| Friday, December
28, 2001
Roland calls attention to VIA Chipset problems and
says I told you so.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/23502.html
And then there is this:
Any science-fiction writer interested ?
------------------ http://www.webaxs.net/~noelz/articles/par-sem.htm
--SOVIET SCALAR ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS--
This briefing presents the basic concepts of Soviet
Scalar electromagnetic weapons, some of the major types available, and
evidence of their widespread testing.
- Scalar Electromagnetics is Electrogravitation -
Scalar electromagnetics is an extension of present
electromagnetics (EM) to include gravitation. That is, a unified
electrogravitation, and, what is more important, it is a unified
engineering theory. Its basis was discovered by Nikola Tesla.
In the scalar EM extension, EM field energy can be
turned into gravitational field energy and vice versa. This exchange can
be patterned and localized, in specific areas and objects. Such a
controlled change of electromagnetics to gravitation is not possible in
the normal EM or physics presently taught in Western textbooks. However,
the bits and pieces of the theory have been scattered through the physics
literature for some time, but no orthodox western scientist seems to have
realized that these anomalous portions could be integrated into a
startling new physics. Unorthodox experimenters, inventors, and scientists
have made discoveries in this arena for several decades, but again have
not realized the exact implications or the precise manner in which their
results could be combined with present electrical physics.
-- Fer-De-Lance -- Such sluggishness is certainly
not present in the Soviet Union. For over three decades, the Soviet Union
has been developing electrogravitation and applying it to develop strange
new secret weapons of incredible power and capability. They have sustained
the largest weapons development program ever launched by any nation, and
they have kept it effectively hidden from prying western eyes. I have
called this program "Fer-De-Lance", after the deadly South
American pit viper of the same name.
The dreaded fer-de-lance is a snake of great agility
and lethal effect. It often ambushes its hapless prey, and strikes
unexpectedly and without warning. Its first sudden strike is usually
lethal to its victim, which promptly expires in writhing agony. Since the
Soviet development of scalar EM weapons has been designed for the same
purpose, the name seems appropriate.
The equivalent effort of about seven Manhattan
projects has been poured into fer-de-lance by the Soviets, and the program
has been successful almost beyond imagination. The eerie weapons are now
developed, deployed, and tested. The ambush has been completed; Fer-de-Lance
is coiled and ready to strike.
<...>
http://www.webaxs.net/~noelz/articles/par-sem.htm
About which I know nothing at all. Sounds
like science fiction of the 40's... The Soviets put a lot into psychic
research too. But this may be real.
And Robert Ranson asks:
When was the last time you looked at this page?
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/empire.html
>From General Anthony C. Zinni's retirement speech on that page:
My son will face non-traditional missions
in messy places that will make Somalia look like a picnic. He will see a
changed battlefield, with an accelerated tempo and greatly expanded
knowledge base. He will witness a great drop in the sense of calling.
People entering the military will not be imprinted with his code. They
will not be candidates for priesthood; at best, they will be part-time
lay ministers. On his watch, my son is likely to see a weapon of mass
destruction (WMD) event. Another Pearl Harbor will occur in some city,
somewhere in the world where Americans are gathered, when that nasty bug
or gas or nuke is released it will forever change him and his
institutions. At that point, all the lip service paid to dealing with
such an eventuality will be revealed for what it is--lip service. And he
will have to deal with it for real. In its wake, I hope he gets to deal
with yet another Goldwater-Nichols arrangement.
That paragraph was written in July 2000, 14 months
before the September 11th attacks. If only we had known that those
Weapons of Mass Destruction would be knives and an empty red box.
Bureaucrats never learn.
Robert Ransom
Actually the weapons were the silly instructions
given to cooperate with the hijackers. And the remedies we are now
imposing, closing airports when someone abandons a bag in an airport
Burger King, are merely the bureaucratic responses: they do no good but
they can prove they did all they could.
But we were born free.
On Education
If Sercombe is
right that the unions support getting rid of bad teachers, why don't
the unions say so, or why doesn't this appear in the media? In other
words, why aren't we seeing Sercombe's case being made in the media? One
reason could be that it isn't very important to them, even if they
somewhat agree with it. Another reason could be that it "would give
people the wrong idea," i.e., it would make bad teachers the main or
only issue so far as the public was concerned.
Bill Magaletta
In fact when was the last time any teacher was
fired for incompetence, and how long did it take to do it?
I make no doubt that most good teachers wish the
bad ones would go away, but I see little being done about it: it's not a
profitable investment of a good teacher's resources and time. What's
needed is more local control of schools: sometimes that will be awful, but
it also means that a couple of crusading parents can actually accomplish
something because there will be people they can talk to who can make
things happen. IN LA you can get a 3 minute appointment to be heard at a
school board meeting. It takes about 4 months.
And from Steve Gibson:
Hello (and Happy Holidays),
I spent my Christmas Eve working on a new and free
utility program to address the end-user's need to secure Windows XP
further than Microsoft appears willing to.
You may be aware that after Thursday's announcement
of a critical security flaw in every version of Windows XP, Friday the
United States FBI urged consumers and businesses alike to (somehow)
disable the Universal Plug & Play features built into XP. The various
articles reporting this generally mentioned that the FBI didn't provide
any specific means for carrying out such a "neutering".
It is in answer to this need that I wrote "UnPlug
n' Pray".
UnPnP.exe is a small (22 kbyte) self-contained,
standalone (no installation required), Windows application which any user
-- regardless of their level of expertise -- can use to quickly, easily
and reversibly disable the unnecessary and still-dangerous Universal Plug
& Play support built into every version of Windows XP. Note that
Microsoft's security update patch does NOT do this.
Please see the following page on my web site for the
whole story:
http://grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm
Steve
and
Sorry to bother you again so soon, but I wanted to
mention that my little (still 22k bytes) UnPlug n' Pray utility now
supports *EVERY* Windows platform.
Any Windows user -- Win9X/ME/NT/2000/XP -- can now
use it to quickly determine whether the Universal Plug and Play services
are installed on their system and, if so, can toggle their "enabled
status" as desired.
Here is a link to the 22 kbyte Win app: http://grc.com/files/UnPnp.exe
Here's a link to the companion web page: http://grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm
Gibson is always worth paying attention to. He's
not always right and sometimes he gets a bit, uh, overenthusiastic, but
he's one of the good guys.
And speaking of good guys,
Jerry,
I wrote last Friday that application of the latest
security updates to Windows XP left me unable to sync Microsoft Outlook
data with my Compaq iPac. I'm still not sure exactly what caused the
problem, but the fix was simple...I simply deleted the existing
"partnership" between PC and handheld and create another. All is
well now.
FWIW
Ron Morse
And Joe Ziff says
Jerry, I didn't have time to read all of the essay
on a supposed military coup in 2012, but I did see enough to find an
obvious fallicy in it: just because the VP declines to take the oath of
office doesn't mean there's a power vacuum. The Constitution specifies a
long line of succession, to avoid exactly that. The Speaker of the House
would be both entitled and expected to step up and take the job in those
circumstances, followed by the President Pro Tem of the Senate, then the
various members of the Cabinet, in the order their departments were
created. Nowhere, as far as I can tell, at least, was this even mentioned.
Frankly, I'm astonished that none of the judges of the contest noted this.
--
Joe Zeff The Guy With the Sideburns If you can't
play with words, what good are they? http://home.earthlink.net/~sidebrnz
Indeed. I found that interesting too. Thanks for
reminding me.
Hi,
In your recent column, you mentioned that the
military is lousy at nation building. I mostly agree with you.
However, in the case of post-WWII Japan, Gen
McArthur and staff did a truly wonderful job. I never thought much of
McArthur's military skills (what blasphemy!) but he certainly turned Japan
around and set it in the right direction (maybe Japan now needs a McArthur
type once again to get it out of its doldrums).
I enjoy your colums, keep up the good work.
Best Regards, Richard C. Wharton
Germany and Japan were utterly defeated, occupied
powers, and we had good proconsuls, Macarthur and Lucius Clay; and we were
willing to spend money. We were also willing to overlook a number of
politically incorrect decisions made by our proconsuls. Today that
does not seem to be the case.
Moreover, while the reconstruction of Germany and
Japan worked (as nation re-building, not building, by the way) and was
necessary because they were large power gaps, I don't see the necessity
for the US to be involved other than in Haiti -- which is in our back yard
and we sure won't let others do it. But our success there has been,
to be charitable, limited...
For those who didn't get it, more on the Reezak
Worm:
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/173111.html
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.maldal.c@mm.html
This description has pretty pictures too
http://www3.ca.com/Virus/Virus.asp?ID=10699
and as described below
Beware: The Reeezak worm bears some nasty gifts Dec
21, 2001 John McCormick Author's Bio | E-Mail | Archive © 2001
TechRepublic, Inc.
Reeezak is yet another mass-mailing worm spreading
through Microsoft Outlook address books and MSN Messenger. Unlike some
other recent viruses, which didn’t cause too much damage, this worm
poses a major threat. However, the worm can’t cause any damage unless
people open the e-mail and the attachment propagated by this virus. But
since this is the holiday season, the fake holiday greeting may trick a
number of people into opening the attachment. Anyone who does open this
worm risks having their computer completely disabled.
Details The Reeezak worm, also known
asW32.Reeezak.A@mm, W32.Zacker.C@mm, and W32.Maldal.C@mm, was first
reported Wednesday afternoon, December 19, 2001. The message that carries
the Reeezak worm looks like the following:
Attachment: Christmas.exe Subject: Happy New year
Message: Hii I can't describe my feelings But all i can say is Happy New
Year :) bye
According to an early Newsbytes report , one of the
things that the Christmas.exe script does is to modify Internet Explorer
to point to a malicious Web site on Yahoo's Geocities community homepage
service. Geocities is a free Web page hosting site, and it’s simple to
create a Web page anonymously on Geocities.
The Web page is titled jobreee/ZaCker.htm and it
contains an anti-Semitic message. The source code of that page also
attempts to use a JavaScript exploit from a known vulnerability in
Internet Explorer to delete antivirus and personal firewall packages from
the computer that browses the page. The Sophos.com antivirus site reports
that the worm actually alters the default browser home page to the ZaCker
site by changing a couple of registry keys.
In addition to deleting antivirus programs and
sending the attacked computer’s IE browser to a Web site containing more
malicious code, Reeezak also disables some keyboard keys and, according to
a Reuters report carried on CNET, attempts to delete files in the Windows
System directory, which could completely disable the computer.
Computer Associates rates this a medium- to
high-risk worm, Trend Micro rates it as a medium risk, ZDNet rates it as a
6 out of 10 on the Virus Meter, and Symantec says it already has wide
distribution and poses a moderate threat.
Final word As usual, I should point out that opening
unexpected attachments is never a good idea and could help avoid this
virus altogether. Many organizations have antivirus software that
automatically blocks .exe files, so these companies should not be affected
by this worm.
mike zawistowski
And on Star Office:
First the original mail:
Jerry,
Regarding your finding that MS applications are
pretty good for what they do: in my opinion this is true only in a limited
sense(for Office, at least). If your needs are very basic, Office will do
what you need with little sweat. OTGH, in that case why spend $416 for XP
Pro when competing products are cheap or free and just as straightforward?
If you have complex but repetitive tasks and have already endured and
forgotten the pain of familiarization, Office can also be adequate. But to
do something in MS Office apps that has not previously been attempted and
involves a degree of complexity is, IMO, typically very painful. Let me
give you the latest example, fresh in my mind because it *was* only
yesterday. Create 2 tables in Access 2000. The table #1 contains a key to
be used to look up a field in table #2. The associated fields represent
dollar values. Define the field in table #1 as currency, and Access will
tell you that you can't use that type field for a look up function -
proper behavior. Define the table #1 field as numeric and the table #2
field as currency, however, and Access goes nuts when you try to define
the look up from table #1 (I did it this way first, of course). You will
receive a message claiming that you referenced an invalid function named
"|". You will receive another error telling you that Access
can't find the look up wizard, please install all wizards from media. You
may, depending on the data already in the tables and design previously
done, see more messages complaining that you have damaged the expression
builder or replaced it with a non-MS version and/or that you cannot use
the field in a look up because it violates an existing relationship for
that field (this in an mdb that *has* no relationships) Every error
imaginable is cited except for any that relate to the actual problem. I
spent about 3 hours yesterday messing about with Office repair, Office
reinstall, and Office patches and service packs, when the real problem was
a simple data mismatch. For years, I have found similar snafus whenever
first trying to do something beyond basic function in Office apps. To me,
this is not nearly good enough. Personally and professionally, I'm more
than ready for a change. YMMVOC.
Scott Miller
I then asked what he proposed as substitute:
Jerry,
Personally, I find the latest version of Star Office
good enough, at least the word processing and spreadsheet modules. I
haven't used the adabas db engine much yet. As long as I have a database
manager that will allow me to quickly and easily design and relate tables,
I'm happy. If I need fancy reports and graphs, I can use Crystal Reports.
Any fairly complete implementation of SQL will do. The trick for me will
be to identify one before I get into crunch time with the next project.
Otherwise, I will fall back on Access in desperation, again. The only
issue preventing me from pushing for a feasibility study on switching our
800-plus users to Star Office is the availability of conversion tools for
macros and the like. I can't imagine those won't be available from third
parties shortly after the Star Office commercial release.
Regards, Scott Miller
I intend to get to general applications and
utilities as a major subject early next year.
And another view of Linux:
Seeing Mr. Rosenberg's review of Star Office, I
downloaded the binary from. It was fairly painless to download & run
the .rpm package manager, true. But... I LOATHE the fonts it used when I
loaded some Word documents to test the data compatability! UUUGGHGHG!
Yuuck! The onscreen fonts were terrible, and Star Office didn't print it
worth a damn. Ditto for a simple document I wrote that included text boxes
& line drawing between the boxes (to approximate a structure chart;
looked pretty darn good in Word; I use the Office 2000 package over here).
Maybe I should have converted fonts, or something,
or not used the default printer for Star Office, but RH 7.2 itself handles
my HP Injet 962c just fine.
My verdict (for now): 2 thumbs down.
Casey Tompkins
Indeed. For Roland's reply on what to do
about this see next week's mail.
And Joel Rosenberg proposes for the Crazy Years
files:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23477.html
"A college computer technician who offered his
school's unused computer processing power for an encryption research
project will be tried next month in Georgia for computer theft and
trespassing charges that carry a potential total of 120 years in jail.
"
And we will all ride airplanes stark nude and
chained into our seats. Have a nice day.
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