From supreet at fig.org Sat Mar 10 12:40:11 2001 From: supreet at fig.org (Supreet Sethi) Date: 10 Mar 2001 12:40:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] test Message-ID: <87ofvaumjw.fsf@localhost.localdomain> first message to the list -- su - -- From indata at satyam.net.in Tue Mar 13 12:20:44 2001 From: indata at satyam.net.in (Arun Mehta) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:20:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] welcome to the Sarai reader list Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010313121356.02966990@imap.satyam.net.in> Hi, I assume you have a copy of the excellent Sarai reader, possibly even wrote for it. In my view, it would be useful to all of us to discuss the individual contributions, and also use the opportunity to engage with the Sarai programme and mandate. I mailed the following to some of you, to whom I apologise for the duplication. Since then we have had a couple of good meetings on the subjects raised below, which I will report on in a subsequent message. In the mean time, please do feel free to discuss these and other matters of mutual interest... Arun __ I have several suggestions for what Sarai might do, in which I could help: a: How about a training course for activists (anyone familiar with the Midwest Academy in the US, which is basically dedicated to training activists?). We could call some of the better activists in India, and funds permitting, international ones too. The class could be given a concrete project from day one, so that it retains a practical focus. Suggestions for a project might be to get the ban on Net telephony lifted, or that on community-based short-range FM radio stations. b: I am CTO in a company (in which the only other employee is the CEO, Vickram Crishna of Mumbai -- you can imagine it was fairly recently started) called Radiophony, and we have been asked by Stephen Hawking to develop a speech synthesizer for him -- his old one is DOS-based, and far from state of the art. We are not getting paid for this, but see a possibility for getting some funding at the right time. Not only would it be an honour to help this great man in any way, but the software could be useful to people with a variety of disabilities. We of course want this to be open-source, and would like to develop this on SourceForge. Would your Linux lot be interested in collaborating in this? c: Inspired by Ravi's "Recycling Modernity" (which I will react to in more detail when Ravi has settled down in the US and is able to take the time to interact on this), may I suggest a project to see how our technical inputs might help add value to the efforts of the people involved in the gray market, particularly those who recycle computer parts. For instance, a simple box with an IDE port on one end and a USB port on the other could convert old hard disks into valuable movable storage devices, or cheaper internal devices (such as CD writers) into mobile external ones. Another instance: there is plenty of waste in old circuit boards, because nobody has the manual any more to determine settings, or people cannot properly recognise what the board is. In such cases, often ICs and other valuable components are simply ripped off the board, fetching the kabariwalla far less than if the board were sold as a whole. If we put our minds to it, we could really make a difference here without needing to get too caught up with the process. d: I too am unhappy with the situation we find ourselves in, in which the IT domain is limited to the elites. The Socy. for Telecom Empowerment is working on a proposal with the Salaam Balak Trust to set up a training institute for street children in IT (see attached note, which is still being worked on). During the open software panel, I had asked if the Linux lot would help develop a training course for the NIIT/Aptech style of semi-literate graduates (no offence meant here to those coming from those institutes, but I suspect that those who did become accomplished programmers out of their alumni learnt most of what they know by themselves). This course should be based not on the traditional, hierarchical system of teaching, but on cooperative learning in the Linux pattern. Perhaps such an intensive course for training programmers could also take in those of the street children which our basic course identifies as having a particular bent towards programming. e: A study of law as it is applied in Indian cyberspace or IT professionals, and what might be done to improve the situation. From indata at satyam.net.in Tue Mar 13 12:28:37 2001 From: indata at satyam.net.in (Arun Mehta) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:28:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: RCFoC for March 12, 2001 - Consuming All Those Cycles Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010313103448.028744f0@202.54.15.1> What do the artists on this list think -- movies without actors? I find it significant, though, that according to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, you will need humans to speak! Arun >Oh My Goodness. I've just seen the first good indication of why >"actors" may have something to worry about. > >I'd heard talk about the video game-inspired "Final Fantasy" movie due >out this summer, and I've been looking forward to its arrival with >interest. Not because I'm into the Final Fantasy video game, but >because this movie is supposed to feature the most impressive to-date, >computer-generated humans. Now that RCFoC reader TM Mak has pointed me >to the online trailer >(http://www.apple.com/trailers/columbia/final_fantasy/), I AM >IMPRESSED. > >These comments are based only on my watching this trailer, which shows >just a few seconds of the heroine and a male character, but I must say >that I have never seen more convincing computer-generated people. In >the context of this movie trailer, they are convincingly real to me. >The way the girl's hair swirls as she moves, the fluidity of her >movements, seem, well -- real! > >Of course, these characters are set in a fantasy environment, which may >help them to appear "real" by comparison -- I would like to see these >characters inserted into a real street scene in New York, for instance, >to see how closely they compare to "real life," side-by-side... > >I found it interesting that my son felt that these characters looked >TOO real -- he said that real people are not quite so perfect and >graceful. But if this turns out to be the common perception, I expect >that future computer-generated people will take on realistic human >foibles. > >I hope the movie's story line turns out to be as interesting as this >first glance at its characters' animation, because it's going to get my >$7.50 as soon as it opens. And I'd like to remain impressed. > >But even if this movie falls flat on its digital face, the level of >computer-generated human animation that I've already seen makes be >believe that the day of completely-convincing computer animation is not >an "if," but only a "when." And of course, once it can be done for a >"movie" with the enormously expensive "best" computers of the day, it >will only be "a little matter of Moore's Law" before our PCs can >generate convincing photo-realistic environments, populated by >convincing photo-realistic humans... > > > >For Example! > >In fact, while not exactly the same thing, RCFoC reader Jeff Daly >points us to groundbreaking work being done in this area by National >Medal of Technology recipient Ray Kurzweil. At the recent TED >(Technology, Entertainment, & Design) conference, Kurzweil demonstrated >a real-time virtual performer, named Ramona. > >Several special motion-tracking videos cameras watched Ray on-stage, >digitizing his movements. At the same time, his voice was digitally >altered to change his gender. Then, his movements and new voice were >transferred, in real time, to a photorealistic 3D model of Ramona, >where she exactly mirrored his movements and spoke his altered voice >within her virtual environment! > > [Image - Ray Kurzwile in the foreground, with his real-time > computer-generated alter ego in a virtual version of the stage in the > background. From QuickTime video at > http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/ted11/index.html ] > >The picture, above, is a very poor screen shot taken from an online >QuickTime video that you can view at >http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/ted11/index.html . Ray Kurzweil is >in the foreground, where his body movements are instantly translated to >the virtual model, Ramona, who is standing behind him in her virtual >representation of the same stage. > >In effect, if you only watched Ramona's video image, she appeared >"alive" and seamlessly reacting to the environment around her. While >she did not appear quite as "perfect" as the Final Fantasy characters >(she was being animated in real-time, after all), this is quite >something to see. A more detailed explanation of how this was >accomplished is at http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0095.html . > > > >Where This Is Headed... > >I don't want to imply that either of these examples of >computer-generated humans is actually lifelike -- yet. And today, >achieving these results required the special configuration and >integration of products and technologies from dozens of companies. But >one day (not too far away, I expect), photorealistic real-time avatars >will be generated from a single easy-to-set-up-and-use product, and the >results (powered by our ever-faster processors) will be even more >lifelike. > >Did you think we WOULDN'T come up with ways to consume all of our new >processing power? > >This consumption of our computing cycles will have fascinating >implications far beyond entertainment -- such as for virtual meetings, >for online trade shows, and certainly for immersive virtual communities >that go far beyond today's somewhat "cartoonish" (although still >convincing, in their context) virtual worlds, such as EverQuest - >www.everquest.com . > >(Additional insights into today's virtual environments, and the >"avatars" that represent us there, are at >http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0096.html) . > >I think Tom Hanks' job is safe -- for now. And Steven Spielberg and >George Lucas seem to feel that way as well, as reflected by their >comments in the March 4 Nashua Telegraph, > > "...Animation, whether it's hand-drawn or computer-rendered, still > needs to be voiced by a real person... The need for actors to add > 'the emotions' will always be there... Audiences will go away > before actors go away." > >Indeed, even the best computer-generated speech is a long way from >HAL's compelling and emotion-laden dialog in the movie 2001. So far. >But this too will improve. And I did notice that Spielberg and Lucas >didn't actually rule out synthetic actors, only synthetic voices... > >Meanwhile, virtual actors will continue to take the stage and >experiment, as they "improve." For example, witness the birth of a new >computer-generated rock star, "T-Babe" from Glasgow Animation. She's >about to launch her first music video, "Peter Pumpkineater." >(http://www.glasgowrecords.com/tbabe2.htm) > >If the Screen Actor's Guild isn't worried, I expect they soon will (or >should) be... From indata at satyam.net.in Tue Mar 13 12:37:07 2001 From: indata at satyam.net.in (Arun Mehta) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:37:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] the IT teacher shortage, speech generator for Prof. Hawking Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010313113608.019a5760@imap.satyam.net.in> From RCFoC for March 12, 2001 - Consuming All Those Cycles, http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc (a truly great zine): "Demand for online courses is much greater than our ability to create and staff classes." how true... I have long maintained that our neglect of IT teachers training is nothing short of criminal. At the top of the IT food chain stands the teacher who teaches students how to produce software and hardware. I am now exploring, together with the local Linux users group and Sarai, a new way (at least in India) to teach programming, in which we make extensive use of existing code as courseware (in fact, the idea for this came out of the discussion following Raj Mathur's presentation at the Sarai conference). After we cover the basics, we put the students into teams of Linux experts to improve or add to the existing tools and apps used in the open source world. I imagine that such teams would span nations, so no reason why the students shouldn't also be at multiple locations. Distance education becomes a part of the core design of the course, making it easy for us to handle large numbers of students without a proportionate expenditure on real estate. Not that we dispense with conventional teaching. When confronted with a problem, the team turns to experts and asks them to take it to the bottom of the issue, possibly spawning a new online course -- let education be a "pull" rather than a "push." Oh, and students growing up in this paradigm would smoothly grow into the role of teachers: as their skills improve, so does their ability to help new students joining the group, so we squarely address the root issue, the shortage of teachers. This model addresses the financial needs of the students as well. Programmers are in such short supply, that anyone who can get the job done is quickly snapped up. In such a setup, the student doesn't have to be able to solve programming problems entirely by herself, as long as there are people in the group willing to help her -- so she can start making money sooner. The course continues, possibly lifelong, the student merely logs on from a different computer, one belonging to her employer. In the process of helping others, students would acquire the kind of reputation needed to get to and stay at the top of the income pile. The good programmers will quickly make a name for themselves on the list, so advertising becomes a useful biproduct of helping other people. Anyone willing to help? This is a serious project that hopefully will start enrolling students within months. A project to kickstart this process has already been launched. Professor Stephen Hawking has entrusted us with developing a better speech generator for him. His input device is the equivalent of a two-button mouse, with which he constructs sentences, which the software then speaks in a configurable voice. This project is worthwhile if it only helps our greatest living genius better bring out the fruits of his fertile brain. However, it has implications for a large number of other physically challenged people, and it also might allow us to improve the quality and efficiency of telephony by orders of magnitude: if we send sentences across, not the bitmap of our voices, what the other person hears is not limited by the bandwidth of the connection, and of course we consume far less bandwidth as well... This project is being discussed at radiophony at yahoogroups.com, a list you may join by mailing radiophony-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Please forward to lists where persons interested in helping with these projects may be found. Arun >Online Learning -- is growing nicely. In 1998, 710,000 students > took distance-learning courses. IDC, in the March 2 EduPage, now > expects that number to grow to 2.2 million online students next > year. > > What's preventing even more students from reaching out and touching > their higher education? University of Colorado Online executive > director Bob Tolsma says, > > "Demand for online courses is much greater than our ability to > create and staff classes." > > Which suggests to me that there's a tremendous potential for > effective online courses. Of course, a virtual classroom makes it > rather hard to butter up the teacher with an apple... or put ink on her seat... ;-) Arun Mehta, B-69, Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi -- 110024, India. Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103. http://members.tripod.com/india_gii To join india-gii, a list which discusses India's bumpy progress on the global infohighway, mail india-gii-subscribe at cpsr.org From monica at sarai.net Thu Mar 29 02:47:57 2001 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 13:17:57 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Free Art License Message-ID: Dear All To all those who are new onto the list - welcome. As you all know this is a list to discuss issues raised by and articles in the Sarai reader, or anything pertaining to both that you all might think relevant. Keeping in mind the section "Free as in Freedom: Software as culture" in the reader, i thought it might be interesting to offer up for reading something we have discovered on the web since the publishing of the book. Below is a copy of the Free Art License (copyleft attitude) that makes for inspiring and challenging reading. The url of the site is http://antomoro.free.fr/c/lalgb.html cheers Monica Free Art license [ Copyleft Attitude ] version 1.1 Preamble: With this Free Art License, you are authorised to copy, distribute and freely transform the work of art while respecting the rights of the originator. Far from ignoring the author's rights, this license recognises them and protects them. It reformulates their principle while making it possible for the public to make creative use of the works of art. Whereas current literary and artistic property rights result in restriction of the public's access to works of art, the goal of the Free Art License is to encourage such access. The intention is to make work accessible and to authorise the use of its resources by the greatest number of people: to use it in order to increase its use, to create new conditions for creation in order to multiply the possibilities of creation, while respecting the originators in according them recognition and defending their moral rights. In fact, with the arrival of the digital age, the invention of the Internet and free software, a new approach to creation and production has made its appearance. It also encourages a continuation of the process of experimentation undertaken by many contemporary artists. Knowledge and creativity are resources which, to be true to themselves, must remain free, i.e. remain a fundamental search which is not directly related to a concrete application. Creating means discovering the unknown, means inventing a reality without any heed to realism. Thus, the object(ive) of art is not equivalent to the finished and defined art object. This is the basic aim of this Free Art License: to promote and protect artistic practice freed from the rules of the market economy. -------- DEFINITIONS The work of art: A communal work which includes the initial oeuvre as well as all subsequent contributions (subsequent originals and copies). It is created at the initiative of the original artist who, by this license, defines the conditions according to which the contributions are made. The original work of art: This is the oeuvre created by the initiator of the communal work, of which copies will be modified by whosoever wishes. Subsequent works: These are the additions put forward by the artists who contribute to the formation of the work by taking advantage of the right to reproduction, distribution and modification that this license confers on them. The Original (the work's source or resource): A dated example of the work, of its definition, of its partition or of its program which the originator provides as the reference for all future updatings, interpretations, copies or reproductions. Copy: Any reproduction of an original as defined by this license. Creator of the initial work of art: This is the person who created the work which is at the heart of the ramifications of this modified work of art. By this license, the author determines the conditions under which these modifications are made. Contributor: Any person who contributes to the creation of the work of art. He is the creator of an original art object resulting from the modification of a copy of the initial oeuvre or the modification of a copy of a subsequent work of art. 1. AIMS The aim of this license is to define the conditions according to which you can use this work freely. 2. EXTENT OF THE USAGE This work of art is subject to copyright, and the author, by this license, specifies the extent to which you can copy, distribute and modify it. 2.1 FREEDOM TO COPY (OR OF REPRODUCTION) You have the right to copy this work of art for your personal use, for your friends or for any other person, by employing whatever technique you choose. 2.2 FREEDOM TO DISTRIBUTE, TO INTERPRET (OR OF REPRESENTATION) You can freely distribute the copies of these works, modified or not, whatever their medium, wherever you wish, for a fee or for free, if you observe all the following conditions: - attach this license, in its entirety, to the copies or indicate precisely where the license can be found, - specify to the recipient the name of the author of the originals, - specify to the recipient where he will be able to access the originals (initial and subsequent). The author of the original may, if he wishes, give you the right to broadcast/distribute the original under the same conditions as the copies. 2.3 FREEDOM TO MODIFY You have the right to modify the copies of the originals (initial and subsequent), partially or otherwise, respecting the conditions set out in article 2.2 , in the event of distribution (or representation) of the modified copy. The author of the original may, if he wishes, give you the right to modify the original under the same conditions as the copies. 3. INCORPORATION OF ARTWORK All the elements of this work of art must remain free, which is why you are not allowed to integrate the originals into another work which would not be subject to this license. 4. YOUR AUTHOR'S RIGHTS The object of this license is not to deny your author's rights on your contribution. By choosing to contribute to the evolution of this work of art, you only agree to give to others the same rights with regard to your contribution as those which were granted to you by this license. 5. DURATION OF THE LICENCE This license takes effect as of your acceptance of its provisions. The fact of copying, distributing, or of modifying the work constitutes a tacit agreement. This license will remain in force for as long as the copyright which is attached to the work of art. If you do not respect the terms of this license, you automatically lose the rights that it confers. If the legal status to which you are subject makes it impossible for you to respect the terms of this license, you may not make use of the rights which it confers. 6. VARIOUS VERSIONS OF THE LICENCE This license may undergo periodic modifications to incorporate improvements by its authors (instigators of the "copyleft attitude" movement) by way of new, numbered versions. You will have the choice of accepting the provisions contained in the version under which the copy was communicated to you, or alternatively, to use the provisions of one of the subsequent versions. 7. SUB-licensing Sub-licenses are not authorized by the present license. Any person who wishes to make use of the rights that it confers will be directly bound to the author of the original work. 8. THE LAW APPLICABLE TO THIS CONTRACT This license is subject to French law. -------- DIRECTIONS FOR USE: - How to use the Free Art license? To benefit from the Free Art License, it is enough to specify the following on your work of art: [- A few lines to indicate the name of the work and to give an idea of what it is.] [- A few lines to describe, if necessary, the modified work of art and give the name of the author/artist.] Copyright © [the date] [name of the creator] (if appropriate, specify the names of the previous creators) Copyleft: this work of art is free, you can redistribute it and/or modify it according to terms of the Free Art license. You will find a specimen of this license on the site Copyleft Attitude http://copyleft.tsx.org as well as on other sites. - Why use the Free Art license? 1 / to give the greatest number of people access to your work. 2 / to allow it to be freely distributed. 3 / to allow it to evolve by authorising its transformation by others. 4 / to be able, yourself, to use the resources of a work when it is under Free Art license: to copy, distribute or transform it freely. 5 / This is not all: because the use of the Free Art License is also a good way to take liberties with the marketing system generated by the dominant economy. The Free Art License offers a useful legal protocol to prevent abusive appropriation. It will no longer be possible for someone to appropriate your work, short-circuiting the creative process to make personal profit from it. Helping yourself to a collective work in progress will be forbidden, as will monopolising the resources of an evolving creation for the benefit of a few. The Free Art License advocates an economy appropriate for art, based on sharing, exchange and joyful giving. What counts in art is also and mostly what is not counted. - When to use the Free Art License ? It is not the goal of the Free Art License to eliminate copyright or author's rights. Quite the opposite, it is about reformulating the relevance of these rights while taking today's environment into account. It is about the right to freedom of movement, to free copying and to free transformation of works of art. The right to work in freedom for art and artists. 1 / Each time you want to use or put this right into practice, use the Free Art License. 2 / Each time you want to create works which can evolve and be freely copied, freely distributed and freely transformed: use the Free Art License. 3 / Each time you want to have the possibility of copying, distributing or transforming a work: check that it is under Free Art License. If it is not, you are liable to be breaking the law. - To which types of art can the Free Art License be applied? This license can be applied to digital as well as to non-digital art. It was born out of observation of the world of free software and the Internet, but its applicability is not limited to the digital media. You can put a painting, a novel, a sculpture, a drawing, a piece of music, a poem, an installation, a video, a film, a recipe, a CD-rom, a Web site, or a performance under the Free Art License, in short any creation which has some claim to be a work of art. This license has a history: it was born at the meeting " Copyleft Attitude " http://copyleft.tsx.org which took place at "Accès Local" and "Public" in Paris at the beginning of the year 2000. For the first time, it brought computer specialists and freeware activists together with contemporary artists and members of the art world. -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From monica at sarai.net Thu Mar 29 04:47:34 2001 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 15:17:34 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Readerlist subscription Message-ID: Hello everyone, and welcome once again to the Sarai Reader 01 Discussion List. Some of you may already have received such an email, but do excuse me as i am still learning how to administer one :) The url where you can go and un-subscribe is: http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list This is also the url to go to if you wish to subscribe from another address, or if anyone else you know wishes to subscribe. In time, the other discussion lists run at Sarai will also be hosted here. The Sarai Reader 01 is available at Sarai. The price is Rs 150 (+ Rs 25 (in India) and Rs 140 (south asia) for postage), and US $ 10 (+ $4 for postage) for the rest of the world. Please order by email, and send us a draft, made in the name of CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF DEVELOPING SOCIETIES. The reader is also available online at www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html warm regards Monica -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net