From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!unc!brl-bmd!Pleasant@Rutgers Newsgroups: fa.human-nets Title: HUMAN-NETS Digest V5 #104 Article-I.D.: brl-bmd.442 Posted: Tue Nov 16 06:41:37 1982 Received: Wed Nov 17 07:56:40 1982 Expires: Tue Nov 16 01:00:00 1982 HUMAN-NETS Digest Sunday, 14 Nov 1982 Volume 5 : Issue 104 Today's Topics: Computers and People - Cable TV and the First Amendment (3 msgs) & Unique Signatures (2 msgs), Technology - WorldNet (2 msgs), Publications - New Journal: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Nov 1982 1159-PST From: Lynn Gold Subject: TV and censorship I am personally against TV censorship, ESPECIALLY with regards to children. Children shouldn't be sheltered from the seedier and less pleasant parts of life; if they don't learn about things when they're little, they get into a great deal of hassles when they're older. For those parents who do insist on being "moral majority" cretins to their children and/or themselves, HBO has two channels in many areas: one which broadcasts all kinds of material, regardless of "rating", and another which transmits a censored subset of the former channel. When I visited my folks in southern New Jersey last spring, such a system existed. Fortunately, my folks were decent enough to get the uncensored channel... --Lynn ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 12 November 1982 11:13-PST From: Jonathan Alan Solomon Subject: home censoring of television The only major problem (besides the fact that neither the computer-controlled VCR/tuner nor the TV-guide-network is yet available for consumers) would be that if parents are away the children can visit a friend's house to consume their allocation of TV hours then bring their friends home to consume their own allocation, and thus get double allocation, or triple, etc., limited only by the number of children who can fit in a room and want to watch the same program and the number of hours the parents are away. Considering how much socializing the children are getting, I really don't see this as a problem! [--JSol--] ------------------------------ Date: 13 November 1982 07:46-EST From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: home censoring of television That's a good point. Although some parents think TV is bad, it's really the aloneness, the child sitting alone watching TV for hours by hirself, not relating to ay living human at all, that hurts the child's psychological/social development. Thus parents should permit the child all the TV heesh wants providing it's with some neighbor kids, but limit TV viewing of a child (with or without siblings?) to a certain number of hours. Then the unattended automatic TV set that limits children's hours on a per-TV basis will do about the right thing even if children "cheat" by visiting neighbors to share TV viewing allocations. Now, let's build the remote-controlled VCR/Tuner so we can do this! Have a keylock on manual controls, and a password on the computer port, so the children can't watch without either parent's personal permission or computer scheduling/allocation permission. On a related matter, how many hours a day should a child be allowed to sit at the workstation sending and receiving network mail? I tend to spend several hours a day myself and I think I'm spending too much time! I'm not a kid, but if I'm prone to excess mail reading -- consider the child who can spend 6 hours a day playing PACMAN, such a child would probably spend 20 hours a day corresponding by computer, and burn his poor mind out! ------------------------------ Date: 9-Nov-82 07:39:29-PST (Tue) From: UCBVAX.floyd!stan@Berkeley Subject: Electronic signatures The Plato system allowed very personalized signatures because of its dot matrix characters which could be written over each over. Control sequences would let you do things like devils, beer steins, etc. @ Stan <-+-> King | _/ \_ (floyd!stan) ------------------------------ From: "STEVE LIONEL AT STAR c/o" Subject: Graphic signatures If Obrien at RAND-UNIX hadn't beaten me to it, I too would have mentioned the University of Illinois' PLATO IV system for its ubiquity of unique graphic signatures. (I have no idea if this spilled over into the PLATO systems that CDC now runs.) The interesting thing about PLATO was not just that the flexible graphics made it easy to do interesting signatures, but that just about EVERYBODY had a "nom de plasma" (pseudonym). I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said that most PLATO "authors" (those who could more or less do anything they wanted to) were known ONLY by their pseudonyms; few knew people's real names. One measure of this was that almost every game and game-like program (such as TALKOMATIC) prompted you for your pseudonym, which it then displayed along with your more mundane "name and course". Combined with PLATO graphics, many people labored to come up with interesting-looking signatures. One limiting factor was that many programs only accepted 10 character pseudonyms, that being how many 6-bit characters fit in a 60-bit word. Shifted characters counted as two places. Other programs, such as NEWS (sort of a BBOARD), had no limitation. My personal graphic made use of PLATO's ability to superscript and subscript by single pixels. My pseudonym was HOLMES4 (taken from Heinlein's book, of course), and I would have the letters "HOLMS4" race out from the left, stop, the letter E come out, move up looking for its spot, the letters "S4" would then move over and the "E" would move down into place. And that was one of the simpler signatures. Anyway, I think that personalized signatures in computerized communication are as inevitable as vanity license plates - it gives some essence of individuality to something that otherwise all looks the same. Steve ------------------------------ Date: 9 November 1982 18:52-EST From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: Amateur Packet Radio You left out the other major reason why amateur packet radio isn't the right model whereas packet-CB is: amateur radio forbids 90% of the uses for which worldnet might be used, like electronic magazines you subscribe to for money, information retrieval systems you pay for usage of, conducting a business internally (bookkeeping, inventory, interoffice memos), conducting business transactions with customers (ordering, billing), electronic funds transfer, anything of a political nature, anything encrypted or data-compressed, ... need I go on? ------------------------------ Date: 11 Nov 1982 1642-EST From: ZALESKI at RU-GREEN (Michael Zaleski [doesn't eat quiche.]) Subject: AT&T (The defense rests) Some last words in defense of the phone company, if I may... Regarding the notion that World-Net would have to support a wide variety of communications devices, I submit that AT&T, through its work interfacing the different phone systems and through various other experiments in communications techniques (both voice and data) has a much richer variety of communications techniques at their disposal than might be expected. The criticism that AT&T does not provide cheap computer connections network for long periods of time is correct. However, it is not because of technology, only because of the cost of such services. Such services could be supplied, but at a cost that would make the average bill much too large. Regarding the claim that "technical expertise isn't the issue", what more can I say but that I disagree? Now please understand, that I am not saying that AT&T is the ONLY candidate for World-Net, rather I am saying that they seem like a good one. As for the claim that a revolution in Poland was stopped by turning off the phones - well, the National Rifle Association will claim that the revolution was stopped because the government has disarmed its citizens. I believe that both points, plus many others contributed to stopping the revolution. Citing one single cause seems a bit superficial. I agree that the power and control issue of any such network is important, but I am hard pressed to imagine a system which cannot be circumvented by local authorities in a given area. In fact, some countries will probably demand this power before allowing World-Net anywhere near their territory. One person wrote complaining about his/her poor experience with New England Bell and its paper record keeping. While I believe it is a waste of time to discuss an individual case, this letter brings to mind several facts about the AT&T that are worthy of mention. First, New England Bell keeps paper records by its own choice. Support programs are developed by AT&T to allow the local operating companies to computerize their records and work. However... Second, the cost of automating is high. For example, to set up one database for New Jersey Bell, it is estimated that the cost will be around two dollars per line. Multiply that by a few million lines and you see why phone companies might be reluctant to use new technology. The start up cost is great and there is no chance for increased profit in a regulated business. But, should the project go wrong and wind up costing money management will look bad. If you were a manager, would you take the chance. As for AT&T not providing MCI with the signaling to directly access the network, I ask why should they? MCI starts out with all the advantages of all the hard work being done, but has to absorb very little of the actual cost of providing the network that they use. For example, AT&T provides connections to all locations and does not charge in proportion to the cost of providing some of these services. (Have you ever considered what the cost per connection is in rural areas where phones are miles apart?) MCI uses low cost lines along the most profitable routes to lure away some of the business that AT&T uses to try to spread the cost of the whole network out with. (In short, I think the federal government would have been better off telling MCI, et al to go away and telling AT&T that they could not go into the computer business.) Oh yes, it turns out that I was wrong about not being able to use an MCI number from distant locations. -- Michael "Zaleski@Green"@Rutgers or mhtsa!mzal P.S. RM(*), in any combination of spacing and upper or lower case is a syntax error on UNIX, not a command. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Nov 1982 12:27 PST From: Moran at PARC-MAXC Subject: New Journal: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Announcing a new journal . . . HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION Theoretical, Empirical, and Methodological Issues of User Psychology and of System Design Human-Computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary journal concerned with theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues of (1) user psychology and (2) computer system design as it affects the user. The goal of HCI is to be a high-quality journal coalescing the best research and design work from diverse fields into a distinct new field of human-computer interaction. User Psychology. HCI seeks to foster a scientific understanding of the behavior of computer users, especially the cognitive aspects. "Users" include both programmers and non-programmers and both experts and novices. HCI is primarily concerned with the individual user and with small working groups of users (and not with social, institutional, organizational, or political issues). Theoretical papers will deal with psychological models of user learning and performance. Empirical papers will range from rigorous laboratory experimentation to field observation. Methodological papers will be concerned with the issues of how to analyze tasks and discover the structure of user behavior. System Design. HCI seeks to foster rational discussion of and methods for the design of new computer systems and the evaluation of existing systems. HCI is interested in user-interface design techniques, including the incorporation of intelligence into the interface. HCI is also concerned with the process of design (i.e., not only the "what", but also the "how" and the "why" of design). Theoretical papers will cover the structure and process of human-computer interaction. Empirical papers will investigate existing and novel interaction techniques; they will also study the design process itself. Methodological papers will be concerned with design principles, the rationalization of design alternatives, and the role of empirical methods in the design process. This announcement is not a call for papers, but the following gives the flavor of the journal: HCI is interested in original papers of high quality and broad relevance that fit in the above thematic framework. Papers may cover any domain in which computers are involved, such as programming, office systems, databases, instruction and training, games, design, text-editing, and other interactive computer tools. Being an interdisciplinary journal, all papers should have both scientific (i.e. theoretical or empirical) content and practical relevance to how systems should be designed or how they are actually used. HCI favors substantial papers, which deal with substantial pieces of research and/or design, over smaller or narrower papers, which focus on issues of interest to only a specialized audience. Review papers should develop new conceptual views or codifications of existing material. The Editorial Board of HCI includes distinguished members in the computer science, psychology, artificial intelligence, human factors, and man-machine systems communities: John Anderson (CMU), Ruven Brooks (ITT), John Seely Brown (Xerox), Stuart Card (Xerox), Bill Curtis (ITT), John Gould (IBM), J. C. R. Licklider (MIT), William Newman (Queen Mary College), Allen Newell (CMU), Donald Norman (UCSD), Richard Pew (BBN), Rudy Ramsey (ITT), William Rouse (Georgia Tech), Elliot Soloway (Yale), Richard Young (APU Cambridge), plus others to be announced. Comments about editorial matters should be sent to the Editor: Thomas P. Moran Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 (or to MORAN@PARC-MAXC). To keep informed about the new journal, HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, mail your name and address to: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers 365 Broadway, Suite 102 Hillsdale, NJ 07642 (Current plans are for HCI to appear quarterly, beginning January 1984, and to cost about $25 per year for personal subscriptions.) ------------------------------ End of HUMAN-NETS Digest ************************