Vitanuova for 2001 September
<M
Y> M>

More about LWCE:

I saw the folks from No Starch Press there. Aside from publishing neat books on Linux, they oppose the DMCA.

The Japan Linux Association was next to the EFF booth. One person from JLA came by to join EFF; I didn't stop by their booth until the end, when I passed out some BBCs and asked for any tips on internationalization and localization.

I saw relatively few technical people from CollabNet, but I went by their booth and got a nice t-shirt from them.

Speaking of t-shirts, I bought the new t-shirt from the Free Software Foundation: it says "Welcome to the GNU age!".

One thing people remembered about Cindy's speech, and wrote about in press reports, was her comment that at first there were only a few people who took the DMCA threat seriously, and then more, and then more, and now... all of us there at the party, and many others.

I spent all day at the "Free Software and the Law" summit meeting, and then I saw Sumana, who was visiting.

I wanted to make a program which restores the 8th bit to text from which it's been stripped out, so that you (well, actually Sumana) can read some Russian text which has been sent through an ancient mailer.

The problem is, of course, that certain characters originally had the high bit set, and others didn't. (For example, you don't want to "restore" the high bit for a space -- 0x20 -- because you'd get 0xA0 instead of a space. So you certainly don't want to apply the high bit to a space or a carriage return. Can someone tell me where to find a character map for KOI8R?

I went back for the seconds day of the Free Software and the Law summit, made some contributions, I hope, to the discussion, and got to sign a couple of people's GPG keys (including Bradley Kuhn's and Richard Stallman's).

I had dinner at Lucky Creation, and it was very, very good. It's been quite a while since I ate there.

There are two particularly interesting letters to LWN this week -- even for those of you who don't care for the ideological debates about free software there. They are the letter about /dev/urandom (claiming that /dev/random is no more secure than /dev/urandom!), and the "Simple example of Unix flexibility", in which a Unix user takes advantage of the flexibility of Unix to solve an apparently impossible computing problem.

I really liked the "simple example" letter. It reminds me of the old days when I would do things like

ssh somewhere cat something.mp3 | mpg123 -

or later

wget -O- http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/vmlinuz | boot-alternate-kernel -

to netboot kernels over HTTP.

I've got this idea about booting Linux kernels by e-mail (the "kernel by mail" or "SMTP netboot" scheme): you would make a .forward file which would deliver through procmail, and then have a procmail recipe which would extract the MIME attachment and pipe it into monte. I'm still working on a demonstration. I haven't quite gotten all of the details together.

I used the LNX-BBC to install Debian on my main machine. Nice work, Andrew! And nice work, Debian project!

I've gotten lots of random, scary errors, but I've been able to overcome all of them, and the selection of software available is impressive.

It's September again (and many people I know have been going back to school, or are about to). There's a song about September -- "Try to Remember", from The Fantasticks, which contains the alliterative lines

Deep in December it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow...

So prepare yourself to remember, a few months hence.

I started my budget, allegedly, so let me see whether I can stay on it. I listened to Brahms again, built some packages for the LNX-BBC, and had a variety of e-mail exchanges.

I'm collecting addresses of people to whom I'll send BBCs. This leads to the funny question about what to do if I send a BBC to somebody I'm not normally in touch with. I actually started a long letter to accompany a couple of BBCs, in one particular case; then I felt funny about it and I decided that a short note will probably do.

I went down to CompUSA to look at some amplified computer speakers. They were pretty expensive, so I didn't get any today. On my way back home, I went to We Be Sushi and ate some sushi rolls and took notes on love and who should receive copies of the Bootable Business Card.

Later on, I talked to Michelle and Wolfgang (both of whom clearly should receive love and copies of the Bootable Business Card).

I also talked to Lee about a legal case, and I talked to Seth, too, for just a minute.

Computer Literacy Books -- now Fatbrain.com -- has closed its retail stores. They were one of the best respected technical bookstores in Silicon Valley.

Help keep your local bookstores open -- buy a book from them!

I did stop by one of my neighborhood bookstores, and I found a copy of Man's Search for Meaning.

Alex Katalov found that "Although Adobe withdrew its support for the criminal complaint, we respect the grand jury's and federal government's role in prosecuting this case." And that's just the beginning!

Leonard: how about "Victoria's Shared Secret"?

For those who don't like IBM's OpenDoc license, you could imagine OpenOpenDoc.

Culture Time: 20 Past Midnight today reminds us of what this time of year looked like in 1752: 

   September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Gregorian Reformation, doncha know. (You can get even more details from a Google search for "inter-gravissimas".)

I worked on the BBC a bit, talking to Zack and Duncan about material for our web site, including endorsing and recommending Wing Shing Optical Disc Co., the company which handled our CD duplication.

I did laundry.

I found a small trove of Joey Hess's amazing short Perl programs in my account on zork.

Here is one: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -pl-                                     ,,ep) ayf >|)nj,,
$_=reverse lc$_;s@"@''@g;y/[]{A-U}<>()a-y1-9,!.?`'/][} #         Joey Hess
{><)(eq)paj6y!fk7wuodbjsfn^mxhl2Eh59L86`i'%,/;s@k@>|@g #  joey@kitenet.net

(That one turns the date of this diary entry into

l002 `E jaqwafdas `hepuow

which works amazingly well.)

And another: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -l
@ARGV=$0;$x=###+H}
99;while(<>)##,+Jt
{$y=0;$a[####{_n#n
$y++][$x]#=",)$i=i
=$& while#_H";(s)r
/./g;$x--#$  8r*2p
}map{$g.=#;YS=t8,;
"\n".join#(ESxs39'
'',@$_}@a#rOE b+/
;eval $g# oJ"_u9y
########  f".$s3$'

One more -- my favorite: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -li361M61AAM61AGMAM61AG261_G326G026M03_MG
@t=('_'x8,GAG,MAMAM,__);for(split$x=6,$^I){s/\d/$t[$&]/eg
;y!MAG!\\ /!;print' 'x$x--,$_}# MC Escher meets Joey Hess

Some people like this kind of humor, and others don't. As for myself, I think Joey is one of the cleverest programmers I've ever met.

It's Labor Day, and I'm thinking about who counts as a "worker" (some say: members of a particular social class; some say: members of a particular social class in particular circumstances; some say: people who are employed; some say: people who support themselves with a salary; some say: people who make an effort to do something productive).

Workers are conceptually significant in a lot of political arguments and rhetoric -- like tax cuts designed to "help workers".

I'm also remembering the motto "laborare est orare" (which many people attribute to the Benedictines, which I guess is right). In trying to find out more about this line, I stumbled upon the following poem:

Labor is Prayer
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887)

LABORARE est orare:
We, black-visaged sons of toil,
From the coal-mine and the anvil
And the delving of the soil,--
From the loom, the wharf, the warehouse,
And the ever-whirling mill,
Out of grim and hungry silence
Raise a weak voice small and shrill;--
Laborare est orare:
Man, dost hear us? God, He will.

We, who just can keep from starving
Sickly wives,--not always mild:
Trying not to curse Heaven's bounty
When it sends another child,--
We who, worn-out, doze on Sundays
O'er the Book we strive to read,
Cannot understand the parson
Or the catechism and creed.
Laborare est orare:--
Then, good sooth, we pray indeed.

We, poor women, feeble-natured,
Large of heart, in wisdom small,
Who the world's incessant battle
Cannot understand at all,
All the mysteries of the churches,
All the troubles of the state,--
Whom child-smiles teach "God is loving,"
And child-coffins, "God is great":
Laborare est orare:--
We too at His footstool wait.

Laborare est orare;
Hear it, ye of spirit poor,
Who sit crouching at the threshold
While your brethren force the door;
Ye whose ignorance stands wringing
Rough hands, scamed with toil, nor dares
Lift so much as eyes to Heaven,--
Lo! all life this truth declares,
Laborare est orare;
And the whole earth rings with prayers.

There's a particular attitude toward work expressed in my Spade Oration of five years ago -- and I think it's interesting to think about how I treated the question of manual labor. It would have been hard for me to have given a speech in praise of manual labor then.

Labor, yes; manual labor, not likely. And I talked about that in my oration, but only briefly, although the issue pervaded everything I had to say.

A piece about EFF board member Dave Farber's visit to Australia, with brief biography of him and columnist Dan Gillmor. Dave Farber was the one who said that "Photons have neither morals nor visas" -- which Nick Moffitt quoted for a long time.

Speaking of Australia -- which just celebrated its Flag Day -- patriotism (or the extreme of nationalism) looks especially odd from across an ocean.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

(Robert Burns, "To a Louse")

Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

(Ecclesiastes 7:10)

Not everyone is happy about the upcoming billion seconds of Unix.

I put together a web bug demo Tuesday. It's fun to work somewhere where using web bugs is part of your job and yet your employer isn't evil.

You can see me in some of the most recent protest pictures now linked from sf.freesklyarov.org: Hintz, Labalme, Manoochehri. (I was wearing a grey t-shirt with a collar that day; it was a LinuxWorld t-shirt. The two signs which I'm shown carrying are the "Svobodu Dime" sign -- which looks like it starts with the Roman letters "CBObO" -- and the "FREE Dmitry" sign.) You can also see Duncan, who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/I_Thought_We_Knew_That.mp3 (or, better yet, http://harvard.pawlo.com/lessig.ogg).

You know, I can imagine a whole entire party with music entirely based on remixes and musical settings of geeky things -- for example, the techno remix of the Free Software Song, and then of course Descramble (This Function Is Void), and much more.

This Kuro5hin story is of interest to me. (The SVLUG mailing list just had a recent round of arguments about whether there is such a thing as a stupid question, which is a tangentially related issue.)

I guess the biggest problem is that I want people to learn about general rules and concepts (the body of knowledge which is true for all systems) -- but so much of what I know about computers is highly specific to particular systems. Why do I know these details?

There is a sense in which people shouldn't have to know the way a particular system does things, if that choice was arbitrary and cosmetic -- on the other hand, how could people use any system without some specific knowledge about it?

The concept of "computer literacy" is so amorphous! So we have arguments in both directions based on metaphors:

  1. Computer enthusiast/computer advocate says: "I want people to learn about computing." Skeptic argues: "Do you expect people to learn about cars? If you don't expect people to know about car technology, why do you expect people to know about computer technology?"
  2. Skeptic says: "Computers should be made easier to use, or we should not expect people to acquire lots of computer skills." Computer advocate argues: "Should we not expect people to learn to read? If you expect people to become literate, why do you not expect them to become computer literate?"

(Nick's version of the latter argument involves comparing graphical UI to cartoons: "So, all business communication should be done by way of cartoons?" That might be kind of neat, actually...)

I hear these parallel arguments fairly often. Now, there are other arguments (such as: "computer interfaces should be improved" -- independent of whether people should learn more about computers -- and then "improved" can mean significantly different things, such as "should be made more intuitive", "should be simplified/optimized for common cases", "should be made more abstract/conceal more detail", "should be made more ergonomic/employ better information design"). And the other arguments don't necessarily have a clear connection to the education issue.

One might be tempted to distill the education issue as follows: "The computer is broken [i.e., incompete, badly designed, inadequate]; it should conform to the person's expectations" vs. "The person is broken [i.e., limited, inadequate, ignorant, inadequate]; he or she should be prepared to use the computer".

Perhaps the reason this debate can sometimes become so acrimonious is the moral overtones that easily creep in. If we take a body of knowledge which is not partly of human design -- such as higher mathematics -- we can already have moralistic and aesthetic controversies. Some people learn some part of higher mathematics and consider it good; other people haven't learned yet. Now many people think it's better to know higher mathematics than not to (although it might be interesting to find people who disagree), but given that there is a learning process involved, there may be a question of values or priorities or opportunity costs -- "I don't want to study math, I want to play Frisbee, or free Dmitry, or learn to sew, or plant rutabagas, or hang out with my girlfriend". So now we run into a question of how to appraise people's choices about what they learn, or how to argue about the value of some kind of knowledge or experience relative to other kinds. (A lot of marketing is based on playing off of consumers' presumed disdain for things. "Tiempo -- para cosas mas importantes", said a Bank of America billboard I saw Monday evening. Which is to say: you have your real life, and then you have this thing, outside of your real life, beneath it.)

Computers are a recent field of knowledge with somewhat imperialist, or moralist or activist, tendencies. I suppose that the idea that "knowledge about computers is good, and is something that should be shared, and something that should be acquired" has various motivating factors:

I doubt anybody reading this would have to look far to find some somewhat strident promotion or opposition to information technology. The promotion of technology as having something for everyone has had huge effects on schools and libraries in the U.S. in the past five or ten years. Was this just a marketing campaign by major IT vendors?

Getting back to the specific argument: some people are painting computer "literacy" as a specialized skill, like needlepoint or being able to fix supercolliders (so let's say that by these people it's dismissed as either a specific vocational skill or a specific hobby, which not everybody needs to share), and others are viewing it as a common-heritage-of-humanity kind of thing, like literacy and (in a traditional view) the liberal arts.

I've spent most of my 21.936 years firmly in the liberal arts camp (although I'm now aware that much of humanity doesn't necessarily believe in traditions that there is anything in particular that everybody ought to know or experience). And I've been enthusiastic about technical education, to the point of thinking that it would likely be the focus of my career for most of my life.

So what do we say to people whose lack of computer knowledge is due to, or attributed to, a choice? "I don't want to know", "I don't need to know", say skeptics. How can we tell whether the skeptics are like a child who doesn't want to learn to read, or like ourselves when we say "I have better things to do", and decline to follow a particular path to its conclusion?

Then again, how can we argue that children who don't want to learn to read are wrong? There must be someone left in the world who's keeping up an argument against literacy, or at least an argument against compulsory literacy. Yes, you need to read to get a job; yes, you need people who can read if you want high tech, and modern medicine; yes, you need to read to have the Great Conversation (if you want it to last more than a century, and to reach and be reached by people in other places and times). You need to read if you want to communicate with people on other continents (or you need to live among readers who can create the technology to drive undersea cables, or track satellites). Can't we imagine a person who doesn't want these things, or who knows about some of the accomplishments of preliterate cultures and is content with them?

I have felt that informatics is qualitatively different from "ordinary" technology. Have I thought too narrowly? Have I been reading too much Wired, and too many advertisements by microchip vendors?

Some people saw the famous AT&T "You Will" advertisements and felt a sense of connection (the way some people have read science fiction and felt a sense of connection to future space colonists, or something); other people felt alienated, or threatened, or attacked.

One skeptical solution would be that there isn't a particular resolution to the problem -- it's just that people are conditioned in different ways by their cultures and life experiences, so that some people feel that a particular technology or experience has a great resonance and meaning, and other people feel repelled by it, or see it as shallow and mainly uninteresting. But if that experience is strictly aesthetic or cultural, there might not be a general solution, any more than there has been a general solution to what color ought to be your favorite color, or what color is most preferable.

When I was in high school, I engaged lots of people in debate about whether there was such a thing as objectively "better" and "worse" in music, so that it was meaningful to say "This piece is really better than the other", not just "I think this one is better", or "I like it more". So I kept repeating the argument that our inability to articulate the standards for these judgments, or even our inability to make them, was no evidence that the judgments were impossible. And the fact that we disagreed about particular cases was also no evidence that the cases in principle couldn't be resolved. Everyone, but everyone, makes mistakes and has inadequate knowledge; that doesn't mean that the knowledge doesn't exist, or that people will be permanently debarred from finding it.

I remembered the bit in Corinthians about presently having imperfect knowledge but (by divine grace, as Corinthians would have it, or by our efforts and the passage of time) acquiring fuller and more real knowledge later on. So we might not know at the moment whether your music is better than mine (we might disagree), but some day we would know, or someone would know, or at least someone could know some day.

Since then, I've seen more and experienced more about human cultural gaps (and many people would insist that I'm still very ignorant, because I've never been to a non-Western country, or even lived in a rural area or among anybody other than college-educated middle class professionals) and how genuine they are. One might expect that this wouldn't have so much effect on my belief that real knowledge exists and that almost all questions of value are also questions of fact. But I've become much more skeptical, or at least much more afraid. The largest thing that shook my confidence in the ultimate resolution of moral and aesthetic questions was dating -- "romance and failure", as my essay put it. There are other things, too.

So now I wonder not just what answer we will reach about the significance of computing in society and in history, but whether we will reach any answer at all. Many people will remember the story about Mao Tse-tung, who, asked about the historical significance of the French Revolution, supposedly replied that it was too early to tell. We've had computers for about 50 years, and there are vast cultural divisions and cultural conflicts surrounding them. (I even feel a culture shock when I venture among Windows users -- there, the question when someone buys a new computer is not "What distribution are you going to install?".)

We've had reading and writing for much longer, and I suppose the divisions surrounding literacy are also not yet healed. I don't have a television at home, following my father's example, and (although I don't talk about it often) I feel somewhat defensive and polemical about that decision. I think -- as many bookdealers do, and many publishers and librarians and teachers -- of the television as somewhat anti-literate. I think that people who watch TV often read and write less than those who don't. I think that, if you're reading this at all, you're probably not someone who watches TV every day.

And I feel an attachment to the literate tradition; I try to cry when I read about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, and (as one writer once said) it would be easier for me to imagine myself weeping for the fall of the Library than for the fall of the Temple.

But someone could still say that it's too early to tell about the significance of literacy, and too early to say whether it's a good thing.

I got some BBCs ready for shipping. Please let me know if you'd like some.

Two worthwhile pieces in the August 13 issue of The New Yorker: Gary Greenberg, "As Good As Dead: Is brain death just a noble lie?"; Connie Bruck, "The Personal Touch: Jack Valenti knew how to make Washington listen to Hollywood. Can he still do it?". Have a look, if you can.

The Bruck article ends with an account of Valenti debating Lessig at Harvard -- even Valenti's critics admired his performance. And such is the tone of the whole article: even Valenti's critics admired his performance.

I broke a simple substitution cipher. Sumana speculated that I could break it in three minutes; it actually took two. Also, the cipher's permutation of the alphabet was based on a pangram.

I had lunch with Biella and Ren, and dinner with Ren.

"A ... side ... channel ... attack ... against ... the ... human ... mind!"

Much techne.

I have a lot of things I need to do.

Pretty sore again. One of the things I should do is do something about that. Whenever I think of my arm injury, these days, I think of the song: "It's not going to stop / 'Til you wise up."

tail -f /dev/zero &

Don't try this at home!

I accidentally rendered a system (temporarily) unusable with this simple command. That was no fun. It could probably have been avoided with stricter ulimit settings.

tail will ask for so much memory that the kernel will try to swap out almost everything else to accomodate it. And most of its time will be spent in I/O, so a lot of CPU time will be spent in kernel space answering useless requests for blocks of zeroes.

I worked at EFF, I went to Berkeley, and I saw Sumana and Leonard there.

I got some challenging questions today.

My arm hurts.

Once again: Share-in concert Saturday in Golden Gate Park by Haight and Stanyan, "Billion Seconds of Unix" dinner to follow.

The Yahoo! Yellow Pages can tell you useful things. For example, Napa and Santa Clara are almost equidistant from Golden Gate Park!

I was hoping to see Sumana and Leonard at the events today, but I didn't. I was at the Share-in for most of the day. It was really excellent; congratulations, Katina.

Don Marti came out and did Free Dmitry stuff; various bands played; I handed out programs and got this nice tie-dyed Share-in t-shirt. A couple of jugglers on stilts came and were very impressive. I think they introduced themselves as Listen and Hardy.

I'd say hundreds of people were present. At one point, I did an announcement about the upcoming Billion Seconds of Unix, and it seemed that most people in the audience had never heard of Unix. However, the Cypherpunks meeting was there in the midst of the concert, and I gave the Cypherpunks some bootable business cards.

It was a beautiful day, and we had quite a variety of music. Some of the funniest, I thought, was from a band called The Planning Commission, which makes fun of San Francisco politics.

After the concert, I gathered up a bunch of geeks, including Anirvan, who'd passed up a chance to hear Dave Eggers in order to attend these events, and we went off and met up with the Cypherpunks to celebrate the Billion Seconds of Unix. Two Cypherpunks had GPS receivers with them, so we had an extremely precise countdown to 18:46:40.

Sure enough, the Unix time is now over 1,000,000,000.

After dinner, I went to a bookstore with Don and got The Ethics of Belief and The Idea of a University. I look forward to reading them.

Fight the SSSCA (or "DMCA II").

Something else happened which I don't remember. Maybe the debate about the Open Audio License.

Need To Know on the Share-in and Billion Seconds of Unix:

The EFF, bless 'em, are holding a copyright-free concert in San Francisco just beforehand, so your last conscious act on this earth need not be one of despicable commodification of cultural property that really belongs in the public domai

As Robert A. Hettinga's .signature file has said for a long while: 

"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

When I told Jim Dennis about my program md5tee (which implements a technique I bet someone will someday try to patent!), he recommended multitee, a more general way of splitting a Unix I/O stream. It was written in 1991 by D. J. Bernstein. I haven't quite figure out all of the ways of using it yet; it may or may not replace md5tee with a simple multitee command line.

md5tee is an example of something I'd like to document, and to generalize, to help resist future patents -- there are so many uses of checksums, and who has actually written all of them down in a public place?

At the software patent summit meeting, I encouraged people to publish articles and papers about their software.

Some people have been playing games with whois. Running whois on a particular domain yielded 

   Name Server: NS1.THIS-DOMAIN-IS-FOR-SALE.COM
   Name Server: NS1.EMAILUS-DOMAINSALESATDOMAINCOLLECTION.COM
   Name Server: NS1.TO-BUY-THIS-DOMAIN-FAX-305-463-9709.COM

and some people actually embed other domains into their nameservers, so that, for example, if you try "whois microsoft.com", you get 

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.ZZZ.SUCKS.AZZ.PHAEN.AS
   IP Address: 195.18.140.26
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.Z---HELLO-FROM-SIBERIA---I.Z3S.COM
   IP Address: 207.46.230.219
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.NEVER.SATISFY.A.TRUE.TELNETJUNKIE.COM
   IP Address: 212.162.2.13
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.NEVER.RUN.PUREDATA.NET
   IP Address: 206.186.223.2
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BUT.LUNIX.SUCKS-BYBIRTH.ARTISTICCHEESE.COM
   IP Address: 209.191.22.24
   Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
   Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.ALWAYS.FEARPENGUINS.COM
   IP Address: 204.201.247.22
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WHOIS.RESULTS.MAKE.A.GREAT.HUMOUR-LIST.COM
   IP Address: 192.68.135.13
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WAS.HACKED.TODAY.BY.JAMESSMALL.COM
   IP Address: 63.195.209.13
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.TONY.HAS.SEXUAL.IN.ADEQUACY.ORG
   IP Address: 216.254.38.242
   Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
   Whois Server: whois.inww.com
   Referral URL: http://www.inww.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.TOLD.ME.TO.KILL.UR.PC.LIVE-EVIL.COM
   IP Address: 204.255.90.167
   Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
   Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.TAKES.IT.IN.THE.BUTT.FROM.WHILE1.ORG
   IP Address: 128.151.85.218
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM
   IP Address: 65.160.248.13
   Registrar: INTERNET DOMAIN REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.registrars.com
   Referral URL: http://www.registrars.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SE.FAIT.HAX0RIZER.PAR.TOUT.LE.ZOY.ORG
   IP Address: 138.12.12.12
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RUNSLINUX.NET
   IP Address: 128.61.44.13
   Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
   Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.PRODUCTS.WILL.NEVER.BE.SEEN.AT.MCNEIGHT.ORG
   IP Address: 209.119.81.237
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.OWNED.BY.MAT.HACKSWARE.COM
   IP Address: 211.63.57.1
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.NOTHING.HAPPENS.XYZZY.COM
   IP Address: 206.20.183.101
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.NAO.VALE.UM.CARALHO.NET
   IP Address: 213.58.160.20
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.N-AIME.BILL.QUE.QUAND.IL.N-EST.PAS.NU
   IP Address: 62.220.128.7
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.MUST.STOP.TAKEDRUGS.ORG
   IP Address: 12.5.4.8
   Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.register.com
   Referral URL: http://www.register.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.MAKES.SHIT.ASS.SOFTWARE.T10.NET
   IP Address: 64.133.38.30
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.THE.COMMERCIAL.ARM.OF.THE.WORLDGOV.ORG
   IP Address: 192.68.135.15
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SOON.GOING.TO.THE.DEATHCORPORATION.COM
   IP Address: 62.92.244.245
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SO.VERY.SKANKY.NET
   IP Address: 129.250.176.143
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SECRETLY.RUN.BY.ILLUMINATI.TERRORISTS.NET
   IP Address: 170.1.75.143
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOTHING.COMPARED.TO.EVILGOAT.NET
   IP Address: 207.46.131.199
   Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
   Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOTHING.BUT.A.MONSTER.ORG
   IP Address: 213.156.2.27
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NO.MATCH.FOR.THE.WANNABE.TERRORISTS.AT.JIMPHILLIPS.ORG
   IP Address: 24.240.60.24
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NO.MATCH.FOR.A.UNIXNINJA.COM
   IP Address: 209.236.159.253
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.HOPELESSLY.INSECURE.ORG
   IP Address: 64.32.188.250
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.GOD.BUT.LINUX.SUCKS-FOREVER.ARTISTICCHEESE.COM
   IP Address: 209.191.99.161
   Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
   Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
   Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.AT.THE.MERCY.OF.DETRIMENT.ORG
   IP Address: 216.229.2.231
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSHIT.NET
   IP Address: 63.99.165.11
   Registrar: THE NAME IT CORPORATION DBA AITDOMAINS.COM
   Whois Server: whois.aitdomains.com
   Referral URL: http://www.aitdomains.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HQ.SHOULD.HAVE.BEEN.MOVED.TO.BAGDAD.JUST.BEFORE.THE.GULFWAR.ORG
   IP Address: 192.68.135.16
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HEBERGEUR.DE.SCHIZOPHRENE.ORG
   IP Address: 217.128.96.127
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.NO.LINUXCLUE.COM
   IP Address: 209.208.48.121
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HACKED.BY.HACKSWARE.COM
   IP Address: 211.63.57.62
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.GUTS.NL
   IP Address: 212.78.175.7
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
   IP Address: 130.58.82.232
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FAIT.VRAIMENT.DES.LOGICIELS.A.TROIS.FRANCS.DOUZE.ORG
   IP Address: 138.12.12.42
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.DOES.NOT.THINK.THEREFOREITHINK.COM
   IP Address: 216.117.0.154
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.DAN.HILLIER.OF.EXETER.UK.IS.A.DUMB.ASS.EVILJAM.COM
   IP Address: 217.32.139.162
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CODERS.SHOULD.DUMP.WINDOWS.AND.CODE.FOR.THE.MORE.PRACTICALMAC.COM
   IP Address: 192.68.135.14
   Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
   Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.CANNOT.HACKUNIX.ORG
   IP Address: 216.117.0.151
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AINT.WORTH.SHIT.KLUGE.ORG
   IP Address: 216.181.127.195
   Registrar: THE NAME IT CORPORATION DBA AITDOMAINS.COM
   Whois Server: whois.aitdomains.com
   Referral URL: http://www.aitdomains.com



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.A.ETE.CREE.PAR.BILLOU.A.L.EPOQUE.OU.IL.FUMAIT.DU.COLA-COCA.ORG
   IP Address: 217.128.36.126
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.A.BIEN.BU.DU.COLA-COCA.SUR.L.ILE.DE.NUMEA.COM
   IP Address: 212.198.2.7
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net



   Domain Name: MICROSOFT.COM
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
   Name Server: DNS2.CP.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS1.CP.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS1.TK.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS2.TK.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS3.UK.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS4.UK.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS3.JP.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS4.JP.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS1.DC.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS2.DC.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS1.SJ.MSFT.NET
   Name Server: DNS2.SJ.MSFT.NET
   Updated Date: 08-jun-2001


>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 02:23:08 EDT <<<

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
Registrars.

I've seen other funny results like these -- for example, for "whois linux.com".

It was very cold in San Francisco through the morning. I think Duncan is back; I should talk to him about the Bootable Business Card. I'm very tempted to do a quick interim BBC release (maybe an on-line only release), probably called version 1.732 (after the square root of three, approximately 1.73205080757).

I have set an unhappy example for someone else. As it is written: "Who is wise? The one who learns from all men, as it is written: 'From all my teachers I have gained understanding'".

(Figuring out how to punctuate that last sentence is tricky.)

Ben Zoma seemed to interpret Psalms 119:99 differently from other people; every Bible I have or can find interprets "micol-m'lam'day" as "[more] than all my teachers", whereas translations of Pirke Avot have "from all my teachers". So most people seem to feel that the Psalmist is saying that he has grown wiser than his teachers, but Ben Zoma says he was grown wiser from his teachers. (Psalm 119 is interesting for its meditation on the virtues of law.)

I would rather be a person who teaches from a good example rather than a bad example. It's a funny feeling. Perhaps it's partly that setting a good example can be deliberate: I might do something good in order to show people that it's good, or to remind them to act accordingly when they faced a similar situation.

But setting a bad example is not deliberate, and learning from it can feel like a misappropriation in a certain way, as though a good example were one I had published freely, and a bad example were something I'd meant to keep to myself:

Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores:
Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves,
Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes,
Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves,
Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves.

(Vergil)

Hey, who says classical poetry doesn't rhyme?

... you try to type "sic vos non vobis", and it comes out "sic vos non vorbis" instead.

Happy birthday, Sumana. Congratulations.

I found this in Bartlett's when I was confirming the "sic vos non vobis" lines yesterday:

When I loved you and you loved me,
You were the sky, the sea, the tree.
Now skies are skies, and seas are seas,
And trees and brown and they are trees.

(Charles A. Wagner)

Elise, when?

I went to Sumana's party and also ate at La Note. We played a game called "Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond..." from a company in Seattle called Cheapass Games. Maybe I should try to make up a game.

A group called CFIF wrote an essay earlier this summer claiming that compulsory licensing violates the takings clause ("'Taking' Away Music Copyrights: Does Compulsory Licensing of Music on the Internet Violate the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause?", by Laurie Messerly). They just mentioned it in connection with the MOCA bill.

This argument is unbelievably ridiculous. Fred found a Cato piece ("Musical Mandates: Must the Pop Music Industry Submit to Compulsory Licensing?", by Wayne Crews) which makes a similar argument.

It's not that I support any particular compulsory licensing proposal, it's that I'm worried about the implications of generalized opposition to compulsory licensing as a concept. The implication of "'Taking' Away Music Copyrights" is that Congress is not allowed to weaken or scale back copyright law!

I think some people proposed that Eric Eldred ought to make fifth amendment takings arguments in challenging the Copyright Term Extension Act -- in particular, that Congress was engaged in a taking when it extended copyright, not when it failed to extend copyright! (I don't think he actually made that argument, but he did make this interesting argument about tide-waters.)

Think for a moment about Messerly's argument. When Congress enacted the first U.S. copyright law, it clearly did not violate the Constitution (ignoring for the moment the historically interesting argument that all copyright law violates the first amendment). But now once that law had been passed -- per Messerly -- it could no longer be repealed! Denying copyright holders their right to dispose of their "intellectual property" would consistute a taking; thereafter, the fifth amendment's takings clause would have to act as a ratchet, forcing the provisions of copyright law to grow ever stricter, not allowing the least diminution.

What will it take to convince people that copyrights are not property?

I talked to Lia and Michelle, which is always a pleasure.

I said that "it's not that I support any particular compulsory licensing proposal" -- and it's true that that's not why I'm worried about the anti-compulsory-licensing arguments. But I do seem to think that it's bad that works can go out of print simply because of copyright.

A question: what would a successful reform aimed at preventing works from going out of print look like? What would it do to the used book business?

This morning, terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City by crashing passenger airplanes into it.

In the morning I wrote to Jean-Pierre, Steve, John, and Micah to see whether they were OK, and by afternoon I had replies from all of them. Steve and Micah were not on Manhattan Island at the time of the attack; Jean-Pierre and John were safe in the Upper West Side.

Zack was on the phone with someone on the scene watching the first tower collapse.

Christoffer perished high above it all,
In terror's South Manhattan fireball.
He ran SWIS, worked for OIT:
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Christoffer M. Carstanjen

Christoffer M. Carstanjen, 1967-2001

This was a very difficult day.

Look:

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

[...]

JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time - calling upon God.

PAT ROBERTSON: Amen.

(Questioned about this later, Falwell maintained that the U.S. was losing divine protection because of "the expulsion [of Christianity] from our schools and from the public square" and risks worse unless America will "repent and return to a genuine faith and dependence on [God]".)

I have another thread going on here which I'm not talking about. However, I'm going to pull out a quotation from its beginning back in July:

[William said:] "I don't believe the doctor cured him. He taught him to laugh at his illness."

"Illness is not exorcised. It is destroyed."

"With the body of the sick man."

"If necessary."

"You are the Devil," William said then.

Jorge seemed not to understand. If he had been able to see, he would have stared at his interlocutor with a dazed look. "I?" he said.

"Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me, you have failed. [...] I would like [...] to say to all: He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth has the taste of death, and you believed, not in his words, but in his grimness. And now I say to you that, in the infinite whirl of possible things, God allows you also to imagine a world where the presumed interpreter of the truth is nothing but a clumsy raven, who repeats words learned long ago."

[...] "You say I am the Devil, but it is not true: I have been the hand of God."

"The hand of God creates; it does not conceal."

"There are boundaries beyond which it not permitted to go. God decreed that certain papers should bear the words 'hic sunt leones.' [here are lions]"

"God created the monsters, too. And you. And He wants everything to be spoken of."

[... But Jorge disagreed.] "I know, I know as if I saw it written in adamantine letters, with my eyes, which see things you do not see, I know that this was the will of the Lord, and I acted, interpreting it. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

(Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose)

The Name of the Rose ends with an ecpyrosis (this would be a spoiler for the book, except that most of my readers won't know what "ecpyrosis" means) and with its aftermath. There are many different sorts of ecpyroses and many different ways to be Eco's character Jorge.

In other news, I'm going to go to the EFF retreat tomorrow, south of Santa Cruz.

I also heard from Christoffer's family, and they're going to have a memorial service on the East Coast. I don't think I'll be able to come, but I'll try to post information about it.

Wow, being a list moderator isn't fun.

I got my business cards that say "Electronic Frontier Foundation, Seth Schoen, Staff Technologist". I'm very proud.

I went off and had a great time at Venture Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains, with the EFF retreat meeting. We had a lot of interesting conversations with some very dedicated and accomplished people.

It's beautiful out there. It actually gets dark at night; you can look up from the top of a hill and see the Milky Way and thousands and thousands of stars. I haven't seen stars that way since high school, or maybe since a New Year's Eve party in 1999 when I was out in New Hampshire. You just look up, and they're all around you, with so much detail visible even to a nearsighted person like myself.

John Gilmore gave me one of those intense pocket LED flashlights. It was very handy amidst the darkness.

Questions about isolation from the natural world, or about lifestyle: When did you last touch an ocean? When did you last stand on natural soil? When did you last stand outdoors in a location where you couldn't see any electric light?

Venture Valley had a telephone and electricity (and hot and cold running water and stoves and refrigerators and even a television), but no Internet access, and no cell phone reception, so that some people were complaining a bit about being out of touch. One of my coworkers brought a sleeping bag and slept outdoors; for this, we called him very brave.

My right arm has been hurting a lot. I'm likely to try something new like swimming, yoga, or going back to acupuncture once I get the time, money, and courage. Some of my friends may help out with the time and courage parts.

Via Aaron:

Also, a memorial fund has been established for UMass employee Christoffer Carstanjen. The address is: The Christoffer Carstanjen Memorial Fund, Cape Cod 5, c/o Paige Pennypacker, Box 86, Orleans, Mass. 02653.

I doubt anybody else reading this knew Christoffer, but there's the information in case you did.

I've been learning a bit recently. "From all my teachers have I gained understanding."

USA Today article about Christoffer; memorial web site.

Princeton Environmental Action is starting a new year under the direction of Helen, who wrote a piece on "The Wilds of Suburbia".

Wired had a good article on DRM which I couldn't read because I wouldn't agree to the shrinkwrap agreement. I've written a letter to Wired in response, and I may send it in the next day or two. It's important that I write my LNX-BBC and "DRM Dark Age" articles sometime soon.

Ouch!

I went to Berkeley and visited a few people, dropping by the Hesperian Foundation and BookFinder.com. Tuesday evening was the first CalLUG meeting of the new school year, and I went and chatted and passed out BBCs and some of my new paper business cards.

I also went by Berkeley Bowl, following Lia's good example, and got some nice food. Sometime soon I'll possibly even start cooking.

Falwell apologized. So, what's next?

Richard Dawkins has been raising a lot of controversy with a recent anti-religious piece published in the U.K. (arguing that religion was important in order to get people willing to commit suicide in order to kill others).

I think there's much to disagree with here, for we know that people fighting in secular wars have often expected or even wished to die. "O terque quaterque beati, / quis ante ora patrum Troiae sub moenibus altis / contigit oppetere! O Danaum fortissime gentis / Tydide! Mene Iliacis occumbere campis / non potuisse, tuaque animam hanc effundere dextra..." Aeneid I, 94-8. (I've elsewhere mentioned similar sentiments appearing in book II.) Dawkins's own work has described instances of suicide and theorized extensively about people willing to kill themselves to protect others. It's not unprecedented for people to make secular decisions that their own lives are not of the highest value.

An earlier comment of his:

We'd be aghast at the branding of "Pro-Euro children" or "Neo-Keynesian children", on the basis of their parents' economic opinions. We do not speak of, let alone separately educate, "Tory children" and "Labour children". We presume that children either are too young to know what they think, or if old enough might disagree with their parents. Why, then, do we accept, without a murmur, the existence and separate education of "Catholic children", "Protestant children", "Jewish children" and "Muslim children"?

This argument must be directed at religious liberals and moderates; there's a sense in which it echoes Stanley Fish in pointing out the ridiculousness of comparing religious belief to matters of opinions or taste.

I find this argument extremely powerful, but I keep feeling that there's some subtlety I'm missing.

I built GNU httptunnel as a downloadable package; it could be pretty handy software for people stuck behind firewalls.

My computer's hard drive crashed (hard, not soft); I expected that because it's been making funny noises for a while. The drive LED flashes on and off to show that it's spun down because of a hardware failure. Fortunately, I have a backup, another drive, and a BBC (and all my most important stuff is over on zork).

Happy birthday to many people, including Biella and Wolfgang. Some say: to the world as a whole.

On Tuesday, I talked to Nathaniel about Kuratowski's problem, which he was assigned as an exercise in his topology class. He was asked to show that only 14 distinct sets can be produced by successive applications of the complement and closure operations to any given set, and then to give an example of a subset of the real number line from which 14 different sets could actually be produced.

I couldn't figure it out, but Nathaniel did, after a while, by combining both a set with a limit point and a dense set. It was really neat.

Various.

"That was a great case! I'm glad you lost."

I must get my Martin Gardner bibliography up to date and show Gwen, who's apparently also a fan.

Some Unix adventures, some writing, and a dinner with various EFF interns and volunteers. I've come to do a real about-face from five or ten years ago on the subject of electronic publishing. So now I think that many important interests are being hurt by the way electronic publishing is working itself out in the world.

Duncan always talks about "Both-and, instead of either-or"; I'd like to think of a world in which people move fluidly and harmoniously between digital and print resources, appreciating the best of both worlds. That's not what I'm hearing has been happening. There's a prospect that digital media could turn out to be a big loss (in the jargon sense).

My big four risks of digital media:

  1. Literacy
  2. Attention span
  3. Continuity and preservation
  4. Expectations and trust
  5. Control and centralization

Each of these concerns really originates for me with television, yet each transfers in some way to computer-mediated publishing and communication. I'm finding a new appreciation for some of the skeptics of computer culture, or at least for those who've said that we've been given too much hype.

A lot of the hype problem comes from thinking that particular systems that already exist are the ideal systems we've been waiting for, or trying to build. So perhaps there is an important distinction to be made between the belief that computers will one day accomplish some particular benefit to humanity, and that existing technology already accomplishes it in practice or in principle.

This was most obvious today in thinking about libraries. We're told that computers might replace libraries. It isn't ridiculous to think that. But then people feel that computers are already sufficient to replace libraries, and this is having bad consequences for the libraries, and for the people.

Is it that it's a sin to give up on an ideal by saying in any particular case that it's already been attained?

The international situation is on my mind pretty often.

I was kind of noticing that I don't understand the world that well, nor have I experienced so much of it.

I felt a bit under the weather Friday evening.

I had lunch with Ren, and later on I put up my Martin Gardner bibliography. I could really use your help making it more complete. I only have 119 books on the list at the moment, and surely Martin Gardner has written more than that...

I went to a protest rally in the morning and afternoon, and got a sunburn.

I went down to the CABAL meeting with Biella.

Each of these could properly be a much longer story.

I had a lot of dreams Saturday night, and I remember that they were very interesting, but I don't remember exactly what happened.

Several of the dreams involved playing various kinds of games with large groups of people at what were apparently parties. I think that, in each case, I didn't know most of the people at the parties, but I always knew at least one or two, and there were extensive sub-plots concerning my interactions with those people. One game was played outdoors at night by candlelight or firelight, and I wandered around or wandered off with a small group of people to have some sort of conversation I don't remember.

I want to give more of the story on one of the things that happened on Saturday, but I'm still trying to figure out how to phrase it. I went to a protest march which started at the 24th and Mission BART station and proceeded along Mission to Dolores Park. It was certainly the biggest protest I've ever been in; I guess there were at least several hundred people. I was uncomfortable with some portions of the event, and that's the part I'd like to write more about.

I was very sedentary all day. I talked to a few people on the phone and ate some food and cleaned up a bit.

Zack showed me Raymond Smullyan's book of retrograde analysis chess problems. It's an interesting area, partly because you don't need to know anything about chess strategy to solve these problems. As Smullyan says, you assume not that a player has played well, but that the player has played legally. In some retrograde analysis problems, the players would actually have to co-operate to achieve the position you see! (That's also the case with the Fool's Mate.)

I wrote to Ilya Vasilyev to point out that most people in the world are older than their local copyright legislation. It seems that he's over a decade older than software copyright in his home country. :-)

lnx-bbc.org (unlike vitanuova and other sites) is being attacked by the Nimda worm several times per minute. Yikes! It's a good thing we're running Apache and not IIS.

You can learn a lot about the relationships between companies -- and to some extent about their business plans -- with a quick TESS search and a little judicious use of whois. If you don't know how to use whois, you're missing out.

With partial thanks to Leonard: "Deictics to Watch Out For"

I am the top Google hit for a search on "Yellow Pig Day".

It's great to have a UPS -- there were a few brownouts in the City on Monday night during a surprise thunderstorm.

This XUL file is very funny.