| Wednesday,
Historians caution that democracies decline when
citizens vote themselves largess from the public treasury. I had assumed
that this was directed at the poor citizens. But I live in the golden era of
the uber lobbyist, so I have to rethink my class prejudice.
Lloyd Arnold Winterville, North Carolina
Democracy is the rule of the middle class. When the
middle class is corrupted by the fruits of democracy, the democracy itself
will not long endure. Or at least history says this.
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/20/wneth20.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/01/20/ixportal.html
Dutch race policy 'a 30-year failure' By Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard in The Hague (Filed: 20/01/2004)
Holland's 30-year experiment in trying to create a
tolerant, multicultural society has failed and led to ethnic ghettos and
sink schools, according to an official parliamentary report.
Between 70 and 80 per cent of Dutch-born members of
immigrant families import their spouse from their "home" country, mostly
Turkey or Morocco, perpetuating a fast-growing Muslim subculture in large
cities.
The 2,500-page all-party report by the Dutch
parliament was the establishment's tentative answer to the critique of Pim
Fortuyn, the shaven-headed firebrand who warned that Holland's easy-going
way of life was threatened by militant Islam and over-crowding. He was
assassinated by an environmental activist two years ago.
<snip>
=======================
Feeling Safer already
Hi Jerry,
I've been a fan and reader of your columns since the
mid-80's in Byte and still going in the online version. I've never written
you, but now I had to. Regarding this (I quote you in your last column):
'On the other side, freedom itself is under
assault from those convinced that we must trade liberty for safety. Add to
that the tendency of petty officials to flaunt their authority, like the TSA
officers at the airport who refused a college student permission to bring
her pet tropical fish on board in a plastic bag, and it's hard to see where
that trend will stop either.'
It recently went even further: a British girl has been
jailed for having a joke with TSA officers! (see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/3412123.stm ) For
me, this is going much to far. Being form a rather liberal country
(Belgium), I really can't understand this. Some people - or nations - are
getting way to serious. What she did - trying to get a smile on the face of
these people - is something I also would do without hesitating. I like to
have people smile, even if they are officials. And they usually appreciate
it. So this could have been me. Frightening. We are indeed loosing our
liberty for safety. And I thank you for pointing it out.
Regards, Johan Fontaine Brugges, Belgium (which might
explain any faults against propper English ;-) )
We also have this :
Dr. Pournelle,
This is the sort of thing that used to happen in
communist China:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=76432004
How do reasonable Americans view this?
Best regards,
Andrew Duffin
Are there any reasonable Americans left?
These petty tyrants are concerned with their own
dignity. And the police "had no choice". But after we send her away for 15
years, perhaps others will properly kowtow to these humorless creatures. As
if what they do were more than window dressing to begin with: we are not
safer for their efforts, and they know it, and they know that the
intelligent among us know it.
And where is the outrage? Or even the simple
humanity? The lady in question was no threat to anyone, as could easily have
been determined by searching her baggage; but in fact they already knew
that. So what is being accomplished here? Why, the rules are being obeyed!
Obey.
Perhaps I will write a fantasy in which the Brits
have some spine and send the SAS to rescue the girl from durance vile.
"Cheers, Samantha, the Army's here."
This from
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36689
"HOMELAND INSECURITY Study: Airport safety no
better since 9-11 Report says problem lies in unaccountable, inflexible
bureaucracy
Posted: January 21, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A new study conducted by an aviation-security
firm concludes federal efforts to safeguard airports, planes and the flying
public have left the U.S. just as vulnerable to terrorism now as it was
before September 11..."
Of course, this does not take into account the
_passengers'_ input as to whether _they_ would allow another 9-11-01 style
hijacking... Of course the "Thousands Standing Around" improves nothing as
regards air travel security. Of course the bureaucracy is inflexible,
obscurantist and obdurate in its petty persecution of pet fish, elderly
heroes (recall the MoH incident... ) and nursing mothers. It's the nature of
petty bureaucrats who are unaccountable to their putative masters (now
become their subjects).
Of course.
And of course the report is wrong in its conclusion
that air tavel is no more secure, given the fact that no doubt there is
little chance of a 9-11-01 style hijack succeeding, at least not until the
"Thousands Standing Around" decide that all passengers must be handcuffed
and shackled before departure (when the ability to use one's hands and feet
are outlawed, only outlaws will have lockpicks... <heh>).
It's enough to make one long for the (mythical?) days
when lawmakers actually read the Constitution without snickering.
David W Needham
A servant when he is master...
It's worth 15 years in jail to say so. But we were
born free.
And see below
========================
I've just finished reading your excellent Dr. Dobb's
column, PDC and The Some, and there's one tiny point I'd like to nitpick.
You correctly state that buffer overflow problems disappear with compilers
that use strong type and range checking. However, dynamically typed
languages such as Smalltalk, Python, Ruby and Perl are also immune to buffer
overflows, simply because it's not possible to directly access the memory.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Quicksilver, by the way.
Thanks for the recommendation.
-- Andrew Eland (http://www.andreweland.org)
Oh I quite agree. There's more ways to -- but no, I
had best not finish that old joke of ted Sturgeon's. There are many ways to
accomplish the goals. But I enjoyed being able to say "I told you so" about
C.
Subject OSX Dock
Good morning!
In response to the earlier discussion of the Mac OS X
dock. I've been using OS X for a couple of years now and I don't think I've
ever put a document into the dock. The way I've used it, and seen others use
it, is as a place to put your (shortcuts to) applications and perhaps
folders rather than documents. (Documents appear there temporarily when
minimized, but that's a different case then is being discussed I believe).
The idea is that it serves much the same function as
the Windows "start" menu, that is to give the user a quick way to get to the
programs they most often use. When you pull something off the dock it does
go "poof" while the Start menu places the shortcut on your desktop instead -
both are probably rare events for most users who keep these tools fairly
static from day to day. Which behavior is "better" is likely a matter of
personal preference and is unlikely to be the deciding factor in choice of
operating system. I would imagine that if you're savvy enough to be pulling
stuff on and off your shortcut bar then you're able to deal with the user
interface used in any case.
The good news is that we at the moment have more UI
and OS choice then ever so folks have the chance to pick what suits their
needs....
Best regards,
Michael Kubler Keflavik, Iceland
Indeed, as I use the tray in Windows XP. As the
chap said, the Dock is a good selling point -- I thought I would really like
it when Dan showed it to me on his Powerbook -- but it turns out in practice
to be a little less useful than I had imagined. Still, it's a clever
features.
Subject: An Aussie view
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/20/1074360761144.html
Steve Seltzer
===================
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
The trip home from Korea on Friday went very well; the
journey through LAX was surprisingly swift and, dare I say, efficient.
Leaving Seoul at 8:30 PM and arriving in Los Angeles at 2:05PM, both on
Friday, will likely constitute my only experience with time travel; but it
gives my children something to giggle about.
My only personal experience with the Green Party was
to have human excrement thrown at me and curses and threats screamed at me
in german and english by Greens in Giessen in 1985. They did so simply
because I was employed by the US Army and they were employed by the KGB.
While I abhor the treatment of gentleman as mentioned in the article and
agree that it is a bureaucratic and imperialistic nightmare, I must point
out that the European progenitors of the US Green Party were willing Soviet
dupes and were vocally dedicated to the destruction of the United States. If
you look around at the doings of modern European Greens you will find
nothing has changed. The Green's "values include nonviolence, social
justice, etc." made me want to laugh and gag by turns. The Greens may not
deserve to have their liberties stomped on by the Imperium, but they really
should change their name if they want to be taken seriously by the American
people.
Yours Truly,
Frank Luxem
Agreed on all counts
===========================
Subject: New gizmo - use external Serial ATA hotswap
drives on IDE controllers
Allows easy quick backup and cloning to external
hot-swappable Serial ATA drives from older machines with IDE controllers.
http://www.sunskypc.com/store/welcome.asp?comersus_listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=16&main
===== -- John E. Bartley, III K7AAY telcom admin, PDX,
USA - Views mine. palmwireless (dot) cjb (dot) net Wireless FAQ for PalmOS(r)
This post is quad-ROT13 encrypted. Reading it violates
the DMCA. Dilbert is a documentary.
And those drives are getting cheaper all the
time...
Subject: South Korean POW Discharged From Army
Hi Jerry,
The subject says it all. What's amazing is that it
took 50 years for him to escape.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_POW?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
- Paul
=====================================
Subject: FYI-Another Internet Scam
If you receive an email from WOMC Support captioned "A
User is researching you at our website." just delete it! Please read more
below:
http://www.lecour.net/richard/archives/001010.html
and a similar scam from Word-of-Mouth.Org:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/wordofmouth.asp
ED
To make it worse, my son Frank used to do business
as "Word of Mouth Productions". But this ain't him.
==========================
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail293.html#safer
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=76432004
I have to disagree with Mr Duffin. Making Bomb jokes
in an airport is something I would hesitate to do. I think a 15 year
sentence is a bit much. I do NOT think it would be out of order to do a
strip search or something to get the message across we are serious about
this.
But no jail sentence unless they really found
something.
Brice Yokem
But precisely. She was a bad girl, not a criminal
terrorist. And think of all the costs involved here, for no purpose
whatever.
But petty tyrants must be served. Kowtow. Knock
that head on the floor. I wonder what they would do if someone did just
that, a full kowtow to them?
And see view,
and also see below
=======================
Subject: Revolution 2.1.
http://www.macworld.com/2004/02/reviews/revolution21/
------- Roland Dobbin
===================================
Dr Pournelle,
(It’s what my mother told me)
Remember now! If you can’t say nice things about Mr
Bin Laden, don’t say anything at all—
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004022176,00.html
Political correctness reaches a new depth of
imbecility. Why am I not surprised?
Jim Mangles
Great Ghu!!
=====================
And more really really good news about the Empire
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?&story_id_key=5599
Fort Stewart to increase its deploying units by 66
percent
By Sgt. 1st Class Marcia Triggs
• Printer-friendly version • E-mail this article •
E-mail Alerts
(Editor's note: This is the second in a series of
articles on Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker's focus areas. This
one discusses "Modularity.")
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 20, 2004) - "It's
like breaking China," said the commanding general who has proposed to make
his division larger, diversify his brigades and turn all his Soldiers into
riflemen.
Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart,
Ga., seized Baghdad and helped in the stabilization of Fallujah. They know
what tactics work against an unconventional enemy, and what vulnerabilities
make American troops targets.
Their task now is to turn their three brigades into
five rapidly deployable "brigade units of action" that are able to plug into
any division and independently fight a high intensity conflict.
"The chief told me that he wants five maneuver
brigades ... to respond to all the needs of combatant commanders when a
crisis occurs, and he said that he wants it to happen ASAP," said Maj. Gen.
William Webster, 3rd Inf. Div. commanding general, referring to instructions
given to him by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
Part of Schoomaker's instruction was to see if the
reorganization could take place using existing resources within the
division. However, the proposal on the table now would cause the division to
get larger by about 2,000 to 3,000 troops, said Webster. The brigade numbers
would stay the same, but combat troops would decrease by about 10 to 15
percent, he added.
-- swb
GOD, GUNS & GUTS-Keep All 3!!!
=========================
I have long suspected that the
Tuskegee study of syphilis has been misrepresented (racist genocide!).
---
Indeed, one of the most astonishing facts about the
disease (at least to those of us who are not medical scientists, or who
naively associate syphilis with the demise and devastation of Frederick
Nietzsche) is that, after the early stages of infection, the vast majority
of people who have untreated syphilis either remain asymptomatic all of
their lives or else spontaneously recover from the disease. For most people,
a syphilis infection is either a self-limiting or self-correcting disease,
and in the 1930s the degree to which doing something (a year of protoplasmic
arsenic poisoning) was better than doing nothing at all was at the very
least uncertain, and was thus a matter of urgent medical and scientific
concern
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA34A.htm
JW
=And in fact the treatments were often worse than
the disease, one of the things the study was intended to look into...
Reminds me of the Salve of War: it was to be
applied to the weapon that wounded your comrade. And it wouldn't work if you
let the doctors get hold of your buddy, so friends went after the weapon
that wounded you and applied the salve and hid you from the medicos and kept
you out of the hospital and by God you had a better chance...
====================
Subject: Charlie.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=13832640&method=full&siteid=50143
------ Roland Dobbins
"A moment's thought would have saved us from these
follies. But thought is a painful process, and a moment is a long time."
-- A.E. Houseman
Good Grief!!
==============================
Subject: Heads Must Roll
Really good investigative bit on the 9 reasons we
didn't send in our Special Forces after Alquaeda before 9/11.
Interestingly CLINTON had asked about it but was
talked out of doing so according to this.
Click Here: Check out "Showstoppers"
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/
Articles/000/000/003/613twavk.asp
Best, Ken Talton
=And
Dr. Pournelle,
Two webloggers I read on a regular basis posted commentary on an article in
the
Weekly Standard about the lack of Special Operations against al-Qaeda
between the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the WTC. I thought I would pass this
on.
Donald Sensing is a former Artillery officer who serves now as a
Methodist minister in Tennessee.
Citizen Smash first came to my attention while he was in Kuwait ensuring
the port remained safe during the conflict; his site then was entitled
"Live From the Sandbox." They have somewhat differing opinions on the
article, but it's another example of bureaucratic lethargy.
And before you ask: no, I'm not surprised. (grin)
Sincerely,
Bruce Jones
=======================
Jerry
Are we safer yet?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ct/20040112/cr_ct/
pilotssearchforflightsimulatorsoftwarespursvisitfromstatetrooper
Ed
Well, with these people on the job, sure we are.
Don't try to learn to fly.
=============================
Everyone could benefit when these are made standard
equipment....
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.suburbanautogroup.com/videoView.html
jer
=============================
And on a more serious note, NASA
Dr. Jerry,
Jack Smith said: While the ultimate reasoning for the
decision is perhaps sound, given the expense of the Shuttle, the timing is
interesting because this is perhaps _the_ major project that could be
counted on to stir up opposition in those corners of the planetary and
stellar sciences community that are already somewhat anti-manned flight. I
note that they made a point of specifically linking this decision to the new
manned space initiative.
The assorted NYT articles on the Hubble indicated that
they were abandoning Hubble servicing because a shuttle could not service
the Hubble AND reach the space station from that orbit if something went
wrong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/science/17HUBB.html
"Periodic service calls by shuttle astronauts repaired
a series of early problems and have continually refurbished the telescope
and kept it at the fore of cosmic research. The mission next year would have
left the telescope in good shape to continue working through the end of the
decade, when NASA plans to bring it down. But the service missions are
expensive, more than $500 million each.
More important, NASA officials say, after the Columbia
catastrophe a year ago, the missions are also considered dangerous. The
shuttles do not carry enough fuel to reach the space station in case of
trouble."
[There is also this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/20/science/space/20SPAC.html?pagewant
ed=1 (Link leads to a registration page I
do not intend to bother with)
"The right way to do Mars is to design a coherent set
of hardware that can do Mars," he said. Along the way, a Moon mission
employing some of the Mars equipment might be a worthwhile test.
and this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/20/science/space/20ESSA.html
As an old cynic, I'm determined not to get excited
about all this. We've been here before. In fact I've spent my whole life
waiting for the Great Leap Outward, only to be disappointed. Now under the
best of circumstances I'm destined to be part of the left-behind generation.
President Bush and the NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, have been too
clever to tell us when the rockets will finally push off to Mars, or at what
ultimate cost. I don't expect to be around.]
[Me:] Which means 200 million in upgrades goes to
waste, but also requires they develop and launch a new vehicle (500
million?) to provide the boosters neccessary to de-orbit the Hubble into the
Pacific. We are back to the post-Challenger safety fetish.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=915
has a reprint of a UPI 'insider' (friendly to whomever
the insider was, and the administration plan) story on how they came up with
this plan:
"Due to NASA's budget constraints, it was obvious
there was no way to keep the shuttle fleet flying and develop the CEV
quickly enough to launch it while the shuttle fleet was still operational.
The soonest a CEV could launch to the moon was perhaps 2013. NASA needed to
retire the shuttle as soon as possible, so it was decided to terminate the
program in 2010, when ISS assembly was completed.
This action would leave a three-year gap, however,
wherein NASA would depend on Soyuz spacecraft. The things to be bartered for
such a capability have yet to be identified. In essence, O'Keefe was willing
to make another leap over a period of uncertainty based on the success he
had been able to achieve during the current, similar period of unknowns."
So, I've thought about it, and I conclude that this
plan sucks. Lemme review:
We go to the moon. We take two steps backwards and
embrace the Shuttle and LEO (no blame for Nixon here). In fact, we make the
decision to more or less abandon Skylab and all the Apollo stuff for another
space station in the future after the Shuttle works.
We finally get the shuttle flying but we do not follow
up to it in the '80s, we systematically cut back NASA funding, without
deleting the agency, and then we have the Challenger accident. We piddle
around for a year or two and Bush the Elder comes up with the Slow Plan to
Mars. The Shuttle goes way someday and maybe we'll build another system but
nothing really changes.
Clinton comes in, we take another two steps backward,
abandon the Slow Plan to Mars and go for an International Space Station and
keep everything else the same, while slowly reducing the NASA budget without
dumping the agency.
NOW we're going to dump the Shuttle (ok, I'm fine with
that) and replace it with something else, eventually, after we sorta finish
the ISS. Meaning the ISS won't be a complete waste, merely mostly a waste.
And we dump the Hubble.
Keeping in mind here, that the '67 budget for NASA was
6 billion, or 0.9% of GNP, which works out to something like 100 billion
dollars in a modern budget. (1969 was equivalent to about 60 billion.)
Figures not exact. Modern NASA budgets have run around 20 billion.
In the interval, we're going to re-develop duplicates
of the Gemini and Apollo technologies, except on a smaller budget. (Same
function, same basic idea, completely different but similar design. Clean
room development, another words.) We may or may not finish some kind of
orbiter (I cannot tell). We'll ditch the ISS and (I have to presume) replace
it with another space station (again, on a small but perhaps somewhat
increased budget). In 2020 or so, we're supposed to build a 'scientific
base', (an *international* science base), which I translate as 'rinky-dink'.
(That is, we landed on the moon when I was two, and we'll return with a
coupla guys when I'm 53.) I expect we'll have to get a licence from the
Chinese.
Then, sometime later, we'll send a coupla guys to
Mars, maybe Russian equipment, maybe Russians.
BESIDES the fact that seems like basically a crib from
the elder Bush administration (which we seem to be reliving, on a
blow-by-blow basis), it seems to be so vague as to be unimplementable. We're
not going to spend serious money until after Bush is gone (at which point
evidently a miracle will occur), the money we do spend will duplicate money
we've already spent, and we're in the hole right now for some ungodly amount
of money, and in the meantime we're going be spending even more. I guess
we'll finance the plan by cutting social security benefits...given that
we'll all be older it seems like an idea which will be about popular as a
child molester at a Girl Scout camp.
We know how to build Saturn rockets, and we know how
to build Titans. We know how to make Apollo capsules and Gemini capsules. We
mostly know how to convert the shuttle launch system to an unmanned cargo
hauler (way more useful than the shuttle), since we have the tank, the
boosters and the engines. Granted, we'd have to change things, but we don't
have to design it, we just have to build it. Instead, we're going to spend a
decade sitting on our hands, and hoping that a future Congress will see the
light. (Which I guess is a virtue for the current administration as the are
free not to actually do anything.) Developing new vehicles is out, since
we've settled a capsule design.
I am not against giving it to the Navy (quite the
opposite), but I don't know that they can do that much more for the same
amount of money.
I am not against prizes. If I was doing it, I'd fund a
large number of prizes, each prize covering a small step forward. Hell, I'd
do both the Navy and the prizes and make it like the Manhatten project or
WWII aircraft design. Multiple designs from multiple sources, and you go
with whatever works.
(I don't see where SDI, or missile defense or space
weapons even features into this...I don't really see how it can. Maybe as a
somewhere over the rainbow idea.)
Instead, we're going to spend juuussssttt enough money
to keep NASA going, and keep NASA in the way of the private people, but not
enough to make the beauracracy work. And we're not exactly lighting a fire
under their butts either.
So I figure eight steps backwards, and 4 * 1/2 steps
forward puts us six steps back from the moon, and an eternity away from
Mars.
It's a de jure 'vision' but it reads like de facto
winding up orders for NASA, and de facto winding up orders for the United
States in space. (Given everything else going on, maybe de facto winding up
orders for the US period.)
Therefore I conclude the plan sucks swamp water.
Better not to have done anything and leave room for some other President to
change things.
ash ['Perhaps I am overly bleak, but I don't think
so.']
=
http://www.panix.com/~richgr/NASA.jpg
========================
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Wednesday
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
