human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (11/23/84)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Friday, 23 Nov 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 77
Today's Topics:
Queries - Are Books Obsolete? &
Is Work at Home Illegal at NASA?
Computers and Education - Re: IBM ad (3 msgs),
Computers and the Law - Unions (3 msgs),
Computer Networks - Cancelling E-Mail,
Computers and Security - How Secure are your Credit Cards?
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Date: 19 Nov 84 16:55:09 EST
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: Are books obsolete?
Sony has recently introduced a portable compact optical disk player.
I hear they intend to market it as a microcomputer peripheral for
$300. I'm not sure what its capacity will be, so I'll estimate it at
50 megabytes per side. That's 25000 ascii coded 8 1/2x11 pages, or
1000 compressed page images, per side. Disks cost about $10, for a
cost per word orders of magnitude less than books.
Here's an excellent opportunity for those concerned with the social
impact of computer technology to demonstrate their wisdom. What will
the effect be of such inexpensive read-only storage media? How will
this technology affect the popularity of home computers? What
features should a home computer have to fully exploit this technology?
How should text be stored on the disks? What difference would
magneto-optical writeable/erasble disks make? How will this
technology affect education?
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Date: Thu, 22 Nov 84 20:19:15 pst
From: Don Reynolds <reynolds@AMES-NAS.ARPA>
To: HUMAN-NETS@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: Re: "still more `n the unions"
I too have been away from the net for some time (Ex AMES-TSS). Have
moved to 4.2 bsd and am now gritting my teeth over the supposedly
wonderful editors, vi and EMACS (oh, right, editor-people is another
list). I read somewhere that UNIX is for people who love chess & wish
the entire world was equally as complicated. Even H-NETS had a chess
game a few weeks ago.
The subject: I was recently informed that somewhere in the NASA
regulations, it is AGAINST THE RULES to work at home. I am a NASA
employee so this applies to me. Is my Government trying to protect me
from itself? myself?
Best,
Don Reynolds
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Date: 20 Nov 1984 13:28:25 PST
Subject: IBM ad
From: David Booth <DBOOTH@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
Cc: cc.wilkes@UTEXAS-20.ARPA
It wasn't a matter of being careless, since the incomplete sentences
were most certainly intentional. This is very common in advertising.
However, they were irresponsible and possibly counterproductive to
IBM's objective.
"A unique" vs. "an unique" is another matter. "A unique" is
absolutely correct: "a" is converted to "an" for phonetic reasons --
not typographical. Phonetics are determined by pronunciation -- not
by spelling. We say "a unique" just as we say "a youthful"; "an hour"
as we say "an outing".
American Heritage Dictionary, under "a":
"A" is used before a word beginning with a consonant ("a
frog") or consonant sound ("a university"); "an" is used
before a work beginning with a vowel ("an egg") or a vowel
sound ("an hour").
David Booth DBOOTH@USC-ISIF.ARPA
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Date: Tue, 20 Nov 1984 16:48 EST
From: Jim Aspnes <ASP%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
To: Cliff <CC.Wilkes@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: IBM advertisement
Nonsense. There's an important difference between writing technical
essays and ordinary prose, one that should not be ignored when one
attacks advertising copy. Sentence fragments? Nothing wrong with
them ...
And "an unique"? Please. I don't think there is an (?) use for "an"
before that particular "u".
The greatest curse of grammar is the twits who insist on enforcing
their own peculiar interpretation of it. I have pity on anyone who
may someday learn to read under your supervision.
Jim
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Date: Tue 20 Nov 84 14:32:43-CST
From: Clifford A. Wilkes <CC.Wilkes@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Apology
Please, hold your flames. I've already been taken to task for my
message about the IBM advertisement. The errors were excessive
and inexcusable. I apologize to IBM for my lack of tact and to the
net for being subjected to my ranting.
<@>
P.S. Gee, wouldn't it be nice to be able to cancel an electronic
mail message you'd sent?
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Date: 20 November 1984 03:23-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: unions for the underprivileged
To: Haas @ UTAH-20
Cc: eyal%wisdom.BITNET @ UCB-VAX
My wife's father had his house blown up the pinkertons for
organizing the miners in Wallace Idaho. After he was retired
(without pension) because with silicosis he couldn';t work any
more he moved to Seattle and became an electrician.
Clearly unions are useful. When they exceed their
utility they become something else.
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Date: 20 November 1984 03:25-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: still more on the unions
To: taber%kirk.DEC @ DECWRL
Cc: hn%kirk.DEC @ DECWRL, me%kirk.DEC @ DECWRL
Hell, anyone has the chance to try to be rich. My inheritance
was debts. My college tuition was GI Bill and those of us in
Korea earned that the hard way.
If you are really compassionate, YOU help out;
collectively gettting me to is a different story. When a union
bargains with an employer that's fine. When it tries to get the
polivce to put me out of work that's not so good.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 20 Nov 84 13:15:49-MST
From: The alleged mind of Walt <Haas@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Unions for the Underprivleged
It's hard to make very general statements about the effects of unions
and government regulations on mining in the western US, since the
industry was created by an intricate mix of private and government
action. To give you an example of the complexities, it first became
possible to move these minerals to market when the Federal government
hired private contractors to build the Transcontinental Railroad,
which was completed in 1869. Then connections from the mines to the
main line were built with a mixture of private venture capital and
State and local grants and preferences. The mines themselves were
created largely by individuals who were able to claim Federally owned
land by finding economic concentrations of minerals on the land. Much
of the market for these minerals was created by the Federal
government's use of silver for money, and many silver mines went
bankrupt when silver was demonetarized. Of course all mines
automatically are bankrupt when they exhaust their ore, and many mines
in this area closed for that simple reason. The economics of mining
is also greatly affected by market conditions; right now, mineral
mining in Utah is at a virtual standstill because Reagan has raised
the value of a dollar to the point where it is cheaper to import
metals than to mine them here. Price fluctuations have of course been
regular and in many cases extreme since the beginning of mining.
Happily, I guess, many persons unemployed in mining have been able to
find jobs in the guided missle business, so we will now be able to
blow each other up better as a result.
For all of these reasons, it is hard to judge exactly what effect the
costs of various health and safety measures had. Undoubtedly there
are costs of adding water to pneumatic drills, but they can't have
been very high, even in the ninteenth century. Remember that there
was already plumbing in place to connect the compressed air from the
compressor to the drill, and it would have been easy to add parallel
plumbing for water. Remember too that steam pumping of water was
highly developed by this time, and indeed was necessary for many of
these mines. This was of course the original application of the steam
engine. You can to this day go up to these old mines and see the huge
boilers that drove the hoists and pumps that ran the mines, so as far
as I can see pumping a small amount of water next to the drill would
have been pretty trivial.
There was, however, a strong economic incentive in operation; namely,
labor was dirt cheap. The United States was at this time absorbing
enormous numbers of immigrants, many of whom had little to offer but
unskilled labor. Many of them were attracted by the possiblity of
discovering a rich deposit and laying claim to it. Some did, too; an
unusually large number of millionaires came out of the Rockies in
those days. However, needless to say, most miners didn't get rich.
So there was a large pool of cheap labor available, plus intense
competition between mines, which gave an incentive to cut costs any
way possible. One way to cut costs is, of course, to force somebody
else to pay them, and the owners did exactly that by giving the miners
minimal protection against silicosis. Notice that the incentive here
is very different from the incentive to protect against caveins. If
your mine caves in, you can't dig up ore and sell it, so you can't
make money. However, if you make one miner sick in a buyer's market
for labor, there is another guy standing behind him to replace him.
Hence there is no incentive to protect the miner from silicosis,
unless the miners create one by reducing the supply of labor. In
order to do that they have to organize a union, and then defend it.
The first mining unions were attacked by the local militia and had
their leaders executed. Eventually, however, the unions more or less
prevailed, in a sense. One way that they prevailed was to get the
Federal government to establish MESA, the Mining Enforcement and
Safety Administration, which made mining safer and accordingly reduced
the incentive to join a union! Mining is now a high tech business run
by highly trained technicians, at least near here, and so there is no
longer a guy ready and able to replace anybody who gets silicosis.
For one thing, it takes a long time to train miners to operate their
machinery. Having acquired this much education, they now are in a
better bargaining position as individuals, so they are not subject to
being jacked around more than the owners. As I mentioned, the owners
get jacked around quite a bit themselves by market conditions, so
there is much more parity between labor and management now because of
MESA and the change in technology.
One thing interesting to speculate on, for the future of my local
society: When the miners started to unionize, they were a motely crew
of different nationalities and ethnic groups. They had a strong
economic incentive to band together, and I suspect that learning to do
this set much of the tone of our social tradition of getting along
with various groups. Now that the economic incentive is reduced, I
wonder if we will continue to value this, or will we end up
Balkanized?
Regards -- Walt
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Date: Wed, 21 Nov 84 09:58:10 est
From: "Alan T. Bowler [SDG]"
From: <atbowler%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Canceling mail
I see nothing wrong with the ability to cancel a message up until the
point that it has been read by the recipient. The mail system I am
currently working on implements this, and allows canceling messages on
remote machines running a compatible mail.
It is true that this allows the sender to determine if the receiver
has taken delivery of a message, (I won't say "read" because there is
not way to guarentee he has understood the message.), and in a sense
this is "spying" on the receiver. However, there is nothing wrong
with this. The ability to determine if a message has been delivered,
is restricted to the originator of the message and is not available to
"anyone". There is an analogy to this in regular registered mail,
which allows a sender to determine that a letter has been delivered.
In this entire discussion on cancelling messages many people seem
to be assuming that E-mail must work by writing the whole text of a
message into the recipients mail box at the moment the originator
sends the message (or at least queuing the text for transmission).
While this is certainly one feasible technique, it is certainly not
the only possibility. It is equally possible, to send a short
notification, and only move the actual text when the recipient says he
wants it. Under this scheme, the sender knows when the recipient
accepts delivery because until that point the sender still has the
text in his outgoing mailbox. He can cancel it merely by removing the
message. A remote recipient might be informed "message cancelled by
sender" but that is the worst that can happen.
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Date: 21 Nov 1984 1223-PST
From: Rem@IMSSS
Subject: Security of physical & electronic
According to a TV news story today, criminals can forge credit cards
from just the info on the carbons that are thrown away when a purchase
is made in a store. The story gave the advice that you should never
give your credit card number to a stranger. Well it seems to me this
advice means you can't ever use your credit card. After all, how many
people do you personall know, how many people you do business with are
not really strangers to you? Do you know the random person who waits
on you in a deparement store? The random person who answers the phone
when you order merchandise by telephone? The receptionist at the
emergency hospital where your life was saved? The random and possibly
temporary employee who pumps your gasoline whenever you drive outside
your home town or even in your home town stop for gasoline at a
station other than your regular station? Except for your favorite
Chinese restaurant, do you really know the person who waits on you
when you go out to eat? What about movies, theatre, concerts, opera,
professional lectures, etc. Do you really know the clerk who handles
your credit card?
Since your local grocery store probably doesn't take credit cards, and
your favorite Chinese restaurant prefers cheques, and the clerk who
handles your credit card (or takes your number over the telephone) is
a stranger in virtually any other business dealing, the advice given
is effectively "don't ever use a credit card".
I hope with electronic credit cards we can freely send public-key
credit vouchers to random strangers and be rightly confident the
voucher will be used only for the intended purpose, and won't
compromise the security of your electronic credit card.
(Replies to REM@MIT-MC.ARPA or to REM%IMSSS@SCORE.ARPA, as I'm
no-longer on this mailing list.)
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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