It is column deadline time. I
have an essay on education as a response to Gates in this issue. As well as
a bunch of other stuff. I'm also experimenting with OneNote which I find is
rather wonderful.
CAUTION
Subject: Caution
Yet another scam. Where is the kinder, gentler Cold
War world I grew up in?
Dear Friends, I had not heard of this scam until I was
almost a victim of it. I don't want it to happen to any of you. I placed an
ad in the Recycler to sell an item for $700.00. I was shortly contacted by a
fellow that wanted to purchase the item for his "client". I was told that he
was going to send me a cashier's check from a US bank but that his client
lived overseas. He wanted to know if I would be so kind as to cash the
check, take out my portion for the item and them wire the remaining money to
the "shipping agent" who would then make arrangements to come to my home and
pick up the item for shipping. To make a long story short, I received the
cashier's check as promised. The amount of the check was $4,200.00. I
immediately became suspicious because the item could be purchased brand new
and shipped from the manufacturer for much less. I went online to do some
research and this is what I found. Apparently there is an old scam going on
that started with people who were selling cars but has obviously progressed.
The end result is that the bank will release the funds for the cashier's
check because, after all, they are as good as cash, right!? WRONG! After
about three weeks the check turns out to be bogus and then you are out the
money since it was cashed against your account! Be careful!
By the way, I was contacted by 4 different people
trying this scam! Please forward this to all your friends and get the word
out!
B.C.
Paranoia time... If it's too good to be true, it probably is
still holds; but the old con man adage that you can't cheat an honest man no
longer holds. I have little sympathy for people who bit on a scam to steal
vast sums from the African poor, but the scammers now try to steal from
those who want to be helpful.
The column is on the wire and so are a number of trivial but still needed
corrections, and it's 1 PM and I still haven't walked the dog or got the
bills paid. The Treadmill is after me.
The following from
Security Guy Hellewell is worth your attention. I'll be back with my
commentaries on the state of the world when I get some other stuff done.
Dr. Pournelle:
I am seeing a new variation of phishing emails. Rather
than asking you to confirm your information due to a possible security
problem, this one tries to hook you by offering a free gift or special
discounts. The message purports to come from your bank (even though you may
not have an account at that bank).
As in most phishing emails, the best defense is to use
the area between your ears. For instance, ask yourself why your bank needs
you to tell them your credit card or checking account number. Why would they
want your PIN or your social security number?
Readers are advised to be very cautious about these
email pitches from "your bank". In fact, you can reduce most of them by
filtering for emails with the HTML "on-mouseover" (no hyphens) command.
That's how I catch most phishing attempts.
More info, including screen shots of the message and
the "identity theft" form are on my "Daynotes" site accessible via
http://tinyurl.com/49tna (the "TinyUrl"
site takes long URLs/addresses and shortens them. That site does not appear
to capture any information about the user, it just immediately redirects
them to the actual site.)
Regards, Rick Hellewell
I often wonder about altruistic outfits that shorten URL's
and other such kindnesses. I fear my paranoia is aroused...
On the subject of paranoia, I fear the
Temple University Incident sharpens mine. In graduate school I did
several papers on freedom and sanity and "the right to be punished for
crimes, not helped by physicians". Stories like the Temple story give me
nightmares because I can easily see how someone might panic and try to
defend himself, and then the real troubles would begin.
Still cleaning up after the column and paying
bills and generally getting things back in order here.
The LA Elections are over, and we have a choice between career
politicians as Mayor of LA. How wonderful that we have a political class
eager to "serve" us. On toast?
When I was in City Hall we had 81 Civil Service Exempt employees (I was
one of them). They now have over 600, each of whom makes a much as a
policeman or a teacher. I know how we could pay for 500 new cops
without raising the budget a nickel. Neither of our brilliant candidates for
Mayor seems to have a clue about this method.
==
We have more reports of people bitten by the
Pluto Data Scam. Be wary.
=============
I am often derided for my "obsession" with Republic vs. Empire and our
transformation from the one to the other. Perhaps the following is relevant:
The number one lesson of 9/11 is that the
"relevant players" include the public, front and center. As the staff
director of the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 found, "The record
suggests that, prior to September 11th, the U.S. intelligence and law
enforcement communities were fighting a war against terrorism largely
without the benefit of what some would call their most potent weapon in that
effort: an alert and informed American public. One need look no further for
proof of the latter point than the heroics of the passengers on Flight 93 or
the quick action of the flight attendant who identified shoe bomber Richard
Reid." After all, the only part of our national security apparatus that
actually prevented casualties on 9/11 was the citizenry - those brave
passengers on Flight 93 who figured out what was going on before the
Pentagon or the CIA did, and brought their plane down before it could take
out the White House or the Capitol.
Look at the case of the Unabomber, the
Harvard-educated terrorist who blew up random scientists with letter bombs.
Years of secret investigation turned up nothing but rambling screeds against
modernity and the machine, and only after the madman threatened more
violence unless his words were published, did the FBI relent and give the
crank letter file to the newspapers. The Washington Post and the New York
Times went in together on a special section to carry the 35,000 words in
1995, but the key paper was the Chicago Tribune, read at the breakfast table
in a Chicago suburb by the bomber's brother, who said, sounds like crazy
Ted, guess I'd better call the cops.
How did we catch the Washington sniper? The
police had been chasing a white van for weeks with no luck, and finally
changed the description to a blue sedan based on an eyewitness report. They
refused to give out the license plate number (because the sniper would then
change the plates, of course); but finally an unnamed police official took
it upon herself to leak the license number at midnight, local radio and TV
picked it up, and a trucker was listening who saw a blue sedan in a rest
area in western Maryland. He checked the plate number, and bingo, within
three hours of the leak they arrested the sniper. Openness empowers
citizens.
The entire 9/11 Commission report includes only
one finding that the attacks might have been prevented. This occurs on page
247 and is repeated on page 276 with the footnote on page 541, quoting the
interrogation of the hijackers' paymaster, Ramzi Binalshibh. Binalshibh
commented that if the organizers, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had
known that the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, had been
arrested at his Minnesota flight school (he only wanted to fly, not to take
off or land) on immigration charges, then Bin Ladin and KSM would have
called off the 9/11 attacks. And wisely so, because news of that arrest
would have alerted the FBI agent in Phoenix who warned of Islamic militants
in flight schools in a July 2001 memo that vanished into the FBI's vaults in
Washington. The Commission's wording is important here: only "publicity"
could have derailed the attacks.
A republic trusts its citizenry even though some will prove to be
traitors and others will prove to be deceived. An empire trusts its paid
experts to do the right thing, and is reluctant to involve the citizens in
matters of importance. The empire must also believe that more good than harm
will come from trusting paid experts: that the experts will not form
turf-warring fiefdoms and cover up their mistakes.
I no longer call it the execrable Adelphia
because the cable modem usually works very well and without problems, but
it's been erratic this morning, so we are on through the satellite.
The satellite works, but the lag is long. Ah well.
Fair amount to catch up with. Inferno outline is creeping along.
Whatever the cable problem was, it lasted just long enough for me to see
just how unsatisfactory the satellite connection is; although I remember
when we first got it how we liked it better than the dialup. Ah well.
Adelphia works again.
========
Announcement:
Jerry, could you do me a favor and post this for your
readers? The subject of what's not likely to get us all into space having
just come up (NASA business-as-usual with established Big Aerospace) it
occurs to me to mention that there is a budding alternative (new startups
going to space for profit outside the established government-aerospace
complex - mammals scurrying about under the dinosaurs' feet, if you will)
and that we're once again running our annual conference on this alternative
seven weeks from now.
The basic info:
Space Access '05, April 28th-30th, the
technology politics and business of radically cheaper access to space, at
the Four Points By Sheraton Hotel at Metrocenter, Phoenix Arizona, $79
"space access" room rate, 602 997-5900 for room reservations, conference
membership $100 in advance, $120 at the door,
http://www.space-access.org
for details.
thanks!
Henry Vanderbilt Executive Director Space Access
Society
Every now and then I get mail that belongs in
view, or I think it does:
Subject:
Open Course Ware
Dr. Pournelle, This link is from a list server I
belong to, and I thought you might find it interesting and usefull. Not
directly related to the Linux theme of the list, but there's a few engineers
and science-buffs on that list.
Because it was not instantly apparent what this was, I elicited the
following:
Dr. Pournelle, It's all free. According to the
website: "MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based electronic publishing
initiative funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT.
MIT OCW's goals are to: Provide free, searchable,
access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners
around the world. Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the "opencourseware"
concept. MIT OCW would not be possible without the support and generosity of
the MIT faculty who choose to share their research, pedagogy, and knowledge
to benefit others. We expect MIT OCW to reach a steady - though never static
- state by 2008. Between now and then, we will publish the materials from
virtually all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses.
We will be continually evaluating the Access, Use, and
Impact of MIT OCW over the course of the next five years. With 900 courses
published as of September 2004, we are still in a learning stage of this MIT
initiative and we will benefit enormously from your feedback, as we strive
to make MIT OCW as rich and useful as possible for our users."
George Laiacona.
This should be of great interest to home schoolers, but also to the
general readership. The wealth of material available here is astonishing.
This is as good a place as any to remind you of the
George Mosse
Lectures if you want to understand something of the modern world.
And Peter Glaskowsky's comments on Richard Stallman and Bill Gates came
while I was in Utah. I am mildly surprised that I have received no comment
on these: PNG on
RMS and BillG
=============
Subject: Redmond
Simonsen passes.
I know you corresponded with Redmond Simonsen for some
years. Redmond passed away on Wednesday of this week. He had been ill for
some time with a heart condition.
I was a business partner of Redmond's for 9 years. I
was his friend, and quite glad of it for many more.
People know of Redmond as a pioneer and founder of the
games industry. Fewer know him as a pioneer in Computers (through
MicroBotics/Amiga days). Very few know that he was on the yet-to-be-leading
edge of Robotics and Autonomous entities.
Dunnigan and Hessle have posted comments, but even
they were not aware of all the areas and people he touched.
It seems the way of things today that such selfless
and amazing people are not known as they truly deserve. I visited him Monday
night and right before he passed. If I could, he would have the Viking
funeral he truly deserved.
Jerry Robinson.
Indeed we corresponded. I adopted a sonic blaster toothbrush at his
suggestion, this years before they became popular. We were friends on BIX
and Genie. I had not heard from him in some time, and wondered about
that; I should have pursued that harder.
Physicists in Europe and the US have performed
a novel version of the double-slit quantum-interference experiment with
single electrons. In the classic version of the experiment, electrons pass
through a mask containing two parallel slits and produce a pattern of bright
and dark interference fringes on a screen. Now, Gerhard Paulus of Texas A&M
University and co-workers in Berlin, Munich, Sarajevo and Vienna have
observed an interference pattern with electrons that pass through a double
slit in time, not space, as a result of being ejected from an atom at one of
two possible times by a laser pulse. <snip>
Now that is queer indeed. Thanks to Frank Gasperik for calling this to my
attention.
I am minded to write a short essay on Arthur Miller, who was able to
overlook the various show trials in Russia while comparing anti-Communism to
witch hunting (hint: there really were Communist agents in the US, and
there's a difference between ham-handed investigations that lead to loss of
jobs, and actually drowning and hanging people); and who took his wife for
visits to the White House, using her as a means of entry, then wrote
After the Fall making her an empty-headed harridan; but I am not sure I
have the stomach for it. Miller's message is that it don't matter how hard
you work or how good you are, life in America will grind you down. The
interesting part is that he was all for social policies that would make that
more and more true over time.
One commentator points out that After the Fall is "a classic
Stalinist hatchet job, turned against a most unlikely target." All
true. But our leading critics vied with each other in offering fulsome
praise of a man who would take his wife to see John F. Kennedy...
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,
8,000 -
12,000 words, depending. (Older
columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.
If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so.
If you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front
page of this site, click here for a better
explanation of what we're trying to do here.
This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.
If
you have no idea what you are doing here, see the What is this
place?,
which tries to make order of chaos.
Boiler Plate:
If you want to PAY FOR THIS,
the site is run like public radio: you don't have to pay, but if no one
does, it will go away. On how to pay, I keep the latest HERE. MY
THANKS to all of you who have sent money. Some of you went to a lot of
trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods. I am preparing a special (electronic)
mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also
toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
Open
Course materials from MIT: Home schoolers take note
