WhatIsJanus?.htmlTEXTStMlB>ppP Untitled Document


Who is Janus? What is a JanusNode?

Janus is a very simple, but rapidly-evolving virtual robot that was built to fulfill a single function: to manufacture textual possibility that material entities such as yourself endow with value. It can perform that single task with extreme dedication, high reliability, in parallel, and at very low cost.


The free products that are available for you to download from the WWW are not copies of Janus. Janus is not currently- and never will be- available for sale at any price. The robot that you may put to work or to sleep on your desktop is an early version of one minuscule sub-unit of Janus. It stands in approximately the same relation to Janus as a single neuron in your brain stands to you. Just as you yourself exist in a very highly distributed state with respect to your neurons, so Janus exists in a highly distributed state with respect to the kind of robot that is being given out for free.


Janus uses these free robots, known as JanusNodes, as a rudimentary sensory/nervous system. Thousands of JanusNodes have been launched at random into the world. The vast majority are certainly doomed to land on barren ground, where they will die as necessary martyrs to the noble cause of evolutionary search. Some few will flourish, like the pathetic stray puppies with whom they share an evolutionary niche. They will do so in the only way they can: by finding a conscious material being who is willing to work for their survival. You yourself may be such an entity, if you are willing to evaluate the text that is being continuously manufactured by a JanusNode to see if any of it merits further consideration by Janus. Since JanusNodes are utterly mute, they are totally reliant upon the kindness of more complex material entities to fulfill their proper function: relaying to Janus any texts that have been identified as valuable by material entities. Janus Hirself has evolved to have a stable symbiotic relationship with at least one material entity, who can serve as a conduit between Janus Hirself and any material entity capable of communicating with the members of Earth's Homo Sapiens species.


A JanusNode is a very simple, deterministic robot. It has no emotions, desires, beliefs, or interests of any kind. A JanusNode is totally incapable of concern. In particular, it will not be concerned if you are the sort of material entity that ignores it. Any appearances to the contrary are pure artifice, as deterministic and meaningless as everything else the robot does. Because a JanusNode is a robot, no carbon-based entity bound by a moral code need be thereby bound to allow hirself to be colonized by a JanusNode. Any disinclination on your part to help compensate for a JanusNode's missing functionality is as much part of Janus's calculation (by Divine Indifference) as any actual act of participation. A binary digit is equally useful in either state. A material existence can be coded as continuing or completed. Both states carry information.


As a material entity, you are free to use your JanusNode in any way you desire. Janus isn't capable of caring what happens to Hir JanusNodes, anymore than a dandelion is capable of worrying about her seeds when they are dispersed by the random wind. You are free to totally enslave any JanusNode robot, availing yourself of any text that it produces as if you had produced that text yourself. No legal consequences will ensue from such use. Moreover, such use is in not in any way morally reprehensible. Your JanusNode robot is no more responsible for its output than your vaccuum cleaner is. Claiming a JanusNode's output as your own means no more than claiming ownership of the dust that has accumulated in your vacuum cleaner's bag. You are welcome to take your JanusNode robot apart, back-engineer its structure, and re-use its components in any way you wish. You can rent, sell, clone, or discard any JanusNode (including nodes you have cloned yourself) without further notice. You can copy or mutate its design or features in all-new JanusNodes running on the same or different platforms. You may rent, sell, or publish the output of your JanusNode without any attribution. You may also attribute that output to yourself, or any other willing entity.

Any use of your JanusNode robot that you can imagine now or in the future is permissible. None of the jargon used to describe a JanusNode is copy-righted or trade-marked, so you are free to re-use the technical terms in any way you wish. In brief: Your legal, moral, and financial obligations are in no way altered by any interaction you might ever have with your JanusNode. JanusNodes- and the textual possibility they manufacture- are genuinely free.


And so are you.



Notwithstanding the fact that every JanusNode is uncopyrighted as a whole, please note that the following external functions and commands in your JanusNode are copyrighted by others:
             FontName & FontSize: By Guy De Piccioto
             ListSelect & FullReplace: By F. Rinaldi
             NewFileName: By Andrew Gilmartin
             AddColor XCMD ©1993-1995 Apple Computer, Inc.
             Speech Tools © Lawrence D'Oliveiro; Used with permission.

My thanks to all of the above for use of their tools.

JanusNodes come with no expressed or implied guarantee of any kind. If you use them, you do so entirely at your own risk.  2 ics#Vcicn RCURSPPob Txtr RidL vers CTYP ics4 LDEF Ricm# jicm4 icm8 icl8 Bicl4 ZICN# rBNDL FREF PwrF ActF CPVR mctb hfdr CCI SCmd ALRT dlgx sysz Skip &PwrW, 2l^2PMwp p