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CHAOS MANOR MAIL
A SELECTION
Mail December 6 - 12, 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
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-- Sunday
HIGHLIGHTS:
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Monday December 5, 1999
Dear Jerry:
You may recall my mentioning that social questions - like the maintenance of
citizen-soldier armies - may have more to do with future war than technology
will. An illustration occured to me.
You're certainly familiar with Nazi Germany's Pzr VIb (aka Koenigstiger,
King Tiger, Royal Tiger, Tiger II). 74 tons, I think, combat loaded. Roughly
the same dimensions as a US M-60 tank of about 54 tons, combat loaded.
Yet the Tiger II had only a fraction of the frontal armor of an M-60, about
a third. Where was the rest? Oh, the engine may have been heavier, if less
powerful. Perhaps the tracks and suspension were heavier too. Not all of
this can account for the 28 tons difference (20 in overall weight, perhaps
another 8 in the thinner glacis).
Where was the weight? Heavier armor on the rear, sides, top and perhaps
belly. Why? Because the Tiger operated in an environment where tanks were
quite rare and good, dedicated, well trained infantry quite plentiful. The
Tiger needed that heavier armor in places besides the front because its
threats came from all around, from infantry in mass, springing both from the
folds of the earth and from societies willing to pay the price.
A tank today has almost no armor in the rear, sides and top. It can get away
with this because Infantry has become quite rare, good infantry almost a
forgotten legend. (For reasons I won't bore you with at this time, the
advent of the Infantry Fighting Vehicle, or IFV - Bradley's, Marders, BMPs,
has effectively ruined the mechanized infantry of every army that has
adopted them. See the earlier foray into Chechnya, for example.)
So what if you face in war another society that places a more limited value
on human life, and is willing to inflict the necessary hardships on its
young men to turn them into infantry in huge numbers? Perhaps in a very
simple environment, like the desert, it will sometimes not matter. But in a
complex environment (and given some time, good infantry will make even the
desert a complex environment) modern tanks are hopelessly vulnerable in a
way the Tiger II was not.
I entitled this passage "Combat Ecology" because I have suspected
for some time that this is something like what Robert Heinlein meant when he
used the term in Starship Troopers.
By the way, I know few soldiers who have not read SST. And we ALL agree with
its political philosophy. Kind of makes one wonder about our dedication to
current political principles, doesn't it?
VTY
Tom Kratman
Thanks!
Dear Jerry,
Tom Kratman pointed out some systemic problems in modern armed forces, and correctly pointed to the kinds of problems we have and will run into because of it. An annecdote from personal experience may help to illustrate a few of his claims:
I was with B Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines in Desert Storm. Because the Marine divisions were infantry heavy (mechanized as well, but in such a way that we had to dismount to fight effectively) with some armor support, we were handed the job of attacking into the teeth of Iraqi defenses, advancing through the complex environment of oilfields and associated infrastructure in southern Kuwait, and conceivably fighting in Kuwait City. The experience taught us several things:
1. Well trained infantry in properly conceived combined arms task forces can still be effective on the attack. Relying on supporting armor, artillery, and aircraft, we were perfectly capable of 20+kilometer per day advances against some of the toughest opposition encountered during the ground campaign.
2. Well trained infantry can defend itself, even in a desert. On the morning of February 25, an Iraqi mechanized company, mounted in seven armored personnel carriers, supported by three tanks, tried to roll a platoon of my company which was occupying an outpost about 1000m to the front of the battalion. Four burning APCs and 25-30 casualties later, those that didn't surrender backed off at the approach of the rest of the company.
3. Target acquisition and identification turned out to be much more important than overall firepower. Our thermal imaging technology gave us the same kind of information dominance at the tactical level that other systems conferred on the Coallition forces at the operational and strategic level. Fog, smoke (except for hot oil well fire smoke), and night were little obstacle to maneuver and target engagement.
More recent experiences in Somalia, the Balkans, and Chechnya (up to and including the most recent developments) have, IMHO, just reinforced the above lessons.
Tony
Jerry,
" [...] Yet the Tiger II had only a fraction of the frontal armor of an M-60, about a third. Where was the rest? Oh, the engine may have been heavier, if less powerful. Perhaps the tracks and suspension were heavier too. Not all of this can account for the 28 tons difference (20 in overall weight, perhaps another 8 in the thinner glacis).
Where was the weight? Heavier armor on the rear, sides, top and perhaps belly. Why? Because the Tiger operated in an environment where tanks were quite rare and good, dedicated, well trained infantry quite plentiful. The Tiger needed that heavier armor in places besides the front because its threats came from all around, from infantry in mass, springing both from the folds of the earth and from societies willing to pay the price."
Actually, I think you might be surprised by the amount of armor the Tiger II carried at the front relative to the sides, rear, top, and bottom. It was very heavily armored on the front, so much so that no anti-tank or main tank gun then extant could defeat the armor even at point-blank range. From the top (and less so from the rear and sides), the Tiger II was vulnerable even to later variants of the Panzerfaust, which was the best man-portable anti-armor weapon of WWII.
The Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausf B (Sd Kfz 182), also known as the Tiger II, VK4503, and Königstiger, was produced in two major variants. The first fifty used the so-called Porsche turret, designed by Ferdinand Porsche for the VK4502, and recognizable by the pronounced bulge of the commander's cupola on the left center of the turret. The remaining 439 Tiger IIs produced (from 6 December 1943) used the improved Henschel turret. I believe that few of the Porsche turret versions saw action, and many were subsequently converted to other purposes (e.g. tank killers), or had the turret replaced with the Henschel version.
In both variants, the top/bottom of turret, superstructure, hull, and gun mantlet used 40 mm armor; the sides/rear of turret, superstructure, hull, and gun mantlet used 80 mm armor. The only difference was in the front armor of the two turrets. The Porsche turret used rounded armor which varied in thickness from 60 to 110 mm. The Henschel turret used sloped armor that was 180 mm thick. With the Henschel turret, the Tiger II had a combat weight of "only" 68 tons.
I don't know off the top of my head how much armor the M60 carries, but I doubt it's 540 mm at the front, or that it's that much less than 80 mm at the sides and rear. In fact, many Tiger II crews were concerned enough about the relatively light armor at the sides, rear, top and bottom that they mounted spare track links to provide additional protection in these locations. In fact, I've been told this process was semi-formalized, with later production models arriving from the factory with welded attachment points for track links.
Best regards.
Bob
Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com
"My concern is with the changing character of industry in this country. I don't think all our workers ought to have to compete against subsistence wage slaves."
I may not like it, but I think in one sense it is inescapable that, as workers, all workers must compete with all workers and that includes subsistence wage slaves in the set of workers.
Seems to me the discussion is covering several quite distinct points. (1)Is there a net gain from free trade? The answer is so clearly yes as to make this a straw man issue. (2) Are those who gain from trade and those who suffer disjoint? Again the answer is so clearly yes that only by ignoring this question can trade be seen as an unmitigated blessing. (3) What can be done to compensate those who suffer as a class because the suffering is stressing our country almost more than it can stand? A critical issue because what the adjustment aid is too often going to bureaucracies and not to individuals and families who are in fact directly hurt by structural changes in the economy.
On the other hand, it seems clear to me that at least Pareto Optimality (some people better off no one worse off) ought to be attainable in a trading world. If there is no net gain from free trade then free trade is a bad but I do think there is a net gain from free trade given the inevitability of different relative/comparative advantage across the world. The problem then is to collect just enough from those made better off by the free trade to compensate those made worse off, leaving those made better off slightly less better off but still better off (Coases theorem). A revenue tariff is a direct tax on the trade as a proxy for a tax on those made better off. Makes sense to me. A general tax including on those made worse off is likely to lose enough to "friction" in the process that those made worse off don't get back their own contribution. Seems clear enough to me.
It does seem to me that taxes at death on accumulated wealth makes more sense than say a tax on unrealized gain every year along with the income tax. Generally death is a tax shelter although there are aspects of class warfare - the English were pauperizing by taxes on unearned income the families of the upperclass in W.W. II as the men of the families died in succession in combat.
Still the passage of family firms to the managerial class makes a certain sense in our current economy and provides more elite circulation than the alternative of family control coupled with nepotism. As noted elsewhere the educational advantages of the upper classes are cutting down elite circulation and diminishing opportunity for the working class. Birth of Fire and Higher Education are examples of individuals getting lucky (when opportunity meets preparation) but I don't see any across the board solutions better than vocational rehabilitation for those who either missed an education the first time around or find their skills are less valuable. Even in Japan there are people who by virtue of their traditional skills are ranked as national treasures yet who cannot make a living by exercising those skills.
A long time ago (in terms of Net time) you suggested the New Riders computer certification work books as a good route to good employment. I think this is another form of academic training and academic training by self study just does not work for some people. Don't know why, but I know its true. The factory did provide a chance to look around and learn for people whose learning style was not suited to conventional classroom instruction - apprenticeship often has a 1:1 student teacher ratio.
Still the agricultural South was widely mourned by some very good people in such books as I'll Take My Stand but even much of the good was beyond saving and the days of River Rouge with its contributions to war and to peace are over.
Clark
Clark Myers
Death taxes make for equality at the expense of stability. And nostalgia is sometimes justified. When Whirl is King, Things tend to take over. When Things are in the saddle and ride Mankind, the next protests are likely to be really violent.
I enjoyed your December 1 article regarding the Netwinder, and hope you continue to use and talk about Linux -- I got into Linux about a year ago and found it very addicive.
One bit of information for you in case someone asks -- In your article you mention that the person helping you with the Netwinder has a SoundBlaster Live! card working under LInux. If you get any emails asking how he did that, please refer the senders to the site http://opensource.creative.com -- we're distributing an open source driver for the Live from that site, and we're also hosting some other open source projects.
Thanks,
Garin Hiebert Software Engineer Creative Labs Inc.
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Tuesday, December 7, 1999
Column day.
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Wednesday December 8, 1999
Sir,
To some extent, the discussion regarding tank armor misses the point. Modern tanks are not intended to exist on a battlefield alone. Combined arms is far from a new idea, and various Arab/Israeli wars illustrated the consequences of sending unsupported tanks against a competent foe.
Yes, in isolation, a modern tank is vulnerable to infantry weapons. However, the frontal Chobham armor used by modern NATO armies is proof against most shaped-charge weapons (the only kind of anti-tank weapon infantry can carry). Certainly side, top and rear armor are less strong, but simple physics dictate you can make one area nigh-unto-impregnable only by sacrificing weight elsewhere.
The M1A2 and the Leopard II are marvels of defensive strength melded with on the run lethality. Could we build a super-tank, with more than a foot of ceramic composite armor in all directions? Yes. Would it have any value on today's battlefield? No. The heaviest armored ship made today is unarmored by any of WWII's standards. This is a response to current battlefield realities. The exocet missle that sank one of our ships in an accidental firing some years ago would never penetrate the belt armor of a heavy cruiser from WWII. Should we continue to build battleships? No.
There are lessons to be learned from the weapons and tactics of earlier conflict. The easy mistake to make is to assume that the battlefield hasn't evolved.
Bryan Broyles
As you say, combined arms armies are not a particularly new idea.
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Thursday December 9, 1999
In your latest column, which caught the eye of the minions at Linux Weekly News for your glowing comments on the Netwinder, you say:
> The secret of successful IP address changes, by the way, is to go > to a command prompt, and type winipcfg . You will get a > dialogue box, one command of which is "release all". Do that, > wait, then use the button marked "renew all." The result will be a > new IP address assignment for your machine.
Alas, this is not commonly the case.
The release and renew buttons on that dialog are controls (or, as we like to say in the routing business, 'knobs') for the DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a protocol which allows machines to 'lease' addresses from a server's pool for a limited period of time.
If you addresses are set statically, as it sounds like yours were (and, indeed, there's little reason they should not be on a network as small as yours), then if pressing those buttons _does_ do anything, you can probably classify it as the effects of waving a dead chicken over the Ethernet hub.
Also, note that while the Netwinder may not allow slashes in _usernames_, the string your PPP client sends to your dialup access provider isn't really a _username_, per se; it's merely a magic cookie of text data. If the Netwinder doesn't allow slashes there, it's broken. If it doesn't allow slashes there _because it doesn't allow them in login user names_, then it's _really_ broken.
Architecturally, I mean; obviously it works fine, and I'm glad both that it does, and that you think highly enough of it to say so; excuse me; I have to go buy some stock in Rebel now. :-)
(You _have_ seen the CORL runup the last week, right?)
Cheers, -- jra Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Here we go again. It's like writing about the Mac: if you don't say everything you know in every article, it is assumed you don't know anything. The Mac people have made it so painful to write about the Mac that I seldom do it. It's not only that they will discuss me in Mac magazines as if I were a stupid boob, but they won't let me ignore what they say: they have to send me copies of it, often disguised as real mail.
I'm glad that the minions of Linux Weekly News have noticed me. I suppose I should be flattered.
For the record:
I know that I am hardly likely to change static addresses with release all and it says a very great deal about the Linux community that they assume I would think that. I don't often wave dead chickens over my machinery (although I have been tempted at times), and I generally follow things up here until I understand what is going on. I don't always have room to say everything, and a quiet note to the effect that I may confuse someone by not making it clear I am talking about dynamic address assignments would have been appreciated.
The Netwinder will not accept a / in a login name that is going outside the system. I cannot log in as ELN/jerryp to Earthlink through the Netwinder. Shall I say that nine times so that everyone flipping BELIEVES me? OF COURSE IT IS BROKEN. OF COURSE IT OUGHT TO BE FIXED. Why would anyone assume I don't KNOW that? I have not bothered to try to see if I can register a user name internally with a / in it and I don't really care, because I have no reason to want to do so, but it is important, for reasons I explained in the article, that I be able to tell the machine to use ELN/jerryp as the login name (which Earthlink calls a user name; excuse me for allowing a mere ISP to usurp some of the sacred terminology of UNIX and Linux). I would like that fixed. I would also like for people who are buying the damn box on my recommendation to know there is this problem with it. Why that is something to be dumped on for I don't know.
Maybe I am just sensitized by the Mac people.
And having said all that, I now have to say that Mr. Ashworth didn't deserve it. See VIEW.
If you go here:
http://www.strijb.net/dvd/links/Software/
and download the last item on the page, DeCSS, you will get a program that will decode the DVD movie from the DVD disk and place the unencoded version on your hard drive. Then you can open it in the player from there. That'll tell you whether the disk is readable at all in that machine.
As a free bonus, you get the chance at a column on the convenience of DVD library software when the typical movie is now 4GB and 40GB hard drives are here today. Or on the dangers of consumers stealing the movies before the big pirates have had time to press millions of them, depending on your thoughts on the risks and benefits of easy transfer of copyrighted works.
James Day go.compuserve.com/Diabetes
Thanks! I will probably DO that.
This was also a good site:
Yes, the problem with the ATI DVD player is probably that it's looking for an ATI card, not finding one and deciding it can't work apparently without really telling you why. What you need is a generic Software DVD player, which you can find here, along with a bunch of other stuff:
pttdsz [pttdsz@freent.com]
I have put the DOGS IN ELK sequence on another page. If you know about it, there are some additional remarks, and you probably will have to go look. If you don't know about it, you are probably better off not knowing.
I have moved the military debates to altmail. I left the originals here, but copied them over, and I am adding new mail to the discussion over there.
But then there is this:
Sorry for the formatting, but other than removing
the originators. You may have seen it, it is typical army humor. Publish
at will.
MAJ Broyles
-----Original Message----- From: Gereski, John, MAJ.
[mailto:John.Gereski@ngb.ang.af.mil] Sent: Thursday, December 09, 1999
1:59 PM To: Gereski, David N MAJ NGB-ARNG; Gereski, John T Mr NGB-ARNG;
'Broyles, Bryan MAJ USALSA'; 'Jeffrey D. Stacey' Subject: FW: Snake Model
The
Differential Theory of US Armed Forces (Snake Model) upon encountering a
snake in the Area of Operations (AO)
1. Infantry: Snake smells them, leaves area.
2. Airborne: Lands on and kills the snake.
3. Armor: Runs over snake, laughs, and looks for
more snakes.
4. Aviation: Has Global Positioning Satellite
coordinates to snake. Can't find snake. Returns to base for refuel, crew
rest and manicure.
5. Ranger: Plays with snake, then eats it.
6. Field Artillery: Kills snake with massive Time On
Target barrage with three Forward Artillery Brigades in support. Kills
several hundred civilians as unavoidable collateral damage. Mission is
considered a success and all participants (i.e., cooks, mechanics and
clerks) are awarded Silver Stars.
7. Special Forces: Makes contact with snake, ignores
all State Department directives and Theater Commander Rules of Engagement
by building rapport with snake and winning its heart and mind. Trains it
to kill other snakes. Files enormous travel settlement upon return.
8. Combat Engineer: Studies snake. Prepares in-depth
doctrinal thesis in obscure 5 series Field Manual about how to defeat
snake using counter mobility assets. Complains that maneuver forces don't
understand how to properly conduct doctrinal counter-snake ops.
9. Navy SEAL: Expends all ammunition and calls for
naval gunfire support in failed attempt to kill snake. Snake bites SEAL
and retreats to safety. Hollywood makes fantasy film in which SEALS kill
Muslim extremist snakes.
10. Navy: Fires off 50 cruise missiles from various
types of ships, kills snake and makes presentation to Senate
Appropriations Committee on how Naval forces are the most cost-effective
means of anti-snake force projection.
11. Marine: Kills snake by accident while looking
for souvenirs. Local civilians demand removal of all US forces from Area
of Operations.
12. Marine Recon: Follows snake, gets lost.
13. Combat Controllers: Guides snake elsewhere.
14. Para-Rescue Jumper: Wounds snake in initial
encounter, then works feverishly to save snake's life.
15. Supply: (NOTICE: Your anti-snake equipment is on
backorder.)
16. Transport pilot: Receives call for anti-snake
equipment, delivers two weeks after due date.
17. F-15 pilot: Mis-identifies snake as enemy Mil-24
Hind helicopter and engages with missiles. Crew chief paints snake kill on
aircraft.
18. F-16 pilot: Finds snake, drops two CBU-87
cluster bombs, and misses snake target, but get direct hit on Embassy 100
KM East of snake due to weather (Too Hot also Too Cold, Was Clear but too
overcast, Too dry with Rain, Unlimited ceiling with low cloud cover etc.)
Claims that purchasing multi-million dollar, high-tech snake-killing
device will enable it in the future to kill all snakes and achieve a
revolution in military affairs.
19. AH-64 Apache pilot: Unable to locate
snake, snakes don't show well on infra-red. Infrared only operable in
desert AO's without power lines or SAM's.
20. UH-60 Blackhawk pilot: Finds snake on
fourth pass after snake builds bonfire, pops smoke, lays out VS 17 to mark
Landing Zone. Rotor wash blows snake into fire.
21. B-52 pilot: Pulls ARCLIGHT mission on snake,
kills snake and every other living thing within two miles of target.
22. Missile crew: Lays in target coordinates to
snake in 20 seconds, but can't receive authorization from National Command
Authority to use nuclear weapons.
23. Intelligence officer: Snake? What snake? Only
four of 35 indicators of snake activity are currently active. We assess
the potential for snake activity as LOW.
24. Judge Advocate General (JAG): Snake declines to
bite, citing grounds of professional courtesy.
---
PS: Thank you also for MAJ Broyles' military humor I do have an addition, courtesy of my own branch:
25. Air Defense Artillery. Searches skies in vain for TBS (Tactical Ballistic Snakes) and LFS (Low Flying Snakes). Stands down, leaves the radar van and gets bitten by snake on the way to the mess tent. Medevaced to Ft. Bliss and is hailed a hero. Epitomizes ADA's motto, "First to Bite." ADA Center requests budget increase for THAASD (Theater High Altitude Anti-Snake Defense).(Frank Luxem)
I have been using Zoran soft DVD software in a 400 mhz celeron w/ a Matrox G200 and been very happy and a Hollywood decoder board with the player packaged w/ the Hollywood board in a dual celeron running win2k which may work even better. The only caveat is the duals need to be cranked to 450 for best results. A 550 PIII should be no problem. I think the Hollywood will work fine w/ your video board, I have learned to make sure the software and/or decoder board is compatible w/ your video card. I think the Hollywood is made by Sigma and is available for a bit less than 60 USD on the web.
Richard Sherburne Jr [ryszardsh@eatel.net]
Thanks. I am beginning to think I need a decoder card for this, but we will see. It's no urgent; it's only for testing. My ATI 128 board with ATI player software works fine.
Hi,
Wonder if you can help me at all. We have a lot of people here who need to keep a lot of their old emails (we encourage them to throw stuff out, but it's an uphill struggle!), or at least that's what they say. We can't really just clog up our mail servers, and it will no doubt soon enough get to the point where their PST files get unbelievably large and clog up our fileservers. We had initially thought that they could just dump the PST onto a CD when it got too large, and then if ever they needed access to it they could just pop it in the drive and access it from the CD direct. Of course when we tried this we realized that Outlook needs to have write access to the PST. Transferring the PST back onto either the local drive or network drive before use would probably be too complicated and time consuming. Do you know if there is a way around this, a patch or plug in perhaps, that would stop Outlook from being so fussy and allow us to open the PST's as read-only? If not, do you know if Microsoft have any plans to rectify this problem?
Many thanks,
Matthew Rayner
I know nothing, but some Microsoft people read this...
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Friday December 10, 1999
Dogs, Snakes and Linux
Dear Jerry,
Pardon me - I am still chortling over the rerun and enhancements to Dogs in Elk, as well as the Snake:47, Armed Forces:3 bit ...
I was actually moved to write by your response to the letter writer regarding the config problems you experienced in setting up the Netwinder. I had an alternative viewpoint that may ease your misgivings a little (I hope).
Many of the Linux'en have not been blessed by having the years of background with you that I and others have. Back in the days of dead-tree Byte, and no 'net (for John and Jane Q., at least), it was clear from the overall context that if Jerry didn't actually know something, Jerry was surrounded by bright people who did know (Like Steve Ciarcia and others who escape my sieve of a brain at the moment), and could answer you long before any letter could reach you. Now, of course, people that don't pay fairly close attention may not realize that the column on byte.com lags reality by quite a while, and you are still surrounded by bright people that have answers when you don't. And you have been doing this sort of thing for a good many years. I think that some poeple today simply assume that you have been assimilated by the Windows Borg, and it has fried your brain by insulating you from the details that Linux so lovingly presents for your consumption. Oops, wrong - but how were they to know? They work with people who watched Star Trek 4, and saw James Doohan pick up a computer mouse and talk to it... and identified!
Mr. Ashworth probably believes that he was being helpful. Just because you *say* that you do all these silly things so that we don't have to doesn't mean that he can't (rather pedantically) offer some constructive criticism.
Of course, what with the pace of change and all, there is so much more that I don't know than once I did ('tho that may be a memory problem <g>). Linux now *is* much like Apple then - it involves the cult of youth, even more emphatically than in those magical years. Now we have multi-millionaires who aren't yet out of their teens. The Wild Wonderful Web has brought us this, and Linux is repeating the process again.
Unless I am about as lucky as your average lotto winner, I won't be a part of those lofty heights. But thanks for doing silly things and writing about it. Just as there are dogs in elk, clearly there are also people in Linux.
Of course, I could also be an insensitive lout, and wrong about all of this - It wouldn't be the first time.
-- regards, Brian Bilbrey bilbrey@pacbell.net http://www.OrbDesigns.com/ brian@orbdesigns.com
I have apologized to Mr. Ashworth; I was in a curmudgeonly mood at the time. Privilege of age...
Recently in BYTE online magazine you wrote an article about Rebel.Com's NetWinder.
You mentioned the little voice at the startup was annoying. You know, you said yourself that there's a really nifty little volume slider... use it.
In terms of the kid's voice... that's my little brother. Come over and strangle him you want. I let everyone do it. I do it at least twice a day...
But I am glad that in the end you liked the NetWinder. It's a really great machine as a firewall. I'm really loving this, it's a real family project: Dad's a kernel developer for Rebel, I did the startup screen, and of course the aforementioned little guy's doing the sound.
Pat Suwalski Rebel.Com
Well, maybe better would be a way to turn it off? But in fact after we got it set up, we haven't had to do any rebooting (except once, described earlier in View) so it doesn't matter. Weeks without reboot: the box just sits there and works.
Dear Jerry,
I sympathise with your reader who is looking for a way to archive .PST files. Funny, I was thinking "CD-ROM" myself.
The system which does work is an "evolution in action" system. Our users store personal folders on their _local_ drives. They desperately need to keep these emails - all 55MB of them.
Then they start to run out of disc space. Most of them are still unworried. Then their PC starts to pop up warning messages about disc space. They are concerned, but not enough. Then they start to crash and scream for help.
Suddenly it's amazing how much of this stuff is of no use and gets thrown out. Most of it is weekly spreadsheet based reports where each week includes the previous ones and the reports are also available on a server.
It works!
David Cefai
Good point. I ship mine off to CD's every now and then...
Jerry,
For my many sins I have to administer several exchange/outlook sites. I use both top down and bottom up approach to keeping the size of mailboxes under control.
>From the top you can limit the size of the mailboxes, you can set three size limits. When the box reaches the first size exchange sends a warning, at the second the user gets another warning and can no longer send email. When the box reaches the third size, the user an no longer send or receive mail. You can set the limits on all boxes, or a different limit on each users mailbox.
If this is too harsh you can take advantage of Outlook's auto archiving features. Open the Options setting from Outlooks tools menu, and then click on the other tab. Set the system to auto archive every day, but uncheck the prompt before archiving box. Set the location of the archive here (I put it on the users hard disk, but you can put it anywhere convenient). Finally for each of the folders on the users system, set the time that an item is retained before being archived (I find that people seldom look at stuff more than three weeks old).
Every few weeks I look at these archive files, if they are more than 500 MB in size I burn them onto a CD, and label them with the date range, and users name, then delete the file and let it be recreated by outlook. If the user needs to look at an old mail I give them the CD, they can use a simple file open command from the outlook menu to look at the information, if they need to they can copy it back onto their regular outlook folder.
This also satisfies the legal requirement for some firms to retain all email for a set time.
Paul Beaver Sydney, Australia
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Saturday December 11, 1999
Most of the mail for today was about military policy, and is on an alt.mail page. For the general altmail page click here. For the military policy discussion, click here.
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Sunday December 12, 1999
Fr: Don Armstrong Sj: Sloowww "Mail" pages
Jerry, I've had to take time off work, so I'm now condemned to use a slow Internet connection - 33KB and it's line limited - modems won't help.
Under the circumstances, I've noticed something that may not be apparent to you. That is that "View" and "Mail" behave differently. View is good - starts showing content immediately, then fills in images after it has the text done. Mail, on the other hand, shows only background - left column and the rest - then downloads EVERY SINGLE FLIPPING THING before it shows you ANYTHING. On a slow connection, this is somewhat less than ideal, particularly as the small rural ISP I am currently condemned to use can get grossly overloaded and take several minute-or-two breaks during this process.
Just thought I'd let you know how it looks from this end. View good; Mail painful.
Best wishes, Don Armstrong. Currently rural Australia.
Mail tends to be longer, but I don't know any reason why one should begin showing before the other. On the other hand I am no expert on HTML and perhaps the pages differ in some kind of meta-instruction? Is there an expert in the house? FrontPage extimated that it takes 56 seconds to download this page as of now, and 40 for the current view. Neither seems that excessive. Perhaps someone who knows these things will find something? See next week...
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contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.
Comments and discussion welcome.
