| Tuesday,
This will be in the column, sort of,
but it can go here too:
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
Within the past few months, you noted a 'pretty
good' system could be built with an inexpensive motherboard with
peripherals on board. I regret not having saved that, as my home system
has failed, and I need to gird my loins and make the Trip To Fry's tonight
or tomorrow night.
Your search links from your web site turned up
everything but what I need (which is not your fault, just an observation).
May I ask you to recap what you most recently said about building my own
system with the current batch of motheboards?
Thank you kindly,
Sincerely yours,
John Bartley Portland SF Society "It's not a
bug, it's a feature!"
For simplicity and bang for the buck
I recommend getting a Pentium III of 900 GHz or better and an Intel
D815EEAL board. Get a good power supply and case. The system will hold 500
MB of memory and no more, in two slots, so get two 256 memory SDRAMs. The
on-board video is good enough for anything but Everquest. The sound is
excellent. The Ethernet works painlessly. All told it is a more than Good
Enough system for anything but the highest games. You can put a GeForce 2
board in there if you just have to play Everquest. This
month's column will talk about Pentium IV systems, which are useful for
developers -- they compile fast -- and some other purposes. The new
"standard" board is D845 but so far there are none with on-board
video. Following is from Joye
Swain, widow of my old friend Dwight Swain. Dwight's "Techniques of
the Selling Writer" is still about as good a book on that subject as
ever was written.
Dedicated to liberal arts majors everywhere...
This is from a Washington Post Invitational contest
-- Readers were asked to combine the works of two authors, and to provide
a suitable description of the merged book. The prizewinners:
"Machiavelli's The Little Prince" -
Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic children's tale as presented by
Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful and
intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.
"Green Eggs and Hamlet" - Would you kill
him in his bed? Thrust a dagger through his head? I would not, could not,
kill the King. I could not do that evil thing. I would not wed this girl,
you see. Now get her to a nunnery.
"Where's Walden?" - Alas, the challenge of
locating Henry David Thoreau in each richly-detailed drawing loses its
appeal when it quickly becomes clear that he is always in the woods.
"Catch-22 in the Rye" - Holden learns that
if you're insane, you'll probably flunk out of prep school, but if you're
flunking out of prep school, you're probably not insane.
"2001: A Space Iliad" - The Hal 9000
computer wages an insane 10-year war against the Greeks after falling
victim to the Y2K bug.
"Rikki-Kon-Tiki-Tavi"- Thor Heyerdahl
recounts his attempt to prove Rudyard Kipling's theory that the mongoose
first came to India on a raft from Polynesia.
"The Maltese Faulkner" - Is the black bird
a tortured symbol of Sam's struggles with race and family? Does it signify
his decay of soul along with the soul of the Old South? Is it merely a
crow, mocking his attempts to understand? Or is it worth a cool mil?
"Jane Eyre Jordan" - Plucky English orphan
girl survives hardships to lead the Chicago Bulls to the NBA championship.
"Looking for Mr. Godot" - A young woman
waits for Mr. Right to enter her life. She has a loooong wait.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel Letter" - An
18th-century English nobleman leads a double life, freeing comely young
adulteresses from the prisons of post-Revolution France.
"Lorna Dune" - An English farmer, Paul
Atreides, falls for the daughter of a notorious rival clan, the Harkonnens,
and pursues a career as a giant worm jockey in order to impress her.
"The Remains of the Day of the Jackal" - A
formal English butler puts his loyalty to his employer above all else,
until he is persuaded to join a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.
"The Invisible Man of La Mancha"- Don
Quixote discovers a mysterious elixir, which renders him invisible. He
proceeds to go on a mad rampage of corruption and terror, attacking
innocent people in the streets and all the while singing "To Fight
the Invisible Man!" until he is finally stopped by a windmill.
"Of Three Blind Mice and Men" - Burgess
Meredith has his limbs hacked off by a psychopathic farmer's wife. Did you
ever see such a sight in your life?
"Planet of the Grapes of Wrath" -
Astronaut lands on mysterious planet only to discover that it is his very
own home planet of Earth which has been taken over by the Joads, a race of
dirt-poor corn farmers who miraculously developed rudimentary technology
and regained the ability to speak after exposure to nuclear radiation.
"Paradise Lost in Space" - Satan, Moloch,
and Belial are sentenced to spend eternity in a flying saucer with a goofy
robot, an evil scientist, and two annoying children.
"The Exorstentialist" - Camus
psychological thriller about a priest who casts out a demon by convincing
it that there's really no purpose to what it's doing.
Which may be more than we can bear...
Dear Dr. Pournelle;
Is it just me or are people misunderstanding fuel
cell technology? As I understand it, a fuel cell is not a primary source
of energy like an oil well or a photovoltaic cell. It's an energy storage
device - a battery.
The reader who wrote in with the URL for a story
about microbes producing hydrogen for fuel cell use neglects to consider
that the microbes "burn" sugar to produce hydrogen. The last
time I looked, there weren't any sugar wells in Texas, or elsewhere. I
have a hunch that it takes more energy to grow, cultivate, and fertilize
the plants that produce sugar than we'd net in using microbes to produce
hydrogen.
Some wag might say we could use waste products for
the sugar source. If so, we're already doing that. They're called sewage
treatment plants. The "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" biological
waste reactors produce methane which is much easier to handle than
hydrogen.
Fuel cells will have an important place in portable
power, but they're still batteries.
An another note [pun intended]: The Bach travesty.
Danny Kaye does a great send-up of such works in his "It Isn't Dance,
It's Choreography" number in "White Christmas." That was
nearly 50 years ago and most critics still haven't learned when they're
hoodwinked.
-- Pete Nofel
Well there are sugar beet 'wells' in Louisiana
and other places. And there's a lot of fermentable sour
mash... In fact I prefer space solar power as electron wells,
and fuel cells as storage devices, but I am some years behind in actually
studying the technologies.
Any comments on this one? Looks interesting.
Propellant-Free Space Propulsion Technology Marks
Critical Milestone At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020205080246.htm
Jim Riticher
Haven't time to look now, but doubtless some
readers will find it interesting...
And on LINUX
Dr. Pournelle,
I seem to be seeing more and more articles of this
tone lately - and all by thoughtful, reasonable adults instead of teenaged
Slashdot posters ;)
Q&A: Red Hat CEO says Linux won't rule http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-828802.html
Some good reasons not to use Linux http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/30/1938227
Note that the author of the second article is Robin
Miller, Editor-in-Chief for Andover.net (which is the parent of Slashdot
;)
Best regards,
-------------- David P. Huff | "Giving money
and power to government david@ dhuff.org | is like giving whiskey and car
keys | to teenage boys." -- P. J. O'Rourke
And I told you so:
This more than speaks for itself. Like you, I avoid
flying at almost all costs, though I fear I will be flying to Denver to go
skiing rather than drive two very long days each way.
Why are we wasting time and money on ca-ca like
this? We need El-Al style security profiling and effectiveness.
Unfortunately, PC is not dead, and won't take a sharp blow until we lose a
few hundred more citizens.
Jim Riticher
http://www.silentplanet.com/faa/index2.html
John-Erik's Airborne Adventure
John-Erik Moseler, "Rebel Commander" of
Silent Planet, a Central Florida web and print design firm, left the
office at noon on January 18th with his dad (also named John without the
"Erik" just to confuse everyone) to fly to Wisconsin, the Land
of Snow and Cheese, to retrieve a 1987 Chevy Celebrity station wagon that
was graciously donated by his brother to John-Erik's growing family. J-E's
co-workers at Silent Planet were secretly taking bets on which state the
vehicle in question would die in. The plan was for a quick weekend to eat
some bratwurst with the family and watch their beloved Green Bay take on
St. Louis before heading home.
This was precisely the day that a handbook-full of
new post-September 11th regulations for air travelers went into effect.
Quite a few things had changed at the airport since the last trip.
Thick-booted guards in camouflage now patrolled the concourse with their
machine guns, which raised the question: for camouflage to be effective in
an airport, shouldn't you be dressed like a magazine rack or a Planet
Smoothie? No one is allowed to go to the gate any more except passengers,
giving the place a bit more of a ghost town ambience than might be desired
for public transportation. All checked-in bags were now
"matched" to a specific passenger, meaning no bags are loaded
without a corresponding someone on the flight. And the most obvious
change: no fun of any kind is tolerated, no way, no how.
Expecting massive delays, the two Moselers arrived
at the terminal two-and-a-half hours early. Since it would be a short
journey, they didn't check any bags and relied on their carry-ons, hoping
it would speed up the process and avoid any dreaded Security Breach that
may send them to a life of hard labor in a Siberian salt mine. The first
few minutes in the terminal were uneventful, but after surviving the usual
x-ray gauntlet, John-Erik's father made the fatal mistake of jinxing the
entire trip and inviting a rift in the fabric of time-space reality by
saying out loud, "That couldn't have gone any smoother."
As John-Erik presented his ticket for seat
assignment the ticket was returned and he attempted to board the plane. It
was at this moment that John-Erik was unceremoniously pulled aside by an
airline official.
John-Erik suddenly noticed a newly-acquired big red
"S" and other arcane markings scrawled on his ticket. This
scarlet letter denotes that John-Erik has been "profiled," and
must be sequestered for search, possibly due to one or more of the
following: 1) he bought a one-way ticket (on the internet no less) a
couple of days before the flight; 2) he had no check-in baggage; 3) there
were two "John Moselers" traveling on the same plane, and you
know that had to shake someone up; and finally, 4) J-E and his dad are
dead ringers for terrorists, that is, if terrorists look like Norwegian
dairy-farmers.
The search began. John-Erik was asked to remove his
official Silent Planet cap, exposing a serious case of hat-hair to the
world at large, certainly worth a few million for pain and suffering. A
mysterious electronic wand was waved over John-Erik, possibly sterilizing
him for life. He also removed his shoes and was "patted down", a
nice way of saying, "molested in public".
J-E was then instructed to fire up his laptop
computer, the battery of which was dead as Fred, so John-Erik and a second
security agent left the area in search of a wall socket. When they finally
plugged it in, the agent saw the tally light go from red to green and
didn't wait for the computer to actually boot up. "Okay, that's
good," he said, obviously in a hurry, and they returned to the spot
they were manhandling John-Erik's luggage. A third agent, unearthing J-E's
Palm Pilot, gasped, "What's that?" as if the PDA was a phaser
set on stun.
A soft-spoken octogenarian man barely aware of his
surroundings was also randomly flagged for search. Despite his saintly
countenance, the gentleman's carry-on bag revealed several forbidden
articles of doom: a 7-inch nail file, a large pair of shears, a knife with
a serrated edge, and nail clippers, each of which were immediately chucked
into a milky plastic "biohazard" container that was,
disturbingly, already bulging at the seams. John-Erik was struck with the
irony of how this arsenal managed to get through the x-ray, while he and
his wholly innocent parental unit didn't make it past the hot-dog stand.
John-Erik and his dad boarded the plane and found
their seats. The passengers were buzzing about an incident that happened
moments before: apparently a man who looked and sounded--we're not afraid
to say it--Middle Eastern, was having a disagreement with a woman
concerning their identical seat numbers, a number the man already
occupied. A flight attendant looked at the tickets and pointed out that
the man had the correct seat number, but was on the wrong aircraft.
Amazingly, since the irritated Middle Eastern man was not
"profiled", this was not considered a cause for concern,
however, the man was quickly escorted off the plane to an uncertain
future. Just then, an airline representative boarded the plane and
informed John-Erik's father that there had been--egad!--a Security Breach,
and HE was unfortunately the breach-er, and would he be so kind as to exit
the craft before they drag him off hog-tied like a steer? A plainclothes
FAA official, who had only moments before been expressing unbridled lust
for J-E's Mac laptop, asked Mr. Moseler as they were exiting, "How
did you get on this plane?" He replied simply, "I walked right
in." Apparently it doesn't take much to breach security these days.
A few minutes later, the pilot informed the
passengers that, according to the new regulations regarding Security
Breaches, they must all now exit the craft, schlepping their
freshly-stowed luggage with them. Here's why: it seems that Mr. Moseler
had also had the unfortunate red "S" on his ticket all the time,
but the highly-trained agent had neglected to pull him aside, even though
it was the same agent that had marked his ticket in the first place.
The increasingly disgruntled passengers in the
holding area were told that they could now re-board. The schedule was now
in jeopardy, they were informed, and if everyone cooperated, they might
make it to Memphis in time to make their connections. As John-Erik
prepared to return to his seat, another eagle-eyed agent, spotting the
incriminating red "S", pulled him aside for yet another search,
hat, shoes, computer, mysterious alien palm device and all. "You just
did this fifteen minutes ago," J-E protested.
"Regulations," they said.
Finally--finally--the bird was in the air, and
John-Erik fell into a confused slumber.
Forty-five minutes into the flight, practically
within spitting distance of Memphis (as disgusting as that sounds), the
weary pilot addressed the crowd: "Sorry folks, but we have to turn
around and go back to Orlando." It was now that the passengers
understood why all the sharp objects were removed from their persons: so
they wouldn't cut their own throats right there in the aisle.
It turns out that when the plane was off-loaded
because they failed to search Mr. Moseler, one poor anxiety-stricken woman
who had had quite enough of flying for awhile, decided to leave the
holding area and go home to rest her frayed nerves. After the flight was
well on its way, she emerged from the concourse bathroom where she had
been having a nervous breakdown and informed the ground personnel that she
had left her checked bag on the plane, and could they send it to her
later? SECURITY BREACH! Of course this violated the Prime Directive--no
luggage without a corresponding passenger--so the bird was instructed to
return to roost to remove the woman's bag of unmentionables. The
passengers' collective sigh of glum resignation nearly depressurized the
cabin.
As the ill-fated flight approached the runway at
Orlando International, the passengers were mortified to witness a greeting
party of fire-rescue, police and emergency medical teams all on full
alert. After all, an airplane doesn't turn around in mid-air unless
something serious is happening, does it? Back on the ground back in the
City Beautiful when they expected to be hip-deep in Muenster and Sharp
Cheddar, both the elder and younger Moselers were ready to throw in the
towel and leave the flight with what was left of their dignity intact. But
no one was allowed to leave the plane, which now had a forty-five minute
delay for refueling.
After refueling the jet at what must have been a
truly staggering cost, they were back in the air. The Moselers estimate
they have now breathed the same squalid air seventeen times. Of course, by
the time they finally reached Memphis International (after 8:00 p.m.), the
airport was essentially shut down, except for the battalion of roaring,
teeth-rattling Federal Express flights, insuring a sleepless night in the
City of Elvis. The exhausted refugees were handed vouchers for Holiday
Inn, food and phone. During dinner it was noted, in a philosophic moment,
how quickly a single overlooked "S" can cause the world to go
spinning out of control and crashing into the sun.
John-Erik and his pater familias arose bleary-eyed
at 5:30 a.m. to make the flight that would supposedly whisk them to
Milwaukee. J-E was "randomly" selected for search two more
times, once at the x-ray machine and then ten minutes later at the gate
(search numbers three and four), although by now the word
"random" lost all meaning, since it appeared that the very
universe itself was conspiring against him.
The plane taxied to the runway, preparing for
takeoff, full of hope and good will, eager to forget the ordeals of the
previous day, when Mr. Moseler the elder made his second fatal error: he
took out his boarding pass, stuffed it into the seat-back pocket, and
said: "We won't be needing these anymore."
After a few brief dizzying seconds perched at the
very brink of freedom, the passengers were informed that the plane had to
be towed back to the gate due to an "instrument malfunction"
that would take an hour and twenty minutes to repair. Thirty minutes into
the designated repair interval, the pilot announced, "We have to
switch planes," in a voice that suggested utter despair or at least
acid reflux.
Luggage collected. Exodus. Migration from Gate B27
to B10. Another search (number five; J-E wondered if he could qualify for
"Frequently Searched" miles). They examined the bags and told
Mr. Moseler to open a wrapped present for a Moseler sibling in Milwaukee.
It was a gift of marzipan candy that to the airport authorities--who had
never heard of marzipan the same way they had never heard of a Palm
Pilot--looked suspiciously like brightly colored C-4 explosive with sugar
ribbons on top. Mr. Moseler was asked--we're not kidding--to take a bite
out of each offending morsel right there on the spot, to prove that the
stuff wouldn't blow his molars to Kingdom Come (like, if it did, they
wanted to see him burst like a flaming pinata right there in the check-in
line). He courageously refused, and they miraculously let him board
without further incident. The new plane finally left at 10:30 a.m.,
two-and-a-half hours late, that is, if you disregard the twenty-or-so
hours that they were already late.
The Moselers finally got to Milwaukee and had ten
minutes to spend with their family.
As they climbed into the Celebrity for the trip
home, John-Erik decreed: "Dad, don't say a word." They drove
straight back to Orlando from Milwaukee, arriving two hours quicker in an
1987 Chevy station wagon than the trip north had taken in a Boeing 727.
The Packers got clobbered on Sunday by St. Louis
45-17.
Send comments and/or your own personal airline
experiences to: spanky@silentplanet.com
But we were born free.
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