Chaos Manor View, Thursday, March 10, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo beat a word class – some would sat world champion – professional Go master two games in a row; the first win was surprising, the second astonishing. South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol was certainly astonished. It had been assumed previously that it would take years for a computer program to win at Go, since Go requires a far more subtle strategic sense than chess. The algorithm for the AlphaGo program is essentially self-teaching: the program plays against good players, using random strategies and moves until it is fairly good at the game, after which two copies of the program play against each other, learning from each game. It is anthromorphising to say the program begins to understand the game, but that is what it seems like.

The implications for Artificial Intelligence are profound. Go has long been considered a far more difficult game to master than chess; some thought that a computer would never beat a Go Master.

We move to the next phase of the Republican nomination process; Trump tries to be more Presidential, Cruz moderates his vicious attacks on Trump, and leaves the negative campaigning to the main stream media, possibly supplemented by PACs; but the MSM can be relied on to be sure the attacks on Trump are unremitting.

The country club Republicans are faced with a problem; how to nominate one of their own, when Trump gathers more delegates than they can, given that 2/3 of the party does not want to go where they have been leading. The Republicans cannot win if Mr. Trumps 1/3 of the party simply stays home; but then Trump cannot beat Hillary if the country club third sits it out – or for that matter, if Cruz’s quarter to a third doesn’t play.

Romney’s strange appearance with his anti-Trump blast was a declaration of war, and indicates that some of the establishment thinks that if they can get the nomination for Mr. Romney – this time for sure! — by attracting all the “I’m not Trump” votes they are still in the game. And a number of them would rather be in opposition in a Hillary/Democrat regime than see Trump win.

I would think they – and all of us – would be better with Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress and Trump in the White House. There would be much negotiation – deals – but the result is likely to be as successful as when Speaker Newt Gingrich negotiated with President Bill Clinton to yield cuts in entitlements, and a balanced budget. That certainly beats what happened after Newt gave to speakership to someone else and it was Republican Speakers negotiating with a Republican President, and we slid into an ever more massive debt.

Interesting times. Republican leaders probably win if they can work together, and lose otherwise. Meanwhile the rest of us don’t have much choice but to keep taking it as matters are decided in smoke filled rooms…

Google AI leaves world Go champion ‘grim and ashen’ after second game (MN)

By Ethan Baron / March 10, 2016 at 11:32 AM

After his second straight loss to a computer, world Go champion Lee Sedol would do well to ignore comments made by the last guy to get whupped by Google’s AlphaGo program in the ancient Chinese board game. “In China, Go is not just a game. It is also a mirror on life,” Fan Hui, Go champion in Europe, told the journal Nature after losing to AlphaGo in October.  “We say if you have a problem with your game, maybe you also have a problem in life.”

Lee, as a Korean, and a winner of 18 world Go championships, may be immune to such thinking — but if he loses the next game in the best-of-five series, he loses out on the $1 million prize, and that’s bound to hurt.

AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence program developed in Google’s DeepMind unit, vanquished Lee in games on Wednesday and Thursday in Seoul, South Korea.

“Yesterday I was surprised but today it’s more than that — I am speechless,” Lee said in a press conference after his second beat-down. “I admit that it was a very clear loss on my part. From the very beginning of the game I did not feel like there was a point that I was leading.”

The New York Times described Lee as “grim and ashen” following Thursday’s defeat.

AlphaGo’s conquests demonstrate the astounding advance of AI technology — it had been widely believed in computer science communities that AI was a decade away from beating a top Go player.

Lee and AlphaGo now have a one-day break, with Game 3 scheduled for Saturday.

“The third game is not going to be easy for me,” Lee said.

Google has said that if its software wins the match, the $1 million prize will go to UNICEF, Go associations and charities.

A picture of one possible future:

The Skills of Human Interaction Will Become Most Valuable in the Future    (nyt)

Geoff Colvin, a senior editor at large for Fortune Magazine, is the author of “Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will.”

March 9, 2016

AlphaGo’s victory over Go champion Lee Se-dol reportedly shocked artificial intelligence experts, who thought such an event was 10 to 15 years away. But if the timing was a surprise, the outcome was not. On the contrary, it was inevitable and entirely foreseeable. 

Playing complex games, even the most complex game ever invented, is precisely what computers do supremely well. Just as they beat the world champions at checkers and then chess, they were destined to beat the champion at Go. It’s a game of clear rules, and while winning required new forms of computing that rely on a computer that can learn from experience, a machine will eventually best all humans at tasks of this kind.

Yet I don’t believe, as some do, that human defeats like this one presage an era of mass unemployment in which awesomely able computers leave most of us with nothing to do. Advancing technology will profoundly change the nature of high-value human skills and that is threatening, but we aren’t doomed. 

The skills of deep human interaction, the abilities to manage the exchanges that occur only between people, will only become more valuable. Three of these skills stand out: The first, the foundation of the rest, is empathy, which is more than just feeling someone else’s pain. It’s the ability to discern what another person is thinking or feeling, whatever it may be, and to respond in an appropriate way. 

The second is creative problem solving in groups. Research on group effectiveness shows that the key isn’t team cohesion or motivation or even the smartest member’s IQ; rather, it’s the social sensitivity of the members, their ability to read one another and keep anyone from dominating. 

The third critical ability, somewhat surprisingly, is storytelling, which has not traditionally been valued by organizations. Charts, graphs and data analysis will continue to be important, but that’s exactly what technology does so well. To change people’s minds or inspire them to act, tell them a story.

These skills, though basic to our humanity, are fundamentally different from the skills that have been the basis of economic progress for most of human history: Logic, knowledge and analysis, which we learned from textbooks and in classrooms, are now skills being commoditized by advancing technology. By contrast, the skills of deep human interaction address the often irrational reality of how human beings behave, and we find them not in textbooks but inside ourselves. As computers master ever more complexity, that’s where we’ll find the source of our continued value.

American Workers Rank Last in Problem Solving with Technology     (journal)

• By 
• Steve Rosenbush
  •   Good morning. Much has been written about the trouble that American companies have finding and retaining tech workers. It seems that this skills gap, which is at the top of the agenda for many CIOs, reflects a much deeper problem in the U.S., where workers rank last among 18 industrialized countries when it comes to using technology to solve problems.

The consequences of that emerging competitive disadvantage are energizing the volatile undercurrent of this year’s presidential race, the WSJ reports.

Stephen Provasnik, the U.S. technical adviser for the International Assessment for Adult Competency said the results of a global survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reflect flagging literacy and numeracy skills, which are the fundamental tools needed to score well on the survey. “This is the only country in the world where it’s OK to say ‘I’m not good at math,’ ” he said. “That’s just not acceptable in a place like Japan.” CIOs, how is the skills gap affecting your organization?

Good news for geeks?

Dear Jerry:

I laughed out loud on reading your post about the Florida Senate treating computer coding as a foreign language. A Senator is quoted as saying “It’s ahead of its time….”

Such subterfuge to avoid learning to speak and read a foreign language has been in place for more than half a century.

In September 1964, Brown university changed its language requirements for the Ph. D. in physics. We were allowed to substitute a knowledge of Fortran for one of the two foreign languages previously required of Ph. D. candidates. Thanks to my undergraduate German classes, I managed to test out of one language by translating a scientific paper from German to English. For my second language I took Applied Math 101 (Digital Computer Programming) and Applied Math 102 (Theory of Advanced Programming). The first was mostly a course in Fortran using the IBM mainframe. I never saw a computer, just green coding sheets that someone else keypunched. The 2nd course was mostly in SNOBOL using a teletype terminal connected to a mainframe some fifty miles away in Cambridge, Mass. Thus, I satisfied the requirement for two foreign languages in my first year of graduate studies.

I remain largely illiterate in foreign languages. Fortunately my son did not inherit my aversion to languages as he works overseas and is fluent in the language of the countries he works in thanks to intensive courses provided by the American government.

In this case, the federal government knows far better than the schools (or at least far better than the Florida Senate) why real foreign languages are important and why computer coding is not a valid substitute.

No doubt there will be squabbling in Florida about what constitutes computer coding. I’m helping my granddaughter program her Lego robots using the Lego Labview system. It’s a purely visual programming environment without a single line of traditional code.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

making learning a software program equal to learning a foreign language

Very Very Very important.

By the time kids leave high school they should know at least one 4th generation language such as python, enough electronics to understand and use an embedded microprocessor system, how to layout a printed circuit board, and how to design and 3D print physical objects.

There is more opportunity to design new things than ever before, but you much speak the language!

—

Phil Tharp

Hack Brief: ISIS Data Breach Identifies 22,000 Mem
May they all soon serve a useful purpose as fertilizer…
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/hack-brief-isis-data-breach-identifies-22000-members/?mbid=social_fb

Robert Glaub

: FBI Problems

Well this is amusing. Funny how corruption is openly discussed in the news like it is in every third world nation I’ve lived in.

<.>

The aggressive posture of the FBI under Director James Comey is becoming a political problem for the White House.

The FBI’s demand that Apple help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers has outraged Silicon Valley, a significant source of political support for President Obama and Democrats.

Comey, meanwhile, has stirred tensions by linking rising violent crime rates to the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on police violence and by warning about “gaps” in the screening process for Syrian refugees.

Then there’s the biggest issue of all: the FBI’s investigation into the private email server used by Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of State and the leading contender to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

</>

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/272290-comeys-fbi-makes-waves

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Feminine glaciers & global climate warming change

Glacier ice examined as a double-X chromosome entity adversely influenced by masculine-induced-colonialism climate change… or something.
From the actual abstract:
“Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”
PJ Media has more
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/03/07/the-most-grotesquely-comical-academic-paper-ever-published/?singlepage=true
Link to the press release from the university
http://around.uoregon.edu/content/glaciers-melt-more-voices-research-are-needed
Jim Nations

Why Jeff Bezos is finally ready to talk about taking people to space (WP)

By Christian Davenport March 8 at 6:58 PM

KENT, Washington—The company has been secretive so long that even the spokesperson who greeted the media for a tour here Tuesday said, “You’re not dreaming… you are really at the Blue Origin headquarters.”

On a tour of the facility, Jeff Bezos, who founded the company in 2000, and who talks about the day “when millions of people are living and working in space,” showed off the expansive manufacturing site—and the space collection he has amassed over the years.

The lobby has a model of the Star Trek Enterprise that was used in the original motion picture. There is a Russian space suit on display and a proposed space station that was never built. Quotes, including one by Leonardo da Vinci, line the walls.

But the entrance is not the main attraction. As he approached the factory floor, where the company builds its New Shepard vehicle and rocket engines, Bezos said, “here’s where the magic happens.” (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

After some recent test flights that successfully flew to the edge of space, and then landed, Bezos said the company may be ready to fly passengers in 2018 if everything goes according to plan. It is aiming to begin test flights with humans next year.

Since the vehicle would fly autonomously, the test pilots would really be more like test passengers, there to pay attention to the customer experience, he said. Is the flight too noisy? Is it comfortable? Then, once the company is confident in the safety and reliability of the pilotless vehicle, paying passengers—Bezos did not reveal a price— could climb aboard to fly just past the boundary of space, see the curvature of the Earth through large windows, and then unbuckle from their seats to experience a few minutes of weightlessness.

Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s company, also plans to take tourists to the edge of space. Virgin has said its goal is to become the world’s first space line. Asked if Blue Origin wanted to be first, Bezos said: “I want us to be safe. If we end up being first that would be fine. But that’s not the goal.”

But before those flights happen, he said, “We’ll test the every living day lights out of this thing.”

Last April, the company completed the first successful test flight of New Shepard, when it reached Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, and soared 58 miles high, very nearly to what’s considered the edge of space. Then, in November, it launched again. This time it passed the boundary of space, and it also was able to land the first stage of its rocket back on land. Then last month, it launched and landed the same first stage—showing that it could be flown more than once.

Bezos has called reusable rockets the “Holy Grail” of space flight. For decades the first stages of rockets, used to generate the massive thrust needed to escape Earth’s gravity, were ditched into the ocean after powering the spacecraft toward space, never to be used again. But Bezos and others, including SpaceX’s Elon Musk, have been working to develop rockets that would fly, and land, so that they could be reused. Only about 550 people have been to space, and if Bezos and others can successfully perfect the art of rocket recycling, it could lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost of space flight—and potentially open up the cosmos to the masses.

Asked why the company was finally opening up after all these years, Bezos said his motto was “we’ll talk about Blue Origin when we have something to talk about.”

“Space is really easy to overhype,” he continued. “There are very few things in the world where the ratio of attention you get to what you’ve actually done, can be extreme.”

Nobody paid much attention to Amazon in its first years, either.

GE wants to use CO2 pollution to make huge solar batteries

Two big problems have been vexing environmental scientists for decades: How to store solar energy for later use, and what to do with CO2 that’s been captured and sequestered from coal plants? Scientists from General Electric (GE) could solve both those problems at once by using CO2 as a giant “battery” to hold excess energy. The idea is to use solar power from mirrors to heat salt with a concentrated mirror array like the one at the Ivanpah solar plant in California. Meanwhile, CO2 stored underground from, say, a coal plant is cooled to a solid dry ice state using excess grid power.

When extra electricity is needed at peak times, especially after the sun goes down, the heated salt can be tapped to warm up the solid CO2 to a “supercritical” state between a gas and solid. It’s then funneled into purpose built turbines (from GE, naturally) which can rapidly generate power. The final “sunrotor” design (a prototype is shown below) would be able to generate enough energy to power 100,000 homes, according to GE.

The design could also tap wasted heat from gas-fired power plants, making them more efficient. GE senior engineer Stephen Sanborn thinks such a scheme would more than double the output of those systems, reducing the cost from $250 per megawatt-hour to $100. “It is so cheap because you are not making the energy, you are taking the energy from the sun or the turbine exhaust, storing it and transferring it,” he says. In addition, the system would return up to 68 percent of the stored energy back to the grid, much more than the 61 percent of current gas-fired systems.

While the system is complex and requires expertise in refrigeration, heat-transfer, energy storage and chemical engineering, GE has in-house researchers in all those fields. In the short term, the technology could make gas plants 25 to 50 percent more efficient by tapping exhaust waste, significantly reducing CO2 output. Looking ahead, Sanborn thinks that the energy storage system could be put into commercial use in as little as five to 10 years. “We’re not talking about three car batteries here,” he says. “The result is a high-efficiency, high-performance renewable energy system that will reduce the use of fossil fuels for power generation.”

‘How did the Vikings turn wool into functional sailcloth?’

<http://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/no-wool-no-vikings>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

 

This thing makes the Aardvark look like a masterpiece of aeronautical engineering.

<http://warisboring.com/articles/the-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-is-still-a-huge-mess/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

As a long time advocate of nuclear fission power, I find this interesting; as cost/benefit analysis date it is priceless.  Three Mile Island was an unintended test to destruction; expensive, but bearable.  This was another.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329126

Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima (EE Times)

Junko Yoshida

3/8/2016 00:01 AM EST 

It’s been five years since a massive 2011 earthquake hit Japan, including a devastating tsunami that led to the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

So, where stands the aftermath of the power plant disaster? Has the crisis subsided? Or has official Japan — as so often happens — papered over lingering problems with news reports that insist, “No one was killed by radiation, because levels outside the plant itself were too low”?

More important, what lessons, if any, have we learned?

EE Times, five years ago, published a special digital edition, entitled “The Day the Lights Went Out in Japan.”

Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima (EE Times)

No argument in the least. In fact it pretty much emphasizes my point. If the danger is unpredictable and can go long periods of time in between cropping up, humans will ignore it in favor of the benefits found in the site. Never mind the destruction that can be wreaked when the danger turns back up again.

IIRC, there were ancient monuments near one of the populated areas destroyed by the tsunami, commemorating the dead of a prior tsunami. Said monuments were ignored by the locals, because “they’d always been there.”
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima (EE Times)

The problem I have with both people like Prof. Ewing and government reactions in the western world is I don’t trust them. They all have agendas. Nuclear power is the devil incarnate to these folks. No mention of the comparative damage of say, fluorine plant leaks and how many people they kill.  I suspect, but have no proof, that cleaning up and containing the mess is much easier than they are making it sound. I also don’t like the idea that it happened, we think, 1000 years ago, therefore build to that spec. By those standards, we should all have private Arks to protect against the next global flood. I think Fukushima was very well designed and next time they will put the backup generators on higher ground or even go to some other form of power that is not susceptible to flooding.  
Phil

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, March 04, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

The week has been devoured by locusts and time consuming misfortunes; a series of unfortunate events. The last one was caused by my own stupidity: I had written several hundred words for this, rather painfully as I am typing with two fingers, staring at the keyboard, and whenever I look up at the screen it is covered with words underlined in wavy red, even though I have taught autocorrect to handle most of my most common errors (mostly caused by hitting two keys at once). Then, when I was trying to research some numbers, I kept getting popups from some malware that snuck in somehow and kept making me offers to clean up my machine. I found one program among those in control panel that I have not installed, and don’t want, but apparently simply removing it wasn’t enough. I ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, which my advisors assure me is safe if not complete, and lo! it found 37 questionable files, a dozen of them malware.

I ran them, and of course it wanted to reset, which I did, forgetting that I had an unsaved Windows file; and for the first time in years, Windows simply shut down, the system reset, and while the template I used to set the file up was saved, none of the hour and a half’s work I had done was saved. Anywhere. Word has never done that to me before.

So here I am, recreating it. And yes. I know Word is supposed to save everything, or at least a draft. It didn’t.

We have had Super Tuesday and another debate. The Republican National Committee has taken our money to launch Mitt Romney in a fiery speech denouncing Trump, as if any Trump supporter would listen to, heed, or be influenced by anything the man they stayed home thus electing Obama said. Of all people to appeal to reason they chose perhaps the least effective; and they wonder why a third – actually two thirds – of the Party do not care to be led where they think they are leading us.

In the debate Cruz, whose supporters have no great love for the country club establishment Republican elites, attacked Trump repeatedly. It is curious to speculate why. He is not likely to get Trump out of the race, and unless Trump endorses him he has lost about a third of the Party base, plus a lot of Reagan Democrats.

At least all four have now said they would support the nominee no mater which of them it will be. That’s better than in 1968 when the country club Republican elite cut the ticket and repudiated Goldwater, thus giving us Lyndon Johnson, The Great Society, and a boatload of entitlements to throttle the economy. For Romney to tell us that Trump’s no conservative is about as interesting as for the neocons to tell us that.

Fred

http://fredoneverything.org/reviving-napoleons-army-cry-havoc-and-let-slip-the-frogs-of-yore/

Fred has salient points here – and states the obvious in more words than this: “We go into new wars fighting the old wars.”  IOW – we don’t learn.  (well he goes even further – we’re too stupid to learn).

But he’s wrong in his basic premise that we conduct war stupidly because we can’t predict the course, or the outcome.   He, like many military ‘genius’ minds neglect to account for the greatest variable on the battlefield (or, even the football field!) – the enemy (other team!) has a say in the course/outcome.  Combine that with true screw-ups and/or brilliant strokes and/or just plain good/bad dumb luck, you can see that predictions are for guidance only, or for calculated risks – certainly not absolutes.  As the old saw goes, no plan survives the first shot.  If anyone could really get the enemy to play to the plan, THAT would be a story! 

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work

It was von Moltke the Elder, creator of the German Great General Staff, who said “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Of course sometimes that doesn’t matter. As General Forrest said in the Civil War, “You get there firstest with the mostest” and you win battles. That’s hardly the only way. Of course, but sometimes the enemy can be overwhelmed.

The necessity for a General Staff came as the industrial revolution overwhelmed to capabilities of military commanders. Napoleon won nearly all his battles, but no one on his staff was his equal; war had become more complex than a single human mind could comprehend. A few writers pretended it was otherwise, as Gordon R. Dickson did in his “Tactics of Mistake,” but that was fiction and like all fiction need only be plausible: appear to be real, but the author controls all the events. In the real world of battle, the enemy gets a vote, as Fred points out.

Of course in the real world, after many mistakes, the United States won: t he Viet Cong was eliminated in South Viet Nam. North Viet Nam continued to build up its forces, and in 1972 sent 150,000 men with as many tanks as the Wehrmacht had in taking France in 1940. The United States honored our alliance, US air and naval forces supported the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam, and the armored corps the North sent down in invasion was utterly defeated; of the 150,000 sent south, fewer than 50,000 managed to return home to the North. The cost in US casualties was under a thousand in a battle that was as large as any we were involved in in Italy in World War II. It was in fact a great victory.

The United States was not defeated in Viet Nam because after 1972 came Watergate, and when in 1975 North Viet Nam, resupplied at some cost by its Soviet allies, sent a similar sized armored army south against a South Viet Nam that was never equipped to fight it without logistic support from its “ally”, the United States of America. Congress, however, had had enough of Nixon’s war and voted 20 cartridges and two hand grenades per man for South Viet Nam; and forbade air and naval support. Effectively abandoned by its ally, Viet Nam accordingly fell to invasion from the North; but the United States military had not lost because we were never engaged. That “war” was lost in Berkeley California and at Kent State, and in the halls of Congress.

For geopolitical reasons, North Viet Nam was allowed to build up and deploy two armored armies; we could see them coming but we did nothing about it. That was not a military decision, just as it was not a military decision to lose as many pilots over Viet Nam as we did in fact lose. You do not win air supremacy by shooting down the enemy’s planes over his own territory. That is like ridding yourself of a swarm of hornets by swatting them one hornet at a time. It doesn’t work, as Reichsmarschal Herman Goering discovered in the Battle of Britain. North Viet Nam had three air bases capable of supporting MIGs; McNamara would never give us permission to attack all three bases at once. I do not know his motives, but that cost lives, and he knew it.

I was once in a three way debate with Allard Lowenstein and McGeorge Bundy. Lowenstein turned to me and said “Jerry, you want to win it and get out.” I nodded agreement. “And I just want to get out. Your government wants to lose it and stay in.” It was one of the few times in my life that I was stunned into silence. He was right, of course.

But I do not think it was the generals and the strategists who lost Viet Nam. It was the political leadership of the United States who dribbled away blood and treasure, never doing enough to win , but sending in more and more.

If you voluntarily commit your soldiers to battle, there must be a desired outcome: some condition of victory. You cannot simply send them in and hope for the best. You must know what you want That is a political decision. It should not be made by the military, and under the Constitution it must not be.

Regarding Codevilla’s essay and your comments:

We have the ability to go into Sunni-stan (as he calls it) and break up the Caliphate. A substantial number of the enemy will be killed, the rest will disperse into the civilian population and wait for us to leave. Then what? You suggest that we have feasible alternatives to deal with the captured territory. We effectively have already tried giving it to Shia-stan, which clearly didn’t work. The possibility of creating a Western friendly Sunni strongman seems remote, given the history outlined by Codevilla. So I have to assume you think we could make an alliance with the Kurds? But how do we know that won’t eventually backfire on us?
With regard to the Kurds, I found this essay interesting:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n05/patrick-cockburn/end-times-for-the-caliphate

Craig

You need to understand that ISIS is unique among our enemies in that they have to have sovereign territory to govern to have any claim to be the caliphate, otherwise they are an insurgent group indistinguishable from others that have existed a long time.

Part of their territory can be given to its inhabitants with a fair degree of  safety; part to the Kurds, some to Jordan.  There are other solutions after they are conquered.  They have declared war on us, and are getting stronger.  Ignoring them will not make them go away.

Incidentally, both Sunni and Shia say of the Kurds, “They are Moslems compared to infidels…”

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

I get the part about a Caliphate needing to hold territory to have any legitimacy.   Codevilla’s essay was about the futility of trying to rely on others in the region to destroy that Caliphate for us.   So… why is it any less misguided to think we can rely on those same players to preserve order (once restored by our troops), and prevent the resurgence of ISIS, or something similar, after we withdraw?

Craig

Destroying the Caliphate is the mission. We leave it to those who live in the Middle East to restore order. We are not nation builders.

Zero-gravity Cat

Jerry,

On page 64 of these rare historical pictures, there is a photo of the zero-gravity cat experiment you have mentioned before.
http://dailybananas.com/5_d_rare_photos_of_history_us_db_1/64/

Reactionless Feline Drive in action?

Best wishes to you and Roberta.

Respectfully,

-Tom B.

Sigh. Yes, we did that once at Brooks as I recall. I think there was some MacAllister involved.

Obama: The Lamest Duck

From a friend…

Always like Victor Davis Hanson:
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=9102#more-9102

If all cultures are equal, why do they hate our culture?

There’s a new way to hijack drones in mid-flight

Researchers have found a new way to hijack some police drones, as first reported by Wired. The attack was developed by researcher Nils Rodday, currently employed by IBM, who will present his findings at the RSA conference this week. By exploiting vulnerabilities in a drone’s telemetry system, Rodday was able to assume control and block out communications from the owner, an attack with potentially broad implications for drones everywhere.

Rodday’s research focuses on a specific model of drone used by police, which he declines to name, but the broader vulnerability may be much more difficult to fix. The attack focuses on the protocol connecting the drone to its controller, which is often left unsecured to ensure that commands reach the drone as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that also means that with the right set of signals, attackers can masquerade as the drone’s owner and take control of the craft. There are a number of established ways to protect against that attack, but it would require rewriting the drone’s wireless protocols, either adding latency or additional hardware to handle the more complex requests.

As drones have grown more popular, there are an increasing number of researchers and companies looking at ways to take them down, occasionally for public safety reasons. Companies like Selex and Batelle are already marketing products to law enforcement officers that would take down potentially threatening drones that stray too close to airports or prisons, although the use of such devices still occupies a legal gray area. Open vulnerabilities are rarely consistent across different models, while broader spectrum jamming violates FCC regulations, often leaving responders with few options for bringing down a drone without endangering public safety.

• SourceWired

http://www.zdnet.com/article/these-microscopic-robots-swim-in-blood-to-diagnose-disease/

These microscopic robots swim in blood to diagnose disease

Fifty years after Raquel Welch to her Fantastic Voyage, nanomachines are a reality.

By Greg Nichols for Robotics | March 3, 2016 — 11:25 GMT (03:25 PST) |

Picture a robot. You’re probably envisioning something fairly substantial that goes beep boop bop. But a lot of early work is being done on nanomachines–robots so tiny they might not be visible to the naked eye.

Researchers at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, recently published positive results after building a robot out of a 20-nanometer gold particle. Short and long strands of DNA attached to the particle form the functional mechanism of their little machine, which is designed to detect diseases in a blood sample.

The long DNA strands contain the genetic sequences of whatever disease the bot is testing for. The short strands carry fluorescent signal reporters. If biomarkers for the disease are present in a blood sample, the machine “switches on.”

When activated, the bot is designed to use its long DNA strands to cut the short DNA strands, activating fluorescent signals. The result is a glowing bot, which indicates a positive result.It’s that process, which happens autonomously, that makes these little specks true robots.

Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman was one of the first to postulate about manmade molecular machines way back in the 1950s. But the technology to make those devices a reality is only now within reach of advanced labs.

[snip]

‘All it took was the biggest publishing companies in the world deliberately murdering their own share of the market. And it wasn’t even true.’

<http://genedoucette.me/2016/02/the-collective-madness-of-the-publishing-industry/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

: CCP: The Party is Over

Isn’t one of the platforms of communism giving everyone a job? Or does everyone already have a job when they take over during “The Revolution”? But, even so, while using the “socialist road” to get to “communism”, won’t babies be born? How will they get jobs? If nothing else, should a communist government, run by “workers”, be able to provide jobs for it’s people?

While we all know China has not really been “communist” for some time

— I personally saw the special economic zones during my travels in China — I found this news beyond interesting:

<.>

China aims to lay off 5-6 million state workers over the next two to three years as part of efforts to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution, two reliable sources said, Beijing’s boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades.

China’s leadership, obsessed with maintaining stability and making sure redundancies do not lead to unrest, will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors in the next 2-3 years.

The overall figure is likely to rise as closures spread to other industries and even more funding will be required to handle the debt left behind by “zombie” state firms.

The term refers to companies that have shut down some of their operations but keep staff on their rolls since local governments are worried about the social and economic impact of bankruptcies and unemployment.

</>

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-layoffs-exclusive-idUSKCN0W33DS

So, the CCP cannot or will not continue paying workers without purpose to not revolt against the party. Now, what does this mean?

This does not look good. It’s “only” 5-6 million. Which, in Chinese terms, isn’t that much and these may be spread across a wide area.

I’d need to look deeper into the statistical distributions and the cohorts involved to say anything with certainty. However, a few general hypotheses are possible:

1. It could mean the CCP believes it’s losing its grip; they’re out of money and have no choice but to institute a controlled crisis; here comes the pain. This could put the CCP in a position where their heads are on the table or they start a war.

2. It could mean the CCP is confident it its ability to quell unrest and no longer feels that it needs — or will need — to pay potential malcontents. This could include blaming someone else for their policies — guess who?

3. It could mean that we have complete confusion and panic and the CCP is not sure if they’re losing their grip or if they have the strength to deal with social unrest. In this situation, anything can happen and the worst of it — for us — was already listed in points one and two.

I think we’re looking at an acceleration of a powerful index of factors I’ve been following for some time. I wrote a country analysis report on China and I don’t have time to get into, or even summarize, the points here and you wouldn’t need or want to bother with all that data anyway.

But, my previous analysis revealed the CCP will either collapse or find a way to compete internationally in such a way its population is distracted and the collapse is forestalled. That competition can come in many aspects, but war seems a likely manifestation. War with whom?

Well, the Chinese generals threaten to nuke us pre-emptively every so often, as do the Russians. It’s worth considering.

However, the CCP has shown canny ability to move at the right speed.

The “right” speed is important. It is necessary not to go at the speed you think you should go, not to go at the speed others want you to go, but to go “at the speed of man”. China is able to do that.

While these indicators and hypotheses are sound, proper handling of the conditions will cause those hypotheses to shift.

Chinese leadership can avoid war and they can avoid losing their heads, but it gets harder with each day. However, we can take hope that CCP leadership is aware of the problem and working toward a solution. The CCP is preferable to war and it is also preferable to a Chinese civil war. Though I think we all know which better suits us.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

A disturbing corollary to Pournelle’s Law of Computer Troubleshooting.

<http://www.cnet.com/news/usb-type-c-cable-problems/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Good old Obama doesn’t stop does he?

<.>

The White House is quietly pushing for an increase in refugees from Syria, despite new concerns raised by state and county officials that federal help is often missing when they arrive.

</>

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-wants-increase-of-syrian-refugees/article/2584498

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, February 29, 2016

Leap Year Day

Daesh/ISIS having murdered some Americans and continuing to instigate the murder of others, the US government’s quintessential duty is to exterminate any and all who have any part in it. Any number of US politicians make noises more or less in this direction. But he who wills the ends must also will the means. That is the first touchstone of seriousness. The second is like unto it: those means cannot be out-sourced. Minding our safety is our inalienable responsibility.

Angelo Codevilla

“We came, we saw, he died!” she exclaimed.

Hillary Clinton

on hearing that Libyan dictator Khadafy was dead.

The Oscars are over. The theme was diversity, after the Academy failed to nominate a single black. The result was mixed, with what seemed to me to be an extraordinary number of black presenters hastily pressed into service, with varying degrees of sophistication. It seemed very long, although it ended on time. During the requiem scroll of last year’s deceased I did not find David Groll’s guitar presentation appropriate, but he was dressed in a way appropriate to this year’s men’s clothing, which was often bizarre. Apparently one resentment is directed at traditional formal clothing for men; women, of course, often dress to be spectacular.

Lady Gaga did not wear a meat gown, but was quite well attired; I’m not qualified to assess her rather traditional performance because I couldn’t hear it very well — my hearing, not her singing –but it got a standing ovation and the audience seemed to be quite moved.

Angelo Codevilla has, in his three part series in the Asian Times on Romancing the Sunni  — http://atimes.com/2015/12/romancing-the-sunni-a-us-policy-tragedy-in-three-acts-act-i/ — given us the best summary and critique I have seen of the modern situation and critical past events in the Middle East. I have chosen a paragraph from part three – the third act – as an epigraph for today’s view. Obviously it is one I agree with. For those willing to spend the time, I recommend all three parts (parts two and three are linked at the end of the part one link I have given.)

Act One gives some basic history and takes us through the initial US actions in Iraq;. Act II is incomprehensible if you are not familiar with the events of Act I, but takes us from the “Surge” to the present. It also says much about the wisdom of the surge, and some of its aftereffects. Act Three presents a cold and clear eyed picture of the present situation; it can stand alone for those really familiar with the Middle East, but will be a lot better understood if read after the other two.

I repeat here:

Daesh/ISIS having murdered some Americans and continuing to instigate the murder of others, the US government’s quintessential duty is to exterminate any and all who have any part in it. Any number of US politicians make noises more or less in this direction. But he who wills the ends must also will the means. That is the first touchstone of seriousness. The second is like it: those means cannot be out-sourced. Minding our safety is our inalienable responsibility.

Codevilla says:

Making any foreigner’s concurrence a condition for executing the government’s duty to protect Americans is dereliction. Waiting for Sunni states and potentates to fight the Sunni Islamic State is an excuse that disregards reality. Nor will the Sunni fight for us against the Shia.

The past quarter century’s experience demolishes our establishment’s expectation that the goodwill of the likes of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia can shield us against Iran’s Islamic Republic. No. If the American people are going to be protected against violence from both sides of the Sunni-Shia divide, it will be strictly by our own government’s wise warfare.

That is a true statement. I do not believe either the Democratic or Republican establishment(s) find it appealing. The neocons want nation building. The democrat establishment policy is hard to understand, but seems to be a little at a time, waiting to be drawn into conflicts too late with too little.

I said when ISIS first emerged that it must be, not defeated, but destroyed. I said at the time that I could do that with the 101^st Airborne and the A-10 Warthogs. Of course I meant that I know commanders who could do it; I am not a General. At the beginning of last Summer I concluded that it would take two divisions and the tactical air power – A-10’s and some supporting air superiority support.

Last Fall the ante was up: it needed three divisions, all the A-10’s, and considerable air supremacy forces to take out Surface to Air missile forces.

It will now take a division of heavy armor in addition to all those forces. By next January it will be more.

Codevilla says

The first truth of war is that nations fight only for their own sake. Lately, the US government has led the American people into wars for other peoples’ sake. Americans will have no more of that. But Americans are eager enough to exterminate Daesh/ISIS. Were the US government to commit to doing that, it would be easy enough to find governments that would cooperate in that work for their own reasons and in their own ways.

There are a lot of first truths of war. His is important. There are others, and it is a fun but fruitless exercise among strategic theorists to debate which should come first. My own is: If you think it will take a platoon send in a company; if you think you need a company, send a regiment; and so forth. This is the true economy of forces: faced with overwhelming force, few enemies will stand. Sun Tzu teaches us to build golden bridges for our enemies; the point being, rational people will run away in the face of superior force, and the more overwhelming the force, the shorter the actual combat, the more efficient the pursuit, and the fewer the casualties you will take.

The United States at present enjoys the capability of opposing ISIS with overwhelming force. It also has feasible alternatives once we have captured ISIS territory: we need not do “nation building” and we have choices as to whom the captive territory and peoples are to be given, and at what price. We will not enjoy those advantages forever

For a picture of Hillary Clinton’s way of thinking: http://nyti.ms/1RlCSWR

Another lengthy reading assignment. Apologies

And considerably more:

US military preparedness

Sent: 2/28/2016 11:51:07 P.M. Central Standard Time
Subj: Re: US military preparedness

This way lies battle bots and clone armies. And if the Star Wars prequels had any purpose at all (most people think they didn’t…), it was to remind us that hackable armies, whether electromechanical or artificial-biological, are not a good thing…

(And whatever else is true, Apple will never be the lowest bidder…)

Of course, when it comes to draftees, hack armies are only marginally better than hackable armies – and a lot less morally defensible.

Two generations of socialist indoctrination by the schools have left us with nothing… if I may expropriate from a private email from one of you, I can understand the desire to break the schools to rubble and sow salt among the ruins. Or as Jerry Pournelle says frequently, we have sown the wind and reap the whirlwind – with the addendum that it appears to be EF3 at a minimum.

Regarding what follows, the quote attributed to Machiavelli is not exact, but is probably extracted and condensed from one or more of the following …

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli

From The Prince

· Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed.

· Ch. 6

· The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.

·      Ch. 12

·

· A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.

· Ch. 14; Variant: A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and it organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

· Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

· Ch. 14

· Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together.

· Ch. 14; Variant: There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not. Nor it is reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not.

· And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.

· Ch. 14

In a message dated 2/24/2016 8:04:03 A.M. Central Standard Time, writes:

Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 3:26 PM
To: friends
Subject: US military preparedness
As received from a friend..
Yeah, we’re done.  The new Dark Ages are beginning.  The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution have failed.  Half the people in the world still have below-average I.Q., and they call the shots, all over the world, for all of us.  It looks like western civilization is over.  God help our kids and grandkids.
The world’s population has a collective mental illness.  It’s not a ”rational process”.  Most people are not rational.    ”I am a rational man, who lives in a rational universe.   All other ways are madness.”
Before all else, be armed.—-Machiavelli

Overhauling the Army for the Age of Irregular Warfare

The U.S. military isn‘t prepared to wage long fights against Islamic State and other enemies.

By Andrew F. Krepinevich
Feb. 18, 2016
On Jan. 29, the National Commission on the Future of the U.S. Army released its report on a wide range of issues confronting the Army. Its more than 60 recommendations addressed details as specific as the proper ratio of attack-helicopter battalions between the active Army and the Reserves. Yet for all its good work, the commission neglected to tackle the Army biggest problem: its declining ability to wage the kind of protracted irregular wars that America enemies increasingly prefer to fight.
The roots of this problem lie chiefly in the social choice the American people made following the Vietnam War to abolish the draft and field the military entirely with volunteers. That decision has become so expensive that it now threatens to limit U.S. defense options.
The shift to a volunteer force seemed logical at the time. A Cold War Army of volunteers would stand guard in Europe and Korea to deter aggression. In the event war came, the National Guard and Reserves would be mobilized and the draft reinstated if necessary. Following the Iraq war that began in 2003, however, the Army found itself in protracted conflicts against irregular forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are the new Vietnams  the Army civilian masters said it didn‘t need to plan for again.
It turns out there is a big difference between attracting volunteers for service in the peacetime Army as opposed to one that sends its soldiers on repeated combat tours. To maintain the numbers of soldiers needed for these wars, compensation had to be increased and the risk of casualties reduced. Since 9/11, the Army personnel costs have increased, on a per-soldier basis, by over 50% after adjusting for inflation.
The Army has also taken unprecedented steps to reduce casualties. For example, it has spent more than $40 billion since 9/11 on heavily armored vehicles, and nearly $20 billion on other ways—such as detection and defusing methods—to reduce the threat of roadside bombs.
Providing protections for soldiers is only going to get harder. Developing and fielding improved vehicle armor to protect soldiers against roadside bombs takes months or years to accomplish. Yet our enemies have consistently found ways—such as simply emplacing larger bombs—to defeat these improvements far more quickly and cheaply than we can counter them. Enemies like al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan are daunting enough. But they have nothing like the firepower possessed by terrorist groups like the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which has tens of thousands of rockets, missiles, mortars and artillery munitions.
The Obama administration response to this challenge has been to reprise No More Vietnams.  Hence the president ordered the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and major force reductions in Afghanistan, and has directed the Pentagon not to size the Army for these kinds of wars.
But to paraphrase Trotsky: While the U.S. may not be interested in irregular warfare, our enemies are. Iran has increased its support of its proxies in the Middle East. Moscow has employed its own proxies to annex Crimea and seize chunks of eastern Ukraine. ISIS has emerged from the power vacuum created by the Army withdrawal from Iraq, while the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan as the U.S. Army footprint there fades.
The administration has now curtailed the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan. But it isn’t clear that the small residual force will be able to do much more than defend itself—thus becoming what the military refers to as a self-licking ice cream cone.” Nor is it clear what a handful of U.S. Special Forces troops can accomplish in the Middle East.
There are ways the Army can address the persistent threat of modern irregular warfare without returning to a draft, which is neither politically feasible nor necessary. It involves investing in better training of allies and partners, in unmanned systems and in special forces. The administration needs to do a better job of identifying partners and supporting its allies in these conflicts. Spending $500 million to field a few Syrian freedom fighters against Bashar Assad does not square with the president injunction to avoid doing stupid stuff. The Kurds, though, have proven to be reliable and effective partners. They deserve more support, and we should look for similar partners to assist. Fortunately Gen. Mark Milley, the Army new chief of staff, is exploring creating specially designed training and advisory brigades for this purpose.
Second, the Army must leverage technology. As the Air Force use of remotely piloted drones has shown, rapid advances are being made in the area of artificial intelligence and robotics. The Army needs to exploit these technologies.
During the Korean and Vietnam wars the Army sought to minimize casualties by substituting firepower for manpower whenever possible. Increasingly the Army will need to send in the droids instead of soldiers whenever possible.
Finally, the Army must concentrate on protecting the size and readiness of its special-operations forces, preserving these high-quality forces to offset the effects of a continuing 20% cut in the active Army size that began in 2012 and should be completed in 2019.
Our enemies are pursuing an effective strategy, creating irregular-warfare forces to exploit our weakness in this form of warfare. The proper response to this challenge is not to abandon the field to our enemies, but to develop our unique advantages and leverage them in ways that transform our weaknesses into a strength.
Mr. Krepinevich, who served in the Army for 25 years, is president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
Original URL: http://www.wsj.com/articles/overhauling-the-army-for-the-age-of-irregular-warfare-1455839486

Fortunately, terminating ISIS does not require a long protracted conflict. ISIS does not exist if it does not have territory to govern; the Moslem Brotherhood is not ISIS. A Caliphate must have a sovereign territory, or it is just another gang of terrorist thugs,

My paper today takes Apple to task for its stand.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-rotten-core-1456696736

Apple’s Rotten Core

CEO Tim Cook’s case for not aiding the FBI’s antiterror effort looks worse than ever.

By

L. Gordon Crovitz

Feb. 28, 2016 4:58 p.m. ET

594 COMMENTS

By refusing to help the FBI unlock the iPhone used by a dead terrorist, Applesucceeded in shifting the debate over privacy and security—but not the way it intended. Apple’s recalcitrance makes it likely technology companies will no longer be allowed to ignore court orders or design devices to evade reasonable searches. The question is whether Congress or the courts will set the new rules.

It also has http://www.pressreader.com/ which tells us The Los Angeles Times has a story of how police all over the country have similar tasks for Apple.

CEO Tim Cook’s test case for Apple is rotten to the core.

Eight Memorable Passages From Apple’s Fiery Response to the FBI

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/26/eight-memorable-passages-from-apples-fiery-response-to-the-fbi/

It’s a legal motion for the ages.

The response Apple lawyers filed Thursday to a court order that the company write software to defeat its own security protocols is exhaustive, fiery, accessible and full of memorable passages.

The lawyers were asking a federal magistrate judge to vacate what they called her “unprecedented and oppressive” order demanding that Apple design and build software to hack into an iPhone used by San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook.

And they were relentless.

Years from now, people will look back and recall:

1. When Apple called the government out for trying to make Apple compromise on its security when the government itself has terrible cyber hygiene:
2. When Apple said the government was stoking fear but was too afraid to make its case before Congress:
3. When Apple said the Department of Justice and the FBI were lying because they knew full well this case isn’t about just one phone.
4. When Apple pointed out the government reset the phone’s password without asking Apple for help first.
5. When Apple told the world about how the government obtained the court order in secret, and then told reporters about it before Apple had a chance to respond:
6. When Apple pointed out that the FBI director was behaving somewhat suspiciously:
7. When Apple pointed out that it couldn’t just write the software then destroy it and forget it ever existed:
8. When Apple spelled out the potential consequences for companies in the future, if the FBI succeeds:

Related:

• New Court Filing Reveals Apple Faces 12 Other Requests to Break Into Locked iPhones
• FBI Says Apple Court Order Is Narrow, But Other Law Enforcers Hungry to Exploit It

Apple Slams Court Order to Hack a Killer’s iPhone, Inflaming Encryption Debate

Outlook 2016 POP Bug

It looks like last week Microsoft updated Outlook 2016, and there is an apparent bug with POP accounts where the setting to retain mail on the server is ignored and all mail is either downloaded, or duplicate downloads occur.

In my case, I discovered all my mail server copies were removed and downloaded to my main computer’s PST file. No emails were lost, but I had no access to my historical mail on my other computers and devices, like my phone. This was particularly annoying since I leave the mail-server as a sort of backup, and I could not reference mail from my phone I had received only an hour earlier.

Google is my friend on a work-around. See: http://wp.josh.com/2016/02/24/outlook-2016s-new-pop3-bug-deletes-your-emails/ and https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3145116

I switched my Outlook to IMAP for now, which I don’t like on my main machine, but I will have to suffer it for the time being.

I hope this helps others.

Terry Losansky

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/latest-raspberry-pi-gains-wi-fi-powers-keeps-35-price/

The Latest Raspberry Pi Gets Wi-Fi Powers, Keeps $35 Price

·

·

Matt Richardson

Raspberry Pi, the computer that literally fits in the palm of your hand, isn’t for everyone. It comes with circuitry exposed, without a case, input method, or, until now, much in the way of connectivity. With the addition of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, though, Raspberry Pi 3 comes closer to a pocketable PC for everyone.

The third generation of Raspberry Pi in its four years of existence, Raspberry Pi 3 integrates 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. Previously, you had to employ some dongle magic to add that functionality.

The only other big upgrade—there are, after all, only so many components to upgrade—is the processor. Where previously sat a 900MHz 32-bit, quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU now sits a 1.2GHz 64-bit, quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU. If those numbers mean nothing to you, just know that it’s about 10x the performance of the original Raspberry Pi, and over 50 percent better than the previous iteration.

Otherwise, the Pi remains largely the same. It’s roughly the same size and shape as generations past, aside from some minor component shuffling to accommodate the antenna that allows for its newfound wireless connectivity. Most importantly, it’s holding on to that $35 price. For the cost of a few decent deli sandwiches, you can still own a fully functional (and now, even more so) pint-sized computer.

It’s important, too, that Raspberry Pi keep building on its success. No shortage of micro-computer competitors have sprung up in the years since the original Pi’s introduction, some of which, like the Arduino 101, have already either promised or delivered an advanced feature set. And for three or four times the price of a Pi 3, consumers can opt for a “PC on a Stick” dongle, like Lenovo’s Ideacentre Stick or Intel’s Compute Stick, that offers the convenience of a dongle form factor, and the ability to plug directly into a monitor.

Nobody’s done it better for longer, though, than the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It still takes a little bit of know-how to fit it into your life, but one of the best bargains in tech is even more so now.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.