human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (12/29/84)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Friday, 28 Dec 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 85
Today's Topics:
Query - Programmable Microwave Ovens,
Response to Query - A Rural Net of Micros,
Computers and People - Hackers...and the Klan &
"Snagged" Phone Line (3 msgs) &
Paper vs. CD Books,
Computers and the Law - Backup of Copy-Protected Software
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Date: Wednesday, 26 Dec 1984 08:55:15-PST
From: chuck%hyster.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Hyster::Hitchcock 264-6540 )
Subject: Programmable Microwave Ovens
Over the past few years I know there's been many discussions in
HN on radiation from VDTs. What I'm curious about is how much
radiation leaks out of a microwave oven. How does it compare to
the amount of radiation from a color TV (watching it from ten
feet away)? In fact, just what type of radiation is being
referred to when discussing microwave ovens? (Let's assume a
good-quality microwave oven, new in 1984, for purposes of
discussion.)
Also, the one I have is "programmable" insofar as it can store
and retrieve settings for various recipes. What is the storage
media in a programmable product like this one likely to use?
Note: If there is a power drop or the unit is unplugged, it
retains its programs for a short period, so there's some sort of
battery backup...but what's being backedup?
Chuck Hitchcock
DEC/Merrimack, NH
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Date: Sat, 22 Dec 84 06:00:30 pst
From: dual!islenet!bob@Berkeley
Subject: Re: query re rural net of micros
Bruce Nevin asks for a friend:
We are in the process of starting a worker-owned cottage
industry here in the mountains.
...
... we
are seriously considering an approach that we call a
`Computer Coordinated Community.' We think that, by
having computers in most of the households, it might be
possible to communicate more effectively.
...
Before considering a 'computer coordinated community', your friend
ought to have a good understanding of the existing informal
communication structure of the community. If possible, peruse Everett
Rogers' book "Communication Networks." It is NOT about computer
networks. For years Rogers has been studying in depth the social
structure of rural communities in "3rd world" countries. The object:
to find out how and why new ideas and techniques become accepted and
spread into everyday life in small communities. Rogers is perhaps the
leading scholar studying "The Diffusion of Innovation" (a title of
another of his books, a bit less readable).
To oversimplify his central thesis, the formal & obvious political and
social structure of a community tends to have far less influence on
individuals and families adopting new ideas, practices and ways of
life than the underlying informal communication structure of the
community.
Formal, "official" leaders tend to accept only belatedly new ways of
doing things (even though they may talk encouragingly about the new
ideas early on), and have a general bias towards maintaining the
status quo (which they just might deny if you asked them). "Early
acceptors" of new ideas are usually mavericks at the social fringe of
the community (in one sense or another), and tend to have startlingly
small influence over the rest of the community.
Commonly, a new innovation (e.g. a new method of planting crops) gets
talked about by official leaders, accepted by a few early acceptors,
but most of the community effectively ignores it.
Rogers' findings fit in with what experienced, successful agricultural
field agents have learned the hard way: convince a few key "influence
leaders" in the community to adopt and demonstrate to their friends
the new techniques, and the majority soon adopt them.
How do you find those influence leaders? First, they tend to be
relatively successful -- or at least remarkably competent -- at
whatever they're doing, and they're very pragmatic individuals.
Second, they tend to have lots of friends within the community. Lots.
Not only that, but their friends tend to span the inevitable little
social sub-units (cliques) within the community. In fact, the
influence leaders tend to act as "gateways" for information flowing
between subgroups. They are almost-universally trusted by everyone
within the small community of which they are a part. The astonishing
thing is that -- within a community of a few hundred people -- there
are probably only about 2-3 really effective influence leaders.
[Rogers' basic technique is to find out from as many people in the
community as possible who each talks to on a fairly regular basis.
Drawing the results out as a non-directed graph shows clearly the
sub-groupings and the gateway individuals. The gateway individuals
are -- actually or potentially -- your influence leaders, provided
they possess the other necessary traits.]
Whatever your friend's approach, the influence leaders are the key to
success. If they adopt new techniques, many will follow. As gateways
for the existing flow of information within the community, they'll
probably also become key individuals distributing information and
advice using whatever form of computer technology is set up. Plus,
they'll pass information back and forth to others who are outside
whatever computer network you set up.
Bob Cunningham ..{dual,ihnp4,vortex}!islenet!bob
Honolulu, Hawaii
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Date: Thu, 27 Dec 84 18:10:34 est
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@Purdue.ARPA>
Subject: Hackers...and the Klan
I heard an interesting story on WBBM-AM (CBS radio affiliate
in Chicago) the other night...it seems that the Klu Klux Klan has put
together a network of Apple II's running some sort of BBS software,
and that they are using it for communications, and to store
information about people they consider either undesirable or enemies
of their cause.
It occurs to me that perhaps the "hackers" out there who have
been regularly blasted by the media, could undo a lot of the bad
publicity they have received by doing something about this...
...which raises some interesting ethical questions. Such as:
even if we all agree the Klansmen are [insert favorite obscenity
here], do we have any right at all to interfere with their machines?
Do we violate their rights if we encourage others to crack their
systems?
On the other hand, if we stand by and do nothing, and advocate
that others do nothing, are we guilty of a greater wrong?
Rich Kulawiec
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Date: Fri, 21-Dec-84 02:40:37 PST
From: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
Subject: "snagged" phone line
In many states, there is supposed to be someone monitoring the
line to clear the tape if you hang up. The trick is that it can
be very hard to tell when you've hung up if the tape isn't
making a lot of requests for you to say something. For a certain
period of time anyway, a hung up line sounds just like an active
line from the calling side.
However, the real problem is that you jumped the gun. While in the
old days of widespread step by step switching it was possible to
"snag" a call since the calls were totally under calling party
control, all other forms of switching will drop off the call (after
called party hangup) after a timeout period ranging from 20 seconds to
a minute, with 30 seconds being very typical. If you had simply hung
up your phone for 30 seconds or so and left it down, the call would
almost certainly have cleared. But if you kept picking it up, you
kept resetting the timer... These timeouts have been found to be very
necessary, because of occasional line glitches, people who accidently
lean on their hookswitches, and because some people change phones by
hanging up one and running to the other when they've received a call.
While there are still a few areas where a local step by step TO
step by step call could be "calling party hung," they are few
and far between, at least anywhere except in rural areas in the U.S.
And for the call to be hung this way, the caller and callee would have
to be extremely local to each other.
The bottom line: To clear an incoming call, hang up and STAY hung up
for a minute.
--Lauren--
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Date: Friday, 21 Dec 1984 09:50-EST
From: sde@Mitre-Bedford
To: goutal%parrot.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA
Subject: Re: Breaking a phone connection, how to do it
Some, perhaps all, U.S. phone systems have a particular audio
frequency interpreted as "disconnect immediately!" This, last time I
whistled it, was something like 2500 Hz. (I haven't tried in a few
years.) If that is not it, I am pretty sure it was 2xyz Hz, probably
2x00 Hz. In any case, I matched the tone by a slow, whistled sweep. Of
course, an (electronic) audio oscillator would give a better readout
for repeatability, unless you are very musical.
So now you know.
David sde@mitre-bedford
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Date: Friday, 21 Dec 1984 09:36-PST
To: shasta!goutal%parrot.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
Reply-to: imagen!geof@shasta
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #84
From: imagen!geof@su-shasta.arpa
I recall that the old step-by-step exchanges had the property that the
termination of a call was soley the responsibility of the initiator
(using MIT's dormphone, it was a common hack to tie up someone's phone
by calling them from a sub-sub-basement where nobody would notice the
phone off the hook for days on end). This is off the point, because
you definitely weren't using a step-by-step exchange. Most probably
it was ESS.
I believe the current phone systems time out the connection after a
few seconds. My experience has been that the timeout is about 5-10
seconds. Maybe the time out in your area is somewhat greater?
- Geof
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Date: Saturday, 22 Dec 1984 21:36:45-PST
From: goutal%parrot.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
Subject: paper vs. CD books
A friend of mine poses a couple of questions:
a) It's just possible that encyclopedia companies and other producers
of encyclopedic publications would see a market for CD versions of
their wares. They may in fact charge *more* for the CD version, as
some in this discussion have already said, but still, it might be a
workable market. However, one of the major threads I see in this
discussion is whether the CD will make the paper book obsolete. To do
this, it seems to me (and my friend) that the paper-to-CD revolution
must affect not only the encylopedic-publication market, but the
market of relatively small publications -- what we normally refer to
when we say "books". Sci-fi, computer texts, cookbooks, poetry,
biographies, all the junk that we buy from bookstores. The question
is, how can they market *these* kinds of books in CD format
effectively? What's the point of publishing a 200-page novel in a
format that can store a 1000 times that (? -- I'm a little fuzzy on
the actual scale here), and requires a fancy gizmo to read it? How
can such a thing compete with the plain ol' book? I'd be more
inclined to believe that some new technology for cutting the set-up,
marketing, and printing costs by a factor of 10 or a 100 would be more
important for a good while yet. (See the Ernest Callenbach Ecotopia
novels for discussion of same.)
b) The second question is like unto it:
Even supposing you can get the entire Brittanica -- sans pix -- on
one disk, and even supposing Brittanica decides to publish it that way
(see above), and even supposing you are willing to pay the price for
it, who would want such a thing?
(Yes, yes, I know, who cares what the populace of a culture wants,
they have to take what the culture gives them. Separate discussion.
(Very *important* discussion.))
The picture here is one of taking the Brittanica to the beach. Or
some have suggested the compleat works of so-and-so. Who cares? Even
the world's greatest speedreader isn't going to be able to chow down
the entire works of somebody who's entire works require a CD to fit
them on one volume. And how many people would *want* to read the
entire encyclopedia at the beach? (i.e. how big is that market?)
It'd be great if as you bought individual works, you could incorporate
them on your private disk (or two or three). I could see that being a
big thing. But not if the industry does with CD's what the music
industry did in going to cassette or, more lately, to CD's themselves:
they just went ahead and stored one volume of the traditional medium
-- the grooved plastic LP disk -- per cassette or CD, even tho a
cassette can easily store two records' worth of music and a CD much
more. Cassettes were still marketed fairly cheaply, almost
competitive with records, so the increment in convenience worked out
about right. And with the music CD's, well, I suppose the fidelity
and reliability may support the price, although it still seems like a
crock to me. But when it comes to text, what are they going to do?
Still charge $50 per disk but only put only one work on it? I might
see it for a complete-works-of-Larry-Niven just for the reliability
(paperback don't hack more than a few readings these days), but for
individual volumes, I'd still prefer paying $3.00 for something I can
read with just the equipment I was born with.
So, I don't think CD's will revolutionize the reading habits of the
world in quite the way the printing press did. The amazing thing
about the printing press is that it revolutionized the way books were
*made*, but didn't require any change in how they were *read*. (well,
much, anyway -- edge-bound books were already common, and while
printing paved the way for standardized typefaces, it was more or less
a continuum.) I think CD's are more likely to *capitalize* on changes
in reading habits, which changes are already underway, perhaps brought
on by TV, or even cheap paperbacks.
-- Kenn
Sun 23-Dec-1984 00:36 EST
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Date: Fri 21 Dec 84 09:46:03-PST
From: Joseph I. Pallas <PALLAS@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: MusicWorks queries: Backup? FORTH??
To: info-mac@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA
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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