Today is May Day and International Worker's Day (was it originally called
International Workingmen's Day?).
The 2600 appeal was heard in New York. I don't know how it went.
Reports on yesterday's 2600 appeal are mixed. Unfortunately, it seems that
the judges weren't sympathetic to the first amendment arguments.
This is upsetting. I thought the great arguments from the amici
would make them pay close attention.
Andy Hertzfeld:
"Code, whether it is source or object,
is speech and should be
protected.
That's the truth, and there is no ambiguity. I abhor what the
MPAA is doing
to bend the facts to fit their commercial ends."
I wrote a little README and improved things a bit.
Here it is, if you
have a Unix system.
Linuxcare and Turbolinux aren't going to merge after all!
I was in Berkeley on Tuesday. I picked up a copy of
MIM
Notes,
the newsletter of the
Maoist
Internationalist Movement, which is a
revolutionary Communist party.
There are all sorts of interesting things in MIM Notes. The
biggest headline is about AIDS drugs and patents -- one of several examples
in the newsletter of issues where I agree with MIM. These just go to show
that political issues don't "belong" to a particular political ideology.
(I have to accept that someone might think that the DMCA is terrible but not
actually care about free software.)
The newsletter also includes (in the section about how "MIM differs from
other communist parties")
a claim that most workers in first world countries aren't the real proletariat
because they're "bought off" with an artificially high standard of living
based on exploitation of more genuinely oppressed workers in other countries.
I hadn't actually heard that one before; most Marxist writers I've run across
in the past did think that there was a real proletariat in the U.S. But MIM
says not really -- that the interests of U.S. workers aren't really
aligned with those of workers in other countries.
(Here I'm using "workers" in the left sense which doesn't just mean someone
who works. For example, I would probably not be considered a worker in this
sense, notwithstanding that I have a job. This is also the sense in which
most people mean the word in International Workers' Day -- the people in my
office aren't being celebrated by that day, nor are the financial industry
folks downtown who were the targets of protests.)
One of the most interesting:
The border also prevents the development of a real "free market"
in labor power. The internationalist section of the Amerikan bourgeoisie
complains about barriers to the free movement of capital, but you rarely
hear them complain about barriers to the free movement of labor (i.e.
people). This is because they -- and the privilege enjoyed by
oppressor nations generally -- depend on the depressed wages in Third
World countries. [...] In this context, the border is a tool to keep
the vast majority of workers in a situation of most brutal exploitation.
I thought this was an interesting point. It seems clear to me that all
supporters of free trade would be critical of borders in general
and also expect free immigration (in some sense "as the other side of the
coin"). But I'm afraid MIM Notes is right here in that probably
most people who say they support free trade do think that countries have a
right to prevent the free movement of people. And many of them
think that that right should be exercised.
I'm interested in how these correlation work. A lot of libertarians have
attacked "isolationism" and suggested that there is a connection between
opposing trade and opposing immigration. But there must be four
possible combinations.
Interestingly, I associate those combinations to some extent with the four
corners of the Nolan Chart -- much as I think the Nolan Chart is not very
reliable. The correlation in my mind with the Nolan Chart runs something
like this:
- No free trade, no free immigration (no economic freedom, no social
freedom): populist (Nolan "authoritarian")
- No free trade, free immigration (no economic freedom, social freedom):
left-liberal
- Free trade, no free immigration (economic freedom, no social freedom):
right-conservative
- Free trade, free immigration (economic freedom, social freedom):
libertarian
I'd be glad to hear opinions on subtleties of these issues.
The U.S. government has the Customs Service, which tries to prevent or tax
movement of goods across borders, and the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, which tries to prevent or regulate movement of people across borders.
It seems strange to me that somebody would be offended by only one of these
functions, but possibly most people are.
MIM Notes also featured a review of an anthology on violence and
non-violence edited by a philosophy professor who's a friend of my father's.
So that was an interesting co-incidence. MIM's conclusion was that most
of the essays in the book are deficient because they fail to recognize that
capitalist property is violence. (In libertarian notation: they fail to
realize that defending property is coercive, so they don't realize that
infringing property rights is not an initation of force.)
Here, again, MIM Notes makes me think. MIM is making an
argument that, in carrying out the revolution by force, they wouldn't be
violent aggressors; they'd just be using the force necessary to prevent
people from upholding property by force. ("Now we see the violence
inherent in the system." This extends -- from MIM's perspective -- to
apologetics for the actions of the former Soviet Union and of the
Chinese Communist Party, because many of the opponents they were fighting
were quite willing to try to fight back. "No free speech for fascists",
anybody?)
An important theoretical question: what if libertarian ethical ideas are
correct (e.g. everyone has the right to act as he or she pleases as long
as he or she doesn't infringe on anyone else's equal rights), but there
is no such thing as a right to property? One idea is to
become a geolibertarian, but it's
not quite clear to me that solution can be justified (even though it
sounds very appealing).
David
Friedman's response to Mike
Huben's Non-Libertarian FAQ contains the following statement:
Early in [Huben's] FAQ he points out, correctly, that there
are problems with private claims to unproduced resources. But the
implication of that, insofar as there is an implication, is not
government ownership but commons--if I can't get ownership of the
land, and you can't, then we can't, so the land remains unowned.
Insofar as there are justifications for ownership, they start with
private actions and private ownership.
So, what ethical principles describe how people should behave towards one
another in connection with unowned land? That might not be a hypothetical
question, because maybe nobody owns land, so it would be a very real problem
that faces everyone.
My arms are fairly sore, not the worst they've been this week.
Don't let anybody tell you that experiences in early childhood don't really
have a huge effect on how people see the world. Or, when they tell you,
don't believe them.
One encounter or one conversation can have a vast effect.
I made some more updates to my companion site at
bbc.loyalty.org, including a bit
about how to find business card CD-R media, and what kind of CD-ROM drives
not to use these media with.
Maria Cantwell is back in Congress -- this time
in the Senate.
She was very popular with civil liberties folks earlier this decade when
she was in the House of Representatives; she sponsored an
unsuccessful
bill to allow exports of cryptographic software. After that, she went to
work for RealNetworks; now she's
been elected to the Senate.
I wonder if Senator Cantwell is still interested in cryptography. I'm
afraid her time at Real might not make her particulary sympathetic to DMCA
opponents: Real
used the
DMCA to suppress a program called StreamBox VCR, which allowed people
to save RealMedia streams to disk and to convert them to other formats.
(StreamBox subsequently settled with Real and agreed to modify its
software to comply with Real's demands.) This case was the earliest use
of the DMCA to prevent publication of a computer program; unfortunately,
StreamBox didn't attempt a first amendment defense and didn't get in touch
with people who were interested in first amendment protection for software.
Also unfortunately, a number of people on the dvd-discuss list weren't
sympathetic to StreamBox's position and some didn't even think that StreamBox
VCR should have first amendment protection!
I can't quite understand that; I think StreamBox VCR should be every bit as
legal as DeCSS. (You can find some of my arguments in the dvd-discuss
archive.)
Anyway, I don't think Cantwell was still at the company when that lawsuit
was going on, but I wonder whether she got the idea from people at Real that
the DMCA is good.
Even outside of the DMCA, regulation of cryptography is still definitely a big
deal; maybe she can take up the issue once again.
Her biography on her web
site says:
Maria's district contained many of the world's most influential
software and technology firms, and she applied herself to learning the
issues and standing up for this vital new sector of our economy. She
is well-regarded in Internet circles for fighting against archaic
export restrictions on software encryption products and for helping to
defeat the infamous Clipper chip proposal.
Having immersed herself in high tech issues while in Congress, Maria
joined a software start-up [that would be Real, which was
called
Progressive Networks at the time]
in 1995 and helped the
business grow to create 1,000 jobs in Washington state.
In November 2000, Maria was elected to the U.S. Senate, promising to
fight for reform and help expand opportunity for all of Washington
state. She knows that Washingtonians have come to expect a lot from
their Senators, and she is committed to giving them her very best
every day.
No, the "singularity" file in the BBC has no connection with the Singularity.
Chlorophyll, literally, is captured energy from the sun.
Green plant cells are the only ones capable of absorbing energy
directly from the sun and storing it as the chemical
chlorophyll.
[...]
In his book, Wheatgrass: Nature's Finest Medicine, author
Steve Meyerowitz explains wheatgrass' life and energy-giving
properties this way: "Inside the juice are photons, protons,
and electrons. Our living cells reach out for these charged nutrients."
(The Jamba Juice newsletter
Jamba Whirl, Spring 2001)
Wow, I heard cyanoacrylates have protons and electrons too! (I'm not
so sure about the photons.) Maybe our living cells can benefit from
eating CD-R media. I've also heard that there are protons and
electrons in plutonium -- in fact, even more protons and
electrons than in wheatgrass!
Thursday was World Press Freedom Day.
There was more interesting news I can't talk about. It isn't job-related.
Mr. Alter compared DeCSS to code that crashes airplanes, etc. Dave Farber
forwarded my
response:
> > > U.S.: DVD Decoder is Terrorware
> > > By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
> > > 6:16 a.m. May 2, 2001 PDT
> > >
> > > NEW YORK -- To the U.S. government, a DVD descrambling utility is akin
> > > to terrorware that could crash airplanes, disrupt hospital equipment
> > > and imperil human lives.
>
>Since the U.S. still has no Official Secrets Act, telling people how
>to commit serious crimes is still legal, unless you are conspiring or
>aiding someone in committing an actual crime (or breaching a special
>duty, etc.). Investigative journalists are constantly describing and
>exposing vulnerabilities and risks, even, sometimes, in military
>security.
>
>A recent "Boondocks" cartoon showed a student asking why it is legal to
>publish plans for pipe bombs on the Internet, but (supposedly) not
>information on decrypting DVDs. Although some politicians don't like
>it, it's legal to know how to make pipe bombs, it's legal to teach the
>public how to make pipe bombs, it's just not legal to make the pipe
>bombs (without proper pyrotechnics licenses) or to use them in a
>terrorist attack.
>
>Mr. Alter's comparison is extreme hyperbole. Still, I think U.S.
>legal precedent would support publishing details of serious risks and
>threats (which the breaking of CSS isn't), including computer
>software which could be used to exploit them. On the other hand, giving
>information out _in order to facilitate a crime_ is never protected. If
>I know that someone is trying to build a bomb, even providing a standard
>chemistry or engineering textbook might be actionable.
>
>Once again: if I know that somebody is planning to commit a burglary,
>simply looking up an address in a phone book could make me an
>accomplice. Intent is critical, and the burden of proof should be on
>the organization trying to suppress speech.
>
>With their "course of conduct" arguments, the government and the MPAA
>cleverly ask us to overlook that magazines and web sites _aren't_
>generally trying to facilitate crime by offering information to the
>public. And, by outlawing the information itself, they would relieve
>plaintiffs of the burden to prove otherwise.
>
>Jack Valenti said so in a speech on February 7:
>
> The minute you give one professor the keys to the kingdom,
> you're going to be ransacked.
>
>--
>Seth David Schoen | And do not say, I will study when I
>Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will
>down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/
Some clarification of the Official Secrets Act point: in some countries, like
the U.K., there are
government secrets which you're not allowed to tell anybody, regardless of how
you found them out. Even if you, for example, read them in a newspaper, or on
a web site, you might still get in trouble if you passed them along to other
people. In the U.S., there's no such thing -- if you learn a
government secret "legitimately" (in the sense that you weren't to blame for
its unauthorized disclosure), its secrecy is simply lost. This is true for
almost all categories of factual information under U.S. law; there are very
few things you could be punished for revealing if you learned them by
legitimate means. (It appears that the DMCA has created a new category
along these lines, though.)
My script is back on-line at
http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/~schoen/cite.html, but I still need to make it so you can cite to
more things.
I'm planning to make posters out of the
DVD region code
map and the
Federal judicial
circuits.
It's amazingly easy to tell whether a particular long string of random
numbers is really random or was generated by a person asked to give random
numbers. You can use some of the same insights to predict random digits
sequentially generated by a person with better than 10% accuracy (if you
can hear the digits as the person generates them). Part of this is related
to the Gambler's Fallacy.
I had a dream that Wolfgang was visiting. Then I had a dream that I told
her I had dreamt she was visiting. Then I woke up, and she was, so I did.
Lots of parades and festivals today.
I went to the BayFF meeting at the San Francisco Public Library. There was
a panel including David Burt, who founded
Filtering Facts, and who now
works at N2H2.
The meeting was interesting. I'm not going to summarize it here, because
I've already written a long summary for peacefire-technical.
I made an attempt to represent Peacefire
there, by mentioning our work, by asking a Peacefire-interest question, and by
writing a report for Peacefire afterward.
This was a really good weekend. Wolfgang was here, we went to Kate's party,
and other nice things happened.
I went to eat with Zack in the evening.
"[...] We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and
not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present
one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house;
in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still
another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost."
"In every one," I pronounced, not without a tremble to my voice, "I am
grateful to you and revere you for your re-creation of the garden
of Ts'ui Pên."
"Not in all," he murmured with a smile. "Time forks perpetually toward
innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy."
(Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths", trans. Donald A. Yates)
I got a sunburn on my neck over the weekend, between Tilden Park and Bernal
Park.
Zack and I got Speak Freely
working, even with encryption. But we only have half duplex, because
there is no free full duplex Linux driver for our sound card.
And she said, "I got this suitcase and I don't know what to pack."
And I said, "You can take anything you want: just wait and see.
It's not a release, it's not a reward, it's the blessings:
It's the gift of what you notice more."
(Dar Williams, "The Blessings")
Until further notice, I'm interested in hearing about job opportunities.
My resume is here.
"It seems that you would rather have chocolate donuts than moral realism."
I went to the chiropractor, and my shoulder felt a bit better afterward,
but of course I have lots of other arm injuries which are still giving
me trouble. I plan to go back regularly.
I went to Berkeley. It's pretty hot outside all around the Bay Area, and
I'm told there were some rolling blackouts, althugh nowhere I was during
the day had any while I was around.
But it sounds like the colocation facility where this machine is located
was affected -- there were messages from the UPS that Trey installed,
complaining that its batteries were running out.
As often, I understand more things after a trip to Berkeley.
I have no news about my job search yet. The only people who would
actually know that I'm looking for work are a few friends and family
members, and people who read this diary or my home page regularly.
I got invited to the Berkeley commencement ceremony tomorrow (Wednesday
Night is Commencement Night at Zellerbach Hall with Janet Reno?), but I
can't go because of a chiropractic appointment.
Reading a discussion on CTY-L inspired me to play my Alphaville CD. So it
so happened that "Forever Young" came on just as I was reading a later
message which quoted its lyrics.
Do you really want to live forever?
Hi everyone,
Effective immediately, I am forking the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card
project to create a new free software project. [...]
From Leonard:
Sic
transit gloria Mundie.
The Knapsack Problem.
"You could try to compel my testimony about that, and in your case I wouldn't
mind."
"That's what friendship's all about."
and later
Most golden tablets are designed to take away your freedom to share
and change religions. By contrast, the GNU General Golden Tablets
are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
religions -- to make sure the religion is free for all its users.
There was a pretty good response to my announcement. A few dozen people
have joined up on the new
lnx-bbc mailing list in the first day. Of course,
if we make some successful releases, we should be able to attract a lot more
attention.
Today is Daniel Berrigan's 80th birthday. I had a birthday party at my
home; Anirvan and Zack came. We listened to the
Dar
Williams song and had a birthday cake with eight candles and the
inscription "Happy b-day Father Dan".
We also listened to an MP3 of Martin Luther King's speech on why he opposed
the Vietnam War. In the factual background section, there were a bunch of
pieces of history about the Vietnam War I hadn't known about. And this is
the source of a few famous King quotations:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of
values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented"
society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers,
profit motives and property rights are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered.
(Alas, I'm pretty sure King would see me as part of the problem.)
Anirvan let me borrow Phillip Berrigan's autobiography, Fighting the
Lamb's War.
![[Book burning image]](/images/1933-05-10.jpeg)
(Books burning in Berlin, May 10, 1933, sixty-eight years ago today)
Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt
man auch am Ende Menschen. [That was just a prelude; where they burn
books, they will burn men in the end.]
(Heinrich Heine, 1820)
This morning I remembered my famous letter to my parents:
At Northfield Mount Hermon School,
I learned
how to order from a catalog,
how to read sheet music,
how to use Krazy Glue,
how to snap my fingers,
how to set up an Ethernet hub,
how to read the Aeneid and the Iliad,
how to make a proposal,
how to do line integrals,
how to understand optical illusions,
how to assemble audio cables,
how to put on a tuxedo,
how to remember IP addresses,
how to debate in the Oregon, Lincoln-Douglas, and Parliamentary styles,
how to expand acronyms,
how to participate in a protest,
how to send a sick person flowers,
how to found an association,
how to crimp an Ethernet cable,
how to read stock charts,
how to find the altitude of a model rocket,
how to arrange a meeting,
how to swim,
how to explain Gödel's Theorem,
how to give a public speech,
how to appreciate classical music,
how to set up a stereo,
how to graph costs and revenues as a function of output,
how to tie a tie,
how to read Greek and Esperanto,
how to throw a Frisbee,
how to take a derivative,
how to use an uninterruptible power supply,
how to host a radio show,
how to scan dactylic hexameter and iambic pentameter,
how to order take-out food,
how to write a genuine note of thanks,
how to appreciate a sunset,
how to explain the philosophy of Plato,
how to understand the nomenclature of electrical cable terminators,
how to play badminton,
how to evacuate during a blackout,
how to circulate a petition,
how to use Unix well,
how to recite passages from classical texts,
how to do some card tricks,
how to participate in distributed collaborative computing projects,
how to pass on a tradition,
how to use a video editor,
how to write a bibliography,
how to loan people music,
how to create a to-do list,
how to arrange dial-up Internet e-mail,
how to translate the text of the requiem,
how to use a digital multimeter,
how to usher in a play,
how to write a newspaper article,
how to be a friend to a lonely person,
how to make an enormous poster,
how to analyze the efficiency of an algorithm,
how to make a collage,
how to decipher bar codes,
how to play the Prisoner's Dilemma,
how to sing along to music in other languages,
how to use the antiseptic betadine,
how to make advertising posters for various occasions,
how to use an audio or video mixer,
how to perform a titration,
how to install memory in a computer,
how to identify constellations,
how to reminisce about the past,
how to use a Macintosh,
how to design a solar car,
how to use a scanner,
how to write HTML,
how to read Catullus and Horace,
how to know more about the Los Alamos Project,
how to use the conservation of energy,
how to administer computer systems,
how to serve on a committee,
how to compete in a science competition,
how to win a rope pull,
how to give cross-examination,
how to build a binary search tree,
how to play music on a computer,
how to write a computer game,
how to manage a political campaign,
how to say "dishwasher" in German,
how to write letters to the editor,
how to use DSM-IV,
how to ask someone to be my girlfriend,
how to find a senior quotation,
how to count in binary on my fingers,
how to run a store,
how to read a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram,
how to install site wiring,
how to compete in triplespeak,
how to apply to college,
how to find the price at which a market will clear,
how to write an autobiography,
how to be Head of House for a play,
how to annotate Dante's Inferno,
how to describe the origin of seasons,
how to appear on a game show,
how to apply the mass-energy theorem,
how to host a party,
how to describe the outcome of chemical reactions,
how to find yearbook inscriptions,
how to build a regulated power supply,
how to use a CB radio,
how to audition for a play,
how to argue for free markets,
how to catch someone breaking into a computer system,
how to read the gospel of John,
how to compose a short piece of music,
how to tie a laundry bag,
how to memorize friends' initials,
how to calculate equilibrium concentrations of ions in aqueous solutions,
how to play an audio CD on a computer,
how to call an ambulance,
how to write vote-tallying software,
how to use a bullhorn,
how to calculate electrostatic potentials,
how to write a sonnet,
how to install Macintosh video input and television tuner cards,
how to like Moxie,
how to play a role-playing game,
how to throw pottery on a wheel,
how to create a routing table,
how to use a credit card,
how to make a decorated graduation cap,
how to be interrogated,
how to perform Sortes Vergilianae,
how to compare works of literature,
how to use the method of loci to remember lists of items,
how to submit to a literary magazine,
how to give announcements at a Campus Meeting,
how to use a video camera,
how to write a program to make pictures of fractals,
how to wear a martenitsa,
how to sing "Jerusalem",
how to use a blacklight,
how to use personality assessment instruments,
how to classify and identify logical fallacies,
how to make an iron-on t-shirt design,
how to thank the Speaker for recognition,
how to set up a recording studio,
and many other things as well.
Thank you for sending me to NMH.
What I thought about the list on this occasion was that I recant on "how to
ask someone to be my girlfriend". Just because I did it does not mean that I
knew how.
So, please explain how a bunch of people sitting around drinking coke,
listening to music, and playing Settlers of Cataan -- which is what went on at
the MIT fraternity party that I most recently attended -- heightens the
incidence of rape, domestic violence, and assault. And if you find no such
explanation forthcoming, then please stop over-generalising.
(Matthew K. Belmonte, on CTY-L)
I went back to the chiropractor; it feels like she's still making progress.
Today I talked to a Loya and to a lawyer. I also
had lunch with Alex, and Duncan visited in the afternoon. It's good to catch
up with him.
The 2nd Circuit has issued a number of
questions for the
attorneys for the appellants and appellees in the 2600 case:
1. Are the anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act content-neutral? See 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 328-29 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
2. Does DeCSS have both speech and non-speech elements?
3. Does the dissemination of DeCSS have both speech and non-speech elements?
4. Does the use of DeCSS to decrypt an encrypted DVD have both speech and
non-speech elements?
5. Does the existence of non-speech elements, along with speech elements,
in an activity sought to be regulated alone justify intermediate level scrutiny?
6. If DeCSS or its dissemination or its use to decrypt has both speech and
non-speech elements and is not subject to intermediate level scrutiny simply
because of the non-speech elements, is intermediate l.evel scrutiny appropriate
because of the close causal link between dissemination of DeCSS and its improper
use? See 111 F. Supp. 2d at 331-32.
7. If the District Court is correct that the dissemination of DeCSS "carries
very substantial risk of imminent harm," 111 F. Supp. 2d at 332, does that
risk alone justify the injunction? In other words, does that risk satisfy
the requirements for regulating speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio,
395 U.S. 444 (1969), thereby rendering unnecessary an inquiry as to whether
non-speech elements of DeCSS or its dissemination or its use (if such exists)
may be regulated under United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968)?
8. Are the three criteria identified at 111 F. Supp. 2d 333 the correct criteria
for determining the validity, under intermediate level scrutiny, of the use
of DeCSS that has been enjoined?
9. If not, what modification or supplementation would be required to conform
to First Amendment requirements?
10. Are the three criteria identified at 111 F. Supp. 2d 341 and the "clear
and convincing evidence" standard the correct criteria and the correct standard
of proof for testing the validity of the injunction's prohibition of posting
on the defendant's website and of linking?
11. If not, what modification or supplementation would be required to conform
to First Amendment requirements?
It's a relief (no pun intended) that the Court is considering the first
amendment issues seriously, because at oral argument they seemed to ignore
them, for the most part. Now the question is, among other things, how to
convince them.
It does seem that the speech and conduct distinctions are often artificial.
Professor Junger wrote a bit where he pointed out that speakers always
engage in conduct in connection with their speech -- for example, breathing
and wearing clothing (Junger's examples). And speech always has an effect,
and knowledge (and social relationships) may be more consequential than
"conduct".
It is said
that this manifesto was more than a theory, that it was an incitement.
Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and, if
believed, is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it, or some
failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference
between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower
sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. Eloquence may set fire
to reason.
(Justice Holmes, dissenting, in Abrams v. U.S.,
268 U.S. 652 (1925), at 668.)
And if we didn't believe that what we said would do something,
would we bother to say it at all?
bvi is great! That's the very
first thing I'll add in the LNX-BBC 1.618 tree.
A very busy day.
I had several dreams, including one very upsetting one, but I don't remember
any of them now.
I went to the chiropractor and continued to feel better.
In Berkeley, I went by
Berkeley TRiP
and got a BART Plus
pass. This is really cool; I wish I'd known about it before. I can
ride Muni and AC Transit "for free" (at a significant discount) with this
pass.
I went to Michelle's Spanish and Portuguese graduation in Zellerbach. The
speaker was Prof. Robert Alter, who talked about the importance of reading
literature, and got in a plug for independent bookstores, even mentioning
Cody's and Black Oak by name.
My nose started to bleed just before the Italian Department graduated. Oops.
Maybe it's a good thing that I never finished that hypothetical double major
with Classics and Computer Science. If I had, I'd have been in that very
graduation ceremony, and then, if my nose had started to bleed, it would
have been extremely inconvenient.
I did think a lot about the fact that, if I hadn't dropped out of Berkeley,
I would have been graduating around now, and quite possibly would even
have graduated already. Things would have been very different for me.
In the evening, I went to a party at Sumana's house, which was lots of fun.
I met Leonard in person there.
Overheard: "Geeks need advocates."
Sumana has a comic book version of the Mahabarata, in which
the Bhagavad Gita gets an entire issue all to itself. She
also has a different comic book version of the Mahabarata
in which the entire epic is a single issue, and the Gita is
a single page. I should have written down the text of that page
so I could quote it.
I wish I were a cartoonist. Cartoons can be an amazingly effective medium,
and you can certainly draw cartoons on very serious themes (I've seen
physics and African-American history as examples). No wonder the
Comics Code Authority wanted to make sure that cartoonists drew nothing
offensive to faith or morals...
(The CCA is an amazing episode in the history of "industry self-regulation"
in America, and how much more powerful it can be than the government
censorship it seeks to stave off. What do you mean, you've never heard of
it? Well, I hadn't either until I came across some of
Seth's web pages.)
We played Trivial Pursuit, and our team lost. I went to sleep.
Douglas Adams has left this Earth,
Upon which he provoked much mirth.
Just forty-two plus seven he:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Leonard woke me up really early in the morning because he and Sumana were
leaving for a trip. Amusingly enough, I decided to go back to San Francisco
so Duncan could pick me up and take me to Foothill.
And that's exactly what I did, so I ended up at Mongomery and Market around
7:00 in the morning (the last time I was there that early on a weekend,
Rick Moen still lived in the CoffeeNet!). I waited around for a while and
bought a bagel, and then Duncan picked me up, with Simon, Duncan Jr., and
Daniel in the car.
"Foothill" means the Foothill
College Electronics Flea Market, a monthly tradition which I've heard
about for years but which I'd never experienced in person. It's run in
a parking lot at
Foothill College in Los Altos.
This thing is amazing! It starts before dawn and continues until sometime
in the middle of the day. All kinds of vendors -- most of whom are
just individuals -- show up and set up tables or carpets or junk piles
in the parking lot. Then you walk around and talk to them and buy things.
There's a big ham radio focus to the event, but that's not all that you
can find there. I bought a slide rule, a bunch of LEDs, a big 12-volt
rechargeable battery (like an electric scooter battery or a an electric
wheelchair battery), two 1-watt solar panels, and, last but not least,
a traditional IBM PC keyboard! The keyboard is the big heavy type with
the very loud keys which make a satisfying clickety-clack. I learned
to touch-type on one of those keyboards, and I can still type faster
on them than on any other kind of keyboard. Some people have also suggested
that the strong springs will reduce wrist injuries. I know I really
enjoy typing on a keyboard like that.
Of course, there were other neat things I didn't buy -- whole systems,
component kits, oscilloscopes, lots of other test equipment. There was a
PAL programmer -- if only I had some use for a PAL programmer!
Michelle does want to have an electric graduation cap, so we're going to
work on that. I dug out my Engineer's Mini-Notebook set
and looked up the 555 timer chip. I think I have a few of those sitting
around, so maybe I can figure out how to produce a good clock pulse with
a 555 and then drive a relay from that and make some LEDs flash.
Duncan gave me a ride back from Foothill to Berkeley, and we met up with
Michelle and had lunch. It was still early in the day; I'd thought that
Cristina's graduation was at noon, but I was wrong. Eventually we went
to the ceremony, the Berkeley English Department graduation in the
Greek Theater.
One of the speakers gave the following reason for studying English:
I became an English major because I love to read, yes: but I also
wanted to get credit for it.
Now that's really sensible, unlike the claim of another speaker that
recently scientists
have cloned the human genome.
I have a history of complaining about claims people make about the genome
in speeches. One hint: the Human Genome Project is not the same as
cloning or genetic engineering. My guess is that the speaker here meant
that scientists have mapped the human genome.
Cristina and Christine were both graduaing, and they
arranged it so they graduated one after another. Since their names are
pronounced the same way, it was amusing to hear the cheers from our
section: "Go Cristina! Go Christine!"
Some parties followed, and I went back to the City. I ran into two people
from Cal Libertarians on my way home.
As usual, Berkeley was a very educational place.
Overheard on BART:
- "I listen to Pacifica Radio and I
read the Bay
Guardian, so I know what's really going on."
- "Nobody ever falls in love, it's all a media-based lie to sell movies,
and to sell songs."
(If the second claim were true, it would give new meaning to the Dar Williams
lyric "whoever thought of love is no friend of mine".)
Saturday was the one-year anniversary of my first experience of arm pain.
It's amazing to think that I've had these injuries for a whole year.
The wisdom of Tim O'Reilly, as expressed on the Free Software Business
mailing list:
License terms like the right to fork, and the right to redistribute
under the same terms, are *protections* of open source effectiveness,
not causes of them.
Lao Tzu says:
Losing the way of life,
men rely on goodness.
Losing goodness, they rely on laws.
The laws or licenses we create are needed because people have lost sight
of or never understood why open source works (the way of life, the
science and market dynamics of why this is an effective software
development paradigm), or they have lost goodness, and look to subvert
the system for short term local benefit. They don't drive the system.
I didn't reach my mother until Monday, but I hope mothers in general had a
good day.
I had a nice time in Berkeley. Michelle wants an electric graduation cap,
and I'm trying to help out. I finally learned to use a 555 timer chip to
generate clock pulses (thanks to the Radio Shack Engineer's
Mini-Notebook on the subject), so now if I can find solid-state
relays, I can put together some really bright flashing lights.
It's amazing that someone can support free trade and oppose free immigration!
How can that be? Isn't your right to go somewhere even more obvious than your
right to sell things there? For that matter, isn't your right to sell your
labor in any market more obvious than your right to sell personal property in
any market?
It's strange that free immigration is an idea associated with the left and
free trade with the right. I can understand how you can believe in free
immigration without free trade -- if you think that the economic is not
the personal (I just wrote something on CTY-L about this issue) or that
property rights are
socially constructed. How can you believe in free trade without free
immigration? How can that be?
Is it just that free trade is good for business?
I'm getting pretty upset with trade treaty organizations, more so all the
time, for their failure to defend free trade in general, not just in narrow
areas (and for how they export bizarre U.S. intellectual property law through
"harmonization"). I wish -- this will be nothing new to readers of this
diary -- that opponents of treaties like the FTAA would take the approach
that free trade is good but that the treaty organizations don't achieve it
and mix in other things.
For me, free trade is particularly desirable, not because it's good for
business (which I do think is a benefit!), but because it erodes and
diminishes the relevance of the international system and of national borders.
National borders are so contemptible to me; free trade diminishes their
impact. So does free immigration. Today, we finally have half-decent
communication across national borders -- radio, the global telephone network,
the Internet, and the global postal system. Not so bad. That diminishes the
impact of national borders too.
I want to write something about the role of business, supporting the ideal
that politics should neither help nor hinder it, and the idea that it's (just)
one of many important parts of human life. This reminds me very much of
the injunction
You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be
partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness
shall you judge your neighbor.
(Leviticus 19:14 (RSV))
Donella Meadows too is
dead,
Who wrote about what lay ahead
For humankind in times to be:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
The 555 timer circuit is cool; I'm just following a "cookbook" application,
but I have adjustible clock pulses which I can probably get to drive TTL
circuits.
I can't drive a relay coil directly, unless perhaps I use a very high
input voltage, or a transistor, and I still don't see how the transistor
would work, although there seem to be "cookbook" examples of that too.
It's more fun to understand the theory behind something than to follow
somebody's instructions.
I looked into how to get unemployment
benefits, but I haven't applied yet.
I need to do more to look for work. I'm likely to apply to
VA Linux and
Red Hat, two prominent free software
companies which have done a lot for the community. I have some concerns
about some of Red Hat's marketing campaigns, but I think the company has
done great things for the community and for the public's awareness of
Linux, not to mention
the public domain.
Perhaps they have work in the field of training.
I had a dream that I was on a trip and went to see a chiropractor locally
for my arm injury. I met the chiropractor in a cafe which looked a lot like
the old CoffeeNet and where various
doctors consulted with the patients who came in to drink coffee. There were
massage tables; it was set up a lot like the hair styling parlors where there
are lots of independent hairstylists who each rent space from the
proprietor.
This chiropractor was a woman, about 28, who was very interesting and had
a fair amount of health advice for me. Unfortunately, I've forgotten it
all.
"I haven't lost count."
"Have you started count?"
"Actually ... no."
If I may quote myself:
Linuxcare is a trademark of Linuxcare, Inc. Linux is a
registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. United States copyright law is
a regulatory capture of the publishing industries.
My BART Plus pass started working. I saw my cousin.
I filed for unemployment benefits over the phone. I heard that people would
traditionally file in person in an unemployment office and that it would be
very depressing and take a long time. The telephone version was very
convenient.
Interesting question: "Do you have a disability?" Do I have a disability?
I've been listening to Handel's Messiah, which I had out because
I played a selection from it which was parallel to something Martin Luther
King said in his speech on Vietnam which we listened to at the birthday party
for Daniel Berrigan.
In the afternoon, I practiced my LaTeX, and my arm pain came back along
with other sorts of pain. I met Zack and his friend Noah for dinner.
For those not on seth-trips, you should go to Stanford on Thursday to hear
Professor Felten give his
censored lecture on SDMI
("Reading Between the Lines"), or at least an update on when the world can
expect to hear about his results.
Also, you should come with me to see Sacco and Vanzetti: A
Vaudeville at the
Marin Theatre Company sometime
soon.
The U.S. isn't going to support the International Criminal Court. Why not?
Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas,
contended it could be used against U.S. military personnel overseas
and, by endorsing the court, ``we would be abandoning the sacred
covenant between the Congress and our men and women in uniform.''
("Bush Says U.N. Dues Should Be Paid", Associated Press)
Think about this for a minute. The "sacred covenant" between the Congress
and the Armed Forces means that U.S. military personnel can't be tried
before an international war crimes tribunal?
When I first read this, I exclaimed "Tom DeLay says the U.S. military
by definition can't commit war crimes!". But one friend responded
"See how he didn't actually have to say that?", and it's true:
he didn't actually say that the U.S. Armed Forces can't commit war crimes,
just that the U.S. shouldn't implement a plan that would allow them to be
punished for war crimes without its consent.
For that matter, how come party leaders actually like to be called "Whips"?
Doesn't it have a bad connotation for them? What if they were called
"Majority Scourge" or "Minority Cattle Prod"?
I shold get more sleep, because I fell asleep on my bed in my clothes
surrounded by electronic components. Thankfully, I didn't squash them,
nor did they poke me. I was reading about op amps when I thought I'd
just close my eyes for a few moments; I didn't open them until
morning.
This was an aftereffect from lost sleep on Saturday, I think.
The electronics project is not done, but I'm planning to go work on it
and finish it in Berkeley tonight. I couldn't find solid state relays
anywhere. This, after buying all of them from every Radio Shack in
a large radius in New Hampshire just five months ago. Where have they
gone?
The ones I bought back then are in an attic in New Hampshire -- that's where
they've gone. But why would Radio Shack stores in Massachusetts and
New Hampshire carry solid state relays, and stores in San Francisco not
carry them?
I might use my exciting BART Plus pass to go to Berkeley in the afternoon
in search of relays, then come back for my chiropractic appointment, then
go back to Berkeley again.
I'm continuing to practice LaTeX.
Martin Gardner's Puzzling Questions About the Solar System
is a good book.
If you think I should have an accent,
well how do you feel about Ancient Greek?
I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to sound,
but my Swahili's far too weak.
And if you want me to talk backwards,
well oot taht od nac I llew.
And if you want me to speak gibberish,
well meeko weeko Taco Bell.
'Cuz I can do the linguistically ridiculous for you. (For you.)
And I can do the harmonically impossible for you! (For you.)
(Ben Beckstrom and Peter A. Peterson II,
"Biologically
Impossible", from Last Transmission
from Starbase XY003)
I was up all night, only the third or fourth time in my life that I've done
that. With the kind help of several people, I was working on an electronic
graduation cap for Michelle. I think it turned out extremely well! We
mounted a beautiful specimen of Michelle's papel picado artwork,
a papercut of a dragon, on her cap. Then we placed two LEDs over the eyes,
a blue and a gold (UC Berkeley colors), and made them blink alternately, so
that the dragon seems to have a glowing blue eye and a
glowing gold eye and to open and shut them alternately.
The graduation was pretty nice, although rowdier and less organized than
other Berkeley graduations I've seen. I knew five graduates (three
Cognitive Science, two Public Health) and managed to catch up with most
of them, though not all.
I got a sunburn and also got a bit dehydrated at the ceremony. In the
afternoon, I fell asleep while at the lunch table; I walked back to
Michelle's place in a daze (in one case almost falling asleep standing up),
and took a nap for several hours. I felt a lot better physically after
that nap, but still worn out for much of the day.
I hate surface mount soldering! I wasted over five hours trying to transfer
a circuit -- which worked perfectly on a breadboard -- onto a copper
perfboard. After hours of making poor connections and inadvertantly
shorting things together and struggling to separate them, I finally tested
every joint and every pair of adjacent traces; at last, I had connectivity
where it was supposed to be and not where it wasn't supposed to be.
But it still didn't work. Either some connections still had unreasonably
high resistance, or I damaged some of the components with the heat from
the soldering iron (which is very possible), or I made a mistake in the
wiring or in following traces (even though I triple-checked all the
connections).
I had to re-do the circuit from scratch on a breadboard in the morning, and
only finished at the last minute. But the dragon atop Michelle's
graduation cap, in my opinion, is lovely.
Parts: 7805 voltage regulator; 555 timer (556 in new version); 7404 TTL
hex inverter (7402 quad NOR gate in new version); capacitor and two resistors
(for timing); two more resistors (for LEDs); two LEDs; 9-volt battery.
The blinking LED scheme in this graduation cap was more or less equivalent
to, and probably inspired by, Jonas Klein's version for his 1993 NMH
graduation cap (although Jonas used many more LEDs, and tried to drive
them using transistors to increase the available current). Jonas also
used a 555; this impressed me, because I didn't know how to use that chip
until this past week.
I wrote about 1100 lines, about 10,000 words, of my epic poem, tentatively
called "Existence and Uniqueness". (Three books plus a section of a fourth,
out of what I expect will be either ten or twelve books.) Although some parts
are not so bad, in places it may be some of the worst poetry I've
ever written. (Not so much bad writing as merely much closer to prose
than poetry: some parts could well be long prose narratives pretending to be
poetry. There is no meter; I've almost never been able to write in meter.
I'm trying to keep it iambic where possible, but I haven't done anything
metri causa.)
Most of it seems like good storytelling to me. It helps to have a
meaningful story that you care about. The lapses there have to do with
trying to talk about inner states and thoughts rather than showing what
happened or recounting conversations -- the old "show, don't tell"
advice.
"Show, don't tell" is not good advice. It's just good advice for people
who aren't skilled fiction or narrative writers, while they're writing
fiction or narratives. If you're really good at using a particular
form, you can tell and it will still work fine.
Remember the Maine!
I went to two parties in Berkeley, and didn't go to one party in Berkeley.
"Thera-Band(R) and associated colors are trademarks of the Hygenic
Corporation. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. (C) The
Hygenic Corporation, 1998. All rights reserved. Made in USA.
Patent Pending."
They've really got all their bases covered, haven't they? This is on
a package containing an exercise ball
which you squeeze to develop hand and arm strength. It's the latest
instance of the idea that
colors
can be trademarks, which
courts seem to believe. (That thread on
the Crackmonkey list was the first time I'd heard of the concept, but then
I went down to my local office supply store and looked at the back of a
pack of Post-It(R) notes. Sure enough.)
One of the most exciting things about the first party in Berkeley was
getting to argue about the Monty Hall problem for half an hour with
Daniel Ellsberg, "a great hero of the American people".
I also met a doctor who's working on scientific studies of alternative
medicine, and is planning a randomized, controlled, double-blind study
of moxibustion for breech babies. There was
a
previous study which found positive results but didn't use any kind
of placebo for the control group. So this new study will include a
sham moxibustion treatment to see whether the effect could be due to a
placebo effect.
At the second party, I met a woman who managed to complete the inductive
proof of the formula for the sum of the first n integers in her head.
I've never seen anybody do that before; I kept offering her paper and
pen, and she kept on refusing, saying that she could figure it out. So
she did.
I also went swimming at that party for the first time in a couple of years.
It felt great, but I think I overdid it a little.
"You're a happening geek!"
(My sister Rebecca)
"Only people who
have something to hide should be worried," [about a legislative
proposal to keep complete archives for seven years of all voice and e-mail
traffic in the U.K. to allow retroactive searches] said a spokesperson at the
Department of Trade and Industry.
I thought that was just a parody, and actual government officials didn't
really say things like that.
Everybody has something to hide.
"Clearly, what you should do is help them [...] and then write a feature article
for slashdot."
(a slashdot reporter with an innovative response to an ethical dilemma)
"he
thought he knew better than the U.S. Government what was best for the United
States."
Meeting Daniel Ellsberg and thinking about his experiences made me ponder
the quotation above. It's
upsetting to me that this should be phrased so contemptuously, so so
condescendingly.
(The piece is not about Ellsberg but about a more recent case involving a
man named Frederick Hamilton, who leaked classified information for
altruistic reasons -- once again, to try to stop a war -- and went to jail
for it.)
Ellsberg also "thought he knew better than the U.S. government what was
best for the United States"; according to interviews, he still thinks
he knew better than the U.S. government what was best for the United
States:
[Q.] Do you have any regrets about releasing the Pentagon Papers or would
you have done anything differently?
[A.]
Yes. I regret that in 1964 or early 1965 I did not release the
documents in my possession at that time to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. These documents were in my safe in the Pentagon.
Later they were among the documents in the Pentagon Papers that I
copied and gave to the Senate in 1969 and later to the newspapers in
1971. But if I had released them during the 1964 presidential campaign
or before the open-ended escalation on the ground in mid-1965, I
believe that all the war that came afterwards could well have been
averted. That is a heavy burden to bear.
(Daniel Ellsberg, in a 1999 interview with Bay Area high school
students)
It seems to me that history will vindicate Ellsberg, so that people will
agree that he, in fact, knew better than the government. Perhaps
history will also vindicate Frederick Hamilton. It seems that the
Department of Energy doesn't consider that a possibility.
You know you've been reading the news media too long when ... you see the
news headline "Bush Energy Plan Not Universally Popular" and think "Oh,
that must be a new piece from The
Onion".
I wrote a few hundred more lines of "Existence and Uniqueness".
I went to the chiropractor and then I went down to the
EFF to meet with Shari Steele.
I'm planning to volunteer for EFF and work on technical projects there.
I wrote some more lines of "Existence and Uniqueness".
My friend Erik came to visit in the morning, and in the afternoon I went
to Berkeley to get a Feldenkrais lesson.
In the evening, I had dinner with Biella. That was very nice.
Erik discovered that the reason my old Ricochet didn't work was that
the power supply was failing. He also discovered that the Sony
4.5 V DC supplies (for a Walkman, Discman, etc.) work with it just fine.
That's cool.
What is the difference between freedom and justice?
I read the beginning of Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
(most famous as the author of The Shockwave Rider). This
novel is interesting so far for its picture of overpopulation. There's
also some treatment of race relations. This novel is also known as
the source for quotations from Chad Mulligan's The Hipcrime
Vocab, which
perhaps plays the same role in Stand on Zanzibar that
Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
Collectivism plays in 1984.
Some of these lines are fairly famous among Unix geeks (who may have
encountered them in fortune files). For example:
HISTORY Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.
I went to the chiropractor and I helped Zack put in a new hard drive
and then went to dinner with him. I still have a lot of things I have
to get done that I've put off.
As you might expect, I wrote some more of "Existence and Uniqueness":
currently almost 3000 lines, 25,000 words. I need to make a "records"
list: longest letter, longest written work, longest conversation,
longest walk, longest poem, etc.
My arms are a bit sore -- I think the chiropractor helped. Certainly,
writing that poem is a possible explanation for my arm pain.
I also read a little more about Ellsberg's Paradox and its interesting
implications. Maybe some time I'll read a bit more technical game
theory than I have; game theorists are certainly interesting,
colorful characters.
Intellectual property law
is government regulation
not free trade
(Not a haiku, but rather a memo to the BSA)
A powerful dream on the distinction between "dating" and "being boyfriend and
girlfriend".
Did I mention these lovely little stickers? I got a bunch at the EFF when
I went by there with Erik on Tuesday. They say "Free Jon Johansen", and
I have been wanting one for a while.
My dream Wednesday night was really very interesting,
and so was
Raph
Levien's.
"If you talk that way and don't make that distinction, they won't
believe you. They aren't going to believe you, they'll think you're
lying."
I ate a ridiculous amount of sugar on Thursday.