human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (01/10/85)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Wednesday, 9 Jan 1985 Volume 8 : Issue 1
Today's Topics:
Computers and People - Paper vs CD Books (3 msgs) &
The AI Community (2 msgs) &
Friend Finders,
Computers and the Law - Copy Protection
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Date: 2 January 1985 04:11-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Paper vs CD Books
To: abc @ BRL-TGR
Your notion of specialized "encyclopedias" is excellent; once
most knowledge is available electronically -- because stored on
CD disks -- then compilations of various pages from different
volumes onto WRITE ONCE DISKS becomes possible. As one of my
upcoming columns discusses, the write-once 100 megabyte optical
disk lets you accumulate a LOT of information from various
sources, store it, and yet not have your house overflow with
paper.
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From: ihnp4!houxm!pegasus!lzmi!psc@Berkeley
Date: 2 Jan 85 03:39:03 CST (Wed)
To: pegasus!houxm!ihnp4!ucbvax!human-nets@Berkeley
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #85
There's at least one kind of publishing that could really take
advantage of CD books. That's the people who print *large* notebooks
of information that have to be updated fairly frequently (more than
twelve times a year). For an example, visit the office of any
programmer who uses an IBM or DEC operating system.
Rather than Xyzzy Inc. sending you a packet of sheets to add to your
looseleaf notebooks, they'd send you a new disk. Two advantages:
you'd find it much easier to update your documentation set, which
would thus tend to be more up-to-date. Also, if the disks weren't
easy to reproduce locally, Xyzzy Inc. wouldn't have to worry about
sites running down to the local Xerox machine and running off "pirated
documentation". The expensive, low circulation reports might like
this especially, and they're generally kept on reference shelves.
(Haven't seen any Datapro Reports down at Sandy Hook lately.-)
This works much better if the disks are bulk erasable. The first doc
set might cost $1000 (say); the second would cost $1000, but with a
$950 rebate for return of the original disk, which could be easily
recycled. Xyzzy would just erase it and use it for the next release.
Good for phone books, too, when everyone who needs your particular
phone book has a CD reader.
(BTW, is the phrase "CD disk" redundant? "Compact disk disk?")
-Paul S. R. Chisholm
...!hogpd!pegasus!lzmi!psc The above opinions are my own,
...!cbosg!lzmi!psc and do not necessarily represent
...!ucbvax!ihnp4!lznv!psc those of anyone else.
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Date: Fri, 4 Jan 85 12:19:54 pst
From: ihnp4!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!eder@Berkeley (Dani Eder)
To: uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!houxm!ihnp4!ucbvax!human-nets@Berkeley
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #86
[4 January 1985]
I can think of at least two other uses for Compact Disks (CD's).
One is to improve on the scientific calculator. I would pay large
sums of money for a box that had the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and
Physics, plus several other reference books available read only from a
CD. The data could be extracted and manipulated with calcuator-type
functions. A packet of CD's could replace several bookcases of
reference books. If the setup was reasonably portable (i.e. fit in my
briefcase), that would be acceptable.
Another use for the capacity of CD's would be for lawyers. Today
the US laws plus accumulated decisions fill about 440 volumes.
Lawyers would find it very valuble to do keyword searches on this
database, to find relevant decisions for their clients. This is
possible today on a dialup information service, but the costs are
fairly high on an hourly basis. An additional advantage for lawyer
types is the distribution cost of the medium. Most legal series are
updated annually, at considerable cost ( hundreds/year). CD's could
reduce this.
Dani Eder / Boeing Aerospace Company / ssc-vax!eder
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Date: Monday, 31 Dec 1984 10:18-EST
From: munck@Mitre-Bedford
To: Human-Nets@Rutgers
Subject: Overblown Expectations for AI
Les Earnest's report that sanity still exists in the "real" AI
community, despite the fantastic pronouncements surrounding it, was
long overdue. However, I must quibble with his use of past tense in
describing the attempts at AI "Command and Control" systems by the Air
Force and others. They've changed focus slightly, but they're still
around.
Specifically, it's a widely-held belief in the DoD that our
problems with building large software systems will be solved - more
accurately, circumvented - within a decade by AI. They believe that
AI systems will be able to listen to an hour or so of verbal
description of, say, an air-defense system and then produce overnight
the million-odd lines of code to implement it. Normally, I'd classify
this belief as relatively harmless, like those in the Tooth Fairy, the
Star Wars initiative, and Santa Claus, but it has a chilling effect on
work on practical, people-writing-code methodologies. I have no doubt
that there is a great deal of the programming task that can be taken
over by computers using AI techniques, but the state of the art is
that many people are not convinced that compilers can be used to free
humans from doing register allocation.
Fusion research uses the criterion of "break-even," the point at
which a reactor produces more power than is needed to run it, as a
goal. I suggest that a similar measure could be applied to AI systems
and the field as a whole. What AI systems have saved more human effort
than was needed to produce them?
-- Bob Munck
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@Berkeley
Date: 2 Jan 85 23:07:58 CST (Wed)
To: MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: AI, laser disks, etc.
Ah, I wondered what sort of response I would get from the AI folks to
that flame.
I agree that outliners, natural-language interfaces, and free-form
databases are interesting things, and not necessarily fads. But the
commercial versions of same that I have seen -- and I admit I have not
made an exhaustive survey -- have struck me as 5% content and 95%
marketing hype. That is, lots of sales literature wrapped around a
not-very-complex program. Something better is needed before these
things will truly become worth their keep.
I admit I'm looking at them from a Unix environment, so my standards
as to what's trivial and what isn't are fairly high. I have no major
experience with current micro environments, and what experience I have
had convinces me that I don't want to plunge in just yet.
> (2) Mitch Kapor's remarks about AI are not, as you put it, a lot
> of "marketing hype." As I understand it, a company has been spun off
> from Lotus which is doing serious research in natural language
> processing. That company will probably develop a product somewhat
> like Intellect or Clout which will become an essential element in
> future integrated software from Lotus.
If he doesn't want them to sound like marketing hype, he needs to find
some new buzzwords to use. I would not be at all surprised to find
that there was something solid behind the verbiage in this case, but I
sure couldn't tell that from the original text. Remember, this is the
latest New Hot Area, and everybody is making glowing claims.
> (3) A pencil and paper is fine, but I much prefer a Model 100 as
> a portable device for recording and shaping notes and ideas. A
> Model 100 with significantly greater memory, built-in idea
> processing software, and a connecter to an optical disk storage
> device would, I suspect, wean many people away from paper and
> pencils for good.
I confess I'd be very interested in such a thing myself... but I don't
see one being marketed. The existing Model 100 does not seem to me to
be a great leap forward over pencil and paper, unless it is mandatory
that the output of the operation be machine-readable. Yes, I have
used one. Don't forget that a graphics display, with a decent
resolution and *software* *to* *use* *it*, should be on your wishlist.
Graphics is a non-trivial part of a lot of my use of pencil and paper,
even when all I am manipulating is text.
I note with considerable displeasure that the Data General 1 does not
have square pixels, due to Data General's fixation on 24x80.
> (4) Building a powerful idea processor is very much a function of
> available memory. Framework, for instance, would be a much more
> effective product if the quality of its word processor and database
> management system could be raised to the level of ZyWrite II Plus
> and MDBS III. To acquire that kind of power would require an extra
> megabyte or two of memory.
Exercising heroic willpower, I will refrain from describing in detail
the things I have seen done on an 8K PDP8. Substituting memory for
thought is often a worthwhile tradeoff, but there is a mythology
growing up that you can't do anything useful in less than (your
favorite number here) megabytes. Nonsense. Guano. Utterly false. I
would conjecture that sufficient application of (human) intelligence
would easily fit the capabilities you want into the existing memory.
Good software does not have to be elephantine. Corollary: the number
of people writing good software is small, and dropping fast.
Remember the comment I made in my original letter: the number of good
programs for the 64K Apple II is less than the number for the (say)
512K IBM PC... but it's not a factor of 8 less.
Of course more memory is useful. Beating a problem to death with
multiple megabytes is often the most cost-effective way to do it. But
being deprived of this possibility should not leave you gasping like a
fish out of water, totally unable to proceed. There will, of course,
be some size of memory where the damn thing just won't fit. It's
smaller than you think, though.
I repeat my original comment: if good and glorious things really are
possible in umpteen megabytes, a convincing demonstration of this
ought to be possible with current machines. Not a production version,
mind you, but a convincing experimental prototype.
> (5) The privacy issue in regard to optical disks is a red
> herring. The federal government already has easy access to much of
> the sensitive information which would be stored on a personal disk.
> A biodisk might give individuals an opportunity to know as much
> about themselves as the government does.
I already know rather more about myself than the feds do; don't you?
I'd prefer to keep it that way, too.
Beyond a certain point, a quantitative change becomes qualitative.
Making information more accessible does not change the theoretical
level of privacy, but it makes formerly-impractical invasions of
privacy possible and simple. Did Mr. X really write that vicious
anonymous letter to the campus paper, claiming that the leftists were
rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the Nazis? Look at his
biodisk, and find out.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: Mon 7 Jan 85 03:46:00-EST
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Friend Finders
To: zbbs%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
From The New York Times, 1/4/85, p. B6:
COMPUTER SEEKS LOST FRIENDS
A grandmother in Arkansas is looking for the niece she has not
seen in years to tell her she is an heir. A 21-year-old woman in New
York wants to find the pen pal she shared secrets with when they were
12. And two men who traveled to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington
did not find the name of their commanding officer in Vietnam, who they
thought was dead. Now they are looking for him.
They turned to Friend Finders, an organization begun in November
as "a lost and found for friends." Friend Finders has set up a
computer to try to match the searchers with the missing.
Herbert Farmer, a real estate investor in Anchorage, had the idea
for the organization when he became frustrated trying to find friends
he made as a prisoner in World War II. So he turned to his friend
Larry Pedersen, a family budget consultant in Anchorage. Mr.
Pedersen, now the president of Friend Finders, said: "Herb called me
last February and said he had an idea I might be interested in. I
haven't been able to put this idea down since."
So far, Mr. Farmer has spent $300,000 to purchase a computer with
a capacity of 200 million names and to rent an office in Poulsbo,
Wash., from which Mr. Pedersen is operating.
"You figure you've got friends you'll never lose track of," Mr.
Pedersen said. "But as the years go by, there are fewer Christmas
cards. We found everybody we talked to could think of a friend
they've lost an address to."
Those who search for someone through Friend Finders are asked to
give the name of the missing friend, nicknames, date of birth, places
he or she lived and, if married, the spouse's name. The information
is stored in the computer.
Anyone who simply wants to register with Friend Finders can do so
at no charge. If a caller wishes to search for someone, the fee is $5
a year; people who have initiated a search will be asked each year if
they want the search to continue, and will be charged the annual fee
once more, Mr. Pedersen said. An additional $5 will be charged if the
person is found. The organization is still waiting for the computer
to match a searcher with a friend.
"First we verify it's a friendly caller," Mr. Pedersen said. "We
don't want any bill collectors." He said the caller's word is taken
on this point.
"Then," he added, "through the process of elimination the
computer zeroes it down to the right person. If it doesn't find a
match, we'll keep trying. We're betting on a match any day now."
If a match is made, both the searcher and the person he or she is
seeking will be notified. The searcher will be given the telephone
number only if the other party approves, Mr. Pedersen said.
All calls are kept confidential, he said. "It's like an unlisted
phone number that's only open to your friends," he added. He declined
to say how many names had been entered in the computer so far.
Anita Pacquette of Poulsbo, who works in the office answering the
phone, said: "When people call, they're always astonished it doesn't
cost more. They say, "I've been looking for this person for years,
and I finally found a way to find them."
Friend Finders can be reached at 1-800-346-3377 from 10 A.M. to
10 P.M. Eastern time. In Washington the number is 800-422-2514. A
brochure may be obtained by writing Friend Finders, 314 Lloyd
Building, Seattle, Wash. 98101.
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Date: 31 Dec 84 09:33:19 PST (Mon)
To: PALLAS%su-score.arpa@UCI-ICSB
Cc: POURNE@mit-mc
Subject: MusicWorks queries: Backup? FORTH??
From: "Tim Shimeall" <tim@uci-icsb>
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but aren't you really saying:
"How can I tell the vendor of a software product that the utility
of that product would be greatly enhanced by the ability to make
a backup copy?"
If this is what you're asking then why not simply tell the vendor so?
Write the vendor a letter (I presume you know which company did the
original marketing, and at least the city in which its located). Now,
from the vendor's point of view, providing you with the capability
of making arbitrary backup copies of the software may be unwise. The
question from his or her viewpoint may be: "Will I lose more customers
due to the lack of backups, or due to copying by software pirates?"
This is a side issue. You have at least communicated your need for
backups to the vendor, and may recieve some constructive result from
it.
Tim
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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