CHAOS MANOR MAIL
A SELECTION
December 14 - 20, 1998
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I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail.
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We begin with a nagging suspicion.
Talin: think of Chaos Manor as Open Source Development
BYTE laments: a note from overseas.
Calvin Dodge on installing Linux 5.2
Moshe Bar on upgrading to Linux 5.2
- Bar asks about Clinton in Israel
- Pournelle on Clinton in Israel
- Bar replies
- And more on peacekeeping
Word Perfect 7, not 8, in Linux
A lament for BYTE from England
Russell Kay on Internet Explorer 5 Beta problems
- with reply
- And more from Russell Kay
A question about a science fiction novel I didn't write
- And answer
A discussion on being the world policeman
LINUX, Microsoft, and using the DISPLAY command
Word Perfect 8 for Linux Available now
Cancelling your BYTE Subscription: there will be no BYTE.
A mild constitutional debate on "war".
Microsoft, mature markets, and economic history
Internal vs. External modems: go with external
From Joe Kubler email:joe.kubler@cwix.com
Jerry,
I thought you might be interested in an opinion piece that appeared in the November IEEE Computer magazine. It was in the Open Channel column. (I know that it is december and this is "old" now, but in fact for me this is about as current as I can get on my reading! Except when BYTE was still alive and I read your column as soon as I got the magazine.)
Anyway this guy Nevelle Holmes ( a senior lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Tasmania) claims that computers in fact have made it easier for the haves of the world to better control, keep and increase what they have. That in fact computers did not cause new systems to be produced but better enable those that could afford them to automate systems in place and better control the information which in turn allows better control of their clients which of course eventually is the have nots.
While I personally have a little trouble with what he says, reading the whole piece was somewhat unsettling. I know that you are up to your armpits already, but if you know of this article or better yet its proponents, I would be very interested in your take on it. I respect your social insight on these type of things.
Joe Kubler
I don't get that publication, and I am unlikely to; but it seems wrong to me. In the early days of small computers, Mother Jones, and the Whole Earth Review, ran long articles on computers and the enslavement of women, who would be chained to the kitchen table doing data entry at home, and so forth, doomed forever. I thought then and now that having this kind of power available is a great equalizer. God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal; as has the small computer. Now it is true enough that computers make it possible for the wealthy to track, and thus hang onto, and thus increase, their wealth; but they always had that ability, albeit mostly through hirelings. Now, though, you and I can afford to have helpers manage what we have.
The portable electric quarter inch drill made the true industrial revolution; as small computers are making the true information revolution. Yes, they increase everyone's abilities, rich as well as poor; but the numbers show that while the rich are getting richer, so are the middle class.
It also remains true that fully half the people are below average. In everything, from intelligence to wealth. The question is, where is that average?
Jerry,
Has it occured to you that your website is in fact an open-source development project? Just think, you have people volunteering to send you not only new content (i.e. articles and letters) but structure (the index page, background art, new layouts), not to mention bug reports and bug fixes. Other parallels can be drawn, such as the fact that your publishing of credit for contributions motivates others to contribute as well.
Which means that the problems you have of collecting money for your site is exactly the same as any other open source author deals with. This, in turn, that once the OSS community figures out how to solve this problem, the solution might be applicable to your problem as well. For example, Stig (
http://www.hackvan.com) has suggested the idea of "e-tipping", which is the idea of creating a technology that would allow anyone to send a small "tip" to anyone on the internet. For example, I can easily afford to register shareware, but often I don’t because (frankly) I’m too lazy to fill out all of those forms. If I had a little button on my browser that would send five bucks to the owner of whatever web site I was currently reading, I would probably use it a lot more often. Just as tipping in restaurants is voluntary but customary (i.e. if you don’t do it, people think it strange), so I foresee a culture where e-tipping becomes commonplace, assuming it can be made really, really easy.--
Talin (
Talin@ACM.org) Talin’s first law:http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin "Computing power is infinitely wasteable."
That makes a great deal of sense, and I had not thought of it that way. My first move, I think, is to set things up so that money can be sent to me through my wife's credit card acceptance scheme. That just takes work, but it also takes fooling with her system, which she hates; but since I am setting her up a new W 98 box with 8 gigabytes of storage space, when I install her other stuff I'll try that too. As you say, it is not the money, it is the inconvenience. I also ought to work with Kagi again. I am sure I let that correspondence lapse when I got busy with other stuff, and they collect money in any way it is possible including postage stamps.
I ought also to set some pricings; such as a "bare bones' subscription, and one with fancier options. For the moment, I certainly do not get enough out of this to justify the work, and much of what I do is just sort of to keep the system operating while we think of other ways to make it pay. We'll see. But that is a very interesting analogy.
Jerry,
I should correct myself by mentioning that although your site is open source, it is not "Open Source[tm]", in other words it does not meet the Open Source Definition, nor is it likely to. (For one thing, it’s not freely redistributable.) However, the site is certainly an example of "open collaboration" or "distributed development".
One suggestion for improving the site along these lines would be a "credits" page.
--
Talin (Talin@ACM.org) Talin’s first law:
http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin "Computing power is infinitely wasteable."
And how would I do that? I do the best I can to leave names and email addresses for everyone; what the heck more do you want me to do?
===
Clark E. Myers
e-mail at:
ClarkEMyers@msn.com
I wouldn't Spam filter you!
Quoting a letter: "Nevelle Holmes ( a senior lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Tasmania) claims that computers in fact have made it easier for the haves of the world to better control, keep and increase what they have. That in fact computers did not cause new systems to be produced but better enable those that could afford them to automate systems in place and better control the information which in turn allows better control of their clients which of course eventually is the have nots."
I suggest this statement is literally true and precisely nonsense because it is incomplete. That is a neutral tool can be used by the haves of the world but also by the have nots. Computers helped the Stasi keep better files and computers helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Moore's Law in its various forms says that "those that could afford them" is in some sense everyone. Today's (Monday December 14) Wall Street Journal features a story on strategic computing and arms control or putting together a super computer at Fry's. Dr. Pournelle has repeatedly pointed out that individual desktops can replicate the analysis formerly done on large systems and extend it. See the Second Computer Revolution discussion elsewhere on this site for a discussion of the spread of programming knowledge to use the cheap super computers.
Sam Colt made Captain Walker and the Rangers famous as well as arming Quantrill's Raiders. Access to information gave us Sub-Commandante Marcos in Mexico as well as supporting the P.R.I.. The observed gross effects say to me that the computers empower the clients more than they empower the haves. Seems to me this a general effect, perhaps traceable to conservatism by the haves and the willingness of some have nots to try anything.
On the other hand, I am terrified at the implications of not paying for shareware. I think it may be somewhere in the Notebooks of Lazarus Long that if you cannot afford the tip you cannot afford the meal. Frankly I did not send money for the Strategy of Technology until nagged on screen repeatedly and when I was subscribing to this site anyway so I am as we all are dear semblable lecteur somewhat hypocritical. I have also been known to get heavily discounted software. Nevertheless, when someone wants my assistance to bootleg software (from me or another source) I have been known to suggest that if they cannot afford to buy their own copy, they just shoplift it so they have an installation disc. My intention is to shut them up and say don't ask me again, not to incite them to crime. For reasons that seem good to me I have also bought and paid for software myself to give people licensed copies. I wonder if there should not be an attractive nuisance doctrine that says if you invite being ripped off you have an obligation to make it easy to pay. On the other hand I do not look forward to Microsoft's nag screens and term limits. On the gripping hand I do write the CD keys on the CDs. There is real need for that $5 tip button.
Good points all. Thanks.
===
I read your comments on Jerry Pournelles www-pages.
I tried to scan the cmp wwwpages for some information, some weeks ago, I only found one email-address and sent a request that my inquiry about should be forwarded.
Last week I sent a fax to France with same text, but still no answer.
We have a renewal for three years starting last summer, so CMP has for 120$ from us but we have got nothing from from them, not even a letter about discontiunity.
Perhaps some people should start a thread on all related newsgroups and complain about CMP??
Best regards
Kaj G Backas
KGB@systecon.fi (job)
KGB@compart.fi (home)
www.compart.fi/~KGB (homepage)
I fear I have no advice to give on this. I am not quite to the stage of burning every possible bridge to CMP: they have some good publications, and one of their executives is a close friend. I think they bought the magazines at the wrong time, and did not understand the nature of BYTE's readership; probably they did not bother to ask people like Fred Langa who had had some experience with BYTE. I think they thought of BYTE as a slightly more technical WINDOWS, and when they discovered that it was not, and meanwhile there were cash flow problems, they went into a state of panic.
Certainly they have honored all the contracts with me; there were some officials in CMP who tried to stiff me, but their top management people paid every cent they owed, just as McGraw Hill paid all my previous expenses.
On the other hand, it was a raw deal all around for subscribers, and their web pages to this day do not send people here for the rest of the columns.
==
From Calvin Dodge, Linux Evangelist
On your "View" page you wrote:
> Now I need to figure how to upgrade what I have, and do I
> install Moshe Bar's suites before or after? This will take
> some thought, and I haven't time for thinking. The good news is
I'd suggest you install them after upgrading. When you upgrade Red Hat _some_ configuration files will be replaced. They'll be backed up to files named "originalname.rpmsave" (where "originalname" is the original configuration filename), but why go through the trouble of recreating any special modifications you (or Moshe's scripts) may have made?
> I have about decided to start over on Linux: scrub the disk,
> repartition with few to no extra partitions (essentialy a swap,
> and a couple of big ones, and that's it) and install
If you want two big ones, you'll probably want some idea as to what to put in each one. I was surprised when I logged in as root, then did a "du -s *" from the root directory - "/usr" took up half the occupied space, so it might be a logical candidate for a separate partition. That was on a system with less than a full install, so YMMV, of course.
My standard practice now is:
Do a full install (space permitting) with three partitions: a little one (10 megs) at the beginning for the /boot directory, a 128 meg swap partition, and the rest as one big partition.
Get X windows up and running, then use "glint" to quickly and easily remove the foreign language documentation (it's somewhere around 170 megs worth now - they even have help files in Croatian!)
> 5.2 from scratch. I am astonished that none of the other Linux
> suppliers have sent anything; most of them said they would at
> COMDEX. Of course one can download a bunch of stuff, and
> one day I will, but Red Hat seems to be doing a good job of
> keeping up with things, and they have documentation, and
> such like.
I'm beginning to get an(other) idea as to why Red Hat is so popular.
> to say about the work he did on getting SAMBA to work with
> my system (I have not installed that) and whether it will work
> all right with 5.2 installed from the beginning.
Don't forget to download the Samba update from Red Hat (it clears up a security concern). (see http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/rh52-errata-general.html#samba for more details).
> On that score, Corel is about to send me their already set up
> Linux Box; more when I have it, but it won't be too long now.
> And that is probably the best way for small businesses that
> want to use Linux to do it: installation is not a problem and
> the boxes are cheap enough, and Corel is enthusiastic.
> And you will get Word Perfect Suite as part of the deal...
I saw one of those under a fellow enthusiast's arm at our Linux Mini-expo Thursday night. OOOOOH, I WANT ONE!
I'm glad you received the 5.2 CD - try the simplified installation (Server, Workstation, or Custom) to see how much easier Red Hat has made the installation process.
I'll be leaving for Saipan tomorrow night (to see my sweetheart for a couple of weeks). I'll be taking two more 5.2 CDs with me, in the hopes of spreading the "Linux Gospel" to the far Pacific. I will keep track of my email from there, so feel free to send any questions you might have.
Sincerely,
Calvin Dodge
Thanks. I have got most of my errands done, and I have now to finish Roberta's Win 98 machine; after which it's Linux for a while. And I will scrub and start over. Merry Christmas.
=
for lots of linux games, try:
http://www.happypenguin.org/news
doom, quake, and many others are available.
thanks for trying linux
galen
==
Moshe Bar [mbar@campofranco.com]
Dear Dr. Pournelle
The scripts I send you for SAMBA and the internet connection will work also for 5.2.
One thing. I would not re-install everything again after scratching the disk. Your partition set-up as it is now is quite wise. You can't have a swap partition larger than 128MB in Linux (one of its shortcomings) but you don't really need that I think. So, basically you are just fine as you are now.
One of the install options of RH5.2 is "upgrade". This will do just fine. It will upgrade your kernel to 2.0.36, which is significantly faster and also install the newest drivers and stuff for you. You will have a much more efficient system, while still preserving all local configuration like users, applix etc.
In the world of UNIX, a total re-install is a no-no. You upgrade, you re-compile, but you never re-install.
If you upgrade (or choose to actually re-install) make sure not to tell Red Hat to launch the "named" deamon on boot, since this is what causes you the long hang-up on start-up. Also, supply it the DNS numbers of your ISP, as well as the proper IP numbers for your network (192.168.1.x).
One last note. Release 6 of Red Hat is due out in one month or so, as Linus Torvalds is finishing the new generation of Linux kernels, the 2.2.0 series with very significant changes, enhancements and extensions. Although, RH5.2 is nice, you might want to wait (as I do) for RH6.0 which should come out very shortly.
Best regards
Moshe Bar
PS Can we know your thoughts on Clinton's visit here?
Thank you. OK, I will "upgrade" to 5.2. I probably will wait for 6 before doing much serious work, but I hope to have some time shortly to play with Linux, and this looks like a good time to do it; I am particularly interested in SAMBA. I would also like to make Linux my communications server.
Regarding Clinton's visit, I doubt my thoughts are worth a lot. I have no love for Clinton, but he was elected, and until and unless impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate he remains the only President we have. The US pays Israel a lot of money -- more than is good for either country in my judgment -- but we really have little to no understanding of the problems there. I gathered in my interview with your President (it's odd that I have met the President of Israel but not of the US) that he isn't all that happy with the present policies of the government, but he doesn't know what to do about it; if that's true of a general of his stature, it's got to be doubly true of a professor turned writer. I have seen injustice from both sides in that conflict, and I found the treatment of some of the Christians in Jerusalem at the hands of some of the European Jewish immigrants to be despicable; but hardly in the same class as firing rockets and shells at random, or blowing up busses full of school children.
I can hope that Mr. Clinton's considerable charm was useful in getting both sides to give some ground, but I am afraid I don't think that can be enough. For Israel to be secure requires concessions that no Palestinian leader can make without being assassinated by his own people, and I have not forgotten that the last Israeli Prime Minister was assassinated by one of his own people; a fate that will await any Israeli leader who makes a deal acceptable to the Palestinians, in my judgment.
I understand that 10,000 additional security people were put on the job to protect Clinton. This is very expensive, and adds to the conversion of the Presidency to Emperor; and this without anyone to whisper, Remember, thou art but a man.
I don't think I know any Palestinian Moslems, but I have a number of Christian friends who call themselves Palestinian Arabs; as well as a number of friends who call themselves Jews of Israel. I would hate to see any of them come to harm. But pious wishes solve few problems.
I have heard good arguments that the Old City of Jerusalem ought to be put under an international commission and not be part of any state. I doubt that will ever be acceptable to Israel. Whether the US ought to make such acceptance a condition of continued aid to Israel is beyond my competence; I have heard arguments on both sides, and some sideways to it.
In a word: I don't know. And I doubt anyone else does either.
Dear Dr. Pournelle
I am hit by the Talin opinion on your website. He is absolutely right, your site is an open source site. Chaos Manor, for that matter is now an Open Source network. You have people contributing to the functioning and efficiency of your network through your web site.
Once again, Dr. Pournelle, you are fulfilling your own vision of technology.
Thank you for letting us, your readers, know your opinion on the Middle East and the US involvement there. I also see, and am embarrassed by, the poor treatment of other religious minorities by Jews in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a separate universe and understanding all the issues there, between Jews and Christians and Arabs, but also between religious Jews and secular Jews is impossible even for residents.
In his welcome speech to Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu mentioned that "the Israeli eternal capital, Jerusalem, " should be a home for all religions. This pretty much sums up the prevalent view of Israelis as to giving administration of the city over to an international body. The US itself has confirmed the status of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital by deciding to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
On the US monetary contributions to Israel, I would just like to add US contributions to Egypt, as a matter of policy, have to match the ones to Israel.
Best regards and good luck with your upgrade to RH5.2, I am here to help where I can.
Moshe Bar
==
WP has been shipping WordPerfect for Linux for at least two years - wp7 though. wp8 is SUPPOSED to be out by now but isn’t. Ugh - I’m still using the slightly buggy production candidate version.
Do you get the feeling that a new user’s guide to Linux would be a best seller?
I am reading through your notes and it is very enlightening. It makes me realize just how long I have been using Unix and debugging tricks that I just happen to remember would take a new user weeks to suffer through (as you obviously have done).
Maybe I should try writing a new user’s guide.
Mark
It couldn't hurt. I suspect others are working on it too. It seems a natural. But it takes a guru who can write for beginners; there do not seem to be many of those.
==
I guess I have been behind the times. For some months now I had been wondering what had happened, as I had been unable to obtain BYTE in any of the local or national retailers here in the UK. I did wonder if there had been some change with the distribution arrangements, but I never got round to really trying to find out until today. I logged into
www.byte.com, and saw the change to CMP Media, started digging deeper and found the notice about the change of ownership. I sent off a message to one mail address asking about getting the magazine in the UK and all I got back was an automated response. I then remembered your columns and made a stab at the web address, from which I then got all the gory details.What can I say. I was greatly saddened to hear of the demise of BYTE magazine as it was. Like you, I believe that it will almost certainly not reappear as it was (if it indeed reappears at all). CMP clearly did not have their heads screwed on when they made their decisions on BYTE. One wonders if McGraw-Hill are perhaps beginning to regret selling the magazine now? But then again, I guess business is business.
Well I wish you and the rest of the BYTE "crowd" all the best, and would be happy to see any or all of you working again either on BYTE (whether under CMP auspices or otherwise) or in any similar publication that might see the light of day. I may not have been a religious reader of BYTE, but I certainly valued the in-depth and independent analysis and reporting that made it such a unique publication. It will be sadly missed.
Many regards,
Michael Lancastle,
Manchester, UK.
Thanks. I have no idea of why this happened, or what will happen now. Nothing has changed. Welcome aboard, and spread the word…
==
Could you help me find a book? I read this book when I was about nine years old in 1963 so it had to be published in the fifties or early sixties. It was the first science fiction book (and the first real book) I ever read. It led me to a love of books ever since. I checked the book out of the school library. Here is what I remember about it. It was a story of a young man who leads Earth forces against an invading fleet of aliens from within our galaxy. They may have been a lizard-like race (not sure). This leader fought the aliens across the galaxy and eventually arrived at the aliens home planet at the center of the galaxy. The aliens basically surrendered or disappeared at this point and turned the galaxy over the upstart Terrans. The book ends with the realization that a new force from outside the galaxy may be a threat to our galaxy. Well, that is the best I remember. It seems the cover showed a alien ship in the sites of some kind of gun. Any ideas? I would love to find that book and read it again. Thanks for your help.
ps - As a long time SF reader and Byte reader from 1980, I have enjoyed your work. I was glad to find your web site.
Jim Purcell
That sounds like a lot of book plots. Including the Hubbard novel about John Goodboy, which I fear I have not read. But '63 is too early for that and by a lot. I don't have the foggiest notion. Anyone else?
==
Ben Bova, The Star Conquerors. Based on Alexander. Not even close to his best novel, but popular at the time among young males.
Harry Erwin, Internet: herwin@gmu.edu, Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin Senior Software Analyst supporting the FAA, PhD candidate in computational neuroscience—modeling how bats echolocate—and lecturer for CS 211 (data structures and advanced C++).
Thanks!
==
Mark Thompson [jomath@mctcnet.net]
Alas, I cannot remember the author’s name, but the book he described fits _The Star Conquerors_. I know the author was a well-known writer of SF at the time this book was in print, (Fletcher Pratt?)and it was definitely in the library’s juvenile sf section. I saw this book in more than 1 library.
The bad guys were definitely saurian (Saurian may have been their species name) but they were in the employ of the Masters. The Masters ruled the galaxy but had been attacked from outside: "we retreated, destroying the stars behind us"—and Earth apparently had suffered an attack by the Masters and/or their rivals, as a concealed installation in the Saturn system was designed to perpetuate Ice Ages to keep humans from getting out into the galaxy. The lizards were not Mersians, but I have no doubt they were not trustworthy in this book, either.
We seem to have lost much of the really good juvenile sf from the 50’s to 80’s; stuff that was mostly published for librarians. Alan E. Nourse had some great books, but I can’t find much of his adult work (he was the Dr. X who wrote _Intern_, which caused much scandal in medical circles years back)and I’d really like to re-read some of that.
Come to that, Jim Kjelgaard’s juveniles (Big Red, Irish Red, Ulysses’ Woodland Zoo, many others) are hard to find, especially in libraries.
Questions of computer literacy aside, I am beginning to believe that modern education is a frontal assault on BASIC literacy.
[What had started as a response to a query became a polemic. I apologize for the length, not the content.]
No apology needed. The literacy rate in the US has gone from essentially 100% to lower than that of Iraq. We may be turning that around, and we may not. See my wife's page…
==
>> >We built a number of structures in response the to the Cold War. Now it’s time
to dismantle most of them, but that will be >very hard to do, particularly if we continue to have vague but vast overseas commitments and seek to be the world’s >policeman.
As you may recall, you and I had a version of this debate on BIX long ago, concerning the Gulf War. You were opposed to it, at the time; my argument was that if you had Saddam Hussein controlling the entire Arabian Peninsula, you’d have $5/gallon gasoline and a man with more money than he could ever spend, bent on setting himself up as the next Nasser. Then he’d go after Israel at some point, and they’d go nuclear, and God knows where it would’ve ended up (the USSR, still in existence at that time, had 2600 "advisers" in Iraq during the Gulf War. The firepower we demonstrated there had a noticeable effect on STAVKA’s thinking, and indirectly was a causative factor in pushing them the final bit into collapsing their empire).
Now that we no longer have a bipolar world - at least, not presently, though the Chinese are doing their damnedest to make it so again - it’s arguable that the world -needs- a policeman. Not a policeman who sends young men to die in the streets of Mogadishu, or on permanent picket duty in Bosnia, but one who responds with overwhelming, crushing force towards those who threaten great mischief.
>> >I was willing to tolerate a very great deal of nationalized power when we had a
large and implacable national enemy; but once that situation changed, I revert to what I think was the premise of the United States as expressed by John Adams: "We believe that each man is the best judge of his own interest." You can compromise on that when there are 24,000 nuclear >weapons aimed at the country, even if they are aimed by a "superpower" that is tottering internally.
The New York Times are set to run a front-page story tomorrow [12/15/98] on how various intelligence, including NSA intercepts, leads one to the inevitable conclusion that the Chinese tried to influence our 1996 elections in order to secure access to technology - military technology, such as ICBM booster improvements. They currently have 13 ICBMs online, 10 of which are targeted at U.S. soil (including Hawaii, where I live, and Los Angeles, where you live). Now, we may not view them as the ‘main enemy’, per se, but the evidence shows that they surely view -us- that way, and feel that they must build up their military machine a) to limit our influence in southeast Asia, and b) to coerce other nations such as India, Pakistan, Japan, etc. into making territorial and/or mineral wealth concessions. Witness the current tensions surrounding the Spratley Islands, involving China, Japan, India, and Vietnam.
The years between the Great War and WWII should have taught us that the price of peace is eternal vigilance. Well, there’s no cheaper form of vigilance than effective intelligence services. The U.S. intelligence budget, in real terms, is only $30B/year: $17B for NSA, $3B for CIA, and the rest split up amongst DIA, State, Commerce, NRO, etc. That’s a drop in the bucket when viewed as part of the overall federal budget; even if the federal government were pared down to what I believe both you and I would consider a more reasonable size, it’s still peanuts.
Is the intelligence budget spent wisely? In some areas, yes, in others no. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Sen. Moynihan recently wrote a book calling for the reform of the intelligence community generally, and advocating the abolition of CIA specifically. I disagree with him about CIA, but the rest of his book has a lot of valid criticisms and good ideas which those who think seriously about these issues should consider.
As far as the defense budget goes, we’re spending less in real dollars than we were in 1980. We no longer have the capacity to do Desert Storm again if we had to; all our major weapons systems, from the F-14 to the F-16 to the F-15 to the 688-class SSN are more than 20 years old, units lost to accidents aren’t being replaced, and the munitions stockpiles are at all-time lows. The first B-52 prototype flew in 1947, the first A-6 (still the Navy’s premier attack bomber) flew in 1952, and there are -no replacements- in the pipe for the forseeable future.
The Army’s M1A2 Abrams, Longbow Apache, and Comanche are all reasonably up-to-date, but as the Gulf War showed, the greatest force multiplier of all is air superiority, and that’s where we’re lagging the most. Even worse than the equipment situation is the manpower crunch; Air National Guard units are being used in Bosnia, the Middle East, etc., and there simply aren’t enough regular Air Force pilots to go around. Worse than that is the fact that re-enlistment and retention rates for combat-qualified pilots are down about 150% over seven years ago. You can’t just take someone and qualify him fresh off the farm for air combat.
Defense conversion has left us in a situation where the tooling for certain items has been destroyed, and the institutional memory of our nuclear weapons laboratories is fading fast. You can’t just snap your fingers and have a contractor ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out tanks or supersonic fighter aircraft upon demand; if their production lines lie fallow, they’ll dismantle them, shuffle of the personnel into other areas (or simply RIF them), and before you know it, we’re in the position we’re in right now with the old Saturn-Vs lying on the ground at JSC, KSC, and Huntsville - we couldn’t build one from the ground up today if our lives depended upon it.
So, the bottom line is that if we want to live in a reasonably safe condition now, and for the forseeable future, we -need- the intelligence services, we need to actually -increase- defense spending, and we need to realize that just because the USSR is gone, all is not well. In case you missed it, the Duma voted last week to put the statue of Iron Feliks back up outside the Lubyianka; the Chinese have licensed the Su-27 and the MiG-29 (arguably the best all-around air superiority fighter in the world) for production within their own borders, and the North Koreans now have 3-stage ICBMs ready to go.
The inefficiencies and potential for abuse of our intelligence services must be addressed, but dismantling them would be foolish. The same goes for our military-industrial complex. We ignore the lessons of history at our peril.
For a good fictional treatment involving some of these issues, check out Eric L. Harry’s _Arclight_, now in paperback. Well-written, and hair-raisingly plausible.
----------------
Roland Dobbins <
rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com> // 808.351.6110 voiceNull, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane and empty of meaning for all time.
-- Pope Innocent X, on the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648
While I agree with Kagan that if you seek peace, you must keep it, the question is who shall be keeper, and why?
I wasn't opposed to the Gulf War per se, I was opposed to war without a Declaration of War. Had we declared war on Saddam Hussein, we would have actually accomplished something over there; as it was, we killed off a number of his conscripts, encouraged his opposition to rise so that he could kill them, and finished off a lot of Kurds and others who had no use for Hussein; while Saddam Hussein remains. If we had a Declaration of War we might have understood what we were fighting for. As it was -- what WAS that all about? So that a gang of thugs from Kuwait could enjoy themselves in London while we fought for them and killed a bunch of conscript Iraqi's? But domestic politics dictated that the Democratic Congress wasn't about to declare war.
The cost to our Constitution was far more than we gained.
As to the decay of our forces, my recent Intellectual Capital article said all that and more. If we insist on large overseas commitments, then we must have expeditionary forces. Note, though, that what you describe is not a constitutional republic but an Empire. Empires can for a while remain republican in form but they soon demand an Emperor. The logic is this: the soldiers are required to do things that are illegal under a constitutional republic. They do them, but now they want protection. Only an Emperor can give them that protection. And meanwhile there are plums in overseas proconsulships, and politicians vie for them.
This Republic was not designed to be the world's policeman, no more to be part of an international treaty structure of entangling alliances involving us in the territorial disputes in Europe. Just where is the Eastern border of Germany? Of Poland? Who really owns Silesia? Transylvania? Kosovo? We shall find out, and it will cost blood and treasure; and it will be done without a declaration of war.
Yet it remains true that no foreign power could take a drink from the Mississippi without our let or leave, even with our much reduced military establishment.
Make no mistake: if you embark on policing the world, you will no longer have a constitutional republic; the notion of local self government will go away; and your children will hail a Caesar, probably with gladness. Perhaps the world is such that we have no choice, and constitutional republics are no longer viable; but surely that ought not be done without debate? Surely there ought to be some national discussion of a step so profound?
Yet I see none happening.
Stay well.
==
"Make no mistake: if you embark on policing the world, you will no longer have a constitutional republic; the notion of local self government will go away; and your children will hail a Caesar, probably with gladness."
A perceptive comment. It has happened before; it will happen again. And as you note, empires are quite different beasts from constitutional republics. The current presidential woes would by extension almost seem to prepare the ground for moving away from the constitutional republic to something else, if only by making the Office of the President no longer viable for determined leadership and at the same time engendering a broad public disgust with congressional pols.
"Perhaps the world is such that we have no choice, and constitutional republics are no longer viable; but surely that ought not be done without debate? Surely there ought to be some national discussion of a step so profound?"
Ought and ought, but I fear that unlikely. If the step is taken, it will probably be in a series of smaller steps, leading de facto to such a situation. ("... as some of you may have noticed, we have in recent months ..."). In Europe, we drift (or are herded) towards something that we are told we must not call a "federation", but still it comes ever closer, step by "harmonizing" step, as bit by bit the former national sovereignities are dismantled or diluted in favor of dictates from Brussles.
As Newsweek noted (Dec 14, World View): "Be careful what you ask for:
you may get it. For more than 50 years ... the United States has championed the cause of greater European unity. ... Yet most American policymakers haven’t had a serious think about European unity since 1948." Now there is a belated awakening on both sides of the Atlantic that we may be on the threshold of something new here. And it is totally unclear what the results of such a new superstate will be, governed by faceless councils.
/ Bo
--
Bo Leuf <
bo@leuf.com>Leuf fc3 Consultancy
They won't remain faceless. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, said Lord Acton (The History of Freedom in Antiquity). What may not be noticed is that power is attractive. The Framers designed a system of fragmented power precisely to make it less attractive. If you build a system of concentrated power, you must then be very careful, because those who want power and will do anything to get it will be attracted; while good men don't want it in the first place. The result is that the schemers and plotters abound, and sooner or later one takes control and uses the instruments to remain there.
The path to empire is smooth and attractive; but once you have left the constitutional republic, where will you go? The usual path is for the soldiers to be sent on unconstitutional missions. They commit crimes. They bombard foreign cities without a declaration of war. At some point a truly horrible incident takes place: the wrong target is struck, an orphanage is destroyed with the TV cameras watching; something of the sort. And the soldiers demand protection, and their brothers rally to them: and who will give them protection from the laws? That's one scenario, anyway.
Well, a day. We lasted longer than most republics. We are not gone yet, but we have sown the win, and I fear we will reap the whirlwind.
On the other hand, God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America, and we may yet come through the aftermath of the Seventy Years War that began with the Bolshevik overthrow of Kerensky. We won't do it by trying to dictate terms to the world, though.
Adams said our foreign policy should be "We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but we are the guardians only of our own;" and that in the United States "we hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest." No bad principles. Of course no one hears of them in today's schools.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men... There is not worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
Bob
Robert Bruce Thompson
Precisely. This is the essence of empire. Without regard to who shall hold the office. Adams said that the President, while President, was beyond the reach of the law, even if he committed murder in the public streets; but he was not beyond the reach of impeachment, after which he was no longer the President, and subject to the law like any other.
None of this is topical, or related to the question of the hour. My views on impeachment of this particular President are irrelevant beyond my observation that when I was a lad, the shock would have been at the adultery, not at lying about it: Presidents were supposed to be more discreet about such things. Hypocrisy is the courtesy vice pays to virtue: it is the difference between crime and rebellion. Criminals know what they do is criminal; they don't seek to overthrow the laws against theft, they merely break them. Lenin wanted to change the rules entirely so that he would own Russia in fee simple, so as to "do good." Many rogues have said "Give me the sword of state and I will create a beautiful nation." Few have. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk is one of the few I think of, and many Armenians have a different view of him. Washington refused the crown.
There is a real sense in which Clinton's crime was in getting caught. One might blame that on Ken Starr; but given Clinton's personality it is probable that the danger of being caught was the greatest part of the thrill, and one way or another he would have been found out evn if Ken Starr had never been born. Kennedy, on the other hand, was quite successful in keeping from the nation that which everyone near him and half the Congress knew, that no woman was safe in the personal quarters of the White House. (He seems to have kept his bedroom escapades to the bedrooms, and out of the Oval Office.) But now we hear the argument that the office is important enough to sanctify that which will get a general court martialed, and the CEO of any company dismissed. Suppose it to be true: as a world power we simply cannot afford to hold Presidents accountable for their personal behavior, because the office is too important. That is not republic but empire.
A constitutional republic can never be a world policeman, and the qualities that make a nation the arbiter of the world's affairs are totally incompatible with limited self government. Self government takes a lot of time and energy, enough so that there is little left over for overseas adventures. Perhaps the world needs a policeman, and perhaps that is our destiny; if so, we will pay a very high price for it.
==
Not having the patience you have, I might well be interested in a pre-configured Linux box such as you mentioned in your Monday View, but I can find no reference to such a device on Corel’s Web site. Is there some other way to find out about their box? Thanks!
Lindy
(reply will work, or lbsisk@bix.com or lsisk@ieee.org)
Really, all I know is from the press release; and they say they will have a box for me early nest year. I saw the President of Corel at COMDEX and he was enthusiastic about it. Here's their URL:
Hi Jerry,
One of your correspondents was asking: the web site for Corel’s Linux
products, including the computer, is <
http://linux.corel.com/>Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago that Corel jumped on the Java bandwagon? Wonder if their interest in Linux will last any longer.
Rob
Rob Stevenson - Mus.Soft
228 Crichton Ave.
Dartmouth, NS, Canada B3A 3S1
tel: (902) 466-7671
email:
rob.stevenson@ns.sympatico.ca
Thanks. Corel tried to do too much with Java; more than Java is capable of doing. They've always been a forward looking company, and were great pioneers of SCSI. The latest Corel Draw is about the best product of its kind out there, and gives them a solid base to work from. Their president is enthusiastic about Linux. What more can you ask for?
==
I do not usually post press releases but this one is worth seeing:
From: linux8@corel.com [mailto:linux8@corel.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 1998 10:48 AM
To: Linux mail-out
Subject: Corel® WordPerfect® 8 for Linux® is here!
Corel® WordPerfect® 8 for Linux® is here!
Corel is pleased to announce that the Corel® WordPerfect® 8 for Linux® free download will be available tomorrow (Thursday, Dec. 17), exclusively from CNET at
http://www.download.com
When we started this project, we anticipated that there was a strong demand by the Linux community for powerful applications like Corel WordPerfect; the overwhelming response-over 60,000 Linux users preregistered for the free download-reaffirms that belief.
Available in six languages, the Download Edition is a fully functional version of the award-winning Corel WordPerfect 8 and includes online help, import/export filters and more. In addition, the Personal Edition of Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux will be available in early 1999. This version includes all of the features of the Download Edition as well as many extras, including fonts, clipart, templates and more. A Server Edition for Linux and UNIX® will also be available in early 1999.
Corel Computer’s NetWinder™ Server and desktop solutions are fast, reliable and feature-rich and offer many potential benefits, including increased productivity and cost savings. Visit
http://www.corelcomputer.com, or call us toll-free at 1-877-282-6735 to find out how you can take advantage of NetWinder Power. Also remember to visit our Linux community site at http://linux.corel.com for the latest information on these and other Corel product releases for Linux.Once again, thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Linux Team
===
If you go into the BIOS on your motherboard, you should be able to tell the P-n-P settings that you want to reserve IRQ 3 (or whatever). On my BIOS, I have to change the setting from automatic to manual configuration, then go to the particular IRQ and set it as being controlled by a legacy device. The others should sort themselves out accordingly.
I have seen rumblings that 3Com will have a USB version of their modems. I was on their web site the other day, and they were proclaiming USB drivers, so I presume that the modems should be in the store Real Soon Now.
Thanks for your site. I appreciate the insights that it gives me.
Sincerely,
Ken Scott
Well, yes, but the problem is that you must do it one at a time: that is, I can reserve one IRQ for ISA, but then -- I'll have to try that. Just reserve 3 even though it's in use; and see if Plug and Play can reconfigure around it. Then give that one to the modem. We'll try it. I am not sanguine about the results, but we'll try it. Thanks; I should have thought of doing it that way. Mostly I want to get higher order stuff to higher order…
I just called 1-800-232-2983 (the number listed at byte.com for old subscribers to call) and was told that CMP mailed a letter on Wednesday Dec 16th to subscribers telling them that CMP has decided to not re-launch a print version of BYTE, and that my subscription would be rolled over to another one of their print mags.
After a little bit of confusion over what actions the person answering the phone could do, I was able to cancel my subscription and I should be receiving a refund shortly.
If anyone else is interested in cancelling subscriptions to BYTE, this seems to be the place to do it. Just remember, the person answering the phone had nothing to do with killing BYTE, so be polite. :-)
-Nat
No surprises here. Thanks. And as he say, be polite...
==
Jeremy Hunt Manson [jmanson@wam.umd.edu]
Hello,
I am a long time reader of our column, in graduate school for Computer Science at the University of Maryland. In one of your recent views you said that you felt that the Gulf War and our President’s current distraction unconstitutional, so I thought you might like to see what the Constitution itself said on the matter:
The Congress shall have the power ... to declare War.
So far, so good. Exactly what we expect. However, there is no definition of what a "war" is.
It goes on a bit like that, explaining that it can also provide and maintain an Army and Navy, and make rules for their regulation and training, etc. It also says that the Congress cannot provide funds for an army for more than two years at a time. This is because the framers didn’t like the idea of a standing army.
What is my point? I’m getting there. Once the army is assembled, the President is given command of it. It is a way of maintaining checks: if the Congress doesn’t like what the President is doing with the army, Congress can suspend its funding after two years. This was okay in 1789, when a war was likely to last for more than two years. Furthermore, Congress can pass laws regulating the armed forces, if it wishes.
However, after WWII (the last time a war was declared, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution notwithstanding), folks in government sort of realized that we effectively had a standing army, as funding was renewed every two years. They also realized that "war" was undefined in the Constitution. Because the President is the commander in chief, he can essentially order them to do whatever he wants them to do. The declaration of "war" by the Congress becomes meaningless, as, indeed, it is in the Constitution. So, we end up with an undeclared Korean War, an undeclared Viet Nam war, and an undeclared Gulf War. As well as massive bombings in Cambodia, incursions into Central America, and all of the other "wonderful" things that the last 50 years have seen.
Every two years, the Congress rubber stamps military appropriations, with the explanation of "Commies", or "Terrorists", or whatever the threat du jour is. Every so often, it tells the folks in the army that they had better stop sexually harassing their subordinates, to regulate them.
Worrisome? You had better believe it.
Constitutional? 100 percent.
Just a little something to keep you up at nights,
Jeremy Manson
Thank you for the lesson, but as a one time professor of constitutional law I have in fact read the document, as well as the Federalist, and Madison's notes, and quite a few other relevant papers. I may be wrong, but it is not for lack of information.
Your view is of a piece with the modern notions, but it is not correct. The proper background for understanding the Framers of the Philadelphia Constitution of 1787 is the constitutional history of England. Under English law and tradition, the foreign policy of the realm was entirely in the hands of the Crown, and the King of England had the right to make war on whomever he pleased, as he pleased. Now true, if Parliament did not vote the money he was unlikely to be able to wage effective war; although in fact by use of contributions by allies, and by paying mercenaries through the right to loot, sometimes things could be done.
In any event the Framers explicitly took that right away. Over the last two centuries some traditions developed which, although not quite constitutional, were long accepted: the President more or less owned the Navy, and could send it where he would, and even use force in situations where American life and property were at stake; but even then, each incident was an incident, and there was no war until Congress acted.
It is quite a change from a constitutional republic to a nation that can make war at the behest of the President; that is much more imperial than republican. Perhaps modern times demand that we go to some such practice. I do not think so, but it is an arguable proposition. What I do not think is arguable is that any construction of the Constitution as understood by the Framers would allow continued and sustained bombardment of a foreign land with whom we were not at war absent explicit Congressional sanction to do so. The Barbary States caused Congress to vote a sort of conditional declaration, and it has been recognized that sometimes powers have to be delegated to commanders in the field. All this can and should be debated. What I assert is that absent a Constitutional Amendment defining states less than war but yet authorizing use of military power without Congressional action, these actions are not legal, can and should be challenged, set dangerous precedents, and move us farther and farther away from a constitutional republic.
I could well be wrong; certainly I hold a minority position at least among political elites; but I have yet to hear my views refuted by any argument other than the "living document" definition of the Constitution, which, on examination, is actually a repudiation of the whole notion of constitutional government. Or so think I.
==
Saw an interesting news clip this morning (Friday 12/8). Bill and Hillary partying down at the annual Christmas Gala. It may have just been my imagination, but I swear he was playing a violin. Are we not engaged in a war right now?
More to the point. You are not the only person concerned about the degradation of the constitution. I am one other and I refuse to believe it is only you and me. In fact I know of 10’s of thousands of people that are working to create "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights."
I’m not sure you will recognize the source of the quote, but I do know you are associated with the group that has that as its aim. I just saw your ugly mug in the ASI (Author Sevices, Inc) Magazine. Truth will out and Good will prevail over Evil.
Flourish and Prosper
George Hughes [georgehughes@earthlink.net]
My association with Author Services is confined to being a judge in their Writers of the Future Contest. I share that honor with people of many political views, from Fred Pohl whose wife ran for Congress as a liberal Democrat, to Greg Benford who is a registered Libertarian. As well as Algis Budrys and Jack Williamson whose politics are both irrelevant and unknown to me.
My concerns were summed up yesterday by Larry Niven on Constitutional rights: if you do not use them you will surely lose them.
I hadn't thought myself ugly. Fortunately my wife does not share your views.
==
Bruce McFarling [ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au]
A couple of brief bits of poor economic history caught my eye while reading the Halloween papers debates.
The analogy of the Model T to Microsoft may be appropos. However, extending the analogy to (paraphrasing): "... and then the Japanese took over" misses the boat. What came next was GM, who developed an organisational model which let them combine a variety of smaller car &; truck makers to put out a product that could take on the Model T. At the time, it was a range of models which were higher end than the Model T, but of course with technological innovation that started eating bigger and bigger chunks out of the Model T’s market. Between that, and the maturity of the car market as the number of first time car buyers started to be overtaken by the number of repeat car buyers, Ford’s "You can have any color you want, as long as its black’ philosophy bit the dust.
Take care in extending this analogy, of course. Microsoft as an organisation is a lot closer to the GM strategy than to the Ford strategy, with marketing, producer buyouts, and product line proliferation coming to the fore. But it still stands in the position of a first mover. At this far remove, its hard to remember that there was once a serious question of whether Ford would survive, but in any event the fact that they did not parlay their initial dominance into a permanent dominance is obvious.
The second point is the assertion that economic theory tells us that things will settle down as the market matures. Economic theory which is uninformed by economic history may tell us that. Economic history tells us otherwise. The maturation of a market is a time of almost as much turmoil as the pioneer years of a new industry. And it is invariably turbulance which has much more impact on the rest of the economy, because by definition an entirely new industry is a very small blip on the radar screen in the early pioneering years. It’s not a smooth transition: figuring out how to make it settle down may be as hard a task as figuring out how to get the industry started in the first place was.
Virtually,
Bruce McFarling, Shortland, NSW
Well said. I have no quarrel with any of that. The Japanese innovations were post WW II, and were concerned with industry organization: whereas we turn inventory around about 30 times a year at most, and often lower than that (before we began to study Japanese methods we thought 10 times a year was good) the Japanese large industries, through strategic location of their suppliers and insistence on exact interchangeability of parts, have managed over 100 times a year turnovers, making "just in time" parts arrival a bit of a magic phrase. Again that was not so much innovation as relentless application of principles developed by the American Gilberts who pioneered industrial theory, and Sloan's management principles.
==
Your recent discussion of trying to get an internal modem setup reminds me of one of my pet peeves... trying to explain why external modems are, 99 of 100 times, a better idea.
I can understand wanting to save the $15-20 that an external modem costs, but an external modem is so much easier to use:
1) No setup problems, plug it into a serial port (or USB, MultiTech has a nice-looking one, although I don’t have it yet)... don’t have to sweat IRQ, empty card slots or anything.
2) When using the modem, if the modem locks up, you can just reach up and turn off the modem. With an internal, you have to power down the entire computer to clear the modem!
3) If you don’t want your punk kid using the Internet when you’re not home, it takes all of about five seconds to unplug the modem and take it somewhere else.
...brig
--
Brig C. McCoy - Automation Consultant
Southeast Kansas Library System -
BRIGC@WORLD.STD.COM218 East Madison Street - 316 365-5136
Iola, KS 66749 - 316 365-5137, Fax
Home Page: <
http://www.sekls.lib.ks.us/staff/brigc>Actually I agree with every bit of that, and I seldom use internal modems. It just happened I HAD one, which is why I made that change. But I think in future I will simply not do that any more. External is easier to set up and a lot easier to use. Agree, Agree, Agree, and when when when will I learn to stop pinching pennies! Thanks for beating me up on this, because I had it coming.
===
David Cefai [davcefai@keyworld.net]
Dear Jerry,
Why does one use internal modems?
1. External Modems take up COM2: . This means that you have to disconnect the thing to set up a direct cable connection to a laptop or palmtop.
2. External Modems take up space. Putting them on top of you tower can be a BAD idea as they contribute to overheating.
3. It is a bad idea to leave the external power supply powered. One more thing to switch off.
4. An External Modem has 3 wires attached to it, the serial cable is stiff and comparatively unwieldy.
5. An internal modem is "fit, configure and forget".
I once had a Sinclair Spectrum - in the States they were called Timex. This was the computer that brought computing into the home. However the thing ended up with wires and ribbon cables sprouting out in all directions (drives, extra interfaces, speech synthesiser....). Most of the problems were due to connections. In my view external Modems are an attempt at recreating connection chaos. My first modem was an external one (one of the new "fast" 2400bps ones!). I realised what a poor idea this was when I bought an internal faxmodem instead.
Regards
David Cefai
Both sides heard from now. Is this a religious thing? Anyway, that's enough on the subject; we're not going to settle this by arguing about it. And I just bought an external for Roberta…
==
Roger G. Smith [rgsmith@c-gate.net]
Stealth PCI board mis-seating.
Jerry,
True. I recall hearing accounts of companies swithching to ISA network cards to eliminate problems with PCI network cards that subtly creep out of their sockets—not all the way out, unfortunately, just enough to make it very difficult to catch on visual inspection. Note that PCI sockets have contacts on two levels, one above the other, which apparently facililtates manufacturing sockets with pins close together by staggering the rows, but I’d have to look at one or look up the specs.[1] Interesting that nothing has really happened to unseat the card, right?
As it’s been a while, I assumed that manufacturers would have fixed this and it’s no longer a problme.. How naive.
-Roger rgsmith(at)c-gate.net [1] And I should look it up, it’s been several years since I studied the "new" PCI spec.
Thanks. Let me know what you find out. It sure fixed my problem.
==
bk@lunde.netJerry- My son, Thomas Lunde, introduced me to you by copying a quote of yours about knowledge specialization. It included a reference to PIGA, and the statement that you did not remember what the A stood for. It stands for accelerometer. I have a patent on the Integrating Droplet Accelerometer (IDA) that I invented at MIT in 1958. It was to replace the PIGA. The PIGA had an analog output and IDA was digital.
The guidance information is classified for many years, so I wondered who you were and when you had studied it. Thomas told me about your career in computers. I am sorry about BYTE.
I took a computer course at Northwestern University on an IBM that had a 2K ram in 1957. I had a FORTRAN program in my Ph.D. thesis in 1970. Thomas (who was a twinkle in his father’s eye when I wrote the program) and I spotted a Sinclair computer in 1981, and we bought it. I’m now figuring out how to expand an Access database to record FAA operational circuits.
Reminiscing about PIGA is fun. I wonder what contact you have had with guidance?
B. K. Lunde
I was in operations research (now generally called systems analysis, but I was an OR man) in the 60's, and in 1964 I was the general editor of Project 75, a highly classified survey of everything we knew about ballistic missile technology. General Schriever had been pleased with Col. Francis X. Kane's Project Forecast for Air Systems Division of Systems Command, and asked Aerospace Corporation to do a similar work on ballistic missile technology. The study Direector was Bill Dorrance, who hired me to be the general editor. The goal of Project 75 was to identify technology requirements for systems to go on line in 1975. One of the requirements we identified was the need for ON BOARD GUIDANCE, which meant on board computers capable of taking data from inertial platforms and integrating it and comparing with the nominal flight path to give boost phase corrections, and later to control bus maneuvers for multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRV). That of course led to LSIC chips and our whole small computer industry; while Missiles, Missile Defenses, and the inherent communications facilitations of small computers were the chief factors in ending the Cold War. So in a sense Project 75 was one of the key activities in what Possony and I later described in THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY, and by luck or whatever I was in at the beginning….
All long ago. I never worked so hard in my life as I did that summer of 1964.
Jerry,
Just a note to vote for your web site for an orchid of the year award. This may seem to be a self-serving type of comment, but I (and, I’m sure, many others) now find that a visit to Chaos Manor is a regular part of my morning log-on routine. I’ve also found that exposure to your ups and downs is a lot more educational than the sanitized version that used to be found in Byte (but, please, continue the e-mailing of columns - it’s still a pleasure to handle paper, even a print-out, once in a while). Two more points: I was glad to see that you survived the Death Valley experience and wish you well - I just hope that eventually you would come to the same conclusion as others - it’s a lot more fun to go round corners on four wheels in a car than it is on two wheels in a pick-up clone of some kind - please at least try a Subaru!! (just joking, but with an element of concern as gas-guzzling SPUTs seem to be taking over the world and its rapidly-diminishing resources - give them an onion)
- please let us know what would be considered a reasonable subscription rate. I think that you must have got my $10 as I’m on your e-mail list, but another contribution must be due sometime? There is no replacement for Byte, particularly from the first few years, but your web site has come as close as I think that it could get - DON’T GIVE IT UP!!
Thanks again,
Chris Gilks
Well, thanks. I am in fact ruling my own site out as eligible, but it's nice to be nominated. I am still undecided on cars. Options include buying a used vehicle and rebuilding, and I may do that. Once the money comes in from two book contracts I will be able to buy what I want, but I have to decide what it is I do want. I like to think I can, at a moment's notice, pack up and go almost anywhere on the Continent in my current vehicle. Bronco II was pretty close to that. We went to the eclipse without problems. Losing a tire on a turn did it to me, that and the berm the Park Rangers threw up. Oh well.
Subscription rates: I am thinking on them. Suggestions open. I am working on what I will need to keep things open. Eric and Darnell are in school, Alex and David Em are writing books, and there's sort of just me and whatever I get from people like Russell and Peter and Bob Thompson, but that won't always be the case.
Anyway, it is more work than I can do forever. Insidiously fun, of course.
==
I have sucessfully used a Matrox Productiva AGP card now for some months in a Socket 7 main board with the AMD K2/6 - 300mhz cpu w/ 3DNOW . Very stable . The motherboard is jumper set to 100mhz bus speed and has worked since day one . My son has the identical board and chip set with a Matrox Mystique (PCI) which has been equally stable . The Productiva is a very good card for everything except games requiring 3D graphics . Just a thought.
Ron Booker [rbooker@roxboro.net]
Thanks. I have lost contact with Matrox, and I shouldn't have. I need to get hold of them again. Thanks for reminding me.
Dr. Pournelle,
I was reading week 27 (I come through every once in a while and catch up :) and noticed
this:
> For the record I have not yet managed to get any AGP board to work
> with a super-7 AMD K6/2 chip, and I have tried three mother
> boards. I'll keep trying, but it's a little discouraging. As I said I got
> one to work until I installed sound card and then it blew up... I will
> keep trying.
Well, I'm doing just that. I built this system last week and it seems quite stable. Here
is my setup:
Asus P5A motherboard (ATX format - Socket 7, 100 MHz bus)
AMD K6-2-350 CPU
64 MB SDRAM
#9 Revolution IV video card (16 MB, AGP)
AWE64 sound card
Windows 95 (OSR 2 or B or whatever they call it this week :)
It's up and running fine with no glitches that I've noticed yet ;). I tested it using
Sierra's new game "Return to Krondor" which does lots of 3D and sound stuff.
Works fine for me.
Good luck!
Kevin Ferlazzo
ferlazzo@richmond.infi.net
Thanks! I have got off an urgent signal to Number Nine. I like Number Nine boxes anyway.
==
I won’t pester you about Byte; suffice to say that I’m as sad about it as everyone else (I’ve been a reader of Byte since 1977/78, when I was in high school)
The reason for my e-mail is this: I first found your website back in June or July ‘98, when I read your Byte Saga page. It was here that I read for the very first time a quotation you attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte:
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence". I really liked that quote, and have often repeated it in my head since then when dealing with dummies, just to remind myself not to get too agitated! Recently, I searched a few quote databases for it, because I’d forgotten the exact wording. I found several worded slightly differently as "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", which were variously attributed to Nick Dalius or more anonymously to "Hanlon’s Razor" (as a sort of partner to Occam’s Razor).
I like this quote, all the more so if I can say (pompously): "Well, as Napoleon once said: Never ascribe to...." - it carries so much more authority when you can invoke the name of the great general himself. What’s your source for attributing this to Napoleon?
I hope you have a Merry Christmas and that 1999 brings you less turmoil and heartache than did 1998!
Best regards,
Kai Griffin
(Sydney, Australia)
My source on that is long forgotten, but at the time I was surprised because I had always heard that attributed to others, so I took the trouble to verify it including finding the incident in which he said it. It was in response to a dispatch. One of the staff said "Treason!" and Bonaparte replied "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." Of course the original French can be translated in slightly different ways. But I fear I don't remember the book in which this appears. It's the kind of incident Fletcher Pratt delighted in reporting, but I am not sure I ever had a book by Pratt on the Napoleonic Wars. Sorry.
==
Donald W. McArthur [don@mcarthurweb.com]
Dr. Pournelle,
Go into your original PGP installation and do a backup of your keyrings. Put them on a floppy. Copy to your new machine. Install PGP on your new machine, and somewhere during the installation it will ask you if you have extant PGP keys. Advise it of the location of those files. You should be OK.
Donald W. McArthur
**************************************
I only regret my economies.
Reynolds Price (quoting his mother on her deathbed)
**************************************
Thanks!
