Considering that "strange objects in the sky" have been around all through recorded history, calling them UFOs is just, IMHO, bad chronoanthromorphism. (i.e. a cultural projection from our time based on human-centered lack of understanding). Now that physicists are beginning to understand that we live in a 10-dimensional (not 4-D) continuum AND that we are not separate from what we perceive, a better explanation is that these -- things -- are cross-sectional intrusions into our culturally determined perceptual space. They may in fact not actually be made of matter (as we understand it) at all. Go back and read "Flatland". Think of *us* as the Flatlanders. A bit of evidence to convince you is that some of these intrusions seem to pass through a rainbow of colors, which is consistent with a energy spectrum shift. Perhaps the Philadelphia experiments during WWII (where bizarre space-time relativistic deformities were observed utilizing high-energy magnetic fields, leading, unfortunately, to psychoses in the volunteers) cut a little too close to the "truth". I do not think that we will ever find a technologically-based solution to the UFO problem -- because the "technology" being used is partly based on non-physical consciousness (the "inner" 6 dimensions), which will never be able to be produced by machines of any kind. I think that Carl Jung's speculations (near the end of his life) that UFOs are mass consciousness projections may be more accurate than a purely technologically-based solution.
In today's New York Times (081799) on the front page there is an article about a bizarre interstellar object. Its spectrum matches neither that of a star or a quasar. It looks somewhat like a star spectrum in its fractal dimension, but then it has these odd peaks like a quasar. (Stars have "valleys" instead of peaks, indicating absorbtion of energy.) This makes me think of two things:
1) Are quasars, with their extremely high outputs of energy, locales of matter/anti-matter interaction?
2) Is this object an anti-matter *star*? If so, it would be fairly rare, since (presumably) most anti-matter objects would have long since been destroyed. And, indeed, it is rare -- no other objects with this spectrum have been found. If it is, moreover, it appears to have an extremely high red-shift factor, indicating great distance/age.
Curiously, the bass-ackwards stance of the Kansas Board of Education points up a good feature of the United States of America. Each State is different. Yes, it's true they are remarkably similar in many ways, but each state has its own personality. People can always vote with their feet and move somewhere else.
Now, how does UCITA figure into this? Each state has to ratify UCITA within its own borders and that's not a given at all. Do now: set up a bookmark to your local legislature and check often to see when UCITA comes up. While waiting, set up a listserv at ListBot or ONElist (or on your own machine if you're running listserv or majordomo) about UCITA and get all the user groups and third parties in your state to sign onto it. When UCITA shows up, hit the panic button and have everyone start writing your legislators every day -- either snail or Email. (Encourage writers to use their own words rather than a form letter.) When you have defeated UCITA in your state, change the name of the list to Internet Issues. Voila! You have just created an inspired and dedicated Internet-aware polity! Those legislators will now *always* be looking over their shoulder for you -- and that's the way we want it...
Sure it can. If the algorithm is keying on word boundries, then "sane" and "insane" are two different words. That would be a pretty lame (and badly written) bit of code that found all the words lurking in other words and broke them out as individual words.
In fact you can search faster by first breaking up all the sentences into words and matching against the words than trying to match an arbitrary string against another string. Say you had a sentence of 20 words, averaging five letters a word, and you were trying to match a six-letter word. Breaking at word boundries means you only have to try to match 20 times. On the other hand, 20 words * 5 letters/word (+the space) means you have 120 characters. Matching a six-character string means making 115 (!) comparisons. (Wouldn't have to match after the first 115 chars because not enough chars left in the string.)
Written back in 1993(!) as a master's thesis, it is, as far as I know, the *first* history of the net. Maybe you even read it in school; it's been downloaded thousands of times and translated into many languages. Here is a quote from the beginning:
"Why write a history of the Net? It's not enough to say merely that it's never been done.
The Net is a unique creation of human intelligence.
The Net is the first intelligent artificial organism.
The Net represents the growth of a new society within the old.
The Net represents a new model of governance.
The Net represents a threat to civil liberties.
The Net is the greatest free marketplace of ideas that has ever existed.
As much as everyone is fawning over Kismet, Dr. Brooks as much admits that it is a hack when he lets slip that it exploits "human" programming. Much more impressive (and operating at a 5-year-old level, not 2-year-old) is CYC, which has been being built in Austin Texas for about 10 years now by Dr. Douglas Lenat. See Cyc here. It is based on Dr. Lenat's work going back to the 80's to build a computer that can learn and reason. Dr. Lenat previously had built AM and Eurisko. All/.ers should have at least some familiarity with his work.
Sheesh. Mrpunch is right; the government did NOT register f*ck.com; it is merely holding onto to that name pending a court case in New Hampshire regarding the First Amendment rights of the people who DID register it. (They are suing NetSol and the government on the grounds that, since the Commerce Dept. mandated domain names, this constitutes prior government censorship. NetSol holds that they are a private entity, and thus have a perfect right to censor.)
Well, isn't this ironic. I think the government is overstepping its bounds just slightly here. If Spencer Abraham's Anticybersquatting Bill passes, this should be the first domain to be sued, because I don't think the government has any plans to use this domain name. And if they do, what are they going to use it for? May I suggest that they use it as a public forum for anti-government expression? (Check out this bill S.1255 at Library of Congress; I think Sec 3(B)(ii)(II) would be the appropriate section under which to sue.)
People don't seem to have trouble with the concept of "geeks" forming an association of like-minded people, but they seem to hung up on the semantic concept of "union". Reframe: think not top-down "union" but voluntary-association "guild". When you start thinking that way, you will realize that geek guilds *already* exist: e.g. Webmaster's guild, Internet Society, etc. Remember, too, that the basis behind Net divisions is not really political, it's "religious"!;-)
I have gone to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and read (again) the text of the law to which you are referring. I see nothing that says that this law is retroactive; in fact, Congress is specifically enjoined *against* passing such laws.
(from the US Constitution: http://tucson.com/Constitution/cns2/cns253.htm)
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 - BILL, EX POST FACTO No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
That having been said, I agree with your assertion that this is a bad -- in fact, probably unconstitutional -- law, as it ties together prior censorship by public entities with funding constraints. Although the Federal Government has used defunding threats in the past to progmulate de facto national standards (e.g. using the threat of highway funds withholding to force states to keep their drinking ages at 21), various Circuit Courts have held that the InterState Commerce clause (which the Supreme Court has upheld as one of the powers of Congress) *cannot* be overly extended. (The case of which I am thinking concerned Congress using that clause to establish "gun-free" zones around public schools; a circuit court (Ninth?) held that that use of the InterState Commerce clause was unconstitutional.)
You might want to check out Ian Clarke's Distributed Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System at http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~iic/4yp . He has come up with a way to use adaptive neural networks to monitor ht requests and then move the content closer to the requestor, thus reducing overall network traffic. Quite an ingenious idea really. And -- bonus -- he has other bells and whistles which make the net "uncensorable". Check it out!
I used to spew out tripe like this in high school. I called it "beating a deadline to death with a writer's block." It's really simple: 1) Attack something. 2) Come up with a real bizarre analogy or metaphor. Extend it to insane lengths. 3) Drag in a bunch of useless and/or meaningless and/or grandiose stuff. 4) Finish with a flourish. My AP English teacher was on to me though; he would mark me down for "excessive use of purple prose." I had fun, though.;-)
I have a friend -- a Senior Systems Administrator -- who, a couple of years ago, described his job as "data janitor". So I fully agree with this post. He also made the point that being good enough that you didn't have to do that much wasn't a Good Thing. He was once fired from a job for just that reason -- "wasn't bringing in billable hours" was the *official reason*. (A week later they had to rush out and hire a new sysadmin, because -- guess what -- they found they needed one! They were *really* suitpid!;-)
Hackers are the parasites of the cyberworld. As Tom Ray pointed out so vividly with his artificial life experiment Tierra, parasites (beings that steal resources to live or reproduce) co-evolve along with the other citizens of the ecology. They are a feature, not a bug. Interestingly, he found that environments where parasites were permitted were both more diverse and more robust, compared to environments where parasites were artificially supressed. Apparently, by bleeding off resources without contributing, they increase selection pressures on the "animals" who are "playing by the rules". So it is in cyberspace. Of course, just as animals, in turn, evolve defenses against parasites, so cybernauts should protect themselves. It really is a jungle out there. While the FBI is swatting mosquitos, who knows how tapeworms there are?
Re:pic of Cmdr Taco and Squeaky
on
Slashdot Notes
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· Score: 1
So *that's* the Cmdr. Gee, I don't know, he looks so...so *normal*. Where's the wings? And the halo? And the voice like thunder? Perhaps this is just his don't-frighten-the-kiddies manifestation. Seriously, though, big props to you, Rob! For me,/. has gone from Cool Thing to Must Read Every Day. Great uncensored commentage on what's really up with the net. Keep up the excellent work! (Hey Squeaky: Power to the People -- Right on!)
Amendment 4 - PROBABLE CAUSE The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Therefore, it seems to me, that being scanned at airports IS an unreasonable search without a warrant. It's convenient for the airlines; it's yet another step down the slippery slope to a national security state; and, of course, it's just another hole being opened in the Constitutional safety net.
Wait a second! It appears to me that Erik does not grasp the First Amendment correctly. The establishment of free speech was *not* merely to ensure that political speech was unhindered; it was to recognize the *natural* right *to* free speech. To argue that the "right" of free speech was *established* is to argue that the so-called "right" is ONLY a privilege. He goes on to say that 'the US has widened what is considered"political" speech.' Wrong end of the telescope again. More correctly, the Supreme Court has carved out certain exceptions to the ABSOLUTE right of free speech. The right to free speech existed *before* any laws were made about it. Thus his argument that the First Amendment is 'invisioned' [sic] to protect political speech is simply incorrect, and thus any further argument based on that notion is also incorrect.
From *my* perspective, source code, being an expression of an idea, *IS* free speech and the government has to meet a very high standard in order to restrict it in any way. Now, in a sense, I do agree that Source Code is unlike other types of expression in that it is both a machine and an expression at the same time. However, that it is a machine puts it squarely under the domain of the Patent office. We don't need another pile of regulations.
1) Why do these advertisements have to be for corporate sponsors? Why not have Public Service Announcements or causes near to the artists' heart?
2) Subscription model: Set up an.htpassword page. Let people in at various levels: song X, album X, all works. And RealAudio, MP3. Set up some sort of microcosting system. Each level being a little more costly, but still less expensive than even one CD. For example, I'd pay $20 to be able to access all Talking Heads songs from my desktop in MP3. Maybe even more... I suppose you could set it up so a market-driven consensus emerged as to how much was just the right amount to charge. Perhaps auction?
Slashdot Mirror
"Stuff that matters".
How can anyone top that?
Considering that "strange objects in the sky" have been around all through recorded history, calling them UFOs is just, IMHO, bad chronoanthromorphism. (i.e. a cultural projection from our time based on human-centered lack of understanding). Now that physicists are beginning to understand that we live in a 10-dimensional (not 4-D) continuum AND that we are not separate from what we perceive, a better explanation is that these -- things -- are cross-sectional intrusions into our culturally determined perceptual space. They may in fact not actually be made of matter (as we understand it) at all. Go back and read "Flatland". Think of *us* as the Flatlanders. A bit of evidence to convince you is that some of these intrusions seem to pass through a rainbow of colors, which is consistent with a energy spectrum shift. Perhaps the Philadelphia experiments during WWII (where bizarre space-time relativistic deformities were observed utilizing high-energy magnetic fields, leading, unfortunately, to psychoses in the volunteers) cut a little too close to the "truth". I do not think that we will ever find a technologically-based solution to the UFO problem -- because the "technology" being used is partly based on non-physical consciousness (the "inner" 6 dimensions), which will never be able to be produced by machines of any kind. I think that Carl Jung's speculations (near the end of his life) that UFOs are mass consciousness projections may be more accurate than a purely technologically-based solution.
1) Are quasars, with their extremely high outputs of energy, locales of matter/anti-matter interaction?
2) Is this object an anti-matter *star*? If so, it would be fairly rare, since (presumably) most anti-matter objects would have long since been destroyed. And, indeed, it is rare -- no other objects with this spectrum have been found. If it is, moreover, it appears to have an extremely high red-shift factor, indicating great distance/age.
Now, how does UCITA figure into this? Each state has to ratify UCITA within its own borders and that's not a given at all. Do now: set up a bookmark to your local legislature and check often to see when UCITA comes up. While waiting, set up a listserv at ListBot or ONElist (or on your own machine if you're running listserv or majordomo) about UCITA and get all the user groups and third parties in your state to sign onto it. When UCITA shows up, hit the panic button and have everyone start writing your legislators every day -- either snail or Email. (Encourage writers to use their own words rather than a form letter.) When you have defeated UCITA in your state, change the name of the list to Internet Issues. Voila! You have just created an inspired and dedicated Internet-aware polity! Those legislators will now *always* be looking over their shoulder for you -- and that's the way we want it...
In fact you can search faster by first breaking up all the sentences into words and matching against the words than trying to match an arbitrary string against another string. Say you had a sentence of 20 words, averaging five letters a word, and you were trying to match a six-letter word. Breaking at word boundries means you only have to try to match 20 times. On the other hand, 20 words * 5 letters/word (+the space) means you have 120 characters. Matching a six-character string means making 115 (!) comparisons. (Wouldn't have to match after the first 115 chars because not enough chars left in the string.)
Written back in 1993(!) as a master's thesis, it is, as far as I know, the *first* history of the net. Maybe you even read it in school; it's been downloaded thousands of times and translated into many languages. Here is a quote from the beginning:
"Why write a history of the Net? It's not enough to say merely that it's never been done.
The Net is a unique creation of human intelligence.
The Net is the first intelligent artificial organism.
The Net represents the growth of a new society within the old.
The Net represents a new model of governance.
The Net represents a threat to civil liberties.
The Net is the greatest free marketplace of ideas that has ever existed.
The Net is in imminent danger of extinction.
The Net is immortal. "
Check it out at The History of The Net.
As much as everyone is fawning over Kismet, Dr. Brooks as much admits that it is a hack when he lets slip that it exploits "human" programming. Much more impressive (and operating at a 5-year-old level, not 2-year-old) is CYC, which has been being built in Austin Texas for about 10 years now by Dr. Douglas Lenat. See Cyc here. It is based on Dr. Lenat's work going back to the 80's to build a computer that can learn and reason. Dr. Lenat previously had built AM and Eurisko. All /.ers should have at least some familiarity with his work.
Sheesh. Mrpunch is right; the government did NOT register f*ck.com; it is merely holding onto to that name pending a court case in New Hampshire regarding the First Amendment rights of the people who DID register it. (They are suing NetSol and the government on the grounds that, since the Commerce Dept. mandated domain names, this constitutes prior government censorship. NetSol holds that they are a private entity, and thus have a perfect right to censor.)
Well, isn't this ironic. I think the government is overstepping its bounds just slightly here. If Spencer Abraham's Anticybersquatting Bill passes, this should be the first domain to be sued, because I don't think the government has any plans to use this domain name. And if they do, what are they going to use it for? May I suggest that they use it as a public forum for anti-government expression? (Check out this bill S.1255 at Library of Congress; I think Sec 3(B)(ii)(II) would be the appropriate section under which to sue.)
People don't seem to have trouble with the concept of "geeks" forming an association of like-minded people, but they seem to hung up on the semantic concept of "union". Reframe: think not top-down "union" but voluntary-association "guild". When you start thinking that way, you will realize that geek guilds *already* exist: e.g. Webmaster's guild, Internet Society, etc. Remember, too, that the basis behind Net divisions is not really political, it's "religious"! ;-)
http://ocean.hhardy.net/rafiles/linus/
(from the US Constitution: http://tucson.com/Constitution/cns2/cns253.htm)
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 - BILL, EX POST FACTO No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
That having been said, I agree with your assertion that this is a bad -- in fact, probably unconstitutional -- law, as it ties together prior censorship by public entities with funding constraints. Although the Federal Government has used defunding threats in the past to progmulate de facto national standards (e.g. using the threat of highway funds withholding to force states to keep their drinking ages at 21), various Circuit Courts have held that the InterState Commerce clause (which the Supreme Court has upheld as one of the powers of Congress) *cannot* be overly extended. (The case of which I am thinking concerned Congress using that clause to establish "gun-free" zones around public schools; a circuit court (Ninth?) held that that use of the InterState Commerce clause was unconstitutional.)
You might want to check out Ian Clarke's Distributed Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System at http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~iic/4yp . He has come up with a way to use adaptive neural networks to monitor ht requests and then move the content closer to the requestor, thus reducing overall network traffic. Quite an ingenious idea really. And -- bonus -- he has other bells and whistles which make the net "uncensorable". Check it out!
I used to spew out tripe like this in high school. I called it "beating a deadline to death with a writer's block." It's really simple: 1) Attack something. 2) Come up with a real bizarre analogy or metaphor. Extend it to insane lengths. 3) Drag in a bunch of useless and/or meaningless and/or grandiose stuff. 4) Finish with a flourish. My AP English teacher was on to me though; he would mark me down for "excessive use of purple prose." I had fun, though. ;-)
I have a friend -- a Senior Systems Administrator -- who, a couple of years ago, described his job as "data janitor". So I fully agree with this post. He also made the point that being good enough that you didn't have to do that much wasn't a Good Thing. He was once fired from a job for just that reason -- "wasn't bringing in billable hours" was the *official reason*. (A week later they had to rush out and hire a new sysadmin, because -- guess what -- they found they needed one! They were *really* suitpid! ;-)
Hackers are the parasites of the cyberworld. As Tom Ray pointed out so vividly with his artificial life experiment Tierra, parasites (beings that steal resources to live or reproduce) co-evolve along with the other citizens of the ecology. They are a feature, not a bug. Interestingly, he found that environments where parasites were permitted were both more diverse and more robust, compared to environments where parasites were artificially supressed. Apparently, by bleeding off resources without contributing, they increase selection pressures on the "animals" who are "playing by the rules". So it is in cyberspace. Of course, just as animals, in turn, evolve defenses against parasites, so cybernauts should protect themselves. It really is a jungle out there. While the FBI is swatting mosquitos, who knows how tapeworms there are?
So *that's* the Cmdr. Gee, I don't know, he looks so...so *normal*. Where's the wings? And the halo? And the voice like thunder? Perhaps this is just his don't-frighten-the-kiddies manifestation. Seriously, though, big props to you, Rob! For me, /. has gone from Cool Thing to Must Read Every Day. Great uncensored commentage on what's really up with the net. Keep up the excellent work! (Hey Squeaky: Power to the People -- Right on!)
Amendment 4 - PROBABLE CAUSE
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Therefore, it seems to me, that being scanned at airports IS an unreasonable search without a warrant. It's convenient for the airlines; it's yet another step down the slippery slope to a national security state; and, of course, it's just another hole being opened in the Constitutional safety net.
From *my* perspective, source code, being an expression of an idea, *IS* free speech and the government has to meet a very high standard in order to restrict it in any way. Now, in a sense, I do agree that Source Code is unlike other types of expression in that it is both a machine and an expression at the same time. However, that it is a machine puts it squarely under the domain of the Patent office. We don't need another pile of regulations.
Extending the ideas here...
.htpassword page. Let people in at various levels: song X, album X, all works. And RealAudio, MP3. Set up some sort of microcosting system. Each level being a little more costly, but still less expensive than even one CD. For example, I'd pay $20 to be able to access all Talking Heads songs from my desktop in MP3. Maybe even more... I suppose you could set it up so a market-driven consensus emerged as to how much was just the right amount to charge. Perhaps auction?
1) Why do these advertisements have to be for corporate sponsors? Why not have Public Service Announcements or causes near to the artists' heart?
2) Subscription model: Set up an