"In an LED, light emits from inside the semiconductor in every direction, but our omnidirectional mirror reflects light equally well no matter what the angle of incidence. Other types of reflectors are only efficient when the angle is normal, or 90 degrees perpendicular to the surface," said Schubert.
I wonder if this technology could be used to enhance the efficiency of solar collection devices. This reminds me of the way that plants collect and use photons. Any solar engineers out there?
Good citizens keep to themselves and operate under common decency and common sense. But there are always some malcontents (spammers, virus creators etc) that feel they can do whatever they feel to whoever they want with small fear of retribution.
Some governments are just now awakening to the threats of these malcontents, and have passed laws against them. Of course, these laws are next to useless, because the net transcends international geopolitical boundaries. So what is a decent net citizen to do? Nothing? Scream and cry until the lawmakers listen? Until there is a real sheriff on the net, vigilante groups may be the only answer. Small groups of net-aware individuals who can root out the bad guys and administer some well-deserved justice. Some may call them net terrorists, but if they leave the good people alone, I would call them patriots.
Will the law go after these patriots? The law may turn a blind eye if these groups keep the peace. Besides, what can the law do to the net patriots that are trying to make things better when they can't even go after the malcontents? I'm all for vigilantes, until we get a real sheriff in town.
Hmmm...this sounds familiar somehow. Let's see:
Good citizens keep to themselves and operate under common decency and common sense. But there are always some malcontents that feel they can do whatever they feel to whoever they want with small fear of retribution.
Some governments are just now awakening to the threats of these malcontents, and have passed laws against them. Of course, these laws are next to useless, because the problem transcends international geopolitical boundaries. So what is a decent citizen to do? Nothing? Scream and cry until the lawmakers listen?
Until there is a real leader in the Homeland, vigilante groups may be the only answer. Small groups of aware individuals who can root out the Jews and administer some well-deserved justice. Some may call them terrorists, but if they leave the good people alone, I would call them patriots.
Will the law go after these patriots? The law may turn a blind eye if these groups keep the peace. Besides, what can the law do to the patriots that are trying to make things better when they can't even go after the malcontents?
I'm all for vigilantes, until we get a real leader in the Homeland.
With money from the Air Force, Professor Fridrich is designing a camera that takes two pictures at once: one though the camera lens, and a smaller one of the photographer's iris. The iris image along with the time and place of the photo session would then be compressed, encrypted and instantly hidden within the larger picture just taken.
Does the good professor seriously think that people -- especially people who are aware that their camera utilizes this technology -- *only* take pictures by putting their eye to the camera when they click? Ha! If you use a stand, your 'iris' picture could be *whatever you wanted*. I know my 'iris' picture would be a picture of an iris, all right -- but not one in any database. Maybe I'll take a TIFF of my *cat's* iris, photoshop recolor it in, oh, *lavender*, print it on nice photo paper, light it right, and hang it an appropriate distance from the 'iris' lens -- that'll freak 'em out, *for sure*. 8^D
BTW, I don't know about other states, but this kind of steganography is illegal in Michigan under the new Super-DCMA law.
That's the great thing about government research -- no idea is *too* wacko.
Four of the five states still in the MATRIX program (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio) are considered "battleground states". If you are in a political organization trying to get the Shrub out of office, here is a major opportunity, through educating your fellow citizens about MATRIX, to swing the election. To the Democrats, emphasize the privacy-invading concerns that you have, pointing out the similarity to the police state tactics used by Nixon in the Sixties. To the Republicans, emphasize the Big Government and anti-Constitutionality (specifically 4th Amendment) aspects of the MATRIX. In either case, end your rant with "Remember, Big Brother is watching!" and SMILE. This is guaranteed to send a chill down their spine -- whoever they are.
(If they are a little more hip, you might want to end with something like,"Hello, Mr. [their last name here], we've been waiting for you!" in your best Agent Smith voice.)
An intelligence could virtually be defined as a method for choosing between choices based upon the ability to predict the future, even crudely.
That's a very nice definition of intelligence. Thank you for taking the time to expand on your original post. I was moved by your post to go to your website and found it *very interesting*. I'd say that you have a bright future ahead of you; keep up the good work!
...and support the corporations that support Orrin Hatch.
"Free enterprise"?. Ha! Corporations are worse than governments; you have *no* ability to kick *them* out of "office".
"Vote" with my dollars? Oh I do. Anything I can't grow, make or mend myself, I get from *local* businesspeople (including consumer-owned co-ops) or do without. I'm not against *actual* free enterprise, but there's a world of difference between a mom&pop and a transnational corporation. Unfortunately, I've never met a libertarian who wasn't blinded by ideology along those lines and apparently unable to tell the difference. They have bought the "A corporation is a person too." line. No, it's not. Really. At best, most corporations resemble a parody of a sociopath -- without the charm.
What the fuck happens to people with the name John Smith?
(slightly OT)
I knew a guy in high school whose name was Z Smith. No kidding. Z! (No period after the Z either.) In fact he was the president of our class. Great guy, too: smart, funny, cool. Years later I happened to see an article he wrote -- I think he was working for alexa.com at that point.
But that *is* his real name. Quite possibly other posters have met him too, because he works in the computer field.
This would seem to substantially increase the chance that life once existed on the red planet.
Every planet probably has microscopic, non-oxygen-using life INSIDE it. (In fact, it may even be NON-microscopic.) Just because we don't find it lying about the surface does not mean that it did not exist.
When we talk about 'life on earth' it's assumed that we are talking about life on the *surface* of Earth. But that surface is *7 miles thick* [depth of ocean] and the radius of Earth is *4000* miles. And we know non-oxygen-using extremophiles and Archaea exist *here*. Why not there?
But obviously an AI will have to be an algorithm that prunes and "ranks" a decision tree to locate what to do, presumedly based on either a physics engine or an experience database.
A learning AI would presumedly store the results of its decisions in its experience database. If its experience database grew far too conflicted and far too confused, the AI could conceivably be unable to do anything - stuck in a decision deadlock.
"Obviously"? Why is that? We, ourselves, are N[atural] Intelligences, each made up of several thousand interlocking neural networks. Granted, some people act like they are "ranking a decision tree" or "get stuck in decision deadlocks", but we don't all do that -- in fact, most of us don't. (Those would be the Asperger's Syndrome types and the catatonics respectively.)
In fact, procedural code makes the worst kind of AI: the overly rigid, easily broken type. See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859 -1&q=%22expert+systems%22&btnG=Search 'expert systems': good only in a well-defined environment (which IMHO the world is not). Everything is very carefully hand-coded for optimality, but if the system gets an input which doesn't match its parameters, it degrades *not* gracefully.
Robot version:
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Human version:
1) Be nice to each other. Take care of each other.
2) Obey, except if the order is 'unlawful', in that it would involve hurting others.
3) Take care of yourself.
(However, the human version is not really a good 'translation' of the robotic version, because it is lacking the implicit 'master/slave' subtext: the concept that these are imperatives, rather than just guidelines (because humans have, relative to robots, "free will".)
If these were, in fact, imperatives, what you would then have is a religion (non-monotheistic category): something somewhat like, say, Confucianism.
The finds show that the organisms were assembled in fractal patterns from frond-like building blocks. They were unable to move and had no reproductive organs, perhaps reproducing by dropping off new fronds.
Does Chris Langton know about this? It appears that his cellular automata self-reproduction structures may have been right on the money!
Trying to assert that "more" or "less" randomness is 'better' or 'worse' misses the point that randomness is a continuum from, as it were, "brown" (deterministic, correlation between neighborng events = 1: i.e. hand-coded, no surprises) to "white" (completely random, correlation = 0). What might make games more interesting is not whether they are hard-coded in the 0 or 1 mode [digital], but if you could *adjust* the amount of randomness in the game (0...1, analog). If you wanted to play the game like it was originally designed, select 1; if you want wacko wierdness, select 0; if you want a random-like game that nevertheless mostly follows the rules, pick something like.7.
(This could be related to Wolfram's lambda parameter in cellular automata research as well: a game that 'hovers on the edge of chaos' would seem to be more interesting than either one totally deterministic or totally random.)
Of course, it goes without saying that this sort of analog parameter would have to be designed into the game from the beginning. Obviously, it's just easier to declare a certain sub-set of the game objects to be 0 (totally random) and another sub-set to be 1 (fixed). That's precisely why randomness in games *isn't* that interesting: too much all or nothing.
But the govt. still hasn't implemented the library version of the FCC for some reason.
Perhaps because the "wordcast" spectrum is unlimited, unlike the broadcast spectrum? Perhaps because the First Amendment singles out the "press" (meaning dead-tree data) for special protection? Perhaps because any government official who suggested this would be driven from office and then tarred and feathered on his lonely walk out of town?
Perhaps because it *already has happened* -- the "PATRIOT" act gives the FBI the power to see what you're reading and the librarians can't even tell you that they checked on what you are reading? After all, why do in the light what you can get away with in the dark?
...been wondering about how much of this "won't someone think of the children" crap would still exist if legal age for voting was 14 or 15.
You might be surprised to find out that kids are actually *more* puritanical than their parents. Liberal attitudes, on the whole, don't tend to blossom until college -- if then.
I'd be very surprised if the FCC had the power to implement retroactive law. Under Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, no ex post facto law may be passed.
Under the first Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...". If that's the case, then under what law does the FCC have the power to *fine* anyone -- because a "fine" is an amount of money that you are compelled to pay *after* having been found guilty of a crime. As far as I can see, fining someone who has *not* been charged with a crime and adjudged guilty in a court of law is illegal.
So to recap: 1) The FCC is illegal because its very existence is *forbidden* under the First Amendment; 2) the FCC fining people (or corporations under the delusion that they are people) is illegal because it's being done without a day in court.
The real problem here is Congress ignoring the Constitution and no-one ever successfully arguing in a court of law that what they have done is *unconstitutional* -- even though, on its face, it *clearly is*. But when you have Supreme Court which okays "sneak and peek" searches -- despite their obvious 5th Amendment illegality -- what are you going to do? *I'm* not *ever* voting for a Republican or Democrat again -- and I make sure that I vote in every single election that comes my way. (I also do more than vote: I'm active at the state level in a non-Rep, non-Dem political party.)
SB and WM only gives them the choice, they don't make it.
Unless you note the fact that Starbuck's coffee has twice as much caffeine as other coffee shops. Then the question arises: are these customers actually making a free choice or are they being driven by their caffeine addiction to choose Starbucks so that they can get their daily maintenance dose?
New legislation recently introduced by a group of powerful U.S. senators would allow artists and entertainment companies to sue creators of products, such as peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software, that "induce" copyright violations.
The bill has powerful backers. Among the bill's co-sponsors are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat and Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy from Vermont.
So: not *only* do we have ignoramuses making law, but they are from *both sides of the aisle*. Seriously, guys, why don't you just OUTLAW FREEDOM, instead of nibbling away at it piecemeal?
Also, it is truly amazing that they can excoriate corporations for "stealing", but then turn a blind eye to the Enrons, Exxons and Halliburtons -- you know, the corporations who actually steal (but it's all *legal* stealing -- so that's 'OK'.)
And -- to the readers who made it this far -- what are *you* doing to ensure that these blockheads aren't going to be re-elected this November? Aren't you tired of the elites running America like it was their own personal fiefdom?
If content producers want to control how their content is distributed, isn't that the content producer's perogative?
You misunderstand. The content producers *don't* have control over how their content is distributed. Instead, the content distributors have -- contractually -- said, "If you sign over the rights to your content, we will distribute it and give you a royalty. Oh, by the way -- we have a monopoly on distribution -- so you really have no choice."
For those who say, "Well, I'm just going to distribute my stuff over the net!", the distributors' comeback is in the form of "Welcome to the wonderful world of Digital Rights Management and Broadcast flags! We're busy making sure that you can't do that."
The bottom line is that the distributors are parasites with no creativity of their own who have manipulated the property-rights system (formerly known as the legal system) to *legally* seize control over the content producers' creative work, on the grounds of "merely" being the distributors. The producers have had two choices: join the distributors' monopoly, so people can see their work -- or have *no distribution at all*. Perhaps you can understand why they have not selected the second choice.
It seems to me its nearly as impossible to predict a traffic jam as it is to predict stock prices. Both are fundamentally chaotic.
As I read your comment, it struck me that the flow of cars past a given point resembles the flow of water from a drippy faucet, and that both can be modeled as a 2D strange attractor. Just as you can map the time differences between Drips [ D1, D2, D3, etc. are absolute time of drips; T1=D2-D1; T2=D3-D2; etc.], you can map the space differences between cars. Then map it on cartesian coordinates thusly:
Point1: T1, T2
Point2: T2, T3
Point3: T3, T2; etc.
When traffic is flowing smoothly, the difference in time between cars is essentially random, so the map will just be a bunch of randomly scattered dots. But when jams began to occur, the average length between cars shortens, and the dots began to describe a spiral inward. At total jam, the length between cars is, essentially, zero, leading to a dot centered at 0,0.
It's the point when the average length between cars begans to shorten that is when the graph becomes most interesting. Also, this is where intervention might occur "on the ground" so to speak.
One drawback of this graph is that it describes only a single location along the roadway. You'd need many of these graphs to simulate a large traffic situation.
And, as to the poster's note that People are just flat out unpredictable., that's only true in the *individual* sense. In the aggregate sense, people are *remarkably* predictable. This traffic problem happens to be an interesting problem because it involves *both* aggregate (so it's fairly predictable) AND individual (ONE driver makes an error...) behavior.
It's clear -- if you read the article -- that the Court held that the communications in question were in "electronic storage" rather than "in transmission" and thus it dismissed the count against the defendent on the grounds, basically, that he was *mischarged* when he was charged under the Wiretap statute. The government apparently *should have* charged him under a different law regarding illegally accessing 'electronic storage'.
The Court also said that part of the problem is that the law is lagging behind technology, and that it is up to Congress to revisit the relevant laws. Under *current* law, however, the Court had no alternative but to dismiss the charge. (However, there *was* a very good and reasoned dissent from the majority ruling.)
Note that the company in this case was *not* an ISP, but, in providing the ability to receive email at their address, was acting somewhat like an ISP. However, they were a rare-book service and not techically an ISP; their primary business was not the providing of internet access.
Like just about every poster here, I find the ruling ridiculous. We all know, as sysadmins, that reading someone else's email -- *especially* to gain a commercial advantage -- is just wrong; we only do it as a last resort, and then only in order to correctly route it. The fact that the email was "in storage" rather than "in transmission" is, to us, a difference that makes no difference; unfortunately, the justices chose to read the law very narrowly and found that those two possible states that email could be in were *different enough* to make a difference in the prosectution of the case.
In any case, the ruling was very narrow and arcane; I don't think this ruling is going to be cited in future as a precedent for *anything*. But *we* certainly should use this as a reason to harass our congresspeople to close this little loophold, before some businessperson builds a business model around it. Oh wait... Gmail...
I think that I'll start adding a little disclaimer at the bottom of *my* email: "If you are reading this and are not the intended recipient, you hereby agree to waive any protection from prosecution for violating my Fifth Amendment rights. "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."; you are, by reading this email, depriving me of my intellectual property without due process of law.
Under looser policies issued in 1993, agencies could hold back information to prevent "foreseeable harm."
I hereby call for the resignation of John Ashcroft on the grounds that his ineptitude in responding to legitimate FOIA requests clearly causes "forseeable harm" to American democracy.
Not to mention that the excuse he gave is *not* one of the reasons permitted to be cited by the government to avoid giving us -- the American people, who paid for it all -- *our* information.
Mr. Ashcroft is from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. Tell me, Mr. Ashcroft: what part of "Show me the public records" do you not understand?
Zanette counted the frequency of different notes in each piece (taking into account both the pitch and the length of the note), and plotted that against their rank, as Zipf did with texts.
Intervals would be better than notes. Why? Because an interval creates context while a note does not.
Example: consider two quarter notes: C then E. Now consider C then A. Both imply chords: the first, a C major chord and the second an A minor chord. *You will have different emotional responses to each pair of notes.* [This is largely because you are likely (if you are reading this) to have grown up in the western tradition of even-tempered scaling, where the two major harmonic tonalities *are* major and minor chords. You are, in essence, preconditioned.]
Therefore, mapping the *intervals between the notes* -- rather than the notes themselves-- will give you a more accurate reading of a musical piece. I daresay, however, that the results that he got will remain about the same: tonal pieces are still more highly self-correlated than atonal pieces.
This also puts me in mind of a particular technique used in chaos theory. If you plot the differences in time between drips from a dripping faucet in succession versus each other: (X1 = diff2, Y1 = diff1; X2 = diff3, Y2 = diff2; etc.) you describe a 2D cross-section of a strange attractor. Now I wonder what would happen if you did this with elements of a musical piece, substituting "musical intervals" for "time differences". I strongly suspect that tonal music will produce repetitive figures and atonal music will produce -- well -- what looks like random noise.
I have rolled my own ad-delivery package and I look at my raw logs every month. The metric that I find most useful is page-views. Why? Because 1) it shows the *actual* number of pages viewed per month; and 2) the concept of "page-views" is easy to explain to people who want to advertise on my site, after I get done explaining to them why "hits" is the worst metric. (doesn't discriminate between pages and graphics; the caching problem; blah, blah, blah.)
Plus, I can divide page-views by unique visitors and have a pretty good idea (along with looking at the numbers from certain directories) how long my visitors are staying and what they are doing. (Largely they are looking at upcoming events in the area.)
I also look at *when* people are coming and from *where*. Thus I can reliably say to my advertisers, "Well two-thirds of our traffic is from.com URLS and shows up between 9-5 M-F, so those are largely coming into the site from their workplace." Since we are an in affluent area, this probably means that these are people with fairly large disposable income. *That* is exactly what they want to hear.
If I am really interested, I can run a little program that does path-tracing through the site based on the raw logs, but I generally don't do that too often anymore.
Of course, I *only* see about 50,000 pageviews a month, so I don't run a big site, but I *can* talk fairly knowledgeably about my users without resorting to fancy-schmancy "network traffic analysis" or any of that other useless and expensive stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this technology could be used to enhance the efficiency of solar collection devices. This reminds me of the way that plants collect and use photons. Any solar engineers out there?
Hmmm...this sounds familiar somehow. Let's see:
Good citizens keep to themselves and operate under common decency and common sense. But there are always some malcontents that feel they can do whatever they feel to whoever they want with small fear of retribution. Some governments are just now awakening to the threats of these malcontents, and have passed laws against them. Of course, these laws are next to useless, because the problem transcends international geopolitical boundaries. So what is a decent citizen to do? Nothing? Scream and cry until the lawmakers listen? Until there is a real leader in the Homeland, vigilante groups may be the only answer. Small groups of aware individuals who can root out the Jews and administer some well-deserved justice. Some may call them terrorists, but if they leave the good people alone, I would call them patriots. Will the law go after these patriots? The law may turn a blind eye if these groups keep the peace. Besides, what can the law do to the patriots that are trying to make things better when they can't even go after the malcontents? I'm all for vigilantes, until we get a real leader in the Homeland.
I forget exactly who it was who said this. 8^{
Does the good professor seriously think that people -- especially people who are aware that their camera utilizes this technology -- *only* take pictures by putting their eye to the camera when they click? Ha! If you use a stand, your 'iris' picture could be *whatever you wanted*. I know my 'iris' picture would be a picture of an iris, all right -- but not one in any database. Maybe I'll take a TIFF of my *cat's* iris, photoshop recolor it in, oh, *lavender*, print it on nice photo paper, light it right, and hang it an appropriate distance from the 'iris' lens -- that'll freak 'em out, *for sure*. 8^D
BTW, I don't know about other states, but this kind of steganography is illegal in Michigan under the new Super-DCMA law.
That's the great thing about government research -- no idea is *too* wacko .
(If they are a little more hip, you might want to end with something like,"Hello, Mr. [their last name here], we've been waiting for you!" in your best Agent Smith voice.)
That's a very nice definition of intelligence. Thank you for taking the time to expand on your original post. I was moved by your post to go to your website and found it *very interesting*. I'd say that you have a bright future ahead of you; keep up the good work!
"Free enterprise"?. Ha! Corporations are worse than governments; you have *no* ability to kick *them* out of "office".
"Vote" with my dollars? Oh I do. Anything I can't grow, make or mend myself, I get from *local* businesspeople (including consumer-owned co-ops) or do without. I'm not against *actual* free enterprise, but there's a world of difference between a mom&pop and a transnational corporation. Unfortunately, I've never met a libertarian who wasn't blinded by ideology along those lines and apparently unable to tell the difference. They have bought the "A corporation is a person too." line. No, it's not. Really. At best, most corporations resemble a parody of a sociopath -- without the charm.
This being /., it had to be said.
(slightly OT)
I knew a guy in high school whose name was Z Smith. No kidding. Z! (No period after the Z either.) In fact he was the president of our class. Great guy, too: smart, funny, cool. Years later I happened to see an article he wrote -- I think he was working for alexa.com at that point.
But that *is* his real name. Quite possibly other posters have met him too, because he works in the computer field.
Every planet probably has microscopic, non-oxygen-using life INSIDE it. (In fact, it may even be NON-microscopic.) Just because we don't find it lying about the surface does not mean that it did not exist.
When we talk about 'life on earth' it's assumed that we are talking about life on the *surface* of Earth. But that surface is *7 miles thick* [depth of ocean] and the radius of Earth is *4000* miles. And we know non-oxygen-using extremophiles and Archaea exist *here*. Why not there?
A learning AI would presumedly store the results of its decisions in its experience database. If its experience database grew far too conflicted and far too confused, the AI could conceivably be unable to do anything - stuck in a decision deadlock.
"Obviously"? Why is that? We, ourselves, are N[atural] Intelligences, each made up of several thousand interlocking neural networks. Granted, some people act like they are "ranking a decision tree" or "get stuck in decision deadlocks", but we don't all do that -- in fact, most of us don't. (Those would be the Asperger's Syndrome types and the catatonics respectively.)
In fact, procedural code makes the worst kind of AI: the overly rigid, easily broken type. See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859 -1&q=%22expert+systems%22&btnG=Search 'expert systems': good only in a well-defined environment (which IMHO the world is not). Everything is very carefully hand-coded for optimality, but if the system gets an input which doesn't match its parameters, it degrades *not* gracefully.
We don't know how to make an AI.
You don't know how to make an AI. Read Doug Lenat's work on AM, Eurisko and http://www.cyc.com/ CYC: *he* knows. Also read http://i5.nyu.edu/~mm64/x52.9265/january1966.html Joseph Weizenbaum: *he* found out that you get out of AI what you put into it. 8^D
Sure we do.
Robot version:
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Human version:
1) Be nice to each other. Take care of each other.
2) Obey, except if the order is 'unlawful', in that it would involve hurting others.
3) Take care of yourself.
(However, the human version is not really a good 'translation' of the robotic version, because it is lacking the implicit 'master/slave' subtext: the concept that these are imperatives, rather than just guidelines (because humans have, relative to robots, "free will".)
If these were, in fact, imperatives, what you would then have is a religion (non-monotheistic category): something somewhat like, say, Confucianism.
Does Chris Langton know about this? It appears that his cellular automata self-reproduction structures may have been right on the money!
Useful tool: http://www.complex.iastate.edu/information/downloa d/Trend/examples/langton.html
(This could be related to Wolfram's lambda parameter in cellular automata research as well: a game that 'hovers on the edge of chaos' would seem to be more interesting than either one totally deterministic or totally random.)
Of course, it goes without saying that this sort of analog parameter would have to be designed into the game from the beginning. Obviously, it's just easier to declare a certain sub-set of the game objects to be 0 (totally random) and another sub-set to be 1 (fixed). That's precisely why randomness in games *isn't* that interesting: too much all or nothing.
Perhaps because the "wordcast" spectrum is unlimited, unlike the broadcast spectrum? Perhaps because the First Amendment singles out the "press" (meaning dead-tree data) for special protection? Perhaps because any government official who suggested this would be driven from office and then tarred and feathered on his lonely walk out of town?
Perhaps because it *already has happened* -- the "PATRIOT" act gives the FBI the power to see what you're reading and the librarians can't even tell you that they checked on what you are reading? After all, why do in the light what you can get away with in the dark?
You might be surprised to find out that kids are actually *more* puritanical than their parents. Liberal attitudes, on the whole, don't tend to blossom until college -- if then.
Under the first Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...". If that's the case, then under what law does the FCC have the power to *fine* anyone -- because a "fine" is an amount of money that you are compelled to pay *after* having been found guilty of a crime. As far as I can see, fining someone who has *not* been charged with a crime and adjudged guilty in a court of law is illegal.
So to recap: 1) The FCC is illegal because its very existence is *forbidden* under the First Amendment; 2) the FCC fining people (or corporations under the delusion that they are people) is illegal because it's being done without a day in court.
The real problem here is Congress ignoring the Constitution and no-one ever successfully arguing in a court of law that what they have done is *unconstitutional* -- even though, on its face, it *clearly is*. But when you have Supreme Court which okays "sneak and peek" searches -- despite their obvious 5th Amendment illegality -- what are you going to do? *I'm* not *ever* voting for a Republican or Democrat again -- and I make sure that I vote in every single election that comes my way. (I also do more than vote: I'm active at the state level in a non-Rep, non-Dem political party.)
Unless you note the fact that Starbuck's coffee has twice as much caffeine as other coffee shops. Then the question arises: are these customers actually making a free choice or are they being driven by their caffeine addiction to choose Starbucks so that they can get their daily maintenance dose?
The bill has powerful backers. Among the bill's co-sponsors are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat and Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy from Vermont.
So: not *only* do we have ignoramuses making law, but they are from *both sides of the aisle*. Seriously, guys, why don't you just OUTLAW FREEDOM, instead of nibbling away at it piecemeal?
Also, it is truly amazing that they can excoriate corporations for "stealing", but then turn a blind eye to the Enrons, Exxons and Halliburtons -- you know, the corporations who actually steal (but it's all *legal* stealing -- so that's 'OK'.)
And -- to the readers who made it this far -- what are *you* doing to ensure that these blockheads aren't going to be re-elected this November? Aren't you tired of the elites running America like it was their own personal fiefdom?
You misunderstand. The content producers *don't* have control over how their content is distributed. Instead, the content distributors have -- contractually -- said, "If you sign over the rights to your content, we will distribute it and give you a royalty. Oh, by the way -- we have a monopoly on distribution -- so you really have no choice."
For those who say, "Well, I'm just going to distribute my stuff over the net!", the distributors' comeback is in the form of "Welcome to the wonderful world of Digital Rights Management and Broadcast flags! We're busy making sure that you can't do that."
The bottom line is that the distributors are parasites with no creativity of their own who have manipulated the property-rights system (formerly known as the legal system) to *legally* seize control over the content producers' creative work, on the grounds of "merely" being the distributors. The producers have had two choices: join the distributors' monopoly, so people can see their work -- or have *no distribution at all*. Perhaps you can understand why they have not selected the second choice.
*Now* do you understand?
As I read your comment, it struck me that the flow of cars past a given point resembles the flow of water from a drippy faucet, and that both can be modeled as a 2D strange attractor. Just as you can map the time differences between Drips [ D1, D2, D3, etc. are absolute time of drips; T1=D2-D1; T2=D3-D2; etc.], you can map the space differences between cars. Then map it on cartesian coordinates thusly:
Point1: T1, T2
Point2: T2, T3
Point3: T3, T2; etc.
When traffic is flowing smoothly, the difference in time between cars is essentially random, so the map will just be a bunch of randomly scattered dots. But when jams began to occur, the average length between cars shortens, and the dots began to describe a spiral inward. At total jam, the length between cars is, essentially, zero, leading to a dot centered at 0,0.
It's the point when the average length between cars begans to shorten that is when the graph becomes most interesting. Also, this is where intervention might occur "on the ground" so to speak.
One drawback of this graph is that it describes only a single location along the roadway. You'd need many of these graphs to simulate a large traffic situation.
And, as to the poster's note that People are just flat out unpredictable., that's only true in the *individual* sense. In the aggregate sense, people are *remarkably* predictable. This traffic problem happens to be an interesting problem because it involves *both* aggregate (so it's fairly predictable) AND individual (ONE driver makes an error...) behavior.
From Voodoo Chile or Voodoo Child (Slight Return) from Electric Ladyland.
The Court also said that part of the problem is that the law is lagging behind technology, and that it is up to Congress to revisit the relevant laws. Under *current* law, however, the Court had no alternative but to dismiss the charge. (However, there *was* a very good and reasoned dissent from the majority ruling.)
Note that the company in this case was *not* an ISP, but, in providing the ability to receive email at their address, was acting somewhat like an ISP. However, they were a rare-book service and not techically an ISP; their primary business was not the providing of internet access.
Like just about every poster here, I find the ruling ridiculous. We all know, as sysadmins, that reading someone else's email -- *especially* to gain a commercial advantage -- is just wrong; we only do it as a last resort, and then only in order to correctly route it. The fact that the email was "in storage" rather than "in transmission" is, to us, a difference that makes no difference; unfortunately, the justices chose to read the law very narrowly and found that those two possible states that email could be in were *different enough* to make a difference in the prosectution of the case.
In any case, the ruling was very narrow and arcane; I don't think this ruling is going to be cited in future as a precedent for *anything*. But *we* certainly should use this as a reason to harass our congresspeople to close this little loophold, before some businessperson builds a business model around it. Oh wait ... Gmail...
I think that I'll start adding a little disclaimer at the bottom of *my* email: "If you are reading this and are not the intended recipient, you hereby agree to waive any protection from prosecution for violating my Fifth Amendment rights. "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."; you are, by reading this email, depriving me of my intellectual property without due process of law.
I hereby call for the resignation of John Ashcroft on the grounds that his ineptitude in responding to legitimate FOIA requests clearly causes "forseeable harm" to American democracy.
Not to mention that the excuse he gave is *not* one of the reasons permitted to be cited by the government to avoid giving us -- the American people, who paid for it all -- *our* information.
Mr. Ashcroft is from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. Tell me, Mr. Ashcroft: what part of "Show me the public records" do you not understand?
Intervals would be better than notes. Why? Because an interval creates context while a note does not.
Example: consider two quarter notes: C then E. Now consider C then A. Both imply chords: the first, a C major chord and the second an A minor chord. *You will have different emotional responses to each pair of notes.* [This is largely because you are likely (if you are reading this) to have grown up in the western tradition of even-tempered scaling, where the two major harmonic tonalities *are* major and minor chords. You are, in essence, preconditioned.]
Therefore, mapping the *intervals between the notes* -- rather than the notes themselves-- will give you a more accurate reading of a musical piece. I daresay, however, that the results that he got will remain about the same: tonal pieces are still more highly self-correlated than atonal pieces.
This also puts me in mind of a particular technique used in chaos theory. If you plot the differences in time between drips from a dripping faucet in succession versus each other: (X1 = diff2, Y1 = diff1; X2 = diff3, Y2 = diff2; etc.) you describe a 2D cross-section of a strange attractor. Now I wonder what would happen if you did this with elements of a musical piece, substituting "musical intervals" for "time differences". I strongly suspect that tonal music will produce repetitive figures and atonal music will produce -- well -- what looks like random noise.
Plus, I can divide page-views by unique visitors and have a pretty good idea (along with looking at the numbers from certain directories) how long my visitors are staying and what they are doing. (Largely they are looking at upcoming events in the area.)
I also look at *when* people are coming and from *where*. Thus I can reliably say to my advertisers, "Well two-thirds of our traffic is from .com URLS and shows up between 9-5 M-F, so those are largely coming into the site from their workplace." Since we are an in affluent area, this probably means that these are people with fairly large disposable income. *That* is exactly what they want to hear.
If I am really interested, I can run a little program that does path-tracing through the site based on the raw logs, but I generally don't do that too often anymore.
Of course, I *only* see about 50,000 pageviews a month, so I don't run a big site, but I *can* talk fairly knowledgeably about my users without resorting to fancy-schmancy "network traffic analysis" or any of that other useless and expensive stuff.