] Volume 8, Number 8 August 4th 2003
]
] The Augmented Social Network: Building identity and trust
] into the next-generation Internet
] by Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, and Steven Foster
]
] A social ecology of wireless technology
] by Critical Friends of Technology
]
] The ecology the connecticon
] by Frank Rennie and Robin Mason
]
] Open content and value creation
] by Magnus Cedergren

Wow... First Monday will go for months with nothing *really* juicy and then BAM, a tour-de-force of interesting and fresh ideas. Read this entire issue. I know. I know. You are surfing then net, at work, and looking for a quicky distraction while waiting for something to compile. Reading this is actually going to take time. Fuck you, slacker. Read it.

First Monday August 2003

] The White House expects that President Bush would have to
] assemble a new foreign policy team, including a secretary
] of state, if he wins a second term, administration
] officials said Monday.

This is a crazy mess of competing spin, but the concensus is that Powell will not be a part of the second term. A shame. I think he is presently my favorite republican.

CNN.com - Powell not expected to serve if Bush re-elected - Aug. 4, 2003

] Retired Adm. John Poindexter, who created a firestorm
] this week with his plan to create a futures market that
] would capitalize on predicting terror attacks, will
] resign in coming weeks from his post at the Pentagon, a
] senior defense official said Thursday.

CNN.com - Poindexter to resign in coming weeks following terror futures flap - Jul. 31, 2003

] Sen. Norm Coleman on Thursday began an inquiry into the
] recording industry's copyright lawsuits against online
] music swappers, saying the tactics could ensnare innocent
] people.

Sen. Norm Coleman raises eyebrow at RIAA

] Evolving Self-Diagnosing Hardware was first attempted by
] the author for some toy circuits in the hope it would be
] possible. The toy circuits attempted where a two bit
] multiplier and a one bit adder. After hundreds of
] thousands of generations, circuits evolved performing
] full diagnosis using about half the overhead the
] conventional solution would have required. For example
] when using two-input logic-gate technology, a two-bit
] multiplier can be implemented using 7 gates. Adding an
] extra copy, and 7 more gates for comparing 4 outputs, we
] have an overhead of 14 gates for the conventional voting
] system BIST solution. After four million generations the
] GA found a circuit (diagram) with the same behaviour
] using only 9 extra gates. It is hard to work out exactly
] what operating principles underlie its operation but it
] looks like it tends to use more XOR gates which always
] propagate a bit flip in one of their inputs, and also
] exploits design diversity to compare multiple sections of
] the circuit simultaneously.

I'm going to have to look at this in detail tonight.

I'm a little sceptical. Its not "hard to work out exactly what operating principles underlie" a 9 gate circuit. "Exploits design diversity" sounds like something a politician would say. I'm fairly certain that karnaugh maps produce solutions that are proveably optimised for simple cases like this. If he got results from this technique he probably started with an improperly designed circuit.

This is not to say that evolving hardware isn't interesting. It just seems like something isn't right with this example. A little math will tell me, and I'll post an update later.

Distributed Hardware Evolution

] He says criticism that terrorists could have profited
] from the market are overblown, since the architects of
] the exchange were not planning on allowing any wagers
] greater than about $100.

Forbers likes assassination politics, and thinks that this will come up again. I'm glad to hear that they had a wager cap, but what are the odds associated with a highly accurate prediction? Can I get 1000 to 1 on something if I pick an exact date? Cause $100,000 goes a long way in place like Afghanistan.

Update:I've now heard that the max GAIN from a trade was set at $100. That changes the picture entirely. There is really nothing wrong with such a system if such limits are in place, assuming they cannot be circumvented. I remain skeptical, as the press reports clearly contradict eachother, on not just this but other points as well. Supporters and detracters seem to differ on how anonymous this system was supposed to be.

Fortune.com - Investing - Is a Futures Market on Terror Outlandish?

"It is totally unauthorized as far as we are concerned. It's really a serious mistake on the part of DARPA."

Sound familiar?

This meme just in: DARPA is the new AOL Time Warner, and John Poindexter is the new Justin Frankel.

Terror Trading Site Goes Bust

]
] ASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed
] spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential
] terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which
] anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting
] terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online
] futures market.
]
] Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads
] the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he
] had conferred with the program's director at the
] Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should
] be stopped."

Someone must have read JB's paper...

Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror

] "I'm delighted to take on this role," Bainwol said in a
] statement. "What could be more rewarding than helping to
] promote two great American traditions: music and property
] rights?"

Mitch Bainwol, new head of the RIAA.

Quote of the day

] The Pentagon is setting up a commodity-market style
] trading system in which investors would be able to bet on
] political and economic events in the Middle East
] including the likelihood of assassinations and terrorist
] attacks.

To quote the Onion: Holy Fucking Shit. But, this isn't a joke.

Pentagon sets up Jim Bell's Assassination Politics!