| Thursday,
November 8, 2001
Subject: The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
While diagnosing a problem with Microsoft Exchange,
the following became apparent from Microsoft's Knowledge Base:
1) Applying certain security patches to fix
Microsoft's porous web server (IIS) breaks Microsoft's email/collaboration
server, Exchange.
2) There is a later security patch to apply to
Microsoft's web server that incidentally (not by design) fixes the problem
with Exchange introduced by the earlier patches.
3) That later patch was re-issued by Microsoft
because in its original incarnation, it reversed the effects of a previous
security patch. In other words, as originally released, it closed a
newly-found security hole but opened one that had been found previously.
I am reminded of the opening credits to "Monty
Python and the Holy Grail": "Those responsible for sacking the
people who have just been sacked, have been sacked."
Steve Setzer
Ain't higher management fun?
Jerry,
I am hoping you or one of your readers might be able
to help me. I am trying to find a way to have Outlook (Im using Outlook
2000) show the due dates of tasks in the calendar. This way when I sync
with my palm all my tasks will show up in the daily schedule. The reason
for this is I want to be able to set alarms on the tasks to remind me to
get things done. I know that Handspring has datebook+ software on the
their device that does this. I do not know if when it syncs with outlook
it will move the tasks into the task folder or not. I like the task folder
in Outlook because it gives me a simple way to see how I am doing big
picture wise. Thanks for any ideas.
Richard Lynch [rlynch@hst.nasa.gov]
I don't use either of those so I can't tell you.
I blush to say I have gone back to Franklin Ascend and printed daybooks...
Jerry,
This is an FYI on some things I've read recently.
this article:
<http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8402180338.html
>
describes some hardware that the reviewer testing
various embedded Linux toolkits on.
The interesting thing about this is the hardware
they use. They used three EBX formfactor Single Board Computers (SBC).
These are all x86 based, but all come with integrated video, networking,
multiple serial ports, compact flash/ide, etc. One even comes with 40-pin
digital IO. All support both Linux, and vxWorks BSPs appear to be
available from all the vendors.
This EBX formfactor is a small 5.75 x 8.0 in board,
and they use standard PC power supplies. EBX SBCs support PC/104+
expansion boards as well (which is essentially the PCI bus, only setup to
"stack" parallel to the original board rather than
perpendicular), so they can support a wide range of peripheral add in
cards (if needed). See:
http://www.mcg.mot.com/cfm/templates/formfactor.cfm?PageID=552&FormFactorID=5
for EBX information. See http://www.pc104.org/
for PC/104 information.
I would think that by removing the Ziatech backplane
and card cage, at least two of these boards could easily be inserted in
the same space (or different space). After arranging for redundant power
supplies, I expect you will end up saving space.
Pete
Subj: Anthrax - DNA Evidence of US Origin
Wall Street Journal article 8 Nov 2001 "Two
Scientists Tracing Anthrax Family Tree Investigate Origins of Strain From
Attacks", by ANTONIO REGALADO, says there is a lab at Northern
Arizona University that catalogs anthrax strains.
The evidence in favor of US origin is DNA similarity
to the "Ames Strain", which has apparently been grown for
research purposes in several US and British labs since at least the 1930s.
This doesn't _rule_out_ Iraqi origin -- the Iraqis
could have got hold of some Ames strain.
One annoyance is that the media furor over the
"Ames Strain" prompted researchers at Iowa State University to
destroy their own anthrax collection -- with FBI and CDC permission, they
say. But now there's no way to find out whether anything in that
collection matched the strains used in the attacks or not.
There is some possible evidence in favor of Iraqi or
other nation-state-supported origin of the strains used in the attacks:
the Ames strain doesn't drift genetically very much in culture, but the
samples used in the attacks are not quite identical. That's more
consistent with the conjecture that the spores used in the several attacks
were sampled from the very large production runs one would find in a
state-sponsored bio-weapons program than it is with the conjecture that
those spores came from a small batch or two that someone cooked up in his
basement lab.
But the NAU researchers apparently regard the DNA
evidence so far as not really pointing very strongly either way.
Rod Montgomery == monty@sprintmail.com
I guess my astonishment is how large a frog
people will swallow in order to believe that this stuff was from some
"domestic hate group" and unrelated to the Black September War.
Handling that stuff without leaving contamination
traces isn't rocket science but it's not trivial either. Milling to one
micron isn't easy. Getting things set to mail it to different places isn't
easy. Getting hold of anthrax isn't trivial. Of course neither is doing a
coordinated hijack of 4 airplanes and successfully crashing 3 of them into
major public buildings.
Which leads me to ask, why postulate more groups
capable of this when there is one that certainly was capable, had access
to anthrax sources, and has every reason to try using it against us?
Absent evidence to the contrary, why not assume Iraqi anthrax, probably
obtained originally from strains available in the US and likely on the
open market from US labs back when that was a lot easier, grown in
fermentation tanks in Iraq and milled there, and then passed along to bin
Laden's people possibly without the consent of Saddam Hussein himself?
That doesn't take many assumptions at all. But apparently the media
like swallowing large toads.
AP) - In buses and trucks, pickups and vans, more
than 5,000 people rolled out of a northeastern Pakistan village Saturday
morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war
against the United States. Thousands of Pakistani men, young and old, had
massed in Temergarah on Friday night with assault rifles, machine guns,
even rocket launchers. A few even carried axes and swords.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Pakistan/
One does have to feel sorry for them. (feeling the
pain and death to come, and fearing it)
Andy
It doesn't really matter that Russia was chased out
of Afghanistan.
It doesn't really matter that the Northern Alliance
is outnumbered 4 to 1.
Why? Well, to quote Messrs. Pournelle and Stirling:
"Military
historians like Creveld, in considering how successful insurgency aided by
one Superpower could be used against the other did not, until the end of
the Cold War, consider the improbability of the success of LIC against
both Superpowers acting in concert.
Insurgency against
a modern state requires powerful allies operating from sanctuary. The
allies need not be of 'superpower' status; but they will require that one
of the Superpowers, or both of them acting as the CoDominium, protect the
sanctuary status of the supplying nation. Unfortunately, given supply of
war material from a sanctuary, insurgency can be continued practically
forever." ("Go Tell the Spartans", 344-345).
The Taliban "government" is hardly a
"modern state." The Northern Alliance and Southern tribes, given
both supply and direct bombing assistance by the US and with the
less-active support of Russia and regional powers like Pakistan and India,
will in time be able to wear down a Taliban state that has no friends and
no real means of large-scale resupply. If the CoDominium oops I mean U.S.
ground forces are sent in, the Taliban's lifespan will be much shorter.
And unlike "Prince of Sparta", there will be few forces
defecting to the Taliban's side.
Steve Setzer
By the way, when are you going to get back to
Lysander and Christian Johnny?
Oh, I agree. And it never troubles a wolf how
many the sheep be... I'm dancing as fast as I can.
From another discussion group:
For too long we have assumed that since being a
"nation" has been good for America, it must be good for
everyone. It's time for us to Try Something Else. Instead of artificial
"nation-building", let's try amplifying the natural
"nation-destroying" forces at work in "tribal" areas.
Letting (and even helping) Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. splinter into hundreds
of little principalities run by warlords with no allegiance other than to
holding power for their families might well be the best way to neutralize
the danger that "failed nations" pose to the West.
Hooking all these little "country-lets" on
Western food aid would be a sound move. It would provide us with something
to do with our farm surpluses while destroying their indigenous
agriculture. They would then be like the U.S. inner city, only far
away--we could subdue them with just an aid cutoff rather than our
military.
Anyway, trying to make foreign lands
"like" us has not worked. Let's try something else.
J
And then send in the computers and Internet, and
try Snowcrash for real!
But at least we know why it happened now:
Bill Clinton, the former president, said yesterday
that terror has existed in America for hundreds of years and the nation is
"paying a price today" for its past of slavery and for looking
"the other way when a significant number of native Americans were
dispossessed and killed."
"Here in the United States, we were founded as
a nation that practiced slavery, and slaves quite frequently were killed
even though they were innocent," said Mr. Clinton in a speech to
nearly 1,000 students at Georgetown University's ornate Gaston Hall.
"This country once looked the other way when a significant number of
native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their
mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully
human.
"And we are still paying a price today,"
said Mr. Clinton, who was invited to address the students by the
university's School of Foreign Service.
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
You noted a month or so ago the report that
suggested that the Ebola virus may have been the actual cause of the Black
Death. This comes rather late, but my computer chose that rather
financially inopportune moment to force a system upgrade, and it has taken
me a while to catch up. While the suggestion is, as you said, interesting,
it doesn’t have much to back it up. Contemporary accounts of the Plague
describe symptoms quite in line with y. pestis and very little like those
of Ebola and related strains. There is little reason to go wandering far
a-field when there has been a reasonable explanation for a century (that
old doctor’s adage about hoofbeats and zebras applies). The buboes
common to plague victims bear little resemblance to the lesions of Ebola
and, from what I’ve read of Ebola, it would far more likely have been
referred to as the Red Death than the Black.
I think this is more a matter of Ebola being the
demon plague of the hour (or rather it was; anthrax seems to have pushed
its way forward with smallpox waiting in the wings) and the media willing
to take the opinions of any self-proclaimed expert as hard fact. There
were similar—and slightly more credible—efforts to tie Ebola to the
Athenian plague of 429/28 BC several months back. In my own layman’s
opinion, however, Ebola is a recent cross-over to the human population. It
seems to me that the extremity of its symptoms and the speed with which it
can run through a population demonstrate that it has not quite fully
adapted to a human host. Any disease organism that destroys its host so
quickly will be far less successful than one that lets its host live for a
longer time and come into contact with more potential hosts. Had Ebola
been around for the 700 to 1000 years necessary for it to be the source of
the Black Plague, I think that it would be far more adapted to us and we
to it.
David Levinson
The question is, do the contemporary accounts
actually square with bubonic plague? I always accepted the rat fleas
theories, and that's still the most likely I suppose, but there seem to be
anomalies.
Your evolutionary biology point is a good one.
Jerry,
You mentioned on your site a few days ago when you
were looking for a thesaurus that reference CD from Microsoft is no longer
available. The site at the link below has a Compton's/Webster's reference
CD available for free plus S&H (prolly an older CD, but how often does
the thesaurus change?).
Includes Compton's Concise Encyclopedia, Compton's
Concise Atlas, Compton's Internet Directory, Webster's New World
Dictionary, Webster's New World Thesaurus, The World Almanac and Book of
Facts, The Columbia University Complete Home Medical Guide, World History:
A Dictionary of Important People, Places and Events, Merriam-Webster's
Geographical Dictionary and The Merriam-Webster Concise Handbook for
Writers All Ages Published by Compton's New Media for Windows
Ted Borreson
http://www.free-cdsoftware.com/cgi-hazel?client=81229407&action=serve&item=edu.html
Thanks
Thanks for the discussion on your site about where
to go for the best online versions. It's little stuff like this that makes
your site such a wonderful resource.
If you don't know about J.I. Rodale's "Synonym
Finder" you should. As far as I know, it's only in book form, but
I've had it with me for more than 15 years, and would never be without it.
Roget's pales by comparison--not even in the same league. It never fails
to provide me with what I'm looking for--and sometimes that's pretty
obscure.
Get the hardback copy; the soft cover won't stand up
to professional use. I've recommended it to quite a few professional
writers, and if you don't end up raving about it, you will be the first.
--Best, Chuck
Dear Jerry, and other responders-
Hello out there, WordPerfect still exists, works
well, and now has a dictionary/thesaraus for you based on the Oxford
English Dictionary (WP Office 2002/ver. 10), it may possibly overwhelm you
with choices, including verbs, nouns, and adjectives for "fool".
I am forced to admit that among the many choices I didn't find
"idiot" associated with "fool", but "fool"
is associated with "idiot". Incidently, I'm finding that Word
files are now 3-4 times the size of WP files for the same text, with no
associated benefits that I have been able to discern.
End of sarcastic rant. Thanks for being here.
Paul rphampson@earthlink.net
And to copy from a previous mail so we have much
of this together,
Hi, Jerry,
As a writer myself, and one not lucky enough to have
Microsoft Bookshelf (drat it!), I noticed quickly how politically correct,
and how bad overall, the thesaurus in Word 2000 is. For those interested,
I found a quick, simple, and free solution. It's a freeware
thesaurus/dictionary called WordWeb. It can be found at http://www.wordweb.co.uk/free/
StarOffice does have a thesaurus, but it's even more
politically correct, and less useful otherwise than even the one in Word
2000.
Other than the PC test, I check a thesaurus in other
ways. One of the simplest is typing in the word "red." The
StarOffice thesaurus doesn't even have it listed. The Word 2000 thesaurus
gives only six, not very, us, colorful synonyms. WordWeb, on the other
hand, gives dictionary definitions, plus 21 synonyms, plus such things as
Antonyms, Similar Words, Type, Types of, and Part Of.
During install, it also gives you the option of
letting it automatically macro itself into Word 2000. This gives you a
pretty little button on the toolbar. One click of the mouse and you have
all you could ask for. When you have it check "fool" you get not
only get noun and verb definitions, but fifty synonyms. And under
'Types" you get sixteen words, starting with "ass"
"buffoon" "clown" "cuckoo"
"fathead" "f****r," etc. Politically correct, it ain't.
As a writer, I wouldn't be without it.
Love your writing. I know you're dancing as fast as
you can, but you know how selfish we fans are. Good reading is hard to
find, and you and Niven do it better than anyone.
Sincerely,
James A. Ritchie
THANKS!!
I will download that as soon as I get home! (In fact I didn't, but I'll
get it today.) [And have done so.]
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