Chaos Manor Mail October 25 - 31, 1999

HOME Current View VIEW Home MAIL Home BOOK Reviews © This week: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	CHAOS MANOR MAIL A SELECTION MAIL October 25 - 31, 1999 REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN! CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE. Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit. IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature. PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. *TABS* in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all. 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. If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better.. This week: Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday Current Mail HIGHLIGHTS: The true link for getting vi The true link for Irfan Global Warming Continued Echelon An alternative to notetab Modeling freeware software for the Mac: Regress Have we lost hope? (Begin tariff discussion) Tariff for Revenue Only Windows 2000 Refunds... Mississippi - Tunicia county today An odd job offer letter Continued The Toshiba affair Contingency? Double jeopardy Not a Joke. Alas.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Monday October 25, 1999 As usual, lots in last night's mail. Jerry, Under the date of October 24 1999, for CHAOS MANOR MAIL, you have the following entry.... If you like vi as an editor, you can find out where to get it in mail. Clicking on the link that is part of that sentence takes me to a page with a lot of stuff, mostly on global warming, but NADA on the vi editor and were to get it. How about a hint as to where I might find the "real skinny" on the vi editor? Thanks, T. Patrick Kelly T. Patrick Kelly, LL.B., LL.M. Systems Analyst &; LABNEWS WebMaster tpk1@bellsouth.net The link to the vi editor was there, but do note that all links take you to the bookmark, which is at the TOP of the thread, and what will be on screen above it may have little to do with the subject you were looking for. You have to scroll down. Jerry I bought a new Microsoft IntelliMouse with IntelliEye. It has a wheel but no ball. It uses a light like the old PCMouses did years ago, but doesn't need a special pad. It doesn't work on either of two desktops I've tried it on, but works on both mouse pads. It is either PS/2 or USB compatible. I have it on a Gateway SOLO 5150 as USB. A strange installation, but now it works fine. $50.00 at Best Buy. It's the first USB peripheral I have tried. The only problem is it leaves this touch pad active. The touch pad can reach out and move the cursor from quite a distance as you type. Michael A. Boyle mboyle@toltbbs.com I should look into USB stuff, and thanks. I got dropped off a bunch of lists back when print BYTE vanished, and I haven't renewed them all. There's always enough to write about that I forget to ask. I have been happy enough with regular mouse port wheel mice that I paid little attention to USB although at one time we did have a machine with two mice, both active, one "regular" and the other USB, now that I think of it. What I want now is a Wacom USB tablet. I'll see them at COMDEX and ask. Thanks for reminding me. Hi, Jerry Got my "Pournelle" fix again this morning -- yours is always the first, &; often the only column I read in Byte online. But don't tell them that -- I want to continue getting my Byte email. ;^) You've probably received multiple emails about the link for IrfanView -- the link is for "irfan.net," &; appears to be geared toward Web site development. Here's the correct URL: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/ And for readers as the site says, on the "left side of the pond": http://members.home.com/rsimmons/irfanview/english.htm Keep up the good work! Linda Pape Jerry, Just to let you know, there's a problem with the link you posted in Byte to IrFan. The link you give is to http://www.irfan.net , which leads you to a web design service. The correct link (I found it on Tucows) is http://stud1.tuwein.ac.at/~e9227474/ . Haven't been able to download it yet, I keep getting "Server Busy" messages - perhaps because of all the traffic a recommendation from you generates. :) If it's as good in it's class as Drag and File (which I've used for years, based on your recommendation), it will be worth the wait. Chuck Wingo cwingo@atlcom.net Thanks! Continuing a Previous Discussion A news article on MSNBC about Global Warming (or the lack thereof). Regarding the recent discussion, I thought you might find this interesting. http://www.msnbc.com/news/319963.asp?cp1=1 EXPERTS FROM the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., claimed that the emphasis on carbon dioxide, or CO2, increases the cost of implementing the 1997 Kyoto climate change agreement. “The main finding is that including gases other than CO2 emissions from fossil fuels could greatly reduce costs of meeting the protocol,” said MIT researcher John Reilly, the lead author of the report published in the science journal Nature. “The Kyoto protocol leaves in these other gases but it is up to countries to design the policies that will bring them under control,” he noted. CUT COSTS BY 60 PERCENT? The panel of experts — among them an economist, an ecologist, a climatologist and an atmospheric chemist — claimed their work was the first comprehensive assessment of how the Kyoto accord would work. They added that by doing more to reduce other gases and to create “forest sinks” — repositories of CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere — the cost of meeting the Kyoto agreement would be cut by more than 60 percent. “Many analyses of the Kyoto agreement have been flawed because they haven’t looked at these other gases,” Reilly said. “This is the first paper that has looked at the Kyoto agreement as it was essentially written. Most analyses have only looked at CO2 emissions reduction. The Kyoto agreement includes these other gases, so we examined that.” FIGURING OUT THE NUMBERS The researchers calculated the cost of meeting the Kyoto requirements in two ways: by reducing only carbon dioxide and by cutting all six kinds of greenhouse gases in the accord in the least costly manner. He found that the United States would have to spend $68 million a year if the country focused solely on carbon dioxide, versus $42 million a year using the alternative approach. The costs were calculated using 1995 dollars. Daniel Lashof, a global warming expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council who did not participate in the study, said even the lower costs found in the study were still too high. The analysis, he noted, does not anticipate future developments in pollution control technology or big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved rather cheaply overseas. But Glenn Kelly, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, a business group, said the technology does not exist yet for the study results to be applied. “We’re looking at economic theories and it is overly optimistic,” he said. RATING FLAW CITED The study also highlights what the researchers say are flaws in how greenhouse gases are rated, known as their global warming potential (GWP), under the Kyoto accord. The GWP is an index of the different gases and the amount of warming they would cause over about 100 years in the atmosphere. In their analysis, Reilly and his colleagues found the way the GWP is calculated does not give an accurate rating. “People really need to re-explore the global warming potential. It is not quite right the way it is and that needs to be investigated more clearly,” he added. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. George A. Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> "It is better to have fought and died, than never to have fought at all... well maybe not." -Din the Decisive "S-4 really screwed up this time. We're at the objective...it's a rest room." -Val Well, yes: everyone I know has always known that CO2 is hardly the worst of the greenhouse gasses, and the emphasis on carbon has always made me believe that this whole effort was more about politics and getting rich out of "pollution control" than about doing anything useful. As for example, Western coal: the stack gasses from burning western coal go into the scrubbers CLEANER than the stack gasses from burning eastern coal COME OUT of the scrubbers. So scrubber mfg people get rich, eastern miners mine coal, eastern companies donate to Congress, and the west is abused yet one more time to the benefit of the East Coast Country Club oligarchies of both parties. So, with that sterling example before me, when I hear the "environmentalist" who insist on keeping the silly scrubbers going tell me it's time to reduce carbon, you will pardon me if I become a bit cynical. Dr. Pournelle: I notice that at least 2 sources of "greenhouse gases" tend to be mentioned, one being the CO2 emissions from man-made sources ie industrial processes and internal combustion engines, and the other being methane from domesticated animals such as beef herds. I also remember reading about the vast numbers of horses which used to inhabit cities before the turn of the century, prior to the adoption of the motor car and the various forms of public transit. Is it possible we have merely exchanged one source of thermal pollution for another? Also, since the environmental supporters have made much of their efforts and successes in forcing industries to reduce their output of airborne and waterborne pollutants, and since coal (primary industrial fuel in the 1800's) is much dirtier than current fuels such as refined oil, natural gas or electricity from hydro or nuclear plants, are we not likely to find we are having no more and possibly less impact on the warming of the planet than we did in the last century? I have no doubt Man is having an impact on the planet... The question is whether the impact is growing, and whether in this context (global warming) it is even significant. Gavin Downie Good questions. From: Dunn, Steven J. [SDunn@logicon.com] Thought you mighty be interested in this. His last comments match one you made last week. ****************** Monday, October 25, 1999 Published at 11:47 GMT 12:47 UK BBC: 'Ignore global warming hype' says scientist By Professor Philip Stott, University of London During the next few days, our media will suffer a collective bout of hypochondria over global warming and the future of the Earth. Why? A cynic might say it is all the aircraft fuel burnt to carry the hundreds of delegates and journalists to Bonn, Germany, for the Fifth Session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But even this would be to accept the ecohype of the global warmers. Why are we so surprised that climate is changing? Climate always changes. It would be newsworthy if climate stopped changing. Slow and rapid changes During the last 18,000 years there have been both gradual and abrupt changes, some much larger than any we are currently experiencing. And what is the consensus about the present changes? A rise of between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Centigrade during the last 150 years, although there has been cooling as well during this period. Some measures, such as those from corrected satellite readings, still indicate overall cooling. So why are we so desperate to criminalise human beings for this change? No single factor can account for climate variability. Climate is governed by millions of factors, from the flip of a butterfly's wing, through volcanic eruptions, the oceans and natural greenhouse gases, to solar activity and meteors. 'The biggest myth of all' The idea that climate change is brought about by just one or two factors, such as carbon dioxide emissions, is simply nonsense. We must grasp the fact that curbing human-induced greenhouse gases will not halt climate change. That is the biggest myth of them all. My advice is therefore to ignore the hype. It will only make you unnecessarily anxious. Let them play with their inadequate climate models and come up with scenarios, the worse the better. Instead, remember that humans have survived climate change for thousands of years, not by playing God with one or two politically selected factors, but by adapting to the new conditions, whether hot, cold, dry or wet. And, moreover, what about the opportunities global warming presents - far better than cooling any day! Philip Stott is Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. Well, I am not QUITE as positive as he is, in the sense that I am not completely sure there is nothing we ought to do, but I am very much sure that until we know a lot more, we are wasting time, energy, and thought on "do something NOW!" even if it's wrong. You wrote: "I've seen this [Echelon description] before: but I still have no direct evidence that any of this exists." There is no one piece of damning, dramatic evidence in Hager's book that I can cite that would be convincing. Even five pieces of evidence wouldn't do it. Maybe fifty would be enough, but that is too much to type in. But I can summarize: Hager's techniques are mostly the classic intelligence ones (by which I of course do not mean James Bond's): -- The collection of information of a rather mundane variety, which might divulge facts about names and places. Much of this comes from a close examination of related but unclassified government activity. -- Observation of known or suspected sites: walking around them and looking at (and counting and photographing) antennae. Doing as much snooping as is legal, and occasionally a bit more. Measuring photographs, and comparing the directions which dish antennae point, with the known positions of geosynchronous satellites and of microwave towers. More recently, he has had another source: the facts uncovered by parliamentary inquiries into Echelon. New Zealand's government is (or at least was at the time the book was published) fairly unsympathetic toward their territory being used for US spying. This is where he gets most of his information about the computer programs used. Hager does not in his book report all of his raw data, only his conclusions, and I did not report his conclusions (which are pretty specific about which New Zealand locations are involved in which parts of the process, as well as the names of people involved there), but only summarized the most robust of them. The book has a slight leftist tinge, but is mostly just a sober piece of writing. -- Norman Yarvin, yarvin@cs.yale.edu Well, I have a somewhat leftist tinge when it comes to bureacratic snoops who control SWAT teams and are looking for big publicity coups. Although I am not sure that "left" and "right" apply in those situations. Dear Dr. Pournelle, In the vein of echelon, et. al. "Deep Black", by William Burrows, is an interesting, though old (1986), look at the history of overhead reconnaissance. From the Civil War balloon corps through the KH-11, including U2, SR-71, COMINT, SIGINT, and, of course, imaging. Lots of data, many references. Also, note that commercial imaging sattellites now have 1 meter resolution. Kit Case kitcase@netutah.com I know the book, and I have good reason to know a good bit about satellite intelligence capabilities, as well as listening to cell phone calls through satellites (bin Laden's people know too, which is how we were suckered into hitting a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan when the President needed a target, bad. Also into hitting an Islamic medical conference in Afghanistan, turning the Taliban into our mortal enemies when previously they had been, if not friends, at least knew us as the enemy of their enemies. I fear those two strikes, which seem oddly timed to domestic matters, did more harm to our foreign policy than most anything else in the past few years. Hello Jerry, I read your column in Byte (Oct. 18) and noticed your mention about NoteTab, "a better Notepad". Whilst I have not tried NoteTab I though that you would interested to know that there exists a freeware product called "Programmer's File Editor" (PFE). I find PFE immensely superior to Notepad and while the name implies that it is an editor for programmers, I use it all the time for text-editing tasks when using Win9x/WinNT. It comes for 32 bit, 16 bit and PowerPC CPUs. The web page is as follows (and you won't need any download managers): http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles.htm Best regards, - -- Janus Christensen - jnc@di.dk System Developer - The Confederation of Danish Industries Shop. Consume. Possess. And smile! http://www.di.dk/ Thanks. Jerry, On your page http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/currentmail.html you have the URL http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles.htm shown as the address for PFE, a freeware text editor alternative to Microsoft's Notepad, but when I tried that address a 404 error message was returned. A little searching found the home page for PFE at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/default.htm and the download page at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/pfefiles.htm I will download PFE and give it a try, but so far EditPad (www.jgsoft.com), which I found through an earlier link on your web site, suits me fine. Regards, David C. Plunkett dcplunkt@ipa.net Okay...
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Tuesday, October 26, 1999 To webmaster and Jerry, I noticed the link to the Star Office website has a space in it making the link invalid. The link is located in the first paragraph of Jerry's article located at http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991019S0001 The link reads: http:// www.sun.com/staroffice and should be http://www.sun.com/staroffice To Byte: Jerry's articles are the main reason I return to your website weekly. To Jerry: I've been enjoying your website and articles. Thank you for the records of your trials with "all things computerish" and your mail commentary. Matthew D. Rider Thanks for the kind words, and the correction. Dear Jerry: I want to make you aware of a warning that the Council on Computing Council is issuing today concerning recent news that some PC OEMs are considering decreasing memory content in new PCs they are offering. This warning is particularly relevant given the fact that November is the biggest month for PC purchases in the entire calendar year. PC users need to carefully evaluate the amount of system memory available when purchasing a new PC. Please see the attached release for Council comments and suggestions. If you have any questions about this statement or have further question of the Council, please feel free to call or e-mail the contacts listed on the news release. Thanks for your consideration of this important message. Kelli Fratto Bremer Public Relations Inc. Thanks. If you get a PC, get at least 92 megabytes of memory: that probably works out to 128. It's the best improvement you can make. If your system doesn't have that much, buy some: and when you do, pay the premium for "name brand" that has been adequately tested. Crucial and Kingston are two companies I recommend. I am sure there are other good outfits, but I know about those. I too downloaded Star Office, although the cable modem made the download time substantially faster than several hours (@Home's servers were actually working that day). Like you, I only looked at the word processor. I was disappointed. Compared on a feature basis rather than price, just a few problems I found were: 1. The interface is really confusing. I had absolutly no idea how to create a new document and had to resort to the help files immediately. So far, exteremly anti-intuitive. Also, the interface is very slow. Once a document gets started it works OK, but loading and dialog boxes are terrible. This is on a PIII/450 with 256Meg RAM. 2. The spell checker only recognizes strict ASCII characters. This means that the characters such as typeface-customized apostrophes and quotes imported from Word docs are seen as spelling errors. That might not seem like much, but straight ASCII looks much less than professional. 3. No way to annotate or track revisions. I would really miss that. 4. I can't find a way to create odd/even headers and footers. I don't think you can do that, but it may be buried in the interface somewhere. 5. Silly interface again. The headings tags are in ascii order. So you see a tag list that looks like: header 1 header 10 header 2 header 3... Come on now! 6. I can't figure out how to line-select. You know, select a line by clicking in the margin (or some other means). 7. There is only one default TOC style that is extremely simple and not something you'd really want to use outside of a rough draft. Wouldn't you miss at least some of this? To be fair, it is free and Sun has not had a chance to work it over yet. But Sun's application software skills are not something I'd bet on based on their previous efforts! By the way, I saw nothing useful to me in Office 2000 so I'm still using Word 97. Maybe the 2000 edition is awful enough to make Star Office look good. john --------------------- jgitz@usa.net I thought I had made it clear that I still use Word 97 and Office 97 for nearly everything. I see no reason to go to 2000, although there's nothing so bad about it (as my retraction said, you don't get multiple instances of Word with multiple documents, it just looks that way). But the price is right on Star Office. If you have Office 97 OSR2 (the original was bad) then you'll probably go on using it; but at least there is now a Word compatible system good enough for those who can't yet afford Microsoft and don't want Word Perfect. But yes, I use Office 97 and will keep on doing so. Here's more: Hi Mr. Pournelle, (Before anything else, English is not my primary language, there might be quite a few errors. Please excuses them in advance). Just a comment or two about Star Office 5.1 to complete your own appreciation in October 25th issue of Byte. I use Star Office since version 5.0 (let say a half a year). My main usage is word processing. It's pretty stable. I did crashed it a couple times with texts of more than 20 pages but my computer is nothing but stable even using Windows NT 4 SP 5 so this is not meaningful at all. Compatibility with word 97 is far from perfect: while the base text is there, complex formatting can drive it nuts quickly ! On one hand, the program is easy to use, the interface is intuitive. Integration is excellent. On the other hand, some operations are not trivial to find. Even if I could consider myself expert of Microsoft Word, It took me many hours to figure out how to make half a page on 3 columns and the rest on a single one. Try it on your side and let me know how much time it will take you to find it. I downloaded the French version. The translation is far from perfect: some dialog boxes and all the help are not translated at all. My conclusion is that Star Office is a good base for real competition for Microsoft Office. However, some works is still required to polish it in terms of import/export filter an user interface; but for the price, it is already my main office suite at home. Best Regards, -- Michel Rondeau mailto:michel.rondeau@bigfoot.com ICQ: 6142715 FYI -- Celera Genomic is mapping the human gene -- they are private and rumored to be about to apply for some 6000 patents on their work. This brings up the "intellectual property" question again which is actively being discussed at slashdot.org ( http://slashdot.org/articles/99/10/26/082245.shtml ). This is actually usefull pointers to data from slashdot in spite of the noise. Chris Smith Thanks!
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Wednesday October 27, 1999 Hello, Don't know you are still one of the "blessed" with a Mac somewhere in the vicinity but, just in case, I thought I'd pass along this reference to an update of some freeware (of mine) that you once commented upon favorably. Regress+ 2.3 is available at http://www.geocities.com/~mikemclaughlin/software/Regress_plus.html Also, published at the same time, is (IMHO) a very nice reference page, A Compendium of Common Probability Distributions linked at http://www.geocities.com/~mikemclaughlin/math_stat/Dists/Compendium.html The latter is in PDF format and looks much nicer when printed (esp., double-sided). If you get a chance to check out either of these, I'd be very interested in your comments/feedback. Sincerely, Mike McLaughlin P.S. There have been nearly 2,000 new Regress+ users in the past 1.5 weeks so, apparently, people must like it. [A partial feature list: Did you ever have to fit your data to a function that was not necessarily a straight line? believe that you already knew some/all of the model parameters? discover that the residuals were Laplacian, not Gaussian :-( wonder if the optimum fit were statistically acceptable? want the minimum average deviation instead of least-squares? JEP] Thanks! Worth having a Mac just for that... Jerry, >From a past Byte column: "One thing I do is periodically burn what I call the "Full Monty" disk, everything I ever wrote plus the editor programs that can read the files" Sounds good, but particularly in the case of Microsoft Word, how do you archive the word processor in a manner that allows it to be easily restored and used? Regards, Roger Older editions of WORD, such as DOS Word, are simple. Earlier Windows Word with DLL's is easy enough. Current I don't bother with. WordStar, Write, and the other editors I used over the years fit nicely though. I read recently that you downloaded StarOffice. I assume its 5.1. I found it would take 37 hours to download, so sprung for the CD. I wanted it since my new computer did not come with Microsoft Office, only Works, which is kinda lame. But StarOffice has no documentation. I'm not much of a computer whiz and wanted to use it to print pamphlets, little 8-pagers that can be printed on a single, standard-size piece of letter paper. But I'm at a loss on how to get them to print so the pages are in order. Do you have any clues? Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing more about your adventures with StarOffice. Skip As they happen, as they happen....
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Thursday 28 October 1999 This is a sample of much mail I have got about mailings: Well, the trouble, in your case, is two fold: You're trying to maintain the entire list in Outlook, and you're trying to maintain the entire list in Outlook. :-} I'll explain that a bit more fully. The first problem is that it's Outlook, which of course is a MicroSoft product, and it's been documented down the hill and around the lake that MicroSoft _never_ implement an Internet protocol (in this case, SMTP) properly. Whether that's "embrace and extend" or merely stupidity is open for debate. Somewhere else. The other problem is that it's Outlook, by which I mean that it's a Mail User Agent. MUA's typically don't send mail directly to other people's mailers, they send to a "smart agent" somewhere, usually a sendmail box (or it's ilk) run by your ISP. Many of these boxes have finicky rules intended to stop spamming and relaying, and, as I think you're finding out, neither these rules, nor -- in some cases -- the humans who wrote them, are all that bright. The problem, of course, is that as a dialup customer, you're just not important enough to go to the effort of bending the rules for. I have two recommendations, and they're new neither to you nor me. 1) Get the Linux box up. Since _it_ will now be your smart agent, you won't get hindered by the stupid rules because the Linux box, having a native sendmail on it, will be sending directly to the mailers at the other end -- which means it will also be more robust. 2) Manage the mailing list on the Linux box. Get the O'Reilly book on Managing Mailing Lists (or "Internet Information Services", or whatever they're calling that book this month :-), hand it off to a flunky, and then just build your mail in outlook, and mail it to "jerry@exploder" or whatever your Linux guy names the machine on your network. Note that you will have to engage in a little subversion to make sure that mail to the alias in question can only be sent by you; an inquiry to editor@telecom-digest.org, Pat Townson, who manages a 25K+ mailing list might bring interesting insight. It's a little hill to climb, but _believe_ me, it will reduce your Zantac bills noticeably. Cheers, -- jra 'Tis true. I have a Rebel.com Netwatcher office server I intend to get running; THAT will take care of the mailing lists, I think. It just all takes time... Even though you may have had dealings in your "home land" 20 years ago - I suspect that the culture you are remembering is more like 40-50 years ago. A lot can change in a region in 50 years - mostly the intelligent and motivated (perhaps an entire generation of Pournelles and cohorts?) get college degrees and move on to the rest of the world. I don't know what it is like on the west coast - but in Chicago (my life long home until recently) I could demonstrate a bit of pop sociology at McDonald's. My worst service experiences have been in the wealthiest suburbs - with kids too bored and embarrassed to do a good job - or in the Loop - with inner city adults working at the best job they are ever going to get in their lives. My best service experiences have been in the working class blue-to-white collar neighborhoods. Here the parents have demonstrated a visible work ethic to their kids and the kids know this job is just a step on the way to college and career. I imagine the sharecroppers of your childhood just "knew" things would get better - if not for them then for their kids - they just had to persevere until things turned around. But if you come from four generations of sharecroppers - there just isn't much hope left - so why even try? In my view, "hopefulness" in America has been generated by transitions - my grandparents left a country ruined by the Czar's army, my parents get an eighth grade education, lifetime employment, a peaceful neighborhood, and a pension. I get a college education, a career, a house in a very nice suburb. My children? - hopefully at least as good a life as mine - but I don't see the big step up of each of the past three generations. We still have immigrants fleeing political and economic catastrophes - most of them work hard and expect something better for their children. But there seems to be a growing number of people "stuck" at the lower levels - and a perception that the next jump is so big that you just can't get it no matter how you try. My parent's generation could own a home without a mortgage and send their children to college by working in steel mills, assembling automobiles, wiring switchboards, or soldering televisions. All those jobs now are done by robots or in Asia. My take on why this happened so well through the mid-twentieth century? Cheap energy and labor unions. Cheap energy means efficiency is not important and labor unions made sure that the working man got a good (maybe even undeserved and disproportionate) share of the benefits. You could say this just kept some of the profits out of the financiers pocket and put it in the workers'. And the worker invested it in his children. That allowed us children of the blue collar workers to go to engineering and business schools and learn how to increase "productivity" and make more efficient production facilities (sweat shops?) and improve financial performance and reduce labor costs. And move the jobs out of America. I don't have a solution - if we try to prop up an inefficient production system we will only have a bigger disaster in the future. Maybe the demise of the big steel mills and the opening of the high-tech specialty mills in the midwest gives a clue. Maybe just minor regional economic disasters that we recover from and grow will keep the future open. But I am fearsome of the service economy or the moral hollowness of greeting gambling as an economic boon - it just doesn't feel like anything is being "created", that no real wealth is being generated - just moved around. Andy Kowalczyk Lexington, Massachusetts Well, my top of the head solution is the one that the Democrats used to tout: tariff for revenue only. As opposed to tariff for protection. A revenue tariff transfers some tax burdens from the domestic economy, and gives a bit of an edge to the locals without overwhelming the economy with protectionism. I would say 10% just offhand. I do think that people who are willing to work hard ought to be allowed that opportunity, and not be abandoned to maquiladora shops on the slightest pretext. And it scares hell out of me that Detroit, which defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, is now in essence out of business, and the plants that turned out a Liberator bomber every hour, and a hundred Sherman tanks a day, are gone. Dr. Pournelle: Andy Kowalczyk's post, and your reply, make sense. George Will noted in his column (10/28/99)that Patrick Kennedy (Rhode Island) has introduced a bill in the House that would grant an income tax credit on certain luxury items, such as yachts, to help the boat building industry, and several thousand un- or underemployed boat builders in Rhode Island, recover from the disaster inflicted by the now-repealed 'luxury tax.' George Will's column perfectly illustrates the Law of Unintended Consequences. Taxes only make sense when revenue is the only object. Social policy by taxation is the opposite of basic research--in the long run, basic research always has resulted in improvements in practical applications--taxation as a means to direct the course of the nation has never suceeded. Politicians tend to think of tax policy the way sf readers think of teleportation--we probably can't do it, but it would be so much fun if we did; let's keep trying! Now, though, I'm going to spend half the night worrying that the politicians might succeed. Mark Thompson Certainly the "luxury tax" neatly destroyed the US yacht industry and very much harmed the big car industry at a time when that kind of skilled labor job was important... For more see below. First, I can't even understand how you can keep all your projects going at once. That said, my 20 lb CAT, Buster, wants to say good job. I don't ask, if I'm doing something that is agreeable he leaves me alone. I just returned from a Microsoft Direct Access presenation for Win2K, and yes I have the free CD's and I'm runing RC2. First impression, almost all of the system drivers worked. My Creative Labs 3D Blaster Savage 4 was identified as a problem. Installed Win2K and lo and behold, Windows installed the S3 drivers and I'm running in 1028X768 16 bit. However none of the CL drivers will run. Next, I have a STB PCI TV card. Never has run correctly, and 3DFX says they will not upgrade the drivers. Under Win 98 I set up a different hardware profile because the thing is a resource hog. I hoped Win2K would have some help, no, but it has additional troubleshooting that made it easy to yank the card. Because even with a different Hardware Profile in W98, the darn card still killed my system. I'm impressed with the stability of the OS. Using W2K Pro, trying my best to get the "Blue Screen of Death", Win2K lets me shut down and save, pretty good as far as I'm concerned. Well, it's getting late, and the furry one's say GO TO BED, and who am I to argue with that.... Regards Jeff Pelton I've been using Windows 2000 on Princess for weeks, and I like it; but I don't have all that demanding a system. IBM.net says they don't know how to get me logged in using Windows 2000, though. Their tech support people say it can't be done. Which is not quite what I wanted to hear... Clearly I can use Windows 2000 to communicate through Earthlink, since that's how I'm doing this. Pity IBM.NET doesn't know how.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Friday October 29, 1999 Subject revenue tariffs From: Jim Dodd [jimdodd@tcubed.net] Dear Jerry, You wrote: "Well, my top of the head solution is the one that the Democrats used to tout: tariff for revenue only. As opposed to tariff for protection. A revenue tariff transfers some tax burdens from the domestic economy, and gives a bit of an edge to the locals without overwhelming the economy with protectionism. I would say 10% just offhand." <Snip> Would you mind elaborating on this a bit? Where is the tax applied and who collects it? I saw tariffs in Namibia, like 140% of price for a 4-wheel drive vehicle… Come now, surely tariff for revenue is not an utterly foreign idea? Or is it? Odd. We were taught the difference between tariff for revenue only (which the Democrats were for, one reason the South was solid Democratic Party at the time) and protective tariff, which the Republicans stood for. (They seem to have changed roles in recent years.) This was in 6th grade in Capleville Consolidated, a rural Tennessee school; so it can't be overly complex. A tariff for revenue is intended to collect money. After all, someone has to pay taxes, and taxes do fall differentially on people (unless it's a head tax, and we tend to think of those as extremely regressive). A revenue tariff falls on those who "buy foreign" as opposed to those who "buy American". The theory is that since those who are put out of work by having their job exported are going to have to be kept alive somehow, and probably retrained, the costs of such unemployment may as well fall on those who benefit from the cheaper foreign inputs. A 140% tariff isn't intended for revenue, it's protective: it either protects a native industry, or a more favored import (say from the mother country in the case of a colony). Protective tariff isn't intended to raise revenue and will in general not even be collected since the purpose is to prevent the import in the first place. Excessive inspections and "safety requirements" and so forth have much the same effect. Protective tariff is justified on the grounds of national security: some industries are just so valuable that we must keep them here no matter what it costs. They can lead to horrors: the US Steel industry was protected to the point of such vast inefficiency that it nearly went away and last time I looked hadn't really recovered yet. The auto industry was that way for a while, secure behind tariff walls and producing bigger boats with less value, overpriced and not competitive. Foreign imports saved that industry for a while by forcing US auto makers to become more efficient; but now all of Detroit seems to be out of the auto industry entirely, with all the jobs in Mexico and further away. Someone will have to pay the costs of the adjustment from a manufacturing economy to a "service" (you want fries with that; I'm working my way up to be a manager, or maybe a telephone solicitor) economy. The government has no money mines: it will have to extract that money from SOMEONE. The theory of revenue tariff is that it is set to maximize revenue. When the revenue falls too low you adjust either upward or downward depending on the reason for the revenue fall; but you don't play favorites, and the ideal is an across the board tariff set at the rate that maximizes revenue. My view, and it's no more than an educated guess, is you start at 10% across the board on all imports from everywhere, and adjust probably downward after the initial dislocations. We have budget surplus in this country, but we have BIG retirement obligations to the work force, many of whom aren't in high paying manufacturing jobs any more and thus not paying heavily into the Social Security and other retirement pools. Revenue tariff would help meet that obligation while allowing a general lowering of the income tax. Taxes distort economies. It is probably true that unrestricted free trade makes for the lowest consumer prices; but it does so at a fairly high social cost. Protective tariff tries to shield from the social costs, but the result is often very inefficient industries. Now inefficiency isn't always so horrible: it's worth something to the nation not to have people yanked out of communities they lived in all their lives to move elsewhere to find jobs. It's worth something to let children grow up in the same household for all their adolescent years. It costs when alienation makes people go ballistic: witness Columbine. A sense of community is good insurance against some of the more bizarre forms of alienation (of course it's not 100% effective; but it's pretty clear that uprooting in adolescence isn't a good way to raise kids when it can be avoided). In other words, there are some benefits to inefficiency that keeps employment steady. The question is how much benefit for how much cost, and if anyone knows that, it's not me. But after years of thinking about all this, I come to the conclusion that a revenue tariff helps promote social stability, and since someone has to pay taxes, they may as well fall on people benefiting from lower costs due to trade. AND HERE is another view: Dr. Pournelle, You wrote: "And it scares hell out of me that Detroit, which defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, is now in essence out of business, and the plants that turned out a Liberator bomber every hour, and a hundred Sherman tanks a day, are gone." Which was the goal of Hirohito and Hitler after all. They never saw it in their lifetimes, but we have been beaten by their respective countries, at least industrially. We still have time to turn this around, but nobody is attempting to do so. At least we can be consoled in that if and when we go down, because these countries are so economically tied to us, they go with us. Should make the great depression look like a minor annoyance. But, I am, as always, optimistic. Because: "God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America". George A. Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> "It is better to have fought and died, than never to have fought at all... well maybe not." -Din the Decisive "S-4 really screwed up this time. We're at the objective...it's a rest room." -Val Jerry, After CMP shut down the print edition of Byte, they substituted Windows Magazine as a way to fulfill my subscription. Hardly a one-for-one replacement, but it had enough interesting product reviews that I did not demand a refund. Then in August CMP shut down Windows Magazine (I'm sorry, "expanded its editorial efforts" to the Internet). Today I received a postcard from CMP: "As a prior subscriber to Windows Magazine, you already know that Windows ceased publication effective with the August 1999 issue. Thank you for your patience during these last few months while we arranged to best meet your needs. If you like, you can request a refund for any remaining issues that were not fulfilled. Please return this postcard with your request to us at PO Box 420217, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0217. Please contact us by November 30th as we are in the process of closing down our operations." Now I may be expecting a little too much here. If they have my address, and they have my subscription information, and they have my money, and they have shut down all of their magazines then why can't they just mail me a check? I choose to ascribe this behavior to malice. The only reasonable explanation is that CMP hopes most people throw the postcard away and never claim their money. Chris Casper Malice may be a bit strong a word, but it certainly does look as if that is what they are hoping for. Interestingly I today got a refund check made out to a subscriber, who, being in Japan, would have had most of it eaten by bank charges and currency fees, so he sent it to me as his subscription to the site. For which thanks. I did find that an amusing way of paying: it also shows that they DO pay, eventually, since the check is a CMP check that looks very like what they pay me with... "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -- Napoleon Bonaparte Dear Dr. Pournelle: The invasion of the casinos to Tunicia, MS has had an effect on the entire Mid-South region. Tunicia county infrastructure at the time the casinos came in was about what it was when you lived her. No kidding. Because the construction companies (mostly from out of the area) got bonuses for how fast the buildings were built, the hourly rate of construction tradesmen went suborbital. Same for food service workers, even to the point that a neighbor of mine, a fairly well known caterer in Memphis had to press several of us into service as waiters for a Christmas party because several of his (then) employees canceled out at the last minute because the casinos had tripled his hourly rate, which was one of the highest pay scales in town. However, the companies were paying for results, so the desired social engineering result of letting gambling in, creating jobs for MS. residents didn't happen because the locals were not "ready to work." I mean by that that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the sharecroppers you knew had not been exposed to a family work ethic for at least two generations. Automation hit agriculture way before it hit the factories. Combine that with the dismal education system afforded African-Americans in Mississippi in the late 50s through at least the early 80s and the loss somewhere along the way of the idea of education being a way to better one's lot. Finally, the Great Society removed the final motivator, an empty belly, by insuring that there was at least basic food to eat and enough cash to make life at least no different that the life their parents were afforded by backbreaking labor. Education is not only not encouraged, it is looked on as a suspect activity. This is my humble explanation as to why the work ethic has mostly vanished among the rural poor. The bottom line is that the "commuters from Memphis" have filled the gap. Oddly enough, this has forced Memphis employers to both raise real wages and hire people that would never have been considered in the past (this is in part why "fast food" is an oxymoron in Memphis) The labor pool has been increased because the final motivator is back in play. People are really going off welfare in Tennessee, because they have to. Employers have to hire them because there is literally no one else. In the long run, I hope that the idea of a work ethic will return to the bulk of the "welfare poor" in Memphis, where it suffered for mostly the same reasons set out above. In reading this, I suspect that I will be thought a redneck Southerner (or worse). I center on the African American population for the simple reason they are the largest group affected. Poverty and ignorance knows no color line. The idea of a "work ethic" is not inborn, it is learned. If we as a society are not willing to teach it, (including letting able bodied people go hungry if that is what it takes to get the message across) we should not expect it to appear out of thin air. Richard D. Cartwright rcartwr@ibm.net I suspected it was something like that. In red dirt Tennessee/Mississippi farm country, where the land was gullying and it was all you could do to keep a crop in the hills, or keep the floods out of the bottom land, everyone worked. We all learned to get up and get to work. Black or white. And every black (we called the Negroes in my family, which was frowned on by some who had a more vulgar word and didn't appreciate our pronunciation) I knew could read, from people my age through their grandparents. They all read newspapers, they all belonged to a burial insurance society, and they all worked. When World War II came along there were jobs at the Naval Depot (Millington) and other such places, and there was no unemployment. Not that there ever had been much. Incidentally, our Case tractor was the first tractor in our part of the county, and it wasn't enough automation for all the work: most of the plowing and dirt moving was done by mules. Mules and slip shovels were no match for the gullies, but there weren't any bulldozers. I know we contemplated planting -- are you ready -- kudzu in hopes of stopping some gullying but went with cucumbers and locust trees instead. But that was long ago: when war work came, there wasn't much problem for people finding jobs, and find them they did. Well, I wish Tunicia County well. The cotton gin we had to go to was in Mineral Wells (our water tasted just like you would think water from a place called Mineral Wells that never became a famous spa -- it only had a general store and a cotton gin) Mississippi. I bicycled through that area looking for lakes to fish in. All long ago. I received this letter and sent it to a number of people I thought might be interested. I am now told it is a scam. Read on: From: 915602@candseek.com [mailto:915602@candseek.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 9:57 AM To: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com Subject: JOBOP Oracle DBA Since your email address was listed on a related web site page or database, I thought you might help. I am seeking an individual within the following conditions: I represent a leader in litigation and legal cost management in Philadelphia, PA. Currently, they are looking for an Oracle DBA to join their dynamic Information Technology department. In this role, an individual will be responsible for designing and maintaining Oracle databases on multiple server configurations. The ideal candidate will have at least 2 years of DBA experience with Oracle 8. Prior experience with NT platform is also required. In addition, this individual must have experience with Web based data delivery, SQL Server and MS Back Office. Knowledge of Oracle Web development tools is desired. For the right person, the salary can go as high as $90,000 with a generous bonus plan. Geographic Location of Position: Philadelphia, Pa If you know anyone that might be interested, please forward this to them or contact: Megan McCullough Diedre Moire Corporation Fax: 609-584-9575 Email: 915602@candseek.com To permanently discontinue receiving employment opportunity notices from any and all help wanted advertisers using the Candidate Seeker system, click your "Reply" button and type the word "re- move" without spaces between the letters into the SUBJECT field then click the "Send" button. Your email address will be permanently filtered from ALL future job opportunity notifications sent via the Candidate Seeker system. To temporarily filter employment opportunity notices sent via the Candidate Seeker system, type the acronym "JOBOP" into your subject filter. All employment opportunity notices sent via the Candidate Seeker system contain the acronym "JOBOP" in the subject so they may be easily filtered or blocked if so desired. Other email addresses may be permanently deleted from future contact by emailing a single blank message from the desired address to nomail@candseek.com. Enter additional addresses into the body of the message and they will also be added to the "nomail" list Please feel free to contact the candidateseeker.com feedback line at 609-584-5499. Do not use this number for job related questions. All job related questions should be directed to the employer by replying to contact addresses or phone numbers indicated at the end of the job description message. Mailed By: candseek.com 510 Horizon Center Robbinsville, NJ 08691 It looked legitimate enough, and I know people who do want Oracle data base programmers. Anyway I did send it along; and I received this: One thing I do in my "Spare" time is run a simple web site for my father's business. Since he doesn't check e-mail every day, I've got the server set up to send me copies of any messages sent to his domain. I see this kind of message relatively frequently. This is a particularly pernicious type of SPAM. I think they've a robot that crawls the web and then based on some kind of key word matching sends this type of message to all the e-mail addresses it can scrape off a web site. What they are doing is spamming random e-mail addresses trying to get a message to someone who fits what they are looking for. While I'm in favor of an open and free labor market, this type of spam, like all others, should not be encouraged. BTW, since all the e-mail addresses on the site I manage are actually redirects to my father's AOL account (it's a small business) and he's the owner, they're wasting their time with us. Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com P.S. Keep up the good work. And later: I'm not saying that the opportunity wasn't real, but that it's random spam directed at employer's web sites in order to poach their employees. Additionally, an Oracle DBA is generally employed by a company that uses Oracle systems in house. They are expensive and hard to keep because they are scarce. Probably is a real job, but not a fair pool way to advertise it IMHO. I am not quite sure this fits in the definition of SPAM, or that it's really a scam; in any event, that's what I know.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Saturday October 30, 1999 I am not quite sure this fits in the definition of SPAM, or that it's really a scam; in any event, that's what I know. The polite term for spam is Unsolicited Commercial E-mail. I think this fits. It is definitely unsolicited. It has a clear commercial purpose. Maybe because I am one in management and two in the engineering services field I have an extra negative reaction to this type of approach. In my business the people are, almost literally, the product. Their ability to get good work done is the only saleable asset I have. As a result, I work very hard to keep them happy. I generally succeed too. It's been almost two years since one of my employees quit. What this type of span does is put job opportunities in front of people who aren't looking for them. A lot of people would be in favor of that, but I'm not. The key issue here is that it uses the employer's computing resources in an activity that is against the employer's interests and without their permission. It is, in short, a form of theft and SPAM. Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com One could make several comments here. The analogy to the exporting of jobs does come to mind. We export manufacturing jobs to Mexico and then give the companies that did that tax breaks -- not only no tariff, but tax credits on taxes they paid to Mexico -- in the name of free trade and the fluidity of labor. I don't much like that. Here we have information flowing to employees of companies that try to keep their people rather than export their job. But would that company later export the job if that could be done? On Work ethics: >>"The idea of a "work ethic" is not inborn, it is learned." I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Cartwright. I think that children are born with an inbred desire to do work and do well. In many cases or society in general and our public education system specifically drive the desire out over time. My daughter (5) is in her third year of a Montessori preschool. A third of a century ago, I went to one too. For those unfamiliar with the Montessori method, here's a good link: http://www.montessori.edu/. One of the key tenets of this approach is that kids want to work and all that a teacher needs to do is encourage and guide that desire. From my own experience and watching my daughter, I'm a believer. Mr. Cartwright's mistake is an easy one to make. Separating nature from nurture is a challenge under any conditions. We've become very good in this country at shutting down people's desire to do work from an early age. I think this is at the core of a lot of the problems this country faces today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Montessori is the only answer or the answer for everyone. It works quite well for a lot of kids and it's success is a good indicator that kids are born with a work ethic. The challenge of society in general and parents specifically is to sustain that desire. Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com Given the bizarre findings of twin studies -- identical twins raised apart have eerily similar tendencies toward, for instance, "being religious" and other highly complex behavior -- I certainly cannot be sure that the desire to do meaningful work is not inheritable, but surely it can also be learned? Indeed, one theory of criminal rehabilitation is the establishment of decent work habits: getting up, getting dressed, being on time, becoming a habit. If coupled with work skills it seems to work better than any other prison regime. I would certainly expect that growing up in a family with good work habits would be beneficial, but it is clearly neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. Today you wrote: What a little candlelight can do! There's nothing like candlelight to create a tranquil atmosphere [etc.] and for some reason came the mental picture of the house burning down. Oh. Well. And just a couple of hours ago, reading "ENIAC The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer" by Scott McCartney, Walker and Company, I came across this tidbit about John William Mauchly, co-inventor of ENIAC: "At age five, he had taken a dry cell battery, a lightbulb, and a socket and fashioned a flashlight to explore a dark attic at a friend's house. The friend's mother was so afraid the new creation would start a fire, she gave him a candle to use instead." Ah, well...... balferow@basex.com Indeed. Then there was the hideous fire in a southern nuclear power plant -- Brownsville? -- started when a technician was using a candle to look for air leaks in flammable (non-asbestos) insulation... Dr. Pournelle, This will crank your blood pressure up. Toshiba is settling a lawsuit for a "defective product" (intermittent floppy write errors on its laptops) that has never caused anybody any lost data or damage. The average member of the class action suit will be eligible for a coupon worth $200 - $400. The lawyers involved will get about $140 million. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/10/biztech/articles/30toshiba.html Well, I won't even comment. Donald W. McArthur http://www.mcarthurweb.com ********************************* "The more he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ***************************** I saw that "settlement" this morning and my immediate question was how much are the lawyers getting? So far as I am concerned those lawyers names ought to be made public: they are now fair game, anyone who can devise a cheme to get money off them has complete moral and ethical right -- indeed obligation -- to do so. Making their lives miserable ought to be a hobby for any decent person. Do I mean that? Probably not, but then I am a fiction writer. I can think of a novel in which someone makes it a goal to make such lawyers miserable. For more see below. Your Emerson quote was one of Larry Niven's brother's favorites. We had reason to use it after negotiating with a famous publisher once, who looked us in the eye and lied, knowing that we knew he was lying. He's still famous, but at least he is no longer in a publishing company we have to deal with.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Sunday October 31, 1999 ALL HALLOWS EVE Dr. Pournelle, Thought you might be interested: The History Channel is doing a program about the Orion Project tonight (Sunday, 31 Oct 1999 @ 10:00 Eastern) . They had footage of small working models in flight on the preview. Kind of neat . Pulsed explosive propulsion may still be the answer, outside the atmosphere. An external combustion engine . Anyway, watch if you can, tape if you can't . Ron Booker rbooker@roxboro.net THANKS. I'll try to tape it. I was once "involved" with Orion in the sense of evaluating it, and I know Freeman Dyson (Esther Dyson's father; a Fellow at the Princeton Institution for Advanced Studies). Jerry: This is a great page on Internet connection security. http://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 GRC is Gibson Research Corporation. Steve Gibson is the guy who wrote SpinRite, among other useful PC utilities. He's now turned his attention to security, and the results are outstanding. His page will scan your PC for vulnerabilities (while you wait), and is chock full of high content, low noise information and links. Great reviews of the current personal PC security products like BlackICE and Conseal. Recommended. (I passed his scan test, and still remain somewhat paranoid <g>). I believe personal firewalls are highly recommended for anyone regularly connected to the net via modem, and absolutely essential to those with high speed full time connections (xDSL and cable modems). I'm going over to a cousin's house today to install BlackICE on her new system, for which she got a cable modem last week. Jim Riticher jriti@yahoo.com Gibson is one of the good guys, and meticulous. If you worry about security at all, or wonder if you should, this is a good thing to look at. Dear Dr. Pournelle: I must take issue with both you and Mr. McArthur regarding the Toshiba lawsuit. First, in the interests of full disclosure, I am a lawyer. I agree that $147 million is a lot of money. But in the context of a $2.1 billion settlement it is quite low, about 7% of the total. I suspect that this case was taken on contingency, that means that the lawyers share a portion of the recovery. If they do not recover, they do not get paid. Clients' love this approach because they don't have to pay up front. However, once the case is won, and the risk the lawyers took in allocating time and resources to the case is to be rewarded, then everyone says that the "greedy lawyers" are making a killing. Had the case gone to court and lost, would the paper have noted that the law firms lost millions in taking the case to trial? I think not. I commend the book A CIVIL ACTION to anyone who wishes to see the other side of the coin. I also found it intersting that the rush to trash the lawyers, no notice is made of the fact that the company knew of the problem since 1987 and chose to do nothing about it. Computer users, including the master of Chaos Manor, routinely complain about the sorry state of software and the companies that do nothing to fix small problems. Further, a general principal of most lawsuits is that you have to prove damages. If indeed there were no damages, then Toshiba was foolish in settling, they could have won the suit. Company reps claimed that they could have been exposed to over $9 billion in damages should the case have gone against them. Again, this would be the case only if there were actual damages. I suspect that in the process of getting ready for trial a "smoking gun" was discovered somewhere that Toshiba did not want to make public. Finally, note the following terms of the settlement: "Owners of Toshiba notebook computers purchased since March 5, 1998, will be eligible to receive cash rebates ranging from $210 to $443.21, with the higher figures for the more recently purchased machines. The settlement announcement said that there are 1.8 million such computers and that the total costs will be $597.5 million. Any unclaimed amounts will go to a charity to provide Toshiba computers to schools and libraries. In addition, owners of machines still covered by warranty as of March 1999 -- an estimated 3 million machines -- will be entitled to coupons worth either $200 or $225 that can be used toward the purchase of Toshiba computers or computer accessories. Owners of laptops not covered by warranty -- an estimated 2 million machines -- will be entitled to a $100 coupon. " http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/10/biztech/articles/30toshiba.html Now I am just a simple Tennessee country lawyer, but this looks an lot like a rebate program for the sale of Toshiba computers and products. Most class action suits provide for the payment of cash money, not Toshiba money. Toshiba is facing competition from IBM and Compaq. A fair amount of this money is directed to folks who will either be considering buying another computer. As close as margins are, a $100.00 coupon could easily make the difference. For newer users, the purchase of Toshiba computer accessories will bind them closer to the Toshiba line. Either way sales of their products will benefit. How much do such rebates cost companies when they do it to increase or maintain market share? I am not at all sure that Toshiba really lost this case. Richard D. Cartwright rcartwr@ibm.net This case wasn't "taken on contingency" it was INSTIGATED on contingency. There were no "clients" until the case was manufactured. There were no people who had lost data and were suing. The whole damn thing was a scheme to get money for the lawyers, and Toshiba largely settled to avoid the publicity involved. NO ONE LOST ANY DATA so there were not really any grounds for a suit; but this one got cobbled up. Taken on contingency indeed. Interestingly, those who bought computers have a choice of taking the "settlement" coupons or suing. Since no one is known to have been harmed by this defect which can't even be triggered in the labs without extraordinary effort, how is Toshiba saved from exposure to worse damages? Anyone with a real case -- there don't seem to be any such people -- can sue on their own. No, this was a splendid deal for the lawyers, but it was hardly the stuff of A CIVIL ACTION. I do not believe all legal "class actions" are pernicious, but I have often found myself a party to one through being offered my "settlement" which was invariably worthless and discovered that the lawyers were getting real money far too often for me to be a booster of such actions. Dear Dr. Pournelle: I fear that we will have to agree to disagree on the Toshiba business, although I do agree that the suit was probably a put up job (which is why I will probably always be a simple Tennessee country lawyer-but I can look myself in the mirror every day which more than makes up for it. <G>) I will never be able to buy into the idea that corporations make giant settlements just to avoid bad publicity. If part of the deal in this case is a nondisclosure agreement about the suit, then I really will never be able to swallow the "bad publicity" argument. Incidentally, "opt out" provisions are usually meaningless in product liability class actions because the nature of a class action is to consolidate many cases that on their own would not be worth pursuing, but taken in total represent a major wrong. This is of course the ideal, I agree that the reality often strays from the path. The American legal system is by no means perfect, but I still prefer it to the alternative. On a totally different subject, I think that the nuclear plant fire you referenced earlier in the week was at Browns Ferry, not Brownsville (which does not have a plant). We got alerted to evacuate from our home, so I remember the event well. Thought you would like to know. Richard D. Cartwright rcartwr@ibm.net I am not under the illusion that I am infallible, and I may indeed be wrong, but in a case in which there are no injured plaintiffs this seems a huge settlement. It was indeed Brown's Ferry; my memory is faulty sometimes. Thanks. Jerry, As it turns out, I saw Double Jeopardy this past week too. A couple of hours watching Ashley Judd smiling and Tommy Lee Jones scowling should have provided a couple of hours of enjoyment. But I was really bugged by Judd's character's actions in general and in particular, her ability to retain her life and her gun during the cemetery scene. Lost a lot of that 'smart' feeling most TL Jones movies seem to have. The question I REALLY have is: Is Dershowitz correct in maintaining that double jeopardy pertains to a particular murder of a person at a specific place and time, or does the tenet of the movie really apply in American jurisprudence? Gary Mugford Bramalea ON Canada P.S. As an interested outsider, I continually find the American thirst for judicial largesse to be horrifying. Given the splitting of awards into compensatory and punitive, would the re-direction of punitive damages to the State, rather than the plaintiffs and/or the lawyers, lead to more or less rational judgments? I enjoyed the movie although there were some plot holes. But no, I do not believe that legally the fundamental premise of the movie would hold: having been convicted in Washington State of murdering her husband would not give her an automatic king's x for killing him elsewhere. But I am no lawyer, and the law is odd. Mostly it sounds plausible and I expect the Judd character would believe it as would her husband. Punitive damages going to the state are indistinguishable from fines and would cause a different standard for conviction, or so I think. The whole notion is a lawyer's trick to begin with: a kind of lottery ticket, whereupon if you can show that a deep pocket injured you, you have a chance for wealth untold. This is an insanity that only lawyers who are entitled to a cut of that wealth could have devised. It's a bit like George Orwell once saying "You must be an intellectual. No ordinary person would believe that." The system has to be devised by lawyers, for lawyers to employ lawyers. For me, Toshiba healthy is worth more than "punishing " them for selling products that have injured no one but which make them vulnerable to blackmail. From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:17:42 -0700 Subj: politically-correct Yearbook (sadly, this is NOT a joke <sigh) [More proof that our educators are insane] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Yearbook-Fight.html October 28, 1999 Howitzer Picture Cut From Yearbook Filed at 3:16 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press NEVIS, Minn. (AP) - A high school is refusing to allow a picture to appear in the yearbook of a student sitting on a 155 mm howitzer. Nevis High of^cials said the photo of senior Samantha Jones violates the school's ``zero-tolerance'' policy toward weapons. The policy prohibits images of guns, knives or other weapons on shirts, hats or in pictures. It also bans squirt guns. The snapshot shows Ms. Jones, who is joining the Army in June, perched on the small cannon outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars post. ``Whether it's in military, recreational or sporting form, anything shaped like a gun or knife is banned,'' said Superintendent Dick Magaard. Ms. Jones' mother, Sue Jones, petitioned for a vote by the School Board, which deadlocked 3-3 this week on publishing the photo. ``I back my daughter 100 percent on this. The lawyer will be sending you papers,'' she told school of^cials. School Board chairman Marv Vredenburg defended Ms. Jones by pointing to war photographs already hanging on school walls. ``She is honoring the ~ag and service,'' he said. Not a joke. Sigh.
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