human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (12/31/84)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Monday, 31 Dec 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 86
Today's Topics:
Query - Computer Credit Databases,
Response to Query - Microwave Oven Radiation,
Computers and People - "Idea Processors" and AI (2 msgs) &
Paper vs CD Books (3 msgs),
Telephones - "Snagging" Phone Lines (2 msgs),
Information - Magazine: Whole Earth Review,
Computers and the Law - Re: To Break or not to Break (Programs)
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From: pur-ee!ef.malcolm@Berkeley (Malcolm Slaney)
Date: 29 Dec 1984 1356-EST (Saturday)
Subject: Computer Credit Databases
Does anybody have a list of the big computerized credit reporting
companies? I just recently got a copy of my credit history from the
TRW office in Chicago and found it interesting. I'd like to see what
the other companies think of me.
The TRW credit report was a real mess. A lot of symbols and cryptic
abbreviations all over the page and fine print to explain what it
meant. I found it took a bit of effort to make sense of it all, I
wonder what the average Joe Blow (who can't figure out a 1040 form)
does with it all.
Cheers.
Malcolm
malcolm@purdue
pur-ee!malcolm
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Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 20:03:21 PST
From: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
Subject: microwave oven radiation
The issue of microwave radiation, in general, is a "hot" topic (no pun
intended) these days. First of all, microwave radiation is considered
non-ionizing, unlike X-rays, for example. The U.S. has standards for
microwave radiation from both older and newer microwave ovens. I'm
not going to quote numbers here, only state that there is a standard
and that a certain amount of leakage is permitted under the standard.
Now, there has been considerably controversy recently in that some
Eastern block microwave standards (at least in theory, though there
are obvious violations) are set (as I recall) about an order of
magnitude less than the U.S. standard. This was poo-pooed for a long
time, but lately, some new studies have started to indicate all sorts
of physical problems with people who work near microwave equipment for
long periods (including telco personnel and others who are
theoretically well within the U.S. exposure standards for that type of
equipment). There has also been evidence of problems among power
company workers exposed to high power, low frequency fields for
periods of time. For a long time, it was assumed that all physical
effects from microwave exposure were the results of "simple" heating.
But now this assumption has been called into doubt in a number of
studies.
The microwave issue, by the way, is of enough concern that the
the last I heard, the U.S. government was considering scrapping the
current standards completely and setting new (lower) ones, across
the board.
The moral? Perhaps you don't want to stand with your head too
near the oven while you watch the microwaves cook your food.
As it turns out, the eyes are among the most sensitive part of the
body when it comes to absorbed microwaves.
--Lauren--
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Date: Fri 21 Dec 84 20:40:13-EST
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
To: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@UCB-VAX.ARPA
I agree with Henry Spencer that many claims from the AI community
are overblown, and that we need to maintain a healthy stance of
scepticism about the Next Big Revolutionary Breakthroughs that are
forecast every week. However:
(1) I don't think the present generation of outliners, natural
language interfaces, and free-form databases, which are some of the
basic building blocks of idea processors, are, as you insist, a "fad."
Products like Thinktank and Intellect are not vaporware: they have
firmly established themselves in the marketplace, and are not going to
disappear. They are a permanent and welcome fixture in the world of
microcomputer software.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
-- Wayne McGuire <wayne%mit-oz@mit-mc>
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Date: Friday, 21 Dec 1984 18:12-PST
To: shasta!POURNE@MIT-MC
Subject: TV and the 5th generation
From: imagen!les@su-shasta.arpa
In response to your 20 Dec. comments on "Personal Assistants", I can
confirm that the TV story is apocryphal. I bought the Heathkit
television set for the Stanford AI Lab and it was completely assembled
within a few days after arrival, by gnomes not robots. Aside from its
use for monitoring "Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman!" it served as a
display for computer-synthesized color images.
A creative student (Hans Morovec) shortly built a remote control ray
gun that worked rather well. As I recall, that was a few years before
remote control became available on commercial TV sets.
As for the digs at the AI community by you and others, please do not
paint everyone with the same brush. In any research field, the
lunatic fringe is much more likely to catch headlines and certain
government grants than those who speak rationally. The Great Machine
Translation fiasco of the '60s was brought about mainly by the CIA's
slavering desire to leap ahead in an area where no one knew how to
walk yet.
An even greater fiasco was the series of "Command and Control" systems
assembled by the Air Force and others in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.
They wanted computers to run the military establishment even though
they hadn't mastered chess yet. The reason that these largely useless
projects kept going was that the people involved were having a good
time (and making good money) and the Congress never seemed to
understand what was going on.
As for AI and 5th generation computers, I know of very few people in
the AI community who believe in any of that nonsense. Nevertheless,
some will use it to pry larger grants out of the government or to sell
high-priced seminars to the gullible public.
What keeps happening, it seems, is that people take a few partially-
understood facts and principles then extrapolate a few light years
away and declare that it must be possible to do this new thing. As
long as such activities are rewarded, they will continue to
proliferate. Why settle for a trip to the beach when you can head
toward Andromeda?
Les Earnest
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Date: 25 December 1984 02:14-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: longevity of paper
To: ihnp4!utzoo!henry @ UCB-VAX
Alas, the GLUE in optical laser disks is not only not eternal,
but not even very long lived; some of the disks have already
self destructed. True, they are working on that; but they ain't
archive quality yet, or so I am told. I had thought they were, too...
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Date: 27 Dec 84 14:18:41 PST (Thursday)
From: Hoffman.es@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: The Model Product
From a review of "Understanding New Media: Trends and Issues in
Electronic Distribution of Information" edited by Benjamin M. Compaine
(Ballinger Publ. Co., $30):
"...As Compaine and several other authors in this volume point out,
the 'model home information and entertainment product...provides a
broad range of information and entertainment, provides built in
storage, is easily portable, integrates graphics and text, allows user
self-pacing and random access to any portion of the database within
five seconds, allows for branching, provides hard copy and is
completely updated every twenty-four hours, yet comes at a low price
to the consumer -- 25 cents per connect hour or less.'
"The description currently filts only that marvel of technology, the
traditional newspaper...."
--Rodney Hoffman
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 84 0:02:17 EST
From: The Home Office of <abc@BRL-TGR.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Paper vs CD Books
It seems that the discussion is too narrow. The issue may not at all
be whether Britannica will come out on CDs and how much it will cost.
New technology offers the opportunities for more specialized
"encyclopedias" at affordable prices than the printing press can
deliver.
Consider that the Library of Congress is reported to be putting much
(all?) of its printed collection on laser disks accessible down to the
page (?) via computer. Given this, it's not much of a leap of faith
to imagine the creation of a "custom" collection on, say, the history
of steelmaking or an encyclopedia of soccer the world over. The
compilation of such specialty compendia is, with present methods,
prohibitively costly, but with the information retrievable via
computer becomes feasible indeed.
Re the original discussion: if the Britannica can be produced on CDs
and sold for a fraction of the printed version and if the demand for
such a product can be demonstrated, rest assured the product will be
produced. The name of the game is to sell products in volume at a
product--not to protect existing products.
Brint
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Date: Fri, 21 Dec 1984 13:22 EST
From: ELAN%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #84: corporate nasties
How long did you leave the phone hung up before picking up the
receiver and trying to dial? I heard that the circuitry sometimes
takes a few seconds before it disconnects you. If you kept snatching
the receiver up every two seconds to see if you were still connected
to the tape, it probably thought you never hung up.
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Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 20:03:21 PST
From: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
Subject: phone call clearing
The tone that a writer mentioned for "clearing" phone lines
is the old SF tone used almost exclusively on long distance
circuits for trunk control. It was also used extensively by
phone phreaks, and is now detected by automatic phone phreak
detecting equipment in many areas. It also won't work even
on an increasing percentage of long distance any more, since the
changeover of the toll network to CCIS has replaced many
tone control circuits with dedicated call address data paths.
--Lauren--
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Subject: Magazine of note
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 84 18:33:42 EST
From: Larry Hunter <Hunter@YALE.ARPA>
CoEvolution Quarterly and The Whole Earth Software Review have
combined to form the Whole Earth Review. WER's premire issue is
titled *All Panaceas Become Poison: Computers as Poison*. Articles
include pieces on homework, back offices, privacy and cultural changes
induced by computers. Generally worth the steep cover price ($3) they
charge because they don't run ads.
I admit I'm a bit biased -- they ran an article of mine (an extension
of "Should Your Florist Know Your Income" which appeared on HumanNets
v.7 #29) but I think it's worth reading.
Larry
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Date: 30 December 1984 05:03-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: MusicWorks queries: Backup? FORTH??
To: PALLAS @ SU-SCORE
Cc: info-mac @ SUMEX-AIM
I would love some suggestions as to what to do abut the dilemma
you pose. You've stated it well.
JEP
Date: Fri 21 Dec 84 09:46:03-PST
From: Joseph I. Pallas <PALLAS at SU-SCORE.ARPA>
To: HUMAN-NETS, info-mac at SUMEX-AIM.ARPA
Re: MusicWorks queries: Backup? FORTH??
Now this disturbs me a great deal. I was all set to go out and
buy this program, because it looked so nifty at all the
pre-release demos. Now I find out (I guess it's no surprise) that
it's copy-protected. This makes me considerably less willing to
pay more than $40 dollars for anything, no matter how good.
It also puts me in a dilemma: even if someone can tell me how to
back up this program if I buy it, I would like to send a loud and
clear message to the vendor that I don't buy programs that I can't
back up. If I just buy the program and back it up, the vendor
never gets that message. If I obtain a copy illegally, the vendor
doesn't get the message either, and I'm a crook as well. The
catch is that I think it's a good program, easily worth half its
selling price.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
joe
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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