Rants & Raves
More Heresies Alvin Toffler ("Anticipatory Democracy," Wired 4.07, page 45) is wrong. We're not "straining all of [the Constitution's] provisions judicially to make it fit changed realities" because the Constitution is obsolete. We're doing it because the legislators we keep electing – and re-electing – keep writing legislation that is unconstitutional on its face. Toffler's own example, the cyberporn issue, is a case in point: what part of "Congress shall make no law" do you really think Senator James Exon didn't understand?
We don't need a new constitution; we need new legislators who will keep their oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution we already have.
Similarly, Representative Rick White's solution to the current state of congressional techno-illiteracy ("I'm from Congress. I'm Here to Help," Wired 4.07, page 80) is no solution at all. He would have us "raise Congress's consciousness about the value of the Internet." Bull. If a candidate doesn't already grasp the value of the Internet, he or she is far too ignorant to be trusted with public office.
Lex Alexander lex@nr.infi.net
Nano No No Nanobucks ("The Buck Starts Here," Wired 4.08, page 132) will fail to catch on because they're a bad deal for everyone: Consumers do not want to be nickeled and dimed for bits of information, and no merchant will pay a 20 to 30 percent processing fee for each transaction. Remember the fuss about American Express charging 3 to 4 percent while Visa and Mastercard charged 2 to 3 percent! The processors themselves can't make a profit on even 20 to 30 percent when the base is a bunch of micropayments. There just isn't enough money generated to cover the cost of the infrastructure.
As the author points out, the payment solution for the sale of bits of information online is right under our noses. It's called a subscription.
Leslie Ehrlich ehrlic1@ix.netcom.com
The Cult of First-Year Journalism Aside from the details of Shoko Asahara and Aum's forays into weapons and terrorism ("The Cult at the End of the World," Wired 4.07, page 134), there are two philosophically interesting questions to be asked about the cult. First, how did it recruit these "brilliant" minds, and what did it offer its initiates? Second, what is Aum's religious/philosophical pretension? How do its followers explain their ideology, epistemology, and/or ontology to the discriminating, rational intellects of Japan's most educated citizens?
For lack of information and investigation, the authors avoid these questions and focus on aspects of Aum that a first-year journalism student could dig up. I realize that Wired is not an academic journal (nor should it be), but come on: "A psychopathic band of brilliant scientists, bent on indiscriminate murder and the world's end." It reads like something from People magazine.
Joe Schmelzer joes@3ad.com
A Bit of Bit History In "Do You Know the Way to Ban Jos�?" (Wired 4.08, page 45), John Heilemann asserts that "no industry since the dawn of the New Deal has developed more free of the hand of government than the bit business; and, not coincidentally, no industry has been so disengaged from the ins and outs of politics."
Really? My first programming job, back in 1967, included work for the Air Force Satellite Control Facility, located by Moffett Federal Air Field near Sunnyvale, California. Does Heilemann think Silicon Valley sprang up by accident? It was seeded by billions of government aerodollars that were blown to San Jose by the very winds of politics and policy that he pooh-poohs. Go back another 20 years to the birth of the ENIAC, a project fostered by the US Army to solve ballistics problems. Look at the depression of the computer business in 1970 when aerospace funding bit the dust; it's all part of a pattern of extensive government funding based on a belief (correct, in my opinion) that the computer business was a vital national interest. And given that no government money ever flowed free of political influence, the second part of the assertion fails as well.
Ron Enfield enfield@worldnet.att.net
Rants and Rights One may agree that government shouldn't censor electronic data communications for the sake of minors, but that doesn't mean that no one should ("The Rights of Kids in the Digital Age," Wired 4.07, page 120). In the "Of Paternal Power" chapter in Two Treatises of Government, John Locke observed that children are not born in the full state of equality, although they are born to it. He said that because children lack the full reason necessary to protect their interests, nature provides them with guardians (parents) until they reach the age of reason.
Jon Katz's description of Locke's philosophy more closely resembles that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Locke carefully distinguished between the bonds of nature (e.g., parenthood) and the bonds of civil society, which are created by social contract and limited by the rights of nature: life, liberty, and property. Children do not have the rights of liberty and property, because their reason is still immature.
In his philosophy, Rousseau treated children as the full equals of adults. In �mile he argued that children are naturally good and reasonable, to the extent that they know better than adults their own best interests. In real life, however, Rousseau ignored his own philosophy, committing his children born of a mistress to an orphanage. In real life, socialist states – such as Hitler's Germany and communist China – have used Rousseau's arguments to defend state control of children over the natural rights of parents.
Martin R. Noland 75113.2703@compuserve.comm
I'd like to suggest one small addition to Article V: The Rights of Children. Children have the right to be represented in articles written about their political rights. They should be interviewed, quoted, and otherwise consulted on all points made on their behalf. To exclude their voices from such works of journalism does infinitely more harm than any V-chip ever will.
Kevin Press press@interlog.com
The depiction of children on pages 120-121 as glaring, humorless, sulking, resentful little brats is neither hip nor cool … it is exploitative and trendy. I think they are presented in a most negative, offensive manner, and if any of them belonged to me I would take immediate steps to restore their childhood.
Bill Gunter bill.gunter@24stex.com
If kids get to possess cyber rights, don't they deserve, at least, a possessive apostrophe?
Andrea Albi aalbi@aol.com
Angel Gabriel I couldn't help noticing that most of "To Surf and Protect" (Wired 4.07, page 90) wasn't about CyberAngels at all. Half of the article rehashed what some of our critics have said (secondhand journalism?), while the rest was a personal character assassination of CyberAngels cofounder Curtis Sliwa, who is not directly involved with running the project.
Hostile critics have made numerous inaccurate accusations: CyberAngels don't understand the global nature of the Internet (we are 1,100 members in 32 countries and we don't understand the global nature of the Internet?). They don't realize that posts can be forged (this was one of the first things that happened to us when we started a year ago). They could obstruct FBI investigations and be criminally liable (some CyberAngels are actually teaching federal agents how to download and decode binaries from Usenet. In our experience, the Feds need and welcome all the help they can get. By the way, we follow FBI guidelines for the gathering of evidence in child pornography cases).
By far the biggest misrepresentation of our work is to confuse our fight against Internet crime with the criminalization of free speech. Some netizens are unable to differentiate the two. Are CyberAngels trying to take away other Net users' freedom to criticize the government or to play adult games in private? Absolutely not. What about the freedom to sexually exploit children, to cause others distress, and to prey on the weaker members of the evolving Net society? Can those activities really be defended on the grounds of "freedom"?
We are not pressuring ISPs for mandatory speech codes – nothing could be further from the truth. We are simply asking sysadmins to take sterner measures against activities such as online stalking, electronic harassment, sabotage, and uninvited obscene and threatening communications.
Is the Net an electronic Garden of Eden? Or is Wired living in denial, ignoring the reality of Internet crime? Look carefully and you'll find people suffering the consequences of an electronic society in which "anything goes." The growing number of victims that CyberAngels deal with on a daily basis shows the hard reality of Internet crime. Of course, these victims are a minority, but does that mean we should pretend they don't exist?
Many users believe in self-regulation, but for too many people that means "leave us alone to do whatever we want." This self-centered and antisocial attitude opens the door to criminals. Can you imagine a society with no laws and no law enforcement? Is the Net different? I've found nothing to indicate that behavior online has evolved to the point that enforceable rules of conduct aren't necessary.
Let me finally point out to Wired's readers that CyberAngels are not made up of users who have just bought their first computers, but include expert users with 15-plus years of Internet experience – programmers, sysadmins, and a growing number of professional law-enforcement people. In addition, we are familiar with US and international laws on entrapment and inadmissible evidence and on obscenity and the sexual exploitation of children.
Do CyberAngels believe in freedom of speech? Absolutely. That belief is in our mission statement. We also believe in the responsibilities that come with it, and we believe that freedom is not possible without personal safety and security from criminal predators. If you believe in freedom, then you fight crime – it's as simple as that.
Gabriel Hatcher
CyberAngels Director angels@wavenet.com
Does Not Compute While I agree with Harald Preissler and Burkhard Jaerisch's premise that the computer industry isn't as "clean" as it should be ("A Material World," Wired 4.06, page 124), their numbers are incredible. Making one computer uses nearly 9,000 gallons of water? A company that makes a million units a year dumps 9 billion gallons overboard? One computer results in 640 pounds of waste? What does the manufacturer do, carve out the case from a solid block of steel and throw out the parings? Does it recycle the water and materials? Where did these numbers come from?
Phil McCole mccole@tiac.net
Our article was based on an ecological study by Andreas Grote – published in the German computer magazine c't ("Gr�ne Rechnung," issue 12, page 92) – that includes data from both the manufacturing process and from the refining and production of raw materials (e.g., aluminum from Brazil, copper from Chile). All of these steps must be taken into account to calculate the full ecological impact of PC production.
The "out of sight, out of mind" thinking permeates discussion of information societies, where material flows is too often neglected. More awareness of material flows is crucial to our future.
– Harald Preissler and Burkhard Jaerisch
Amen I was shocked and horrified by the image accompanying "Calling for Christ" (Wired 4.07, page 64). To see the Lord Jesus in the midst of dying for the sins of the world (including this one, I suppose) with a farcical hand and phone to his head was disgusting. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I too, will forgive you, but I won't ever buy another issue.
Gregory Worona gworona@ipa.net
Kudos for another great issue! The "Calling for Christ" piece quickly grabbed my attention. Is it not enough for the Christian Coalition to try and control everything we see and hear? Now a group of hardcore, militant Christians wants to "turn America into a church-ruled nation." Is everything our forefathers worked for to be thrown away because a minority wants to establish a dictatorship in the name of Christ? What happened to the First Amendment? You know, that pesky little clause tacked on to the Constitution to guarantee freedom of speech and religion?
Watch out folks. Your freedoms are being stripped from you one at a time.
E. Eli Boaz eli@mail.pernet.net
The MBone's Connected to the…. I was pleased to see your article on the multicast backbone or MBone ("Multicasting," Wired 4.06, page 86). Multicasting is critical to the Internet – today in video broadcasting, and, over time, in applications such as file transfer and information update.
But the article's assertion that MBone protocols won't scale to very large networks, and Christian Huitema's statement that the MBone "should have remained an experiment" are misleading. The IP multicasting protocols in use today, as well as new standards such as protocol independent multicast (PIM), are very scalable. The MBone was designed to allow users to experiment with multicast well before the Net as a whole could support multicast routing. The current tunneling scheme does have limitations on the amount of multicast traffic it can handle, but those limitations will vanish as the Internet is upgraded to support multicast.
The MBone is a more practical approach to distributing audio/video information than flooding the Net with lots of point-to-point unicast data streams.
Of course, I may be biased: my company develops and markets multimedia networking software.
Judy Estrin CEO, Precept Software Inc. Palo Alto, California
Splitting Fibers … er … Fibres. Karen Coyle's letter about indexing the Web is so indicative (Rants & Raves, Wired 4.08, page 30). Her example of a search on fiber optics being language specific to English highlights a further problem: fiber is the US spelling – the UK spelling is fibre. Even people who speak the same language cannot find each other!
Jonathan A. Gwyer jon@jagnet.demon.co.uk
Where Is the Damn Can of Raid? Funny how the political views of this software pirate ("Computer Insect," Wired 4.07, page 82) prevent him from seeing the more common reasons that piracy prevails throughout the developing markets of the world: the legal versions of the damn stuff are frighteningly expensive for people whose income amounts to a few hundred dollars or less a month.
Large American software companies often hook up with local distributors in Asia, and these companies, apart from being generally corrupt, offer little or no service whatsoever. On top of that, people who need computers for their livelihoods read about billionaire software executives and millionaire midlevel workers in America. Is it any wonder that there is such a demand for pirated stuff? (Of course, the fact that local governments are the primary venture capitalists behind the pirating enterprises is another matter.)
The pirate industry is simply nature's way of saying that software is too expensive and that to produce for the global market, the price needs to reflect the worldwide economy and not just the high economic status of corporate America.
Rande Jaffe benidafka@aol.com
The brag-boast-and-strut by this Chinese software pirate absolutely kills me. I swear to God that William Gibson made this guy up in 1984, right down to the bomber jacket.
Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com
Not an Official AT&T Response The letter you published from Jo Schaper regarding AT&T's WorldNet service is almost all false (Rants & Raves, Wired 4.08, page 34). I run Netscape 3.0 with WorldNet. AT&T does not tell users to use only 1.22, it just happens to be currently bundled with the software (2.0 is coming soon). The request for deletion of other Netscapes implies removal of lesser versions, not upgrades.
WorldNet does not get disconnected by incoming calls. WorldNet allows for prefix settings that cancel call waiting, et cetera. If the writer couldn't understand this, a professional at AT&T WorldNet would have happily helped.
Why read newsgroups offline? For US$19.95 a month, you get unlimited access to the Internet, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There is nothing messed up with AT&T's phone directory, though Schaper fails to define "messed up."
John Bobela johnbobela@worldnet.att.net
Linguistics 101 It plays to the worst kind of nerd stereotype that when Wired runs an article on language ("Dejpu'bogh Hov rur qablIj!" Wired 4.08, page 84), the piece focuses on Klingon and Elvish.
One of my many questions about this very questionable piece arose from Gavin Edwards's comment (in the fourth paragraph) that there are "5,000 human languages spoken today." Later, he refers to "the tens of thousands of languages that humankind has spoken through the ages." Tens of thousands? This would mean that there are at least 15,000 attested dead languages. True? Not even close. With more than 5 billion loyal users, human language has an installed base that puts other software to shame. Next time you run a piece about language, get someone – like a linguist – who really understands the material.
Gabriel Cheifetz gabecheif@aol.com
Joy, Fervor, and Na�vete I may qualify as your most devoted reader, having read literally every word in every issue of Wired. The first year was a revelation: I have never felt anything so in tune with my desires. Imagine my gradual horror as the somewhat predictable end of the third year led to the only occasionally useful fourth year. From wild, hypnotic, have-to-read-cover-to-cover-right-now to only occasionally useful is a sad descent.
Where is the craziness that inspired "the music that helped get this magazine out" and "drugs of choice" (I've read them all) and that proselytized McLuhan's metonymic mysteries in mastheads?
Before I cancel my multiyear subscription and am forced to read nothing,please shake yourselves up and embrace the joy, fervor, and na�vet� of those early months. Re-invigorate Wired. My cool friends no longer read it, and you're about to lose your most loyal subscriber!
Charles L. Perkins clp@virtual.rendezvous.com
Render Bender I found Charles Platt's piece on Microsoft becoming a cool company hilarious ("They Render unto Bill," Wired 4.07, page 114). Microsoft on technology's edge? Unlike Apple, which routinely comes out with cool technology and can't seem to make a dime off it, Microsoft is buying up bit wizards.
Did it ever occur to the author that the reason for buying all those brains wasn't, as he says, to "shape the future" and launch really cool software, but to prevent it from being released? Not that I'm suspicious of Redmond or anything (heh heh).
Meanwhile, I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up when 3-D lead man Jim Kajiya actually does something that "has an effect" on the lives of those millions that Nathan Myhrvold talks about.
PJ West pjwest@wdl.lmco.com
Undo The Naked Truth: Ned Greene's Naked Empire animation short ("Instant Rendering," Wired 4.08, page 42) d�buted at the Siggraph Electronic Film Festival in August. n Bon Voyager: We misplaced the s from Mark Brems's name when we quoted him in "The Teachings of Bob Stein" (Wired 4.07, page 126).n Better Visibility: The photo accompanying "Invisibly Interactive" (Wired 4.07, page 64) should have included the touch screen and headphones that are a part of Visible Interactive's product, based on the Newton platform.
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