human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (12/09/84)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Sunday, 9 Dec 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 80
Today's Topics:
Query - Dvorak Keyboards,
Computers and People - Mace Spraying Robot &
Compact Disk Books (2 msgs) &
Future social changes due to WorldNet,
Computer Networks - "Registered" E-Mail (2 msgs) &
MCI MAIL ends free mailboxes,
Computers and the Law - Unions
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Date: Sun, 2 Dec 84 14:29:48 cst
From: Rusty Haddock <haddock%waltz%ti-csl.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Dvorak keyboards
Does anyone have a file they could send me that has a (relatively)
complete layout (more that just the alphas)? Pointers to
articles, books, etc. would be appreciated just as well.
Thanks for the trouble.
=================================================================
_____
|\/ o \ o
-Rusty- | ( -< O o Where's the fish?
|/\__V__/
ARPA: Haddock%Waltz%TI-CSL@CSNet-Relay.Arpa
Rusty@Maryland
CSNet: Haddock@TI-CSL
Rusty@UMCP-CS
USENET: {convex!smu, ut-sally, texsun, rice} ! waltz ! haddock
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Date: Thu, 29 Nov 84 21:39 EST
From: Steven Gutfreund <gutfreund%umass-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
To: leichter@yale.ARPA
Subject: Mace Spraying Robot
In Today's New York Times (29-Nov) there is an article about a robot
the NYPD is testing out that is designed to help in evicting mentally
disturbed people. It walks up to the person, asks if they need help,
and if it gets agressive reply it sprays mace in their face (which
gives the nearby police time to club the person) [Hey, I don't make
this up, it's in the NYT!].
Look out, world-net is not going to sit passively and take our
invective, it may fight back and spray us with mace!
- Steven Gutfreund
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Date: Wed, 5 Dec 84 14:50 CST
From: Giebelhaus@HI-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: RE: compact disk prices vs. INFORMATION prices
I disagree with Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA>
about the price of digital books. I think at first the price would
remain above the cost of the same printed material. The competition
would soon drive the price down, however. I would guess that the
smaller publishing houses would be the first to start cutting their
rates in hopes of getting a larger share of the market. Soon the
price would be down to a reasonable profit margin.
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Date: Thu 6 Dec 84 19:19:58-EST
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Personal Assistants & Optical Disks
To: AIList@MIT-MC
Cc: zbbs%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Re: Dietz's speculation about optical disks:
Optical disks will clearly impact information technology in
general (microforms, magnetic tape, commercial databases, book
publishing, etc.) and microcomputers in particular in many
revolutionary ways. One potential use would be to integrate the
optical disk with AI-based integrated software in a microcomputer
product which would be a powerful general purpose idea processor and
personal assistant.
We already see a trend towards general purpose idea processors in
such micro products as Framework, Symphony, Thinktank, Clout, Dayflo,
Factfinder, and The Desk Organizer. This trend is likely to continue
and to accelerate as new generations of microprocessors rapidly come
online and make available ever greater random access memory for
personal computer users. Framework and Symphony are the crude
precursors of general purpose personal assistant programs of 1MB, 5MB,
and more of memory.
A sign of the times: Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus, recently
commented in an MIS Week interview that the next key step for his
company would be to explore current AI research in depth, and to
develop new more powerful products that were capable of sophisticated
qualitative, not just quantitative, information processing.
Optical disks would nicely interface with the next generation of
general purpose idea processors. With them one could easily store,
retrieve, and manipulate all the vital information and minute details
in one's life: financial transactions, notes for miscellaneous
projects, diary entries, address books, medical records, rough drafts,
datebooks, electronic mail, shopping lists, statistics, papers,
bibliographies, administrivia, programs in progress, graphs, abstracts
and full-text documents downloaded from commercial databases, etc.
Every individual record or key chunk of information in one's personal
digital archive could be uniquely identified by a date and time stamp,
and every personal database, structured and/or free-form, could be
integrated into a single richly interconnected knowledgebase. The set
of storage optical disks for a program of this kind would constitute
for anyone, in compact and efficient form, an extremely thorough
journal of his or her life.
Write-once optical disks would actually be preferable for this
archival purpose than disks which could be erased and written over.
Subsets from the master archival disk(s), of any desired information
or complex combination of records, could be transfered at will to
working floppy or hard disks. The technology for the greatest
revolution in the history of personal information management is
already solidly in place.
It is not likely that the total information processed by a
personal assistant for an average person over a lifetime would occupy
more than one or two disks. Even for someone whose personal
information needs were much greater than average--say, a Harvard
economics professor who is a dedicated teacher, a prolific scholar and
author, holds a cabinet-level post (not concurrently with his teaching
responsibilities, of course), and has an active globe-trotting social
life--under 100 disks would probably neatly archive a lifetime of rich
intellectual, professional, and social activity. Our professor would
be able to pinpoint in a few minutes those two sentences in which x
remarked about y in a private communication twenty years ago, or that
small note of last year which captured a flash of insight about how to
improve a formula in an econometric model of the Venezuelan oil
industry. (Literary scholars analyzing the biodisks of future Walt
Whitmans or Virginia Woolfs would be able to reconstruct in
microscopic detail the evolution of their subjects' works and themes,
and the interaction of quotidian life events with their imaginative
creations.)
AI-based personal assistants and optical disks seem to be made
for one another. I wouldn't be surprised to see prototype products on
the market within the next two years. By the '90s we may well wonder
how we ever got by without them.
-- Wayne McGuire (mdc.wayne@mit-oz)
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Date: 07 Dec 84 10:30:51 PST (Fri)
To: sf-lovers@rutgers
Cc: HJNCU%CUNYVM.BITNET@wiscvm
Subject: Future social changes due to WorldNet
From: Martin D. Katz <katz@uci-icse>
Henry Nussbacher sent me the following message after a discussion in
SF-lovers. Since this has been discussed recently in your digest, I
am passing it on to you:
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 84 11:05 EST
From: Henry Nussbacher <HJNCU%CUNYVM.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: re: Networks and Manners
I have found that people can compose their thoughts better via a
terminal and send off what they really think and don't have to deal
with the problems of looking someone in the eye. I have noticed that
people alter their personality considerably when behind a keyboard
just like when someone gets behind the wheel of a car. The analogy
stands up quite well.
Children today are taught how to use computers the way kids 80 years
ago were taught to use a telephone. Some are labeled "computer nerd"
if they sit too long behind a keyboard and wear glasses but lately
society has been glorifing the computer "youth". I can't forsee a day
when all people will stay indoors and type (or speak) into their
computer. Man is a social beast and that is the reason cities were
developed. But I do see the kids of today communicating with friends
in Europe and Asia. As the Worldnet grows people will be able to
communicate to places that were previously unknown to them.. Whole
countries will suddenly be found by an exploring 15 year old in the
network. Does anyone know today the countless number of dates and
marriages and lasting friendships that have been initiated over a
terminal?
Society will look quite different 20 years from now.
Henry Nussbacher
BITNET Network Information Center
------- End of Forwarded Message
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Date: Wed, 5 Dec 84 19:45 PST
From: "Schroeder Wa"@LLL-MFE.ARPA
Subject: "Registered" E-Mail
The TELL/MESSAGE mail system, which we wrote for the National
Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center's Crays/7600 and for MFEnet's
PDP-10s and VAXes, has non-optional (for the receiver) return
receipts. If a return receipt is requested by a sender of a message
then when the receiver types or copies that message a return receipt
message is sent back. Since the receiver has no option, this type of
return receipt is very useful. If you don't get a return receipt then
you know they haven't read it. Optional return receipts strike me as
almost meaningless.
The system also keeps track of return receipts that you are waiting
for. With an option to the reader program you can list the message
headers for which you have not yet received a return receipt.
About 1/4 of the messages in the Cray system have return receipts
requested.
We have no delivery acknowledgment by the various host computers
since, within MFEnet, delivery or rapid return (or eventual) is almost
certain.
TELL/MESSAGE is somewhat primitive by Internet standards but has
three noteworthy features : return receipts, attachments (text,
graphics (FR80), or binary (other) files), and a single data base for
the central machines (currently a Cray X/MP, 2 Cray-1s and a CDC
7600). The mail system is loosely based on the TELL/MESSAGE program
written for PDP-10s by Steve Fortune and Peter DeWolf of the
Coordinated Science Lab at the U of Illinois at Urbana. We connect to
the Internet via an interface on this PDP-10. I wrote the Cray/7600
version.
- Wayne Schroeder -
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Date: 6 Dec 84 7:47:28-EST (Thu)
From: Gale%mep-onyx01.darcom@amc-hq.arpa
To: SEILER%mit-xx.arpa@amc-hq.arpa
Subject: Status of Dispatched EMail
A few years back we leased a service from TYMSHARE Corp. This included
a box on the ARPANet and a mail system. It was aptly called HEMES ( @,
I believe by BBN).
That system included a "MAILSTAT" command. HERMES would then tell you
that your msg was "UNDELIVERABLE" (in which case it was placed back in
your directory) or "QUEUED". If he told you that you had none in
either status, it meant he had winged his way thru the net and dropped
your message in the addressee's mailbox ( or host, as the case may
be).
Since I normally elect EMailwhen expediency is foremost, that was much
more comforting than our UNIX. Now I hold my breath for two days
awaitng a possible "Queue" notice and sweat for eleven against an
"Undeliverable" notice.Of couse every once in a while I can break thru
the AUTOVON crunch to verify receipt, but I was relly spoiled by
HERMES and frequently have tried to invoke the rath of those he served
in days of yore upon my new messenger.
Regards: Jimmy Gale O O
\^/
#
***
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Date: 3 Dec 1984 20:01 PST
From: Lars Poulsen <LARS@ACC>
Subject: MCI MAIL ends free mailboxes
Reply-to: LARS@ACC
At the end of the year, the honeymoon is over for those of us that got
a free mailbox on MCI-MAIL. We will then be charged for
- connect time (at least on the 800-numbers)
- $18.-/year to have a mailbox
besides the current charges. Since I was really just playing with it,
sending an occasional TWX to Europe and hoping that someday the'd
gateway the thing to Usenet or CSNET so I could send my international
twx'es without ever having to log in on the MCI host, I've
canceled my account, and will now let a secretary type my TWX's up
from a hardcopy ....
I still think that the experiment was a neat idea; we knew it was
too good to last, but at least it got us to try. I hope for MCI
that many of you stay on - it certainly is a much nicer service
than W.U.s misnamed "Easy-Link".
/ Lars Poulsen
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To: eyal%wisdom.BITNET@Berkeley (Eyal moses)
Subject: Re: unions for the underprivileged
> b) If there was a large pool of cheap labor available, then making
> it less cheap (which is exactly what MESA did) had to result in part
> of it remaining unused - i.e., in unemployment for thousands of
> miners. Which takes us back to my first message - unions can only
> benefit some workers at the expense of others.
Yes, the basic law of supply and demand says that if the price of
something is raised, the demand for it will decrease. How large
this decrease will be is another matter; that depends upon how elastic
the demand is. There is no reason that a decrease in demand for labor
need result in more unemployment; an alternative is to switch to a
shorter work week.
> > The first mining unions were
> > attacked by the local militia and had their leaders executed.
>
> If this is true, then the solution is neither MESA nor union laws;
> The simple solution, and the only way to protect everybody's rights,
> was to enforce the laws forbiding violence on either side, without
> any special legal priviledges to the unions. This is still the
> solution today. The unions, of course, never liked this solution.
"NEVER liked this solution" ??? I'm sure that the early union leaders
would have appreciated a little protection by the law. People
attempting to form unions are at a significant disadvantage compared
to the employers if the employers are allowed to blacklist anyone who
displays an interest in forming a union, and so your "simple solution"
gives most of the chips to the corporations. Of course, once a union
is entrenched its power can become much greater.
> A capitalistic society
> gives people a strong incentive to get along with each other.
> In a mixed economy, however, with many laws
> (including union laws) giving special priviledges to some at
> the expense of others, people come to regard each other as a
> threat (look, for example, at the way immigrants are regarded
> in the U.S.A. today). So if you want to avoid balkanization,
> one step in the right way would be repealing the union laws.
I agree that a capitalist society give people an incentive to
get along with one another, although there are exceptions. The
case of immigrants is one such exception. Immigrants are rightly
regarded as a threat in a capitalist society because they increase
the labor supply and thus decrease wages.
Kenneth Almquist
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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