1995.08.08 / Paul Koloc /  Re: FYI98 - PCAST Report on DOE Fusion Program
     
Originally-From: pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M. Koloc)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.energy,sci.physics
Subject: Re: FYI98 - PCAST Report on DOE Fusion Program
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 00:15:04 GMT
Organization: Prometheus II, Ltd.

In article <EACHUS.95Aug7180612@spectre.mitre.org> eachus@spectre.mitre.
rg (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>In article <DCxsrE.Dr2@festival.ed.ac.uk> ajc@reaxp01.roe.ac.uk (Andrew Cooke) writes:
>
>  >  come again?  our sun is variable?  do you want to be a 
>  >  co-author - i think we have a real breakthrough on our hands
>  >  here...
>
>   Paul had it right.  (btw, it's the Maunder sunspot minimum which
>corresponded to the "mini-Ice Age" a couple hundred years ago.)  The
>best evidence for variations in the solar constant are the O16/O18
>ratios in ice cores from the Greenland Ice cap.  But if you go to
>Greece you can see barnacle encrusted and sea worm eaten buildings
>that were underwater during the period.  The Mediterranean Sea has a
>higher evaportation rate than is replaced by inflowing rivers. When
>the weather gets colder evaporation slows, and the Med rises. The
>effect is more pronounced in the eastern Med.
>					Robert I. Eachus
>with Standard_Disclaimer;
>use  Standard_Disclaimer;
>function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Thanks, 
I also remember something to the effect that the cooling switched 
off the gulf current traveling to the northern Europe, UK etc 
and instead it seem to switch over to a weaker and more southerly 
vector.  In any event, it took some time for the current to jump 
back to the original flow pattern, but the warming of Northern 
Europe so the worming may have been a bit out of synch or slower 
than the gradual increase in warming that was already in progress 
by other regions.  Hope that makes some sense.   

The most important observation is that this cooling with respect 
to the average terperatures and other variations of excess heating 
periods  of similar time length have happened at other times.  If 
this is real, then something doesn't fit with constant solar 
output.  The basis for a constant solar output is the assumption
that there is no mechanism for a fusion burn that would produce
pressure outside the core of the star ( sun in this case).  
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Paul M. Koloc, Bx 1037 Prometheus II Ltd, College Park MD 20741-1037    |
| mimsy!promethe!pmk; pmk%prometheus@mimsy.umd.edu   FAX (301) 434-6737   |
| VOICE (301) 445-1075   *****  Commercial FUSION in the Nineties *****   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Mario Pain /  Re: Cold fusion!?
     
Originally-From: Mario Pain <pain@drfc.cad.cea.fr>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Cold fusion!?
Date: 9 Aug 1995 10:07:55 GMT
Organization: cea

Joseph Raulet <raulet@jrv.qc.ca> wrote:
>I have heard that many laboratories around the world
>have obtained positives results in cold fusion experiments
>that cannot be explained by exotical chimical reaction.
>Is it true?
>
>If it is true, why the hot fusion community still
>discredit the work of cold fusionners.
>
>Are they more emotional than logical???
>
>
>See http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rei/CFdir/CFhome.html
>
>And tel me what you think about it!
>

Well, here is what I think about it:

* First of all, being a member of the hot fusion community, I can
tell you that I (and many of my colleagues) do not "discredit" 
cold fusion. We simply do not believe in it !. That does not mean
that cold fusion does not exist. It simply means that as
scientists we can only accept SCIENTIFIC arguments. The weak 
point of cold fusion experiments is that thy cannot be repeated
at will. An an experiment which gives a different result every
time it is tried is essentially suspicious.

* Secondly, hot fusioners are starting to get tired of the 
paranoia of cold fusioners. The theory of the "grand conspiracy"
against cold fusion, which pretend that the answers to all
questions exist but are being kept under cover by corrupt 
publishers, nasty scientific competitors and so on is bullshit.

* And finally, cold fusion is not "too good to be true", but it
looks so much like a dream that is likely to be one. An infinite,
non polluting source of energy so simple that you could build it
in your garage (and therefore does not need governemental or
corporate structures to be built)... One may ask if it is not
an ad-hoc creation to get money from people in the same way the 
quack doctors used to.

   The best thing is to let time tell. But there is a suspicion
in my mind that all this is not a scientific argument. I think
that there is a lot of small labs that have found a way to get
money by joining the mainstream opinion that "small is beautiful"
and that the hot fusion program is a gold plated turkey. They
may get some help that way, but in the long run they will help 
those who want (for very bad reasons) to clip the wings of all 
large research projects. SSC is now dead... will ITER be next ?




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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / A Plutonium /  Re: Plutonium v. Merriman, a lawyer's response
     
Originally-From: Archimedes.Plutonium@dartmouth.edu (Archimedes Plutonium)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sci.physics.plutonium,sci.physics.fusion,alt.california
Subject: Re: Plutonium v. Merriman, a lawyer's response
Date: 9 Aug 1995 10:14:34 GMT
Organization: Plutonium College

In article <4090jd$nuv@ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>
heckles@ix.netcom.com (Howard Eckles) writes:

> An opinion from a lookie-loo. 
> Where I live there is a law against public racial and reglious
> defamation. Swastika and hate slogans on churches and graves etc.  How
> can AP be doing anything less than this.  How can he grieve against
> criticism for doing something that may get him jail time?
> 
> This is my opinion of what I read in this public forum. There may be no
> similarity but there is plenty of hate in the postings of AP
> 
> Howard


  Good, good, bring the persecution my way. Will you Howard build my
cross??
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 /  dwark@vax.oxfo /  Re: Yoshiaka Arata
     
Originally-From: dwark@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Yoshiaka Arata
Date: 9 Aug 95 12:20:58 BST
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

<rampant snippery>

> How do you know that the results of Yoshiaka Arata are invalid? You do
> not know. 

  You're right, at some level I cannot be absolutely certain they are not
  valid.  However I strongly doubt it.

> Why doesn't western science take its head out of the sand and 
> spend some money to make some proper evaluations, both theroetical and
> experimental? 

   "Western science" is made up of individual scientists, it is not some
 monolithic enterprise that pushes resources this way and that.  Individual
 scientists must make for themselves the judgement as to what problems to
 pursue (and there are never any shortage of fascinating questions to try to
 answer).  In making that decision one must constantly compare the potential
 importance of a breakthrough against the probability of making it.  It is
 almost by definition impossible to predict where a scientific breakthrough
 will come from, and perhaps some new insight into field theory would come 
 from a detailed study of cricket averages.  It seems more likely that it
 would come from particle or condensed matter physics, however, and so that
 is where people concentrate their efforts.  They may be wrong, but that is
 what their best judgement suggests.  
    In the case of cold fusion the individual scientists have voted with 
 their feet that a breakthrough is very unlikely to found.  When the original
 claims of Jones and of Pons and Fleishmann were made many people were very
 interested.  I myself was pushed into participating in an early experiment 
 at LANL before the details of Pons and Fleishmann's results were known.  In
 fact a very large number of people got involved in such experiments (you 
 should remember that when you suggest that "western science" spend money on 
 trying to replicate these results that it already has spent millions on doing 
 exactly that).   Many of us were furious when we eventually did see the 
 "evidence" that P&F claimed demonstrated nuclear fusion was taking place and 
 found that it was total garbage.  If one of my fourth-year undergraduate 
 laboratory students had given me that work as a writeup I would have failed 
 him, and yet we were asked to pour in even more resources.  My experience 
 was far from unique, and it has left a profound distaste for the whole field 
 in the mouths of the vast majority of the scientists who would be needed for 
 your proposed program of verification.  It will take a very impressive
 demonstration of an effect indeed before they will be induced to look again.
 I haven't seen anything in cold fusion that would come remotely close.   
 
>  What is there to lose? 

 Just my precious time.

>  There is much to gain,
 
 Or nothing at all.  You pay's your money and you take's your chance.

Dave Wark

> 
>                         Very Best Wishes,
> 
>                         Ramon Prasad 
> 
>          <internet:100437.530@compuserve.com>
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Jim Carr /  Re: Nuclear reaction time scales
     
Originally-From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Nuclear reaction time scales
Date: 9 Aug 1995 10:20:14 -0400
Organization: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute

In article <USE2PCB304483081@brbbs.brbbs.com> mdudley@brbbs.brbbs.com writes:
> 
>        ...         Note that a beta decay is also a 3 body decay as well, when
>you count the antineutrino.

It is a three-body final state but *not* a three-body decay.  Each step 
(u-quark --> d-quark + W-  and  W- --> e- + nu-bar) is a two-body process. 

True three-body reactions are extremely rare because you have the product 
of probabilities that are themselves small.  

-- 
 James A. Carr   <jac@scri.fsu.edu>     | Tallahassee: the Flowering Inferno
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       | is also the British Olympic training  
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  | site.  Check out http://freenet3.scri
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |   .fsu.edu:81/Olympics/brits1.html 
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Andy Fogliano /  Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
     
Originally-From: Andy Fogliano <SFN@wsdot.wa.gov>
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.astro,
ci.energy,sci.misc,sci.physics,sci.physics.electromag,sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.particle,sci.research,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
Date: 9 Aug 1995 15:42:18 GMT
Organization: Washington State Department Of Transportation

Tom, I'm not a qualified physicist and cannot follow your arguments in 
detail but, I'm struck by one of your assertions that the bit is the most 
fundamental piece of information. This assertion actually goes back to 
Aristotle who said that a thing can either be or it cannot. As an example 
he would use say that EITHER you have a rock in your hand or you do 
not. This form of black and white thinking has been perpetuated for 2000 
years in Western Civilization and is known as Aristotle's Law of the 
Excluded Middle. What is most interesting is that this law is being 
challenged by the Fuzzy Logic people. Their example woudl run as follows:
Suppose you had a pile of sand in front of you and I began to throw away 
a grain of sand one at a time. At some point you would say "It's no 
longer a pile, it has lost its' "pileness". Suppose, I re-add a 1/2 grain
of sand? At that point, it is both a pile and NOT a pile. The point of 
paradox.
The point being that rather than think in terms of black and white, on 
and off, right or wrong, there may exist a continuum which includes such 
phrases as "sometimes", "usually", "rarely", "always", "never" etc.

So, perhaps, the bit is NOT the most fundamental piece of information. It 
may contain "shades of grey". Best - Andy  


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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Matthew Kennel /  Re: Nuclear reaction time scales
     
Originally-From: mbk@caffeine.engr.utk.edu (Matthew Kennel)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Nuclear reaction time scales
Date: 9 Aug 1995 00:54:47 GMT
Organization: I need to put my ORGANIZATION here.

ZoltanCCC (zoltanccc@aol.com) wrote:
: In article <40281h$etm@otis.netspace.net.au>, rvanspaa@netspace.net.au
: (Robin van Spaandonk) writes:

: >If in the above most of the 2.47 MeV were to be carried off by the
: >antineutrino, then almost no radiation would be detected, providing
: >that the He4* then managed to get rid of the remainder of its energy
: >in the form of phonons.

: It is an excellent observation, if the antineutrino carries off part of
: the energy we would not detect it. 

: I looked at the spectrum of electrons emitted in beta decay and noticed
: that:

: 1. The spectrum is continouos, allowing the electron to carry off all or
: part of the available energy. I don't know if this means that the electron
: spectrum in our case would extend all the 20 MeV or so. 

Yes it would.  The distribution of decay energies is given by the
various phase space factors.  You will have some states of high neutrino
energy, but also some states of high electron energy with most of them
somewhere in between.

: I imagine that the electron and
: antineutrino will carry off some portion of the available energy, a
: different portion in each case. 

: 2. I noticed that there is a process "internal conversion" in which an
: excited nucleus can deexcite by ejecting an electron from one of those in
: the shells orbiting it. There are lines in the spectrum corresponding to
: the different shells from where the electron is ejected. This may be
: interesting for us since it is an example of such a coupling from the
: excited nucleus to the electrons surrounding it. This reaction supposedly
: happens by transferring a virtual photon from the nucleus to the electron.

: Zoltan Szakaly 

There's still no obvious way to prohibit the normal strong decay which will
happen much faster than the weak decay modes proposed here.
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Cliff Frost /  Re: Is Griggs Experiment Hot Water Simplicity Incarnate?
     
Originally-From: cliff@ack.berkeley.edu (Cliff Frost)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Is Griggs Experiment Hot Water Simplicity Incarnate?
Date: 9 Aug 1995 16:18:47 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

Yo!  Barry,

Just wondering if you'd caught on yet to the Jed Jones/Mitchell Rothwell
paradox.  The big questions are: 

	-are they twins?  
	-were they separated at birth?  
	-if you trapped them together in a lattice would they get even
	 hotter and hotter but still not produce any evidence?

I'll tell you my theory, brought about by my judicious use of the CLUE 
technique (Coping with Lame User Emanations)--something I developed to
protect myself from accidentally reading anthing written by yer buddy-
in-law Mr LudWigged OutMindezi.)

To see how CLUE works, take one of Mitchell Rothwell's postings on Griggs,
remove the "(****" thingies, and look at the style, use of rhetoric,
language, etc.  One of the most telling attributes is the incredible
wordiness of his posts--something "Mitchell" seemed to try to hide
early on, but his natural verbosity soon took over.

So, Barry, I advise getting a CLUE.  ;-)  Think of it this way: If
Mitchell and Jed are not the same person, how could you tell and what
difference would it make?

	Have fun, & cheers,

			Cliff

The above prompted by the last line quoted below, a truism if ever
there were one!

In article <21cenlogic-0808951534180001@austin-2-6.i-link.net>,
Mitchell Jones <21cenlogic@i-link.net> wrote:
>> In article <Z-BC6wi.jedrothwell@delphi.com>, jedrothwell@delphi.com says:
>> >Barry Merriman <barry@starfire.ucsd.edu> writes:
>> > 
>> >>I am going to settle for nothing less than replication at independent,
>> >>reputable lab with a history of performing sensitive measurments. 
>>  
>> >As long as you are going to set impossible goals, set 'em high.
>> > 
>> >- Jed
...
>Jed can speak for himself, but, for the record, here is my answer: given
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Doug Merritt /  Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
     
Originally-From: doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.astro,
ci.energy,sci.misc,sci.physics,sci.physics.electromag,sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.particle,sci.research,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 15:59:46 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <408rnl$ler@ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> tdp@ix.netcom.com (Tom Potter ) writes:
>As I mentioned, I recently posted a chart of computed solar system
>data.

Which you probably copied out of an old issue of Sky and Telescope,
or something. It showed no application of your supposed "theory".
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow

Unicode Novis Cypherpunks Gutenberg Wavelets Conlang Logli Alife Anthro
Computational linguistics Fundamental physics Cogsci Egyptology GA TLAs
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Matthew Kennel /  Re: Yoshiaka Arata
     
Originally-From: mbk@caffeine.engr.utk.edu (Matthew Kennel)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Yoshiaka Arata
Date: 9 Aug 1995 00:58:27 GMT
Organization: I need to put my ORGANIZATION here.

Alan M. Dunsmuir (Alan@moonrake.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article: <4054g6$s0e@dub-news-svc-3.compuserve.com>  <100437.530@co
puserve.com> writes:
: > His device has run for as much as 3000 hours and produced 200 
: > megajoules of excess energy, of which only 4 kilojoules can have been
: > produced as chemical energy, at a rate of between 50 and 100 kilojoules 
: > per hour. Surely the time has come for "official" science to stop discussing
: > whether the effect is "real "and start comissioning some in-depth studies
: > as to the explanations for such phenomena. The world needs safe energy
: > production badly enough. For how long will the scientific establishment
: > continue to fail the tesr?
: >
: What are you waiting for, Prasad. If you run quickly, you might even
: beat Jed to making those millions out of CF!

: Who needs the scientific theory if you *know* it produces excess heat?

It has to produce extra thermodynamic work.  Turning 100 watts of
electricity into 110 watts of heat is a bad business decision.

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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Bruce TOK /  Re: FYI98 - PCAST Report on DOE Fusion Program
     
Originally-From: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK )
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.energy,sci.physics
Subject: Re: FYI98 - PCAST Report on DOE Fusion Program
Date: 9 Aug 1995 16:15:11 GMT
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Garching

Robert I. Eachus (eachus@spectre.mitre.org) wrote:
: In article <DCxsrE.Dr2@festival.ed.ac.uk> ajc@reaxp01.roe.ac.uk (Andrew Cooke) writes:

:   >  come again?  our sun is variable?  do you want to be a 
:   >  co-author - i think we have a real breakthrough on our hands
:   >  here...

:    Paul had it right.  [...]

He did not.  You guys are talking about climate (even there, changes in
the average thermal energy of the atmosphere on the order of 0.2 per
cent -- this is the Little Ice Age's -0.6 C fluctuation, for example),
while I am talking about solar output.  Variations in the latter are
even less but are magnified by the nonlinear response of the Earth's
climate system.

--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott                                The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de                               -- W Gibson
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Bruce TOK /  Re: Hot Fusion:  Challenges and Approaches
     
Originally-From: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK )
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Hot Fusion:  Challenges and Approaches
Date: 9 Aug 1995 16:23:28 GMT
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Garching

Barry Merriman (barry@starfire.ucsd.edu) wrote:

[...]

: I agree with your sentiment, but I doubt the 5 year figure. What
: do you base it on. It seems to me 5 years will be the timescale for limited,
: reliable direct simulation, but hardly for direct simulation of entire
: concepts. There is still a lot of important physics missing from current
: direct simulation efforts.

: Also, by direct simulation do you mean gyro-particle, gyro-fluid,
: or other?

I mean gyro-fluid, and I mean global simulations for as long as a
turbulence adjustment time, yes, in five years.  This is, as you say,
just the plasma itself, but the results from such simulations can be
joined to existing models of the other components.  The plasma physics
is what is holding us back at the moment.

At the same time, we will have real tests of the validity of the
gyrofluid models vis-a-vis full-Vlasov benchmarks in model geometries,
sufficient to accurately guide the gyrofluid models.  This is already
well underway.


--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott                                The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de                               -- W Gibson
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Bruce TOK /  Re: Hot Fusion: Challenges and Approaches
     
Originally-From: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK )
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Hot Fusion: Challenges and Approaches
Date: 9 Aug 1995 16:24:55 GMT
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Garching

parsec@worf.netins.net wrote:

: Rats.  In April '93 there was was a discussion of 'high-density 
: z-pinch' experiments here.  The latest being 'MAGPIE' at Imperial
: College.  If it had been a roaring success I suppose someone would
: have posted a followup.  Another dead end?

Hang tough; that experiment is still in start-up and control phase.
They are operating on a miniscule budget.


--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott                                The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de                               -- W Gibson
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Tom Potter /  Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
     
Originally-From: tdp@ix.netcom.com (Tom Potter )
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.astro,
ci.energy,sci.misc,sci.physics,sci.physics.electromag,sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.particle,sci.research,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
Date: 9 Aug 1995 18:04:37 GMT
Organization: Netcom

In <40al0q$26@news.wsdot.wa.gov> Andy Fogliano <SFN@wsdot.wa.gov>
writes: 
>
>Tom, I'm not a qualified physicist and cannot follow your arguments in

>detail but, I'm struck by one of your assertions that the bit is the
most 
>fundamental piece of information. This assertion actually goes back to

>Aristotle who said that a thing can either be or it cannot. As an
example 
>he would use say that EITHER you have a rock in your hand or you do 
>not. This form of black and white thinking has been perpetuated for
2000 
>years in Western Civilization and is known as Aristotle's Law of the 
>Excluded Middle. What is most interesting is that this law is being 
>challenged by the Fuzzy Logic people. Their example woudl run as
follows:
>Suppose you had a pile of sand in front of you and I began to throw
away 
>a grain of sand one at a time. At some point you would say "It's no 
>longer a pile, it has lost its' "pileness". Suppose, I re-add a 1/2
grain
>of sand? At that point, it is both a pile and NOT a pile. The point of

>paradox.
>The point being that rather than think in terms of black and white, on

>and off, right or wrong, there may exist a continuum which includes
such 
>phrases as "sometimes", "usually", "rarely", "always", "never" etc.
>
>So, perhaps, the bit is NOT the most fundamental piece of information.
It 
>may contain "shades of grey". Best - Andy  

I like Democritus' treatment of this.
He said that the process of division brought about something other than
the parts. As I see it, this "massless, dimensionless sawdust" is a
tangent, or in the case of the electron, the "fine structure constanr".
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Tom Potter /  Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
     
Originally-From: tdp@ix.netcom.com (Tom Potter )
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.astro,
ci.energy,sci.misc,sci.physics,sci.physics.electromag,sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.particle,sci.research,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: General Relativity sucks, "space and time"
Date: 9 Aug 1995 18:14:37 GMT
Organization: Netcom

In <dougDD1wFM.Lyw@netcom.com> doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt) writes: 
>
>In article <408rnl$ler@ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> tdp@ix.netcom.com (Tom
Potter ) writes:
>>As I mentioned, I recently posted a chart of computed solar system
>>data.
>
>Which you probably copied out of an old issue of Sky and Telescope,
>or something. It showed no application of your supposed "theory".
>	Doug
>-- 
>Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
>Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better
Tomorrow
>
>Unicode Novis Cypherpunks Gutenberg Wavelets Conlang Logli Alife
Anthro
>Computational linguistics Fundamental physics Cogsci Egyptology GA
TLAs

Maybe my perception of Doug's abrasiveness was right, 
and I shouldn't have apologized.
cudkeys:
cuddy9 cudentdp cudfnTom cudlnPotter cudmo8 cudqt3 cudszM cudyr1995 
------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Dick Jackson /  Re: Please complain about Archimedes Plutonium to Dartmouth
     
Originally-From: jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math,sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics.electromag
Subject: Re: Please complain about Archimedes Plutonium to Dartmouth
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 18:03:16 GMT
Organization: Citicorp-TTI at Santa Monica (CA) by the Sea

In article <tomkDCz89r.Mwv@netcom.com> tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich) writes:
>In article <3vnlv3$aqv@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
>Douglas J. Zare <zare@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Spams are not acceptable forms of expression; they are abuses of the 
>>internet. AP's intentional volume of posts to irrelevant newsgroups 
>>constitutes an attack on those groups and a violation of the trust of 
>>those who support the internet with time, materials, and money. I find his 
>>false FAQ's to be even worse.
>
>Excuse me, but get a life. No one is forcing you to read Plutonium.
>I don't, why should you?

I sort of agree with you -- Archie seems to be a harmless (ahem)
eccentric whom it easy to ignore if one chooses.

*BUT* -- this could be the tip of a very big iceberg. The net is
wonderful because it is an uncontrolled publishing mechanism. If more
people like Archie, who are much more fanatical and ruthless, start
following in his footsteps, some kind of control will have to be imposed
if only to avoid strain on net resources. We will all be the losers if
this situation comes about.

For me, *that* is the reason why Archie and others like him should be
gently encouraged to pick their targets more carefully.

Dick Jackson
cudkeys:
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------------------------------
1995.08.09 / Mitchell Jones /  Re: OFF-CHARTER POSTS:  Another Netiquette lesson.
     
Originally-From: 21cenlogic@i-link.net (Mitchell Jones)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: OFF-CHARTER POSTS:  Another Netiquette lesson.
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 1995 12:59:33 -0500
Organization: 21st Century Logic

In article <400b2l$pus@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, Robert F. Heeter
<rfheeter@phoenix.princeton.edu> wrote:

> It looks like Mitchell Jones would benefit from another
> netiquette lesson.
> 
> In article <21cenlogic-3107951244190001@austin-1-12.i-link.net> Mitchell
> Jones, 21cenlogic@i-link.net writes:
> >In article <3vdg9q$irk@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, Robert F. Heeter
> ><rfheeter@phoenix.princeton.edu> wrote:
> 
> >***{Bob, you miss the point. Discussions about a newsgroup charter are
> >certainly appropriate to the forum to which the charter applies, but
> >demands that others conform to your intuitive view of what is relevant to
> >the charter are *never* appropriate. And that is precisely what you did:
> >you posted a gripe that was based on your intuitive judgment that
> >gravitational theory is irrelevant to CF. 
> 
> Actually, no.  I simply pointed out that the "GR sucks" thread was
> not being discussed with any reference to fusion. 

***{Irrelevant. The question is not whether the discussion presently
connects, but whether it will or may connect in the future, after a proper
foundation is laid. If the participants think it may connect, that should
be good enough. It is their call, not yours. --Mitchell Jones}***

This has nothing
> to do with intuitive judgments and everything to do with the
> structure of USENET.  USENET was not set up so that every article
> of every thread would be posted to every newsgroup to which
> it might conceivably be relevant.  The idea of USENET is that
> *initial* articles are crossposted, and then *subsequent*
> discussion is sent to a *single* followup-to newsgroup.
> That way discussions are not inflicted on groups for which 
> they are not clearly and obviously relevant.

***{OK, Bob, let's cut to the chase. Suppose that sci.physics.fusion had
existed just before Newton revealed his theories to the world and that he
decided to clue everybody in. A huge portion of his work required
understanding of calculus, which was then unknown. Therefore it follows
that a lengthy discussion of calculus would be required to lay a
foundation for the physics that was to follow. That discussion would
obviously, and for a long time, not be conducted with relevance to
physics: the math would have to be explained first. By your rules, that
discussion would be diverted to a math newsgroup, and would result in a
bunch of mathematicians with no interest in physics being prepared to
follow Mr. Newton's arguments about physics, while the physicists (who,
naturally, would be reading the physics threads) would be no more prepared
than they were before! By your theory, Newton would have been posting to
the wrong thread if he had posted calculus articles to physics threads,
despite the fact that it was the physicists, not the mathematicians, that
he wanted to bring up to speed! And, similarly, if a modern-day person
with the answer to the source of "cold fusion" power derived his
explanation from, say, a radical restructuring in metaphysics, he would
have to post in that area--e.g., sci.philosophy.meta--until he reached a
point where his audience was ready to focus specifically on "cold fusion."
Result: philosophers would soon be prepared to understand "cold fusion,"
but the people who are actually interested in it--i.e., those of us over
here in sci.physics.fusion--would not be ready! Bottom line: you need to
grant some slack to those who seem to be acting in good faith. Maybe they
understand their purposes better than you do. Maybe that which seems
irrelevant to you at the present time will seem relevant later, when you
have been brought up to speed. Stop harassing them with ill-mannered
gripes about their posting decisions. Recognize that it is their call,
that they don't have to consult with you or submit to your will, and that
the system works quite well in spite of that. Live and let live.
--Mitchell Jones}***    
> 
> While GR, or even Tom Potter's new theory, *might conceivably*
> be relevant to fusion, the actual discussion of the theory
> has very little to do with fusion, and a lot to do with, say,
> general physics, new physical theories, or maybe the 
> philosophy of science.  After the initial article, the 
> discussion should be localized to those groups.  Those who 
> read sci.physics.fusion and see the initial article can easily 
> follow the discussion over there.

***{Yes, they can--in theory. But the reality is that most of us do not
read those groups, because we do not consider them to be relevant. We
expect that the subset of articles posted there which are relevant to us
will be crossposted here! And, of course, this is precisely what you want
to prevent from happening! You intend to bitch and carp and quibble, until
you drive everybody out of this group whose posting behavior does not
conform to your intuitive judgment of what is relevant. You "know" that
your intuitive judgment cannot be wrong while that of the person actually
making the cross-post can't be right, despite the fact that he knows what
he is up to and you do not! Thus I have not the slightest doubt that if,
in 1670 say, Newton started a calculus thread in a physics group and you
were present, you would have done your level best to drive him out! The
problem with your intolerant behavior is that if the understanding of
"cold fusion" requires a paradigm shift on the order of that inaugurated
by Newton, then the discussion of that shift is going to linger for a very
long time on matters that bear no obvious and immediate connection to
"cold fusion." Result: you, and people like you, are going to set up an
ungodly stink about "off-topic posting," and drive away the very guy who
can solve our problems! --Mitchell Jones}***    
> 
> Netiquette (as I posted) requires that after the initial article,
> subsequent articles in a particular thread be sent to a *single*
> group to which the discussion is *most* relevant.  Anyone reading
> the initial article (and the author should say where followups
> should go) should then start reading the thread in the appropriate
> followups group.

***{Baloney. As noted above, when groundwork is being laid for a
connection that will be made later, only the person laying the groundwork
is going to be aware that a connection will be made later. Moreover, it
may be that he only suspects, based on intuition, that a connection will
be *discovered* later, if the discussion proceeds. Unless we accept his
judgment, his posts will seem to be irrelevant to many of us even when, in
fact, they are relevant. Thus if we shuttle him off into some other group,
the result will be that most of us will not read his posts, and the
further result will be that he doesn't reach the audience he wants to
reach. Indeed, he may not get the feedback he needs in the other group,
and the connection may not be discovered at all. The only solution to this
difficulty is tolerance: stop harassing people whose posting behavior does
not conform to your intuitive view of what is relevant. Stop griping, and
let such people alone. If we want to read their seemingly irrelevant
posts, we will; if not, not. It's our call, not yours. Nobody appointed
you information daddy to us all! --Mitchell Jones}*** 
> 
> >You simply assume that everybody
> >else agrees with your intuitive judgment, and that, therefore, those who
> >post to the gravitational thread are malevolent, deliberately disruptive,
> >and deserving of condemnation. 
> 
> Continued unnecessary crossposting *is* disruptive. 

***{Those who respond by skipping forward to the next thread are not
disrupted. It is only those who seek to impose their will on others who
are disturbed by posts that do not conform to their intuitive judgments
about relevancy. Most of us read newsgroups the same way we read a
newspaper: if an article seems uninteresting or irrelevant to our
concerns, we skip it. Unfortunately, newsgroups are afflicted by
ill-mannered people who disrupt threads by bitching and griping about
their relevance. This is the only way I know of in which newspapers are
superior to newsgroups. If we could just get rid of the self-appointed
censors, the competitive superiority of usenet over the establishment
media would be clear to all. --Mitchell Jones}***

 But 
> I don't think it's malevolent, deliberate, or deserving 
> of condemnation.  What I think it deserves is a little
> more Netiquette education.  If you want to see condemnation,
> read news.newusers.questions and look at Emily Postnews.
> This is a satire of precisely the sort of behavior that
> is going on with the "GR sucks" thread.  I'm not trying
> to be vicious, I'm just trying to get everyone to play
> by the rules that the rest of USENET uses.

***{Most newsgroups are not focused on results that violate the
established paradigm in their area of interest. Result: judgments about
what is relevant can be made with greater accuracy than is the case here.
In all groups, however, it is *clarity* that is required to support
measures against an individual. If it is crystal clear that a person is
not posting in good faith, then and only then, does action become
appropriate. And the action called for is not the posting of complaints in
the affected newsgroup, but the sending of complaints to the guilty
party's access provider. If you do that, and if the case is, in fact,
crystal clear, then the person will be warned and the nature of his
offense will be explained to him. Subsequently, if he persists, and if the
breach remains crystal clear, then his connect privileges will be
terminated. This is the way the system works, and the way it should work.
Doing it your way, by posting constant gripes and complaints based upon
conflicts of intuition and judgment, merely discourages people from
posting and impairs the ability of newsgroups to compete with the
establishment media. --Mitchell Jones}***
> 
> Unnecessary and unrelenting crossposting is generally
> referred to as spamming and can be dealt with very
> harshly by the USENET authorities.

***{What "usenet authorities?" All you have to enforce such matters is the
cooperative arrangements employed by access providers to deal with clear
and egregious violations. I don't have any problem with those
arrangements, and neither does anyone I know of. Access providers, quite
properly, bend over backwards to avoid taking actions that might smack of
censorship, and they will be of no use to you in your little campaign. In
fact, my only criticism of them is that they tend to be excessively
reluctant to act. For example, an issue that has been before them of late
which they have failed to address is the growing practice of
"cancelbotting:" i.e., the use of fraudulent internet packets to cancel
other people's posts without their permission. In my view, this is fraud
in its purest form, as well as a criminal violation of the first amendment
rights of the victim, and persons guilty of it should be prosecuted to the
full extent that the law permits. So far, however, providers as a group
have chosen to look the other way. Thus the only possible route to action
is for the victim to go to his local prosecutor and file charges.
(Fortunately, it is easy to trace a cancelbot back to the source.) This is
a hassle, and I don't know of anyone who has done it yet. Most people
don't like to waste their time tangled up in a legal action, and are not
angry enough (yet) to be willing to send one of these idiots to prison.
But the level of irritation, and the number of victims, is growing, and
the day will soon come when this type of harsh response will be made. The
laws are in place to really hold these guys feet to the fire, though most
of them do not know it. They are living in a fool's paradise. --Mitchell
Jones}*** 
> 
> >But that is wrong. They think their
> >material is relevant based on their intuition/judgment. 
> 
> A hint of possible relevance is insufficient justification for 
> continued crossposting of a thread into a newsgroup.  They 
> should determine which *single* group is *most* relevant, 
> and go there.

***{As noted above, lengthy discussions that seem "off topic" are
frequently needed to lay the foundation for a paradigm shift. In those
cases, the only person who is in a position to judge relevance is the
person who seems to be "off topic." But he is precisely the person you
seek to drive out, because you "know" that his posts are irrelevant.
Bottom line: your mindset is totally inappropriate in a group such as
sci.physics.fusion, where results are being discussed which are crudely in
violation of the established paradigm. --Mitchell Jones}***
> 
> >There is no reason
> >for you to conclude that they are malevolent in their intent, which is
> >what you imply when you declare, ipse dixit, that they are "off charter."
> 
> I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a complaint that something is
> "off charter" indicates malevolent intent on anyone's part.
> Please do not infer anything unjustified by what I actually said.

***{OK, I stand corrected. Let me rephrase: when you harass people for
making "off topic" posts, you imply that it is clear and unambiguous that
their posts are off topic. (If it is unclear, you shouldn't be harassing
them.) Thus, to rephrase my original comment: "There is no reason for you
to conclude that they are either malevolent, or stupid, or crazy, which is
what you imply when you claim they have failed to see the obvious." Is
that better? My point stands: your constant griping and grousing at people
who are posting in good faith is ill-mannered. The proper response is for
you to simply skip over their posts. Relevant or not, they will roll off
the server soon enough anyway. There is no reason to exhibit such
narrow-mindedness and intolerance. Live and let live. --Mitchell Jones}***

> 
> Personally I think it reflects a certain naivete about USENET
> etiquette, but I don't think it represents a deliberate attempt
> to be malevolent or disruptive.  Which is why I'm simply trying
> to explain USENET etiquette here and not to have people's news
> privileges revoked or anything obnoxious like that.
> 
> >It is this implication which threatens to provoke a "flame war," not the
> >formal tone of your post. 
> 
> If that is the case then the flame war will be due to your own
> apparent paranoia, since I didn't really mean to imply what
> you claim I did.

***{As I have already noted, I am not concerned with your intentions, but
with the clear implications of your actions. --Mitchell Jones}***
> 
> >And now you are trying to stir it all up again. But why? Do you really
> >think that you are smarter than all the other guys who tried to argue this
> >case before, and that you can win the argument which they lost? Do you
> >really want to paint a target on yourself and step in front of this
> >particular firing line? Think about it. 
> 
> Yes, I do.  Fire away.  

***{Done. (See above.) Do you feel better? I'll bet not. --Mitchell Jones}***

I have a different angle on the 
> whole thing, and a very easy solution based on USENET netiquette 
> standards.  It's very simple:  
> 
>      CROSSPOSTING NETIQUETTE: 
>      If you want to post an article which is only marginally
>      related to a particular group's charter, you may do so 
>      once for a particular thread, but you should direct 
>      followup articles to a single, most-appropriate newsgroup.
> 
> >You have not a shred of a basis for concluding that he is not
> >posting in good faith, and you should simply skip his posts and move on.
> 
> On the contrary, I have an enormous amount of evidence that 
> those participating in these heavily-crossposted threads are
> ignorant of usenet netiquette, and I think it is time
> people thought a little more about how to make this group
> work more smoothly, and a little less about shouting their
> ideas to every newsgroup in existence.

***{I don't doubt for a second that some of the individuals in question
are ignorant of usenet etiquette, just as I have no doubt whatever that
you fail to see the inappropriateness of harassing people about etiquette
in a group devoted to the analysis of seemingly "impossible" results.
Questions of relevance are blurred here, Bob. If you want to harass these
people, you should do it in the other groups where they post, where people
aren't on the lookout for the odd result and willing to wade through some
seemingly irrelevant material while trying to find it. In this group, we
need an unusually diverse range of opinion. You need to recognize this
fact, accept it, and get used to it. Stop trying to drive people out who
don't seem to conform to your intuitions about relevance. Otherwise, you
run the risk of throwing Newton out with the bath water! :-) --Mitchell
Jones}***
> 
> >When is this nonsense going to end? Why can't you guys
> >let this go, and simply practice tolerance? 
> 
> It's a lot easier to be tolerant of a single posting than an
> endless thread of marginal relevance.  That's a key justification
> for the netiquette standard I mentioned.

***{See above. --Mitchell Jones}***
> 
> >The answer, in my view, if obvious: you guys are, fundamentally,
> >censorious, intolerant, controlling, and authoritarian. 
> 
> Actually, I think that's a bit of a fantasy on your part.
> Me, I'm just trying to get people with diverse perpectives,
> opinions, and ideas to talk to each other in a way that 
> won't piss anyone off unnecessarily.  

***{The only people who are getting pissed off are people like you, Bob.
Most of us just skip over uninteresting threads, if they don't seem to be
relevant. We don't bitch about them because we are not disturbed by the
fact that other people get to decide for themselves what and where to
post. It's called live and let live. If you are really as tolerant as you
say, then you should try it! --Mitchell Jones}***

It's much easier
> to misinterpret what people write, because you don't
> have the same audible and visual cues to what they
> really mean that you do when you talk face-to-face.
> Netiquette is a way of compensating for that a little.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Bob Heeter
> Graduate Student in Plasma Physics, Princeton University
> rfheeter@phoenix.princeton.edu / rfheeter@pppl.gov
> http://www.princeton.edu/~rfheeter
> Of course I do not speak for anyone else in any of the above.

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