Rogan and Gupta
This week's hardass interview of Gupta is obviously refreshing and maybe just a teensy fraction hopeful.

Rogan had all the EXPERIENTIAL FACTS on his side, not EXPERT THEORIES. He RELENTLESSLY pursued Gupta, who had only the usual media murder on his side. No pause, no quarter, no room for "agree to disagree". These are the facts and you are LYING LYING LYING LYING. Gupta finally buckled, after playing all the usual shit games, and admitted that he was LYING.

In a totally busted and de-trusted former civilization, where all leaders and influencers are either holocaustal NAZI NAZI NAZI demons or fake Pied Pipers, RELENTLESS hammering on the side of facts is vanishingly rare.

Why is this possibly micro-hopeful?

Because in this instance CNN was punching up, not punching down. Rogan's audience is bigger than CNN's audience, and his audience is paying specifically for his program, not just part of a Basic Cable Package.

Media are accustomed to punching down, slaughtering the low-status Deplorables. Rogan looks like a Deplorable to them, but his AUDIENCE IS BIGGER. The usual condescension and arrogance doesn't work when you're punching upward.
  ¶ 9:23 AM

  Edmund Berkeley on Parkinson
From an article in Computers and Automation, Sept 73, p 6 of the PDF.

He's discussing Establishments in the broadest sense.

From my study of and experience with establishments, I believe the following natural laws apply:

• Because an establishment develops to perform a function, usually at the outset it performs the function very well, and so it derives a great deal of its strength from its belief in the "obvious" importance and worthwhileness of its function.

• As an establishment ages over the years, it tends to become more and more blind and bureaucratic in its behavior.

• An establishment develops fashions, fads, and mythology such as the "national security" blanket; the "peace with honor" hoax; etc.

• An establishment will not willingly tolerate truth that puts it in an unfavorable light.

• An establishment is a kind of system, and therefore should be made subject to all the laws for the proper functioning of systems, INCLUDING FEEDBACK CONTROL.

In other words, for nearly all the years that an establishment is in existence, the correction and modification of that establishment by applying truth to it is vitally necessary.

Here is another reason why those persons who are now ca!led "computer professionals" need to concern themselves with truth, in great variety and on many levels. Information processing is really important only if you are dealing with the truth.

Unfortunately it didn't happen. The total transition from analog to digital removed feedback from the technical understanding of the profession. Share Value removed feedback from the economic side of the business. Epstein removed facts and truth.

The economic end would probably be easiest to fix, by restoring profit to business and restoring the profit MOTIVE to establishments and governments. Ideally an establishment should gain money by SOLVING problems, not by UNSOLVING problems. I've been discussing this fix in the Trinity House theme.

Labels: Parkinson, Trinity House

  ¶ 11:43 PM

  Constants and Variables 168, Lowenstein edition
Since I just bashed Unz, let's balance it with praise for ONE of the columnists. Barrett appears (at the moment anyway) to be a relatively true beacon. He hasn't showed the Pied Piper colors YET.

His latest audio clip is an interview with a pair of high-status hippies, Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould. Unlike most high-status hippies, Paul and Elizabeth didn't join Deepstate. They continued working on the side of truth.

They see more or less the same things I'm seeing, from a different angle. I see these monstrosities from a scientist/engineer temperament. Paul and Elizabeth (and Barrett as well) see the trends from a historian/journalist temperament.

The story starts with a point of intersection between the two angles, a 'controlled experiment' that shows the distinction between high-status and low-status hippies. The constant in the experiment is Allard Lowenstein.

Paul Fitzgerald met Allard Lowenstein while involved in the 1980 Teddy Kennedy campaign. Lowenstein recognized him as a distant relative of the Kennedys, and confided in him that the truth about the assassinations would eventually come out. (Of course it hasn't yet.)

I met Lowenstein in Jamestown NY while I was campaigning for Gene McCarthy in 1968. A group of Bobby Kennedy campaigners was also working in Jamestown. Lowenstein gathered up both crews and gave us a pep talk. So I got a handshake from Lowenstein.

High status vs low-status.

Paul and Elizabeth discuss four important themes at length in the interview.

1. The Fairness Doctrine WORKED, and we need to bring it back.

2. Medieval mode. We're back in 1300.

3. Endless wars and staged "threats".

4. Psychopaths are in charge, and psychopaths have a burning need to OBLITERATE EVERYTHING. Each demon wants to be the SOLE OCCUPANT OF THE UNIVERSE.

In each case, Paul and Elizabeth treat these subjects from a historical and theological angle, while I treat them from neurology and the predestined course of the universe. Both angles are needed for a complete picture.

Labels: 2000=1000, Constants and Variables, endless hell, Parkinson

  ¶ 12:27 PM

  An odd type of identity theft
Sometimes I'll look at an old article on a website and see a comment that looks like something I'd write. Hey, there's a kindred spirit! Then I notice the name and realize it WAS me, under the handle of Polistra or one of my older Ockham-style handles.

What's the opposite? Seeing a comment that DOESN'T look like something I'd write, then checking the name and seeing it was posted by Polistra.

The latter doesn't happen often because most websites don't allow you to pick a name that's already used.

Apparently Unz doesn't follow that rule. I hadn't been commenting much there because I got tired of the false flags. Nearly everything on Unz is obvious 'controlled opposition', steering dissidents into positions that can be tinfoiled.

Now I'm seeing prolific comments under my handle, and they're NOT the sort of thing I'd write. Many of these comments are being 'moderated'.

I don't think there's any meaningful way to take action, and the spoof is probably harmless unless the spoofer gets seriously illegal. Unz's moderators are pretty careful about seriously illegal stuff.

All I can do is post a notice, here and at Unz, that 'the original Polistra' will never comment again, so everything under this handle from now on will be from 'the spoof Polistra'.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 5:41 AM

  RAMAC
In 1957 IBM's RAMAC system brought together a number of trends and patterns into a new EQUIPMENT.

Trend 1:

Ramac was the first EQUIPMENT for business. In military procurement an equipment is a complete system including all parts necessary. An equipment for pigeoneers included a mobile loft, a prefab stationary loft, cages, feeding dishes, and pigeons. An equipment for aircraft radio included the transmitter and receiver in the aircraft, the transmitter and receiver on the ground, and all necessary wires and microphones and earphones and dynamotors and batteries and antennas.

IBM had been producing individual machines for business (hence the name) since 1890, but hadn't made an equipment before. RAMAC was designed from end to end for the needs of accounting, not for any other skill or department. The acronym was Random Access Method of Accounting and Control.

The M was a little tricky, and the AC was a pun of sorts. M originally stood for Memory, but some other company had the trademark, so M had to be Method. AC habitually stood for Automatic Computer in the usual acronyms, so the name was recognizable as meaning an Automatic Computer even though it 'really' meant Accounting and Control. And it was explicitly for accounting:



Note that the input and output were IBM's default cards. The system included at least one memory drum, which was an established machine at the time, and several magnetic memory matrices. Those weren't the New and Improved part. Reynold Johnson's multiple disk was the iconic part of RAMAC.

= = = = =

Trend 2:

Recording and storing sound and data have mostly taken separate paths, occasionally converging and then diverging again.

Recording and storing DATA has gone through three stages.

Tape, cylinder, disk.

Cards are a subset of tape. Jacquard stored programs on a chained set of metal cards, essentially a jointed tape. Early telegraph systems used punched tape, and computers continued the form well into the 1970s.

Hollerith established free-standing cards as the default physical data holder for computers in 1890.

Magnetic recording began with Valdemar Poulsen, primarily responsible for the wire recorder. Poulsen also tried a magnetic disk, similar in size and shape to the RAMAC disks.



Wire started widening into tape around 1940, as plastic manufacturing matured. Wire was never used for data, but magnetic tape quickly became the standard for internal storage of data, with cards as the human-readable inputs and outputs.

= = = = =

Trend 3:

Reynold Johnson joined IBM in the '30s and brought the world of analog thinking and sense transducing into the mechanistic and digital world of sorters and collators. Johnson's team was responsible for the multiple hard disk that formed the unique center of RAMAC.

= = = = =

IBM threw a nationwide party to introduce RAMAC, with showings in major cities, following GM's Motorama trend.



Again the name had to be slightly offbase. Ramarama wouldn't do.

Later, RAMAC served to keep score at the 1960 winter Olympics, with more hoopla.





Note the lack of OCD. Smoking and eating around the computer were EXPECTED. Machines and humans were both designed to tolerate normal life.

= = = = =

As an Equipment, RAMAC was meant to be set up in exactly one configuration, and IBM provided all necessary cabling to set it up.

Proper setup:



The floor plan with exact measurements:



= = = = =

Now my version, demonstrated as usual by Polistra and Happystar.





Unlike the other memory devices, the 350 hard disk had a glass front. Ramarama again.



It was sometimes called the Jukebox Memory for obvious reasons. Each disk was coated on both sides, and the arm traveled radially in and out to reach any point on any of the 50 disks in a few milliseconds. The up/down and in/out movements were both driven by servomotors. Up/down was on a pulley, and in/out was a rack and pinion. The base of the 305 box included an air compressor, with hoses to each head to maintain spacing from the surface.



Other parts of the system were older technologies, mainly using cards.

Each machine had at least one internal plugboard, continuing the programming technique that began with Hollerith's first 1880 census tabulator:



A fast printer was available:



The console at right had a card reader:



And a conventional typewriter for output in more readable form:



Only a few thousand RAMACs were installed, but they changed the landscape of computing.


= = = = =

Footnote: Credit to Ed Thelen's RAMAC site for most of the necessary information.

Labels: Alternate universe, Equipoise

  ¶ 9:16 AM

  Reprint on closure
From 2016, a different angle on the sequence of closing the physical world and then closing the virtual world.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Infrastructure is meant to be STATIC. Roads and bridges and sewer systems and rules of morality and rules of discussion and written laws and computer operating systems are all supposed to HOLD STILL so you can USE THEM to get things done. Navigating a fast-changing set of social or moral rules is like driving on Galloping Gertie. There may be a line down the middle where you can slowly crawl across to your destination, but the risk is so obvious that a sane human just doesn't bother. Your best bet for survival is to stay where you are. Shelter in place until the shaking reaches you and kills you.

I first grasped this point in 1978, realizing that a classroom conducted with old-fashioned decorum was MORE OPEN to discussion of new ideas. Classrooms conducted by Alinskyan 'anything goes' behavior were dominated by bullies and tyrants who enforced orthodox doctrine.

Constants allow variables, variables force constants.

I considered the same point in the realm of culture and religion here.

In the technical world:

When building an EXE for use in Windows, you can count on a consistent set of API rules. The native Win functions are well defined, and the workings of C++ are well defined. Provided you understand both of these rule sets and use them correctly, you can predict what will happen when you write something like

MoveToEx(this->hdc,NewPt.x,NewPt.y,NULL);

When you put all those pieces together into a self-contained EXE, you know it will run on the Win versions that were specified in the rules. If there are problems, you can be 99% sure the problems are your own fault, even though you'll always waste time by blaming Windows first.

In the new world of HTML5 and CSS and SVG and JS, none of those certainties exist. All of those standards are only partly standardized and constantly changing, and you can't count on a package running on all common platforms. If it runs today, a version change by Firefox or Chrome may blow it up tomorrow.

In other words, 'platform-independent' really means 'excruciatingly platform-dependent.'

The platform-makers obviously love this, because they have finally reclaimed the power they lost when Windows owned the universe.

= = = = =

Comes down to this pair:

When the rules are stable, ordinary people can function.

When the rules are changing all the time, only the rulemakers can function.

I was looking again at my courseware product in its old EXE form and in its new JS form. The old form was packed with ORIGINAL graphics and ORIGINAL ways of presenting material and asking questions. The new form looks just like any other Imperial web page, with rounded buttons telling User to SUBMIT. Why? Because I was required to use the 'Twitter Bootstrap' pre-written code as the base of the presentation. And why did I have to use 'Twitter Bootstrap'? Because it's AUTHORITATIVELY VARIABLE. It's not contained in my code. It's strictly owned and controlled by the MASTERS OF VARIATION.

POINT: You can't have your own tools.

You must borrow the tools provided by the Master, because only the Master knows which tools will work at this millisecond on the systems run by the Master. When the Empire DDOS's Twitter to prevent Assange from insulting the Empress, everything that actively uses Twitter resources, even indirectly or unintentionally, also goes down.

= = = = = END REPRINT from 2016.
  ¶ 12:14 AM

  Since I'm focusing....
Since I'm focusing on blackmail today, here's a post from last year that deserves more attention. The main point is that Deepstate uses blackmail to suppress rebellion, and ALSO uses blackmail to recruit competent blackmailers. It's a double-action tool. This was dramatically obvious in the Epstein story.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Basic generality: All factions of Deepstate are blackmailers.

Blackmailer is another name for secret-keeper. Any profession that has the habit of confidentiality will end up blackmailing and destroying normal people if it's not rigidly constrained.

The first Deepstate was Rome. Priests hear confessions, which gives them material for blackmail. Priests commit every crime in the book, and use Original Sin to make normal people feel guilty for the priestly crimes, while the priests are officially infallible, protected from prosecution by the secrets they own.

Later versions of Deepstate picked up the Roman model. Keep secrets to create blackmail, force normal people to bear the guilt. (Are you helping the Commies? Helping the RadicalIslamicTerrorists? Helping the AltRightQanonTrumpNazis? Helping the "virus"? You are, whether you know it or not.) Modern Deepstates always include spies and intel agencies, the best secret-keepers and blackmailers of all.

Wilson's version of Deepstate was developed by Lady Edgar, the ideal Roman and the champion blackmailer, starting the apostolic succession of Roy Cohn and Jeffrey Epstein. (Who comes after Epstein? No need for the question since Epstein is still running the show. He was simply castled.)

The tech Deepstate of the last two decades reproduces the priestly pattern with NDAs as the seal of confidentiality and social media as the confessional, letting Jobs and Zuck and Ellison know the innermost thoughts and detailed daily movements of the sinners.

This year's priesthood arises from the former "medical" profession, another gang of secret-keepers, specifically enabled by HIPAA. This year's Original Sin is "mask deniers" and "superspreaders". We must comply more and more in thought and deed while the rulers openly and brazenly violate their own rules and commit every crime in the book plus an infinite number of new crimes unimagined before. Infallible priests.

= = = = =

EXCEPTION: One branch of Deepstate doesn't quite fit the pattern. Environmentalism certainly has Original Sin, and has Carbon Offsets, an exact copy of indulgences. But it doesn't have an obsession with secrecy, and doesn't actively commit blackmail. The 2009 hack showed Michael Mann and his cohorts concealing data and pulling dirty tricks against competing academics. The tricks were just unfair, not forcible extortion. Smart competitors can counteract data suppression** and ruthless competition. You can't defend against forced extortion.

I was reminded of this by a splendid article in Unherd, written by an experienced British forester and farmer. Boris achieved Brexit so he could be MORE free to commit genocide. He started with "climate" genocide then smoothly jumped into the "virus" holocaust. This article points out the natural harm of planting trees as indulgences. Trees are imperialists. An overgrown forest is NOT a balanced landscape; everything in it is designed by the trees to favor the trees. There's more biodiversity in a cleared meadow under a powerline than in the virgin forests around the clearing.

Some of the "climate" operatives use social media to find and shame "climate" BadThinkers, but this isn't a formalized blackmail network, and there isn't a tradition of confessional secrecy in environmentalism.

When I see a major exception like this, it's a pretty good sign that I'm missing some of the facts. I'll keep watching.

= = = = =

** HIPAA and secrets are just plain impossible with natural data. Mann had a proprietary set of tree-ring and ice-core measurements that supposedly supported his evil theories. Well, you don't have to wait for him to reveal his data, and you don't have to file futile FOIA suits. You can find other tree rings and ice cores and make your own measurements. BE YOUR OWN BEACON.


= = = = = END REPRINT.

See also. And see also.
  ¶ 2:31 PM

  Another closure sequence
Thinking about closure of info, here's another category of previously available info that is closed off now. I've discussed this many times. Radio and TV and newspapers used to warn us about frauds and rackets and blackmail. All the common methods were described and dramatized clearly, and prosecuted harshly.

Now we're not allowed to learn how scams work, and all talk of blackmail is tinfoiled into oblivion. Blackmail is rarely prosecuted because it's a government program.

Ran into a good example of the old style in this Charlie Chan movie. Chan has exposed a 'psychic' cult leader who was profiting massively from blackmail. His followers were required to gather info to serve his 'telepathy' act, and he then used the same info to blackmail others.



Blackmail plus Big Data, 1938 style. Now it's much easier, but we're not allowed to see how it works.
  ¶ 8:52 PM

  Sequence of closure
Here's a half-baked or maybe milli-baked thought.

Since 1946, Deepstate first closed down the physical channels to information and then closed down the mental channels to information.

Before the Web, acquiring information took physical work, skills and knowledge. You had to own a shortwave radio, or run your own experiments, or take care of your own body, or search on foot through the old stacks of a library, or find and subscribe to obscure newsletters.

Those activities were physically difficult and sometimes expensive, but they were AVAILABLE AND LEGAL. Shortwave receivers were common, and stations were all over the world. You could buy all sorts of chemicals and medications at the hardware store or pharmacy. The libraries were open to anyone. Obscure newsletters were eager to gain new customers.

The physical channels are already closed, and the "replacement" virtual channels are starting to close as well. The shortwave band is abandoned. All chemicals are forbidden by EPA. All medicines are forbidden by FDA. All methods of maintaining health and immunity are LETHALLY forbidden by CDC. Google's online library is removing entire classes of info and maps. Newsletters are published via Facebook, which is shutting them down.

Result: First we lost the SKILLS of acquiring and distributing info physically, and then we lost the CHANNELS for acquiring info without skills.

Parallel to the central/decentral timeline for media described here.

Parallel to Deepstate's ruination of industry. First we offshored the skills to China, and now we're closing down access to the remote skills in China.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, MMT, skill-estate

  ¶ 8:35 PM

  IBM had Pascal in 1957!
No, not Turbo Pascal. Pascal's adder.

Continuing my 1957 IBM theme:

IBM's field engineers sometimes needed to figure in hexadecimal. IBM made sure its engineers were equipped with superdeluxe pocket-size hex calculators.

But they weren't electronic. IBM's engineers were using the original mechanical adding machines while servicing the most advanced electronic sorting machines.



I saw this on Ebay and had to buy it. Closeup view:



On the back it says MADE IN USA, and lists Patent number 2797047. The patent (for decimal, not hex) was granted to Sterling Plastics in New Jersey in 1957.



Somebody had scratched 'Bad Carry' on the back, but the carry action works fine. It just needed to be loosened up. The only problem is that it doesn't have a convenient way to reset to zero. The older Addometer pictured above it had a reset lever.

Sterling sounded familiar but I couldn't place it at first. I have several slide rules made by Sterling.



The Slide Rule Museum gives a history of Sterling and shows its decimal adders, which were sold commercially. Presumably the hex version was a special 'fleet order' for IBM.

Labels: Happy Ending, new toy

  ¶ 1:50 PM

  Epstein prophecy
Continuing from ACM, Oct 1969. Those dissidents knew what would happen when an Epstein, aided by Big Data, was able to monitor everyone in real time.

This author was noticing proposals for a National Data Bank, and proposals for a cashless society. He wrote a parody, supposedly dated 1987.



Swift and SWIFT would be proud.

= = = = =

1987 was an interesting date. Roy Cohn, who operated the old-fashioned way, stopped blackmailing in 1986. Epstein started his blackmail business in 1981, and took over Cohn's government contracts after 1986. But Epstein didn't take over the tech world until the mid 90s. Of course the government itself had been using computerized data for its own blackmail operations since 1890. The older tech firms had been part of Deepstate since the '50s. Epstein's contribution to the extortion industry was flipping those Silicon Valley outsiders, not bringing in tech as such.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 8:46 AM

  The one question we don't need to ask
1975 was unquestionably a major point of inflection in the Long March of Deepstate toward total obliteration of civilization.

Edmund Berkeley had been quietly editing the establishment journal of the ACM since the late '50s. In the '70s he got pissed, and he steered the journal toward more noisy and serious anti-establishment advocacy.

The Feb '75 issue includes two articles that show what it felt like to live inside an inflection point.

= = = = =

First:

On p 28, Joe Raben, a prof of English at CUNY, writes on the future of computers in education.

It's worth remembering that mechanical and electronic teaching machines had already been around for a hundred years, and had already established the operating methods of courseware. Present the material, then present a series of questions and record the answers.

Personal computers were EXACTLY on the inflection point in '75. IBM had just introduced its first PC, which didn't succeed commercially; and DEC personal machines were already common but not really general-purpose computers.

Raben is pushing hard for a more individual approach to teaching, more like apprenticeship. He foresees the interactive potential of computers only in a vague abstract way, even though mechanical and (non-digital) electronic machines were already fully interactive.

In this new learning environment, the student need not be restricted to verbal or symbolic information. Since the cathode-ray tube on his terminal is designed to project visual images, he can call up all kinds of pictures, and the treasures of the world's art collections will be his to command.

He can have performed on a tape recorder whatever music he is interested in hearing, while on his screen he watches the notes that represent it. He can hear great poetry spoken, he can watch a surgical operation performed, he can have a geometrical theorem demonstrated, he can watch the re-enactment of a historical event.

And no nervous human teacher, anxious about distractions to himself and to the other students in the class, will have to concern himself over whether that student is chewing gum, doodling, or in any other way relieving the tensions of his own concentration. We give adult workers in our factories soft music to ease their efforts; when can we begin to show equal sympathy for the strains we impose on hyperactive kids when we compel them to sit for hours and listen to us talk at them?

He misses the main purpose of apprenticeship. Job training doesn't just individualize the passive experience of a classroom. Training engages the student in a PRODUCTIVE task. Making things, serving customers.

In '82, just a few years after the '75 inflection point, many programmers (including me) were starting to use the interactive potential of the computer for job training. Visual graphics had been around since the '20s on analog computers, and since 1950 on specialized digital terminals. Audio was much slower to develop, as always; but it was expensively available on PCs in '81. (A professional-level ADC/DAC accessory board was $1500.)

= = = = =

Second:

On p 36, Richard Sprague goes deep into Deepstate's nefarious activities, which had just been fakely "exposed" by the Watergate crap. Watergate was meant to attach the evil to Nixon, then kick out Nixon to "remove the evil", like an anti-rust anode on a ship.

Sprague wasn't fooled. He had been organizing computer professionals to analyze aspects of the JFK assassination, and had seen Deepstate's stings and controlled opposition up close.

An organization I belong to, called "The Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate," has decided to concentrate on the issue. It is the growing, illegal, immoral, and clandestine use of various methods and policies by the intelligence "community" in the U.S. This ·development could lead us toward what we may call "technofascism," a dictatorship in the U.S. by technologists in the Interests of the military-industrial complex. The methods involved include the use of computer technology and information systems. The Fifth Estate defines the clandestine intelligence "community" as including secret divisions or departments or contractors or subcontractors of agencies and groups at four levels of government; federal, state, regional, and local.

Evidence is mounting that all four levels are currently increasing (and not decreasing) the amount of illegal, unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional activity, aimed at reducing or limiting the rights of citizens and increasing the power of the clandestine groups.

On the fucking dot.

To sum up, I recommend again, as three controversial issues for discussion:

1. Who is assassinating our political leaders and why?

2. What activities are leading us toward "technofascism," how can they be exposed and stopped?

3. Where and how is the American establishment using technology in other countries around the world to help suppress people and murder them?

On all the fucking dots.

50 years later his grim prophecies have come true, and the genuine opposition never got any traction.

The metaquestions are:

4. What happened to those three questions?

5. What happened to the people who were asking them?

A question that DOESN'T need to be asked is:

0. How did the entire tech establishment join Deepstate?

We know the answer to this one. Epstein.

And those dissidents WERE aware of the power of an Epstein.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Experiential education, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 7:10 AM

  Sewell hits a huge point
I need to interrupt my ceaseless point-missing-finding expedition to note an extremely sharp BULLSEYE by Granville Sewell.

He demolishes a common AI myth with a perfectly simple bit of logic that SHOULD be obvious. But it's not obvious to anyone else. It wasn't obvious to me. I never noticed the problem.

In a post here (“The First ‘Simple’ Self-Replicator?”), I tried to explain why self-replicating machines are so far beyond current human technology, by imagining trying to design something as “simple” as a self-replicating cardboard box. Take an empty cardboard box, I said, and build a completely automated factory inside which can produce empty cardboard boxes. The factory would, I presume, at least need to have some metal parts to cut and fold the cardboard and a motor with a battery to power these parts. But since the box now only builds empty boxes, it is not a self-replicator. So we would need to add another factory that could automatically produce a box with an empty box-building factory inside, and that factory would be enormously more complicated. But this box is still not a self-replicator because the box it builds can only build empty boxes, so now we need to add more technology to build a factory that builds the empty box-building factory, and then…. All of this ignores, of course, the very difficult question of where the box gets the cardboard and metals and other raw materials needed to supply its factories.

In fact we've had fully automatic box-making machines for at least 100 years, long before computers. What we don't have, and absolutely CAN'T have, is an infinite regress of box-making machine-making machine-making machine-making machine-making ....

The resource problem is outside of the infinite regress, and thus not PERFECTLY unsolvable. We have never developed a machine that seeks and extracts water and minerals and sunlight, and assembles a new machine with the full capacity to assemble more machines. Plants do it all the time.

This resource extraction mechanism is at least conceivable, not perfectly logically impossible.

Labels: Not AI point-missing

  ¶ 12:03 PM

  SETI + METI = SILLY
More silliness about talking to aliens.

SETI/METI is the ultimate replacement of What by Who. Aliens are expected to be cult leaders for the cult of IQ and abstraction. Presumably they will be just like Fauci but cooler. We are waiting to be led by them.

Vakoch is planning on sending messages containing references to the periodic table. The idea being that certain elements, such as hydrogen, are abundant across the Universe so any receiving civilisation is likely to recognise a reference to the chemical signature of those elements.

Another important requirement is making sure that whoever is on the receiving end of the message knows what they’re tuning into, says Jacob Haqq-Misra, a researcher at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. “The basic idea is to define some sort of mathematical language,” he says. Initial messages might establish some basics. One is not equal to zero, but one is equal to one, for example. “And now we've established a common language, we can talk about physics with each other.”

No, no, no. Your "basics" are NOT the basics of math. Axioms and definitions are the fake "foundation" stuffed under the REAL structure of math by Peano and Hilbert and Godel.

Why should we talk about physics? Real humans don't talk about physics.



One good idea: Do what hams do. Talk about antennas and transmitters and receivers and propagation. In other words, talk about the process of communicating.

A better idea: Talk in parallel instead of serial. Talk the way we talk. Send harmonies on many frequencies at once, so the receiving party could build a 3d object from the spectrogram.

The best idea: Shut up. First listen to the universe itself, instead of searching for a cult leader who is Just Like Me But Cooler. Figure out what the universe has in mind for us and for me.

This was the purpose of astronomy from Plato through the Arabs and Persians to Brahe and Kepler. After Kepler we stopped listening to the universe and started listening to cult leaders who spoke in the name of Science.

= = = = =

Later and more random thoughts:

Discussion of aliens is packed full of CASTE. The trite old cartoons featured an alien who looks like a vacuum cleaner approaching an Earthly vacuum cleaner and saying "Take me to your leader." He wasn't saying "Tell me about your life and your place."

The people who wish for aliens are high-caste Courtiers, the same type who wish to be leaders. Courtiers dress like leaders (including ballgags), drive the right cars and eat the right foods and medicines as recommended by leaders. They don't realize the leaders don't actually wear or eat or drive or inject any of those recommendations. It's a cargo cult.

BUT: The people who report actual contacts with aliens are pure 100% Deplorables. White Christians in Dixie, the lowest caste of all, the caste every leader and influencer wants to EXTERMINATE, but only Lincoln actually accomplished the task.

Conclusion: If the aliens are really landing and contacting us, they're good scientists following Carver's rules. They realize that Deplorables are sane. They want to interrogate sane realistic people instead of wacked-out cargo cultists. A vacuum cleaner can tell you more about the house than the owner can.

Labels: AI point-missing, Carver, Real World Math

  ¶ 12:35 AM

  Time was a whole bunch of money!
In previous item I noted that the AI speech synthesizer for a video failed to look up an unfamiliar word, just tried to pronounce it without even following normal English semi-rules. How much time would the lookup take? Maybe 20 milliseconds at best, a few seconds at worst. Locating a fact on the web is much slower and less predictable than internal processing, even if the synthesizer had a 'favored' connection to Google.

Time was a vastly more important limiting factor than memory size in the early mainframe era, mainly because computers were rented. We usually focus on the limited memory and miss the time cost.

Chart from Datamation June '64.



The cost to compile 100 COBOL statements varied unpredictably from twenty cents to twenty dollars! No correlation with monthly rental. Note that IBM 70xx series computers were at both ends of the scale.

Unsurprisingly, the same issue of Datamation had a long article on the pros and cons of timesharing.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Metrology

  ¶ 3:21 PM

  Chancy niche
Pointed by UncommonDescent, a truly weird creature....



Triops is a mini-trilobite. In a larger size it would be scary as hell, but at this size it's sort of cute.

It's weird in two ways.

1. The eyes themselves are not weird. They're typical arthropod eyes, two big compound eyes with one or more light-sensors between them. (Note that the AI generating the synthetic speech in the video doesn't know the word 'ocellus'.) The mounting is weird. Normally arthropod eyes would be on the sides of a very small head, surveying all directions at once. On Triops the eyes are inside the huge shield, pointing only forward. This defeats the advantage of compound eyes without adding any obvious counter-advantage.

2. It emerges from eggs only in an uncertain and brief environment. Dry lakes may go for many years without enough rain to be worth hatching, and only last a few days or at most weeks when they do get wet. Many insects have a long larval or non-reproductive stage and a brief flying or swarming stage. For example, the aphids who swarmed here last week. But the Triops pattern is more like plants than animals. Purely dormant for years if necessary, emerging into life only when conditions are just right.

The uncertain environment has one obvious advantage: Predators can't depend on Triops as a food source, and can't develop strategies for hunting it.

I guess Triops is just an extreme example of the Booker T rule. Find your niche and stick to it. Store your skills and amortize. In this case we have 350 million years of amortizing.

Sidenote on AI: A human announcer hired to do a voiceover would rehearse the script first, catch the unfamiliar word, and look it up. In the age of radio, announcers were expected to be thoroughly versed in the phonetics of most languages, and expected to have serious dictionaries on hand for unfamiliar words. The AI didn't bother to look up the unfamiliar word. It wasn't in the standard database, so the AI guessed badly, not following the normal phonetic semi-rules of English.

Labels: AI point-missing, Carver, storage

  ¶ 11:31 PM

  Where's Shannon when we need him?
Yeah, I know Shannon was actually talking about signal/noise ratio in cables, but like Heisenberg his highly technical rule has turned into a useful broad definition.

The broad definition:

News is new. Information is surprising.

This is also the natural definition of information, embodied in every level of every nervous system. Neurons are designed to ignore unchanging data and pay SHARP ATTENTION to departures from the unchanging pattern.

"News" media have always violated Shannon, and government "investigations" and "revelations" also turn Shannon upside down. Media try to generate fake deltas and fake surprise from totally old and unsurprising data. Deepstate sometimes "leaks" shocking facts like Heat Is Hot or Gravity Exists, carefully reworded to sound new.

Today's fake "news" is the Pandora Papers, a second chapter of the Panama Papers. Both of these "leaks" tell us that rich fuckheads never pay for anything. Heat is hot. Water is wet.

What's the point of these specific "leaks"? We can safely assume that they are just another way to kill the competition. The "investigators" are funded by Soros, which should tell you everything. These "leaks" give the government a reason to punish dictators and fuckheads who offend Soros.

Analyzing this type of data requires holding an internal template of all the fuckheads who should be included, and comparing this template with the fuckheads who were actually mentioned in the report. We don't have a strong natural talent for "what's missing" questions, so we need external helpers like written checklists or McBee cards or Hollerith's sorter or Reynold Johnson's multiple comparator.

Labels: Sorosia

  ¶ 5:33 AM

  When analog fertilized digital
IBM started with the purely digital and mostly mechanical Hollerith sorter. The sorter remained mostly mechanical for many decades. In the '30s the company expanded into generalized Business Machines, everything from intercoms to timeclocks. As part of their expansion they took a chance on a mostly analog invention, and the resulting hybrid grew and flourished.

In 1932, high school physics teacher Reynold Johnson got tired of grading tests. He took advantage of his unique knowledge and talents to build a test-grading machine.

His original prototype was crude, just a proof of concept, and wouldn't have helped in grading. His second idea caught the attention of an important statistician, who brought it to IBM.

Top view:



Side view:



His prototype used the same principle as the Hollerith punch. Remove material to create a conductive spot. The test paper would be conductive, and coated with a set of pasted-on non-conductive squares. The student would peel off a square for each desired answer, and a matrix of pins would make contact with the conductive paper. A key sheet with the correct answers would occupy a second pin-press, and lights would indicate where the student paper's conductivity disagreed with the key sheet's conductivity. The paper would be expensive to make, and the process would be too delicate for most students.

This first concept was purely digital, with a glowing lamp for each peeled square that disagreed with the peeled square on the key sheet. The teacher would be able to see which of the peeled spots disagreed with the key sheet, which she could have seen easily enough without the whole mechanism!

Johnson's second concept, like many Big Ideas, inverted the original. Instead of removing an insulator to create a conductive point, add a conductive point to create a conductive point. Replace punches with pencils. Wireless experimenters were familiar with the semiconductor properties of graphite. Johnson placed a pair of contacts close together on each standardized square of ordinary paper. If there was a smear of graphite in this narrow rectangle, there would be a current between the contacts.

Now the analog and balancy part takes over. Instead of lighting a single light for each disagreeing contact, the machine would sense the graphite conduction of each individual answer, and compare it against the correct answers on a key sheet. This comparison or subtraction would provide a delta of current in one direction.



The total of the deltas would then be summed up in an analog way and indicated on a meter.

= = = = =

After IBM hired Johnson, he was able to work with their vast array of electronic and mechanical resources. Their workshop turned the concept into a first machine, somewhat rough-looking but fully usable.



The correct key sheet was kept inside the upper right box. Each student paper was inserted in the middle hopper, then the teacher would turn the crank to run the paper into the comparison press, where the rights and wrongs balanced into the meter reading. The paper then flowed down onto the stack.

The knobs on the left were complicated and I suspect they were rarely used. It was possible to section off the key sheet into groups with different weightings. Each knob set the weights for the sections, and the master knob normalized the result to 100 with a calibration sheet.

A later and more convenient version, the 805, motorized and automated the paper action.

Here teacher Polistra is assisted by TA Happystar. The answer key (red here) stays in the front hopper. Happystar inserts one student sheet into the back hopper. Polistra notes the name of the student and pushes the button to process the sheet. The total correct shows on the meter, and she writes the total in her gradebook. (The gradebook would be on the 'wing' of the grading machine.)



Top view to show the multiplier knobs and meter action:



= = = = =

There are only a few pictures of the 805 online. None of the usual computer museums or collectors own one, so there are no new pix or videos. The old pictures disagree on the combination of knobs and the mode of operation. Some seem to show the teacher writing grades on the student answer sheet after running it through the comparison. The sheet appears to be on a roller, and a later patent shows rollers. This action is entirely unclear, so I've stuck with the fairly clear action seen in the earlier patent. Insert, measure, write grade in gradebook, drop into stack at bottom.

= = = = =

Reynold Johnson stayed at IBM. His team developed a huge variety of inventions, focused on analog transducers serving as sensors for digital machines. The 805 graphite grader evolved into the 1230 optical grader, providing detailed digital counts and records. His biggest breakthrough was the 350 hard disk drive in 1957, which I'll feature in the next item.

Labels: Equipoise

  ¶ 3:15 PM

  This should be our Pompeii
Via Zuhlsdorf, this THING should be the icon of 2020. Brain-dead zombies delusionally believe that they are The Vanguard Of Revolutionary Resistance Against Orange Trump Witch Breath. These Courtiers are worshipping Lord Fauci, who knows perfectly well that his orders are designed to EXTERMINATE the mind and soul and body.

Every zombie in this room, and every symbol and noise and toxic emission from this room, is perfectly iconic of the Mecher HOLOCAUST. This should be our Golden Record. If we want aliens to know what we are and how we committed total planetary suicide, we should send this video out through the galaxies.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, Jackboot stomping forever, UNENDING HELL

  ¶ 9:15 AM

  HTML oddity
Irrelevant but odd. When I wrote previous item, I accidentally copied the last line over and over and over with the Bold and Big tags at the start of each line but not at the end.

Unexpectedly, Firefox considers Big and Bold to be cumulative or additive tags. This doesn't happen with Italic. The first Italic turns on Italic, and then there's no 'morer Italicer' from further unclosed Italic tags.

Here's the result. It conveys the idea of cumulative repetition nicely, but it's unreadable.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY MADE THE HOAX.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 8:50 AM