examples from 2600 decision of prot. and unprot.
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
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· Score: 1
* First Amendment does not protect instructions for violating the tax laws
* First Amendment protects instructions for engaging in a dangerous sex act
* First Amendment does not protect instructions for building an explosive device
* Instructions, do-it-yourself manuals, [and] recipes are all speech
Thanks for reminding me! I read your message, dashed down to the polls, and they were closed. Closed sometime this morning apparently, with no word on when or if they'll reopen.
NY State seems to be generally overreacting around here. I work at the state univ. at Buffalo; they closed early too.
So everyone else: go vote! I'll join you when they let me.
[Microsoft PR firm Waggener-Edstrom] tries to know editors nearly as well as it knows its own clients. To this end, it keeps a detailed database of media organizations and their employees. Dossiers on individual journalists might include assessments of their coverage of Microsoft and its products.
Free software, t-shirts and laptop bags aren't the way positive press coverage is rewarded in high-tech reporting. Access to officials and information is. Over the past few months, my access to top Microsoft brass has been curtailed. When I am "awarded" despite my "bad behavior" with audiences with execs, it's more often than not just for show. I can ask the exact same question of Microsoft that another reporter asks, yet receive a totally different--and usually vapid--answer.
"Buying" isn't the point
on
Mob Software
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· Score: 1
> I can't imagine anyone being willing to buy a house that had been built with no architect, no blueprint and no foreman...
Me neither, but if someone offered it to me, I'd live there. Same way many of us live in cities built by disorganized multitudes. The essay's about creating gifts, not commodities.
There's a class at Oberlin College this semester on writing music apps in python.
mix 2 channels the right way (link) + question
on
Audio Mixers For PCs?
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· Score: 1
here's a simple schematic for mixing two line level audio signals into one, without degradation. (disclaimer: I am schematic-illiterate and have not tried building one).
Does anyone make a mixer with a tv-style remote? It would be nice to amplify cd player, computer, and tv through my only set of surround speakers, and selectively quiet/silence one channel like when commercials come on.
that's a pretty goofy article..."Their next argument is similarly perverse." Their argument? that the way things are going, when email is universal, there will always be some people still getting spam. I hope the author is one of them.
he didn't go into detail, but everything he agreed with sounds like the trend that's been growing. like shoppers club cards at supermarkets. He's just pushing more of the same.
On the other hand, would you trust a company like AOL to build and maintain municipal roads? ("I'm sorry sir, we only support recent-model AOL-certified vehicles. We have a deal this month on...") At least the local government is democratic and not out to profit off you.
Tor Klingberg on gnutellang.wego.com pointed out that all those keyword requests would use a lot of bandwidth. He suggested you just crawl toward the direction of searches that match your keywords. He also pointed out you could have anti-keywords: search terms you crawl away from.
Of course, you could expedite the whole thing by searching for stuff that describes you even if you'll never download it.
I was thinking clients like this could integrate into the current network by using a specially formatted search term right when they first connect -- a properly formatted reply would mean "connect to me instead, I'm neighborhood-aware too".
Leverage "location" to make network size irrelevan
on
Gnutella's Challenge
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· Score: 3
If you have a room full of all different kinds of people, they'll interact more meaningfully if they can wander the room, moving next to like minded people, than if they're stuck in their randomly assigned chair. We should let the gnutella network self-organize like that. Here are some details:
Have clients keep some keywords about the user. It could be a user-written paragraph, the names of shared files, recent search requests, etc. Clients would also have a "horizon" H: clients within H hops are considered "local". Clients can query other local clients for their keywords, and determine how similar those keywords are to their own (maybe a percent).
Define a "crawl" to be dropping one (low-keyword-match) direct connection and forming a new direct connection to a local node. You might decrease search response times by crawling repeatedly toward higher keyword-matching nodes.
Imagine a "speed" setting, measured in crawls per minute. There could also be a "randomness" setting, to misrepresent percent-keyword-match by a random amount for each local node. These settings could decrease over time, so you gradually lock in to a suitable local community without getting caught at the nearest local maximum. This idea is borrowed from simulated annealing, which someone else here probably understands better than I.
Is it possible to integrate such clients into the existing network, through search and search-response packets with a ttl of H?
Your horizon defines a neighborhood of local nodes. Their shared files will likely be of interest to you, so your client software might list them. In addition, their _ideas_ might be of interest, so your client software could show you their keywords, and allow instant messaging. There could even be a local neighborhood chat, ignoring chat packets with (hops > H), and sending packets with (ttl = H).
Usage scenario: I heard a band on the radio; sounded kinda like some other bands A B and C; and the lyrics had something to do with X, although I don't think they used that word. I make sure to put A B and C in my keywords, push up the speed and randomness sliders, and wait for them to settle down. Then I start asking in the chat if anyone knows about.... Maybe someone helps me out, and puts up a sample mp3. I might even ask if there are other bands like that.
Current Napster/Gnutella/whatever software lets you find songs you've heard of by bands you've heard of. Gnutella neighborhoods could let you find music you've never heard of.
So; here's the rub: What's the best way to get people to buy into this? With snow just setting in here in Buffalo I have a lot of coding time; what's the best codebase to start from? Who should I convince? (and of course, what am I missing and how could this idea be made better?)
The pyramid builders could have been offshoots of an older transatlantic culture which existed before the end of the last ice age. Chances are, most people lived on the coast, like people always have. When the ice melted, sea levels rose. Any settlements would have been inundated, like in the stories told worldwide about a great flood.
You can call it Atlantis, even though it probably wasn't the civilization from Plato's stories, but those floods must have wiped it out just as surely. The survivors would have been so busy rebuilding locally that transcontinental travel was forgotten, except in stories and such:
the Aztecs (pyramid-builders) believed a blond-haired god would come over the sea and take over
the aforementioned South American sculptures with beards
>Remember that the thing that caused the Depression wasn't the stock market crash itself, but people who stopped spending what money they had because of their fear.
The depression happened because too much of the wealth was in the hands of too few. The crash didn't scare people from buying everyday necessities; it stopped large investors from buying the latest toys. Unfortunately, their great wealth meant that many jobs were dedicated to those toys--those workers lost their jobs, couldn't buy even the basics, and so it spiraled downwards.
Gnutella clients could have a list of user-supplied keywords, and try to connect to other clients with similar keywords. As another poster pointed out, the keywords could include words you've searched for.
Connecting: Connect to any old node, like usual, then do a search to find better neighbors.
Refining: Clients could have a speed setting, for moseying around their neighborhood, replacing direct connections with higher-rated 2nd or 3rd order neighbors. Perhaps some degenerate simulated annealing, with a randomness setting that decreases gradually, so at first you're just wandering, then later you settle in near like-minded people.
Hopefully this would limit the distance most broadcast packets have to travel. It could also make it useful to have file listings and chat within your immediate neighborhood (clients at most k hops away).
These ideas came out of a conversation I had with someone who wanted to make a "spiritual internet", connecting people with people. Too bad I've been too busy/lazy to implement them yet. If you want to use them, please make it available under the GPL, and let me know. I'll be glad to help once I finish moving in to a new apartment.
It says here (sorry no direct link) that "Those rights [ to use Mac OS X beta] will expire upon the commercial release of Mac OS X or May 15, 2001, whichever occurs first."
<speculation>
If it's like some other betas, it'll stop working after the expiration date. Then you'll have to search hotline^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H send Apple more money just to keep the computer working. Even M$ isn't that brazen.
</speculation>
Looks like the cops' media strategy worked for you. They arrested _everyone_ at the protest headquarters _before_ any protests and confiscated banners, flyers, puppets, and costumes. With the peaceful folks' visible message stolen, only the violent minority got attention from national media.
Besides, they ripped someone's ear off. They RIPPED SOMEONE'S EAR OFF! Disfigurement is an extreme punishment for a misdemeanor.
Let's say all this happens, and average consumer boxes are shipped with net software and a text editor but no word processor. Standard open formats will probably displace.doc as the default. Specifically:
Paper: people will keep a hard copy of everything in case the ASP crashes/goes out of business/runs out of disk space ASCII: for documents that never needed formatting anyway, a text editor will be more responsive and less net/broken/hassle.
Ever since I started college and got a LAN connection, I've been dependent on the net for things I "remember." Like "I think that's on hyperreal. *click* *click* *click* here you go."
Not quite what they were talking about, but something to consider, especially with the direst Y2K warnings.
They studied advertising and found that the more you hear something, the more you agree with it, even if you have no other reason. Someone mentioned white supremacists; I wouldn't want them to have that kind of impact on my head. I'm starting to think JonKatz isn't worth seeing either, so rather than avoid/. altogether (my "filtering" solution for David Every and MacKiDo) I'll just go set my preferences now...
I'm a CS Major, and yeah that's all right, and maybe if I'm lucky something I'm learning will be useful. The big thing I'm getting out of college is working in student organizations doing jobs that nobody in their right mind would hire me for. You can be president or manager of operations for an organization that handles millions of dollars even if you have no relevant experience and you're actually sketchy and disorganized. I got one of those jobs, and it's teaching me organizational and people skills that real-world businesses would require an MBA before you could get any on-the-job experience.
In elementary school we learned LogoWriter on the Apple IIe. It's a derivative of Logo--draw things by telling a turtle to move, interactive interpreter, simple functional programming with global variables--with some multimedia features. You have four turtles; each can take any shape or be invisible, which is cool for representing characters in a game. The main window holds graphics, bitmapped text, and text-editor-style text, all programmable. There's even rudimentary event-driven programming--you can tell it what to do when various control-keys are pressed, then do something else in the meantime. Definitely a lot it couldn't do, but programs were quicker to write and more engaging than my native BASIC. State of the art for my class were races/obstacle courses where the turtle moved inexorably forward while you kept it on the path by pressing control-keys to turn. LogoWriter was by LCSI. I heard they might have updated/replaced it with MicroWorlds, which I haven't seen.
A step up in complexity and power from LogoWriter is Hypercard. I never got far into it, but the HyperTalk language is English-like, with object-orientation everywhere (each object has its own code area where you can extend its vocabulary). If there's a mac classic around that nobody wants, you could dedicate it to hypercard, which hasn't changed much in the past decade, so it still works fine on slow machines. Or, slightly far out, how about Squeak, a graphical environment written in Smalltalk, source code included? See squeak.cs.uiuc.edu Whatever you choose, prefer stuff that's interactive (no compile/run if you just want to try one command) and has a modern approach, like object-orientation and stuff. I guess BASIC is good at showing you how the computer does one thing after another, but it's not a good way to organize programs.
Unless you're implying that the human brain is not a machine, that it doesn't think by physical laws, Godel's theorem doesn't rule out AI. In other words, our brains are just as limited by Godel's theorem as AI's would be. See _Godel,Escher,Bach_ by Hofstadter for details, and also because it's great.
Slashdot Mirror
http://civic.net/civic-values.archive/200106/msg00 023.html
* First Amendment does not protect instructions for violating the tax laws
* First Amendment protects instructions for engaging in a dangerous sex act
* First Amendment does not protect instructions for building an explosive device
* Instructions, do-it-yourself manuals, [and] recipes are all speech
> VOTE!
Thanks for reminding me! I read your message, dashed down to the polls, and they were closed. Closed sometime this morning apparently, with no word on when or if they'll reopen.
NY State seems to be generally overreacting around here. I work at the state univ. at Buffalo; they closed early too.
So everyone else: go vote! I'll join you when they let me.
[Microsoft PR firm Waggener-Edstrom] tries to know editors nearly as well as it knows its own clients. To this end, it keeps a detailed database of media organizations and their employees. Dossiers on individual journalists might include assessments of their coverage of Microsoft and its products.
From http://www.zdnet.com/sp/columns/foley/980805.html
Free software, t-shirts and laptop bags aren't the way positive press coverage is rewarded in high-tech reporting. Access to officials and information is. Over the past few months, my access to top Microsoft brass has been curtailed. When I am "awarded" despite my "bad behavior" with audiences with execs, it's more often than not just for show. I can ask the exact same question of Microsoft that another reporter asks, yet receive a totally different--and usually vapid--answer.
Me neither, but if someone offered it to me, I'd live there. Same way many of us live in cities built by disorganized multitudes. The essay's about creating gifts, not commodities.
There's a class at Oberlin College this semester on writing music apps in python.
Does anyone make a mixer with a tv-style remote? It would be nice to amplify cd player, computer, and tv through my only set of surround speakers, and selectively quiet/silence one channel like when commercials come on.
that's a pretty goofy article..."Their next argument is similarly perverse." Their argument? that the way things are going, when email is universal, there will always be some people still getting spam. I hope the author is one of them.
he didn't go into detail, but everything he agreed with sounds like the trend that's been growing. like shoppers club cards at supermarkets. He's just pushing more of the same.
On the other hand, would you trust a company like AOL to build and maintain municipal roads? ("I'm sorry sir, we only support recent-model AOL-certified vehicles. We have a deal this month on...") At least the local government is democratic and not out to profit off you.
Of course, you could expedite the whole thing by searching for stuff that describes you even if you'll never download it.
I was thinking clients like this could integrate into the current network by using a specially formatted search term right when they first connect -- a properly formatted reply would mean "connect to me instead, I'm neighborhood-aware too".
Have clients keep some keywords about the user. It could be a user-written paragraph, the names of shared files, recent search requests, etc. Clients would also have a "horizon" H: clients within H hops are considered "local". Clients can query other local clients for their keywords, and determine how similar those keywords are to their own (maybe a percent).
Define a "crawl" to be dropping one (low-keyword-match) direct connection and forming a new direct connection to a local node. You might decrease search response times by crawling repeatedly toward higher keyword-matching nodes.
Imagine a "speed" setting, measured in crawls per minute. There could also be a "randomness" setting, to misrepresent percent-keyword-match by a random amount for each local node. These settings could decrease over time, so you gradually lock in to a suitable local community without getting caught at the nearest local maximum. This idea is borrowed from simulated annealing, which someone else here probably understands better than I.
Is it possible to integrate such clients into the existing network, through search and search-response packets with a ttl of H?
Your horizon defines a neighborhood of local nodes. Their shared files will likely be of interest to you, so your client software might list them. In addition, their _ideas_ might be of interest, so your client software could show you their keywords, and allow instant messaging. There could even be a local neighborhood chat, ignoring chat packets with (hops > H), and sending packets with (ttl = H).
Usage scenario: I heard a band on the radio; sounded kinda like some other bands A B and C; and the lyrics had something to do with X, although I don't think they used that word. I make sure to put A B and C in my keywords, push up the speed and randomness sliders, and wait for them to settle down. Then I start asking in the chat if anyone knows about .... Maybe someone helps me out, and puts up a sample mp3. I might even ask if there are other bands like that.
Current Napster/Gnutella/whatever software lets you find songs you've heard of by bands you've heard of. Gnutella neighborhoods could let you find music you've never heard of.
So; here's the rub: What's the best way to get people to buy into this? With snow just setting in here in Buffalo I have a lot of coding time; what's the best codebase to start from? Who should I convince? (and of course, what am I missing and how could this idea be made better?)
Thanks for reading this whole long thang.
Chris
You can call it Atlantis, even though it probably wasn't the civilization from Plato's stories, but those floods must have wiped it out just as surely. The survivors would have been so busy rebuilding locally that transcontinental travel was forgotten, except in stories and such:
The depression happened because too much of the wealth was in the hands of too few. The crash didn't scare people from buying everyday necessities; it stopped large investors from buying the latest toys. Unfortunately, their great wealth meant that many jobs were dedicated to those toys--those workers lost their jobs, couldn't buy even the basics, and so it spiraled downwards.
Another way of putting it: "It was not that the surplus products of industrialized society were not wanted, but rather that those whose needs were not satiated could not afford more, whereas the wealthy were satiated by spending only a small portion of their income." ... "The U.S. economy was also reliant upon luxury spending and investment from the rich to stay afloat during the 1920's. The significant problem with this
reliance was that luxury spending and investment were based on the wealthy's confidence in the U.S. economy." ... "The market crashes undermined this confidence. The rich stopped spending on
luxury items, and slowed investments. The middle-class and poor stopped buying things with installment credit for fear of loosing their jobs, and not being
able to pay the interest."
Connecting: Connect to any old node, like usual, then do a search to find better neighbors.
Refining: Clients could have a speed setting, for moseying around their neighborhood, replacing direct connections with higher-rated 2nd or 3rd order neighbors. Perhaps some degenerate simulated annealing, with a randomness setting that decreases gradually, so at first you're just wandering, then later you settle in near like-minded people.
Hopefully this would limit the distance most broadcast packets have to travel. It could also make it useful to have file listings and chat within your immediate neighborhood (clients at most k hops away).
These ideas came out of a conversation I had with someone who wanted to make a "spiritual internet", connecting people with people. Too bad I've been too busy/lazy to implement them yet. If you want to use them, please make it available under the GPL, and let me know. I'll be glad to help once I finish moving in to a new apartment.
Chris
<speculation>
If it's like some other betas, it'll stop working after the expiration date. Then you'll have to search hotline^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H send Apple more money just to keep the computer working. Even M$ isn't that brazen.
</speculation>
Besides, they ripped someone's ear off. They RIPPED SOMEONE'S EAR OFF! Disfigurement is an extreme punishment for a misdemeanor.
Ch
Paper: people will keep a hard copy of everything in case the ASP crashes/goes out of business/runs out of disk space
ASCII: for documents that never needed formatting anyway, a text editor will be more responsive and less net/broken/hassle.
Drop me an email if you know of recent (past 2 years) macs about to go to waste.
Ever since I started college and got a LAN connection, I've been dependent on the net for things I "remember." Like "I think that's on hyperreal. *click* *click* *click* here you go."
Not quite what they were talking about, but something to consider, especially with the direst Y2K warnings.
They studied advertising and found that the more you hear something, the more you agree with it, even if you have no other reason. Someone mentioned white supremacists; I wouldn't want them to have that kind of impact on my head. I'm starting to think JonKatz isn't worth seeing either, so rather than avoid /. altogether (my "filtering" solution for David Every and MacKiDo) I'll just go set my preferences now...
I'm a CS Major, and yeah that's all right, and maybe if I'm lucky something I'm learning will be useful. The big thing I'm getting out of college is working in student organizations doing jobs that nobody in their right mind would hire me for. You can be president or manager of operations for an organization that handles millions of dollars even if you have no relevant experience and you're actually sketchy and disorganized. I got one of those jobs, and it's teaching me organizational and people skills that real-world businesses would require an MBA before you could get any on-the-job experience.
In elementary school we learned LogoWriter on the Apple IIe. It's a derivative of Logo--draw things by telling a turtle to move, interactive interpreter, simple functional programming with global variables--with some multimedia features.
You have four turtles; each can take any shape or be invisible, which is cool for representing characters in a game. The main window holds graphics, bitmapped text, and text-editor-style text, all programmable. There's even rudimentary event-driven programming--you can tell it what to do when various control-keys are pressed, then do something else in the meantime.
Definitely a lot it couldn't do, but programs were quicker to write and more engaging than my native BASIC. State of the art for my class were races/obstacle courses where the turtle moved inexorably forward while you kept it on the path by pressing control-keys to turn.
LogoWriter was by LCSI. I heard they might have updated/replaced it with MicroWorlds, which I haven't seen.
A step up in complexity and power from LogoWriter is Hypercard. I never got far into it, but the HyperTalk language is English-like, with object-orientation everywhere (each object has its own code area where you can extend its vocabulary). If there's a mac classic around that nobody wants, you could dedicate it to hypercard, which hasn't changed much in the past decade, so it still works fine on slow machines.
Or, slightly far out, how about Squeak, a graphical environment written in Smalltalk, source code included? See squeak.cs.uiuc.edu
Whatever you choose, prefer stuff that's interactive (no compile/run if you just want to try one command) and has a modern approach, like object-orientation and stuff. I guess BASIC is good at showing you how the computer does one thing after another, but it's not a good way to organize programs.
Unless you're implying that the human brain is not a machine, that it doesn't think by physical laws, Godel's theorem doesn't rule out AI. In other words, our brains are just as limited by Godel's theorem as AI's would be. See _Godel,Escher,Bach_ by Hofstadter for details, and also because it's great.
Chris