Yes certain companies do use their content providers to promote their products and their company beliefs over the beliefs of the founders. This can be seen a lot in the UK with the bias shown by the national press following their owners coporate whims (for a good example look as Rupert Murdock owned press and China.)
However the article forbodes of disaster and the community dying. Many companys allow their content arm independence from propaganda and spin and/. has a better than good chance of maintaining this with the current team's ideological stance. Sure the content is biased towards the founders choice of contributions, but not to the owners, and as long as the editorial team do not leave I for one feel it would stay this way.
ALso I feel that the/. comminity would smell out any bias towards VA over other distributers and developers and that would be when it loses it's high standing in the open source community.
As I have seen in my brief time here there is a lot of controversy surrounding your opinion as you are considered not geek enough by a lot of people to comment on technological subjects. As somebody from social science and subcultural research who has become one of the techs I find the reflexivity of your situation interesting in as much as you you appear to have the roles of actor, commentator and outsider all at the same time. This to me is a very unique situation to be in but...
What do you feel your foray into the 'geek' community has taught you and what do you feel you have given back?
Ok, but lets review principles of governtment Mr. Katz. For a democracy to exist, there must be a leader. As it stands, the net is far far far from a democracy. It is, at best, anarchy in action.
Democracy needs a leader??? Maybe with what we misname democracy today whereby we elect temporary rulers and dictators to spend their time in office. THe closest to democracy is the swis where consensus and referendum are the ways in which decisions are made.
One of the things I keep saying with the commercialisation of Linux is that it will lose it's appeal to a lot of up and coming non-commercial coders who will look to other products as the coporations take on linux. There will be a hard core of people who stick with it for love, those who milk the cash cow and others who see the romance dying looking to new and exciting underground projects where they can develope and hack code for fun rather than for others gain.
Also I think the issue is respect for the facilities. Having done the uni thing and having friends who now work as admins at them the bandwith is becoming more and more of a problem. My uni guys restrected bandwidth which was good (if frustrating) because even then most of it was taken up with non academic e-mail lists and downloading illegal material. They weren't bothered about small amounts, but most people abused the bandwith and complained when it got cut. Another good example is where at a uni they are allowing students to have their own servers for local distrubition, etc., but someone has used this privilage to post rascist and homophobic attacks to uni chat rooms and around JANET without a trace being possible (they know the box but can not pin point the individual). These are the fist to complain when their extra privilages get revoked, but who are abusing what is primarily an academic resource...
THere probably is ging to be a lot of Anti-Microsoft argument here on this thread. But this move by them could be a positive thing. Firstly it is recognition which could work to the communities advantage. Most of the world relies on Microsoft production at the workdesk and will not move to Linux (or toehr OS's) until Microsoft start creating products for it. Whether or not this is sound practice is another story, but use of office (for instance) is pretty much a self fulfilling dream for MS as people use it because it is used elsewhere. If MS start making products for Linux it should help increase it's legetimace in the workplace and thus give it footholds where it may not have been. Anyway, jsut a few thoughts on the fly.
I think a communal concept is less important than the way in which electronic communications has re-defined the concept of community. Until the era of mass technology communitys were on the whole geographically based. This spread out with mass communications media, but the real revolution has been the growth of the net and the ease atwhich communication now comes to us. It has been pointed out that the demographic of net users is still very narrow, but it is broadening all the time. Anyway, the point being that withthis new communications technology community is no longer about physical geography, but about intellectual bonds based around interest and subject. I think this can only be a good thing as ideas can now become the ling between groups and this can allow those idear to evolve at greater rates as people can get together on it. The Open SOurce community is a good example of this. Sociatially disparate people have come together on a community with a basis in an intellectual concept and this has allowed the rapid growth of both that concept and the community that backs it.. Anyway, must go home and read the works on virtual communities...
Firstly, a sceme to allow companies to send electronic content to near point of delivery printers. Electronic information can be sent via e-mail or fax. The only advanage of this may be to areas where these services are not available, but a scheme of telecottages would probably be a better answer. As for attaching e-mail address to addresses, this will be a very difficult one to impliment. It could be done with unique addy's for all locations, but this would lead to all the peole who had the potential to use it to have dual e-mail addresses. Alternatively I guess people could register their e-mail with the postal service and have that attached, but the advantage would be minimal, they could send documents electronically, but it would only be possible if it is a paper based medium and would the scanning, etc. time be worth it... Maybe with a globalised partnership between postal services. Although again, those who are online have e-mail and they can contact others on line with that... I think in many ways this is a company groping for ideas rather than one with a direction.
You assert that the internet is genderless and colourless, but in reality the majority of people are white, young, male, technically literate and english speaking, and are assumed to be so unless they state otherwise. I agree with the point about freedom of speach and annonomous posting, but the more people abuse that privilage, and it is a privilage granted rahter than a right, the close we get to losing it. It is a very vocal minority who abuse their freedom, and unfortunately, as in life, they are the ones who cause the legislation that affects us all. There are strong links between this issue and juvinile crime. In the UK at least the majority of crime is carried out by 14-21 year olds and the majority of that by a hardcore minority who are out of control and flaunt their freedoms. THey will legislate against this abuse and it will affect all others in this social group and others in the country. Increase the IQ of these criminals and give them technosavvy and you have the demographic of the majority of people who abuse our freedoms on the web... Is there a solution? I have a thick skin, many newcomers don't yet and shy away....
I think one thing that needs to be notes is what is actually meant by freedom. Freedom is usually interpreted as peoples ability to do what they want and this has often formed the basis for proto-anarchistic groups and social reform movements. The internet is seen by many to be this kind of anarchistic community where people can do what they want regardless of consequences, national boundaries, etc. However freedom is intrisincly tied in with responsibility for ones actions. If one curtails anothers freedon you have in fact curtailed your own and those of the community. Flaming is an example of freedon being used to censor and control the content of an area. As newbie many years ago I learned the hard way that many flamers refuse to listen to arguement as they cling to their self reichousness under the banner of freedon, not allowing others to infringe on their superiority and teretory. I was fortunate in that I found groups of adults on the net who were mature enough to listen as much as they talked and I perservered and am still about. One of the consequences we are seeing of this flagrant abuse of the freedom given to users of the net is a movement to censor and curtail those rights. Oddly enough the people who dislike this the most are the ones who are on the whole creating the situation where this is necessary... All one can hope for is that these people grow up and become responsible nettizens, although it would lay money on the fact that there will be another batch who come through. The best hope we have is that there will eb a new generation of people coming through who have used the net since they could type and they will grow up realising the resource they have and be able to understand what it can be used for.
This is going to be a great stock lifter for all these companies in this market. It is a great product, but even more so, to the big technologists it will be another bandwagon. + They'll be able to get Linux into their marketing more easily which again will lift their stock. There are myriad companies out there trying to work linux into their advertising and this will go the same way. Talking of which it appears we have just sold our coporate soul (what we had left anyway) to Freeserve...
I think so many things get tied into flaming whereas it is actually quite a diverse thing. On the one hand it is a tool to bully people into conforming to the rules of a certain forum. On the other it is a tool of to try to beat down an arguement without formulating a well thought out discource. In many ways it is an emotional response when used as a one off with people often typing before they really think about it, in many ways flaming is the net's equivilent of a bar room brawl where people have no reason just focus and a need to hit out at someone. I have been thinking about this a bit as I tend to be pretty attractive to general purpose flamers as I don't pull punches in arguement and came to a number of hypotheses. As has been stated this form of discourse is pretty unique to the net. Could one of these reasons be that the people who participate in these forums tend to be those who in general used their minds rather than their fists whilst growing up and were often on the losing side through school, etc and now there is an environment where the mind is all and therefore they can vent some of their anger and frustration on others. This would also account for the age of the people involved as they either mature out of it or just get the frustration out of their system. Or maybe it is the extension of what we all do when we are pissed off, wishing and often saying 'just FOAD' although now this mutter becomes a broadcastable signal, often sent on the spur of the moment? Anyway, I ramble and probably digress. Maybe I will hit the books tonight to see what they say... Social Science Geek MkII
As a big player in the Linux field which is growing at an exponential rate both in terms of product and visibilities what do you think, from your position, needs to be done about the exploitation of the markets through IPO's building up hype (examples of which seem to becoming more regular as the stakes rise out of proportion to the knowledge of the financial markets.) Do you think there is a solution and could this damage the reputation of what until now has been (and still is in the majority of cases) a solid product backed by reputable and honest players in the market?
The problem with this is the sensiticity of areas of skin. Braille is readable as it is relatively simple combinations of few dots in recognisable patterns. With more complex patterns and especially interpretable ones this becomes more difficut and anything over very large blocks of contrast will be impossible to interpret. On the other hand, the electrical stimulation of the visual centers offers greater potential for drtail and resolution, maybe with possibilities for shade with different levels of electrical signal. I remember seeing some stuff about this research a couple of years ago when they were talking about how far they could push the image on the implants and the greatest limit was the technology needed to create the more complex arrays (100*100+) AFAIR there was also a query about how much detail the centres could interpret, but in many ways this would be the only way of giving sight to those who's retina has no communication with the visual centres. For other forms of blindness and focal problems there is the possiblity of projecting onto thte retina, which is getting closer to a solution by the day....
I can see the point of having it as part of a course based around interpretations of reality, maybe with Total Recall, Blade Runner, etc. If these were used as a basis for a look at the nature of reality and the way technology can change our perception and therefore alter the actual fabric of reality as experiences by the social actors. But as a course on it's own, I think it will be especially lightweight academically. As media there are more thought provoking/intellectually stimulating films out there. I suspect this is more of a publicity stunt for the college involved due to poor student numbers and therefore funding difficulties. Probably about on a par with the Madonna studies and the most lightweight of all degrees in the UK 'Punk Studies' which had for the dissertation the option on writing a song... Although I am a social science geek...
I find it interesting following the recent vitriol surround privacy, freedom and the rights of people needing to be maintained under the state that people actually advocate the forcing of a private (well, shareholder owned anyway) company to be fragmented by the government. So freedom is only the right of certain circumstances. Anyway on another note entirely, this isn't really going to change anything. Short of appointing government senctioned overseers and managers the company will still be able to continue to develope integrated products to a centralised strategy with monopoly control over tehir areas. In fact it may even strenghten MS's control over those markets, as although there will be a splitting of capital they will still dominate and will be able to focus more clearly on their individual tasks. Creating 3 seperate pseudo-monopolies will still elave them with market share. The only real answer is promotion of alternatives and looking at why the previous competitors failed whilst MS was slowly gaining it's dominance and trying to not make the same mistakes. + monopoly regulation is a bit of a non starter in gereral, it's only real power is stopping mergers, although in the UK the MMC is one of the most useless organisations of it's kind...
The soil samples were used in as the justification for the attack, although they could have come from fertilizer or as a legitimate chemical byproduct. Pity the US military machine didn't speak to the British and American designers of the plant who have spoken on record on British TV that the plant had no weapons making capabilities...
Most news is propaganda biased towards the viewpoint of somebody or other. Compare the coverage of the gulf war from the US and Iraqi perspectives. + I can imagine the US news machine trying to justify when they blew up an african medicine factory which was probably reported as a chemical weapons factory... Reality is that which the majority are told to believe.
This was a knee jerk reaction rather than a thought our piece of legislation. Although handguns have little or no practical application outside of shooting people (which is their only primary purpose...) Although it did ruin our Olympic shooting teams practicing.
I'm suprised that he didn't book you for having an overladen vehical too. Seriously, if you believe that you should be allowed to drive any speed that you like, would you extend this to the people who drive 120+ MPH on the roads as they regulary do here on the motorways. We have a real problem with speeding in the UK, the limit on Motorways is 70MPH but most people do 100 because they think they are good enough drivers. + Remember that the faster you go the more likely you are to be involved in an accident/fatality. However In my entire life I have only met a couple of dozen people who I think can truely control a car at that speed, and two of those were professional racers. We have moved to digital rather than film cameras in this country so that they are always active and never run out, with a chance of losing your licence for speeding. I've been in a car that lost control at 90 MPH and only jsut survived due to very good ABS. We were lucky there were no other cars on the road, otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this. Yeah, bitch about getting fined, but try to realise why speed is bad.
Can't remember who did the bending, but the guy set it up at his stooges favourite restaurant and had special spoons put in place and used a reactive chemical. The oil and chemical companies money came from dowsing, which ironically anyone can do easily, just he got them to pay a lot of money for him to do it. Randi probably used a reactive chemical to weaken the spoon, which does take a bit of preparation. For good references and information read Colin Wilson's Poltergeist which goes into these areas, and although flawed in many ways, he takes a critical stance on the examples and higlights some interesting examples of phenemonen.
Well, he may be a fake, but then I would keep that news quiet from the oil and mineral companies that hired him during his 'quiet' years and who's pay has brought him a huge house and the need never to work again.... Also, the only time anyone replicated the spoonbending it took about 4 days to set up the scam.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes certain companies do use their content providers to promote their products and their company beliefs over the beliefs of the founders. This can be seen a lot in the UK with the bias shown by the national press following their owners coporate whims (for a good example look as Rupert Murdock owned press and China.)
However the article forbodes of disaster and the community dying. Many companys allow their content arm independence from propaganda and spin and /. has a better than good chance of maintaining this with the current team's ideological stance. Sure the content is biased towards the founders choice of contributions, but not to the owners, and as long as the editorial team do not leave I for one feel it would stay this way.
ALso I feel that the /. comminity would smell out any bias towards VA over other distributers and developers and that would be when it loses it's high standing in the open source community.
What do you feel your foray into the 'geek' community has taught you and what do you feel you have given back?
Democracy needs a leader??? Maybe with what we misname democracy today whereby we elect temporary rulers and dictators to spend their time in office. THe closest to democracy is the swis where consensus and referendum are the ways in which decisions are made.
Yes, but they will have the controling interest in the partnership.
One of the things I keep saying with the commercialisation of Linux is that it will lose it's appeal to a lot of up and coming non-commercial coders who will look to other products as the coporations take on linux. There will be a hard core of people who stick with it for love, those who milk the cash cow and others who see the romance dying looking to new and exciting underground projects where they can develope and hack code for fun rather than for others gain.
Also I think the issue is respect for the facilities. Having done the uni thing and having friends who now work as admins at them the bandwith is becoming more and more of a problem. My uni guys restrected bandwidth which was good (if frustrating) because even then most of it was taken up with non academic e-mail lists and downloading illegal material. They weren't bothered about small amounts, but most people abused the bandwith and complained when it got cut. Another good example is where at a uni they are allowing students to have their own servers for local distrubition, etc., but someone has used this privilage to post rascist and homophobic attacks to uni chat rooms and around JANET without a trace being possible (they know the box but can not pin point the individual). These are the fist to complain when their extra privilages get revoked, but who are abusing what is primarily an academic resource...
THere probably is ging to be a lot of Anti-Microsoft argument here on this thread. But this move by them could be a positive thing. Firstly it is recognition which could work to the communities advantage. Most of the world relies on Microsoft production at the workdesk and will not move to Linux (or toehr OS's) until Microsoft start creating products for it. Whether or not this is sound practice is another story, but use of office (for instance) is pretty much a self fulfilling dream for MS as people use it because it is used elsewhere. If MS start making products for Linux it should help increase it's legetimace in the workplace and thus give it footholds where it may not have been. Anyway, jsut a few thoughts on the fly.
They would if they hadn't been around for a couple of years with no body really taking them up as a standard.
I think a communal concept is less important than the way in which electronic communications has re-defined the concept of community. Until the era of mass technology communitys were on the whole geographically based. This spread out with mass communications media, but the real revolution has been the growth of the net and the ease atwhich communication now comes to us. It has been pointed out that the demographic of net users is still very narrow, but it is broadening all the time. Anyway, the point being that withthis new communications technology community is no longer about physical geography, but about intellectual bonds based around interest and subject. I think this can only be a good thing as ideas can now become the ling between groups and this can allow those idear to evolve at greater rates as people can get together on it. The Open SOurce community is a good example of this. Sociatially disparate people have come together on a community with a basis in an intellectual concept and this has allowed the rapid growth of both that concept and the community that backs it.. Anyway, must go home and read the works on virtual communities...
Firstly, a sceme to allow companies to send electronic content to near point of delivery printers. Electronic information can be sent via e-mail or fax. The only advanage of this may be to areas where these services are not available, but a scheme of telecottages would probably be a better answer. As for attaching e-mail address to addresses, this will be a very difficult one to impliment. It could be done with unique addy's for all locations, but this would lead to all the peole who had the potential to use it to have dual e-mail addresses. Alternatively I guess people could register their e-mail with the postal service and have that attached, but the advantage would be minimal, they could send documents electronically, but it would only be possible if it is a paper based medium and would the scanning, etc. time be worth it... Maybe with a globalised partnership between postal services. Although again, those who are online have e-mail and they can contact others on line with that... I think in many ways this is a company groping for ideas rather than one with a direction.
You assert that the internet is genderless and colourless, but in reality the majority of people are white, young, male, technically literate and english speaking, and are assumed to be so unless they state otherwise. I agree with the point about freedom of speach and annonomous posting, but the more people abuse that privilage, and it is a privilage granted rahter than a right, the close we get to losing it. It is a very vocal minority who abuse their freedom, and unfortunately, as in life, they are the ones who cause the legislation that affects us all. There are strong links between this issue and juvinile crime. In the UK at least the majority of crime is carried out by 14-21 year olds and the majority of that by a hardcore minority who are out of control and flaunt their freedoms. THey will legislate against this abuse and it will affect all others in this social group and others in the country. Increase the IQ of these criminals and give them technosavvy and you have the demographic of the majority of people who abuse our freedoms on the web... Is there a solution? I have a thick skin, many newcomers don't yet and shy away....
Abuse of freedom is simply using that freedom to curtail somebody elses right to the same.
I think one thing that needs to be notes is what is actually meant by freedom. Freedom is usually interpreted as peoples ability to do what they want and this has often formed the basis for proto-anarchistic groups and social reform movements. The internet is seen by many to be this kind of anarchistic community where people can do what they want regardless of consequences, national boundaries, etc. However freedom is intrisincly tied in with responsibility for ones actions. If one curtails anothers freedon you have in fact curtailed your own and those of the community. Flaming is an example of freedon being used to censor and control the content of an area. As newbie many years ago I learned the hard way that many flamers refuse to listen to arguement as they cling to their self reichousness under the banner of freedon, not allowing others to infringe on their superiority and teretory. I was fortunate in that I found groups of adults on the net who were mature enough to listen as much as they talked and I perservered and am still about. One of the consequences we are seeing of this flagrant abuse of the freedom given to users of the net is a movement to censor and curtail those rights. Oddly enough the people who dislike this the most are the ones who are on the whole creating the situation where this is necessary... All one can hope for is that these people grow up and become responsible nettizens, although it would lay money on the fact that there will be another batch who come through. The best hope we have is that there will eb a new generation of people coming through who have used the net since they could type and they will grow up realising the resource they have and be able to understand what it can be used for.
This is going to be a great stock lifter for all these companies in this market. It is a great product, but even more so, to the big technologists it will be another bandwagon. + They'll be able to get Linux into their marketing more easily which again will lift their stock. There are myriad companies out there trying to work linux into their advertising and this will go the same way. Talking of which it appears we have just sold our coporate soul (what we had left anyway) to Freeserve...
I think so many things get tied into flaming whereas it is actually quite a diverse thing. On the one hand it is a tool to bully people into conforming to the rules of a certain forum. On the other it is a tool of to try to beat down an arguement without formulating a well thought out discource. In many ways it is an emotional response when used as a one off with people often typing before they really think about it, in many ways flaming is the net's equivilent of a bar room brawl where people have no reason just focus and a need to hit out at someone. I have been thinking about this a bit as I tend to be pretty attractive to general purpose flamers as I don't pull punches in arguement and came to a number of hypotheses. As has been stated this form of discourse is pretty unique to the net. Could one of these reasons be that the people who participate in these forums tend to be those who in general used their minds rather than their fists whilst growing up and were often on the losing side through school, etc and now there is an environment where the mind is all and therefore they can vent some of their anger and frustration on others. This would also account for the age of the people involved as they either mature out of it or just get the frustration out of their system. Or maybe it is the extension of what we all do when we are pissed off, wishing and often saying 'just FOAD' although now this mutter becomes a broadcastable signal, often sent on the spur of the moment? Anyway, I ramble and probably digress. Maybe I will hit the books tonight to see what they say... Social Science Geek MkII
As a big player in the Linux field which is growing at an exponential rate both in terms of product and visibilities what do you think, from your position, needs to be done about the exploitation of the markets through IPO's building up hype (examples of which seem to becoming more regular as the stakes rise out of proportion to the knowledge of the financial markets.) Do you think there is a solution and could this damage the reputation of what until now has been (and still is in the majority of cases) a solid product backed by reputable and honest players in the market?
The problem with this is the sensiticity of areas of skin. Braille is readable as it is relatively simple combinations of few dots in recognisable patterns. With more complex patterns and especially interpretable ones this becomes more difficut and anything over very large blocks of contrast will be impossible to interpret. On the other hand, the electrical stimulation of the visual centers offers greater potential for drtail and resolution, maybe with possibilities for shade with different levels of electrical signal. I remember seeing some stuff about this research a couple of years ago when they were talking about how far they could push the image on the implants and the greatest limit was the technology needed to create the more complex arrays (100*100+) AFAIR there was also a query about how much detail the centres could interpret, but in many ways this would be the only way of giving sight to those who's retina has no communication with the visual centres. For other forms of blindness and focal problems there is the possiblity of projecting onto thte retina, which is getting closer to a solution by the day....
I can see the point of having it as part of a course based around interpretations of reality, maybe with Total Recall, Blade Runner, etc. If these were used as a basis for a look at the nature of reality and the way technology can change our perception and therefore alter the actual fabric of reality as experiences by the social actors. But as a course on it's own, I think it will be especially lightweight academically. As media there are more thought provoking/intellectually stimulating films out there. I suspect this is more of a publicity stunt for the college involved due to poor student numbers and therefore funding difficulties. Probably about on a par with the Madonna studies and the most lightweight of all degrees in the UK 'Punk Studies' which had for the dissertation the option on writing a song... Although I am a social science geek...
I find it interesting following the recent vitriol surround privacy, freedom and the rights of people needing to be maintained under the state that people actually advocate the forcing of a private (well, shareholder owned anyway) company to be fragmented by the government. So freedom is only the right of certain circumstances. Anyway on another note entirely, this isn't really going to change anything. Short of appointing government senctioned overseers and managers the company will still be able to continue to develope integrated products to a centralised strategy with monopoly control over tehir areas. In fact it may even strenghten MS's control over those markets, as although there will be a splitting of capital they will still dominate and will be able to focus more clearly on their individual tasks. Creating 3 seperate pseudo-monopolies will still elave them with market share. The only real answer is promotion of alternatives and looking at why the previous competitors failed whilst MS was slowly gaining it's dominance and trying to not make the same mistakes. + monopoly regulation is a bit of a non starter in gereral, it's only real power is stopping mergers, although in the UK the MMC is one of the most useless organisations of it's kind...
The soil samples were used in as the justification for the attack, although they could have come from fertilizer or as a legitimate chemical byproduct. Pity the US military machine didn't speak to the British and American designers of the plant who have spoken on record on British TV that the plant had no weapons making capabilities...
Most news is propaganda biased towards the viewpoint of somebody or other. Compare the coverage of the gulf war from the US and Iraqi perspectives. + I can imagine the US news machine trying to justify when they blew up an african medicine factory which was probably reported as a chemical weapons factory... Reality is that which the majority are told to believe.
This was a knee jerk reaction rather than a thought our piece of legislation. Although handguns have little or no practical application outside of shooting people (which is their only primary purpose...) Although it did ruin our Olympic shooting teams practicing.
I'm suprised that he didn't book you for having an overladen vehical too. Seriously, if you believe that you should be allowed to drive any speed that you like, would you extend this to the people who drive 120+ MPH on the roads as they regulary do here on the motorways. We have a real problem with speeding in the UK, the limit on Motorways is 70MPH but most people do 100 because they think they are good enough drivers. + Remember that the faster you go the more likely you are to be involved in an accident/fatality. However In my entire life I have only met a couple of dozen people who I think can truely control a car at that speed, and two of those were professional racers. We have moved to digital rather than film cameras in this country so that they are always active and never run out, with a chance of losing your licence for speeding. I've been in a car that lost control at 90 MPH and only jsut survived due to very good ABS. We were lucky there were no other cars on the road, otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this. Yeah, bitch about getting fined, but try to realise why speed is bad.
Can't remember who did the bending, but the guy set it up at his stooges favourite restaurant and had special spoons put in place and used a reactive chemical. The oil and chemical companies money came from dowsing, which ironically anyone can do easily, just he got them to pay a lot of money for him to do it. Randi probably used a reactive chemical to weaken the spoon, which does take a bit of preparation. For good references and information read Colin Wilson's Poltergeist which goes into these areas, and although flawed in many ways, he takes a critical stance on the examples and higlights some interesting examples of phenemonen.
Well, he may be a fake, but then I would keep that news quiet from the oil and mineral companies that hired him during his 'quiet' years and who's pay has brought him a huge house and the need never to work again.... Also, the only time anyone replicated the spoonbending it took about 4 days to set up the scam.