Article 821 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: The future of printed books -- solved. Bonus: an experiment! Date: 12 Jan 1992 03:26:44 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 79 Message-ID: References: <1991Dec18.132659.3542@bernina.ethz.ch> <4323@kielo.uta.fi> <03.01.92.164747.191@cogsci.cog.jhu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: Everything _but_ computer programs will be shareware. Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:662 rec.arts.sf.written:2018 rec.arts.sf.science:821 It's really quite simple: after a few more decades, when America is wired fiber-optically and all your living room data processing is integrated, it's just going to be hard to make money selling data on physical media. Books, music, movies, art reprints, periodicals -- if it's data, it's going to be instantaneously copiable and distributable. The only way to stop it will be if Big Brother monitors the packets going in and out of your house, and is allowed to arrest you when he can't decrypt something. Or, authors would have to uniquely and subtly code each copy of the data sold, and Big Brother would have to fine anyone caught with a copy they didn't buy. Either way, the requisite privacy invasion would be intolerable. The only way to make money selling data will be to offer it at near-shareware prices. If the fee that the author charges for copying it directly from him gets anywhere above nominal, then his data inevitably will be pirated. What will happen is that an efficient system will be set up to make it almost effortless for people to electronically flip a coin or two into the author's hat each time they feel they've benefited from the author's data. It will be interesting to see what kind of works the coming circumstances will promote or discourage. Entertainment will no longer be produced on the basis of its simple mass appeal, since advertisements will become extinct. (When your advertisement-detecting software actually slips up and lets an ad through, you'll just utter a command, the ad will be skipped, and the system will try to learn not to be fooled that way again. Initially, there will be a technically interesting struggle between the ad-creators and the authors of the ad-detectors, but the ad-creators cannot win, because the consumer isn't on their side.) Instead, entertainment will be produced on the basis of its mass appeal to people likely to honor their obligation to "tip" those who entertain them. A possible exception will be highly-perishable data. For example, even a small "tape delay" (i.e., piracy delay) of a live sporting event could dramatically lower its appeal. But even news and market quotes are fresh when they are piracy-delayed, so I'm not sure how much of a premium one could charge for delivering them live. In the same vein, recorded pop music will become mainly a way to drum up attendance at one's concert dates. There won't be as much money anymore in the "record" business, because I don't think the typical pop-music lover will feel much obligation to further enrich a music mega-star. Of course, parents may have to prevent their swooning teeny-boppers from sending all their allowance to New Kids On The Block. Splitting shareware proceeds among collaborators will be a thorny problem. For example, movies will be hard to produce if their likely audience tends to "tip" directly to their box office idol instead of to the movie's general account. Luckily for me ;), significant software will not be piratable. At first this seems contradictory, because software is data -- data with a difference. The difference is that software is _instructions_. The instructions are only useful when they are executed. If the author of a program chooses, she can have the program require that a temporary license has been secured over the network before it will agree to do anything useful. Simple programs will be sold like data, either because their authors choose not to use run-time licensing, or because they will not try too hard to fool disassemblers that try to tease out the useful logic from the licensing logic. But authors of more-significant systems will ensure that it is uneconomical to try to engineer the licensing logic out of the programs they distribute. Let's get the ball rolling. I know you can't easily send me money -- it would probably take you two or three minutes. But in ten or twenty seconds you _can_ e-mail me, so here's an experiment: e-mail me and tell me how much you would be willing to compensate me for whatever value you found in this article, if you could trivially do so. (Zero is an acceptable answer, of course. I know I'm biased, but I'd be willing to pay about a penny for reading this article. Definitely a yen. ;) I will summarize the responses. -- Brian Holtz [My responses were: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .0025 .01 .01 .01 .01 .02 .03 .03 .05 .05 .05 .10 .10 .10 .10 .10 .15 .18 .25 .25 .50 .77 1.00 ] Article 667 of rec.arts.sf.misc: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc Subject: Re: The future of printed books -- solved. Bonus: an experiment! Date: 12 Jan 1992 22:06:04 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 154 Message-ID: References: <1991Dec18.132659.3542@bernina.ethz.ch> <4323@kielo.uta.fi> <03.01.92.164747.191@cogsci.cog.jhu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: 4 ways to foil my scenario. Linear data cannot be run-time licensed. In article martinc@hatteras.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin) writes: >the problem of viewing the data, esp. in place of printed books. If it >costs me $1000 for a viewer that weighs 5 pounds, it's going to be very >hard to get me to use it in place of a paperback perfect-bound book that >costs $2 or $5 and weighs 10 oz. $1000 and 5 lbs? Sony's almost there _already_. I'm talking about decades from now. Viewers will be perhaps an order of magnitude cheaper, and book-capacity diskettes will be cheaper than paperbacks. > The only way to make money selling data will be to offer it at > near-shareware prices. > >But that pretty well precisely describes the current situation: authors >get 6 or 8 percent of the cover price as a royalty; the remaining costs >are the costs of production and distribution. Right. Only in the future, the marginal cost of reproduction and distribution will be essentially zero. And royalties will be unenforceable without drastic government action. >The distribution of the >data in other forms will still require physical media -- what is fiber? >-- and the cost of that, the cost of the data bases to hold it, the >costs of editing and preparation will all still have to be borne. You're confusing the costs that authors can't avoid with the costs that consumers _can_ avoid. Yes, the fiber network will cost money, but the marginal cost of slurping a few more gigabytes from a friend will be very, very low. > people to electronically flip a coin or two into the author's hat > each time they feel they've benefited from the author's data. > >What will happen in that csae is that authors will have to go back to >getting *real* jobs; I find it *very* difficult to believe that all of, >say, Steven King's readers will simply voluntarily mail him his $2. That's what I _said_. Pop mega-stars may disappear, unless they aim their material at audiences who are honest about paying for it. >King won't suffer -- at least I presume he's got investments -- but what >about the next generation's blockbuster? I won't be shedding any tears over the disappearance of Stephen King, Madonna, and Entertainment Tonight. > advertisements will become extinct. > >That's frankly silly. When you read a magazine do you go through and >cut out the ads? No -- because magazines today are _physical_, not electronic. (However, I _do_ immediately rip out the cardboard inserts that make flipping through the magazine so hard. ;) >You're presuming a reading mechanism with no better >bandwidth than the net. No. I said fiber to every home. We're talking megabits/sec. And of course, radio networking. >What *may* happen is that the adverts will be >embedded in specialized documents similar in effect to the Time Book >Review or Locus. But without *some* advertising mechanism, how will you >learn about the files you want to read? Your filtering software will choose it for you. Oh, and there'll still be ads, but you'll only see them when you want to see them. Like the yellow pages, the classifieds, the movie listings. My point is that there will be zero chance of you having to sit through an ad in the middle of the entertainment data stream you just downloaded. > A possible exception will be highly-perishable data. > >Market stuff, at least, is handled by limiting access to the source. >MYSE rules allow people to access their monopoly data feed Yes -- and with megabits/sec to each household, once one person has it, all his friends have it, and his friends' friends, etc. The only way this won't happen is if the government _very_ aggressively prosecutes petty intellectual crime -- which I'm not aware of it ever having done. I think my scenario is more enlightened, but I don't completely discount the ability of the entrenched media interests to use the police to suppress the movement of bits. >How will >the data pirates get access to the data at point of origination? It only takes one. >If they figure out a way, how will they sell their service without >revealing that they have access? That's why I said perishable data might be an exception. It's far easier to police the piracy of perishable data without invading privacy than it is to police other kinds of piracy. >Again, the artist only gets a buck or two from an album, the rest is >distribution cost. Again, marginal distribution costs will be near zero, and artists will have no way ensuring they get their buck or two per copy -- _unless_ the state brutally enforces my per-customer data-stamping scheme. I don't think we'll stand for it. >We can already obtain the "hits" for "free" by >listening to the radio -- but we still buy albums. Just wait until we have digital radio and non-linear digital home recording. At that point, the price of data-ful CD's will drop very close to that of blank CD's, with the difference being accounted for by the album cover, authenticity panache, etc. > Splitting shareware proceeds among collaborators will be a thorny > problem. For example, movies will be hard to produce if their likely > audience tends to "tip" directly to their box office idol instead of > to the movie's general account. > >Another good argument for intellectual property laws and a mechanism for >colelction. Hardly. There are only a few ways to do it: 1. Prior restraint against owning the hardware that _could_ be used for committing intellectual theft. 2. Prior restraint against buying blank recording media, by taxing its purchase and distributing the proceeds to data authors according to their share of the legitimate data market. (Isn't something like this in place for DAT? How do they decide who gets how much?) 3. Routine monitoring of nearly all household's data I/O coupled with automated funds transfer to the creator whose data you are receiving. 4. Random raids on households coupled with severe penalties, to create fear. No free society could long stomach any of these ghastly policies. >If this mechanism will protect programs, then it can be applied to >protect music or "books" or video. If the mechanism can be beaten >for music etc., then your programs aren't safe either. Wrong. At some point, the book/song/video becomes an unencrypted dumb stream of bits going down a wire to a monitor or speaker. But at no point does a run-time-licensed computer program become a stream of bits that is of any use without a run-time license. (I know of no run-time licensing scheme that works by providing an un-licensed version of the program for the duration of the license! ;) Only extremely interactive "data" -- such as certain kinds of reference works, or interactive books -- will be able to protect themselves with run-time licensing. But linear data is dead meat. -- Brian Holtz Article 844 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: sci.astro,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: ET Phone Home Date: 14 Jan 1992 16:14:55 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan12.072412.18767@techbook.com> <1992Jan14.225850.3424@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM sci.astro:13931 rec.arts.sf.science:844 In article <1992Jan14.225850.3424@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> chisnall@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz writes: >> Motivating the purchase of information without giving away the ability >> to replicate that information is a continuing, unsolved problem >> in our modern information industries. > >Isn't this the sort of problem that zero-knowledge protocols are >meant to solve? I don't think so. I thought zero-knowledge protocols were a way to prove you know something without making you spit out all the bits involved. But once you've given N bits to somebody, only police action can keep her from replicating those bits to her heart's content. -- Brian Holtz Article 848 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: The future of printed books -- solved. Bonus: an experiment! Date: 15 Jan 1992 04:50:33 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 131 Message-ID: References: <4323@kielo.uta.fi> <03.01.92.164747.191@cogsci.cog.jhu.edu> <1992Jan14.154024.22104@tsltor.uucp> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:676 rec.arts.sf.written:2157 rec.arts.sf.science:848 In article <1992Jan14.154024.22104@tsltor.uucp> stevew@tsltor.uucp (Stephen Webb) writes: >There's no way any operating company worth it's >liability insurance would allow a third-party power supply for operating >fiber, and batteries are just too impractical (the telco would insist on >ownership of the power supply to prevent damage to its circuits, otherwise >the subscriber would probably require hefty liability insurance). Huh? Circuits can be protected. And how is fiber different from cable TV in this respect? >And another thing. Who the heck does any significant amount of "living room >data processing"? I push bits from my CD to my speakers, and magnetic patterns from my videocassettes to my monitor. Don't you? >>Books, music, movies, art reprints, periodicals -- if it's data, it's >>going to be instantaneously copiable and distributable. > >No, all these things are data, paper, toner, energy consumption, time, >reproduction equipment. Paper? Toner? I'm talking about 1's and 0's. >Not to mention research, production costs, >operating costs, distribution costs. You're confusing what it costs _you_ to make it with what it costs _me_ to give a copy to a friend. The latter cost will be effectively zero, and only drastic police surveillance can deter it. >Take art reprints: it's already >cheap and easy to get sleazy knockoffs of famous prints by going out and >interacting at a poster shop. They're worthless, except for the paper they're >printed on, plus a slice of the production and distribution costs. No resale >value. If you want a valuable artist's print, you'll have to buy a designated >piece of matter I wasn't talking about those quaint pieces of paper among which certain afficianados differentiate so keenly; maybe I used the wrong term. No, I'm talking about the data one feeds into one's wall hologram to give oneself a reproduction that only a mass spectrometer could see through. What I'm saying is that the artist will not be able to collect more than shareware prices in compensation for displaying pictures of his art. >There are already many, many data services making reasonable profits. Because >the cost of gathering and maintining the data is so high I already said that perishable data will be hard to pirate, because that kind of piracy is so easy to police non-invasively. >They generally charge for (i) connect time, >(ii) per query, (iii) per full-text retreival, and (iv) per printout. >If you have a printer at home, Printer? What's a printer? In 50 years, the only printers will be in museums. ;) >you could capture and print the data, but you're charged for the >retreival. Most people will not give away for free something they've >paid for (and take a loss?). Software piracy usually involves >stealing, rather than giving away, programs. No, in America it usually involves both. You steal a program from its owner _when_ you give a copy away. In America at least, it's hard to make much money selling pirated software. >How many people >would sit in front of their TV if they had to pay per minute? I didn't _say_ they "had to pay" -- that's the whole point. Quick, somebody divide the production costs of "The Cosby Show" by its weekly audience. >How many >people actuall send their mony to the local PBS station (which is already >providing entertainment in the way you described)? Well, I _prefer_ PBS's programming to commercial programming, so it seems to be working. It will work _much_ better when people can tip (i.e., vote) on a per-program basis. Then maybe all those stupid mystery shows will go away... ;) >Think of advertising as a virus (I know I do). If the virus was real good, >it would kill all of it's hosts, and thereby do itself in. If the virus >doesn't survive too well, it will survive better than if it survives very well >(get it?). What's the point? In fifty years, you'll only have to sit through an ad if you tell your equipment _not_ to skip it. >People will continue to >buy recorded music because they want to hear the music when they want. Why buy it, when you can ftp it from your friends? >Saying they'll boycott the artist for capital reasons is like saying they >won't buy cars because it will help GM shareholders earn dividend income. Who said anything about "boycotts"? I just said that as a mega-star becomes mega-rich, more and more people will decide to tip less, on the theory that the mega-star already has enough money. Thus perhaps the truly mega-rich stars will be those whose audience are least susceptible to envy. >>For example, movies will be hard to produce if their likely >>audience tends to "tip" directly to their box office idol instead of >>to the movie's general account. > >No movies would be made. No. A show will be produced any time its producers think it will appeal to an audience willing to tip them. Of course, in-theater shows will still be able to produce ticket sales, _as long as_ 1) theaters stay technologically ahead of home video, 2) home video release continues to be delayed compared to theater release, and 3) theaters can prevent patrons from furtively making quality recordings. >I won't buy any software that requires me to spend mony to use it (as such >a remote licensing procedure would require). Run-time licensing does not imply per-run pricing. >Your article has already cost the net hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. You forgot to put smiley on that sentence. -- Brian Holtz Article 856 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 15 Jan 1992 21:19:17 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan15.070855.25182@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <61778@apple.Apple.COM> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:682 rec.arts.sf.written:2198 rec.arts.sf.science:856 In article <61778@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >If the advertisers go away, then we (as >viewers/readers/whatevers) would have to pay for what we view. But in the future, once somebody has paid for one viewing, (the transitive closure of) her friends will be able to view it for free. >o Cable TV with no advertising. Every channel a premium channel. You thought >your cable bill was too high now? (if you had to pay $10 a month for each >channel you wanted programmed into your box, how would that change your >viewing habits?) You're still thinking short-term. In the future, the only programming that will trickle into your house in real-time will be perishable data like news, sports, live concerts, etc. Everything else you will probably just download in seconds, and watch it when you want to. And that means that many people will just get their copies from friends instead of from official sources. One possible problem with this theory is the passive nature of "network" programming. I notice that I am much more likely to watch a rerun of movie X on night Y if it's on TV that night -- _even if_ I have movie X on videocassette. The non-passivity required to programming one's own entertainment may somehow provide niche markets for networks to operate in. >o Magazines with no advertising. Each issue of TIME would cost you $5.00. >Each issue of Playboy $8.00. Yes, if they were _paper_ magazines with no ads. In fifty years paper magazines will be gag gifts. >The point is, it's a great fantasy to say "do away with advertising". The >reality, though, is that advertising makes a lot of things affordable that, >if we (the consumer) had to pay the real cost, simply wouldn't stand for. They're only otherwise unaffordable because the information infrastructure isn't in place yet. It will be, perhaps in my lifetime. -- Brian Holtz Article 2201 of rec.arts.sf.written: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: The ethics of buying used books Date: 15 Jan 1992 21:39:04 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan15.175747.12073@beaver.cs.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: The "velocity" of books dictates author compensation strategy. In article <1992Jan15.175747.12073@beaver.cs.washington.edu> phaedrus@cs.washington.edu (Mark Phaedrus) writes: >in general, is it considered unethical to buy mostly used instead of new? If >the authors were against it, For one thing, if people didn't acquire the complete resale right when they bought new books, less people would buy them. Authors have to choose between being compensated per-copy or per-reader; people won't compensate them both ways. Given the low "velocity" of books and the high costs of reproducing them, authors have been wise to choose per-copy compensation. However, given the coming advances in OCR, data diskmen, and home digital networking, authors will soon have to switch to voluntary per-reader compensation -- or get the police to use gestapo tactics to lower the velocity of digital books. (I suspect that authors of digital works would still not be satisfied if you destroyed all your other copies of a work when you give a copy to a friend; too many sales could be lost that way.) [The "velocity" of money is a measure of how much economic activity occurs in a system when a dollar is "injected" into it. Today it's typically around $3 and change; my guess for the current velocity of paper books is a little under 2.) -- Brian Holtz Article 872 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 16 Jan 1992 23:54:18 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 52 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan15.070855.25182@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <61778@apple.Apple.COM> <61806@apple.Apple.COM> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:693 rec.arts.sf.written:2273 rec.arts.sf.science:872 In article <61806@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >>But in the future, once somebody has paid for one viewing, (the >>transitive closure of) her friends will be able to view it for free. > >This is all well and good. It ignores a basic question: > > WHO IS PAYING FOR ALL THIS? I said in my original posting that it should be paid for by electronic consumer tipping. >If a dozen unpaid >copies are passed around for every paid copy, then the costs of all 13 >copies will be factored into that single copy, or the service goes broke. And what will happen when a _thousand_ unpaid copies are passed around for every paid copy? >There aren't any other choices (well, there are: government funding, which >is just like advertising funding but more expensive), I agree: yuck. >limiting programming to work done by motivated amateurs. What about work done by people who create for audiences who tend to voluntarily compensate creators? >I'm sorry. Cute idea, but you STILL haven't invented the free lunch. I didn't say I had. >Take a >look at (a) the computer game market [where all those pirate copies are >factored into the price paid by the legal buyers] Is there any reason to think that the ratio of legal buyers to piracy recipients will do anything but climb? >(b) casette tapes >[where you pay a royalty every time you buy a blank tape, because they know >it's going to be used to tape something off a purchased album the vast >majority of the time]. A disgusting system. Not only does it fine me without proving that I've done anything wrong, but it also has no way of getting the fine to the creator whose creation gets copied. -- Brian Holtz Article 873 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: AI and FTL and other paradigms Date: 16 Jan 1992 23:58:49 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 10 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan14.221734.29153@crash.cts.com> <4048@sheol.UUCP> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf-lovers:43802 rec.arts.sf.science:873 In article <4048@sheol.UUCP> throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes: >> kfree@pnet01.cts.com (Kenneth Freeman) >> AI is more problematic than FTL. There is a model for FTL; AI >> isn't as neat AI doesn't have a working model, but it has something better: a working example. -- Brian Holtz Article 887 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: AI and FTL and other paradigms Date: 18 Jan 1992 02:54:37 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <4048@sheol.UUCP> <=cwrhvf@rpi.edu> <1992Jan17.162622.24597@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: Intelligence is the ability to make and test inductions. Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf-lovers:43839 rec.arts.sf.science:887 In article <1992Jan17.162622.24597@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Joachim Schrod) writes: >> >(Brian Holtz) writes: >> >> >> >>AI doesn't have a working model, but it has something better: a >> >>working example. >> > >Ooh, you're artificial?? Interesting to know. Wow, I always thought >we know only human (== natural) intelligence. Yes, of course; I was being coy. But we're all good materialists here (right?), so human intelligence is a working example of a purely material intelligence. Such an example reduces AI to an engineering problem. FTL travel is far from simply an engineering problem. >-- But even, if we are >a good example of intelligence, can you pleace define what it is? Intelligence is the ability to make and test inductions. -- Brian Holtz Article 888 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 18 Jan 1992 03:23:53 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 60 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan15.070855.25182@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <61778@apple.Apple.COM> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: Look beyond coercion and subversion, to cooperation. Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:710 rec.arts.sf.written:2348 rec.arts.sf.science:888 In article rjc@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes: >bh> But in the future, once somebody has paid for one viewing, (the >bh> transitive closure of) her friends will be able to view it for free. > >In that case no one will produce the stuff in the first place. Or, to >be less extreme, there will only be the equivalent of fanzines, things >produced for the love of it. _And_, as I said in my original posting, there will also be programming produced for audiences that tend to voluntarily compensate the producers of the programming they enjoy. >Who is going to produce Star Trek 97, or whatever, if their expenses >had to be coverred by selling a few hundred copies? No one could >afford to buy any of those copies to pass on to their friends. 1. In-theater shows will still be able to produce ticket sales, _as long as_ a) theaters stay technologically ahead of home video, b) home video release continues to be delayed compared to theater release, and c) theaters can prevent patrons from furtively making quality recordings. 2. You're ignoring the revenue possible from audiences' voluntary remittances. If you think that the people who enjoy Star Trek TV shows are the sort of people who would ignore their interest in compensating the show's producers, then you will conclude that Star Trek shows will not be produced. I have to disagree. >You assume that the paper and distribution is the only major cost. No >matter how the things are distributed, somoene has to write, edit and >design it. They have to be payed, with no advertising their wages go >straight onto the cover price. And _you_ seem to assume that insert advertising and per-copy sales are the only ways to be compensated for publishing. Not so. There is also voluntary audience remittance and corporate goodwill sponsorship, just to name two. >Your electronic Time will be in the same possition as broadcast TV. >With no way of charging the viewer they will have to get outside >revenue and that means either taxes or advertising as far as I can >see. You need to look beyond coercion and subversion, to cooperation. BTW, I agree with the poster who pointed out that product-placement advertising will increase. However, I think that it will tend to concentrate in the programming whose audience tends not to punish with reduced remittances the distraction it causes. >Stopping people from deleting the adverts in their copy is >hard, but who does that with things recorded from TV? Today, TV is an analog signal recorded on serial storage media. I'm talking about digital recordings on random-access media; only live and perishable data will be consumed immediately as it trickles in over the fiber. -- Brian Holtz Article 889 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 18 Jan 1992 03:38:13 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:711 rec.arts.sf.written:2349 rec.arts.sf.science:889 In article mathew@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes: >> But in the future, once somebody has paid for one viewing, (the >> transitive closure of) her friends will be able to view it for free. > >Once again, you're assuming that everyone My assumption is that in countries like America, in fifty or hundred years the same fraction of households will have megabit/sec digital I/O as currently have cable TV. In two hundred years, it will be a gigabit/sec to the same fraction of households that currently have phone service. >will have duplication and transmission equipment as well as equipment >to receive the broadcasts. I see no reason why this should be the >case, as it isn't the case for radio or TV. Forty years ago <<1% of American households could record radio signals; now I bet it's two thirds. Twenty years ago <<1% of American households could record TV signals; now I think it's around a quarter. Ten years ago <<1% of American households could record digital data over phone lines; now I bet it's maybe 2 or 3 percent. Are you going to tell me that in 2042 not many households will be able to trade digital multimedia data over the public communications utilities? How about 2092? How about 3092? -- Brian Holtz Article 913 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 19 Jan 1992 20:04:42 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: <1992Jan15.070855.25182@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <61778@apple.Apple.COM> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:726 rec.arts.sf.written:2415 rec.arts.sf.science:913 In article peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >>But in the future, once somebody has paid for one viewing, (the >>transitive closure of) her friends will be able to view it for free. > >And the cost of that first viewing will go through the roof, as the cost >of packaged software has, and for the same reasons. No. Software publishers are only able to get away with it because software consumers (viz., businesses) are very concerned about support, upgrades, and getting caught. Entertainment consumers will have no such concerns. >>Everything else you will >>probably just download in seconds, and watch it when you want to. > >Have you any idea of tha bandwidth of an NTSC TV signal? [...] >The quality of the image will expand to >fill the available bandwidth. Perhaps my estimate of "seconds" was optimistic. But I find it hard to believe that, as I'm watching Super Bowl LXXXIV, there won't be any bandwidth leftover for my search software to use to download some programming that it thinks I'll be interested in. In fact, with the myriad of programming that will be available, it will probably be uncommon for you to choose your fare from anything besides the programming that your search software has cached in your house. At any rate ;), the last niche for interruptive advertising could very well be live programming, and first-run programming that people will not want to watch via time-shifting. Still, I suspect that somebody will invent a way to mask these commercial breaks with something customized to each consumer's interests. -- Brian Holtz Article 932 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 20 Jan 1992 21:53:00 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 87 Message-ID: References: <98970@brunix.UUCP> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: The only way to get $ is to require $ be given. True or False? Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:737 rec.arts.sf.written:2453 rec.arts.sf.science:932 Messrs. Yarvin, Von Rospach, da Silva, and Caley all make the same mistake: they assume that the only way to get money from a consumer of your data is to _require_ that he gives you money when he consumes it. This is simply false. In articles <98970@brunix.UUCP> cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes: >(1) The TANSTAAFL test. It costs money to create information, and if it >isn't profitable for the producers to produce, they won't. True. That's why I've been saying that most of the information that will be produced will be the sort whose audience tends to voluntarily compensate the producers. (The rest will be supported by product placement advertising, corporate sponsorship, realtime insert advertising during the info's first release, ticket sales for in-theater consumption, etc.) >Electronic books have some advantages on point (a), but so do paper ones (we >hashed this all out a month ago), and IMHO the contest is not close enough >to justify a much higher price for e-books. Are you willing to bet that in 50 years, the price of an e-book reader (amortized over all the books it's used to read) will be higher than paper books? How about in 100 years? 200? >Suppose you could connect to an electronic bookstore which sold _every book >ever written_, and download one, in a few seconds, for about _$2_. Suppose >you had a palmtop viewer/computer which could store a few thousand such >books, and display them as well as paper. I will assume that with that level of technology it would cost me next to nothing to copy a book from the friend who recommended it. >Would you bother with pirating? Sure. And I'd send _$4_ to authors whose books I liked, and nothing to authors whose books were duds. In article <61915@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >So you envision a situation where: > >a) most people don't pay for the service but borrow free copies from >friends, and No. I envision a situation where you are unable to _require_ that most people pay for data. My whole thesis is that some people will pay nevertheless, and that the kind of data that such people prefer will tend to dominate the market. >And when you make your estimates of bandwidth into a household, [...] >those'll be the technologies in use for the next 30-50 years [...] I could easily be off by a factor of 2, or even an order of magnitude, in my estimate of how soon the technology will make my scenario possible. But barring an informational police state, it's a good bet that my prediction will come true sometime in the next 500 years. In article peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >If they can only sell the movies to 100,000 individuals >because the other 9,900,000 would-be viewers are pirating it, they will >have to increase the sale price by a factor of 10 to make a profit. > >Or else reduce the quality by the same factor. Or start making movies that appeal to people who tend to feel a duty to compensate the producers of the information they consume. In article rjc@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes: >_Somone_ has to pay. If by this you mean that payments need to occur, then you're right. If by this you mean that someone has to be required to pay, then you're wrong. >If the person that buys it passes it on to 20 other people >then they will have to pay 21 times what they otherwise might to get >it in the first place. That's only true if none of the 20 other people decide to compensate the producers. -- Brian Holtz Article 739 of rec.arts.sf.misc: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc Subject: Re: The future of printed books -- solved. Bonus: an experiment! Date: 20 Jan 1992 22:13:58 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <0PFLeB16w164w@mantis.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: How many people save copies of Usenet articles with pencil and paper? In article <0PFLeB16w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (en font terrible) writes: >> Yes, the fiber network will cost money, >> but the marginal cost of slurping a few more gigabytes from a friend >> will be very, very low. > >Not if you have to buy special pirating hardware to do it. A century from now, it will be hard to buy home entertainment hardware that _can't_ do the requisite copying. >> Again, marginal distribution costs will be near zero, and artists will >> have no way ensuring they get their buck or two per copy -- _unless_ >> the state brutally enforces my per-customer data-stamping scheme. I >> don't think we'll stand for it. > >If the alternative is "no music, no books, no movies" It isn't. The alternative is "no music, books, or movies for audiences who don't tend to voluntarily compensate those who produce their entertainment". >all you need is for some combination of: > >a) The duplicating hardware being sufficiently expensive and tricky to obtain > that it's not worthwhile. When has the cost of transmitting, copying, and storing digital data _ever_ gone up? >b) The data (whatever it is) being sufficiently cheap that it's not worth > the hassle of finding a possibly tampered-with pirate copy when you can > get the real thing for no effort and minimal cost. If the data are also available for free from a friend, then this is no different from my scenario: you are voluntarily compensating the producers of the data. (Who would bother "tampering with" a song/movie/book?) >c) The data being provided with "added value" which cannot be duplicated > (see "Literary Machines", Ted Nelson). In that case, what's really being sold is the added value. People who want just the data will not be fooled. >But how many people do you know who spend thousands of dollars on an >expensive Xerox machine so that they can duplicate $5 books? About the same number who spend millions of dollars on an expensive assembly line just so that they can "duplicate" $20,000 cars. A more relevant question is: how many people do you know get out pencil and paper when they want to save a copy of a Usenet article? Do I really need to explain to you the difference between cars/books and information? -- Brian Holtz Article 942 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 21 Jan 1992 03:04:24 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <61806@apple.Apple.COM> <1992Jan20.155626.14870@tsltor.uucp> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: You can't ftp books yet. Nobody logs private cassette recordings. Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:744 rec.arts.sf.written:2469 rec.arts.sf.science:942 In article <1992Jan20.155626.14870@tsltor.uucp> stevew@tsltor.uucp (Stephen Webb) writes: >>And what will happen when a _thousand_ unpaid copies are passed around >>for every paid copy? > >Excessive speculation on your part. Most people are (a) basically honest and >(b) basically greedy. When one person pays a lot of money for something, >is that person really going to give it away free to someone else? You bet, in order to shaft the people who charged you so much in the first place. >Most books, magazines, and newspapers are read by, on average, more than one >person. If your speculation was well grounded, we would have observed the >phenomenon of thousands of unpaid copies of books, etc., floating around. >It just hasn't happened, and that's because of human nature. And I suppose the fact that we can't ftp books, magazines, and newspapers has had nothing to do with it... >>Is there any reason to think that the ratio of legal buyers to piracy >>recipients will do anything but climb? > >Yes. The [computer game] market is old enough now to have reached an >equilibrium. Perhaps. But software is a bad example, because there are lots of ways to persuade software buyers that they shouldn't pirate: upgrades, manuals, passwords, etc. As I said in my original posting, software will be the _one_ kind of consumer data that will be substantially immune to piracy, thanks to run-time licensing. >>A disgusting system. Not only does it fine me without proving that >>I've done anything wrong, but it also has no way of getting the fine >>to the creator whose creation gets copied. > >You have demonstrated your ignorance in this matter. The tax (or whatever you >call it) on cassette tapes, like the fees charged to radio stations, goes to >on of two "unions" of professional musicians. These unions distribute >royalties to their members in the form of cheques. Did you think music >played on the radio was free? No. Each time a song is played, the artist >gets a royalty (assuming they're a member of one of these unions, and that >the radio keeps an accurate log as required by their license agreement). _My_ ignorance? Are going to tell me that buyers of cassette tapes report to some union precisely whose music they've copied? Don't put words in my mouth and then call me ignorant, Mr. Webb. -- Brian Holtz Article 945 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 21 Jan 1992 04:57:43 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <98970@brunix.UUCP> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: "Roseanne" costs $.05/household/week. Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:747 rec.arts.sf.written:2476 rec.arts.sf.science:945 In article rjc@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes: >I can't imagine a shareware feature film. Too big and most importantly >too costly. In-theater shows will still be able to produce ticket sales, _as long as_ 1) theaters stay technologically ahead of home video, 2) home video release continues to be delayed compared to theater release, and 3) theaters can prevent patrons from furtively making quality recordings. >TV, which is where I came into this, is just as bad. I imagine that some costs might be defrayed by people willing to pay for realtime viewing of first-run programming, and by the advertising that might be inserted into such live programming. At any rate, consider that a hit TV series costs a few hundred thousand dollars a week to produce and is seen by 15 million households, so the average household would only have to chip in a nickel. -- Brian Holtz Article 993 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 23 Jan 1992 21:00:17 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <98970@brunix.UUCP> <1992Jan23.173022.6578@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Summary: A socialist? Me? Don't you know who I _am_? Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:769 rec.arts.sf.written:2595 rec.arts.sf.science:993 In article <1992Jan23.173022.6578@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de> schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Joachim Schrod) writes: >> I envision a situation where you are unable to _require_ that >> most people pay for data. My whole thesis is that some people will >> pay nevertheless, and that the kind of data that such people prefer >> will tend to dominate the market. > >May I kindly point out, that there is already a theory for a society >based on such circumstances? The theory was made by Karl Marx and >Friedrich Engels, such an utopian society is called socialistic. (You're calling _me_ a socialist? Would you care to step into talk.politics.theory and say that again? ;) Sorry, but socialism is the idea that resources -- and in particular, the means of production -- should taken from whoever happens to have them and distributed to the masses. By contrast, what I'm talking about is a kind of data vending in which vendors realize that data distribution cannot be prevented and so tailor their data to appeal to audiences who will compensate them voluntarily. -- Brian Holtz Article 998 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Advertisement skippers (was: the "Printed Books" funfest) Date: 24 Jan 1992 05:12:19 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <98970@brunix.UUCP> <1992Jan23.153256.11415@tsltor.uucp> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.misc:776 rec.arts.sf.written:2619 rec.arts.sf.science:998 In article <1992Jan23.153256.11415@tsltor.uucp> stevew@tsltor.uucp (Stephen Webb) writes: >I think people's biggest reservation about an economy based on honesty is that >people will be dishonest if they know they can get away with it. I'm not saying that the whole economy could or should be run on a merit system. I'm saying that, barring illiberal police tactics, the market for private consumption of pure data will have to eventually be based on voluntary payments. >I must confess that I use certain shareware programs that I have >never contributed for. Not that I begrudge the money, in fact I would have >spent the money to buy them (at regular software prices), but I just >couldn't be bothered going to the bank, getting an international money order >for US$10 (or whatever), going to the post office and getting a single >US-rate stamp, buying an envelope, writing the address, putting it all >together, and mailing it. EXACTLY!!!! With the current infratructure, people like you and me consider the effort of compensating data producers to be more costly than the actual amount of compensation we would be willing to remit. But it would be a different story if you could instantaneously conpensate a data producer by selecting a menu item with your mouse, or hitting a button on your TV's remote control. >Even assuming sufficiently complex technology that >I could just tell my bank account to credit someone else's bank account, >I'd still have to make the effort for something I've already consumed. The difference is that with good enough technology you could compensate the producer while enjoying the product, without affecting your enjoyment. If anything, the biggest difficulty with my scenario will be building a compensation infrastructure that is sufficiently efficient and simple to use. >No, make me pay before I consume and I'm more likely to do it. I'd _like_ to make you pay, but I'm arguing that I won't be _able_ to make you pay. -- Brian Holtz Article 3307 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech Subject: Teleportation == suicide Date: 23 Sep 1992 05:34:59 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 100 Distribution: usa Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.science:3307 rec.arts.startrek.tech:4062 In article <1686825B1.PKJAMES@UKCC.UKY.EDU> PKJAMES@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes: >Jeffrey D Koperski writes: > >one time watching Star Trek, >I happened to think about what the transporter did. It murders you, takes notes while doing so, and makes a duplicate of you somewhere else. Consider: would you agree to step in to the following prototype transporter? The prototype takes a snapshot of you, and then uses a laser to slowly dismember you and send your raw material along. On the other side, it uses the raw material to reconstruct the snapshot -- which was taken before the agonizing dismemberment occurred. Naturally, the reconstructed entity has no memory (perhaps even no knowledge -- see note, below) of dismemberment. So, if you buy the theory that it's really "you" on the other side, then you would have no fear of stepping into such a ghastly machine. Now, would you step into it? I think not. (Note: if the reconstructee's *knowledge* of the dismemberment bothers you, we can stipulate that the transportee wasn't told about the process. Now put yourself in the shoes of the transporter operator, and pretend that the transportee is your most dear loved one. Could you throw the switch and listen to her screams as her body is slowly sliced and diced?) >Did it "copy" with atoms from the new place or truly "transport" the >original ones a a unit through time and space. To the best of our scientific knowledge, it doesn't matter. Atoms are atoms. There's no reason to think that, e.g., our soul adheres to our atoms. (If immaterial things like souls exist, then everything I say in this article is invalid.) >That made me question what "identity" was. Was >it the dynamic processes the atoms were going through, or the atoms >themself that were my soul-identity, or both? Mostly the former. Identity depends on continuity. To make a non-murderous teleporter, you'd need to make one that opens a space warp for the teleportee to step through. Or, you could gradually strip the teleportee apart, cell by cell (or whatever), and as you accrete the pieces on the other side, keep the two halves of him in causal contact (by transmitting info about what nerve impulses, etc. that pass between them). So while identity isn't preserved across discontinuous replication, it can perhaps be forked: as you accrete the pieces on the other side, accrete them redundantly, side-by-side. This would have the effect of creating separate entities, each with equal (and valid) claims to the identity of the transportee. Note that this only works if the redundantly accreted pieces all behave the same way during the accretion process. (Otherwise, you have to pick one distinguished piece to provide the causal feedback, and that piece becomes the identity-carrier.) >I reasoned no matter >what it was, there was some possibility that after my "death" and my >sense of time was gone, millions of galaxies would explode, form, reform >etc. and that it was not at all impossible for all of my atoms to >comeback together under the same circumstances or slightly different >than before my death. At that point would I not have a sense of myself? "I", who? Yes, that entity would be as convinced as you are now that he shares your identity. However, he would be wrong. (Similarly, you could be wrong NOW. For example, the universe might have ended while you were reading this sentence, and then reformed itself eons later in exactly the same configuration. But of course, as Hume tells us, this problem bedevils all knowledge that would aspire to apodictic certainty, so we shouldn't pay any special heed to this bedevilment when considering knowledge-of-identity.) I wouldn't step into a discontinuous transporter to get somewhere faster, no matter how painless the dismemberment process. However, some people might, because we all share an experience that isn't too different (in the sense that the stream of consciousness is discontinuous, at least at some naive level): sleep. (Interestingly enough, it was a Trek episode in which a god-cum-human entity named Q awoke in terror after his first experience of sleep.) But we know enough about what actually happens during sleep that it's hard to call the two discontinuities equivalent. But there *are* circumstances under which I would submit to discontinuous teleportation. Why? 1) There are loved ones who I would not want to see needlessly deprived of all Brian Holtz-ish experiences, and 2) I feel a not insignificant amount of affection for my dopplegangers, and so I wouldn't deprive one of existence merely for spite. So if I were close to death (or if non-invasive techniques were invented), I would not object to replication. Almost all of this stuff is discussed in _The Mind's I_, edited by Doug Hofstadter. -- Brian Holtz Article 3314 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord.Eng.Sun.COM!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech Subject: Re: Teleportation == suicide Date: 24 Sep 1992 04:28:28 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 56 Distribution: usa Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord Xref: exodus.Eng.Sun.COM rec.arts.sf.science:3314 rec.arts.startrek.tech:4073 In article alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com (Alan Braggins) writes: >Most SF transporters are only capable of gaining sufficient information >to reconstruct by recording during dismemberment. Otherwise you could >just make a copy from other raw material Yes, but once the information is available, why can't they use it to construct a pair at the far side? >(Trek replicators work like this - >they can create inanimate matter from a "snapshot", but don't have enough >detail for thought processes). Out of curiosity: does Trek canon say, then, that one can use a replicator to build a perfect corpse from a living template? >However, consider the following prototype not-a-transporter. You will >be subjected to enormous pain in the process of extracting information >from you, then subjected to selective amnesia so you forget being >tortured. Would you willingly agree to this? Absolutely not. (Note that the 'amnesia' argument has traditionally been used to justify withholding anesthesia from infants during e.g. circumcision. Also, my anesthetist father tells me that there are anesthetics that cause you to forget things that happened in the few minutes before the anesthetic was administered. I'll have to ask him if it can make you forget torture or emotional trauma.) >Does this have anything to do >with whether you are still yourself afterwards? If the "subjecting to selective amnesia" isn't a discontinuous process, then no. (An example of a discontinuous process would be disassembling you and then reassembling you in the state you were before the torture.) >The Trek transporter nominally sends the actual subatomic particles >of the original. Other SF transporters copy with atoms at source >(possibly with information transmitted at light speed between, >possibly with "subspace" or other FTL communication), These two kinds of transportation are lethal. To be faxed is to be killed. >others just link two different bits of space directly (through >sub/warp/hyperspace or "wormholes") so you just step through. This is no more lethal then stepping onto an airliner. >In 10 years time you will have few or none of the same atoms in your >body. You will have a continuous sense of identity though. Precisely. -- Brian Holtz Article 4304 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: appserv.Eng.Sun.COM!tooltalk!holtz From: holtz@tooltalk.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Wreaking a habitat (was Re: Wrecking a Planet Date: 12 Jan 1993 07:54:28 GMT Organization: Sun Lines: 47 Message-ID: References: <1993Jan9.200929.11673@julian.uwo.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: tooltalk In article rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes: >I've been saying all along that smart missiles would be needed to attack >a habitat. That's the whole problem: you need smart missiles, which are >much more expensive than the bombs and decoys that suffice to attack a >planet; No. Delta-vee (energy) is expensive; smartness (sensors, processing power) is cheap. At extra-atmospheric ranges, there's essentially no cost difference between a ballistic projectile and one that has a little terminal guidance. Star Wars can't work. If my target is city-sized, and your target is every thermonuclear weapon I send at my target, and our resources and technology are anywhere *near* comparable, I'm going to win. Period. As for "decoys" -- who needs "decoys"? The only reason ICBM attacks aren't stealthy is they have an atmosphere to push through on the way up and on the way down -- both activities tend to give your position away. A space station will not see a thermonuclear missile attack coming. For whatever range your space station can sense warheads being inserted into a rendezvous trajectory, there will be a greater range, from which they can secretly be launched. Stealthy cool warheads on a trajectory toward your space station won't be seen until they're too close to do much about. Any point defenses could blinded by a some selective premature detonations. >And the radiators are not an especially tempting target. Even their >total destruction would probably not kill the habitat, since they could >shut down all nonessential power while repairing at least part of the >capacity. And their total destruction would require hits with nuclear >missiles Bingo. Don't be distracted by all this talk of gravel and crowbars and depleted uranium. If I'm going to pay the cost of throwing stuff at you at a few dozen kps from a few AU away, you can be damn sure that the stuff is gonna be chock full of *enriched* uranium, etc. And it's going to have an eye and a little reaction mass to make sure it sees you and hits you. E=mc^2 means I can kill you and you can kill me. Your only possible defense is to hide inside a Star Fleet Mark I Force Shield, or inside a planetoid. In the latter case, be prepared to be buried inside it. Forever. -- Brian Holtz Article 4387 of rec.arts.sf.science: Path: appserv.Eng.Sun.COM!netcord!holtz From: holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science Subject: Re: Wreaking a habitat (was Re: Wrecking a Planet Date: 16 Jan 1993 01:34:21 GMT Organization: Sun Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: <1993Jan12.041012.3461@Princeton.EDU> <1iu1o3INNr5u@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: netcord In article szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes: >rock would >have to be stealth in radio, IR, optical, etc. This coating becomes >more expensive than cheap electronics for the low delta-v guided missiles >I have proposed as weapons against a space colony. [...] > >Any earlier poster suggested building nukes is cheap. Sophisticated >chemical processing and precision machining are required, and warheads >typically cost over $10 million per. In comparison, a little hand-launched >guided missile can cost less than $10K What I said was that the predominant cost in attacking a space colony is the energy required to deliver your payload. Once you've paid the cost of intercepting a space colony with a payload, it's silly for the payload to be an inert KE warhead or a chemical explosive. A "little hand-launched missile" might only cost $10K, but it will not get anywhere near the space station unless it's the final stage of a propulsion system with enormous energy costs. By analogy, the best SDI system is a 50-cent bullet between the eyes of the guy in the silo about to turn the launch key, but getting the bullet into the room in the first place costs a tad more than 50 cents. In fact, the cheapest way we've come up with so far involves bringing the "bullet" in through the ceiling from low sub-orbit, the cost of which is already so high we decided to go ahead and make the bullet a plutonium-deuterium "dum dum" bullet... -- Brian Holtz