Category Archives: Mail

Mail 681 July 1, 2011 – 3

• Verizon High Speed
• War in Libya
• Strategic Defense
• The Tablet PC
• Cruising Death Valley

An Opening Note: I am composing this with cut and paste special in an ordinary Word window, after which I will convert it to Word Blog and go through and apply a style to my comments. At some point I am going to develop a “reply” style I can apply to my replies so I don’t have to use “quote”, and thus can use “quote” for quotes within mail to me.

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The end of cheap Verizon High Speed Data

Jerry,

After resisting mightily for several years, I finally succumbed and upgraded to a Verizon smart phone. I made my bet on Android and purchased a Samsung Droid Charge….More for the spectacular screen than for any other reason. So far, I am simply delighted with it.

Of interest to you, with your high speed internet access issues, and possibly to your readers, is the cost of high speed access. When I purchased the phone a couple weeks ago I was required to purchase a $30/month data plan. On the Verizon LTE (4G) network, available to me here on Long Island, NY, internet access is quite speedy….and since the phone can act as a data point for my netbook, the potential for large amounts of data makes the Verizon plan very attractive: $30/month for unlimited data!

The week after I committed to a 2 year renewal, one of the Droid sites reported that Verizon was going to terminate their unlimited plan in favor of a tiered usage plan. My $30/month would only purchase 2 GB!

I immediately contacted Verizon customer service (always a dreadful experience). The CSR I spoke with had not heard of this plan change and headed off to speak to her supervision….when she came back she confirmed it. But she also stated that existing plan users would be grandfathered in….both for their current contract AND for all future renewals!!

Since I have been burned by Verizon in the past and have become somewhat paranoid in dealing with them, I asked if she could email me a statement to that effect. I expected her to have to either clear that email with management or simply refuse. Much to my surprise and delight, she sent me that email the same day.

The point to this longer dissertation than I had expected is simply this: the $30/month unlimited data plan is STILL available to anyone under contract by July 7th. Given the skyrocketing cost of data across all the various providers, it will quickly amortize even the outrageous early termination fees charged. It might just be the most cost effective solution to your travelling high speed internet access needs.

And lastly, I highly recommend the Samsung Droid Charge….so far at least…it just works and that display really is wonderful. On the other hand, if any device is in need of “The Missing Manual” this is the one!

Warm regards,

Larry Cunningham

This really ought to go in Chaos Manor Mail and I may duplicate it there. Thanks. I will Tuesday 5 July head out to Verizon to see what they offer me: I can just about afford $30 a month to have known reliable unlimited data, but on the other hand I don’t travel so much any more. If AT&T had offered that I would probably have bought it: at the moment it costs me $50 for a gigabyte and the account is good for a month. I have used about 170 mb in the past two days here, but some of that was installing some programs and doing some updates. It’s clear I can’t do all my connectivity at that price. It’s not clear that I need a permanent road warrior solution. Thanks.

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AFRICOM: AF, Navy still flying Libya missions – Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq – Air Force Times

Jerry,

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/06/defense-africom-air-force-navy-flying-libya-missions-063011/

This is reminiscent of covert ops in Cambodia. Unfortunately; the mendacity is more blatant and unlike the Vietnam War which was just one battle in the Cold War, there is no cogent argument that the Libya intervention much less the overthrow of Mubarak serves US interests. The only explanation that seems plausible is articulated in Dinesh D’Souza’s, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”. Obama views Mubarak and Quadaffi as NeoColonial puppet regimes that have to be overthrown because they made peace with the US. This doesn’t serve US interests.

Jim Crawford

One can make a case for wringing Qadaffi’s neck as being in the national interest pour encourager les autres; that is, as a general message that you shouldn’t down US planes with bombs, and you should not unduly annoy the President of the United States. Actions have consequences. Ghadaffi in particular has earned some special attention from the US. But if that is the objective, it ought to be accomplished and gotten over with: surely we do not want to send the message that we will bankrupt ourselves pursuing but not catching our enemies.

The odd part, to me, is that if the explanation is the rage of the President, why doesn’t he just do it? Running about dropping bombs in a rather uncoordinated way enriches no one. Except for those who make bombs, of course.

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Missile Defense

Jerry,

There was a letter in yesterday’s Washington Post proposing eliminating missile defense as part of the budget deals:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-good-start-for-pentagon-cuts-missile-defense/2011/06/30/AGPYBmsH_story.html

What I found interesting is that the author (a partner with Ted Postol of MIT) admits that the Russians would have to treat a missile defense system as effective, whether or not it truly was. As I recall, this was an argument that you had used in in the past to argue in favor of the system — the Russians would have to assume it would be effective, and therefore would have to expend that much more to overcome it.

The author here uses the same point to argue against the system, saying that the Russians and Chinese would have to build more to overcome the defenses (which he views as a bad thing) and would therefore not be as willing to enter into arms control deals.

Karl

The Constitution states that we should provide for the common defense, not for Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD Deterrence was important in the early times of the Post WW II Cold War, but the goal should always have been Assured Survival, not Assured Destruction, and when Reagan turned to that, it became the decisive move in the Cold War. A Navy and Coast Artillery – with BMD being the modern equivalent of coastal defense – are required.

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Who’ll keep taking Windows Tablets in the iPad era? • The Register

Jerry: Article on some of the history of Bill Gates 2001 tablet:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/01/windows_tablets_then_and_now/

Chris C

An excellent ramble by Andrew Orlanski , last man to be using a Psion. He talked me into trying to use mine. It was a great idea, but it never quite got there. Having said all that, I will continue to say that the HP TabletPC plus OneNote made in combination the best research tool ever made, and had that been updated with a faster CPU and more memory and storage, I think it would have caught on. I love mine to this day even though she’s old and cranky and slow and a real fussbudget. But there’s something great about being able to scribble a note. Nowadays it would be possible to make that in two pieces with a Bluetooth keyboard for production work and the on screen keyboard for notes and stuff. I’d buy a really good update of LisaBeta in a heartbeat. I can recall doing an entire COMDEX with no other computer, and while the swivel keyboard made typing a bit awkward compared to, say, a ThinkPad, I was able to file daily reports plus a show report, and still keep up some of my BIX conferences, all from the Press Room; at nights I could use dialup to do some work with mail. Those were busy times, but I sure loved that machine. I would really like to see a revival of the Gates-inspired tablets.

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1998 Bronco Accident

Your pictures were impressive, as was your narrative that you were only going 35 mph or so when it happened. However, looking through your photos, I found it impossible to identify which tire was blown. Either the tire is too stiff without a load on it to be very flat, or AAA threw the spare on to make it easier to pull on the flatbed.

Makes a very good example of why drivers shouldn’t exceed the recommended speeds for their tires. A blowout at 65, 85, or 105 mph has far more catastrophic results than you experienced at 35. Accidents at 105 mph shred vehicles into small pieces. Tire Rack.com, http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=35 has a good set of charts on how to read load and speed ratings on tires. What they don’t mention is that is the ratings are only for brand new tires. Their load and speed capabilities degrade with wear and as the wire and ‘cloth’ belts break inside. Hit a few curbs too hard, and you’ll have breaks which look like scuffs and dimples in your tire (especially the sidewalls). If you figure on a 20% degradation in strength (a very loose guestimate), you’re down into the ‘normal’ high speed ranges. Take a look at a few cars tires in the parking lot; it gets very sobering.

As for giving up cruising Death Valley, just don’t do it solo anymore. Make a couples weekend of it with Larry & his wife. And don’t forget to bring your puppy.

Mike Houst

Well, I wasn’t going very fast for a desert dirt road, and had there not been that stupid berm on the side of the road I wouldn’t have rolled. I certainly wasn’t exceeding the capabilities of the Bronco II. Alas, something had damaged the tire or rim, and I hadn’t known that.

Cruising alone in Death Valley was never all that good an idea to begin with. And it’s a lot drive out there. Great old days though. Niven and I wrote some of the best Footfall scenes in a beat up old motel out on the ridge overlooking Death Valley…

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Mail 681 Friday July 1, 2011 – 3

Duties and Rights

Regarding your comment re responsibilities versus benefits, the Google Ngram of “duties” versus “rights” tells the story.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/203878.html

Mike

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Dept. of Agriculture Spending

Victor Davis Hanson points out in the link below that the Dept. of Agriculture annual budget is greater than the entire nation’s annual net farm income this year. Somehow that doesn’t make good sense to me.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304450604576415880239918492.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Good luck with the new system. What you have to say will always be worth reading, irrespective of what it looks like. We know you’ll figure it out.

Best Regards,

— Lindy Sisk

I recall way back in the Eisenhower Administration there was an effort to have a public law to the effect that there could never be more employees of the Department of Agriculture than there were farmers and farm workers. That failed every time it was proposed.

I would think, though, that given the financial circumstances we could eliminate the entire group of inspectors and supervisors who enforce the regulation that stage magicians must have a Federal license to keep rabbits, and anyone who sells rabbits as pets (although not if they sell them to eat or to feed alive to serpents) must have a Federal license. Perhaps when we are rich again we can afford such people but surely we can do without them now? Incidentally if a stage performer slays and eats alive a rabbit he does not need a Federal license; only if the rabbit is used as a pet in a performance. And grown people enforce this.

The lesson is clear. There are a lot of Federal jobs that we can spare in these troubled times; many people doing things that we can do without, certainly that we do not have to borrow money to pay for. Why is there never such discussion in debt ceiling debates?

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Bill Quick on CA vs. Amazon

http://dailypundit.com/?p=41973

Somebody ran the numbers and reached the conclusion I immediately suspected. Driving away Amazon is going to result in a serious loss of tax revenue rather than the intended gain.

It’s like trying to get through grocery shopping with a grabby toddler in the cart.

Eric

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TSA – another astonishing gaffe

Message Body:

Dear Jerry,

I am sure you have read this, and probably had a flood of email about it too, but there is a story in today’s LA Times about a man making flights with someone else’s expired boarding pass and no valid id. He was detected (but not arrested) after passengers ‘complained that the man seated in 3E reeked of body odor’. I find it difficult to comment on this – I am filled with outrage over the indignities I have endured in the name of flight security, and incensed that this man was allowed to travel (apparently many times) like this.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0701-airport-security-20110630,0,2315584.story

Regards,

Dave Checkley

PS I find the new site layout interesting. It is very good for reading the most current stuff, but when I went back and tried to reread a whole week I found myself wishing that the order was reversed.

PPS I probably should have done a separate email on this, except that my comment is so slight. Analog are running a serial (Energized) by Edward M. Lerner on Space Solar Power (and terrorists hijacking the system and frying various industrial complexes on earth). I suppose it is a cautionary against this technology, although I haven’t read the final installment yet.

I am trying to figure out how to set things up as we used to do. Some read this daily or several times a day. Others once or twice a week. Clearly the old order was better for those who come here at intervals not several times a day. We will see what we can do. There must be a way.

It’s very hard to turn a solar power satellite into a sun gun. That was one of the first things we thought of back in the original Boeing proposal I worked on. A long time ago. Sun guns require high energy densities and the ability to keep the beam collimated when it is off target. That’s pretty hard to do even if you are the legitimate owner of the SSPS, and we don’t think hijackers can do it at all, whether they hijack the ground control room or actually get to space… As Wina Sturgeon asked me once, the only way I know of to make a nuclear power plant explode with a nuclear blast is to smuggle in a nuke…

As to TSA and its kabuki security theater, why are you surprised?

Mail 681 Friday July 1, 2011 – 2

Global Mean Temperature Anomalies

Message Body:

Dr. Pournelle:

I saw where you stated that you haven’t found a good reference for the method of how they make the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly. The first thing to realize is that there is no one method used. The three major surface air temperature datasets; National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), NASA GISS (GISS) and the Hadley/CRU (HadCRUT) all use different methods. However there is some basic similarities across them. For one they all divide the globe into 5° x 5° grid squares. Second they find an average for each grid square. Since the grid squares closet to the poles are smaller area wise compared to the ones closer to the equator when combining the grid they use a weighting system so that the larger squares do not become statistically dominant in the resulting Global Temperature Anomaly. To see how each dataset takes the quality controlled raw data and makes the grid averages you need to read the papers they are based on.

The easiest one IMHO to find and read is the NASA GISS documentation here:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

It is based on the series of papers by Dr. Hansen and you will find the links to those papers at that webpage.

For HadCRUT you can find the names of the papers they are based:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#filfor

The major papers to review are Jones et al 1999 (no link provided) and Brohan et al 2006 (link provided to PDF)

For NCDC there is their analysis here:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php#grid

However the reference section hasn’t been updated to the new version that the analysis is based on:

Menne and Williams 2009 ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-williams2009.pdf

and Menne et al 2009 : ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2009.pdf

As to the Satellites they work completely different and I haven’t found yet how they do them exactly. For the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) you would have to contact Dr. Roy Spencer of Dr. John Christy.

For the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) dataset you would have to check on their website on who to contact: http://www.remss.com/contact_rss/contact_rss.html

Hope this is helpful

Sincerely Robert Allaband

Thank you. I am having trouble following some of the links, but that may be due to where I am. I still have seen no discussion of how these methods are chosen and how and why the weights are assigned to the various cells, nor have I seen any discussion of what methods are used to compensate for the loss of some of the data, such as when all of Siberia didn’t report for a month. By discussion I mean an explanation at the level of “scientifically educated tax payer who is expected to go without some discretionary luxury in order to pay for this” – ie, an explanation of why certain procedures are used, and why the results are often contrary to intuition.

For example, it may be obvious to NASA that last year was the second hottest year ever, but to the outside observer this is more a function of where you measured what, and what weights are given to the various measurements. It was pretty cold in many places. It was cold and wet in others. Surely out of the billions we pay for these models, they could spare a bright graduate student who can explain just what we are paying for? But perhaps I ask for too much.

Mail 681 Friday Jule 1, 2011 – 1

This is an attempt to publish Mail. I made up a package last night but Word informed me that I could not publish it. It gives no explanations, and Help was as useful as Microsoft Help usually is. I have no idea whether there is something in one of the mail items, or if I inadvertently put in a bad character. I am going to publish this several times (assuming I can do so at all) adding mail to it each time in a series of tests. Apologies to those getting multiple feeds.

All right. That worked. Now to start adding some mail.

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All right. I pasted one of the unpublishable letters from last night. I was promptly told that I cannot publish. I tried eliminating my reply and it still will not publish. First see if this will publish –

And it does. Now to see if I can paste in any letter at all and get it to publish. This will not be an organized mail session.

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Subject: America saving California

Dr. Pournelle

Now to the point you mentioned that America might save California from itself where they are voting themselves largess. The question really should be: “Who is going to save America?”

Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation in testimony in front of the Senate Budget Committee on March 9, 2011 showed that right now that 36% of filers do not pay income tax and that shortly that number will be almost 40% due to tax credits that the Democrat controlled Congress passed and the President signed into law:

[quote]In 2008, these tax rebates boosted the number of nonpayers to nearly 52 million, or roughly 36 percent of all tax filers. Moreover, the rebates boosted the maximum income for nonpayers to more than $56,700. In the absence of the rebates, the threshold would have been roughly $44,500.

When the final IRS data is tallied for tax years 2009 and 2010, it is likely that the number of nonpayers could approach 40 percent due to President Obama’s making-work-pay credit, first-time homebuyer credit, and American Opportunity tax credit. As a rule of thumb, we can now expect that the typical family of four earning up to $50,000 will owe no income taxes.[5] [End Quote] http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/27099.html

So as you can see asking America to save California is like asking the blind to lead the blind.

Robert Allaband

Oh, I am aware of the irony here. The only thing that can save the United States, or California, is what my father used to call an economic dose of salts; and at the moment that is politically impossible. We are not so bad off as Greece where they riot because the retirement age for civil servants may be set to 55 instead of 50, and there is insistence on raises and more spending even long after they have gone broke, but it’s close. The political leadership in both California and Washington has built a tax and spend machine that is ruthless, and any attempt to cut back anything is met with fiery opposition, and the claim that this is a preference for the rich over – the kids, the poor, the sick, nurses, teachers, anyone other than the political organizations which forcibly collect dues and make big donations to political campaign funds, which are of course the main beneficiaries of this system. Boss Tweed used to fix the potholes and actually provide some services for the constituents: Los Angeles has managed to have all the high salaries, exchanges of favors, bureaucracies within bureaucracies, and the rest of it and still be the pothole capital of California. Probably there is a lobby of autorepair shops that donates to keep the potholes unfilled, and God how the money flows in…

We all know that in the past decades the cost per pupil in the schools has doubled while the effectiveness of our K-12 schools has been going down and down. We expect it. But any attempt to cut back on all the money spent, or to introduce some form of productivity testing to the schools, is always an attack on the teachers. The only remedy to bad schools is to throw in more money. We don’t have any more money, so we must raise more money, with taxes, or borrowing, or balancing the budget by putting in an item on how we expect money from the Easter Bunny. Charlie Sheffield and I described a school system in Higher Education that was seen as a horrible slur on the school system. It seems to have been prophetic, and if it was in error, it was an understatement of just how awful things can get.

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fusion space “drive”

Message Body:

Jerry,

 I saw this interesting tidbit about a potential fusion space drive in and article on the IEEE Spectrum magazine on line site. It is pretty brief, but informative description of a non-continuous fusion reaction used for a space drive based on boron as fuel (since it is low on neutrons). It produces significantly more power than is input by a pulsed laser.

 http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/
a-fusion-thruster-for-space-travel/0

 The NASA scientist who is working on this said he thought it would take 10 years to make it usable as a space drive.

 Joe Kubler

NOTE: this published, but when I attempted a reply I got the cannot be published message. I am trying again, first with this note. Then I will try to do a reply.

I used a boron fusion drive in a story some decades ago, after I visited Los Alamos and talked to the project director. There were high hopes for fusion as an interplanetary drive system. Other projects got higher priorities and I have not followed this, but it is good to see that work still continues. This isn’t Heinlein’s torch ship, but there’s enough ISP to generate interplanetary commerce.

Comment: that worked and published. Now to see if I can color it.

Apparently an attempt to color the QUOTE style before publishing renders the entire document unpublishable; but if I use quote style, publish, THEN color the quote style and publish again, it works. Of course that raises the question, should I bother with the color. The quote style certainly makes it clear which remarks are mine and which are the readers.

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Not so! Not so!

Reads like an Oslo editorial, about 1100.

http://www.economist.com/node/18897425 http://www.economist.com/node/18897425

Steven J. Dunn

Or the Mandarins dealing with the Chinese Treasure Fleet that discovered Africa in the time of Vasco de Gama. But it is not so, we will have interplanetary commerce.

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The Sixth War

We’re back in Somalia and we now have six wars.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-drones-target-two-leaders-of-somali-group-allied-with-al-qaeda/2011/06/29/AGJFxZrH_story.html?hpid=z1

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Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Bush took terrible advice regarding Aidid, who had previously had every indication that he was “our man” in Somalia, and who undertook to restore some order. Operation Gothic Serpent was a terrible idea: there was no need to arrest Aidid, who was the most popular leader in the region and who had at least some notions of western values (his son was educated in the US). The result was a terrible war of all against all, with the US exacerbating the situation as we often do when we send in leaders who know little of the local area – and worse, who have not studied the classical documents of political philosophy and reality, starting with Aristotle. We paid a price in Somalia but the people there paid worse. And the beat goes on.

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Instaneous Cheap Memory

Another game changer from IBM. I don’t want to wait 5 years, I want it NOW.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/embargo-ibm-develops-instantaneous-memory-100x-faster-than-fl/

–Jerry

Fascinating. I want it now, too. Things flow here so…

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