THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR View 114 August 14 - 20, 2000 |
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Last Week's View Next Week's View This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending. (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you are not paying for this place, click here... For Previous Weeks of the View, SEE VIEW HOME PAGE Search: type in string and press return.
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of previous pages of view, see VIEWDEX. See also the New Order page, which tries to make order of chaos. These will be useful. For the rest, see What is this place? for some details on where you have got to.
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Highlights this week:
The atomz Search returns: Search: type in string and press return. The freefind search remains:
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This week: | Monday
August 14
Was used up by fiction, errands, and paying the bills
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This week: | Tuesday, August
15, 2000
New regime or attempt at. Try to get up and work, go to bed earlier. We'll see. New Intel D815 motherboard and Pentium III 933 chip, Windows ME installed from beginning. WARNING: turn off POWER MANAGEMENT: machine doesn't go to sleep, it DIES. Three times. Turned off power management, all is well, but that machine with that OS can't take this modern power management garbage. I would like to find and beat senseless the people who invented that stuff. Turning off disk drives, bashing the CPU on the head: I presume this is to sell more systems as we wear them out with all this thrashing. Nutso. They say Clinton passed on the mantle and will vanish now in favor of his VP, and I am Marie of Rumania...
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This week: |
Wednesday,
August 15, 2000 Roberta is off to the beach house. I'm going to stay up here and try to finish Mamalukes by blitz. Niven is off to Bellingham to be GOH at a convention in a city we blew up in Footfall... And otherwise all is well. Hollywood Bowl last night, an evening of Rachmaninov. Well done.
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This week: |
Thursday,
August 17, 2000 Slow progress but progress on the latest Janissaries book. Read Kipling's Grave of the Hundred Head for an idea of some of what will be in it...
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This week: |
Friday,
August 18, 2000 Roland sent me this. A giant has left us: Bob Gilruth has passed on: http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/0,1038,500240835-500354651-502063949-0,00.html And another note: Dear Dr. Pournelle, Apparently the rumor about some MicroSoft programs being ported to Linux was true. The press release is here: http://www.mainsoft.com/press/pr-internetexpl.html . Kit Case kitcase@starpower.net Meanwhile I continue to pound away. For amusement I have built a new 933 MHz machine on the Intel D815 motherboard with original installation of Windows ME. Easiest thing I ever did, but we'll see if not having DOS underneath makes things more difficult another time. So far all is very well. And if you want to see how good Hollywood was in the Old Days, get the DVD of the 1950 ALL ABOUT EVE (Bette Davis, Ann Baxter, Celeste Holm, bit part by Marilyn Monroe). And Tuesday night the Democratic National Convention booed a bunch of Eagle Scouts who had been sent there at the request of the DNC. Wonderful. Seems the Scouts policy on gay and lesbians translates into booing a bunch of kids. That's logic. Real logic, and will certainly make people see gay and lesbian rights in a different light. Larry Niven has a convention badge that says "BAD TASTE IS TIMELESS." Examples are never hard to find. Bad manners are too. Let's see, the logic is: the boys don't set the policy, but their adult leaders do, therefore let us boo the boys because we don't like the policies of their organization. Well, a day.
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This week: | Saturday,
August 19, 2000 Mr. St Onge finds:
Found the "Grave of the Hundred Head" at http://www.wargame.com/archives/poems/poem41.shtml.
Whew! Makes me wonder whom will die in Mamelukes, and
what the bloodprice will be. Looking forward to it.
It is a chilling story. Incidentally, "Grave of the Hundred Head" is the way Kipling titled the poem. For anyone interested a Subadar was a colonial lieutenant, a Jemadar was a sergeant, a samadh is a monument, and a jingal is a muzzle-loading cannon. There was no outfit called the "First Shiraki"; Shikari is an Urdu word used universally in India to mean hunters and hunting, something as safari is used in Africa. I don't know enough about India to know from the names Subadar Prag Tewarri and Jemadar Hira Lal where these troops were recruited, but the names are Hindu, not Sikh or Moslem, and it's my guess they were Gurkha (or Goorkha as it is spelled in the Indian army). The Gurkhas are a tribe in Nepal who have long furnished up to 8 regiments of mercenary soldiers for the British Army; the last major engagement of a Gurkha outfit was in the Falkland Islands. In any event such things happened in the border wars and colonial pacifications. Chris Morton tells me that a jingal was not quite a cannon but a swivel mounted blunderbuss, a bit muzzle loading rifle. Thanks.
And, sort of by coincidence, there is a very long speech by a retiring general and my rather long commentary over in mail; another commentary in the never ending discussion of Republic and Empire. I think I will try to pull together as much of the discussion on republic and empire as I can; it's scattered everywhere in view and mail. Pointers to appropriate letters and commentaries and blatherings by me that ought to be pulled onto a single report site welcomed. While we are on the subject of organization: Jerry, I rarely find the time to read the views - is there a chance to add a link at the bottom of each one that allows you to : <- go to previous view> < go to next view -> ? It would make things a bit easier... Best, Jens Stark Which is no doubt a good idea, but I am not sure how to do it. I need to reorganize this whole place anyway. Much of what is here is left form the earliest days. I do have a next and previous up in the header, and have had for some time. But all that has to be done by hand, and that means it doesn't get done. Or I don't have time to write anything... And for those who missed it, I have posted my Intellectual Capital essay on lessons of the Twentieth Century with reference to Ortega y Gasset. I suppose most of you know that I am doing an O'Reilly book on hardware in collaboration with Robert Bruce Thompson. His web site is and is well worth your time.
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This week: | Sunday,
Sky Dayton's birthday party and other pleasantries.
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