| Monday
September 25, 2000
Dr. Pournelle,
Enjoy your column as always. Here is my 2 cents on
the Orb and DVD Software on Win2000.
I have custom built machine - ASUS P3B-F, PIII 450,
196MB RAM. I just swapped out my Kenwood 52X for an ASUS 8x/40X DVD. Also
have a Sony CD-RW, 13GB Maxtor IDE, 30GB Maxtor IDE (connected to a
Promise Ultra 66), Elsa Erazor X, Creative SBLive and a USB Castlewood
ORB. I needed some DVD decoder software, tried a few demo's and decided on
Intervideo's WINDVD (http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Home.jsp) Works great
on WinME
I decided to install Win200 Professional this past
weekend on this same computer. Used Partition Magic 5.0 (started from a
WinME boot-floppy since WinME does not go into DOS mode anymore) to split
my primary drive into two 6 GB partitions. I then installed Win2000 with
out a single problem. Both OS's are available for boot when Win2000
starts.
During the install Win2000 found the attached USB
Orb and assigned a drive letter. No problems here.
I then installed WinDVD, except for having to obtain
the activation key from the web site it installed fine. Popped Blade
Runner (one of my favorites of all time) in to the DVD, WinDVD
auto-started and the movie was playing within seconds.
This may not help much, but wanted to let you know
that it is not a lost cause.
Enjoy your work. Any plans for another epic novel
with Larry Niven? Along the lines of the "Mote in God's Eye" or
"Lucifers Hammer"?
-Ed Gallagher
I need to find a good Windows 2000
DVD decoder program. Shouldn't be a problem. We continue to have no
difficulties with the ORB.
One of the pleasures of discussing things with you
is that you keep up with your old field.
I remember the twin studies. What I don't remember
is the extent of the variability in the environments the separated twins
grew up in. Were some of them abusive? Makes a big difference, in my
experience.
I talked with someone very familiar with the plight
of orphans in China. He tells me that orphans have no chance compared with
their peers because they do not have parents who are "on them like
white on rice," keeping them focused on their schoolwork. For this
reason the kids don't do as well in school. They pull down class averages.
School administrators don't like this, so they try to discourage such
children from attending their schools. Many kids (apparently this varies
by city) do attend public school. But many kids do not, and the societal
opportunities available to these kids differ greatly from those of kids
with parents (including adopted kids). This is the kind of environmental
difference that is difficult for heredity to overcome.
I believe, then that within certain limits people do
rise to their potential; but outside those limits they may not. The
question is, where is the dividing line for any particular individual? Is
an abusive environment beyond the divide?
The problem with my chimney sweep example was that
there was no matched comparison subject. There was certainly more than
environment at work in his case: regardless of how smart his father was,
his mother had a temperament that caused her to participate in the breakup
of a two-parent-plus-child(ren) relationship (note I am not blaming either
party) and enter into a relationship with a man who abused her biological
son. One could argue with some success that her temperament is heritable,
and her son's relative lack of success is at least in part due to his
inheriting something of his mother's ways.
Where I trained they did lots of research on the
inheritance of psychiatric disorders and psychological traits. The results
were ugly: most everything nasty that people do is heritable.
Yet there is room for modulation by the environment.
Based on research from Scandinavian adoption records, we know that
children of alcoholics who are adopted at birth and never know who their
parents are, are much more likely to become alcoholics than similarly
adopted-out children of non-alcoholics. But group the results differently:
of the offspring of alcoholic parents, those raised in alcoholic homes are
more likely to become alcoholics than those raised in homes with little
access to alcohol. An environmental effect. Smaller than the hereditary
effect, but there.
So, as any sane observer would conclude from simply
looking at people, it ain't nurture, it ain't nature, it's both. That
doesn't say that my chimney sweep would really have been my colleague if
he had been raised in a less-abusive home, but who knows?
My conclusions about the complicated questions and
answers on heredity and environment are:
1. Be careful whom you reproduce with. 2. Try to
provide a good environment for your kids.
As for public policy, I advocate providing humane
environments for children in schools. For many minority students, for
example, the stern teacher of my past has been replaced by the abusive
teacher who doesn't like having minority kids in her class or the teacher
who provides no discipline in her class.
For many non-jock students, jocks are allowed to do
as they please and bully whomever they choose. This is bad for the bullied
and bad for the bully. In the case of Columbine, they pushed the wrong
kids too far.
Ed Hume
ANy damn fool knows that. I know
it...
Jerry
Perhaps someone can help me with this.
I am running Outlook 98. It keeps coming up with an
89% zoom. I would like it to have a 150% zoom so I can read the messages
without my reading glasses (I remember from the pre-Windows days that you
advocated large monitors for this reason).
I can set a message at 89% zoom, and each subsequent
one will come up with that until I hit an HTML-formatted message. After
that, all the messages are in some other squirrely zoom percent.
Q: where does Outlook bury its bodies? I've tried to
find every likely OFT and DOT file with no success so far. Outlook Help,
of course, answereth not. After hours on this, I give up. Now I ask for
help.
Thanks
Ed Hume www.pshrink.com
I got this in a discussion group, and it is published with
permission. It was sent to the New York Times without much hope that they
would publish it:
349 Words
To The Editor of The _Times_: _ Let us say that we
did not invoke the death penalty for nuns who murder, but did for all
other murderers. And let's say that we found, as no doubt we would, that
nuns had a lower murder rate than did the non-nuns. Would the _Times_
conclude that the death penalty does not deter?
Now let us say that we _did_ invoke the death
penalty for nuns who murder, but not for all other murderers. And let us
say that we again found, as no doubt we would, that nuns had a lower
murder rate than did the non-nuns. Would the _Times_ conclude that the
death penalty _does_ deter?
Of course not. It would be obvious that other
factors-for example, the differentiated tendency to violence of nuns and
non-nuns-causally overwhelmed the deterent effect of the death penalty
even if there is such an effect.
But this is precisely the fallacy committed when the
Times infers that the death penalty doesn't deter from the fact that
states that don't invoke the death penalty have lower murder rates than
states that do (Sept. 22). A cursory glance at the Times graphic makes
clear that the states that don't have the death penalty are states that
are far, far more homogeneous, more northern, and less urban than the
states that do invoke the death penalty, states whose higher murder rates
are clearly related to heterogeneity, urbanization, and geography.
These is nothing in the data presented by the
_Times_ that argues against (or for) the belief that the states that
impose the death penalty do so because they are the states that have to
impose the death penalty, and that their doing so does, in fact, lessen
the murder rate.
I don't know whether the death penalty deters, but I
do know that arguments such as those accepted by the _Times_ retard our
attempts to find out.
But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. It was the
_Times_, after all, that ran the headline proclaiming that the crime rate
is down despite the fact that there are more people in prison. _Despite_?
Steven Goldberg Chairman Department of Sociology
City College City University of New York
There are about 5 sociologists I
consider worthy of paying attention to. As for the rest, well, most social
scientists know neither humanities nor science. Pity, but there is is. We
were fortunate in my grad school to have Paul Horst, who made us go take mathematics
from the maths department...
But if you live in NYC it would be
worth going to CCNY to study with Dr. Goldberg.
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
subject: Why we have spam
Dear Jerry:
This story tells it all. A kid in NJ allegedly made
$285,000 spamming idiots into buying various penny stocks that he'd
previously purchased. They'd read his 'this stock is set to move' e-mails,
buy it, and of course all that demand in a thin market would guarantee it
moved.
Perhaps we should encourage spam, and such
associated scams. As somebody or other ;-) said, "Think of it as
evolution in action."
Best, Stephen
Before you yell at your kid to get off the
computer and go outside to play, check this out: A New Jersey teenager
made over $285,000 by illegal trading on the internet. Turns out that
Jonathan Lebed would buy a penny stock, then send out thousands of bogus
email messages, saying that the stock was going to soar in price. What's
amazing about this story isn't that a 15 year old kid made over a quarter
million bucks on-line, but that so many idiots believed his bogus emails
and bought those penny stocks.
At Gibbleguts we strongly recommend that you
stick to twisted humor sites instead. -The only thing you risk losing is
your breakfast.
© 2000, Gibbleguts.com
Howdy Jerry,
Have you seen this article?
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/2000b/092400b.htm
I've been a huge fan of the X-33 program. It is
really too bad to see it mired in the bureaucratic BS.
What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks. Later.
Greg Lenderink, aka, CyberRanger cybrrngr@frii.com
-- CyberRanger, cybrrngr@frii.com
Unfortunately the X-33 never was an
X program. One day I may have to make clear what is and is not. X-33 grew
out of briefings I gave Congress but alas it became corporate welfare. And
that is what it remains. It is NOT an X program.
>>The ability to make a jest of death has long been common and
even prized among soldiers, or at least soldiers I have known.
Sailors too, Dr. P! Sea story: Fresh-outa-boot-camp
sailor sez, "What happens if [system X] doesn't work?" Leading
Petty Officer replies, "We're all gonna die." Ghoulish, knowing
laughter from the assembled sailors.
The test works -- rumors to the contrary, the USN
really does test stuff ashore before underway trials -- and our new seaman
recounts the whole story in a letter home.
Mom &; Dad have to be peeled off the overhead,
whereupon they ship off a letter to Ye Friendly Local Congresscritter.
Your Kursk story wasn't disrespectful to the sailors
who died. It was, I think, a first cousin to 'whistling past the
graveyard.'
Beat Army.
Rod McFadden Whose titles include, for the record,
both "Captain" and "Master Mariner." Centreville, VA
Yes, you may publish my email address.
Beat Army indeed. Talk about mixed
emotions in this household! Anyway, thanks.
Dear *Dr. * Pournelle
On Friday, Sept. 22, you wrote: >...my title,
which I earned, is Dr. not Mr. and I am rather proud of it.
This brings up an interesting point. I too am a
Ph.D. (Chemistry, U.B.C., 1996), but I do not use "Dr."
socially, nor do the vast majority of the other "doctors" I
know. To the general public, it is a confusing title and has the
appearance of puffery. Professional use is different; on my business
cards, I am Dr. B.P. Hollebone, Ph.D.
I think that this is a generational difference.
There are a lot of Ph.D.s out there now, certainly a much higher fraction
than when you got your degree. A doctorate is no longer the signifier of
accomplishment that it used to be. Maybe I am blase simply because I know
so many (and come from three generations worth, male and female). Anyway,
to my mind, Jerry Pournelle, NY Times best selling author, Hugo winner, is
much more impressive than Dr. Jerry Pournelle, Ph.D.
If you prefer to be addressed as Dr. Pournelle, I
will do as you wish. But as my grandfather used to say, you can call me
anything you like, as long as you don't call me late for dinner.
Kind Regards, Bruce Hollebone: hollebon (at)
cyberus.ca
I really don't insist on titles at
all, and most readers send notes to me as "Jerry" which is
reasonable since that is the way the editors refer to me in the magazines,
and I write as close to personal letter style as I can. But if one is
going to call me names, then one may as well use my proper title...
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Spam. How I hate it. Today I got mail from my dad.
He's in his early seventies, a bit older than you, and while he knows how
to do the basics with his PC, e-mail, web surfing, and editing journal
articles (see http://www.asprs.org/ )
with Word, he still has to be talked through installing new software or
changing anything that isn't on the menu bar. He was on a Sierra Club
backpack last week (I wish I was in the shape he's in!) and when he got
home found dozens of messages "most for porn sites or sites promising
all sorts of money". He replied to them asking to be unsubscribed
"most came back as undeliverable. How can someone send a message with
an invalid return address?"
Of course I told him never to confirm the validity
of his address like that. I also told him to contact his ISP, the police
(porn is, basically, illegal in Utah, especially small towns in Southern
Utah) and gave him the e-mail addresses for his senators and congressman
(through the U.S. Congress web site at http://thomas.loc.gov/
). I told him to attach the porn spam. Senator Hatch (or his designated
peon) is just gonna love that!
Now, my father's a smart man, BS from Stanford, PHD
from Ohio State, not afraid of technology, but modern OS shells just seem
to confuse the heck out of him. He did well with the DOS command line, and
touch types. I find myself in the position of having to help my father
with these problems when I am in Virginia and he is in Utah. How do I go
about explaining forged headers, RBLs, spam filters, etc. to him when I
can't explain how to install Word? Part of the problem, of course, is that
I'm a programmer and can't translate 'programmer' into 'user'.
Both my father and I regard censorship with the same
dread that you probably do, but it would be nice if there were an easy way
to filter this stuff. It's only going to get worse and I don't know what
to do.
On another, but related, note. You should try to
take the time to read "Secrets &; Lies" by Bruce Schneier,
the author of "Applied Cryptography". It's about the difficulty,
if not impossibility, of protecting ourselves in the digital era.
Terrifying book. Discusses the various attacks, the reasons for them, who
launches them. And the response to the attacks. "The war on drugs
seems to be the root password to the U.S. Constitution" (P 52). The
lack of privacy. The fact that there is no Constitutional Right to
Privacy, probably because the authors didn't think that it was necessary.
After all, if you want privacy, close and lock the door, or just walk out
into the woods. There were no wireless bugs or parabolic mics in those
days. Or large corporate databases, accessible through a warrant, either.
Kit Case kitcase@starpower.net
please see http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/10/harper.htm
header for the article entitled "Shoot to
Kill" is:
<<In the post-Columbine world, police
departments all over America are adopting new, no-nonsense SWAT-team
tactics
by Timothy Harper>>
This article is very apropos to the ongoing
discussion in Mail.
charleshahn@my-deja.com Freedom is never free, but
it is never more costly in the long run than the alternatives prove to be.
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Given a perfectly administered system of justice
(does anyone REALLY want 'perfect justice'? Think about it.) the death
penalty would be acceptable. We would know that the murderer, rapist,
whatever, was guilty beyond any shadow of doubt. I know, the Constitution
requires only 'beyond a reasonable doubt', but we are talking about the
ultimate penalty here. One for which there is no recovery from error. I
believe that it was Justice Holmes who said "Better that a thousand
guilty men go free than one innocent man be hanged". The situation
today, in many states, seems to be that a certain number of 'accidental'
executions are acceptable. Of course, raising the standards for execution,
via extended appeals and hiring the best attorneys (at public expense), to
raise the certainty that it is fairly administered is so expensive that it
would be less expensive to impose life without parole. Life without parole
keeps the criminal off the streets just as affectively while allowing for
the possibility that they may, at a later time, be released if there was a
mistake. I think about the problems in the Ramparts division of the LAPD,
and I wonder.
Kit Case kitcase@starpower.net
What I have here is mixed emotions.
Justice consists of giving to each what he deserves (well, technically it
is a firm an fixed intention to do that); and some people probably deserve
death. On the other hand, some deserve life and we can't give that
to them. Why be in an hurry to deal what what we can give? But I think few
innocent people are executed. In some cases they may be executed for the
wrong crime. I doubt we will settle the issue, since so many of us are
ourselves unsure of how it ought to be settled. Which still does not
excuse flawed arguments.
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