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
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Column is done but still polishing, and I want to do a couple of thousand
words of fiction today. I don't know if the world has slowed down or not;
I'm just coming up for air.
The column is done. Much of it is about the
Internet Explorer situation; it has taken a lot of work to get that right.
At least as I think of it as right...
Everyone has their hair on fire on this one.
Speaking of which, my system experience progressive communications
failure. It turns out that the DNS server I was relying on died this morning
while I was working (not mine, it was "out there"). After a while I couldn't
connect to much, and it became less and less.
Eventually I called Adelphia, got a frontline tech who instantly realized
this was more than just a "reset the router, reset the modem, reset your XP
machine" problem and passed me along to Sal, who didn't understand the
situation but was able to help intelligently as I looked the router settings
while he looked at the cable modem from his end. Eventually they found each
other, and all was well, and I have new DNS servers maintained by Adelphia.
Subject: DNS issue
From what you write, you had only one DNS server, and
when that went down, you lost all ability to resolve host names. Your router
should have room for both a primary and secondary server, giving you the
redundancy to survive the occasional failure of either. Of course, it helps
if they're on different subnets, so that no one router failure takes down
more than one. (Does MSN still have all their DNS servers on the same
subnet, or have they finally learned their lesson?)
-- Joe Zeff
Yeah. And each machine has a primary DNS which is local
(192.168.x.x to a fixed address of one of the servers ) and the servers all
pointed to the router, and when the DNS that the router was looking at went
south...
More later: Sable is insisting on a walk, and that's what she gets paid
for.. .
=============
The column is in. The site is working. Both my primary and secondary DNS
servers are from Adelphia, and perhaps I ought to have one from elsewhere,
although in fact if Adelphia is down I may have to go to satellite or dialup
anyway....
=========
Francis Hamit sends me a link showing that there are now about 15,000 NEW
web logs per DAY, and the number grows without limit.
The column is in, and I
got to bed early, which means I woke up early. Feeling pretty good, too.
Then I looked at mail, and got a
stomach ache. I am now sitting here in a state of cold fury.
I once contemplated a novel to be called "The Brotherhood" in which a
group of combat veterans well trained in violence take an oath: whenever one
of these aging former heroes discovers he has an incurable disorder, he will
go out in glory, taking with him as many enemies of the United States as he
can: the petty tyrants who make a mockery of all that they fought for.
I haven't written that novel, but I now have at least one episode in
mind.
Now I should be clear here: the problem is not that these security people
don't have a legitimate job to do, it's that they are both arrogant and
incompetent, and like all such people they put rules and regulations ahead
of the job they are supposed to do.
Their job is to prevent terrorists from killing people and disrupting the
nation, and in this specific case, to stop them from harming the Ballard
Locks railway bridge. There are a lot of ways to do this. One would be to
see if anyone takes an unusual interest in the bridge; and if so, to
determine if that unusual interest stems from improper motives. If they
could find someone taking a surreptitious interest in the bridge they ought
to shout for joy, because that might lead them to someone else, etc.
But sending successive waves of people to demand identification and throw
their weight around isn't going to accomplish their task, as anyone with
average intelligence would realize; what it's going to do is anger someone
who is paying a lot of attention to the bridge, and who might actually be
helpful some day. But if you treat people as if they were enemies you get
enemies.
"Excuse me, sir, but why are you photographing that bridge?"
"No need to be alarmed. We do keep track of such things. If you see
anything we ought to know about, here's my card, please call..."
Or if you are really suspicious do nothing and follow the guy with the
camera in hopes he leads somewhere.
But it's a lot easier and safer to turn out in force, and having done
that, justify to yourself that this guy might have been a bad guy, and thus
we really were doing things the right way, and ....
=================
There is a great shortage of women (or a great surplus of males) in
China. Celibate men tend to be pretty good warriors. This situation will
continue for a while. And Chinese women can insist on fidelity...
==========
Rumsfeld watch: recall what the neos were saying not all that long ago:
I haven't heard what is happening with recruiting. And the borders are
wide open.
And it isn't as if there were no examples of the results:
France 'forming ethnic ghettoes'
By Caroline Wyatt BBC correspondent in Paris
Many French city suburbs are becoming ethnic
ghettoes, a report has warned. The study by the French domestic intelligence
services found many areas were populated by poor, young French of north
African immigrant backgrounds.
The report, leaked to Le Monde newspaper, found
at least half of the 630 suburbs it looked at had already become separate
ethnic communities.
The report warned the ghettoes, cut off from
mainstream French society, could encourage radical Islam to take root.
The intelligence service report deals with an
extremely sensitive issue for France: just how bad the sense of alienation
has become in the suburbs, among the French-born children of north African
immigrant background.
Sometimes, besides the withdrawal to the
culture of origin and the rejection of Western values, a kind of negative
identity is built which mixes the cultures of origin, the values of the
public housing projects and rudimentary references to Islam. French domestic
intelligence report
The report - given to the interior minister,
Dominique de Villepin - concludes that the situation is actually worse than
previously thought. Of the suburbs studied, the report says at least half
could already be called ghettoes, whose inhabitants felt rejected by, and
were in turn rejecting, mainstream French society.
The areas studied were chosen because they
already had problems with unemployment, crime and violence, had a high
proportion of immigrant families - some still practising polygamy - plus a
growing number of Islamic prayer rooms as well as frequent anti-Western and
anti-Semitic graffiti.
The intelligence services noted that many
families of immigrant origin were rejecting French values and even the
French language, following instead more traditional ways of life associated
with their ethnic origin - including an increasing religious radicalisation
among young Muslims, and a backlash against young Muslim women who wore
Western clothing.
Better-off families, mainly those of white
European origin, were leaving such suburbs, creating an even greater sense
of isolation.
Divide widens
The report's conclusions will worry the
government, although they are not entirely unexpected.
For decades, France had hoped that its
immigrants and their children would simply integrate into secular French
society.
Instead, it seems, the opposite has been
happening, with the divide becoming ever greater.
France's new law, banning the Islamic headscarf
from state schools, had already provoked a national debate on integration.
In an attempt to solve the problems of France's
city suburbs, the government has proposed a five-year plan to improve social
cohesion - although, as the newspaper Le Monde concludes, it will be a race
against time.
Emphasis added. The French melting pot isn't working; and how can the
American melting pot work when it is overwhelmed by numbers? But neither
major party cares one whit.
=========
I have never been a big fan of Buchanan's American Conservative with
its interviews of Norman Mailer and Ralph Nader and other people who
have always opposed everything I thought good in America; but the July
19 issue, at least the first half (far as I have got so far) is superb,
from the opening page on through the review of Huntington's book, James
Antle on the laptop bombardiers, Bacevich on lessons from the Iraqi War.
It's all worth reading. That issue is not yet posted; I recommend it when
it comes up.
Yesterday I mentioned The American Conservative,
which I don't always care for -- I particularly deplore their habit of
putting anti-Americans on the cover simply because they are also anti-Bush
-- and that the July 19 issue is superb you should look at it when it comes
on line.
Or, as editor Scott McConnell says, subscribe: they don't put everything
on line.
And I have to agrree, that issue is worth the subscription price.
CLICK HERE for
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