I don't know if the poster intended this, but this spam was almost
on-topic. The PEAR lab used Teraks as lab computers in the early 80s.
Earlier this year, I assisted one of the PEAR researchers in archiving
more than a hundred eight-inch Terak floppies containing results from
past experiments. It was the PEAR Terak that was on display in the
computer graphics history exhibit at SIGGRAPH 98 this summer in Orlando.
As for what they're trying to do, I'd say they're on the hard science end
of the parapsychological spectrum. They seem to be trying very hard to
keep their experiments reproducible and tamper-proof. For more info,
see their web site at <
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/index.html>.
Interestingly, one of the PEAR random event generators is hosted by
John Walker, the zillionaire founder of Autodesk, and now an ex-pat
living in Switzerland, and maintainer of one of the most interesting
sites on the web <
http://www.fourmilab.ch/>. Also, Roger Nelson
of PEAR wrote a review of an Amiga FORTH for Amazing Computing
magazine way back when, when I was the technical editor there.
I'm a skeptic of the Skeptical Inquirer / CSICOP <
http://www.csicop.org/>
variety. I'm so skeptical, even I can hardly believe it. PEAR's
press releases are often re-spun and re-interpreted by the more
fruity ESP fans. I've been sent at least one that had been
processed into spam - and at the time, PEAR had posted a note
saying they weren't associated with the spam.
- John
Received on Fri Nov 06 1998 - 09:05:03 GMT