| Thursday,
September 6, 2001
Jerry,
Your correspondent wrote: "Unlike a good
Taiwanese motherboard "white box" system, you cannot go to
Compaq's site and find BIOS and/or driver updates..."
I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. Go to
Compaq.com/support/files/ and follow the bouncing ball, you will find
BIOS, drivers, and all sorts of other goodies for every Compaq ever made
as far as I can tell. Including DOS support, early versions of
Windows,long-obsolete NIC's, etc.
On the matter of support from VAR's, I agree. It is
almost impossible to get good server support from VAR's, they just don't
understand enterprise requirements. I bought IBM Servers for my company,
purely and entirely because IBM support them directly, using their own
people, and you simply cannot beat IBM hardware support. The actual
servers are pretty good too. Pick up a Dell server by its corners and you
can feel it bending. Not so a Netfinity. 'Nuff said.
Finally, if I told you the whole truth about my
experiences with Compaq laptops, I would probably get sued, or fired, or
both. We use Thinkpads now.
Keep up the good work,
Andrew Duffin
Dr. Pournelle:
I assume you've already seen these:
http://www.up-ship.com/apr/michael.htm
but you may want to post the link for others to look
at.
Tom Brosz
Spidoni does a great job with my ships... And
Larry's
I found this and thought you might be interested :-)
>From today's SANS Bulletin ...
>-------------------------------------------------------------------
--30 & 31 August 2001 Microsoft Reader
Encryption Broken
A programmer says he has broken the most
stringent level of protection in Microsoft Reader, the company's e-book
software, according to Technology Review. The programmer is not releasing
the code and is maintaining his anonymity due to his fear of being
prosecuted for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
http://www.msnbc.com/news/621827.asp?0dm=T17MT
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2809412,00.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7026815.html?tag=prntfr
>-------------------------------------------------------------------
What a screw up. So now we have the news that the
crypto on Microsoft's much heralded eBook has been cracked. But abiding by
the DMCA reasonably prevents anyone from being able to demonstrate the
proof. This of course means that crack claims can no longer be challenged
by asking for proof, since it will be reasonable to withhold proof in
light of the DMCA.
So, did the guy really crack Microsoft's eBook? We
don't know. Microsoft doesn't know. And neither do the skittish
traditional book publishers who are correct to worry about the security of
eBooks.
And Microsoft can't get much needed feedback to
properly enhance their crypto. If they really think their crypto is any
good (who ca tell), you might imagine that they are wondering how it was
cracked.
It's difficult to see that anyone is being served by
the free speech gag aspect of the DMCA.
This needs little comment. We will see more of
same.
Shame, Adobe. Shame.
Dr. Pournelle,
I, as many 'Internetzos', would like to believe that
'the Internet' is the open and free world...the world that allows us (all
of us) to do and say what we want (within 'reasonalble' limits). We (internetzos)
all know, that was never the case. The Internet was not invented. It was a
result of the US "Cold War Effort", that, among other things,
ended the Cold War. Originally, the Internet was 'Top Secret'. The
commercialisation came much later. Now, all of it is in the open market.
The security net of US 'Bombenbauer' (bomb builders) is no longer in the
'open net' (they have an even cooler net!) .
The question is, IMHO, who decides what crosses the
open net now? You? Me? What about "trade secrets"? What about
art? What about stuff that is just plain questionable, such as child
porno, or child prostitution? Is it OK to lament the trials and fears of
Sklaryov, and not worry about the trials and fears of "Olga from
Kiev, age 13"?. Is it reasonable to allow neo-nazis to promote
neo-nazi-ism in the virtual world? Who should decide this kind of stuff?
Where should this be decided? Where do we draw the line in the Internet?
Skalyov, Olga or Copyright?
you think about this kinda stuff, so I asked,
Regards, Juergen Schmalacker
P.S. In Germany there is a saying about people that
act the way Adobe does: Tu was Du nicht lassen kannst " do what you
can't resist" In LA it would/could be translated as: whatever
Wasn't classified. I was using an at sign in my
name in the 70's. Most of the old ARPAnet was paid for by DOD DCA, and
then later by NSF, but it wasn't classified.
I think most of your questions answer
themselves. They were asked by the office of the chamberlain in royal
times: shouldn't book sellers be licensed, and printers submit their
screeds to the palace before being allowed to publish?
As to pornography this is a bit of a smoke
screen. We had control of pornography in public places for hundreds of
years; it is only recently that we have courts that say they can display
"INSIDE! Joy spreads, gives head, swallows!" with illustrations
at waist height on a stand across the street from Carpenter School in
Studio City. For years Bernie's kept stuff like that in a back room
visited only by those who wanted to go in there.
But I would rather have pornography than
censorship. And the child pornography laws are abused, as in the case of
the man in Iowa whose house was searched because they knew he had a child
pornographic magazine: they knew because a postal inspector mailed it to
him and they watched him take the mail inside.
If you believe National Socialism will surface
again unless it is suppressed by the Geheim Staats Polizei then you
don't have a lot of faith in democracy -- which Weimar Germany most
assuredly was not. And perhaps National Socialism will rise again. But is
your cure not almost as bad as the disease? But you do ask questions
about the hard subjects.
Hello Jerry, I just stumbled across your webpage
after doing a lookup on a quote of yours that someone had on an online
post (Kuro5hin.org I think). I spend a lot of time on the 'net due to my
(lacking) job situation, so I decided to have a look at your site when I
saw this, below:
"I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the
page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts."
Although I'm not a regular on your page (yet) I just
wanted to share my thoughts on this! Essentially, I like the idea that the
internet is used for obtaining information for free. However I also
appreciate that the quality of information would improve if a
person/people are being paid to spend time specifically on improving their
knowledge to give better informed information. And I tend to feel that the
best way for this to happen is that those people who are highly respected
in the field(s) off this kind of service (good information for free,
better information for a price).
Also, I especially feel that the best way to draw
attention to an informative website is to provide a quality of information
that is already good, and that the only reason for people to pay for an
extended service would be to provide information that actually takes
research, time, directed expertise, etc, to provide that service. This
would then have a cumulative effect on various commercial websites that
provide information that may or may not be of good quality and useful.
I hope that the above doesn't come across as
authoritive, as I am definitely not an authority on the matter. I would
like to know your response to the above, please get back to me at: istolz@
australia.edu - I would appreciate it greatly!
Thank you very much for your time, I will look
forward to hearing back from you!
Sincerest regards- Ian O Stolz
Actually as you read on you will find that I run
this like KUSC (my local classical music station): if enough people subscribe
I stay open, and if not enough do I cut back or quit... A subscriber page
would cost time and effort I don't have. I gather Bob Thompson and others
have done this with mixed results. I find so far that it's worth staying
open, although sometimes it's the way a cat accepts the inevitable, 'just
barely.'
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
subject: green weapons Dear Jerry: Thanks for
posting the link from Roland Dobbins ( http://www.msnbc.com/news/624020.asp
) informing us about environmentally friendly killing. Good to know we
won't harm the little animals while we kill people.
But one thing puzzles me. The article states rocket
fuels produce "hydrochloric acid, the main cause of acid rain."
Gee, I thought the main cause of acid rain was SULFURIC acid, from burning
fossil fuels in autos and power plants. Could it be that Prof. Klaptoke
doesn't know what he's talking about? Or maybe the Reuters misunderstood
him? Or maybe the whole acid rain threat is hysteria and lies?
On second thought, scratch that last idea. Surely no
one would ever lie or get hysterical about the environment, no?
Best, Stephen
Now really... It is astonishing how many
things mature Americans are now willing to pretend to believe lest they
get into trouble. School children have it worse of course.
And this should be enough for today.
g
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