| Monday September
3, 2007 The Day SFWA folded.
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Harry Erwin's Letter from England
After the recent neural network conference that I
attended, I mentioned that I believe we will be able to model goal-directed
behaviour within five to ten years. This is relevant to true artificial
intelligence--which I expect will be very difficult. There were a number of
presentations at the conference that people might find interesting.
Chip Levy spoke about his work on the hippocampus.
This is a complex structure in the centre of the brain that seems to
play a role in storing episodic memory. We've known that since the
1950s, when HM (how he's referred to in the literature) received
neurosurgery to treat intractable epilepsy. His surgery involved the
removal of his hippocampus and nearby regions. After he recovered from
the surgery, it was found that he could no longer store long-term
memories, although he could retrieve existing memories fine.
The hippocampus is now suspected (by Chip Levy) of
being the associative memory system of last resort. It associates events
in multiple parts of the brain based on temporal synchrony, and replays
them during sleep to set up associations in the various cortical regions
that lit up when the events occurred. The hippocampus (and the
entorhinal cortex that feeds into it) also contain "place fields" that
light up when a rat is at specific locations in its environment.
The replay involves 'sharp waves', which replay
events at about twenty times real-time. Recently, researchers have also
shown that the hippocampus can also replay events in time-reversed
order. The time tags associated with these events seem to be phases of a
couple of periodic brain wave patterns, called the gamma and theta
rhythms. Christo Panchev was actually able to model this in his thesis
work, but a lot of the biology remains completely unclear.
In my bat work, I found that bats could predict the
movement of targets (mealworms) much faster than real-time. When they
realise that a target is inedible, they shear off immediately, which
suggests that can extrapolate their plans backwards to rapidly
re-estimate the reward values of various actions. Finally, they seem to
be able to plan ahead and/or extrapolate backwards for multiple plans at
the same time. In a sense, they can communicate with the future to
optimise their current actions.
This bidirectional communication with the future
becomes more complicated for people, because we're not restricted to
predicting movement, but also can use internal models of other minds. We
can look into the future, see what someone else--who has a similar model
of us--may do, and change our current behaviour. AI's are unlikely to
have the necessary parallel processing to simulate this in the near
future, but it may be possible for us to work with a fast parallel
computer to emulate what a real AI might do. I'll leave it at that until
I have some time to write a story about it.
It's the end of the summer. Diane and I did some
walking and bicycling this weekend in the Lake District to celebrate
Labor Day.
Public ("private") school advantages. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6973922.stm>.
Something the public schools also do that the comprehensives don't is
teach their students how to "think outside the box" in the ways that the
most selective universities are looking for in applicants. This gives
them a marked advantage.
--
Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems
Security, University of Sunderland.
===================
Copyright, Infringement, and Enforcement
Unfortunately, copyright laws are written in such a
way that there's really no incentive to follow them. The burden is ENTIRELY
on the aggrieved party to identify the violation, attempt a resolution
through private negotiation, and then bring the matter to court.
As you say, there's probably no way whatsoever that
Saberhagen's works will ever be defended; and the only way that copyright
law can be enforced is if the copyright holder actively defends it.
Indeed, I can pirate copyrighted material WHILE THE
POLICE ARE STANDING THERE WATCHING ME, and unless (and until) the copyright
owner tells me to stop, there's NOTHING they can do about it.
Mike
Moreover, the Electronic Freedom Foundation will
be right there defending their right to do it in case one of the
constables blunders. However, thanks to you and many other readers
who have taken the trouble to find out the truth of these matters,
scribd seems to have changed course and is now acting cooperative: a
large number of the pirate works that have been on their site for some
time have been taken down.
If they had shown anything like that level of
cooperation in the weeks when Dr. Burt was trying to negotiate with them, we
would not have had this flap, EFF would not have covered itself in glory by
writing on behalf of a site where there were thousands of copyrighted works
without permission to an author's associate trying to get some justice for
its members, and I wouldn't have wasted a weekend with my stomach tied in
knots. Ah well.
=======
I could easily fill this day and week with comments
on the Great SFWA/boing boing/scribd/ars technica/EFF flap; I will include
only a few representative letters.
On Copyright and Books
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I think you are over reacting.
First and foremost, you are incorrect about the impact
of portable devices like an iPhone on the book trade. No matter how
convenient they are, they simply do not have the battery life. You really
fear that I am going to pass the time in an airport waiting for my delayed
flight by reading a copy of one of your novels on my iPhone for which you
didn't receive any royalties? Not only would the battery not last long
enough but when the battery dies, there goes my phone! Now if they ever come
up with a battery that will last a whole day, recharge in a couple of hours
while I sleep, and not wear out then and only then do you have something to
worry about.
Second, you and the SFWA underestimate your fans. I am
not going to download a book from that site. I have not YET been able to
budget for a copy of Burning City and Burning Tower; I checked them out of
the library and read them. I loved them and will one day buy a copy of each.
Didn't you mention a third one that might be set in Iceland? When you write
that and your publisher offers a 3 book, hard bound set then I expect that I
will have enough disposable income to pay for it. Now if the battery I want
were available, I might want an electronic copy of my book to carry with me
so I don't have to worry about losing my treasured print edition and I might
will balk at paying for the book again. But that is speculation.
Books are not like music in one way that is important
to you; there is not a perception by the public that we have been ripped off
for years.
You have been helpful. When I initially read the
stories about the takedown notices, I immediately visited your site to find
out the other side of the story. What I was initially told was the opposite
of what you are saying and I find you to be the more credible source.
Sincerely,
Greg Brewer
Houston
You are certainly correct regarding the current
situation and financial impact; I doubt I could prove a hundred dollars loss
to electronic piracy. Eric Flint insists that having a novel on a pirate
site may actually increase the number of paper sales.
I have not seen any claims that pirate sites do not
affect electronic sales. So far those are so small as not to matter; and I
rather hope you are right, and that the book business, which I sort of
understand, won't change substantially in the decade or so that I have left
for writing.
On the other hand, I see indications that a
substantial part of the paperback book sales will in future have to be
electronic book sales; and while fans and serious readers will be loyalists,
a great many people act from purely economic motives. Why pay for that which
is offered free on a site that uses other people's works to attract
visitors, gets its revenue from ads, and gives way other people's works? You
won't patronize that place; but for an author to make a living at this,
paperback sales have to be in the tens of thousands. I assure you I don't
have anything like that many subscribers. I
only wish I did. Then I wouldn't have to worry about how my works are
distributed. I could simply write them and make them available to
subscribers and let my agent worry about publishing and sales to everyone
else.
I don't underestimate my fans; but I don't
overestimate their numbers, and when pirates get serious about defending
their piracy, and organizations like EFF defend the right of places like
scribd to post anything they please absent a validly worded takedown order
for each and every individual copyright violation, I do wonder where the
general public will go for electronic copies. I would hope to my web site,
or my publisher's web site, but I don't have a lot of data. But I very much
hope you are right.
Thank you for your concluding comments.
==
Scribd as a symptom
Dear Jerry, This is a minor point and of no legal
relevance whatsoever, but as a fan of irony I can't help but appreciate one
little remarked upon aspect of this whole flap with scribd.com. On one side
you have people who, as a group, heartily denounce the DCMA as an
unconscionable restriction of the people's right to 'free' content,
insisting that notices of infringement must follow it's form to the letter,
while on the other side you have copyright holders, people who obviously
benefit from that act whether they wholly approve of it or not, in apparent
technical violation of it.
More seriously, stepping back from the debate over
copyrights, the most troubling aspect of this affair is that it is one more
indication of a degeneration in the tone of debates over public policy. I
have no reason to doubt that both you and Dr. Burt first attempted to bring
possible violations of copyright to scribd.com's attention informally and
politely. When met with silence Dr. Burt took what seems to have been his
only course of action, sending a legal notice. While regrettable that his
notice included works it should not have, I'm more disturbed by the tone of
reactions to it.
It's both reasonable, and even desirable, for people
to have different views on matters of public policy, but recently positions
on both sides seem to have hardened to the extent of considering opposition
to your views to be an indication of moral failing, even evil, and that does
not bode well for having a reasonable debate on the issues. You see this
hardening of positions across a wide range of issues, from copyright to
immigration to climate change, and from my perspective all it will
accomplish is to guarantee that those whose positions are not adopted will
become embittered, cynical, and even less willing to compromise on the next
issue. Is this any way to run a republic? Perhaps saddest of all, I can see
no way to reverse this trend that does not invoke Mr. Jefferson's
prescription.
Chuck Wingo
==
subscription, scribd, and a question
Jerry -
I've subscribed for another year; please keep up the
column. I like the "NPR style" - gentle reminders work just fine with me.
After a while...
Though I am not an Author, I agree with your stance on
scribd. It's theft of copyrighted material. As the medium evolves (paperback
books into 'readers') the question will become more acute - perhaps it's
better to get the matter addressed sooner rather than later.
Now for my question: if I buy a copy of an
out-of-print book (e.g. A Step Farther Out) to give to a friend or prove a
discussion point, etc., this obviously doesn't reward the author, nor is
there a simple mechanism to do so. Since good books do, sadly, go
out-of-print, how can we make some process where the writer does get some
fiscal benefit? With you specifically, it's easy (just subscribe). With most
other writers, it's not so simple.
Regards,
-Dave
Thanks!
One must be careful: scribd has not exceeded its
legal rights, and thus is not guilty of theft. They merely make copyrighted
works easy to post, don't require those posting works even to claim they
have the right to put them up, and set up onerous requirements for the
copyright holder to get them to consider removing the work. That's not
theft, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, representing scribd, has said
so in a letter to SFWA defending scribd rights.
I agree that the question is likely to become a
great deal more important as electronic book readers improve.
Regarding used books, authors don't make anything
from them unless they invest in remainders; some writers buy up remaindered
copies and sell signed copies during their lectures. This is both lucrative
and clever, and those who buy from the author are to be commended. But no
author I know of really resents used book sales or refuses to autograph used
books. I certainly don't have any such objection.
As electronic sales replace paperback sales --
which I believe is inevitable -- the question of used books will be moot,
but of course an ebook is eternal, and copies are easily given away.
We live in interesting times.
========
Power transmission lines
Dr. Pournelle
I thought this editorial in today’s paper would
interest you and your readers. It seems that it isn’t enough to just build
more power plants, wind farms, or solar farms. You need to build the
transmission lines to connect to the grid, which would be easy enough in
itself except, it takes even longer to get the permits to build the lines
than to get the permits to build and construct a new plant!
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/energy-
wind-transmission-1835648-congress-power
Michael Scoggins
Indeed.
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