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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 175 October 15 - 21, 2001

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.

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Monday  October 15, 2001

Niven and I are off to write. I will be back later this week. I may or may not be able to update this place along the line. Probably won't. There is a fair amount of material in last week's view including Sunday.

Early before we go: the air strikes continue. The inevitable civilian casualties result. The protests over that amplify. And the Northern Alliance, which has Hindu support, girds for the march to Kabul. The Taliban can't hold against massive American air support for its enemies. Air power alone can't win a war, but air power plus supplies and logistics can make an inferior ground army into a winning one.

Will the Taliban fall before Pakistan does? And if Pakistan collapses into anarchy, who gets their nuclear weapons?  An interesting world indeed.

Incidentally China's interests are against India, but then there is Chinese Turkestan with its volatile inhabitants. We all live in interesting times.

If the US is to take a permanent hand in Middle Eastern affairs, we will need a permanent base that we own: a client state that knows it is a client state, propped up by us and run on the advice of an American Resident. Would Kuwait do? And have we the stomach for that kind of Imperialism?  

If we are to go that route we had better begin recruiting Legions now. That requires changes in UCMJ and other laws. Legionnaires would not be citizens...

 

We spent the night in Tonopah. Arizona.

 

 

 

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Tuesday, October 16, 2001

Cuba, New Mexico

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We have driven up the road past Phoenix, across old 66 (US 40 now) and past Meteor Crater and Petrified Forest, through Winslow, New Mexico, up Route 666 to Indian 9, and across that to Cuba. We are staying in a motel that is large enough to let us set up the computers and do some work. That's Niven hard at work on the new system with a flat screen monitor and that hump=back keyboard he likes attached to his laptop.

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Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Chaco Canyon all day. Hiked up to Pueblo Alto, which is about 900 feet above the canyon floor. The Continental Divide is about 4 miles east. We started at about 8000 feet and hiked up. Five mile round trip. Not too bad for two guys our age.

The Explorer has been working wonderfully. The dirt roads here are washboards, with rocks and holes. Eddie Bauer is comfortable inside and the dust stays outside. All told this car is great for this trip. Long highway and a day off roads or on bad roads, and no problems whatever.

Chaco is wonderful.

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That's me with the Pueblo Bonito behind me. If we'd found anything like that in Europe we would call it a palace, but since it's American not European it's only a Pueblo. Sigh.

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Here's Niven on the high overlook on the way up to Pueblo Alto. 

We spent the night in Gallup, New Mexico, in a nice comfortable Day's Inn with hot water and a spa. We deserved it.

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Thursday, October 18, 2001

Gallup to Petrified Forest National Park. Several hours there. This and Chaco will be key parts of Burning Tower.

Long drive through to Barstow. We might have stayed in Needles but the last time I was there we found no decent motels. As we were driving out of Needles we say signs advertising Day's Inn, but we were past them and I don't like to turn back. Ended up at Barstow, where we had a good room to set up the computers.

 

 

 

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Friday, October 19, 2001 

Home before noon, driving the northern route past Edwards AFB and the town of Mojave. Immediately hiked up to the top of the local hill, much needed exercise.

Over a thousand emails to deal with. Sigh.

And of course the Internet is not working, I cannot connect to my web site, nothing transfers. Tracert shows everything stalled, nothing gets there and back without major delays. Why not? It's clearly the Critical Need Detector at work. I think the problem is Earthlink, though: I don't seem to have got connected to the real Internet yet. Just through Earthlink which isn't connecting to anything. Sigh.

But sending to my site is apparently impossible. I wonder if the satellite connection is any better? For the moment, I can't get nothing to go nowhere although mail works. I keep getting receive errors, which means PAIR, bless them, has decided to make things time out. Yet again.

If I ever get connected I can send some updates. If you see this I managed to get past the evil Internet demons.

Apparently there are 40 people trying to get onto my site...

HO! It is trying now. It didn't even try to send before... And the problems seem to have cleared up. Just testing my patience I suppose...

Anyway now that it is working it works well, and you can see a couple of photos up above on the appropriate days.


Roland reports that Penguin is in trouble.

http://www.linuxgram.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/1737201&section=newsflash 

Which is distressing. They make very good Linux boxes and support them well.

Also from Roland, on Microsoft Digital Management:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22354.html 

Well worth your attention.

And an important Kipling story at

http://www.kipling.org.uk/proofs_1.htm 


And from Joel Rosenberg:

More anon, or maybe in an anon and a half.

Short form: Star Office is now my main word processor, and I find that I can already write with it at least as fast and well and as comfortably as with Word -- although for formatting more complicated than needed for manuscripts, Word is still easier for me, probably more because of the learning curve than anything else.

Looking forward to more. I'll install my own shortly.

And of course ftp isn't working again. Periodically the net collapses. I wonder why?


And David Roel tells why I am unlikely ever to fly United Airlines again:

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml 

Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also prevent you from boarding that plane. No kidding. It happened just last week in Philadelphia.

The Republic seems to be collapsing in stupidity. "Better safe than sorry." Cowardice is king.

"When a stupid man does something he knows is wrong, he always claims it is his duty."

Keepers of the Judgment, suffer not the king!


If you are terrified by the prospect of anthrax and don't know what to do, iron your mail. Use a steam iron. That will probably take care of it...

 

 

 

 

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Saturday, October 20, 2001

You CAN NOW ORDER the Windows Version of Roberta Pournelle's Reading Program. Click here.

Today I attack that VBscript to rebuild Roberta's web site pages for ordering the Windows Version of her reading program, paying for this place, and ordering the DOS and Mac versions of TLC. Her program will teach anyone who can speak English to read it, and has been used with non-English speaking classes with startling success: that includes LA kids who speak only Armenian, Chinese, and Spanish (but are in public schools where they are learning English). The results have been really astonishing.

And with English speaking children, by the time the 70 lessons are done the reading vocabulary and speaking vocabulary are the same: no more of this controlled vocabulary stuff.  So over the weekend I have to learn how to set up the pages for ordering her program over a secure link. I'll have it all shortly.

Of course the big news is that the Windows version of her program is available. Unlike the DOS version you don't need anyone to read the screens to the pupil: Roberta has personally recorded the thousands of instructions, phrases, and syllables onto a CD-ROM. You need any reasonably good Windows system, Sound Blaster or better sound card, and a CD-ROM drive. More on that when I get her web site set up. I've told her I'll have it done by Monday morning.

Meanwhile I see that we're peppering the Taliban with pinprick raids here and there. Yesterday's paper told me the Taliban stopped a drive by the Northern Alliance by rushing 1,000 troops to a trouble spot. If they are down to that, then commando style raids here and there through their country will divert so many troops they can't hold the front as well. 

Of course the US Air Force is designed to defeat the Russians although there have been TEN YEARS and more we could have been building an Air Force designed for the kinds of wars we are likely to fight. We didn't. We don't have anything like the number of Warthogs we need, and we have only 100 heavy bombers.  Imagine: the United States of America has 100 heavy bombers in service. This is what comes of giving jet jockeys command of a "service" and making them equal to the Army and Navy. Silly. Silly. Silly.

The Air Force doesn't want the troop support mission. It ought to be taken away from them. They don't really want the logistics and supply missions. Take it away from them.  They clearly no longer even want heavy bombers and long range bombardment. Take it away from them.  They don't like battlefield interdiction (they want to do it all from 15,000 feet and higher). Take it away from them. Let USAF have the 15,000 feet and above missions: everything else can go to a Service that wants it.  This will leave the fighter jocks in charge of the only things they want. Now cap that command at 3 stars and let them play.

There are no air war strategists left in USAF: if there were, we would not have the force structure we have. We might have an air force designed to actually win the wars we must actually fight. Oh well.

Meanwhile, perhaps they ought to detail one officer to go read Douhet. If anyone in USAF remembers who Douhet was. Understand, I am no great believer in the Douhet Victory Through Air Power philosophy, but it's better than what we have now, which is "victory through flying at 15,000 feet and above with planes that cost half a billion and more for each airplane..."

Now back to work on Roberta's web page. DONE!


I also need to work on the War Pages: what are our objectives? Do we want nation states where Afghanistan now sits in anarchy? DO we want to restore the monarchy? What about in Iraq?

What do we WANT, and is it worth the price to get it?

While we are at it, what are reasonable projections?

First, bin Laden will die. All his followers will die. This has usually been enough to finish religious fanatic movements: the Mennonites are now pacifists but they certainly didn't start that way (causing Luther to tell the Princes of German to Burn, Slay, Kill! to suppress them). There are pacifist sects of Islam descended from the movement of the Old Man Of The Mountain. Failure doesn't usually bring about recruits. (Christianity is an exception, and Christians believe they know why.)

What will happen to Pakistan, with its atom bombs? This is a bit harder to project because it involves a few individuals. Rationally the military officers who could bring down Pakistan should understand that given enough trouble the US will turn to India for help. Pakistan can't like that prospect much.

And so forth. It's interesting to speculate: but we need first to determine what we WANT to happen. We can then look at what is likely to happen. Then we work to change the conditions.  But unless you have a goal it is hard to determine a strategy.

The one thing we must not do is what was done in Iraq; go in, annoy the dictator, stir up dissidents -- and leave him in power to work his will on those who rose up to help us.  That must not happen again. That must not happen again. That must not happen again. The cost would be horrible. What I tell you three times is true.

OF course it may happen again unless the US people show some resolve that is communicated to the leadership.


Your FBI at work: the arrest of a Texas doctor, 12 days confinement in jails and prisons, transport to New York City:

 

'Who Is This Kafka That People Keep Mentioning?'

New York Times Magazine, 1.10.21

October 21, 2001

By DEBORAH SONTAG

< snip >

It wasn't until the 12th day that Hazmi finally got to answer the government's suspicions. At about 5 p.m., he said, he and O'Shea sat down with ''two F.B.I. agents named Mark and Martin'' and reacted item by item to the government's points.

He said he told them: 1. Check the pages and pages in Saudi phone books and you will see that al-Hazmi is a very common name. 2. Lots of Saudis obtain American visas in Jiddah, where he did, most of whom are not hijackers. 3. He had indeed wired $10,000 from Saudi Arabia to another Saudi doctor in Texas in 1997 -- so that he could buy furniture and a car when he moved to America. 4. His recent trips to Boston and Washington -- cities connected to the hijackings -- were to attend medical courses. 5. The five plane tickets to California that he had purchased on Travelocity -- which the hijackers also allegedly used -- for ''people with Saudi names'' were for him, his wife and his three children. He had planned to go to San Diego in late September for a course in muscular and skeletal radiology. 6. The two calls that he had received in the last couple of years from a bin Laden were from an Abdullah bin Laden who directed the Northern Virginia office of a world assembly of Muslim youth.

''At the end I said to myself, These guys are clueless,'' Hazmi said later. ''How can they figure out who is behind this thing? I would suggest that Americans don't rely on the F.B.I. I say, God must protect America instead.''

Not long after the meeting ended, his lawyer told him that he would be released the next day. On that day, waiting to be processed, he was shuffled from one locked room to another and left by himself for hours, he said. At one point, an official in a suit and tie came in, stood behind him and asked him his name. When he didn't respond quickly enough, he said, the man kicked him in his back. That is the only abusive incident that Hazmi claims. It particularly irked him, he said, because ''they knew I was innocent by then, no?''

O'Shea and his investigator both wrapped Hazmi in bear hugs when he was finally freed. The F.B.I. secured him a room at the Southgate Tower Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where he was checked in under an agent's name. The doctor called his family and friends. He prostrated himself before God on the hotel carpet. He took a long shower, his second in 13 days. He went shopping for clothes with O'Shea's investigator because he had been released in prison garb. And the next morning, he took a Delta flight back to San Antonio. This time he was escorted by F.B.I. agents as a courtesy.

Rene Salinas, spokesman for the F.B.I. in San Antonio, characterized Hazmi throughout as ''very professional, very polite and at no time hostile.'' He also suggested that Hazmi might have spared himself a good part of his ordeal. ''We backed off when he requested an attorney,'' he said. ''As soon as he lawyered up, we couldn't ask him to clear up our questions, and then the system took over and he was off to New York.''

< snip >

So relax. You are in safe hands, protected by the professionals who served us so well at Waco. The FBI in peace and war...


You might also contemplate Roland's latest alert:

What an idiot:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-10-20-002-20-OP-MS 

Ah well.

But if you want your kid to learn to read, click here.


Apparently there are some major router outages in the LA area so I am not just being paranoid about net problems. Oh Well.

 

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Sunday, October 21, 2001

It's done. You can now order the Windows version of Roberta's reading program. Alas, we still have an installation problem with Windows XP: I cannot much recommend the install program we bought to use with this. It seems to do many things in a complex way. 

We did the program in Delphi rather than Visual Basic. That may also have been a mistake: Microsoft seems to have made things needlessly difficult for applications designers who aren't using Microsoft's development tools. I suppose I should be shocked.

But the program works, it raises reading levels something wonderful, and at the end of the 70 some lessons anyone who speaks English can read it: the reading vocabulary is the speaking vocabulary, plus with phonics you can read words like dimethyldiethyltrichloroethane even if you have not the foggiest notion of what they mean. You can also read words like horseless carriage even if you have never seen either word before...


The world just changed: Linux for Desktop may be more likely than we thought. I have opened a new reports page on Star Office. I haven't myself run it due to a lot of things happening, but that will not be long. Meanwhile, read what Joel Rosenberg has to say. I think you will be pleased.

And Microsoft has, I think, some competition in applications.

 

 


There are tanks in Manger Square in Bethlehem. US troops are on the ground in Afghanistan. We have worked hard in the past to be admired and loved. It is now time to be feared. I doubt the Arab Coalition will last with Israeli troops in every major city in Judea and Samaria, and now there are Christian Arab casualties as well. The Israelis have clearly chosen to be feared. I doubt we can do less.

Anthrax in the Capitol Building: less of a worry than Pakistani nuclear weapons. Can the Pakistani government hold? We will know more by All Souls' Day.

And on that score we open today's mail with a letter from Joel Rosenberg arguing the case for Empire.


I have just done and am doing the processing for the new subscribers. Thanks! to all of you who keep this place open. When I get them all entered I will send a mailing, probably tomorrow or next day so if you didn't get it don't panic. And a gentle reminder to some of the early subscribers, it's time to renew...


I find 

www.palmbooks.org 

looks to be a pirate site. I don't have fast enough web access to be able to navigate around it much, so I have not found any actual books: I only know that over on the SFWA site there seems to be the impression that there are many books including Harry Potter and some others.

I don't know what to make of it: the place is clearly professional in appearance and took a lot of work and I presume a fair amount of money to get going.

I find Legacy of Heorot appears to be there in zip form. This is interesting since I am certain we haven't authorized this.  What is this place, and why?

I have opened a Reports page on this, and I'll put stuff there as I learn it. First from Roland on who owns it, and some Internet Lawyer stuff he found there...

Monday Morning

 

Whoever telephoned that person and apparently frightened the site owner's 4 year old daughter is doing no one any good. Assuming that story is true, because I find it hard to believe one of my readers would do that.

I am told that the owner of that odd site -- it appears to have been taken down -- thought that since someone emailed him copies of the books he put there, they were in the public domain. It was all a naive mistake. Then, I am told -- but here is a science fiction writer:

 

Jerry--

We've got a major problem.

Steele Smith (cc:d above) is proprietor of PalmBooks.Org. He is, to put it charitably, a wee bit shaky on copyright law, though he's learning rapidly.

He posted one or more of your books on his website. When he did so, he did not realize (implausible though it sound) that he needed your permission to do that thang. Someone sent him the e-copy of the book through the Internet, and he thought that meant it was in public domain. You and I both understand how stupid an assumption that was, and I believe Steele is beginning to catch on.

You responded by posting his name, address, and phone number on your website. As a result, his four-year-old daughter has received threatening phone calls from some of your fans.

Jerry, this is flat-out unacceptable. Once upon a time, you had a four-year-old girl. Would you think it okay for her to have been scared that someone was going to kill her because of something you did?

I am very angry, Jerry. I was working with Steele Smith to resolve this situation, and we were making great progress. Then your fans started calling his home, and scaring the shit out of his little girl, because you'd put his phone number on your website.

This is flat-out unconscionable. I know you've got a temper, but this goes way over the line.

Get Steele Smith's address and phone number off your website immediately. This isn't a request, Jerry, it's an order, and you will fall in. You have fucked up an amicable resolution of this situation, and you have sent a four-year-old girl to bed with nightmares. I will not tolerate that.

Leave Smith's email address on your website. He deserves all the spitemail he gets.

But goddamit, leave his little girl alone.

 

I am not sure I believe any of this.  First, why is a 4 year old girl answering telephones? There is zero evidence that ANYONE  spoke with his daughter. Steele Smith pretended not to know that he was pirating books; he had previously told one SFWA member that she was a terrorist when she tried to get him to stop; but our heroic official of the Science Fiction Writers of America, protesting that he is protecting children, chooses to attack me first off.  Which tells me more than I wanted to know. And as the first things I saw this morning did manage to upset me more than it should.

Leave all that. I have a conference I have to be at in an hour or so.

Apparently it is all my fault, and I have endangered an amicable resolution and --

But whatever is the problem, I have taken the address and phone number off although most of you know precisely how to find it.  If one of you did in fact telephone and speak to a 4 year old girl in a threatening manner you must already be ashamed of yourself, and certainlfy I do not need that kind of "help"; but I find that story a bit hard to believe.

In any event, the site appears to be down as of this morning.

The above occupied my time so that I didn't see this, which is in response to the letter I sent to the site's owner immediately upon learning of its existence; the reply came many hours later:

Dear Mr. Pournelle,

Thank you for your kind words regarding the palmbooks.org website. I truly appreciate them, as well as the comments on your own site saying that I look "professional". I am in the process of removing all links to downloads for your books on my site. Until this is completed, I have suspended access to the members portion of the site out of respect to you and others.

> > So far as I know all my books are copyrighted, none are in > the public domain, nor are any of those by Larry Niven, nor > any of those by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

I do have a posted policy regarding copyright violations. It can be found here: http://www.palmbooks.org/faq/defaultcopyrightprocedure.asp

Since Mr. Dobbins appears to have done all this research, I am surprised he did not point this out to you. But as they say water under the bridge.

> I am not sure what you are doing here, or why. Apparently > you list as "public domain" a lot of books that do not appear > to me to be out of copyright. > > Have you some theory to the contrary?

I do have a strange theory. All the books that are found on my site are from other publicly available websites or sent to me from other users. I publicly state that I do not do any copyright searches on anything that I post. I have a separate section of the website for books that I *know* are in the public domain. If you read the first page I only state I believe they are in the public domain. (I found them in electronic format or received them in e-book form previously) so I assume that they are in the public domain. But without an adequate search.. I don't know. > > Your site is well done, but it looks to me to be a large act > of piracy attached to something that might be useful. Am I mistaken?

I will let you form your own opinion on this. I do not charge money to/from anyone to access the site. Access is free and has been for a very long time.

I do have a specific request from you. Please remove my phone number and address from your website immediately. I have already received 14 phone calls regarding this and all were threatening. MY 4 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER was spoken to in a manner that was not appropriate at all. It's harassment and you and I both know that you are providing the ammunition for your fans' guns. If the calls went to me that is fine, but it effects my daughter its not. Please ensure your fans are aware of this.

Now that I am aware that your books are not in the public domain, they will be removed immediately.

Sincerely,

Steele Smith

As I said, I have no thanks for anyone who would annoy a young child; I also wonder why a 4 year old girl is answering telephones in what must have been late evening or night.

As to ammunition for guns I fear I don't understand the reference at all. What guns?

But it is interesting that it is all my fault.

 

 

 

 

 

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