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OPT: Slashdot | The Death Of The Open Internet
by Jim Choate 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/03/1933221.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Slashdot | Congress To Address Digital Music
by Jim Choate 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/08/03/2053206.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: The real enemies of the poor
by Jim Choate 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote: > On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote: > Jim wrote: > > In this context I meant "personality" as in demeanor and attitude, not > > scholarship and competence. > > >Opposite sides of the same coin... > > I suppose "attitude" can be ambiguous, but it's hardly relevant! Then why bring it up??? The point I"m making is that demeanor and attitude (for example) are inextricably linked. If one is insecure (attitude) then it can't help but effect other aspects such as demeanor (ie presentation to others). If one isn't confident in their skills then they can hardly be competent. And that confidence has 'personality' based characteristics. You're trying to seperate out components which are not orthogonal. > Being obnoxious, unpleasant, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with whether > or not you know enough about a subject to be worth listening to. One persons 'obnoxious' is another persons 'strained consideration'. Taking the attitude it's the 'other guys' problem is problematic itself. As to 'know enough to be worth listening to', out of the mouths of babes. Sometimes the last person who needs to be talking about a problem is somebody that 'knows all about it'. There are other shades of tinted glasses besides rose. Fundamental Rules of Science: - There are no sacred truths, all assumptions must be critically examined. Arguments from authority are useless - Whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be revised or discarded. See Feynman's concluding commentary in the Challenger report. > Thoroughly looking forward to hearing what a person has to say > and actively, intensely disliking them is not contradictory in the > slightest... Provided you have the opportunity to leave at your own behest...at some point homicide is likely to occur. > Good point. I'm an atheist, but I think Aquinas can worth reading. Marcel > (the Mystery of Being), Bataille (Inner Experience), Unamuno(Tragic Sense > of Life), Kierkegaard (Either/Or), Heidegger (Sein und Zeit) Schopenhauer > (complete works!) also come instantly to mind. I usually have no patience > for anything mystical, but these authors have been very valuable to me. > Several orders of magnitude above the usual religious mush. If you say so. I've found them to be rather confused myself. To be honest I've never read a philosopher who I agreed with. They all seem to be trying to get around basic fundamental facts they don't want to face. > >I disagree, see Newtons comments about hypothesis and playing with stones > on a beach. > > More on this in future posts. :) Newton is such a nutcase, he's fun to use in arguments. What can you say about a religious fundamentalist who pursued alchemy wholeheartedly, developed fundamental mathematical and physical descriptions while he dabbled, and then turns around and hangs people for stealing the King's money. And all the while hating people in general... I think, at least for me, he beats out Gauss as being a general sour puss. > True. But an overwhelmingly large percentage of concepts floating around > your head and populating your mental landscape (so to speak) came from > somewhere else: In a real sense, all of them did. In another sense they were always there just waiting for any sentience to recognize them, and then from another perspective they are each new and revelatory. It harkens back to the Socratic Method (I'm a fond user thereof); everybody knows everything there is to know by knowing nothing in particular outside of being able to ask questions. (Note that a big criticism of the Socratic Method is one of misunderstanding - Socrates claimed he knew nothing, but at the same time knew how to ask questions. Many readers, some quite lettered, seem to miss that there are two different things being discussed here; knowing something about the subject under discussion, and how to organize questions and thoughts). > if you're creative and original, you make new ones out of > the building blocks of the old. But they didn't just pop out of thin air. Maybe, then again there are leaps of insite which for all intents and purposes do just that. It's only after you reach the goal that you even see the path. It might be more accurate to say that they pop out of the throw of (mental) dice. A good example is Huffman Coding. Up until the problem was given to student Huffman it had remained unsolved. He spent the first part of his approach doing exactly what everyone else had done, and got nowhere. Then he decided to try it backwards and the problem resolved itself. Today we have compression algorithms out the yin-yang. The 'discovery' of the Benzen Ring came out of a dream of snakes eating their tails. Discovery is highly non-linear and non-deterministic. (My personal prescription/favorite is free association) > Singular viewpoint?? How so! Talk about different mental contexts... How many viewpoints do you hold on a given subject? And I'm not asking "How may do you understand, describe, recite"... Consider 'abortion' (and no I don't want to know how you feel), how many viewpoints do you hold (as opposed to know of, understand, ...)? Law? Etc. People are singular in their internal mental views. Opposition and conflict create confusion. See the popularity of religion for a prime example. This will get into 'free will' pretty quickly so I'm not going to pursue it deeply; each person has only so many viewpoints that they can relate to. Some of these limits are biological in nature, some social, and then some are simply the way each individual brain is wired. Have you ever met somebody who had a viewpoint you just couldn't wrap your noggin around? > And then, there's always the even less noble-minded egocentric motivation > for recommending books: "read as I read, so you may come to think as I do". > Discourse as narcissistic propaganda: probably a more common motivation > that anyone would like to admit. This speaks to my 'singular viewpoint' above as well as the 'xenophobia' that human psychology expresses to 'others'... > >It's not uncommon in our society to hear people say 'He said ...' but they > >themselves can't explain it in their own terms and context. They can > >regurgitate, they can't cogitate. Dogma and pedantry. It's why 'arguments > >from authority are useless' is such a strong tool with respect to > >deductive/synthetic analysis. > > I'm not disagreeing with that at all; I think the real sticking point here > gets back to the assumptions which led you to bring up the idea > of "singular viewpoint" and the relative meaning(s) of subjective value > judgements. I bet a lot would be made clearer to me if you could just back > up a little and go into that. I tried to expand it some above. Feel free to inquire further. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Extradition from the Great Beyond
by Faustine 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

Eugene Leitl wrote: >How safe are nyms from text fingerprints, and be it only word frequency >analysis? I have no idea how good the state of the art is, but I wouldn't >be risking it for anything production-quality. Not safe at all, even the unclassified programs are getting better all the time. Check the archives for some interesting past discussion--and if you feel like tinkering around yourself, there's a ton of free software you can download here: http://www.content-analysis.de/software.html Hope that helps! ~Faustine.

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Re: Extradition from the Great Beyond
by Dr. Evil 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

> How safe are nyms from text fingerprints, and be it only word frequency > analysis? I have no idea how good the state of the art is, but I wouldn't > be risking it for anything production-quality. I'm not sure, but I only use this for silly things, so I don't really care. Senor Escobar probably has more serious security concerns than I do.

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update.550 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 14:13:49 -0400 (EDT) From: AIP listserver <physnews(a)aip.org> To: physnews-mailing(a)aip.org Subject: update.550 PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 550 August 1, 2001 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon ELEMENT 118 HAS BEEN ERASED FROM THE PERIODIC TABLE. [SSZ: text deleted] INSECT SENSES SUGGEST NOVEL NEURAL NETWORKS. Animals gather information about their environments when sensory neurons fire minute electrical signals in response to chemicals, light, sounds, and other stimuli. Studying networks of neurons in animals and insects can provide us with insight to the natural world as well as inspiration for manmade networks to aid in computing and other applications. A new model of neural networks, based on recent studies of fish and insect olfactory systems, suggests a way that neurons can be linked together to allow them to identify many more stimuli than possible with conventional networks. Researchers from the Institute for Nonlinear Science at the University of California, San Diego (M. Rabinovich, mrabinovich(a)ucsd.edu, 858-534-6753) propose that connections between neurons can cause one neuron to delay the firing of another neuron. As a result, a given stimulus leads to a specific time sequence of neural impulses. In essence, the interconnected neurons include time as another dimension of sensory systems through an encoding method called Winnerless Competition (WLC). Using a locust antenna lobe exposed to fragrances such as cherry and mint for comparison, the researchers found their model could identify roughly (N-1)! (equal to (N-1) x (N-2) x ...x 2) items with a network built of N neurons. That is, a ten neuron WLC network should be able to identify hundreds of thousands as many items as a conventional ten-neuron network, and the benefits increase as networks grow. The WLC model helps explain how the senses of animals, insects, and even humans can accurately and robustly distinguish between so many stimuli. In other words, it is a mathematical rationale as to why a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet---but doesn't smell like an onion. Ultimately, the WLC model may lead to high capacity, potent computing networks that resemble an insect antenna or a human nose more than a desktop PC. (M. Rabinovich et al, Physical Review Letters, 6 August 2001) THE MOST PRECISELY LOCATED ASTRONOMICAL OBJECT [SSZ: text deleted] DELIVERY OF SINGLE ATOMS ON DEMAND is now possible. Physicists at the University of Bonn hold cold cesium atoms in a magneto-optic trap, but can shuttle the neutral atoms, one a time, with great control over distances up to a centimeter by shifting an additional laser-light interference pattern serving as local potential well. This kind of conveyor belt for atoms is expected to be of help in various quantum entanglement experiments or as part of an atomic shift register. (Kuhr et al., Science, 13 July 2001; kuhr(a)iap.uni- bonn.de.)

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Too much time on their hands up in the North Woods (fwd)
by Jim Choate 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 07:19:33 -0400 From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs(a)philodox.com>, dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com Subject: Too much time on their hands up in the North Woods --- begin forwarded text

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South Africa plans hardline Internet snooping legislation
by pablo-escobar＠hushmail.com 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

>Protest is growing in South Africa about the country's plan to introduce legislation that closely parallels the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. > >South Africa's Interception and Monitoring Bill aims to "regulate the monitoring of communications" and even advocates banning forms of communications that can't be bugged, which means it goes further than Britain's RIP Act. Protest No! Kill lawmakers Si! Send dem a necktie. Free, secure Web-based email, now OpenPGP compliant - www.hushmail.com

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The Cautionary Ontological Approach To Technology of Gabriel Marcel
by Faustine 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

The Cautionary Ontological Approach To Technology of Gabriel Marcel http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Tech/TechGend.htm ABSTRACT: I present the arguments of Gabriel Marcel which are intended to overcome the potentially negative impact of technology on the human. Marcel is concerned with forgetting or rejecting human nature. His perspective is metaphysical. He is concerned with the attitude of the "mere technician" who is so immersed in technology that the values which promote him as an authentic person with human dignity are discredited, omitted, denied, minimized, overshadowed, or displaced. He reviews the various losses in ontological values which curtail the full realization of the human person in his dignity. The impact of technology leads too often to a loss of the sense of the mystery of being and self, authenticity and integrity, the concrete and the existential, truth and dialogue, freedom and lover, humanity and community, fidelity and creativity, the natural and the transcendent, commitment and virtue, respect of the self and responsiveness to others, and especially of the spiritual and the sacred. Thus, the task of the philosopher is to be a watchman, un veilleur, on the alert for a hopeful resolution of the human predicament.

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Re: The real enemies of the poor
by Faustine 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote: Jim wrote: > In this context I meant "personality" as in demeanor and attitude, not > scholarship and competence. >Opposite sides of the same coin... I suppose "attitude" can be ambiguous, but it's hardly relevant! Being obnoxious, unpleasant, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you know enough about a subject to be worth listening to. Not to name names, but I've met several brilliant people who literally make me want to run whenever I see them coming--but whom I nevertheless respect to the bottom of my shoes for their sheer brainpower. (And in case you haven't noticed, I'm definitely not a respectful sort in general, so it means something.)Thoroughly looking forward to hearing what a person has to say and actively, intensely disliking them is not contradictory in the slightest... > >Your waste of time is somebodies > >jewel of the Nile (I have these images of Creationist books I've read > >flashing through my mind, very unpleasant). > So do you keep on finding more of the same or have you got on to >something of more value to you? >I keep hoping I'll run across a 'new' creationist theory, but they all >boil down to the same old same old. I don't remember the last time >I finished one of the books . Of course the same can be said about most >books, technical or not. And no, I'm not a creationist of any bent outside >of the pantheist sort (ie Gaia). I'd say that only about 10% of all books >are worth reading. Of those 10%, 90% of their content is wrong (and hence >interesting in the sense of why they are wrong)..which really gets down to >the crux of the matter for me. Not why they got it right, but why they >failed. Good point. I'm an atheist, but I think Aquinas can worth reading. Marcel (the Mystery of Being), Bataille (Inner Experience), Unamuno(Tragic Sense of Life), Kierkegaard (Either/Or), Heidegger (Sein und Zeit) Schopenhauer (complete works!) also come instantly to mind. I usually have no patience for anything mystical, but these authors have been very valuable to me. Several orders of magnitude above the usual religious mush. >Unfortunately most readers focus on what they like, the positive aspect of >the experience, and not the negative. Which from an analytic/comprehension >perspective is a stronger viewpoint (or at least seems so to me). Right--never let anyone do your thinking for you. > >And there's looking for corroborating evidence... :) > Well we all do whether we intend to or not: no matter how much you try > there's no getting out from under your experience. >I disagree, see Newtons comments about hypothesis and playing with stones on a beach. More on this in future posts. > but to avoid re-inventing the wheel. "If I have seen further than > others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." you know? >That's not what he meant by that. He was saying that what he did was not >in and of itself his creation. He was objecting to credit being given the >'Lion of England' when it wasn't the Lion's due (why in his later life he >began to publish anonymously). Hm, okay. Nevertheless, I think the point remains. >Unfortunately this can't be said of most >people. Most people will take credit for whatever they can and then >advertise it widely. One of the most popular strategies is to 'let them >think it was their idea'. True. But an overwhelmingly large percentage of concepts floating around your head and populating your mental landscape (so to speak) came from somewhere else: if you're creative and original, you make new ones out of the building blocks of the old. But they didn't just pop out of thin air. > Recommending books, on the other hand, has to do with getting people to > share an aspect of your mental context. Like that book I recommended on > MOUT awhile back: it's not that I agree with its conclusions or the > ideology behind it--it's just that it made a powerful impression on the > way I think about some of the issues that are most important to me, and >went a long way toward providing valuable information I didn't already >have. Why wouldn't I be interested in spreading it around. >I'm not saying you shouldn't spread it around. I disagree on your 'mental >context'. I don't suggest that another person should read a book to >understand me per se, but rather to escape the singular view point we all >have. Singular viewpoint?? How so! Talk about different mental contexts... And then, there's always the even less noble-minded egocentric motivation for recommending books: "read as I read, so you may come to think as I do". Discourse as narcissistic propaganda: probably a more common motivation that anyone would like to admit. >For me, the best thing that could happen is that somebody else read >it and comes to a different conclusion. It is the dialog that follows that >gives the book worth. Something greater than the authors intent, or my own >personality happens then. I think most works that are complex and rich inspire that.. like the ones I mentioned above. >The problem is that many equate reading (even a >lot) >with understanding, and in actuality too few people question vigorously >enough to ever really 'understand' anything. Couldn't agree more. >It's not uncommon in our society to hear people say 'He said ...' but they >themselves can't explain it in their own terms and context. They can >regurgitate, they can't cogitate. Dogma and pedantry. It's why 'arguments >from authority are useless' is such a strong tool with respect to >deductive/synthetic analysis. I'm not disagreeing with that at all; I think the real sticking point here gets back to the assumptions which led you to bring up the idea of "singular viewpoint" and the relative meaning(s) of subjective value judgements. I bet a lot would be made clearer to me if you could just back up a little and go into that. ~Faustine.

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