Here's a selection of data people have entered into mindpixel (rank as true or false, to validate them).
Do free markets generate prosperity for most people?
does money make you happy?
The release of pain can be a pleasure.
are people better than computers
GAC doesn't like frenchness
Are clowns just like normal people?
russian language use different alphabet than english
Is the platypus a mammal
are cows carnivores?
a carnivore is an animal that consumes only plants
If Bill Clinton is an overstuffed jelly donut, doesn't that mean that someone might want to
eat him?
virgins make good sacrifices
are automobiles a kind of food ?
Do fat people sweat more that skinny people
Flaming someone in a newsgroup means you like that person
Does kissing give you cooties?
What is the sky?
is the moon a sphere?
women tend to carry a bag whilst men tend not to carry a bag
Pizza is food
okay, some of them are good, but they are all supposed to be context independent, and something that everyone would agree on. That means no opinion, no political campaigning, no paradoxes. If 10% of mindpixels database is complete garbage, of course it's never going to succeed. If it doesn't have an answer, people are just screwing up the system by entering it.
You know, standard chat room conversations are probably even simpler than the original eliza. Forget the turing test, let's shoot for a program that can sucker a Disney executive into a meeting in Santa Monica -- not only would it require a pretty good pattern matcher, it could be self funding with blackmail funds.
Just because the computer outputs something physical doesn't make it any more intelligent. Now a computer that could learn to play a game well by reading a book on the subject -- that would be something.
No one else knows what consciousness is either. Most of those who claim to know what it is explain it as "what people have that machines never will", gleefully ignoring the fact that humans are machines.
If anyone defines consciousness, then it's a goal you can shoot for. But Searle & Co. would never think of defining such a thing, because once you're pinned down, then you can be proven wrong.
Option 1: Copyright should be sufficiently strong that copyright holders can put heavy restrictions on how their property can be used, such as refusing to allow code to be run on non-free operating systems, or, the moral equivalent, Microsoft's EULA forbidding using it under WINE. The two are very similar. If one is justified, then so is the other.
Option 2: Copyright should only allow control over distribution and whether and under what circumstances a derived work can be made. That means disagreeing with RMS that calling a library can violate a license. It also means that circumvention devices like DeCSS should be legal.
Take your pick of the positions, but at least be consistent.
All Sun would have to do to make this unquestionably in the same position as WINE would be to move the functionality from a kit into part of the module loader for the kernel. If Solaris can use drivers built for Linux, where is the derived work? Point to it, show where it is distributed.
Perfectly discriminatory pricing takes the economy closer to the prerequisites for Coase's theorem to apply.
While perfect competition is good because it moves the surplus to the consumer, perfectly discriminatory pricing at least allows the surplus to exist.
In other words, while this may appear to hurt the customer, it helps the economy as a whole. So it's a good thing, since anything Amazon makes eventually trickles back to the consumers (even more so today than before, since more people directly hold stocks).
We're moving to a world where everyone gets the shaft on every purchase, but they're all so wealthy it doesn't matter.
You aren't going to get anywhere with "high level strategy". That's why no one has anything to show for 50 years of AI research.
Who cares if you find the optimal strategy for playing soccer within certain constraints? Programming a computer to play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe doesn't get you any closer to building something that's actually intelligent.
Robots aren't near human level computing power, so anything that looks like "strategy" is "pre-computed formula". On the other hand, Rodney Brooks' robots are in the same league as bugs, and they do bug like things in ways that may be close to how bugs do them.
So let the state of the art advance based on hardware for a while. Eventually, though, everyone will be running very similar hardware, and the better software will win out. Everyone is probably already running a good overall strategy -- it's the local control abilities that no one knows how to do well.
Domain names should map from something like: "Señor Hussong's Cantina.com" to "senorhussongscantina.com". Spaces, punctuation, and hyphens should be deleted. Special characters should be translated into the closest low ascii character.
This way, you can write your domain name however you want, and there isn't so much of a potential for people registering something similar.
Hyphens have got to be the dumbest idea of all time. If you have a multi-word name, you almost have to register both with and without the hyphen or you will lose visitors.
Even better would be using something like soundex, which makes a "hash" of a name so that similar sounding words map to the same value. Memorizing exact spelling is not something people are used to doing.
They shouldn't do CKJ domain names, they should just define a standard translation, which can then be incorporated into client software and possibly into DNS systems. What's next, I'll be unable to get to a site unless I also choose the correct encoding? Let's see, was that "cool-shit.org in 8859-1, or coolshit.org in japanese encoding, or maybe cool-shit.net eastern european encoding. Or was it coolshít.org?"
One serious defect in US law is that there are no consequences for violating the constitution. Imagine the parallels for a business operating as congress does. You sign a contract, and then the business unilaterally extends the contract. You need to go to court to say "I didn't agree to that", and even if you win, you can't win any damages.
If the constitution represents the legitimate origin of governmental power, then attempting to get around it is no different than trying to overthrow the government. In an era when the people still had balls, that was usually punished by death. At the very least, you don't leave the usurpers in power.
Legislators should be held criminally accountable for attempting to pass unconstitutional laws. If, for example, the Berkeley city council passed a law prohibiting distributing political literature in public places, we should just say "you can't do that." I'm thinking the closest crime we currently have is impersonating a police officer, which I think carries something like 1-3 years in prison. We need explicit "abuse of power" laws.
Another change we need is that if the law is unconstitutional, then you can't be punished for anything you did getting around it. This means that if your federal income taxes are being spent on unconstitutional activities, like supporting a church, you can refuse to pay that portion of your taxes. Or, if you are on probation for violating an unconstitutional law, you can't go to jail for violating your probation if the law is found unconstitutional.
I'd almost suggest that if a public official engaged in breaking the law (enforcing an unconstitutional law), then they shouldn't be considered a public official. That is, a cop without a warrant shouldn't be considered a cop. If you punch a cop who is beating you, it shouldn't be assulting an officer, it should be self defense. I say I'd almost suggest it because I know too many wackos with strange interpretations of the constitution.
So, when Lieberman sets up his National Movie Censorship Office (read his record), throw him in jail for "federal civil rights offenses". When Bush gives federal money to church run charities, throw him in jail for misuse of public funds.
Unfortunately, "kill all the lawyers" doesn't seem feasible right now, but if we can lock them all away where they won't interfere with us, maybe we can all get on with actually doing something again.
Programming languages aren't closely based on natural languages. The first thing to notice is that a programming language only has imperitive verbs (imperitive languages) or is just an absurdly long noun phrase (functional languages).
Most programing languages don't have cases. The first basic I used had two (numeric and string). Unix shells have two (assignment and reference). Perl has several, but English speakers have no more trouble with this than a native speaker of a language with cases. Larry Wall probably knew what he was doing: he studied linguistics, and probably realized that a case system makes it easier to recognize mistakes.
Spelling and phonetics don't matter in a purely written programming language, so the most important classification for natural languages that would apply would probably be word order. Most programming languages do roughly follow English's SVO word order, like "x equals 4". They tend to put modifiers like array indices at the end, like english uses postfixes.
If we read "function(x)" as "ask function x", we can read namespace::object->function(x) as "ask namespace's object's function x", but in another language, we might have to change the order to "ask the function of object of namespace x".
Consider "program arguments out_file". You can read it in english as "program arguments from in_file to out_file". In japanese, you would say, "in_file from out_file to arguments program".
But, if you look at non-imperitive languages, you would think they aren't designed by english speakers. Most assembly is VSO, and is difficult to read aloud in english. Lisp is more or less VSO, and has a complicated syntax that allows you to build phrases of indefinite length. Lisp might make more sense to a German speaker than and English speaker.
Variables and functions can be considered a type of pronoun, where any word that isn't in the language is assumed to be a pronoun.
I'd vote for an Inanimate Carbon Rod for president before I voted for Bush, too. I.C.R. wouldn't push for stupid laws. I.C.R. probably wouldn't get us into any stupid wars that don't concern us. I.C.R. wouldn't be a pawn of the teachers' unions. I.C.R. wouldn't send the BATF out after whatever group isn't popular this week.
Sadly, I.C.R. isn't running. I'd prefer Bush as someone who will most likely fuck things up less than Gore, but I don't like either of them. I'd really like to see any of the third parties, on the grounds that no way in hell could Nadar, Buchanan, Browne or Hagelan do anything. To bad they aren't really an option either.
I'll probably write in R.U. Sirius (The Revolution(tm)'s candidate). But I'll be hoping for Bush. Do you realize that there are supreme court judges who think that the federal government has authority to prosecute rape under the interstate commerce clause? Is rape bad? Yes. Is it the federal government's responsibility? Not by a long shot. Gore is more likely to appoint brain dead justices. Abortion is currently secure, so it isn't a reason to vote for Gore. Federalism is not, and is a good reason to vote for Bush.
(It's odd -- I don't even like my own party's candidate, because he promised he wouldn't run again back in 96, and now he is.)
Let me see if I understand:
"You know all crap we've been forcing you to use to make your code work in our byzantine operating system for the past ten years? Well, turns out it wasn't actually as pleasant as we told you it would be, and we can do without it. Please don't lynch us for your RSI."
We're going to run into a terminology problem soon. It's sort of self-centered, and problematic in science fiction, to call the solar system which Earth happens to be in, "our solar system". But what should we call it? Some of the possibilities I can think of are:
Sol would seem to be the best, if we didn't have all romance languages to worry about. It even looks like a proper name ("Saul", "Solomon"). Not going to work out, though, because if I'm on a planet in Epsilon Eridani, and I'm speaking spanish, you'd have to differentiate based only on whether I used it with or without an article ("Sol" vs. "El sol").
Any other ideas? "Earth System", "Terran System" both seem wrong because it's the star, not earth, that we're refering too. "Human system" or similar science fiction stuff sounds totally wrong because the whole idea only matters if we get to another star. You don't call Europe "the white man's continent".
I sort of like "home system" or something with that sort of meaning, but I can't think of anything that works. We could always just steal a word for sun from a dead language (is "helios" a word in modern greek?).
The we have the whole problem of renaming a good portion of the natural sciences as soon as we get to Mars: Geology, Geography, Geophysics, and so on.
Pull your head out of your ass and stop listening to the english department.
Tell me, the computer you are looking at: does it work by electricity, or by magic? Would this change if some idiot with a book and a PAC came along and said it worked by magic?
Evolution is correct in the same sense that the moon orbiting the earth is correct. The evidence absolutely, positively cannot be explained via any explaination other than evolution. Evolution has been observed. Speciation has not been observed, but it is in principle impossible to observe unless you are watching for geologic time scales.
Evolution is true in the same sense that if you are travelling faster, or if the ground is wet, it will take longer to stop. Should we fail to teach this in drivers' ed classes if some wacko with beads and an incense stick says, "believe in me, and the car will stop whenever you want it to"?
There is no debate as to the fact of evolution among those who are qualified to have an opinion (which does not include me -- I can only evaluate stuff second hand). There are no "significant disagreements" that prophets for profit like to latch on to. There are disagreements along the lines of "is it a shorted wire, or a warn fuel pump", but the creationists are claiming "they can't even agree whether the car is running".
There are objective facts. Evolution is one of them. The earth being round is one of them. There is better evidence for evolution than there is Julius Caesar being murdered. The latter is taught in schools, why not the former?
And no, we have no obligation to listen to those who say creationism should be taught. The constitution is a contract between me and the government. The government has an obligation to uphold it. If you don't like separation of church and state, you're always free to move to Iraq.
And what was writing a DVD that would work in a DVD player if not authorization? If I encrypt a message with your public key and send it to you, can I then sue you for circumventing an access control method?
I don't see how there could be any solution to this. In theory, you could take your cheating all the way to a massively complicated AI you plug in between the machine the game is running on, and the keyboard, mouse and monitor you see.
There's also no solution to having more information than you're supposed to -- how about turning up the brightness on your monitor? How about using video drivers that allow you to up the gamma? Maybe automatically adjust the levels so that contrast is perfect?
There's stuff you just can't control. But the stuff you can't control isn't necessarily the interesting part of the game. I don't play video games because I'm always insanely frustrated by stuff like why my peons seem to have such pathetic AI. Try to design the game so that cheating doesn't matter, rather than trying to make cheating hard, and you've got a great game. Imagine -- how could you cheat at Sim City? You can't (other than trivially: more money, etc), because the decisions you make in Sim City are decisions that a computer can't (currently) make.
On the other hand, testing your skill in spotting stuff on a dark monitor screen, or in getting the mouse just perfect, isn't all that interesting.
Thought I'd mention this, since the story mentions carnivore.
Well, aparently on like 15 hour tape delay, but they just ended on CSPAN. From what I gather, congress isn't going to do a damn thing right now (because the session is over too soon to do it right), but revising all the law on wiretaps will be on the agenda for the next congress. Only one of the committee members seemed in the least sympathetic to the FBI witnesses. Most of the committee members were already on the "they're the FBI, of course we can't trust them" bandwagon.
So congress will probably get around to updating these laws, the updates will be pretty much along the lines we would like them to be, and they will, of course, be buried under riders making it a capital offense to link to a website that makes mention of the existance of drugs or child pornography.
Imagine you have been operating a car theft ring for several years. Then you get caught. So you offer to return all the cars which you borrowed without authorization to their owners.
Pardon me, but isn't charging someone's credit card without authorization a felony? I'm thinking "federal wire fraud".
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a selection of data people have entered into mindpixel (rank as true or false, to validate them).
eat him?
okay, some of them are good, but they are all supposed to be context independent, and something that everyone would agree on. That means no opinion, no political campaigning, no paradoxes. If 10% of mindpixels database is complete garbage, of course it's never going to succeed. If it doesn't have an answer, people are just screwing up the system by entering it.
You know, standard chat room conversations are probably even simpler than the original eliza. Forget the turing test, let's shoot for a program that can sucker a Disney executive into a meeting in Santa Monica -- not only would it require a pretty good pattern matcher, it could be self funding with blackmail funds.
Just because the computer outputs something physical doesn't make it any more intelligent. Now a computer that could learn to play a game well by reading a book on the subject -- that would be something.
No one else knows what consciousness is either. Most of those who claim to know what it is explain it as "what people have that machines never will", gleefully ignoring the fact that humans are machines.
If anyone defines consciousness, then it's a goal you can shoot for. But Searle & Co. would never think of defining such a thing, because once you're pinned down, then you can be proven wrong.
Which way is it going to be?
Option 1: Copyright should be sufficiently strong that copyright holders can put heavy restrictions on how their property can be used, such as refusing to allow code to be run on non-free operating systems, or, the moral equivalent, Microsoft's EULA forbidding using it under WINE. The two are very similar. If one is justified, then so is the other.
Option 2: Copyright should only allow control over distribution and whether and under what circumstances a derived work can be made. That means disagreeing with RMS that calling a library can violate a license. It also means that circumvention devices like DeCSS should be legal.
Take your pick of the positions, but at least be consistent.
All Sun would have to do to make this unquestionably in the same position as WINE would be to move the functionality from a kit into part of the module loader for the kernel. If Solaris can use drivers built for Linux, where is the derived work? Point to it, show where it is distributed.
he didn't actually say what he was thinking
good point.
Perfectly discriminatory pricing takes the economy closer to the prerequisites for Coase's theorem to apply.
While perfect competition is good because it moves the surplus to the consumer, perfectly discriminatory pricing at least allows the surplus to exist.
In other words, while this may appear to hurt the customer, it helps the economy as a whole. So it's a good thing, since anything Amazon makes eventually trickles back to the consumers (even more so today than before, since more people directly hold stocks).
We're moving to a world where everyone gets the shaft on every purchase, but they're all so wealthy it doesn't matter.
--Kevin
You aren't going to get anywhere with "high level strategy". That's why no one has anything to show for 50 years of AI research.
Who cares if you find the optimal strategy for playing soccer within certain constraints? Programming a computer to play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe doesn't get you any closer to building something that's actually intelligent.
Robots aren't near human level computing power, so anything that looks like "strategy" is "pre-computed formula". On the other hand, Rodney Brooks' robots are in the same league as bugs, and they do bug like things in ways that may be close to how bugs do them.
So let the state of the art advance based on hardware for a while. Eventually, though, everyone will be running very similar hardware, and the better software will win out. Everyone is probably already running a good overall strategy -- it's the local control abilities that no one knows how to do well.
Yes, unlike the millions of possible groups who aren't corporations or private parties.
Good to know the jackasses keep their financial information nearby, so that they can include more data in their clueless posts.
Domain names should map from something like: "Señor Hussong's Cantina.com" to "senorhussongscantina.com". Spaces, punctuation, and hyphens should be deleted. Special characters should be translated into the closest low ascii character.
This way, you can write your domain name however you want, and there isn't so much of a potential for people registering something similar.
Hyphens have got to be the dumbest idea of all time. If you have a multi-word name, you almost have to register both with and without the hyphen or you will lose visitors.
Even better would be using something like soundex, which makes a "hash" of a name so that similar sounding words map to the same value. Memorizing exact spelling is not something people are used to doing.
They shouldn't do CKJ domain names, they should just define a standard translation, which can then be incorporated into client software and possibly into DNS systems. What's next, I'll be unable to get to a site unless I also choose the correct encoding? Let's see, was that "cool-shit.org in 8859-1, or coolshit.org in japanese encoding, or maybe cool-shit.net eastern european encoding. Or was it coolshít.org?"
One serious defect in US law is that there are no consequences for violating the constitution. Imagine the parallels for a business operating as congress does. You sign a contract, and then the business unilaterally extends the contract. You need to go to court to say "I didn't agree to that", and even if you win, you can't win any damages.
If the constitution represents the legitimate origin of governmental power, then attempting to get around it is no different than trying to overthrow the government. In an era when the people still had balls, that was usually punished by death. At the very least, you don't leave the usurpers in power.
Legislators should be held criminally accountable for attempting to pass unconstitutional laws. If, for example, the Berkeley city council passed a law prohibiting distributing political literature in public places, we should just say "you can't do that." I'm thinking the closest crime we currently have is impersonating a police officer, which I think carries something like 1-3 years in prison. We need explicit "abuse of power" laws.
Another change we need is that if the law is unconstitutional, then you can't be punished for anything you did getting around it. This means that if your federal income taxes are being spent on unconstitutional activities, like supporting a church, you can refuse to pay that portion of your taxes. Or, if you are on probation for violating an unconstitutional law, you can't go to jail for violating your probation if the law is found unconstitutional.
I'd almost suggest that if a public official engaged in breaking the law (enforcing an unconstitutional law), then they shouldn't be considered a public official. That is, a cop without a warrant shouldn't be considered a cop. If you punch a cop who is beating you, it shouldn't be assulting an officer, it should be self defense. I say I'd almost suggest it because I know too many wackos with strange interpretations of the constitution.
So, when Lieberman sets up his National Movie Censorship Office (read his record), throw him in jail for "federal civil rights offenses". When Bush gives federal money to church run charities, throw him in jail for misuse of public funds.
Unfortunately, "kill all the lawyers" doesn't seem feasible right now, but if we can lock them all away where they won't interfere with us, maybe we can all get on with actually doing something again.
Programming languages aren't closely based on natural languages. The first thing to notice is that a programming language only has imperitive verbs (imperitive languages) or is just an absurdly long noun phrase (functional languages).
Most programing languages don't have cases. The first basic I used had two (numeric and string). Unix shells have two (assignment and reference). Perl has several, but English speakers have no more trouble with this than a native speaker of a language with cases. Larry Wall probably knew what he was doing: he studied linguistics, and probably realized that a case system makes it easier to recognize mistakes.
Spelling and phonetics don't matter in a purely written programming language, so the most important classification for natural languages that would apply would probably be word order. Most programming languages do roughly follow English's SVO word order, like "x equals 4". They tend to put modifiers like array indices at the end, like english uses postfixes.
If we read "function(x)" as "ask function x", we can read namespace::object->function(x) as "ask namespace's object's function x", but in another language, we might have to change the order to "ask the function of object of namespace x".
Consider "program arguments out_file". You can read it in english as "program arguments from in_file to out_file". In japanese, you would say, "in_file from out_file to arguments program".
But, if you look at non-imperitive languages, you would think they aren't designed by english speakers. Most assembly is VSO, and is difficult to read aloud in english. Lisp is more or less VSO, and has a complicated syntax that allows you to build phrases of indefinite length. Lisp might make more sense to a German speaker than and English speaker.
Variables and functions can be considered a type of pronoun, where any word that isn't in the language is assumed to be a pronoun.
Just some ideas.
Very good point. What I've heard is that most of the american indian tribes are known by names that mean something like "people" in their language.
I'd vote for an Inanimate Carbon Rod for president before I voted for Bush, too. I.C.R. wouldn't push for stupid laws. I.C.R. probably wouldn't get us into any stupid wars that don't concern us. I.C.R. wouldn't be a pawn of the teachers' unions. I.C.R. wouldn't send the BATF out after whatever group isn't popular this week.
Sadly, I.C.R. isn't running. I'd prefer Bush as someone who will most likely fuck things up less than Gore, but I don't like either of them. I'd really like to see any of the third parties, on the grounds that no way in hell could Nadar, Buchanan, Browne or Hagelan do anything. To bad they aren't really an option either.
I'll probably write in R.U. Sirius (The Revolution(tm)'s candidate). But I'll be hoping for Bush. Do you realize that there are supreme court judges who think that the federal government has authority to prosecute rape under the interstate commerce clause? Is rape bad? Yes. Is it the federal government's responsibility? Not by a long shot. Gore is more likely to appoint brain dead justices. Abortion is currently secure, so it isn't a reason to vote for Gore. Federalism is not, and is a good reason to vote for Bush.
(It's odd -- I don't even like my own party's candidate, because he promised he wouldn't run again back in 96, and now he is.)
Let me see if I understand:
"You know all crap we've been forcing you to use to make your code work in our byzantine operating system for the past ten years? Well, turns out it wasn't actually as pleasant as we told you it would be, and we can do without it. Please don't lynch us for your RSI."
We're going to run into a terminology problem soon. It's sort of self-centered, and problematic in science fiction, to call the solar system which Earth happens to be in, "our solar system". But what should we call it? Some of the possibilities I can think of are:
Sol would seem to be the best, if we didn't have all romance languages to worry about. It even looks like a proper name ("Saul", "Solomon"). Not going to work out, though, because if I'm on a planet in Epsilon Eridani, and I'm speaking spanish, you'd have to differentiate based only on whether I used it with or without an article ("Sol" vs. "El sol").
Any other ideas? "Earth System", "Terran System" both seem wrong because it's the star, not earth, that we're refering too. "Human system" or similar science fiction stuff sounds totally wrong because the whole idea only matters if we get to another star. You don't call Europe "the white man's continent".
I sort of like "home system" or something with that sort of meaning, but I can't think of anything that works. We could always just steal a word for sun from a dead language (is "helios" a word in modern greek?).
The we have the whole problem of renaming a good portion of the natural sciences as soon as we get to Mars: Geology, Geography, Geophysics, and so on.
My dad's like that too. He says (jokingly) "They're getting us ready."
Always makes me wonder, where do I apply to become one of They?
Pull your head out of your ass and stop listening to the english department.
Tell me, the computer you are looking at: does it work by electricity, or by magic? Would this change if some idiot with a book and a PAC came along and said it worked by magic?
Evolution is correct in the same sense that the moon orbiting the earth is correct. The evidence absolutely, positively cannot be explained via any explaination other than evolution. Evolution has been observed. Speciation has not been observed, but it is in principle impossible to observe unless you are watching for geologic time scales.
Evolution is true in the same sense that if you are travelling faster, or if the ground is wet, it will take longer to stop. Should we fail to teach this in drivers' ed classes if some wacko with beads and an incense stick says, "believe in me, and the car will stop whenever you want it to"?
There is no debate as to the fact of evolution among those who are qualified to have an opinion (which does not include me -- I can only evaluate stuff second hand). There are no "significant disagreements" that prophets for profit like to latch on to. There are disagreements along the lines of "is it a shorted wire, or a warn fuel pump", but the creationists are claiming "they can't even agree whether the car is running".
There are objective facts. Evolution is one of them. The earth being round is one of them. There is better evidence for evolution than there is Julius Caesar being murdered. The latter is taught in schools, why not the former?
And no, we have no obligation to listen to those who say creationism should be taught. The constitution is a contract between me and the government. The government has an obligation to uphold it. If you don't like separation of church and state, you're always free to move to Iraq.
Anyone in California should keep this in mind in November:
Diane Feinstein was a sponser of the anti meth bill.
Tom Campbell recently said that the drug war has failed, and we need get rid of it.
Any fanatic libertarians out there should keep this in mind: a vote for Lightfoot is a vote for Feinstein.
And what was writing a DVD that would work in a DVD player if not authorization? If I encrypt a message with your public key and send it to you, can I then sue you for circumventing an access control method?
I don't see how there could be any solution to this. In theory, you could take your cheating all the way to a massively complicated AI you plug in between the machine the game is running on, and the keyboard, mouse and monitor you see.
There's also no solution to having more information than you're supposed to -- how about turning up the brightness on your monitor? How about using video drivers that allow you to up the gamma? Maybe automatically adjust the levels so that contrast is perfect?
There's stuff you just can't control. But the stuff you can't control isn't necessarily the interesting part of the game. I don't play video games because I'm always insanely frustrated by stuff like why my peons seem to have such pathetic AI. Try to design the game so that cheating doesn't matter, rather than trying to make cheating hard, and you've got a great game. Imagine -- how could you cheat at Sim City? You can't (other than trivially: more money, etc), because the decisions you make in Sim City are decisions that a computer can't (currently) make.
On the other hand, testing your skill in spotting stuff on a dark monitor screen, or in getting the mouse just perfect, isn't all that interesting.
Thought I'd mention this, since the story mentions carnivore.
Well, aparently on like 15 hour tape delay, but they just ended on CSPAN. From what I gather, congress isn't going to do a damn thing right now (because the session is over too soon to do it right), but revising all the law on wiretaps will be on the agenda for the next congress. Only one of the committee members seemed in the least sympathetic to the FBI witnesses. Most of the committee members were already on the "they're the FBI, of course we can't trust them" bandwagon.
So congress will probably get around to updating these laws, the updates will be pretty much along the lines we would like them to be, and they will, of course, be buried under riders making it a capital offense to link to a website that makes mention of the existance of drugs or child pornography.
there's one inside The Magic Garden Explained.
I would guess you could also find this in Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD, and other histories of Unix.
I seem to remember also seeing it in books on system administration.
Anyone with enough time can probably figure out the answers to you questions by consulting one of the maps at:
http://www.cybergeography.com/atlas/ atlas.html
This map seems to suggest that most data does pass through the US.
How generous, offering to give a refund.
Imagine you have been operating a car theft ring for several years. Then you get caught. So you offer to return all the cars which you borrowed without authorization to their owners.
Pardon me, but isn't charging someone's credit card without authorization a felony? I'm thinking "federal wire fraud".