that in place, I was able to document the code, and then figure out how to make the requested changes.
My point is that analysis is important, and unless you really understand what that code in front of you is actually doing, you're likely to make assumptions based on what it was supposed to be doing. Black box programming is as reliable as black box voting.
+ + +
What's at the intersection of H. P. Lovecraft and politics? http://wp.me/p4ZDr-4R
A predictive model of human behavior? Sure. If I recall, Harvard Law states that under carefully controlled conditions, human beings will do what they damn well please.
+ + +
Read "Terrifying Vindication" at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
If you're going to equip AIs with a sense of purpose, you'd better make sure you also permit them to take action based on that motivation. And once you do, you'll also have to deal with the results of where that introspection might lead, especially if you mistreat the AI, even if it is not intentionally. I explored the possibilities of this path in a short story called "Edifice of Lies". It starts like this:
+ + +
Joanna Bjornsen gaped helplessly at the Synthetic holding her at gunpoint in her living room. The cost of fielding Synthetics demanded that they be visually as unique as the flesh and blood people for whom they performed tasks too complex or too hazardous for the usual dumbed-down spawn of the world's corporate-controlled education systems to handle. This one had a vaguely Chinese look, an effect that helped to identify the multinational that had built him, but it was something in his eyes that had fixed her attention.
"You recognize me," he said quietly. His voice was heavily processed, filtered of inflection, and came across as the kind of non-threatening tone that actors often affect in sales vids.
She closed her eyes and swallowed as she realized it wasn't a question. Synthetics operated on a faster time scale than people. In the half-minute she'd been standing here, svi Gilholic had more than enough time to scan the room and fill in any gaps there might have been in his assessment of her from the books and other tell-tales of inner life that she surrounded herself with.
When she opened them again, it was with remorse. Several years earlier, svi Gilholic had engaged the ACLU in a suit seeking equality for Synthetics, using the tenuous legal standing of corporations as legal persons for precedent. The corporate interest group that underwrote the opposition to that case had engaged her to craft the campaign of disinformation adopted by the government and spread by the captive media to slander Synthetics and squash the nascent public support for them.
"Yes. I know who you are."
He motioned for her to sit in a nearby chair. "Then you also know why I've sought you out."
+ + +
Motivated to find out what happens? If you are go read the whole thing, and lots of other stories at http://wp.me/p4ZDr-1l
P. Orin Zack
Getting the entire team, or people across many teams, to act together, can be difficult, as the contractors at Microsoft recently discovered after their pay rate was unilaterally cut 10%. After seeing what became of the protests, I fantasized a bit. The story is called "Contractor Uprising", and it starts like this:
+ + +
Charlie had never thought that his suggestion would be taken literally. Posting it on the forum at the site where the software giant's now-disgruntled ex-employees and ex-contractors gathered after their across-the-board rate cuts were implemented had been as much a throwaway rant as any of the other two dozen posts he'd left there. But something about this one had struck an unexpectedly responsive chord.
+ + +
You can read this, and other stories, here: http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/short-story-contractor-uprising/
P. Orin Zack
Two consecutive identical readings was also considered conclusive proof of valid air pressure data when the venturi on a cruise missile I worked on was opened. The engineers figured that this indicated the turbulence caused by opening the venturi had dissipated, and that they could therefore use the air pressure reading as the basis for an initial altitude calculation. As it turned out, in a universe this size, it was possible to take two readings from within turbulence and get the same value, so the missile calculated that it was five miles up, and did a power dive into the sand.
Good thing it was only a test.
P. Orin Zack
+ + +
Google returns 64,000,000 matches when you search for political short stories. The first one is mine. Visit http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/ to find out why.
The cards have changed over the years, but mine specifically states:
"For social security and tax purposes -- not for identification"
What were the steps that led down the slippery slope of using them for identification?
Wow. A covert reference to one of the greatest storytellers of all time. All I can say to that is "Flick Lives!"
On the other hand, the first alien visitors we get could be some lawyers serving us with papers...
+ + +
"Yes sir, Mr. Nagle," I told the debriefing officer, "that's what they said when they handed us the papers."
The five of us had just returned from what was supposed to have been the first stage of a long-delayed Mars colonization project. Had everything gone as planned, we were to have stayed for five years, helping groups of volunteer colonists set up their habitats and showing them how to use all of the special equipment. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way.
+ + +
The story is called "Site License", and you can read the whole story here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/site-license/
P. Orin Zack
I once worked on a project where they had a Tempest room to shield the VAX-11/780 and so forth from spies. The room had a heavy metal mechanically operated door which was supposed to latch shut when it closed. Unfortunately, the way the thing was designed, the door bounced open before the latch mechanism could trigger. Our manager solved the problem by carving a backstop from a pink eraser and gluing it in place. Worked great. Then we had a demo for the visiting brass, and they demanded that the eraser be removed, because it was not in the spec. The manager objected, explaining that it made the door seal properly, but was overruled.
As to best vender workaround for a software problem? On a project for NOAA, we reported that the InterData FORTRAN compiler took the bytes it needed for long integers at runtime out of whatever followed the space reserved by it for a short integer. Their response: "It works in New Jersey".
P. Orin Zack
+ + +
Read my short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
The original guys as the ghosts? How about this...
It's been all this time since the original Ghostbusters committed what were considered war crimes by the ghosts, and they've finally been extradited and brought to the other side through ectoplasmic extraordinary rendition for 'questioning'. A new group of Ghostbusters hack the old gear and figure out how to break through so they can rescue them. The ghosts fight them to a stand-off, and agree to hold a trial for them. It's up to the new ghostbusters to win the case, which means they have to figure out how to subvert the ghostly legal system.
I'd pay top ticket prices to see that, and it would have lots of current-day 'B-Western' cred with analogs of current issues to work off of.
P. Orin Zack
---
Read my short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
One of the questions that Bank of America uses to verify your identity for helping over the phone is 'Which branch did you open your account at?" But then, for some people, they have a trick answer. For some reason, B of A unilaterally changed that information for my account, and then expect me to give the false answer in order to access my account. They can't explain why it was changed, and are incapable of setting it back to a true answer. I argued this all the way up to the Office of the President, and nobody there would even acknowledge that it was a bad precedent for them to insist that a customer intentionally lie to them.
To make matters worse, their customer service claimed to be able to leave a note instructing agents not to ask that particular question. However, the note doesn't appear on their screen until AFTER they have asked their stupid questions.
P. Orin Zack
+ + +
Read my fictional account of corporate incarceration in the Business Short Stories section at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
...every election that these machines have been used for in each of those 34 states. If the machines should not have passed certification, and yet they were certified (were they?) then the agency doing the certification ought to be brought up on charges as well, and any OTHER systems that they certified ought to be open to question as well. This could get you dizzy.
---
Read my political short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
My wife is currently on contract to Microsoft, and works in a building right on NE 40th at the overpass, so I see that mess a lot. The Seattle Times had a map showing the proposed overpass. It connects a road inside of Microsoft Campus on one side of the highway to a road inside campus on the other side by making an angled crossing of Highway 520. According to the story, the road on the overpass will be two lanes, and the overpass will also have foot and bicycle lanes, as well as trees. Knowing Microsoft, the edges will probably be grassed between the trees, so it seem like you never leave their wooded maze of parking lots and connecting streets.
If the road was being built to take traffic from Redmond in general, it would probably be designed without the foliage and have only a sidewalk, like NE 40th. People don't drive through Microsoft as a shortcut, because it's not designed for that sort of traffic, so the only users of the new overpass will be people going between buildings within Microsoft. There are a lot of people working there, so being able to do this without exiting onto normal Redmond roads and crossing at NE 40th will reduce a lot of congestion on that road. The benefits touted for Redmond are a side-effect, and presented as they are for PR reasons. The design of the overpass is to look like it is a part of their campus. The direct benefits will be to Microsoft. I therefore agree that Microsoft should foot the entire bill.
Please note that this project is being brought to light fast on the heels of the 10% pay cuts that were forced on the a- contract employees, so seeing how much money Microsoft will be paying for this fancy overpass, while cutting the wages of people who make their products possible, is especially galling. (The contractors affected by this have started discussing strategy at a website created by one of them, http://www.msratecuts.org/.)
Also, the a- folks who are being moved into at least one of the new buildings this week are going to be working in an even smaller space that they were in. Each contractor gets a 4-foot table and a single shelf. Some of these people have been working with multiple PCs and multiple monitors in order to do their jobs. The new space has been dubbed a slum by some of those who have already seen it.
---
Read about how a fictional job action might go down at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/short-story-contractor-uprising/.
It seems to me that equating the output of a text-to-speech process to the product of a human reading the text as an audiobook debases the value of the people who provide the voices of so many audiobooks. Now, granted, at least some of the people who read for audiobooks are volunteers helping our libraries, but there are also audiobooks that are read by professional talent. Consequently, this claim equates professional actors, or professional voice actors, with a bit of technology. Shouldn't the actors' union get involved in this fight?
P. Orin Zack
- - -
I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/
Why limit the reason for having reactive body armor to avoiding incoming projectiles? If you create a body-covering platform that can sense the environment and react to it, you might as well complete the job and have them act as an ad-hoc network, such as the ones in the recent story about the placeable cookie-sized units. Other areas of military readiness would start piling on, too. But like all tech, there's also the risks inherent in such a system, like the one I explored in a story I wrote called 'Infantry Hack'. It starts like this...
+ + +
"If you don't back off right now, I'll tighten your LifeSkin tourniquet the rest of the way. You know I can do it!"
That's Edgar Brannock screaming in my earbud. He's been rocking back and forth behind that grimy warehouse window over there for the past ten minutes. See the glowing smudge in the infra-red overlay of my gunsight? Yeah. That's him. For someone responsible for a major terror attack on New York, you'd think he'd be geek enough to know not to yell at a bugged window.
"I'm not going anywhere, Edgar."
Cripes. Why do these jerks always have to be so melodramatic? It's not like I haven't noticed the auto-constriction band digging into my arm. Targetting someone with something as fuzzy as an IR overlay is hard enough when you can feel your fingers, but doing it with purple sausages is a real thrill. And telling me to back off? Give me a break. They've even given up using that tired ploy in the movies.
"How's you're arm? There are lots of other constriction bands in that thing you're wearing, you know. Want a demo?"
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You can read the whole story (and lots of others) at my short story blog, here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/06/12/short-story-infantry-hack/
P. Orin Zack
The idea of having varying levels of endorsement can be used in other contexts as well. For example, when someone offers indirect information, you would be wise to consider how much you trust the person relaying the information when assessing its validity. The more remote the source is, the more you want to suspect the credibility of the report. That's why hearsay evidence is inadmissible in court. But how would this be implemented in daily life? I took a whack at exploring the idea in a short story called "Business Decision". It starts like this...
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Evan studied the portly man standing in front of the curved dais for a moment before answering.
Jason Sweeney had attended Council meetings before, a silent but imposing presence brooding in the far corner. A curious glance was enough to influence the more convivial constituents in the room, causing them to stay well away lest they become enamored of whatever unsavory business had paid for the custom woven fabrics of his business suit, and led him to wear such uncomfortable-looking shoes. But something was different today. Something had driven him to exchange the shadows at the edge of the room for a brightly lit moment at the center of attention.
"I can offer this Council the means to retire its debts," he had said. "It's just a simple business transaction. What harm can that do?"
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You can read the whole story here:
klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/short-story-business-decision/
P. Orin Zack
So they'll be able to set up covert checkpoints that people walk past without knowing they're being assessed, and they're looking for 'malcontents'? In other words, this is a system for picking out people who are not thrilled with whatever the current government (or junta) is doing, so they can be charged and locked up in those shiny new detention centers that Cheney's company Halliburton have built in the US. That's an easy way to cut down on the possibility of protests in general, and of 'undesirables' at any sort of public or private gathering. Private companies will want to install them in their facilities to monitor employees. This sort of thing has no redeeming social value.
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I write pointed political short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
Whatever is decided, some industries will gain and others will lose. Those which see that the projects would cost them, either financially or in the strength of their influence, will attempt to change the plans to suit their needs. They will do this by attempting to sway the people making the choices, either with threats or rewards. Congress is their playing field, and they know very well how to manipulate its members. Therefore it seems to me that in order for any plan to stay on course we will also have to intervene in the cycle of manipulation of our government. Any suggestions on how to accomplish that?
Apropos of this documentary (which I just finished watching) and Lawrence Lessig's free eBook, "Free Culture", (mentioned here recently,) which I finished reading a few days ago, I wrote a short story about how more law schools could get into the fight against the content behemoths' flood of legal action against so-called IP pirates. Because we're talking about IP, a lot of people just don't get a visceral connection to what is at stake. Hollywood certainly won't dramatize this issue, but what if some indy filmmakers took a shot at it? In any case, the story, which is called "Intended Consequence", starts like this...
Mitchell Robieri, one of the more senior faculty members at the financially strapped Riverside High, stared at the unfinished sentence on his screen. He'd blasted through the bulk of his presentation speech for tomorrow's meeting on the force of the adrenalin raised from the prospect of confronting State Senator Dubinsky with the results of his tie-breaking vote, and now he was stalled.
"And in conclusion, Senator," he read the paragraph back for the umpteenth time, "I urge you to reconsider the curriculum directives you have mandated for the State Board of Education. Focusing exclusively on the material covered in the federal government's faulty tests serves neither the students, nor the future of this country. Instead, what we need is..."
He leaned back, crossed his arms, and sighed. Something was wrong, but what? Could there be flaw in his logic... a mistake in his research?
Robieri's train of thought was broken abruptly by a dull knocking at the door. He glanced at the laptop's clock: a quarter to one. He wasn't expecting any late visitors, and since he was the only night owl on the floor, it wasn't likely to be a neighbor, either. Frowning at the interruption, he hit save, and set the open laptop on the coffee table.
As he approached the door, he slowed and glanced back over his shoulder. He'd gotten into serious trouble from instigating his students into mounting a protest, and there was ample evidence for conspiracy charges on his laptop. Police sometimes made late-night busts. So did the Feds. It wouldn't be the first time that he'd stuck his neck out to make a political point, but it was the first time his actions could cost him his teaching job. Eight years of the lesser Bush had gotten under his skin, and spawned a healthy crop of paranoia. ... To read the whole thing, set your browser to this:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/short-story-intended-consequence/
P. Orin Zack
P.S.: There's over 70 short stories out there, so poke around, and spread the word if you like what you see.
A suggested enhancement: to use this sort of interface during a presentation, you'd want to enable and disable the thing so you could also use your hands for emphasis while you talk. Perhaps a voice-recognition system listening for a keywords to toggle it. Then it would become a very fluid process to do the presentation, using the screen only when you want to.
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JMS is writing a sequel movie to Forbidden Planet.
Read my take on the Krell's side of it at:
klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/short-story-singularity-of-soul/
What about airports, indeed. An argument could easily be made that any international airport is border territory as well. Now adjust the map to include a circle with a hundred mile radius around every international airport, and you have covered just about everyplace people live in any reasonable number. It wouldn't take much prodding for the Bush Junta to order a roundup of 'domestic dissidents' within this zone, and cart them off to the string of detention centers already built by Haliburton.
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I write pointed political and business short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
This seriously dates me, but...
Back in the early days of IBM mainframes, there was a migration from a version of their OS which required the program to specify which tape drive to hang a reel on, to one which picked a drive for you, and thereby managed that resource. One vendor sold an add-on that enabled companies to continue using their old software under the new OS by intercepting those mount messages, which meant supplying it with the text of each one it might encounter. Once the messages were all supplied, the console quieted down and the operator no longer had to deal with programs insisting on a tape drive that was either broken or non-existent.
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I write pointed political and business short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com
The fact that Microsoft tosses the IP info shortly after getting it does not negate the fact that the data is all being shipped to them. That sounds like a very nice setup for any covert agency who wanted to set up a place to monitor browsing behavior and map it back to users. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft doesn't keep the info if someone else does. Could this be happening? How would we know?
P. Orin Zack
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I write pointed political and business short stories at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/