"Do you like our owl?"
-- Said by Rachael to Rick Deckard in the movie Blade Runner
(1982), which was based on Philip K. Dick's novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).
About VALIS.COM, the Domain:
The name "VALIS" comes from the title of a science fiction novel
written by Philip K. Dick (Bantam Books, New York, 1981, ISBN 0-553-20594-3).
The following definition comes from the beginning of the book:
VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System,
from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field
in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is
formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its
environment into arrangements of information. Characterized
by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an
armillary coherence.
-- Great Soviet Dictionary
Sixth Edition, 1992
About VALIS.COM, the Machine:
The machine Valis.COM, a.k.a. WWW.Valis.COM,
located in Mountain View, California, is a Dell Precision Workstation 410MT with
dual Intel Pentium III processors
running at 700 MHz, with 256 KB cache per processor, 512 MB RAM, and 367
GB of hard disk space, running the RedHat
7.2 version of the Linux operating
system. Linux is a free version of
the Unix operating system. Linux is extremely reliable and makes a
great Internet server platform. Best of all,
full source code is available!
Valis.COM is connected to the
Internet via an AT&T
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) running at 6,016 Kbps
downstream and 768 Kbps upstream. Now that the other endpoint of my DSL
service has been moved from the central office to a much-closer remote
terminal, the line is 5X faster and more reliable.
Send correspondence regarding this Web site to: www@valis.com
www@valis.com
Last modified: Mon Jan 14 16:49:06 PST 2008