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Re: EBusiness Webforms: cluetrain has left the station Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote: > > Although it's like a total shock to 99.999% (5nines) of all the > employed website designers out there, the truth is webforms /can/ > accept "U.S. of A" as a country. Incredible, but true. Web forms can > also accept /multiple/ or even /free-form/ telephone numbers and can > even be partitioned into manageable steps. All this can also be done > without selling exclusive rights to your wallet to the World's > Second-Richest Corporation (assuming Cisco is still #1) and vendor > locking your business into their "small transaction fee" tithe. Ah, but you've just gotten to the crux of the situation. There's good design and bad design. There's good testing and bad testing. The problem is, anyone can design a good Web form, but nobody does. I think "best practices" hasn't caught up on main street Web enablement yet. There's some really great packages on how to do this stuff and in fact the usability people knew that Web forms needed to be fixed 5 years ago, so that's why we got XForms and XHTML. You can shoot yourself in the foot and people usually do. What the problem is, they don't even recognize that they're gimpy--ever. They just keeping trundling along making a mess of everything assured in their job security that they can build Web forms without even caring if they can be used or not beyond their test machine. If you had a piece of software and a security warning came out 5 years ago on it, would you run that software? Wouldn't you have patched or upgraded something so fundamentally broken 4 years and 11 months ago? What I want to know is why would someone use Web forms best practices from 5 years ago? I mean you can get a college degree in that time. Imagine if the next version of Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Linux forced you to use a tiled window manager? Sure, tiled windows were the best we had for a brief period of time, but they are completely useless except for some terminal based replacement applications. The bottom line is, if you can't get across the bridge, then it's broken regardless of whose fault it really is, and it's the business that needs to take responsibility as they are the ones that wanted to put the bridge there in the first place. Greg

Re: Content management for MP3s At 09:02 AM 9/29/02 -0700, Elias wrote: >I'm about to undertake a massive project to index/catalog well over one >thousand CDs that have been ripped to MP3 and set up a server to stream >them to different rooms in the house. (Yes, I own them all, no I'm not >broadcasting them to the 'net.) Can anyone give me some recommendations as >to what (free? opensource?) software is best suited for this task? I know >there are a few FoRKs out there who have tackled this problem before... See if http://www.jwz.org/gronk/ meets your needs. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20020905brian5.asp

NYTimes.com Article: Vast Detail on Towers' Collapse May Be Sealed This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu. Another reminder that the moral writ of intellectual property is -- and ought to --be more limited than real property. Private money paid for these bits, but expropriation may be fairer for IP than real-P. Rohit khare@alumni.caltech.edu Vast Detail on Towers' Collapse May Be Sealed September 30, 2002 By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC LIPTON What is almost certainly the most sophisticated and complete understanding of exactly how and why the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell has been compiled as part of a largely secret proceeding in federal court in Lower Manhattan. Amassed during the initial stages of a complicated insurance lawsuit involving the trade center, the confidential material contains data and expert analysis developed by some of the nation's most respected engineering minds. It includes computer calculations that have produced a series of three-dimensional images of the crumpled insides of the towers after the planes hit, helping to identify the sequence of failures that led to the collapses. An immense body of documentary evidence, like maps of the debris piles, rare photos and videos, has also been accumulated in a collection that far outstrips what government analysts have been able to put together as they struggle to answer the scientifically complex and emotionally charged questions surrounding the deadly failures of the buildings. But everyone from structural engineers to relatives of victims fear that the closely held information, which includes the analysis and the possible answers that families and engineers around the world have craved, may remain buried in sealed files, or even destroyed. Bound by confidentiality agreements with their clients, the experts cannot disclose their findings publicly as they wait for the case to play out. Such restrictions are typical during the discovery phase of litigation. And as it now stands, the judge in the case - who has agreed that certain material can remain secret for the time being - has approved standard legal arrangements that, should the lawsuit be settled before trial, could cause crucial material generated by the competing sides to be withheld. "We're obviously in favor of releasing the information, but we can't until we're told what to do," said Matthys Levy, an engineer and founding partner at Weidlinger Associates, who is a consultant in the case and the author of "Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail" (Norton, 2nd edition, 2002). "Let's just say we understand the mechanics of the whole process" of the collapse, Mr. Levy said. Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband, Richard, when the south tower fell and who is a member of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, said the information should be disclosed. "If they have answers and are not going to share them, I would be devastated," Mrs. Gabrielle said. "They have a moral obligation." The lawsuit that has generated the information involves Larry A. Silverstein, whose companies own a lease on the trade center property, and a consortium of insurance companies. Mr. Silverstein maintains that each jetliner that hit the towers constituted a separate terrorist attack, entitling him to some $7 billion, rather than half that amount, as the insurance companies say. As both sides have prepared their arguments, they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring expert opinion about exactly what happened to the towers. Dean Davison, a spokesman for Industrial Risk Insurers of Hartford, one of the insurance companies in the suit, said of the findings, "There are some confidentiality agreements that are keeping those out of the public domain today." He conceded that differing opinions among the more than 20 insurers on his side of the case could complicate any release of the material. As for his own company, whose consultants alone have produced more than 1,700 pages of analysis and thousands of diagrams and photographs, Mr. Davison said every attempt would be made to give the material eventually to "public authorities and investigative teams." Still, some of that analysis relies on information like blueprints and building records from other sources, like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built and owned the trade center and supports Mr. Silverstein in the suit. Mr. Davison said he was uncertain how the differing origins of the material would influence his company's ability to release information. In a statement, the Port Authority said access to documents would be "decided on a case-by-case basis consistent with applicable law and policy," adding that it would cooperate with "federal investigations." The fate of the research is particularly critical to resolve unanswered questions about why the towers fell, given the dissatisfaction with the first major inquiry into the buildings' collapse. That investigation, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was plagued by few resources, a lack of access to crucial information like building plans, and infighting among experts and officials. A new federal investigation intended to remedy those failings has just begun at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, an agency that has studied many building disasters. Officials with NIST have said it could take years to make final determinations and recommendations for other buildings, a process they now acknowledge might be speeded up with access to the analysis done by the consultants on the lawsuit. Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, said of the real estate executive's own heavily financed investigative work, "We decline to comment other than to say that Silverstein is cooperating fully with the NIST investigation." A spokesman for the agency confirmed it was in discussions with Mr. Silverstein on the material, but said no transfer had taken place. With no shortage of money or expertise, investigations by both sides in the legal case have produced a startling body of science and theory, some of it relevant not only to the trade center disaster but to other skyscrapers as well. "The work should be available to other investigators," said Ramon Gilsanz, a structural engineer and managing partner at Gilsanz Murray Steficek, who was a member of the earlier inquiry. "It could be used to build better buildings in the future." Legal experts say confidentiality arrangements like the one governing the material can lead to a variety of outcomes, from full or partial disclosure to destruction of such information. In some cases, litigants who paid for the reports may make them public themselves. Or they may ask to have them sealed forever. "It is not unusual for one party or another to try to keep some of those documents secret for one reason or another, some legitimate, some not," said Lee Levine, a First Amendment lawyer at Levine Sullivan & Koch in Washington. Mr. Levine said that because of the presumed value of the information, the court might look favorably on requests to make it public. But the uncertainty over the fate of the material is unnerving to many people, especially experts who believe that only a complete review of the evidence - not piecemeal disclosures by litigants eager to protect their own interests - could lead to an advance in the federal investigation of the trade center. "It's important for this to get presented and published and subjected to some scrutiny," said Dr. John Osteraas, director of civil engineering practice at Exponent Failure Analysis in Menlo Park, Calif., and a consultant on the case, "because then the general engineering community can sort it out." The scope of the investigation behind the scenes is vast by any measure. Mr. Levy and his colleagues at Weidlinger Associates, hired by Silverstein Properties, have called upon powerful computer programs, originally developed with the Pentagon for classified research, to create a model of the Sept. 11 attack from beginning to end. The result is a compilation of three-dimensional images of the severed exterior columns, smashed floor and damaged core of the towers, beginning with the impacts and proceeding up to the moments of collapse. Those images - which Mr. Levy is not allowed to release - have helped pinpoint the structural failures. The FEMA investigators did not have access to such computer modeling. Nor did the FEMA team have unfettered access to the trade center site, with all its evidence, in the weeks immediately after the attacks. But no such constraints hampered engineers at LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti, brought to the site for emergency work beginning on the afternoon of Sept. 11. Daniel A. Cuoco, the company president and a consultant to Silverstein Properties on the case, said he had assembled detailed maps of the blazing debris at ground zero in models that perhaps contain further clues about how the towers fell. Though the FEMA team could not determine "where things actually fell," Mr. Cuoco said, "we've indicated the specific locations." Mr. Cuoco said he could not reveal any additional details of the findings. Nor would Mr. Osteraas discuss the details of computer calculations his company has done on the spread of fires in large buildings like the twin towers. Mr. Osteraas has also compiled an extensive archive of photographs and videos of the towers that day, some of which he believes have not been available to other investigators. And the investigation has not limited itself to computers and documentary evidence. For months, experiments in wind tunnels in the United States and Canada have been examining the aerodynamics that fed the flames that day and stressed the weakening structures. Jack Cermak, president of Cermak Peterka Peterson in Fort Collins, Colo., was retained by the insurance companies but had previously performed wind-tunnel studies for the original design of the twin towers nearly 40 years ago. For the legal case, Dr. Cermak said, "we've done probably more detailed measurements than in the original design." "The data that have been acquired are very valuable in themselves for understanding how wind and buildings interact," Dr. Cermak said. "Some of the information may be valuable for the litigation," he said, adding, "I think I've told you all I can." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/30/nyregion/30TOWE.html?ex=1034388663&ei=1&en=0d3143a997e5e2e1 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Michael wrote: > > http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20020905brian5.asp I thought this nekkid URL was going to be about the infringement of 1st amendment rights for broadcasters and proposed campaign finanice restrictions preventing them from making money on advertisements that are deemed thinly veiled campaign contributions by some arbitrary government board. As it was posted to "discussion" I thought there'd be some. Instead it's a Post-Gazette column by Brian O'Neill lamenting the fact that some people know how to fill out a permit so that they can take advantage of their right to peaceable assembly. Obviously he's poking fun at the idea that specific groups get specific "zones" and that it's not up to the police to decide what messages and signs get put into what zones to most expediently keep order. The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting political rallies that you don't agree with has become common practice. The courts have constantly ruled that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. They teach you that your very first year of law school. I think that given the information as laid out by the story, Mr. O'Neill has confused free speech with action. Free speech or even protected speech as practiced by almost every American seems to involve the ability to communicate an idea to an unknown audience. Action involves directing a specific comment to a specific well-defined individual or audience that has immediate, harmful, and sometimes physical effects that is easily forseeable by any reasonable person. I think Bill Neel of Butler needs to go back to school as obviously he must have been sleeping in his civics class or else they didn't teach civics in mini-guantanamo, OH 65 years ago. Greg

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Owen Byrne wrote: > What a load of crap. Politics are somehow more muddy now? I'd say that > its considerably > clearer - the vast majority of people feel disenfranchised, and the > common practice of > putting protestors in boxes is done usually to hide them from TV > cameras, visiting dignitaries, > etc, further exacerbating those feelings. > "Unpeaceably disrupting political rallies" is now usually done by police > with riot gear and pepper spray. > > We had a good one here a month or so ago - a few people peaceably > strayed from the permit area, > which was nearly a mile from the site of the meeting of finance > ministers held here (the motorcade drove > by it for about 10 seconds), and were immediately gassed, beaten and > arrested. Not very muddied at all. What does that exactly have to do with the statement that distruption of peacable political assembly has become a common practice disruption tool? It's an observation not a judgement, comment, approval. You've focused on the word "muddy" to use it in a different context than the one I posted. Maybe the distinction I was trying to make was too subtle and I was trying to be too clever with my writing this morning. Let me summarize the important parts of my post for you: I have a premise that there is a difference between free and protected speech and action. I think O'Neill on his soapbox doesn't understand the distinction. All better? Greg

Re[2]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) >> >> http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20020905brian5.asp GAB> I thought this nekkid URL was going to be about the GAB> infringement of 1st amendment rights for broadcasters GAB> and proposed campaign finanice restrictions preventing them GAB> from making money on advertisements that are deemed GAB> thinly veiled campaign contributions by some arbitrary GAB> government board. As it was posted to "discussion" I GAB> thought there'd be some. GAB> Instead it's a Post-Gazette column by Brian O'Neill GAB> lamenting the fact that some people know how to GAB> fill out a permit so that they can take advantage GAB> of their right to peaceable assembly. Obviously GAB> he's poking fun at the idea that specific groups GAB> get specific "zones" and that it's not up to the GAB> police to decide what messages and signs get put into GAB> what zones to most expediently keep order. Oh thats right Greg. Because was explicitly clear that the pro-Bush folks went out and did the permit dance. So where in the article is this again? Lets get something straight here. This -is- a First Amendment issue. Public streets, provided one isn't blocking traffic, generally tend to be sorta ok, at least from my last interpretation of Con Law a few years ago (I'll feign ignorance wrt the fact that laws may have changed, and the specific facts in this case are weak). IF this guy _was_ merely holding a sign (which it seems was the case for all the pro-bush folks) he did nothing wrong. He certainly didn't do enough of a wrong to warrant a disorderly conduct charge. I'll play with your perspective though. Lets assume a few things. If I walk into the city office and tell them I want to peacably assemble against Bush, do you think they'll give me a permit? Probably not. So I lie. Then the cop does what happened in this scenario. HE walks up, checks my permit and finds out that I falsified my statement to get this said document. He arrests me. End of story. GAB> The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied GAB> nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting GAB> political rallies that you don't agree with has become GAB> common practice. The courts have constantly ruled GAB> that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. GAB> They teach you that your very first year of law school. I'll agree with Owen on this one. Muddied my ass. How hard is it to chose between a Republocrat or a Demipublican? Not very. Shouting down has grown to become the answer because the government, over a span of years, and with the help of the Courts -has- limited the rights we have as citizens under the First Amendment. If you question the policy about terrorism, or drugs, or Iraq, or Bush in general, you're aiding terrorism. If you challenge the beliefs of the folks attending the various shadowy G8 conferences, you're an anarchist, and you're herded off to a 'designated protest spot' miles away from anything. Part of the point of speech is to be -heard-. I can scream on my soapbox in the forest somewhere, and while thats speech, its not effective speech. People are screaming and shouting over the political figures because they cannot be heard in any other way. GAB> I think that given the information as laid out by the story, GAB> Mr. O'Neill has confused free speech with action. Free GAB> speech or even protected speech as practiced by almost GAB> every American seems to involve the ability to communicate GAB> an idea to an unknown audience. Action involves directing GAB> a specific comment to a specific well-defined individual or audience GAB> that has immediate, harmful, and sometimes physical GAB> effects that is easily forseeable by any reasonable person. Getting back to my original point. How do you communicate an idea to an unknown audience, if you're miles from where the audience is? How do you bypass the rules for being -miles- away from the audience without violating the rules of the regime? I don't think Mr. Nell was throwing pies at Bush. A sign, the last time I checked, didn't cause physical injury, or even emotional harm. If I remember Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), its not the individual speaking that has the requirement to desist, but the individual listening who has the option to leave. Just my .02, while its still considered legal. -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

RE: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) > The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied > nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting > political rallies that you don't agree with has become > common practice. The courts have constantly ruled > that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. > They teach you that your very first year of law school. > I don't think politics is any muddier. People are becoming increasingly unethical. It's a breakdown in home training. Bill

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote: >at zones to most expediently keep order. > >The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied >nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting >political rallies that you don't agree with has become >common practice. The courts have constantly ruled >that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. >They teach you that your very first year of law school. > > What a load of crap. Politics are somehow more muddy now? I'd say that its considerably clearer - the vast majority of people feel disenfranchised, and the common practice of putting protestors in boxes is done usually to hide them from TV cameras, visiting dignitaries, etc, further exacerbating those feelings. "Unpeaceably disrupting political rallies" is now usually done by police with riot gear and pepper spray. We had a good one here a month or so ago - a few people peaceably strayed from the permit area, which was nearly a mile from the site of the meeting of finance ministers held here (the motorcade drove by it for about 10 seconds), and were immediately gassed, beaten and arrested. Not very muddied at all. Owen

MIT OpenCourseWare Looks useful. Hopefully, they'll put up some more material soon. http://ocw.mit.edu/global/all-courses.html

RE: Re[2]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) > > GAB> The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied > GAB> nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting > GAB> political rallies that you don't agree with has become > GAB> common practice. The courts have constantly ruled > GAB> that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. > GAB> They teach you that your very first year of law school. > > I'll agree with Owen on this one. Muddied my ass. How hard is it to > chose between a Republocrat or a Demipublican? Not very. Shouting > down has grown to become the answer because the government, over a > span of years, and with the help of the Courts -has- limited the > rights we have as citizens under the First Amendment. Wishful thinking. People are just bigger dickheads now. Culture is changing and it is becoming acceptable to get in peoples face and shout them down when you disagree with them. The people that do this are NOT disenfranchised. They get their rocks off on being disagreeable assholes. The act of protesting is more important than the actual issue being protested for most of these people. > question the policy about terrorism, or drugs, or Iraq, or Bush in > general, you're aiding terrorism. If you challenge the beliefs of > the folks attending the various shadowy G8 conferences, you're an > anarchist, and you're herded off to a 'designated protest spot' miles > away from anything. Part of the point of speech is to be -heard-. > I can scream on my soapbox in the forest somewhere, and while thats > speech, its not effective speech. People are screaming and shouting > over the political figures because they cannot be heard in any other > way. And where does this end? Shouting down speakers is an obviously stupid tactic if they are -really- interested in advocating change. Are they such clueless social morons that they don't see this or are they just interested in stroking their pathetic egos? OBTW, 'clueless social moron syndrom' does not have political boundaries. Bill

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Bill Stoddard wrote: > > Wishful thinking. People are just bigger dickheads now. nah, they've always been this way. > Culture is changing and it is becoming acceptable to get in > peoples face and shout them down when you disagree with them. culture changing, yeh. 'those who fail to learn from history..' what does it tell you when a market chain is named 'bread and circus' and no-one twigs? -- #ken P-)} Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Golux.Com/coar/ Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ "Millennium hand and shrimp!"

Re[2]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) >> >>Wishful thinking. People are just bigger dickheads now. Culture is changing >>and it is becoming acceptable to get in peoples face and shout them down >>when you disagree with them. The people that do this are NOT >>disenfranchised. They >>get their rocks off on being disagreeable assholes. The act of protesting is >>more important than the actual issue being protested for most of these >>people. >> >> OB> In my experience, this is classic "American" behaviour, and I don't OB> think its on the increase outside of the US of A. OB> I am willing to accept the premise that Americans are bigger dickheads OB> then they used to be. *sighs* Right. Because Americans are the only people capable of being assholes. Shit. History keeps fucking up when they keep mentioning all the historical examples of dickhead-ness that have proceeded the US. After all, we're the only country who gets unruly when it comes to issues. Thats why its always just the Americans at those crazy WTO meetings... Right, Owen? -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote: >>>Wishful thinking. People are just bigger dickheads now. Culture is changing >>>and it is becoming acceptable to get in peoples face and shout them down >>>when you disagree with them. The people that do this are NOT >>>disenfranchised. They >>>get their rocks off on being disagreeable assholes. The act of protesting is >>>more important than the actual issue being protested for most of these >>>people. >>> >>> >>> >>> >OB> In my experience, this is classic "American" behaviour, and I don't >OB> think its on the increase outside of the US of A. >OB> I am willing to accept the premise that Americans are bigger dickheads >OB> then they used to be. > >*sighs* > >Right. Because Americans are the only people capable of being >assholes. Shit. History keeps fucking up when they keep mentioning >all the historical examples of dickhead-ness that have proceeded the >US. > >After all, we're the only country who gets unruly when it comes to >issues. Thats why its always just the Americans at those crazy WTO >meetings... Right, Owen? > > > > > A flippant remark that I will probably regret - sure there's assholes everywhere. I just remember a lunch in Spain with a semi-famous American - I think we had about 10 nationalities at the table, and he managed to insult each of them within 15 minutes. A historical perspective makes me think that empires - Roman, British, Russian, American, whatever - produce a larger proportion of assholes than subject nations (and are more likely to have them in positions of authority). Owen

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Bill Stoddard wrote: >>GAB> The problem is that politics have gotten so muddied >>GAB> nowadays, that shouting down and unpeaceably disrupting >>GAB> political rallies that you don't agree with has become >>GAB> common practice. The courts have constantly ruled >>GAB> that there are some restrictions on the first amendment. >>GAB> They teach you that your very first year of law school. >> >>I'll agree with Owen on this one. Muddied my ass. How hard is it to >>chose between a Republocrat or a Demipublican? Not very. Shouting >>down has grown to become the answer because the government, over a >>span of years, and with the help of the Courts -has- limited the >>rights we have as citizens under the First Amendment. >> >> > >Wishful thinking. People are just bigger dickheads now. Culture is changing >and it is becoming acceptable to get in peoples face and shout them down >when you disagree with them. The people that do this are NOT >disenfranchised. They >get their rocks off on being disagreeable assholes. The act of protesting is >more important than the actual issue being protested for most of these >people. > > In my experience, this is classic "American" behaviour, and I don't think its on the increase outside of the US of A. I am willing to accept the premise that Americans are bigger dickheads then they used to be. Owen

Re: Re[2]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) ----- Original Message ----- From: <bitbitch@magnesium.net> > People are screaming and shouting over the political figures because > they cannot be heard in any other way. What, are they illiterate? Mute? What's their problem? If somebody stops them from posting web pages, or printing newsletters, or talking on the phone, or organizing their /own/ conference then that would be wrong. I don't think free speech is a license to speak directly at and be in the physical presence of any particular individual of your choosing - especially when that individual is busy doing something else and isn't interested.

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) On Mon, 2002-09-30 at 09:20, Owen Byrne wrote: > In my experience, this is classic "American" behaviour, and I don't > think its on the increase outside of the US of A. In my experience, this protest behavior is really only an issue in "ultra-liberal" coastal cities, which is where I normally live. It is part of the culture and that behavior is viewed as acceptable. For comparison, contrast this with the character of the arguably more serious protests against Federal government abuse in the inter-mountain West. They have a very different idea of what constitutes acceptable protest practice. Those protests remain largely civil and polite, if heated and aggressive, and those involve a far greater percentage of the local population. And unlike 99% of the liberal coastal city protests I've seen, the people protesting in the inter-mountain West are actually facing immediate dire consequences from the activities they are protesting and are strongly motivated to protest in a manner that gets results. Some of their tactics, such as the practice of many businesses and restaurants in northern Nevada to not give service to anyone known to be in the employ of the BLM and related agencies, have been very effective at forcing dialog. I don't recall anyone characterizing their protests as impolite, rude, or violent, but then they have more to lose. -James Rogers jamesr@best.com

Re[4]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Hello Mr., Monday, September 30, 2002, 1:19:12 PM, you wrote: MF> ----- Original Message ----- MF> From: <bitbitch@magnesium.net> >> People are screaming and shouting over the political figures because >> they cannot be heard in any other way. MF> What, are they illiterate? Mute? What's their problem? If somebody stops MF> them from posting web pages, or printing newsletters, or talking on the MF> phone, or organizing their /own/ conference then that would be wrong. Perhaps /cannot be heard in any other way (period)/ was incorrect. What I meant, was a time-specific occurence. Sure, there are other means outside of the circumstance of the occurence. BUt until we're willing to eliminate the ability to speak in public -only- for the side that doesn't agree with the political force, and make that part of the 1st amendment, the parties -are- screaming and shouting over political figures because they cannot be heard (to those figures) in any other way. MF> I don't think free speech is a license to speak directly at and be in the MF> physical presence of any particular individual of your choosing - especially MF> when that individual is busy doing something else and isn't interested. Sure. And that goes back to my second argument -- Cohen. THey can walk away. NObody compells them to stand there, I'll agree fully. But we still have a Constitutional right to speak out against policies, actions and grievances. Again. If you want it another way, lets change the Constitution. -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

Re: Re[4]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) ----- Original Message ----- From: <bitbitch@magnesium.net> > the parties -are- screaming and shouting over > political figures because they cannot be heard (to those figures) in > any other way. The right to speak is not the same as the right to be heard by the audience of the speakers choice. Disruptive protests might be a means to create awareness - but that's a pretty lame way to do it. If it truly is the only way, then I'm all for it, but disruption for the sake of showing how committed the protesters are is pretty weak.

Re: EBusiness Webforms: cluetrain has left the station > > ... webforms /can/ > > accept "U.S. of A" as a country. Incredible, but true. Web forms can > > also accept /multiple/ or even /free-form/ telephone numbers ... Are the people who use procrustean web forms practices the same ones who don't accept faxes? When I *really* need to get something done, instead of just idle surfing, I call or fax. Faxing, like a web form, can be done 24x7; it allows me to give all the (and only the) pertinent info in a single place; it also provides a self-journalled correspondence, which means rollback is easy and replay is even easier. -Dave > Sure, tiled windows were the best we had for > a brief period of time, but they are completely useless > except for some terminal based replacement applications. I've been running a tiled (but somewhat overlapped, yielding a horizontal stack) window manager lately. Like filling in a web form, finding edges and shuffling windows may seem productive, but I find that having a window manager manage the windows means I can concentrate on what I want to do with their contents. ::::::::: "dumb question: X client behind a firewall?" > Back in my day, they didn't have ssh. Then again, back in my day, > they didn't have firewalls. Back in my day, when one changed computer installations, email would be forwarded as a courtesy. Now, we seem to have swung so far in the opposite direction that it makes sense to ditch addresses every couple of years to shed spam.

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) > From: Owen Byrne <owen@permafrost.net> > A flippant remark that I will probably regret - > sure there's assholes everywhere. I just remember a lunch in Spain with > a semi-famous American - I think we had about 10 nationalities at the > table, and he managed to insult each of them within > 15 minutes. A historical perspective makes me think that empires - > Roman, British, Russian, American, whatever - produce > a larger proportion of assholes than subject nations (and are more > likely to have them in positions of authority). Yep, those that win battles collect tthe spoils. Lead and breed. Want it to be different? Lead, don't whine.

Re: Internet Archive bookmobile On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Tom wrote: > If the set passes around enough then more people have these works. the > more folks that have them now, while they are still legal to have, the > likely they will be left behind in the possible/probabale copyright > chillout..and if that doesnt happen then more folks than not will still We will be getting BlackNet-like guerilla P2P pretty soon. Packaging it into wormcode with an initial userbase of a few 100 k to Mnodes gives you pretty bulletproof plausible deniability. > have it for uses all manner of shades.

RE: Re[4]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) > MF> I don't think free speech is a license to speak directly at > and be in the > MF> physical presence of any particular individual of your > choosing - especially > MF> when that individual is busy doing something else and isn't > interested. Yep. I agree 100% > > Sure. And that goes back to my second argument -- Cohen. THey can > walk away. NObody compells them to stand there, I'll agree fully. > But we still have a Constitutional right to speak out against > policies, actions and grievances. > > Again. If you want it another way, lets change the Constitution. Huh? Are you saying that whoever has the loudest voice gets to be heard? Shouting down a public speaker could be considered a form of censorship. If shouting down public speakers is 'protected' it is only a matter of time before the people doing the shouting have their tactic used against them -every single time they open their mouth-. The tactic is stupid and non-productive and if generally used, will only result in chaos. The tactic is just stupid ego-bation at best, unless the goal is to generate chaos. And humans whose goals and actions in life are to create chaos in society should be locked up (provided you can accurately identify them, which is not really possible anyway, but hey, this is my rant :-). IMHO. Bill

Re[6]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd) Hello Bill, Monday, September 30, 2002, 5:46:11 PM, you wrote: >> MF> I don't think free speech is a license to speak directly at >> and be in the >> MF> physical presence of any particular individual of your >> choosing - especially >> MF> when that individual is busy doing something else and isn't >> interested. BS> Yep. I agree 100% >> >> Sure. And that goes back to my second argument -- Cohen. THey can >> walk away. NObody compells them to stand there, I'll agree fully. >> But we still have a Constitutional right to speak out against >> policies, actions and grievances. >> >> Again. If you want it another way, lets change the Constitution. BS> Huh? Are you saying that whoever has the loudest voice gets to be heard? BS> Shouting down a public speaker could be considered a form of censorship. If BS> shouting down public speakers is 'protected' it is only a matter of time BS> before the people doing the shouting have their tactic used against BS> them -every single time they open their mouth-. The tactic is stupid and BS> non-productive and if generally used, will only result in chaos. The tactic BS> is just stupid ego-bation at best, unless the goal is to generate chaos. BS> And humans whose goals and actions in life are to create chaos in society BS> should be locked up (provided you can accurately identify them, which is not BS> really possible anyway, but hey, this is my rant :-). IMHO. BS> Bill No offense or anything, but there's a difference between holding a sign that doesn't agree with Bush and screaming at him. My sole point, as far as the 1st Amendment goes is that there is more to this game than just being an angry, liberal youth. (Which is the gross culmination of everyone's argument sofar) The screaming isn't the most effective method around. I don't believe I argued that it was. But screaming is happening because the means to communicate to the representatives involved are diminishing, at least as far as the people doing the screaming are concerned. For the record, I don't support the screamers in organized conferences (Such as the Colin Powell shout-down that was mentioned earlier). I don't think that this is what the 1st Amendment was implying. These folks -do- have a right to be heard, and I think they have a right to be heard by the folks they elected in the first place. My point, (my only point) was really more concerned with the cases such as Mr. Nell. He wasn't engaged (at least from the limited facts we have) in a shoutout, but rather in a difference of opinion. He has a right to possess this opinion and make it known to the representatives that are elected. A sign is not a shout-out. I think I may have missed (or not accurately addressed) the original thread switch that took this example and mixed in the screaming dissenters to the mix. I was mostly responding with my miffedness in having broad-brush strokes applied to a group without examining the policy reasons that might have contributed to it. IN this case, the screaming parties are fed up with getting corralled miles away from the folks they need to speak with. They're resorting to creative, offensive and constitutionally challengable means, but its not simply due to the fact that they're 20 and have lost all decorum. The 'My generation never did this ' is all BS. THere's more to this story, we just dont' know it all. I hope this clarifies my position. For the quick rehash: Screaming != Free speech on all cases. Dissent = Free speech, provided you follow what has been laid down by the Supremes. K? -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

Re: EBusiness Webforms: cluetrain has left the station On Saturday 28 September 2002 04:37 pm, you struggled free to say: &> > Although it's like a total shock to 99.999% (5nines) of all the &> > employed website designers out there, the truth is webforms /can/ &> > accept "U.S. of A" as a country. Incredible, but true. Web forms can &> > also accept /multiple/ or even /free-form/ telephone numbers and can &> > even be partitioned into manageable steps. All this can also be done &> > without selling exclusive rights to your wallet to the World's &> > Second-Richest Corporation (assuming Cisco is still #1) and vendor &> > locking your business into their "small transaction fee" tithe. Think of all the people and places that would not get unsolicited mail if we hadn't invented them. Though perhaps ordering a free Enron mug as the King of Hell.... I think it's like P3P met whatever commercial /.like forum was rocking yesterday, and they took all Greg's extra serotonin and lit up and made a Successful go of personal address palettes you could occupy and own or rent and even move or sell. So you'd reply to all the whitepaper sites you wouldn't just call to get the real deal like: 'Okay, let's say I'm in Factorytown, GuangZhou, and I'm a battery acid supervisor for a multinational that sometimes buys B1s. e-mail me if you get your story written up all the way;' or 'Today, I'm a 200lb, 3m tall mophead with pearlecent teeth and excellent sex-linked features, but who uses Solaris nntp clients. Got it?' or merely 'I can't read Base64 messages. I use small alphabets and 8-letter words that didn't come from the bible and use calculus, and I'd thank you to class me as a Catamite.' &> Yes, but this is what normally happened: &> Engineer: we can put an input validator/parser on the backend to do that. &> ..... &> Creative Director: I don't give a shit. As long as it's in blue. And &> has a link to my press release. N3kk1D PRR3zzEw33Lz ahR 3V1L, but I thought it had to do with coldfusion-compatiblie plugins (servlets, whatever) that overhyped unimplemented features. Repeatedly. Openly. In rakish 10MB branding-first downloads that meshed well with budgeting policies.

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment & Angry Liberal Yutes Gregory Alan Bolcer: >I'm not sure since I haven't attended civics class >in quite some time, but the First Amendment doesn't cover protected speech, >hate speech, or actions. .. The first two are wrong. The first amendment DOES protect speech the Supreme Court decides it protects (duh!), and that happens to include most of what people consider hate speech. Unlike many other nations, the US has no laws against hate speech, per se. And the first amendment is the reason for that. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com

Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil One of the most bizarre pages I've seen on the Web. At first I thought it might be some sort of back-story to a RPG, but, nope, it looks like somebody believes this. === http://www.viking-z.org/r20i.htm M09. Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil. DINOSAURS. Reptoid ETs are reported to be 12 foot high crocodiles walking on their hind legs. This is a description of a dinosaur. It now appears in Remote Viewing that the Reptoid ETs, dinosaurs and dragons are all linked together and that they all originated on Earth. The Erideans who are Reptoid derivatives have a home planet (in the Eridanus system) like all other ETs. The Reptoids have no reported home planet. They also come over as entities with little brain who control their bodies directly by spirit. This is a description of a ghost or disincarnate entity regardless of how people see them. Thus it could be that the Reptoids, Erideans, Nordics, Anunnaki, but not the Greys, all have origins on Earth and have a strong link to Earth even if they choose to live elsewhere. The Greys do not appear to have a renal or urinary system and this points to them not originating on Earth. The definitive work on dragons is "The Flight of Dragons" by Peter Dickinson. If dragons did exist in the flesh, they did not survive the long bow. Targets do not come much bigger. Truth is stranger than fiction. Thus the writer's current scenario is that there were a race of dinosaurs which developed psychic intelligence to guard their eggs and young, and who probably preferred to live underground. They survived the wipe out of the dinosaurs 50 million years ago with difficulty. They evolved into the Erideans and transferred to a more hospitable planet (for them) possibly with the help of another race of ETs who wanted slaves but otherwise had no interest in Earth or mind control. Thus it appears that the current Reptoids are the Spirits or ghosts of the dinosaurs. They must have been powerful to survive 50 million years and also to appear to some people. They have appeared to the writer in remote viewing. They are living on as vampire entities. Such immortal minds are contagious and can easily jump race and species barriers. If they can be encouraged to reincarnate, then the power sources of the black magicians and mind controllers will disappear. Encouraging them to reincarnate will help so called immortal minds to disappear as immortal minds have great difficulty surviving reincarnation. Purging people's dinosaurs should remove all perverse psychic abilities not under their control. They are a source of Satanic Guardian Angels and demons. They control us by owning our psi. Thus if we regain ownership of psi, we must relinquish their control and that of all other mind controllers. Encourage people to regain ownership of their psi. THE ORIGINS OF LOVE, HATE AND PURE MALICE. The following scenario appears to hold water and can account for the origins of our Universal Subconscious. Dinosaurs laid their eggs and buried them either underground or in piles of rotting vegetation (a good source of beetles and grubs for young hatchelings). They did not sit on their eggs to keep them warm, which made them very vulnerable to drastic climate and temperature change. In order to keep away predators some at least developed psychic mind control. To do this they had to capture ownership of the psi of potential predators. This is an act of hatred and outward looking. While a few dinosaurs did develop the ability to bear living young, most did not. The dinosaurs got in first and so their mind control tends to override all other latter minds. They have become the source of all Satans, devils and demons. Birds on the other hand developed the ability to sit on their eggs and keep them warm. A hen bird normally lays a series of eggs (say one per day) and only starts sitting when the clutch is completely laid. Thus all eggs tend to hatch together as they all have an equal period of warmth. This is primarily an act of love but inward looking. Bearing live young is not suitable to a bird of the air. A pregnant pigeon would not fly very far. Antarctic penguins tuck a single egg between their legs to keep it warm, even if they are standing on ice. Mammals developed live bearing of their young which is also primarily an act of love and inward looking. This is especially true as a mammalian female can not desert her young in the womb in case of emergency as can a bird sitting on a nest. Dinosaurs developed hate and mind control of others to protect their young, while birds and mammals developed love. Birds and mammals certainly do hate all enemies of their young, but this is secondary. If one wants to purge the sources of malice of say a black magician, then purge his dinosaurs and his dinosaur eggs. Unfortunately most of our religions are based on dinosaur protection of eggs and thus mind control, regardless of the front they put out to the public. Religion tends to concentrate on "How to Brainwash your Neighbour". Conscious thought has built many mighty empires, theologies and slave control systems out of using "How to care for and protect one's young" as a foundation. Thus the foulest form of abuse possible is to call something "A load of dinosaur's eggs". Purging the dinosaurs and dinosaur's eggs of any entity tends to purge all malice back to its roots. It looks as if mighty immortal minds have built up from small beginnings, aided and abetted by various occultists and other. As they will insist on vampiring the living for energy to avoid reincarnation and disturbing the serenity of the writer, he encourages them to reincarnate. ITEMS FOR INSPECTION. For mind control to take place, then someone must take control or ownership of the target's psi and pleasure centres. Check for the following. Nest of dinosaur's eggs, holy dinosaurs, etc. Eggs, controllers or owners in peoples psi, pleasure centres, pain killing hormones, abilities, etc. Mind machines. The original engraving or engram. GOD and SATAN appear to be job titles and not entities in their own right. T hey appear to be dinosaur engravings or engrams. No doubt dinosaurs were the first job holders. TIMETRACKS are worth investigating as our complete history from the start of time. My, our, Man's timetracks, etc. The time tracks of the Universe, Universal Subconscious, Galactic Subconscious, etc. EXTINCT RACES of ETs can cause problems when they live on in vampire mode. Their virtues may known to channelers but they can also have vices. Whenever one hears of races which have evolved on to higher planes, suspect that the higher plane is a vampire one. One may never know what they looked like or other basic characteristics, which makes linking back a trifle difficult. Every extinct race, etc. BLOOD ANCESTORS are also worth investigating as minds can be passed down via genetic linkages. Some of these can be over 2,000 years old. Every blood ancestor, ancestral mind, genetic mind, etc.

Am I This Or Not? Wow, talk about a pheenomeenon == http://www.iamcal.com/software/ami/ AmIThisOrNot Dynamic Peer Rating System What is It? It's a tool to help you build your own "Am I X Or Not" sites. Where Can I Get It? Basic Version $20 The basic version lets you build a specific "Am I X" site (example). The license covers a single installation on a single site. Advanced Version $40 The advanced version lets your users create their own "Am I X" sites (example). The license covers a single installation on a single site. Installation $20 Either version of the system can be installed on your web server, given FTP access and MySQL login details.

Internet Archive bookmobile http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/09/26/bono act.DTL Opening arguments are set to begin early next month in Eldred vs. Ashcroft, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide the future of copyright law, including how and when artists and writers can build upon the work of others. .... To heighten public awareness of the importance of the case an Internet bookmobile is set to depart San Francisco next Monday on a trip that will bring it to the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., before arguments wrap up. The van, which will be stopping at schools, libraries and senior centers along the way, is equipped to provide free high-speed access to thousands of literary and artistic works that are already in the public domain. -------- I had the opportunity to visit the Internet Archive about a month ago, and saw the bookmobile under construction. It's a neat idea. Take an SUV, put a small satellite dish on the top, and put a computer, printer, and binding machine in the back. Voila -- people can search for a book, then print out a copy right there on the spot. Quite literally on-demand printing. Total fixed cost of the computer/printer/binding machine, if bought new (the IA had the equipment donated) is under $10k. One of the goals is to show libraries across the country that they could, if they wished, add these "virtual holdings" (public domain materials) to their existing library, at a fixed cost most libraries can afford. This should be compelling to small libraries in remote areas. - Jim

If you like graphic novels/comics http://www.thecliffguy.com/cliffs.htm Numerous artists drawing characters on a cliff.

Re: Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil Neat stuff. Seems to combine elements of Scientology/Xenu and David Icke (http://www.davidicke.com/icke/temp/reptconn.html). - Gordon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> To: <fork@spamassassin.taint.org> Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 10:11 PM Subject: Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil > One of the most bizarre pages I've seen on the Web. At first I thought it > might be some sort of back-story to a RPG, but, nope, it looks like somebody > believes this. > > === > http://www.viking-z.org/r20i.htm > > M09. Dinosaurs Eggs and the Origins of Good and Evil. > DINOSAURS. Reptoid ETs are reported to be 12 foot high crocodiles walking on > their hind legs. This is a description of a dinosaur. It now appears in > Remote Viewing that the Reptoid ETs, dinosaurs and dragons are all linked > together and that they all originated on Earth. The Erideans who are Reptoid > derivatives have a home planet (in the Eridanus system) like all other ETs. > The Reptoids have no reported home planet. They also come over as entities > with little brain who control their bodies directly by spirit. This is a > description of a ghost or disincarnate entity regardless of how people see > them. Thus it could be that the Reptoids, Erideans, Nordics, Anunnaki, but > not the Greys, all have origins on Earth and have a strong link to Earth > even if they choose to live elsewhere. The Greys do not appear to have a > renal or urinary system and this points to them not originating on Earth. > The definitive work on dragons is "The Flight of Dragons" by Peter > Dickinson. If dragons did exist in the flesh, they did not survive the long > bow. Targets do not come much bigger. > > Truth is stranger than fiction. Thus the writer's current scenario is that > there were a race of dinosaurs which developed psychic intelligence to guard > their eggs and young, and who probably preferred to live underground. They > survived the wipe out of the dinosaurs 50 million years ago with difficulty. > They evolved into the Erideans and transferred to a more hospitable planet > (for them) possibly with the help of another race of ETs who wanted slaves > but otherwise had no interest in Earth or mind control. > > Thus it appears that the current Reptoids are the Spirits or ghosts of the > dinosaurs. They must have been powerful to survive 50 million years and also > to appear to some people. They have appeared to the writer in remote > viewing. They are living on as vampire entities. Such immortal minds are > contagious and can easily jump race and species barriers. If they can be > encouraged to reincarnate, then the power sources of the black magicians and > mind controllers will disappear. Encouraging them to reincarnate will help > so called immortal minds to disappear as immortal minds have great > difficulty surviving reincarnation. Purging people's dinosaurs should remove > all perverse psychic abilities not under their control. They are a source of > Satanic Guardian Angels and demons. They control us by owning our psi. Thus > if we regain ownership of psi, we must relinquish their control and that of > all other mind controllers. Encourage people to regain ownership of their > psi. > > THE ORIGINS OF LOVE, HATE AND PURE MALICE. The following scenario appears to > hold water and can account for the origins of our Universal Subconscious. > > Dinosaurs laid their eggs and buried them either underground or in piles of > rotting vegetation (a good source of beetles and grubs for young > hatchelings). They did not sit on their eggs to keep them warm, which made > them very vulnerable to drastic climate and temperature change. In order to > keep away predators some at least developed psychic mind control. To do this > they had to capture ownership of the psi of potential predators. This is an > act of hatred and outward looking. While a few dinosaurs did develop the > ability to bear living young, most did not. The dinosaurs got in first and > so their mind control tends to override all other latter minds. They have > become the source of all Satans, devils and demons. > > Birds on the other hand developed the ability to sit on their eggs and keep > them warm. A hen bird normally lays a series of eggs (say one per day) and > only starts sitting when the clutch is completely laid. Thus all eggs tend > to hatch together as they all have an equal period of warmth. This is > primarily an act of love but inward looking. Bearing live young is not > suitable to a bird of the air. A pregnant pigeon would not fly very far. > Antarctic penguins tuck a single egg between their legs to keep it warm, > even if they are standing on ice. > > Mammals developed live bearing of their young which is also primarily an act > of love and inward looking. This is especially true as a mammalian female > can not desert her young in the womb in case of emergency as can a bird > sitting on a nest. > > Dinosaurs developed hate and mind control of others to protect their young, > while birds and mammals developed love. Birds and mammals certainly do hate > all enemies of their young, but this is secondary. > > If one wants to purge the sources of malice of say a black magician, then > purge his dinosaurs and his dinosaur eggs. Unfortunately most of our > religions are based on dinosaur protection of eggs and thus mind control, > regardless of the front they put out to the public. Religion tends to > concentrate on "How to Brainwash your Neighbour". Conscious thought has > built many mighty empires, theologies and slave control systems out of using > "How to care for and protect one's young" as a foundation. > > Thus the foulest form of abuse possible is to call something "A load of > dinosaur's eggs". Purging the dinosaurs and dinosaur's eggs of any entity > tends to purge all malice back to its roots. > > It looks as if mighty immortal minds have built up from small beginnings, > aided and abetted by various occultists and other. As they will insist on > vampiring the living for energy to avoid reincarnation and disturbing the > serenity of the writer, he encourages them to reincarnate. > > ITEMS FOR INSPECTION. For mind control to take place, then someone must take > control or ownership of the target's psi and pleasure centres. Check for the > following. > > Nest of dinosaur's eggs, holy dinosaurs, etc. > Eggs, controllers or owners in peoples psi, pleasure centres, pain killing > hormones, abilities, etc. > Mind machines. > The original engraving or engram. > GOD and SATAN appear to be job titles and not entities in their own right. T > hey appear to be dinosaur engravings or engrams. No doubt dinosaurs were the > first job holders. > TIMETRACKS are worth investigating as our complete history from the start of > time. > > My, our, Man's timetracks, etc. > The time tracks of the Universe, Universal Subconscious, Galactic > Subconscious, etc. > EXTINCT RACES of ETs can cause problems when they live on in vampire mode. > Their virtues may known to channelers but they can also have vices. Whenever > one hears of races which have evolved on to higher planes, suspect that the > higher plane is a vampire one. One may never know what they looked like or > other basic characteristics, which makes linking back a trifle difficult. > Every extinct race, etc. > BLOOD ANCESTORS are also worth investigating as minds can be passed down via > genetic linkages. Some of these can be over 2,000 years old. > Every blood ancestor, ancestral mind, genetic mind, etc. >

Re: A moment of silence for the First Amendment & Angry Liberal Yutes Russell Turpin wrote: > > Gregory Alan Bolcer: > >I'm not sure since I haven't attended civics class > >in quite some time, but the First Amendment doesn't cover protected speech, > >hate speech, or actions. .. > > The first two are wrong. The first amendment DOES > protect speech the Supreme Court decides it protects > (duh!), and that happens to include most of what > people consider hate speech. Unlike many other > nations, the US has no laws against hate speech, per > se. And the first amendment is the reason for that. > This was poking fun of the practice of making up differnt types of speech with different types of protected status. I think the laws specialing out hate and protected speech are ridiculous. The point I keep trying to make is that there's only two types, speech and action. I agree, they are all speech and should be covered by the First Amendment, but If hate speech is so protected, why are certain states trying to prosecute people for it? There's only two answers and one of them is wrong. 1) Because hate speech is different and needs to have a different level of protection dictated by whoever's offended at the time. 2) It's because it's not just speech, but action. A action who's consequences are foreseeable by any reasonable person. Hate speech is mislabeled. It's really "threat". I think they let the mislabeling perpetuate as there's advantage in being able to counter-threat with loss of liberty and money through civil and criminal lawsuits for people THEY don't like. Greg > _________________________________________________________________ > Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. > http://www.hotmail.com

Re: MIT OpenCourseWare At 05:38 PM 9/30/2002 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >Looks useful. Hopefully, they'll put up some more material soon. > > http://ocw.mit.edu/global/all-courses.html I'll be sure to keep everyone posted on the next update. :) -- B.K. DeLong bkdelong@ceci.mit.edu OpenCourseWare +1.617.258.0360 +1.617.877.3271 (cell)

RE: MIT OpenCourseWare Better late than never -- I received a grant from Project Athena, MIT's original courseware effort, and found at the end that they hadn't thought much about distribution of the courseware. Instead, they had gotten wrapped up with X and various Unix tools, and other useful, but not strictly educational efforts. Ken > -----Original Message----- > From: B.K. DeLong [mailto:bkdelong@pobox.com] > Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 9:06 AM > To: Eugen Leitl; forkit! > Subject: Re: MIT OpenCourseWare > > > At 05:38 PM 9/30/2002 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > >Looks useful. Hopefully, they'll put up some more material soon. > > > > http://ocw.mit.edu/global/all-courses.html > > I'll be sure to keep everyone posted on the next update. :) > > > -- > B.K. DeLong > bkdelong@ceci.mit.edu > OpenCourseWare > > +1.617.258.0360 > +1.617.877.3271 (cell) > >

Re: The Wrong Business On Tuesday 01 October 2002 01:27 am, Mr. FoRK wrote: > http://www.rathergood.com/vikings/ Some classics from this period, now in a new English translation: "The Sagas of Icelanders" in trade paperback, from (duh) Viking, in 2000. Remaindered at my local Barnes & Ignoble. The historical reference material is useful. Eirikur

Re: So I missed this one... bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote: > Turns out the music industry settled ... quite a hefty > settlement. Funnky, I thought that it was minor in comparison the the gouging that occurs on a standard CD. > The Wall Street Journal > Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. > Tuesday, October 1, 2002 > > Five Music Concerns To Pay $143.1 Million In Price-Fixing Case > Reuters News Service ... > The companies, which didn't admit any wrongdoing, will pay $67.4 > million in cash to compensate consumers who overpaid for CDs between > 1995 and 2000. The companies also agreed to distribute $75.7 million > worth of CDs to public entities and nonprofit organizations throughout > the country. The CDs will probably cost less than 7.5 million to produce and distribute... "didn't admit any wrongdoing"?!? Give me a break. Elias

Re[2]: So I missed this one... Hello Elias, Tuesday, October 1, 2002, 9:54:02 PM, you wrote: E> bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote: >> Turns out the music industry settled ... quite a hefty >> settlement. E> Funnky, I thought that it was minor in comparison the the gouging that E> occurs on a standard CD. >> The Wall Street Journal >> Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. >> Tuesday, October 1, 2002 >> >> Five Music Concerns To Pay $143.1 Million In Price-Fixing Case >> Reuters News Service ... >> The companies, which didn't admit any wrongdoing, will pay $67.4 >> million in cash to compensate consumers who overpaid for CDs between >> 1995 and 2000. The companies also agreed to distribute $75.7 million >> worth of CDs to public entities and nonprofit organizations throughout >> the country. E> The CDs will probably cost less than 7.5 million to produce and E> distribute... "didn't admit any wrongdoing"?!? Give me a break. E> Elias Toobad none of this will go back to any of the people who were forced to pay the rates. -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

Re: The Wrong Business At 10:27 PM -0700 on 9/30/02, Mr. FoRK wrote: > I realize now, that after reviewing the past several years of work and > career, I have been in the wrong business. The wrong business. > > This is what I should have been doing. > > http://www.rathergood.com/vikings/ A New Manual has been published: <http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6T1JTEGKQP&isbn=0140447695> Or, the one I read... <http://http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6T1JTEGKQP&isbn=0140441034> And, of course, the open source versions... http://users.ev1.net/~theweb/njaltoc.htm http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Njal/ -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Wifi query I think what you're looking at with the dual antenna mounts is a diversity antenna. It won't work too well with one hooked up to the pringles can and the other hooked up to a regular rubber duck. -Ian. On Tuesday, October 1, 2002, at 01:04 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > 1) reinforced concrete shields like the dickens; wood lots less so > 2) line of sight is best (o'really?) > 3) if you want to boost range, use directional aerials, not omnis > > Direct line of sight (no trees, no nothing) can give you ~10 km with > well > aligned directional aerials (and, say, no sleet, no locusts, nor rain > of > blood). If you want to fan out afterwards, use a bridge of a > directional > coupling to an omni. 802.11a should shield within building lots more > than > 802.11b, ditto line of sight with lots of precipitation inbetween. > > On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Damien Morton wrote: > >> I just bought a LinkSys BEFW1154v2 Access Point Router for $150 >> (http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=415). Im >> doing >> some dev work on a Symbol PocketPC device with built in 802.11b. >> >> In this 600 sq ft pre-war New York apartment it goes through 2 or 3 >> walls, into the hallway and halfway down the first flight of stairs >> before it loses contact with the base station. That's less than 50 ft. >> Inside the apartment, it works just fine. >> >> I just did some further testing - through 2 brick walls the range is >> about 25 feet. The signal also goes through the roof pretty much >> unimpeded. >> >> That said, the Symbol device doesn't have an antenna to speak of, and >> I >> havent done any tweaking to try to extend the range. >> >> The Linksys unit has two antenna mounts - you could leave one as an >> omni >> antenna while hooking up a directional antenna to the other. >> >> You might find that you have to use several access points and/or >> repeaters to get the coverage you want.

Re: Optical analog computing? Uh, WWII Enigma was cracked at Bletchly Park, based on the work of some Poles, who had been trying to figure out when they would be invaded. Entirely mechanical! Definitely not optical at all. Enigma was originally broken based on bad use practice. If it had been employed more sensibly it would have been a lot harder. See "The Code Book" by Singh, Doubleday, 1999. Or, for that matter, "Cryptonomicon" by Stephenson, which is a fictionalization of the Enigma cracking story, and pretty accurate. I eventually get born as a side-effect of the Battle of Britain, you see.... Computing with interference patterns, etc, makes perfect sense, but Enigma was cracked by building mechanical systems that were essentially Enigma machines and brute-forcing. Eirikur

RE: Wifi query That's what the manual said - a diversity antenna. Why wouldn't it work well with one omni and one directional antena? IANAEE, but doesn't that count as diversity? > -----Original Message----- > From: Ian Andrew Bell [mailto:fork@ianbell.com] > Sent: Tuesday, 1 October 2002 23:23 > To: Eugen Leitl > Cc: Damien Morton; tomwhore@slack.net; fork@spamassassin.taint.org > Subject: Re: Wifi query > > > > I think what you're looking at with the dual antenna mounts is a > diversity antenna. It won't work too well with one hooked up to the > pringles can and the other hooked up to a regular rubber duck. > > -Ian. > > > On Tuesday, October 1, 2002, at 01:04 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > 1) reinforced concrete shields like the dickens; wood lots less so > > 2) line of sight is best (o'really?) > > 3) if you want to boost range, use directional aerials, not omnis > > > > Direct line of sight (no trees, no nothing) can give you ~10 km with > > well > > aligned directional aerials (and, say, no sleet, no > locusts, nor rain > > of > > blood). If you want to fan out afterwards, use a bridge of a > > directional > > coupling to an omni. 802.11a should shield within building > lots more > > than > > 802.11b, ditto line of sight with lots of precipitation inbetween. > > > > On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Damien Morton wrote: > > > >> I just bought a LinkSys BEFW1154v2 Access Point Router for $150 > >> (http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=415). Im > >> doing some dev work on a Symbol PocketPC device with built in > >> 802.11b. > >> > >> In this 600 sq ft pre-war New York apartment it goes > through 2 or 3 > >> walls, into the hallway and halfway down the first flight > of stairs > >> before it loses contact with the base station. That's less than 50 > >> ft. Inside the apartment, it works just fine. > >> > >> I just did some further testing - through 2 brick walls > the range is > >> about 25 feet. The signal also goes through the roof pretty much > >> unimpeded. > >> > >> That said, the Symbol device doesn't have an antenna to > speak of, and > >> I > >> havent done any tweaking to try to extend the range. > >> > >> The Linksys unit has two antenna mounts - you could leave one as an > >> omni > >> antenna while hooking up a directional antenna to the other. > >> > >> You might find that you have to use several access points and/or > >> repeaters to get the coverage you want. >

Creative political speech http://www.quitpalestine.org./ Funny as all hell. So a group of 25 QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) marched into the local starbucks in Berkeley (Of course, they pick a safe city like Berkeley, but hey, still funny) and 'settle' driving away straights and other prior inhabitants with supersoakers :) Incredibly creative, in my opinion. Not terribly violent (I mean, how much damage can you -really- do with a supersoaker?) but definintely a newscatcher. Its nice to see folks are finding some creative means to make a point. Even if you don't -agree- with it, its a hard sell to say that this has been done before. <C'mon... I'm just waiting for the uproar from the Conservatives on the list ... :-)> -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

ActiveBuddy Kind of interesting application of 'agent' technology. A mix of telnet and Eliza? (wonder if KnowNow needs this as a partner...) == http://www.activebuddy.com/products/index.shtml ActiveBuddy, Inc. has developed patented technology for building and deploying interactive agents. ActiveBuddy's BuddyScript technology powers business solutions that leverage the functionality, convenience and appeal of instant messaging to provide an efficient and immediate means of communication with customers and constituents. ActiveBuddy technology is proven in the marketplace by the smash success of SmarterChild, ActiveBuddy's showcase interactive agent launched in June 2001 and visited by over 8 million consumers in its first year of life. Interactive agents allow your customers and constituents to receive information and services in a natural, conversational interface. Software Products BuddyScriptT Server - an end-to-end software solution for deploying interactive agents. BuddyScript Server provides every component required to operate an interactive agent, including connectivity with the messaging network, message routing, data access, message formatting, user and session management, and detailed tracking. BuddyScript Server is offered in four configurations to meet your capacity needs. Its scaleable architecture supports virtually unlimited usage. More... === Here is a sample conversation on (MSN Messenger with 'SmarterChild'): Mike says: how are you? SmarterChild says: Great thx! You? Mike says: Fine. What is the weather like in seattle? SmarterChild says: Current weather conditions for Seattle, WA: Currently: 57 F Condition: Few Clouds Real Feel: 57 F Dewpoint: 44 Humidity: 62 % Visibility: 10 mi Wind: N/0 mph Next time, just type "weather seattle, wa." To get the forecast for Seattle, WA, just type "forecast."

Re: ActiveBuddy MF> Here is a sample conversation on (MSN Messenger with 'SmarterChild'): MF> Mike says: MF> how are you? MF> SmarterChild says: MF> Great thx! You? Oh freaking great. In their adoption to make it 'more human' they have to add in all the broken english and shortened AOL-style phrasings. YAY. Next thing you know, the AI will be asking for ASL... Evil.

Re: dumb question: X client behind a firewall? ------=_NextPart_001_0004_01C2655A.4ABB3500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- Original Message ----- From: Joseph S. Barrera III Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 7:06 PM To: FoRK Subject: dumb question: X client behind a firewall? Let's say you're behind a firewall and have a NAT address. Is there any way to telnet to a linux box out there in the world and set your DISPLAY in some way that you can create xterms on your own screen? - Joe -------------------- I'm in no way a pro but perhaps you could set your Firewall to accept con= nections from that Linux box and then somehow set the Linux box to transm= it on a specific port. Then configure your router to forward all informat= ion from that port to your box. But then again, that pretty much defeats the entire point of a firewall =3D= P.Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.ms= n.com ------=_NextPart_001_0004_01C2655A.4ABB3500 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <HTML><BODY STYLE=3D"font:10pt verdana; border:none;"><DIV>&nbsp;</DIV> <= DIV>&nbsp;</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style=3D"PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5= px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">= <DIV style=3D"FONT: 10pt Arial">----- Original Message -----</DIV> <DIV = style=3D"BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt Arial; COLOR: black"><B>From:</B= > Joseph S. Barrera III</DIV> <DIV style=3D"FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>Sent:</B= > Wednesday, September 25, 2002 7:06 PM</DIV> <DIV style=3D"FONT: 10pt Ar= ial"><B>To:</B> FoRK</DIV> <DIV style=3D"FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>Subject:</B= > dumb question: X client behind a firewall?</DIV> <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV> <P>L= et's say you're behind a firewall and have a NAT address.<BR>Is there any= way to telnet to a linux box out there in the world<BR>and set your DISP= LAY in some way that you can create<BR>xterms on your own screen?<BR><BR>= - Joe</P> <P>&nbsp;</P> <P>--------------------</P> <P>I'm in no way a pr= o but perhaps you could set your Firewall to accept connections from that= Linux box and then somehow set the Linux box to transmit on a specific p= ort. Then configure your router to forward all information from that port= to your box.</P> <P>&nbsp;</P> <P>But then again, that pretty much defea= ts the entire point of a firewall =3DP.</P></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML><br= clear=3Dall><hr>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a = href=3D'http://explorer.msn.com'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></p> ------=_NextPart_001_0004_01C2655A.4ABB3500--

Polit-spam This is something new, or at least new to me: Politspam (n): Using a spam engine for political purposes. In this particular case, to get back at the University of Groningen. The content suggests its more prank than vigilante activism (in the old days we used to say "someone left their terminal unguarded") but what's interesting is that it's not trying to sell me anything or lead me to any for-fee service, it's just trying to spread a meme that RUG is evil. >>>>> "w" == wpin <lslifriend> writes: w> Those who want to leave for the Netherlands to carry on any w> kind of education,including for PHD, must be careful w> . Especially the university of Groningen(RUG) should be w> avoided. This university was once a good one but now it has w> lost its reputation. ... Studying is a good investment in time w> and money. So invest in the right place and time. You are w> warned. w> Sincerely yours, w> hyohxsycjlakdbmhjpiouupngoqrm Has anyone else started to receive either consumer vigilante or political activism messages via spam methods? -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: ActiveBuddy How is this any different from attaching an Infobot or A.L.I.C.E through licq's console-hook? People have been doing that for years, and for over a decade in IRC and the MUDs. ... and the one thing I think we've learned in all that time is that, as a help-desk, it doesn't work. People just don't like talking to robots, especially when the robots, once confused, become imbeciles. I think the humans may feel cheated, deceived and tricked when they discover, as with the Seattle answer, that they are talking to a machine; there's no real intelligence behind that simulated-friendly and therefore empty 'thx'. AIML is clever and cute, but for /practical/ applications as a first line of technical support? It's been tried over and over, and while I /also/ think that it /should/ work, for the most part, people won't use it. What's worse, as we make the NL processing more and more clever, it only means it fails more dramatically; ALICE doesn't just stumble a bit, it starts to drool. And ALICE is the best we have. Like a Dalek: All very impressive when things are going well, but all it takes to betray the chicken-brain inside is a towel over it's ill-placed eye, or a spin off the metal surface ;) In all the prolog-based NL database query systems of the 1980's and other later chatterbot helpdesk projects like Shallow Red, even simpler tries like Ask Jeeves, people very quickly know they're talking to a robot, and the queries anneal to short, truncated and terse database-like verb-noun or just noun-keyword requests. People are just too quick to adapt, and too impatient to forgive a clunky interface, and for now, especially when the /average/ computer user still can't type more than maybe 5-10wpm, NL is a painfully slow clunky interface. Put it this way: Would you login, wake the bot and ask for the Seattle weather, or would you do as we /all/ do and just click the weather icon sitting there on your desktop? Just for fun, here's an interesting conversation between Shallow Red, ALICE and Eliza as they decide to play the Turing Game: http://www.botspot.com/best/12-09-97.htm -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: ActiveBuddy Wow, if they put a VRML front end on it it would be 100% worthless rather than just 99% IRC...Bots....scripts.....been there done that and much better. If these folks actualy saw the xddc instafilesharing scripts must 12 year olds hang off of Mirc they might get a clue, then again they might already have teh clue that sometimes you can packege the obvious and sell it to the clueless.

Re: Polit-spam ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Lawrence Murphy" <garym@canada.com> > > >>>>> "w" == wpin <lslifriend> writes: > > w> Those who want to leave for the Netherlands to carry on any > w> kind of education,including for PHD, must be careful > w> . Especially the university of Groningen(RUG) should be > w> avoided. This university was once a good one but now it has > w> lost its reputation. ... Studying is a good investment in time > w> and money. So invest in the right place and time. You are > w> warned. Dear gawd - 'lost its reputation' - how horrible for those Northern Europeans. What could possibly be worse than that?

Re: ActiveBuddy let me put it /another/ way ... f> Mike says: how are you? f> SmarterChild says: Great thx! You? f> Mike says: Fine. What is the weather like in seattle? f> SmarterChild says: Current weather conditions for Seattle, WA: Out of 8 /million/ alledged visitors, this is the /best/ example??? -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: Optical analog computing? --- begin forwarded text Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 01:30:24 -0400 From: "John S. Denker" <jsd@monmouth.com> Subject: Re: Optical analog computing? Sender: jsd@no.domain.spam To: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> Cc: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, cryptography@wasabisystems.com "R. A. Hettinga" wrote: ... > "the first computer to crack enigma was optical" > "the first synthetic-aperture-radar processor was optical" > "but all these early successes were classified -- 100 to 200 projects, > and I probably know of less than half." > > --> Do these claims compute?! is this really a secret history, or does > this mean holography, of am I just completely out of the loop?1 Gimme a break. This is remarkable for its lack of newsworthiness. 1) Bletchley Park used optical sensors, which were (and still are) the best way to read paper tape at high speed. You can read about it in the standard accounts, e.g. http://www.picotech.com/applications/colossus.html 2) For decades before that, codebreakers were using optical computing in the form of superposed masks to find patterns. You can read about it in Kahn. 3) People have been doing opto-electronic computing for decades. There's a lot more to it than just holography. I get 14,000 hits from http://www.google.com/search?q=optical-computing > Optical info is a complex-valued wave (spatial frequency, amplitude and > phase) It isn't right to make it sound like three numbers (frequency, amplitude, and phase); actually there are innumerable frequencies, each of which has its own amplitude and phase. > lenses, refractions, and interference are the computational operators. > (add, copy, multiply, fft, correlation, convolution) of 1D and 2D arrays > > and, of course, massively parallel by default. > > and, of course, allows free-space interconnects. Some things that are hard with wires are easy with light-waves. But most things that are easy with wires are hard with light-waves. > Here's a commercialized effort from israel: a "space integrating > vector-matric multiplier" [ A ] B = [ C ] > laser-> 512-gate modulator -> spread over 2D > "256 Teraflop equivalent" for one multiply per nanosecond. People were doing smaller versions of that in the 1980s. > Unclassified example: acousto-optic spectrometer, 500 Gflops equivalent > (for 12 watts!) doing continuous FFTs. Launched in 1998 on a 2-year > mission. Submillimeter wave observatory. Not "FFTs". FTs. Fourier Transforms. All you need for taking a D=2 Fourier Transform is a lens. It's undergrad physics-lab stuff. I get 6,000 hits from: http://www.google.com/search?q=fourier-optics > Of course, the rest of the talk is about the promise of moving from > optoelectronic to all-optical processors (on all-optical nets & with > optical encryption, & so on). All optical??? No optoelectronics anywhere??? That's medicinal-grade pure snake oil, USP. Photons are well known for not interacting with each other. It's hard to do computing without interactions. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: ActiveBuddy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Lawrence Murphy" <garym@canada.com> > ... and the one thing I think we've learned in all that time is that, > as a help-desk, it doesn't work. I'm not sure they are doing strictly help-desk stuff. But the whole 'who in their right mind would use that? it doesn't have all these cool features!' isn't always a guarantee of failure - maybe there is a strength in this approach (agents and/or IM as ui) than can find a nich application space. > > In all the prolog-based NL database query systems of the 1980's and > other later chatterbot helpdesk projects like Shallow Red, even > simpler tries like Ask Jeeves, people very quickly know they're > talking to a robot, and the queries anneal to short, truncated and > terse database-like verb-noun or just noun-keyword requests. Kind of like a web query - and with google, someone else can turn them into a link so you don't even have to type anything. > > People are just too quick to adapt, and too impatient to forgive a > clunky interface, and for now, especially when the /average/ computer > user still can't type more than maybe 5-10wpm, NL is a painfully slow > clunky interface. Yes - true true. > > Put it this way: Would you login, wake the bot and ask for the Seattle > weather, or would you do as we /all/ do and just click the weather > icon sitting there on your desktop? What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked.

Re: Wifi query 802.11b - 11Mbps per channel over three channels in the 2.4GHz range (also shared with microwaves and cordless phones) at rages up to ~300 ft. 802.11a runs on 12 channels in the 5GHz range and up to around five times more bandwidth (~54Mbps or so) but has less range (60-100 ft). 8021.11a also adds Forward Error Correction into the scheme to allow for more reliable data transmission. Which to use really depends on what you're doing with it. Streaming video almost necessitates 802.11a, while streaming just audio can be comfortably done with 802.11b provided that there isn't much interference or too many clients. Prices? Don't know... Haven't done the research. For covering a large area 802.11a will be more expensive due to the need for more APs. If you want to reach the local coffee shop, however, you will need a directional antenna either way. Check out http://www.80211-planet.com, they've got some good articles on 802.11... Also, some of the best info on 802.11 security I've seen can be found at http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/IEEE/. Give me bandwidth or give me death, Elias Tom wrote: >... I have one very pressing question.... Wifi ranges.. ... > >Do I got for 802.11b stuff or do I gold out for 802.11a ? Is the price >point break goign to warrant the differnce? >

Re: Optical analog computing? --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org Subject: Re: Optical analog computing? From: Dave Long <dl@silcom.com> Sender: fork-admin@xent.com Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 11:09:34 -0700 > > "the first computer to crack enigma was optical" > > Computing with interference patterns, etc, makes perfect sense, but Enigma > was cracked by building mechanical systems that were essentially Enigma > machines and brute-forcing. Look for "Zygalski sheets". By Koerner's* narrative, it wound up being a hybrid affair: Bletchley had mock Enigmas which cycled through the Enigma's ~18k starting positions in a quarter of an hour, but the Germans started using a plugboard which then had ~1.5x10^14 possibilities. The Poles noticed that there were some patterns in the messages which were only possible via certain plugboard settings, and so: > When we have collected several such cards corresponding to different > initial signals ..., we place them in a pile so that the squares > corresponding to the same daily settings are aligned and shine a > light beneath the pile. Only those squares which let the light > through will correspond to possible daily settings. So the brute force hardware allowed precalculation of "optical" computing devices which then narrowed down the possibilities enough for brute force to again be used for daily decodes, until: > On 10 May, the Germans invaded France and, on the same day, in > accordance with the best cryptographic principles, they changed their > Enigma procedures in such a way that the 1560 Zygalski sheets, each > with their carefully drilled 1000 or so holes, became just so much > waste cardboard. -Dave :::::: > > "the first synthetic-aperture-radar processor was optical" This is also easy to believe, given Dr. Elachi's description of the 1981 Shuttle Imaging Radar: > The received signal is recorded on an optical film which is retrieved > after landing. The film ... is then processed in an optical correlator > to generate the final image. which makes sense, as one wishes to shift each component of the return in proportion to its frequency, for which one presumably needs a glorified prism. > Alternatively, the ... signal can be digitized and then recorded on > board or transmitted to the ground via a digital data link. This was > the case with the ... sensor flown in 1984. :::::: * Koerner, _The Pleasures of Counting_, in which various aspects of the Enigma decoding cover four chapters, of which I quote from two sections of one: 14.2: Beautiful Polish females, and 14.3: Passing the torch > Churchill's romantic soul loved the excitement and secrecy surrounding > Bletchley. He relished the way that > > [t]he old procedures, like the setting up of agents, the suborning > > of informants, the sending of messages written in invisible ink, > > the masquerading, the dressing-up, the secret transmitters, and the > > examining of the contents of waste-paper baskets, all turned out > > to be largely cover for this other source, as one might keep some > > old-established business in rare books going in order to be able, > > under cover of it, to do a thriving trade in pornography and erotica > ... > Looking at the disparate, unkempt and definitely unmilitary crew > formed by his top code-breakers, he is said to have added to his head > of Intelligence "I know I told you to leave no stone unturned to find > the necessary staff, but I did not mean you to take me so literally!" --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: ActiveBuddy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Lawrence Murphy" <garym@canada.com> > > f> What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the > f> bot, but they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? > > Do you do that? Do you hear two people at the next table say "I'm > going to Seattle tomorrow" and you just /have/ to lean over and > interject compulsively to tell them what you know about Seattle's > weather? Have you ever worked with Kragen?

Re: ActiveBuddy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gary Lawrence Murphy" <garym@canada.com> > > > > > f> What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the > > f> bot, but they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? > > > > Do you do that? Do you hear two people at the next table say "I'm > > going to Seattle tomorrow" and you just /have/ to lean over and > > interject compulsively to tell them what you know about Seattle's > > weather? > <joke>Oh, please, quit with all that StopEnergy(tm)</joke>

Re: Optical analog computing? --- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 03:21:05 +1000 To: "John S. Denker" <jsd@monmouth.com> From: Greg Rose <ggr@qualcomm.com> Subject: Re: Optical analog computing? Cc: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, cryptography@wasabisystems.com At 01:30 AM 10/2/2002 -0400, John S. Denker wrote: >"R. A. Hettinga" wrote: >... > > "the first computer to crack enigma was optical" >1) Bletchley Park used optical sensors, which were (and >still are) the best way to read paper tape at high speed. >You can read about it in the standard accounts, e.g. > http://www.picotech.com/applications/colossus.html But Colossus was not for Enigma. The bombes used for Enigma were electro-mechanical. I'm not aware of any application of optical techniques to Enigma, unless they were done in the US and are still classified. And clearly, the first bulk breaks of Enigma were done by the bombes, so I guess it depends whether you count bombes as computers or not, whether this statement has any credibility at all. Greg. Williams/Zenon 2004 campaign page: http://www.ben4prez.org Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com Qualcomm Australia VOICE: +61-2-9817 4188 FAX: +61-2-9817 5199 Level 3, 230 Victoria Road, http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Gladesville NSW 2111 232B EC8F 44C6 C853 D68F E107 E6BF CD2F 1081 A37C --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Wifi query Elias Sinderson wrote: > 802.11b - 11Mbps per channel over three channels in the 2.4GHz range > (also shared with microwaves and cordless phones) Microwaves, cordless phones and video-based baby monitors.... Greg -- Gregory Alan Bolcer, CTO | work: +1.949.833.2800 gbolcer at endeavors.com | http://endeavors.com Endeavors Technology, Inc.| cell: +1.714.928.5476

Re: Wifi query On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote: --]Elias Sinderson wrote: --]> 802.11b - 11Mbps per channel over three channels in the 2.4GHz range --]> (also shared with microwaves and cordless phones) --] --]Microwaves, cordless phones and video-based baby monitors.... Well I dont have to worry about microwavers in the house. Ours died a week or so ago and due to doing some research we will nto be getting anysuch device in the near or far future. I mean even if one half of the crap it is reported to do is true it s just not worth it for a quick cup or warm chai. Which brings me to the fact that finding a good Convection only (not combo with a microwaver) oven of any good size is dang near impossible unless you go up to the bizness sizes. thankfully there is Dehlongi of which costco has thru thier online store. Now of course the question is do we get it delivered to the old house or the new one (yep we got our offer approved and are in the short run down to a long mortage:) we close on oct 31. though the realestate agent says t happens like that a lot, I still find it incrediably jolting to have found a house inthe hood I want with the space dawn wants on sunday and we are signing papers on tuesday night with a close at the end of the month. Which of course means....wifi land for wsmf:)- ) So far I like the Linksys dsl/cable router all in one wifi ap. The Dlink has the funky 22mb stuff IF you use all thier stuff across the net and the way things go I cant say thats gonna happen for sure. Pluse the Linksys stuff is all over the mass market sotres so I cna walk home with parts at any time. The fun now comes with a realization that with ATTbi cable as my main hose tot he net offering up bwf might be a tad problematic....So i am thinking of ways around/through/under that. the setup of the particualrs are far form set in stone...any ideas would be welcome. Also any portlanders.....party time. -tom

Re: Optical analog computing? At 4:34 PM -0400 on 10/2/02, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > --- begin forwarded text > > > Status: RO > Delivered-To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org Sigh. Shoot me, now... My apologies. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Apple Sauced...again Over on Arstechnica (www.arstechnica.com) I saw mention of a Wired article that goes into the many wonderfull ways Apple is showing its love and respect for its users. http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55395,00.html There is a good rundown of all the whys and whatfores over at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/macosx-10.2-5.html "True to form, industrious third party developers saw that they could gain a competitive advantage by supporting this more capable user interface in their applications. Apple's private menu extras APIs were reverse engineered and leveraged to great effect. The architecture was so popular that an application for managing predefined sets of menu extras (third party or otherwise) was in development. All of that changed with the release of Jaguar--but not because the private APIs had changed. If they had, third party developers would have updated their applications to work with the new APIs, as they have resigned themselves to doing by choosing to use private APIs in the first place. But what actually happened in Jaguar was that Apple added code to forcibly exclude all non-Apple menu extras. Other parts of the API did not change. But when a menu extra is loaded, it is compared to a hard-coded list of "known" menu extras from Apple. If the menu extra is not on that list, it is not allowed to load. It's easy to laugh at Steve Ballmer's sweat-soaked gyrations as he chants "developers, developers, developers!", but Microsoft clearly understands something that Apple is still struggling with. It is in a platform vendor's best interest to encourage development for its platform. In Apple's case, this doesn't mean that they have to bend over backwards to make every single system service and UI element "pluggable" via public APIs. That's clearly a lot of work, and not something that needs to be the number one priority for an OS in its infancy. And in the meantime, if third party developers want to sell into a market that requires the desired functionality to be added in "unsupported" ways, then they must be prepared for the maintenance consequences of their decisions. But for Apple to go out of its way--to actually expend developer effort--to stop these third party developers, while still failing to provide a supported alternative, is incredibly foolish. "

NYTimes.com Article: Stop Those Presses! Blonds, It Seems, Will This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu. Excellent evidence of the herd. Just imagine if the anonymous noise injected into our world newsphere (noosphere?) was, say, a fraudulent story that a stock accounting scandal had been accused and the evildoers were shorting. Oh, wait, that happened. An unemployed Orange County student took down Emulex... Enjoy! Rohit khare@alumni.caltech.edu Stop Those Presses! Blonds, It Seems, Will Survive After All October 2, 2002 By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN Apparently it fell into the category "too good to check." Last Friday, several British newspapers reported that the World Health Organization had found in a study that blonds would become extinct within 200 years, because blondness was caused by a recessive gene that was dying out. The reports were repeated on Friday by anchors for the ABC News program "Good Morning America," and on Saturday by CNN. There was only one problem, the health organization said in a statement yesterday that it never reported that blonds would become extinct, and it had never done a study on the subject. "W.H.O. has no knowledge of how these news reports originated," said the organization, an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, "but would like to stress that we have no opinion of the future existence of blonds." All the news reports, in Britain and the United States, cited a study from the World Health Organization - "a blonde-shell study," as The Daily Star of London put it. But none reported any scientific details from the study or the names of the scientists who conducted it. On "Good Morning America," Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: "There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets." Ms. Sawyer said she was "somewhat of a natural blonde." Jeffrey Schneider, a spokesman for ABC News, said the anchors got the information from an ABC producer in London who said he had read it in a British newspaper. In London, The Sun and The Express both reported that unnamed scientists said blonds would survive longest in Scandinavia, where they are most concentrated, and expected the last true blond to hail from Finland. The British accounts were replete with the views of bleached blonds who said hairdressers would never allow blondness to become extinct, and doctors who said that rare genes would pop up to keep natural blonds from becoming an endangered species. Journalists in London said last night that the source of the reports was probably one of several European news agencies that are used by the British press, but it remained unclear which one. Tim Hall, a night news editor at The Daily Mail, said the report was probably distributed by The Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency. "Several papers picked it up," he said. But Charlotte Gapper, night editor at The Press Association, said that although it had considered running the report on Sept. 27, it had decided not to after talking to the World Health Organization. "We didn't do that story because we made an inquiry to the World Health Organization first," she said. "They told us that report was two years old, and had been covered at the time. They said it had been picked up again that day by a German news agency." She added that she did not know which agency the organization was referring to. Dr. Ray White, a geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, said that the disappearance of a gene for blond hair "sounds patently incorrect." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/health/02BLON.html?ex=1034599071&ei=1&en=3a0e4f0b2b251593 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Re: Apple Sauced...again >>>>> "E" == Eirikur Hallgrimsson <eh@mad.scientist.com> writes: E> ... If my environment cannot be made beautiful, in E> some sense I cannot live. "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." -- John Cage -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

wifi progress Well it looks pretty much 99% sure that we will be moving in on Nov 1 to the new house. I think the only thing that stops us now are acts of dieties and total economic collapse..so no one mention the dow for the next few weeks.. In preperation we drove to Best Buy tonight and picked up the test core for the wifi net. I got a linksys BEFW11S4(1) for the router/hub/wireless ap/firewall/etc and a linksys wifi pcmcia card for the laptop I made one false move so it took about 30 mins all told to set up the card, the router, and the other 3 machines in the house on the wire ether hub. All vfery neat very easy and very very cool set up via the webinterface. I have to dig into the firewall/nat/routing features some more (i have been reading up the wifi security blackpaper on ars technica) but all in all a smooth move. Now the place im at now, the house soon to be the ex house, has lots of funky things going on in the walls and in the area. We are in , essentialy, a gravel pit..recption of all types suck and transmisions get goofy inside the pit. That being said... with 2 walls and 40 feet between the AP and the pcmica card (no external antena on it) Im still getting 11mbs and at least 60% goodness. Some cool things about the new house...its a 1912 job so no metal works inthe walls to speak of , mostly wood and plaster. We dont have a microwave and our cordless phines are on 900mhz (yea so I can use my bear cat to listen in on some calls, with kids in the house is that such a bad thing? Ben or heather, if you read this years from now...well by then I hope youare better at countermoeasures:)- ) Ok, enough testing for tonight. I gota say, being able to do this in bed by vncing via wifi to my desktop is a blast...oh no...wifes pillow is heading this way....DUCKKKKK (1)http://www.linksys.com/Products/product.asp?grid=23&prid=173

Re: Apple Sauced...again On Wednesday 02 October 2002 06:37 pm, Tom wrote: > But what actually happened in Jaguar was that Apple added code to > exclude all non-Apple menu extras. Too, too, too, true. Just you try to muck with Job's blessed Aqua interface. Or remove the fscking dock. OSX is such a step down from Classic with Kaleidoscope skinning the entire UI. As an artist, I resent it deeply. (This is not in praise of Classic.) If my environment cannot be made beautiful, in some sense I cannot live. Eirikur

The 3rd Annual Consult Hyperion Digital Identity Forum --- begin forwarded text User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/10.1.0.2006 Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 07:56:39 +0100 Subject: The 3rd Annual Consult Hyperion Digital Identity Forum From: "David G.W. Birch" <dgw-lists@birches.org> To: Bob Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> Cc: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com> Dear All, See www.digitalidentityforum.com for more details. Speakers include Microsoft and Liberty Alliance, UK central and local government, law enforcement, financial services (Egg and RBS/NatWest), EC Research Centre, a psychologist and others. Look forward to seeing you there. Regards, Dave Birch. -- -- David Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion -- -- tel +44 (0)1483 301793, fax +44 (0)1483 561657 -- mail dave@chyp.com, web http://www.chyp.com -- -- See you at the 2nd Annual Digital Transactions Forum in Singapore -- October 16th/17th 2002, see http://www.digitaltransactionsforum.com/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Apple Sauced...again At 1:16 AM -0400 on 10/3/02, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote: > "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be > beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you > discover that there is no reason." -- John Cage "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster Fuller "Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." -- Frederic Chopin "Externalities are the last refuge of the dirigistes." -- Friedrich Hayek -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes." -- Jonathan Swift

Re: Apple Sauced...again >>>>> "R" == R A Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> writes: R> "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I R> think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, R> if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R> R. Buckminster Fuller "It was only /after/ I'd completed the geodesic dome that I noticed it was beautiful" --- R. Buckminster Fuller -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: The Wrong Business people with too much time on their hands.. look at this first (8meg, so takes a loong time): http://www.ntk.net/2002/09/27/jesus_large.jpg and then look at this reduction: http://www.ntk.net/2002/09/27/jesus_small.jpg -- #ken P-)} Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Golux.Com/coar/ Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ "Millennium hand and shrimp!"

Re: The Wrong Business Actually this is output from an old java program called jitter. It's very useful for those of us with digital cameras who end up taking 50+ pictures a day while on vacation ;) -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: The Wrong Business egad ... you mean there's two of them??? I knew there was a reason my jobs board had jumped to the top of my traffic list. -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Re: The 3rd Annual Consult Hyperion Digital Identity Forum --- begin forwarded text To: rah@shipwright.com From: hacker@vudu.net Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 06:01:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: The 3rd Annual Consult Hyperion Digital Identity Forum The guy messed up his own URL. It should be http://www.digitalidforum.com which redirects to http://www.consult.hyperion.co.uk/digid3.html "R. A. Hettinga" wrote: > > Dear All, > > See www.digitalidentityforum.com for more details. Speakers include > Microsoft and Liberty Alliance, UK central and local government, > law > enforcement, financial services (Egg and RBS/NatWest), EC Research > Centre, a > psychologist and others. Look forward to seeing you there. > > Regards, > Dave Birch. > > -- > -- David Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion > -- > -- tel +44 (0)1483 301793, fax +44 (0)1483 561657 > -- mail dave@chyp.com, web <a href="http://mail.vudu.net//jump/http://www.chyp.com">http://www.chyp.com</a> > -- > -- See you at the 2nd Annual Digital Transactions Forum in > Singapore > -- October 16th/17th 2002, see > <a href="http://mail.vudu.net//jump/http://www.digitaltransactionsforum.com">http://www.digitaltransactionsforum.com</a>/ > > --- end forwarded text > > > -- > ----------------- > R. A. Hettinga &lt;mailto: rah@ibuc.com&gt; > The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation &lt;<a href="http://mail.vudu.net//jump/http://www.ibuc.com/&gt">http://www.ibuc.com/&gt</a>; > 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA > &quot;... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and > antiquity, > [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to > experience.&quot; -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman > Empire' > > For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a > message to > &quot;dcsb-request@reservoir.com&quot; with one line of text: &quot;help&quot;. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Living Love - Another legacy of the 60's >>>>> "S" == Stephen D Williams <sdw@lig.net> writes: S> The purpose of our lives is to be free of all addictive traps, S> and thus become one with the ocean of Living Love. "One choice is a psychosis. Two, a neurosis" -- Ven Joan Shikai Woodward, Northern Mountain Order of the White Wind Zen Community just a thought. (oh, yes, the bits: Women in Zen - http://lhamo.tripod.com/2zen.htm) -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)

Living Love - Another legacy of the 60's Normally, I disdain any kind of mysticism, even when it is associated with fairly good ideas. Just a big turnoff. A good example would be the difference between Yoga/TM and the more scientifically pure, but related, relaxation techniques including "betagenics", hypnosis/auto-hypnosis, etc. (This was one of the many topics I obsessively absorbed as a teenager.) Or Tai Chi etc. vs. Tai Bo / G-Force Dyno-Staff. I have to say however that, having found this while looking for something completely unrelated, it has some cute truisms. I particularly like their addiction to non-addiction. Additionally, the Mindprod treehugger site has some interesting quotes, etc. To my internal ear, nearly all of these 60's based new-age vernacular seem to assume that you are a simple child (of the 60's?) who needs some religion-like couching of ideas to relate and internalize. Very irritating, but taken in small doses it's interesting to compare and contrast with our (my) modern mental models. I found that a few of the principles could be used to explain and justify US/UN foreign policy and actions. http://mindprod.com/methods.html http://members.aol.com/inossence/Kenkey.html http://www.mindprod.com/ (Apologies for the embedded HTML.) We create the world we live in. A loving person lives in a loving world, A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror. You make yourself and others suffer just as much when you take offence as when you give offence. To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. The past is dead, The future is imaginary, Happiness can only be in the Eternal Now Moment How soon will you realize that the only thing you don't have is the direct experience that there's nothing you need that you don't have. Love a person because he or she is there. This is the only reason. Happiness happens when your consciousness is not dominated by addictions and demands~ and you experience life as a parade of preferences. The purpose of our lives is to be free of all addictive traps, and thus become one with the ocean of Living Love. sdw -- sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st Stephen D. Williams 43392 Wayside Cir,Ashburn,VA 20147-4622 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax Dec2001

RE: Living Love - Another legacy of the 60's draw the pain "Ken never wrote about this method, but he often demonstrated it in workshops. Let us say you have a physical pain somewhere in your body. You draw the pain in the air with your finger, about 30 cm (1 foot) high. Take about 60 seconds to trace around the perimeter of the pain, carefully listening to the pain to find the precise boundary between where it hurts and where it does not. Repeat. You will find that after about 10 minutes of this the pain will shift, shrink or disappear. A variant of this is to imagine making a 3D model the pain in coloured clay." Works! There's this coworker - a real pain in my ass! I used my middle finger to trace his outline for about 60 seconds. I listened to him, found the boundary, and repeated the motion. He left my office! -----Original Message----- From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of Stephen D. Williams Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 5:33 PM To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org Subject: Living Love - Another legacy of the 60's Normally, I disdain any kind of mysticism, even when it is associated with fairly good ideas. Just a big turnoff. A good example would be the difference between Yoga/TM and the more scientifically pure, but related, relaxation techniques including "betagenics", hypnosis/auto-hypnosis, etc. (This was one of the many topics I obsessively absorbed as a teenager.) Or Tai Chi etc. vs. Tai Bo / G-Force Dyno-Staff. I have to say however that, having found this while looking for something completely unrelated, it has some cute truisms. I particularly like their addiction to non-addiction. Additionally, the Mindprod treehugger site has some interesting quotes, etc. To my internal ear, nearly all of these 60's based new-age vernacular seem to assume that you are a simple child (of the 60's?) who needs some religion-like couching of ideas to relate and internalize. Very irritating, but taken in small doses it's interesting to compare and contrast with our (my) modern mental models. I found that a few of the principles could be used to explain and justify US/UN foreign policy and actions. http://mindprod.com/methods.html http://members.aol.com/inossence/Kenkey.html http://www.mindprod.com/ (Apologies for the embedded HTML.) We create the world we live in. A loving person lives in a loving world, A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror. You make yourself and others suffer just as much when you take offence as when you give offence. To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. The past is dead, The future is imaginary, Happiness can only be in the Eternal Now Moment How soon will you realize that the only thing you don't have is the direct experience that there's nothing you need that you don't have. Love a person because he or she is there. This is the only reason. Happiness happens when your consciousness is not dominated by addictions and demands~ and you experience life as a parade of preferences. The purpose of our lives is to be free of all addictive traps, and thus become one with the ocean of Living Love. sdw -- sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st Stephen D. Williams 43392 Wayside Cir,Ashburn,VA 20147-4622 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax Dec2001

Re: ActiveBuddy On 10/2/02 12:00 PM, "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> wrote: > What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but > they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? > example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to > mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked. My guess is it's more insidious than that, it's going to be ActiveSpam. "Oh, you're going to Seattle? I can get you airline tickets for less" Yuck -- peregrine \PEH-ruh-grun or PEH-ruh-green\ (adjective) : having a tendency to wander

Blatantly stolen from a friend's LJ Hello Fork, http://www.pimprig.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=72&page=2 This kid has -way- WAY too much time on his hands. -- Best regards, bitbitch mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net

Economist: Internet models, viral spread, social diseases Not exactly new bits, but I enjoyed seeing The Economist pick up on the similarity between computer and social networks: http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1365118 _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

Re: ActiveBuddy --------------080209060700030309080805 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I actually thought of this kind of active chat at AOL (in 1996 I think), bringing up ads based on what was being discussed and other features. For a while, the VP of dev. (now still CTO I think) was really hot on the idea and they discussed patenting it. Then they lost interest. Probably a good thing. sdw Lorin Rivers wrote: >On 10/2/02 12:00 PM, "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> wrote: > > >>What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but >>they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? >>example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to >>mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked. >> >> > >My guess is it's more insidious than that, it's going to be ActiveSpam. > >"Oh, you're going to Seattle? I can get you airline tickets for less" > >Yuck > > --------------080209060700030309080805 Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title></title> </head> <body> I actually thought of this kind of active chat at AOL (in 1996 I think), bringing up ads based on what was being discussed and other features. &nbsp;For a while, the VP of dev. (now still CTO I think) was really hot on the idea and they discussed patenting it. &nbsp;Then they lost interest. &nbsp;Probably a good thing.<br> <br> sdw<br> <br> Lorin Rivers wrote:<br> <blockquote type="cite" cite="midB9C28892.35FF2%25lrivers@realsoftware.com"> <pre wrap="">On 10/2/02 12:00 PM, "Mr. FoRK" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:fork_list@hotmail.com">&lt;fork_list@hotmail.com&gt;</a> wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">What about a situation where you don't directly ask/talk to the bot, but they listen in and advise/correct/interject/etc? example: two people discussing trips, etc. may trigger a weather bot to mention what the forecast says - without directly being asked. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""><!----> My guess is it's more insidious than that, it's going to be ActiveSpam. "Oh, you're going to Seattle? I can get you airline tickets for less" Yuck </pre> </blockquote> <br> </body> </html> --------------080209060700030309080805--

Headline - Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel Greetings, Carey wants you to know about a story on www.theage.com.au Personal Message: Ah the Ig Nobels, always worth a read :) If only they had a cat-mood decipherer. ^__^ Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel By Jay Lindsay <br>Boston October 05 2002 URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538774048.html

Re: no matter where you go ... nor what color your passport? More American exceptionalism: <http://www.iht.com/articles/72079.htm> > "The United States is the only country in the world to tax its citizens > on a worldwide basis, irrespective of whether they spend time in the > country or whether they have assets there," said Philip Marcovici, > a Zurich-based lawyer with international law firm Baker and Mackenzie. and perhaps even irrespective of their current citizenship: > Under current expatriation law, there are wealth thresholds based on > net worth which lead to a presumption that a person giving up U.S. > citizenship is doing so for tax reasons. > > Individuals who have given up their citizenship and who have earned > $100,000 in any one of the 10 years before expatriation, or who have a > net worth exceeding $500,000, would automatically be deemed a so-called > "taxpatriate." Those persons would be subject to ordinary income tax > on U.S. source income for 10 years. They would also be subject to > U.S. estate and gift tax during the 10-year period. I suppose it could be much worse; there could be some twee affinity program for US citizenship, and a bank of phone people who only get paid well if they manage to keep one from cancelling membership... -Dave ::::::: > Last month, Congress proposed a new exit tax on all citizens who give up > their U.S. status. If the proposal becomes law, individuals will be taxed > as if they had either sold everything or died. This would give rise to > immediate exposure to capital gains tax. To be fair, would this mean that they'd also immediately pay out the difference for anyone whose tax basis was greater than current estate value? ::::::: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2299119.stm> > ... Australian cities overall scored particularly highly in the > [Economist Intelligence Unit] survey [of desirability for expats], > with all five the country's urban centres surveyed ranked near the > top of the table. > > Europe was also well represented among the top 10 places. > > The top US city, Honolulu, ranked 21st, with Boston, at 28th, the > highest ranked city on the US mainland. Canada, in contrast, sneaked > three cities into the top ten. > > The UK cities of London, 44th, and Manchester, 50th, gained only a > mid-table rating, with Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea bottom of > the list.

Documentum Acquires E-Room, Melding Content, Collaboration Don't know much about eRoom - but there is the magic phrase 'collaborate in real-time'... Groove really has people running scared. Wonder if any users actually /benefit/ from collaborating in real-time. === http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/INW20021004S0001 Content-management vendor Documentum said late Thursday it plans to acquire privately held e-Room Technologies in a deal worth about $100 million. Documentum will issue approximately 7.7 million shares of its common stock and pay about $12.6 million in cash for all of the outstanding shares of eRoom. Documentum makes a platform for enterprise-wide content management. ERoom makes tools for enterprise collaboration. Its customers include Airbus, Bausch & Lomb, Ford Motor Co., and Sony. Documentum announced plans this summer to deliver a new Collaboration Edition of its content-management suite. ERoom was already integrating its tools to the Documentum platform, making an acquisition an easy target, according to Documentum president and CEO Dave DeWalt. With the upcoming joint product, customers will be able to collaborate in real-time via virtual workspaces, sharing schedules, resources, and even jointly creating content. Content creation and management has always been a collaborative task, but workflow has usually been delivered via a Web browser interface or even simple e-mail -- and rarely in real-time. For now, Documentum will sell the eRoom platform and its own content-management system through combined sales channels. Further integration is planned down the line, the companies said.

[IRR] Re: The 3rd Annual Consult Hyperion Digital Identity Forum On 4/10/02 1:13 am, someone e-said: > The guy messed up his own URL. It should be > http://www.digitalidforum.com which redirects to > http://www.consult.hyperion.co.uk/digid3.html I didn't mess it up: I f*cked it up by not paying attention to a copy-and-paste from something else. Next time, I really will leave it to the PR guys. Best regards, Dave Birch. _______________________________________________ Irregulars mailing list Irregulars@tb.tf http://tb.tf/mailman/listinfo/irregulars

Re: Documentum Acquires E-Room, Melding Content, Collaboration "Groove really has people running scared" ....oh shit here comes that Groove thingy, run for your life ;-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com> To: <fork@spamassassin.taint.org> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 8:12 PM Subject: Documentum Acquires E-Room, Melding Content, Collaboration > > Don't know much about eRoom - but there is the magic phrase 'collaborate in > real-time'... Groove really has people running scared. Wonder if any users > actually /benefit/ from collaborating in real-time. > > > === > http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/INW20021004S0001 > > Content-management vendor Documentum said late Thursday it plans to acquire > privately held e-Room Technologies in a deal worth about $100 million. > > Documentum will issue approximately 7.7 million shares of its common stock > and pay about $12.6 million in cash for all of the outstanding shares of > eRoom. > > Documentum makes a platform for enterprise-wide content management. ERoom > makes tools for enterprise collaboration. Its customers include Airbus, > Bausch & Lomb, Ford Motor Co., and Sony. > > Documentum announced plans this summer to deliver a new Collaboration > Edition of its content-management suite. ERoom was already integrating its > tools to the Documentum platform, making an acquisition an easy target, > according to Documentum president and CEO Dave DeWalt. > > With the upcoming joint product, customers will be able to collaborate in > real-time via virtual workspaces, sharing schedules, resources, and even > jointly creating content. > > Content creation and management has always been a collaborative task, but > workflow has usually been delivered via a Web browser interface or even > simple e-mail -- and rarely in real-time. > > For now, Documentum will sell the eRoom platform and its own > content-management system through combined sales channels. Further > integration is planned down the line, the companies said. > > >

Whither vCard? Does anyone know what happened to vCard support in Netscape 7.0/Mozilla 1.1? (Not there yet in Mozilla and therefore not in the new mail engine I presume?) Netscape Messenger/Mozilla have LDAP LDIF import/export, but I can't find vCard or a reference to it anywhere. I like the Netscape/Mozilla email client. I avoid LookOut for at least two reasons: Windows Only (my main environment is Linux with 30% on Windows) and security issues. Now that LDAP, and the related DSML and DNS SRV record methods, are becoming more popular, is there a decline of vCard? Is there a standard emerging to deal with the mismatch in naming between the two? I've brushed with directories in the past, but I'm getting in deep along with more PKI oriented focus. Any wisdom would be appreciated. In particular, I'm going to start integrating smart cards into my linux and Win32 systems and integrating them with Netscape Messenger/Mozilla and Outlook. Thanks sdw

RE: Headline - Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel "British scientists were honoured for research that found ostriches became more amorous with each other when a human was around. In fact, ostriches eventually started putting the moves on humans." this is true of manatees also. you don't want to know. -----Original Message----- From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of Carey Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 2:03 PM To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org Subject: Headline - Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel Greetings, Carey wants you to know about a story on www.theage.com.au Personal Message: Ah the Ig Nobels, always worth a read :) If only they had a cat-mood decipherer. ^__^ Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel By Jay Lindsay <br>Boston October 05 2002 URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538774048.html

Re: Headline - Navel gazing wins an Ig Nobel Geege Schuman wrote: >"British scientists were honoured for research that found ostriches became >more amorous with each other when a human was around. In fact, ostriches >eventually started putting the moves on humans." > >this is true of manatees also. you don't want to know. > > > So how much of it is due to jumping the inter-species boundary for STATUS - i.e. I can fuck any of several reasonable candidates from my own species, or I can be ambitious, and go after the authority figure in the room. The alternative hypothesis is that its due to novelty, and then of course, there's the "they'll fuck anything given appropriate conditions." Hmmm, is this a potential intelligence test, seeing as the last is a particularily human response? Owen

Re: Economist: Internet models, viral spread, social diseases The structure of the Internet has never been about where the ditches and ruts are dug although the world needs ditch diggers too. It's a simple inductive concept: You are you and see the world as such, You plus 1 degree of separation is a new you. All this stuff about scale-free Internets, viruses, sex, and money is silly. Scale-free statistically indistinguishable models really means Internet-Scale as rediscovered by social networks people. > Research has shown that the network of human sexual partners > seems to be scale-free, too I tend to prefer the Harvard Business Review to the Economist as they tend to spend less time writing about who's sleeping with whom and come up with real statistical models. Greg Lies, Damn lies, and statistics. Russell Turpin wrote: > Not exactly new bits, but I enjoyed seeing The Economist > pick up on the similarity between computer and social > networks: > > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1365118 > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com > > -- Gregory Alan Bolcer, CTO | work: +1.949.833.2800 gbolcer at endeavors.com | http://endeavors.com Endeavors Technology, Inc.| cell: +1.714.928.5476

Re: Apple Sauced...again Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote: > R. Buckminster Fuller > > "It was only /after/ I'd completed the geodesic dome that I noticed it > was beautiful" --- R. Buckminster Fuller I had cited the information theoretic concept of "elegance" in my dissertation & did a Google to find the reference and instead found a really great tech report for UoT Knoxville by Bruce MacLennan. He cites Efficiency, Economy, and Elegance, but I think he's wrong. The middle E should be Effectiveness. Otherwise kudos. Efficiency is the relation of output to input effectiveness is the total output. In information theory, something is both elegant and efficient if no smaller or less costly something can product the same output in the same amount of time. Greg [1] http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/anon-ftp/Elegance.html ``Who Cares About Elegance?'' The Role of Aesthetics in Programming Language Design Technical Report UT-CS-97-344 Bruce J. MacLennan Computer Science Department University of Tennessee, Knoxville MacLennan@cs.utk.edu Abstract The crucial role played by aesthetics in programming language design and the importance of elegance in programming languages are defended on the basis of analogies with structural engineering, as presented in Billington's The Tower and the Bridge. This report may be used for any nonprofit purpose provided that its source is acknowledged. It will be adapted for inclusion in the third edition of my Principles of Programming Languages. 1.The Value of Analogies 2.Efficiency Seeks to Minimize Resources Used 3.Economy Seeks to Maximize Benefit versus Cost 4.Elegance Symbolizes Good Design 1.For the Designer 2.For the User 5.The Programming Language as Work Environment 6.Acquiring a Sense of Elegance 7.References The Value of Analogies Programming language design is a comparatively new activity - it has existed for less than half a century, so it is often worthwhile to look to older design disciplines to understand better this new activity. Thus, my book Principles of Programming Languages: Design, Evaluation, and Implementation, grew out of a study of teaching methods in architecture, primarily, but also of pedagogy in other disciplines, such as aircraft design. Perhaps you have also seen analogies drawn between programming languages and cars (FORTRAN = Model T, C = dune buggy, etc.). These analogies can be very informative, and can serve as ``intuition pumps'' to enhance our creativity, but they cannot be used uncritically because they are, in the end, just analogies. Ultimately our design decisions must be based on more than analogies, since analogies can be misleading as well as informative. In this essay I'll address the role of aesthetics in programming language design, but I will base my remarks on a book about structural engineering, The Tower and the Bridge, by David P. Billington. Although there are many differences between bridges and programming languages, we will find that many ideas and insights transfer rather directly. According to Billington, there are three values common to many technological activities, which we can call ``the three E's'': Efficiency, Economy and Elegance. These values correspond to three dimensions of technology, which Billington calls the scientific, social and symbolic dimensions (the three S's). We will consider each in turn. Efficiency Seeks to Minimize Resources Used In structural engineering, efficiency deals with the amount of material used; the basic criterion is safety and the issues are scientific (strength of materials, disposition of forces, etc.). Similarly, in programming language design, efficiency is a scientific question dealing with the use of resources. There are many examples where efficiency considerations influenced programming language design (some are reviewed in my Principles of Programming Languages). In the early days, the resources to be minimized were often runtime memory usage and processing time, although compile-time resource utilization was also relevant. In other cases the resource economized was programmer typing time, and there are well-known cases in which this compromised safety (e.g. FORTRAN's implicit declarations). There are also many well-known cases in which security (i.e. safety) was sacrificed for the sake of efficiency by neglecting runtime error checking (e.g. array bounds checking). Efficiency issues often can be quantified in terms of computer memory or time, but we must be careful that we are not comparing apples and oranges. Compile time is not interchangeable run time, and neither one is the same as programmer time. Similarly, computer memory cannot be traded off against computer time unless both are reduced to a common denominator, such as money, but this brings in economic considerations, to which we now turn. Economy Seeks to Maximize Benefit versus Cost Whereas efficiency is a scientific issue, economy is a social issue. In structural engineering, economy seeks to maximize social benefit compared to its cost. (This is especially appropriate since structures like bridges are usually built at public expense for the benefit of the public.) In programming language design, the ``public'' that must be satisfied is the programming community that will use the language and the institutions for which these programmers work. Economic tradeoffs are hard to make because economic values change and are difficult to predict. For example, the shift from first to second generation programming languages was largely a result of a decrease in the cost of computer time compared to programmer time, the shift from the second to the third generation involved the increasing cost of residual bugs in programs, and the fourth generation reflected the increasing cost of program maintenance compared to program development. Other social factors involved in the success or failure of a programming language include: whether major manufacturers support the language, whether prestigious universities teach it, whether it is approved in some way by influential organizations (such as the US Department of Defense), whether it has been standardized, whether it comes to be perceived as a ``real'' language (used by ``real programmers'') or as a ``toy'' language (used by novices or dilettantes), and so forth. As can be seen from the historical remarks in my Principles, social factors are frequently more important than scientific factors in determining the success or failure of a programming language. Often economic issues can be quantified in terms of money, but the monetary values of costs and benefits are often unstable and unpredictable because they depend on changing market forces. Also, many social issues, from dissatisfaction with poorly designed software to human misery resulting from system failures, are inaccurately represented by the single dimension of monetary cost. All kinds of ``cost'' and ``benefit'' must be considered in seeking an economical design. Elegance Symbolizes Good Design ``Elegance? Who cares about elegance?'' snorts the hard-nosed engineer, but Billington shows clearly the critical role of elegance in ``hard-nosed'' engineering. For the Designer It is well-known that feature interaction poses a serious problem for language designers because of the difficulty of analyzing all the possible interactions of features in a language (see my Principles for examples). Structural engineers face similar problems of analytic complexity, but Billington observes that the best designers don't make extensive use of computer models and calculation. One reason is that mathematical analysis is always incomplete. The engineer must make a decision about which variables are significant and which are not, and an analysis may lead to incorrect conclusions if this decision is not made well. Also, equations are often simplified (e.g., made linear) to make their analysis feasible, and this is another potential source of error. Because of these limitations, engineers that depend on mathematical analysis may overdesign a structure to compensate for unforeseen effects left out of the analysis. Thus the price of safety is additional material and increased cost (i.e. decreased efficiency and economy). Similarly in programming language design, the limitations of the analytic approach often force us to make a choice between an under-engineered design, in which we run the risk of unanticipated interactions, and an over-engineered design, in which we have confidence, but which is inefficient or uneconomical. Many people have seen the famous film of the collapse in 1940 of the four-month-old Tacoma Narrows bridge; it vibrated itself to pieces in a storm because aerodynamical stability had not been considered in its design. Billington explains that this accident, along with a number of less dramatic bridge failures, was a consequence of an increasing use of theoretical analyses that began in the 1920s. However, the very problem that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows bridge had been anticipated and avoided a century before by bridge designers who were guided by aesthetic principles. According to Billington, the best structural engineers do not rely on mathematical analysis (although they do not abandon it altogether). Rather, their design activity is guided by a sense of elegance. This is because solutions to structural engineering problems are usually greatly underdetermined, that is, there are many possible solutions to a particular problem, such as bridging a particular river. Therefore, expert designers restrict their attention to designs in which the interaction of the forces is easy to see. The design looks unbalanced if the forces are unbalanced, and the design looks stable if it is stable. The general principle is that designs that look good will also be good, and therefore the design process can be guided by aesthetics without extensive (but incomplete) mathematical analysis. Billington expresses this idea by inverting the old architectural maxim and asserting that, in structural design, function follows form. He adds (p. 21), ``When the form is well chosen, its analysis becomes astoundingly simple.'' In other words, the choice of form is open and free, so we should pick forms where elegant design expresses good design (i.e. efficient and economical design). If we do so, then we can let aesthetics guide design. The same applies to programming language design. By restricting our attention to designs in which the interaction of features is manifest - in which good interactions look good, and bad interactions look bad - we can let our aesthetic sense guide our design and we can be much more confident that we have a good design, without having to check all the possible interactions. For the User In this case, what's good for the designer also is good for the user. Nobody is comfortable crossing a bridge that looks like it will collapse at any moment, and nobody is comfortable using a programming language in which features may ``explode'' if combined in the wrong way. The manifest balance of forces in a well-designed bridge gives us confidence when we cross it. So also, the manifestly good design of our programming language should reinforce our confidence when we program in it, because we have (well-justified) confidence in the consequences of our actions. We accomplish little by covering an unbalanced structure in a beautiful facade. When the bridge is unable to sustain the load for which it was designed, and collapses, it won't much matter that it was beautiful on the outside. So also in programming languages. If the elegance is only superficial, that is, if it is not the manifestation of a deep coherence in the design, then programmers will quickly see through the illusion and loose their (unwarranted) confidence. In summary, good designers choose to work in a region of the design space where good designs look good. As a consequence, these designers can rely on their aesthetic sense, as can the users of the structures (bridges or programming languages) they design. We may miss out on some good designs this way, but they are of limited value unless both the designer and the user can be confident that they are good designs. We may summarize the preceding discussion in a maxim analogous to those in my Principles of Programming Languages: The Elegance Principle Confine your attention to designs that look good because they are good. The Programming Language as Work Environment There are other reasons that elegance is relevant to a well-engineered programming language. The programming language is something the professional programmer will live with - even live in. It should feel comfortable and safe, like a well-designed home or office; in this way it can contribute to the quality of the activities that take place within it. Would you work better in an oriental garden or a sweatshop? A programming language should be a joy to use. This will encourage its use and decrease the programmer's fatigue and frustration. The programming language should not be a hindrance, but should serve more as a collaborator, encouraging programmers to do their jobs better. As some automobiles are ``driving machines'' and work as a natural extension of the driver, so a programming language should be a ``programming machine'' by encouraging the programmer to acquire the smooth competence and seemingly effortless skill of a virtuoso. The programming language should invite the programmer to design elegant, efficient and economical programs. Through its aesthetic dimension a programming language symbolizes many values. For example, in the variety of its features it may symbolize profligate excess, sparing economy or asceticism; the kind of its features may represent intellectual sophistication, down-to-earth practicality or ignorant crudeness. Thus a programming language can promote a set of values. By embodying certain values, it encourages us to think about them; by neglecting or negating other values, it allows them to recede into the background and out of our attention. Out of sight, out of mind. Acquiring a Sense of Elegance Aesthetics is notoriously difficult to teach, so you may wonder how you are supposed to acquire that refined sense of elegance necessary to good design. Billington observes that this sense is acquired through extensive experience in design, which, especially in Europe, is encouraged by a competitive process for choosing bridge designers. Because of it, structural engineers design many more bridges than they build, and they learn from each competition they loose by comparing their own designs with those of the winner and other losers. The public also critiques the competing designs, and in this way becomes more educated; their sense of elegance develops along with that of the designers. So also, to improve as a programming language designer you should design many languages - design obsessively - and criticize, revise and discard your designs. You should also evaluate and criticize other people's designs and try to improve them. In this way you will acquire the body of experience you will need when the ``real thing'' comes along. References 1.Billington, David P., The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Chapters 1 and 6 are the most relevant. 2.MacLennan, Bruce J., Principles of Programming Languages: Design, Evaluation, and Implementation, second edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston (now Oxford University Press), 1987.

Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. Hijacker High (8/30) Dalal Mughrabi was a Palestinian woman who participated in a 1978 bus hijacking in which 36 Israelis and an American nature photographer, Gail Ruban, were killed. Mughrabi has a Palestinian high school named after her, and it's apparently starting to show signs of wear. Fortunately, the United States Agency for International Development has stepped in with money to help renovate it. http://reason.com/brickbats/bb-april.shtml Links to: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archi ve\200208\FOR20020807e.html Praeterea censeo Palestininem esse delendam.

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. she read the links. what must it be like, she wondered, to devote ones life to pointing out neighbors' mistakes, mishaps, inconsistencies and frailties? gloating is definitely underrated in the good book - eh, john? bring it on, gg -----Original Message----- From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of John Hall Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 11:56 PM To: FoRK Subject: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. Hijacker High (8/30) Dalal Mughrabi was a Palestinian woman who participated in a 1978 bus hijacking in which 36 Israelis and an American nature photographer, Gail Ruban, were killed. Mughrabi has a Palestinian high school named after her, and it's apparently starting to show signs of wear. Fortunately, the United States Agency for International Development has stepped in with money to help renovate it. http://reason.com/brickbats/bb-april.shtml Links to: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archi ve\200208\FOR20020807e.html Praeterea censeo Palestininem esse delendam.

Re: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. I propose they rename it "Charlie Heston High" and maybe the students will learn to take AR-15s with extended military-spec scopes and .223 high-velocity ammo and start plinking innocent civilians at random in the suburbs of Washington. That's far more effectual than blowing oneself up in a bus. In America these days, it seems that violence ascribed to any political doctrine foreign to Bushism is vile and repugnant. But random violence is entertainment and intrigue. A couple of ex-FBI "consultants" speaking on the shootings in DC were quoted as saying the shooters, presumed to be a pair, were getting a "heroin-like high" from each successful kill and that they "for whatever reason decided to level the playing field, thumbing their nose at law enforcement and society." See? Just a couple of kids having fun with Daddy's semi-automatic hunting rifle. Harmless! -Ian. On Saturday, October 5, 2002, at 11:01 PM, John Hall wrote: > > It wasn't gloating, it was one for the horror file. > > And of course for the Palestinians it wasn't a mistake, which is a key > part of the horror. > > I'm not against American taxpayers remodeling a school honoring a > killer > if we do it with a daisy cutter. > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Geege Schuman [mailto:geege@barrera.org] >> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 9:35 PM >> To: johnhall@evergo.net; FoRK >> Subject: RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. >> >> she read the links. what must it be like, she wondered, to devote ones >> life >> to pointing out neighbors' mistakes, mishaps, inconsistencies and >> frailties? >> >> gloating is definitely underrated in the good book - eh, john? >> >> bring it on, >> gg >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of > John >> Hall >> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 11:56 PM >> To: FoRK >> Subject: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. >> >> >> >> >> Hijacker High (8/30) >> Dalal Mughrabi was a Palestinian woman who participated in a 1978 bus >> hijacking in which 36 Israelis and an American nature photographer, > Gail >> Ruban, were killed. Mughrabi has a Palestinian high school named after >> her, and it's apparently starting to show signs of wear. Fortunately, >> the United States Agency for International Development has stepped in >> with money to help renovate it. >> >> http://reason.com/brickbats/bb-april.shtml >> >> Links to: >> >> > http://www.cnsnews.com/ > ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archi >> ve\200208\FOR20020807e.html >> >> Praeterea censeo Palestininem esse delendam. >> >> >> >> >> >

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. It wasn't gloating, it was one for the horror file. And of course for the Palestinians it wasn't a mistake, which is a key part of the horror. I'm not against American taxpayers remodeling a school honoring a killer if we do it with a daisy cutter. > -----Original Message----- > From: Geege Schuman [mailto:geege@barrera.org] > Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 9:35 PM > To: johnhall@evergo.net; FoRK > Subject: RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. > > she read the links. what must it be like, she wondered, to devote ones > life > to pointing out neighbors' mistakes, mishaps, inconsistencies and > frailties? > > gloating is definitely underrated in the good book - eh, john? > > bring it on, > gg > > -----Original Message----- > From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of John > Hall > Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 11:56 PM > To: FoRK > Subject: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. > > > > > Hijacker High (8/30) > Dalal Mughrabi was a Palestinian woman who participated in a 1978 bus > hijacking in which 36 Israelis and an American nature photographer, Gail > Ruban, were killed. Mughrabi has a Palestinian high school named after > her, and it's apparently starting to show signs of wear. Fortunately, > the United States Agency for International Development has stepped in > with money to help renovate it. > > http://reason.com/brickbats/bb-april.shtml > > Links to: > > http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archi > ve\200208\FOR20020807e.html > > Praeterea censeo Palestininem esse delendam. > > > > >

Re: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hall" <johnhall@evergo.net> > > I'm not against American taxpayers remodeling a school honoring a killer > if we do it with a daisy cutter. With or without occupants?

Re: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. John Hall wrote: >It wasn't gloating, it was one for the horror file. > >And of course for the Palestinians it wasn't a mistake, which is a key >part of the horror. > >I'm not against American taxpayers remodeling a school honoring a killer >if we do it with a daisy cutter. > > > > I'm sure the plan is that it will be renamed for the settler who kills the last Palestinian in a few years. Owen

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. see my first line: I READ THE LINKS. brickbats. idiot. -----Original Message----- From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of Owen Byrne Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 9:21 AM To: johnhall@evergo.net Cc: 'Geege Schuman'; 'FoRK' Subject: Re: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. John Hall wrote: >It wasn't gloating, it was one for the horror file. > >And of course for the Palestinians it wasn't a mistake, which is a key >part of the horror. > >I'm not against American taxpayers remodeling a school honoring a killer >if we do it with a daisy cutter. > > > > I'm sure the plan is that it will be renamed for the settler who kills the last Palestinian in a few years. Owen

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. When a settler goes postal and kills some Palestinians they are treated as a criminal, not celebrated in word and song. But you knew that. When a Palestinian sets out, to great rejoicing, to attempt to target children with a homicide-bomb, they are careful to dip the shrapnel in rat poison. It helps prevent blood clotting in the victims, you see. I'm sure all those Jewish homicide-bombers do the same. Oh wait, there aren't any. If the Palestinians are driven completely out, either by expulsion or death, they will have nobody to blame but themselves. That won't stop them or you from pretending otherwise. > From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com] On Behalf Of Owen > Byrne > I'm sure the plan is that it will be renamed for the settler who kills > the last Palestinian in a few years. > > Owen >

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. when brickbats or fox exposes the folly of government they do so to accomplish a specific end; dumping truckload after truckload of bad acts proves their point: stupidity and greed typify government, therefore any government is too much government. -----Original Message----- From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of John Hall Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 5:03 PM Cc: 'FoRK' Subject: RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. Yes, you read the links. Sorry, but exposing folly is not only humorous but also instructive. It is only by exposing folly to ridicule that you stop it in the first place. 'Brickbats' leans heavily on both, though the item I highlighted was a 'horror' item not a 'gee that is stupid' item. For an example of the latter, see the city that wanted a woman to pay a ticket for parking in an UNmarked no-parking space. > From: Geege Schuman [mailto:geege@barrera.org] > > see my first line: I READ THE LINKS. brickbats. idiot.

RE: Our friends the Palestinians, Our servants in government. Yes, you read the links. Sorry, but exposing folly is not only humorous but also instructive. It is only by exposing folly to ridicule that you stop it in the first place. 'Brickbats' leans heavily on both, though the item I highlighted was a 'horror' item not a 'gee that is stupid' item. For an example of the latter, see the city that wanted a woman to pay a ticket for parking in an UNmarked no-parking space. > From: Geege Schuman [mailto:geege@barrera.org] > > see my first line: I READ THE LINKS. brickbats. idiot.

Re: The absurdities of life. I call PacBell/SBC every two or three months about a recurring problem we have at my house: We get a phone bill every month for someone who no longer lives at our house for a phone line which has been disconnected for over three years and the account balance is (drum roll please) $0.00! Sometimes the people I talk to cannot locate the account in their system and tell me that the phone number doesn't exist. Some people are able to locate the account but say that it has been disconnected and there is no way we could get a bill sent to us for that account. Some people can locate the account and verify that the line has been disconnected for three years and that the amount owed is $0.00 and then they say somthing along the lines of "Huh?" or "I'm not sure what's going on... Hold please." And eventually I have similar conversations with their managers and the account representatives and billing people and their managers and their managers' managers ad naseum. The outcome of every phone call is that they'll "look into it" and fix the problem and I might receive one or two more bills depending on when it's resolved. So I wait a month or two and send the bills back marked "Not at this address, please fsck off." and then eventually call them back and go through the whole process again. Lately I just explain to the phone jockeys that I know it's not their fault and I'm not mad at them and it's just not their day because I'm about to give them hell. Then I give them the opportunity to have me yell at their boss which they seem all too happy to do. At least it gives me a positive way to vent my aggressions and it's a lot cheaper than seeing a therapist. Perplexed, Elias bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote: > >So I get a check from Pac Bell today (SBC as they're called now). >Turns out, they went to the trouble of printing out, signing, sealing >and stamping a check just to refund me for a whole $0.33. > >[...] >