Chaos Manor View, Monday, August 03, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

After this great glaciation, a succession of smaller glaciations has followed, each separated by about 100,000 years from its predecessor, according to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (a fact first discovered by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630). These periods of time when large areas of the Earth are covered by ice sheets are called “ice ages.” The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood.

Generally on Sundays Larry and Marilyn Niven join us for brunch, but yesterday he called to say he wouldn’t make it: stomach flu. Then I got:

nothing important

Jerry,

My sympathy over the bug – I’m getting over what looks like the same thing – a couple days of mild fever, gut issues, and pervasive mental fog. I just now finished reconstructing the current SAS email list from the last backup, after accidentally deleting the whole list instead of just one entry in it the other day. Whatever this bug was, apparently working with critical data under its influence is contraindicated.

Anyway, I thought you might want to hear it’s not just you.

best

Henry

And began to realize that I didn’t have food poisoning, it was stomach flu, and my gut problems weren’t the only thing. My head wasn’t working either. I replied “Larry has it too, so it’s something recoverable; glad to hear it’s not just senility.” But this morning I have the same gut problems, and I now know my head isn’t working. This week is my birthday; I can hope this will all be gone by then, but fair warning, this is likely to be a fairly sparse week.

We have installed Swan, a relatively modern system, with Windows 10 in the back room I use as TV room and back bedroom. I’m learning and it isn’t easy, and my judgments are impaired enough that I suspect my opinions are worthless. Things that ought to be easy turn out to be impossible: such as installing Live Writer, which I haven’t been able to do, and won’t try again until my head’s working. I have no idea what’s wrong.

A report from Eric Pobirs:

What we did today 8-1-2015

    Nothing major but some notable items came up along the way.

    I brought with me a plastic mounting device that lets the Xbox One’s Kinect sensor live on top of the TV. It comes with a sleeve that can be slid over the Kinect’s camera for those who are actively paranoid about such things but I didn’t bother. The mount works pretty well but the angle of the Kinect is borderline for seeing the user due to the limited space in front of the bed. This was an issue for the first generation Kinect, which had a motor for adjusting it’s position but expected a fair amount of room depth. Several third party companies offered add-on lenses to go over the old Kinect’s camera to let it work in smaller spaces. The version Microsoft produced for use on Windows systems was also slightly different from the console version in a similar way, making it more suitable for a desktop system.

    I also brought a copy of Fantasia: Music Evolved (A bit of an Xbox in-joke: the first Halo game was subtitled Combat Evolved.) Best Buy had a nice blowout and it was something that might be more interesting than the typical console gaming fare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVRoffaTkNQ

    I then set out to find out why Bette had fallen off the network and to bring Swan downstairs for use in the back room. I went through some frustration as everything seemed to be working but it kept insisting there was no cable plugged into the port. The cable lead to the same Netgear 16-port gigabit switch Swan was using with no problems. I noticed the USB to Ethernet adapter from the swollen corpse of the Mac Book Air and tried to use it as a secondary NIC. Windows 7 didn’t have a driver and of course couldn’t connect to Windows Update’s larger library. I found hacked driver after a bit of searching and used Swan and a USB drive to bring it to Bette. The device installed fine but gave the exact same ‘cable is disconnected’ error message.

    Noticing a 5-port gigabit switch that wasn’t in use, I connected it to a known good port on the bigger switch and used that to get both Bette and Swan connected. It worked. Apparent;y ports have started dying on the Netgear in no particular order. Due to time constraints and a general inclination to move on,  I didn’t test to see if giving the Netgear some time off would fix the problem. Perhaps tomorrow. Bette was back on the network and accessible. My next task was to put the D-Link NAS box to rights.

    On my last visit we found the D-Link had lapsed into a coma and needed a full reset before it could be recovered. Fortunately, this left the content of the drives intact and it was back on the network but for its DLNA server function, which was needed if the Xbox was going to treat it as a video library. Because DLNA clients can terribly simple devices that need directories spoon fed to them, the D-Link needed to scan itself for all the files it contained. This was glacially slow and hadn’t concluded when we called it a day last week. Upon checking today it had finished and was still waiting for acknowledgement of that. I save the settings, which triggered another refresh but this one only took a couple of minutes. At least, I thought I save the settings.

    When I went back downstairs and tried the Xbox One’s Media Player it saw the D-Link and the video files in the Media directory. This required an annoying amount of drilling down from the root directory but it worked. Videos played perfectly. Huzzah! Then I summoned Jerry to the back room to bask in the glory of his new toy and… it didn’t work. The media player app no longer saw the D-Link, just three PCs with active UPnP. I went back upstairs to view the D-Link’s configuration menu via Swan. After some UI confusion I got it to use the Media directory as the portion presented to DLNA clients. After some fiddling and yet more refreshes of the directory cache it appeared to do a more definite save of the settings. So now back downstairs to see what the Xbox thought. It now saw the D-Link again and required less drilling down to get to the videos, although still more than a newer NAS would require as they provide more of what common DLNA clients expect.

    Hopefully, it was a learning curve and not an ongoing fault of the D-Link, and the videos will be available to Jerry when he gets around to trying on his own. But wait, what do we watch with videos? MORE VIDEOS! Another item we hadn’t gotten done last time was access to streaming services. I noticed from a package on his desk that Jerry was an Amazon Prime subscriber. This meant he was also entitled to access the Amazon Prime video service. (Amazon Prime also offers free Kindle books starting this month.)

http://www.amazon.com/Prime-Instant-Video/b?node=2676882011

    The library is quite extensive, including a good amount of content exclusive to Amazon. My first choice to try it out was the first episode of ‘Orphan Black’ and I was soon dismayed. Not at the show but at the video quality. It was horrible. Like watching a postage stamp video from the dial-up era blown up to full screen. This couldn’t be right. The same machine had downloaded the 22 GB of ‘Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’ over the same connection just a week ago and had made good time on that. I switched to an episode of ‘Under The Dome’ and it was perfect. Perhaps not Blu-ray quality but at least on par with the HD broadcast. ‘True Blood,’ also perfect. Well, not entirely perfect. I noted some decompression artifacts here and there but only because I was intently looking for them. There wasn’t anything I’d consider unacceptable for the nature and cost of the service.

    I called Jerry over to bask in yet another glory of his new toy. I brought up the HBO ‘John Adams’ as a demo. The animated montage of flags over the credits looked great but was going on interminably. I fast forwarded a bit and found that the image quality dropped substantially and never recovered in the two or three minutes we continued to watch. I also tried ‘Orphan Black’ again. It was better this time, making it almost two minute in before the quality dropped unacceptably. Perhaps Tatiana Maslany just doesn’t compress well.

    At some point I hope to do some more testing on that fast forwarding problem but for the most part having a client device like the Xbox One hugely ups the ante when it comes to weighing the value of buying Amazon Prime.

I’m looking forward to playing with the new Xbox One. It is certainly the best way to Skype if you have a group; the camera adjusts field size to accommodate all the human faces it can see, widening the view when there are several and focusing down when there’s only one. I’ve used a few other features. I’m finding more. This is a lot of computing power as well as a Blu Ray disk player. Ain’t Moore’s Law wonderful?

EmDrive peer reviewed article—

Hi, Jerry – finally, the EmDrive has been presented in a peer reviewed paper.  You can read the synopsis here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576515002726?np=y

There’s also a short slide presentation (3 minutes) which describes the high points of the article.  In it, Shawyer describes a much more powerful 2nd generation design, and the applications for such a design. 
One such application is the delivery of a 1 ton payload to LEO, using a pure electric thrust design; the other is the delivery of a 1 ton scientific payload to a target 4 light years distant.  Such a mission would take about 10 years, similar in length to the recent Pluto mission.  No mention is made of slowing down or achieving orbit around the target destination; it appears that the mission suggested would blow through another solar system at around 2/3rds light speed.  Achieving this would require an on board 200 Kilowatt nuclear power source.

The paper is significant in that it is the first peer reviewed paper on the topic.  The lack of a peer reviewed article is often used by critics to denounce the validity of the EmDrive concept.

So, progress is being made.  We appear to be moving past the ‘offhand condemnation’ of the technology, and entering into the more rigorous actual examination and experimental testing of the concept.

I’ve been ‘banging the drum’ on the EmDrive since perhaps 2006, and it gives me great gratification that actual experiments are being conducted.  These experiments should have been conducted 10 years ago, and that failure of the scientific community to do so reflects very poorly on the open minded, data driven approach that is consistent with modern science.

Even if the experiments reveal a subtle flaw which invalidates the concept, I will feel relieved.  Science will have done its job.  I just feel that it ought to have been done much more quickly.

However, we’re getting there now.  And it appears that the keys to the solar system, and the exploration of the nearest stars, may soon be within our grasp.  As you have said, we can hope.

Regards, Charlie

I can only repeat, if thrust without loss of mass is demonstrable and repeatable, the world is a different place; but so far that does not seem to be certain. I’d love to be part of a testing group. It’s the data, not the theory, that matters. Aether or no aether.

I’ve followed it since 2006 or so myself, and I haven’t seen a crucial experiment; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But it seems to be getting closer. I’d love that.

And yet another game changer as Moore’s Law shifts from chip size to power

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/3d-xpoint/

Intel’s New Memory Chips Are Faster, Store Way More Data

Intel and Micron say they have designed a new class of memory chip that could radically improve the performance of smartphones, desktops, laptops, and other computing devices.

Revealed during a press event in San Francisco on Tuesday morning, the technology is called 3D XPoint. According to Intel and Micron, these chips are “non-volatile,” meaning they can store data even without power; they’re up to 1,000 faster than NAND flash memory chips used in most mobile devices; and they can store 10 times more data than the DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips used in PCs.

Traditional computers—including PCs and laptops as well as the data center servers that drive the world’s Internet services—are built around a processor, some DRAM, and a hard drive. The DRAM holds the short-term data that the processor needs to drive the machine at any given moment, while the hard drive holds applications and long-term data.

However, many machines now use faster flash drives in lieu of hard drives. Smartphones and tablets did away with hard drives and use flash for storage. Intel and Micron’s new technology, 3D XPoint, is a potential alternative to flash as well as DRAM.

3D XPoint doesn’t match the speed of DRAM chips. But since it is non-volatile, the new chips will have the ability, like NAND flash, to preserve data even when a device is powered down.

“One of the most significant hurdles in modern computing is the time it takes the processor to reach data on long-term storage,” Mark Adams, president of Micron, said in a statement. “This new class of non-volatile memory is a revolutionary technology that allows for quick access to enormous data sets and enables entirely new applications.”

Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, says the technology could prove important—if it works as advertised. “This technology could enable a rethinking where and how analytics can be done. Analytics and Big Data today are done in either large monolithic data centers or scale-out data centers,” he says. “This technology enables ‘edge analytics,’ meaning Big Data could be done outside of these kinds of data centers, closer to the data. So instead of doing your processing at an Amazon or Google, you do it in the field.”

Intel and Micron declined to describe the materials they used in creating 3D XPoint, saying that for the moment, those details are proprietary. The two companies didn’t reveal the pricing of their initial chips, either. But they said they expect to start production at a jointly owned factory in Utah this year.

The two companies call this the first new mainstream memory chip to come to market in 25 years. But it follows other recent advances in memory technology. Companies such as Crossbar and Everspin Technologies say that have built technology similar to 3D XPoint, and a few years ago, HP revealed hardware that used memristors, a new fundamental component of computing that could be used to build both processors and long-term storage. HP is now building a system using this technology, called The Machine, which it says it will ship by the end of the decade.

3D XPoint technology may still be a long way from market. But Intel and Micron are among the few companies in a position to widely manufacture such chips. And the stakes could be big. According to research outfit IDC, the memory chips market is worth about $78.5 billion.

These little beasts keep getting better and better; now if the user interface could keep pace.

“Frederick R. Ewing? It’s about time people began noticing his work.

I’ve long felt he hasn’t received the recognition he deserves.”

<http://www.jmarkpowell.com/the-bestseller-book-that-didnt-exist-how-the-author-of-a-beloved-christmas-classic-pulled-off-the-hoax-of-the-century/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Regarding Cecil the Lion

The dentist’s mistake was that he killed the wrong cat. You should never shoot a lion with a tracking collar, a name, two prides of his own, and lots of human friends. You should only shoot lions that are mateless, nameless and friendless. That’s just common sense.

No luring out of sanctuary, no spotlighting, and no slow kills; that’s cheating, punishable by doxing. And dammit, eat what you kill!
So it turns out that hunting, despite its glamorous aura of lawless freedom, is as hide-bound by tiresome custom as is civilization. It’s human nature to both make limits, and chafe at them.

Paradoctor

I don’t hunt, although at one time I was a contributor to Ducks Unlimited. We had Game Wardens in Tennessee when I was growing up, and I was brought up to respect them. It was not a big bureaucracy, and the Iron Law was not at work – at least as far as I noticed at the time. I suspect Cecil would have been a lot safer under the protection of guards with a financial interest in keeping him alive; I doubt he was lured without some cooperation. But my head’s not working.

It certainly seems a less than intelligent thing to do: to shoot a lion with a collar.

“Why are the Americans more concerned than us? We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange.”

<http://news.yahoo.com/lion-zimbabweans-ask-amid-global-cecil-circus-140822692.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Janissaries-BAEN-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/147678079X 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/moscow-could-be-prepping-for-space-war-with-spooky-new-satellites.html

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

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, August 01, 2015

Thursday I came back from medical appointments exhausted, and Thursday night I came home from my LASFS meeting early, with a stomach ache and other internal problems, and feeling worse than I have in weeks.

Bad night Thursday night. But woke up Friday morning after finally going to sleep feeling a lot better, but harried; I hadn’t got much meaningful work done Thursday, had another medical appointment at one o’clock meaning I was rushed, and I began to feel indigestion and nausea again.

And things went crazy; in particular, Firefox acted strangely, and when I restarted it the session manager never appeared, and I couldn’t find it. Part of my memory system is opening links readers send to me so I am reminded of them.

And it was still acting strangely. And I had to go. Came back with stomach ache and Zantac didn’t help a lot; I can only conclude mild stomach flu or food poisoning. And at my age I notice that piling on minor annoyances can quickly result in my bringing on a real disaster.

Restarting the Windows 7 system cured several of the problems; I think Firefox has a real problem with garbage collection. There is also ambiguity in how Firefox treats the “maximize” button, and their new way of accessing Options is perhaps an improvement but also unfamiliar.

In any event All is more or less back to normal; I feel as if I am recovering from either mild stomach flu or mild food poisoning – the symptoms are pretty well the same – and I am improving, so between Zantac, milk of magnesia, and Alka-Seltzer I ought to be fully recovered by Monday. Eric is bringing down Swan, a computer I can use at night in the back room; now that we have wired fast Ethernet back there Things may go better.

Baen and Simon and Schuster announce Lord of Janissaries, http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Janissaries-BAEN-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/147678079X or http://books.simonandschuster.com/Lord-of-Janissaries/Jerry-Pournelle/BAEN/9781476780795

This is not. Alas, the new Janissaries 4 Mamelukes, which, I swear, I am working on and now that my two finger typing is improved – I type that and take longer to correct all the typos than it did to type the sentence. I keep hitting two keys at once. But slowly I improve. Anyway I have not forgotten the book. But Lord of Janissaries, the new title, is not new: it’s all three of the original books in one enormous volume. More than 850 pages, with the maps in back as an appendage. Type big enough that I can read it, which is as well because I opened it at random and came on a scene that affects what I’m doing now, and I better go read it all again. Fortunately it still holds up, so if you need some good bed time reading this may be your answer.

And I just thought of a new Mamelukes scene, so maybe it’ll get worked on faster than I thought.

Eric is hard at work getting the up[stairs straightened out; our Ethernet switches up there are really old and it gets hot, and it’s probably time to replace them, oh my… Meanwhile I think I can type in the Surface Pro 3 faster than on this comfort curve keyboard: bigger keys. So I can take it back there with the docking station and a large screen monitor.

The election is early days; Mr. Obama is not popular, Mrs. Clinton not a great deal more so, and opportunists are throwing themselves into the Republication nomination scene. What the Republicans need is good lower level party work; get the ground game up to speed, Forget the nuances, it’s time to win. There are plenty good candidates who won’t stand out in this early melee. It’s time to take Congress and the Presidency and get out of this Depression. And make no mistake; it is a depression, mostly brought on by regulations. It’s now easier to open a neighborhood bank in most European countries than in the United States, and growing government won’t fix that. Whole agencies need to be abolished.

People have had it with Hope and Change; can we just get back to normal economic growth and take advantage of the enormous upswings in technology? But we won’t do that by growing government. Increasing regulations, and all the rest that Hope and Change always equates to.

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 31, 2015

I opened in the afternoon with this, and there are several lessons to be learned.

I cannot find session manager, none of the controls seem to work, it Windows 8’s me on screen size, they have gone insane.  I can’t restore yesterday.

Anyone know anything about this?  Is there an instruction set?  Are they all lock up in a madhouse?

{jerryp}

Firefox has gone mad 
I hadn’t heard about Firefox breaking as spectacularly as all that (and I’m writing this on Firefox 39.0 under Windows 7, with no problem at all). But I have been seeing complaints on Windows blogs that Windows 10 has made it harder to set Firefox as your default browser.
http://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-cries-foul-on-changes-to-windows-10s-default-browser-settings
I expect we will soon see more problem reports about Firefox, because Mozilla has announced that beginning with version 41, all add-ons for Firefox must be signed. I don’t know why — is someone publishing malware add-ons? — but I have written some add-ons of my own, so I probably won’t upgrade soon.

John David Galt

I can’t find session manager, and it jumps to full screen without my telling it to.  When in full screen the only way out is the Windows key; nothing in Firefox shows a way off that screen.  Maybe my computer has gone mad? But it’s Windows 7, and nothing else is crazy.

Back from medical.  Tired.  But I think Firefox has gone insane.  Someone enlighten me?

{jerryp}

There were many lessons to be learned. I’ll start with them tomorrow. The problem was not Firefox. The lessons were – well, perhaps interesting.  Tomorrow.

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, July 30, 2015

There is new material at Chaos Manor Reviews. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ I am still in fiction mode, but today was a day of adventures… See below

Don’t waste your passion on the election yet; it’s early days.

A day of adventures. It began with Roberta telling me that when I go to the front downstairs office, she doesn’t get to sleep until I go back to the back bedroom where there is my hospital bed – since my stroke we have had to be in separate bedrooms. That’s frequently at midnight or after. She hears me trundle past her bedroom door.

That induced panic because I don’t change subjects well. For instance, yesterday I worked on fiction, and I’m not really here when I’m doing that; it takes me a while to focus on this page, or answer mail, or whatever. It’s particularly difficult just at the moment when our book really needs my attention.

Before the stroke I got most of my best work done at midnight and thereafter, but I only slept about four to six hours a night. I need more sleep now. And if I don’t get some time to refocus – that’s the main effect of that stroke on me, difficulty changing the subject I’m thinking about, with mild panic when that inevitably happens – it’s going to be hard to keep up this place and do fiction. I like doing this place, and apparently a lot of you want me to; my subscription renewal rate is high, and while I could always use more I get enough from subscribers to make a significant contribution to my income. For which thanks, of course. But that’s a strong incentive for keeping this up. Another is that I enjoy rational discussion, and while the Internet has provided us with plenty of communication, rational discussion gets increasingly more rare as time goes by.

About then I discovered that my ancient ThinkPad needed updates, the way I used to synchronize outlook pst files doesn’t work any more, I bumped Alien Artifact – my Windows 7 main machine – and the front panel came off. I couldn’t get it back on while sitting in my chair, and I had to keep telling myself that despair is a sin

The ThinkPad was the way I did this place from the beach house when we used to go down there. I kept all the Outlook pst files in a root folder called, surprisingly, Outlook, on both my main desk machine and the ThinkPad. When I’d go on the road, or to the beach house, I’d simply copy the Outlook folder with Xcopy from my main machine to the ThinkPad. Xcopy, because I could use /D /Y to copy only newer files, saving a lot of time. I’d tell Outlook to leave the old files on the server. Then off I’d go. When I got back I’d reverse the process, so the main machine knew what I’d been doing, then bring Outlook up on me desktop and merrily proceed.

But that was on an older main machine that’s still upstairs, and I don’t use it anymore; I now have a new system, Alien Artifact, as a main machine and it was set up while I was still in the rehab hospital, and the Outlook pst files are stored all over the place to the default whims of Microsoft and Windows 7 and Outlook 2007, and it’s incomprehensible to me; I have no idea of how to daily synchronize two machines in Outlook.

And I had a physical therapy session at Kaiser at 1300 but I needed a shower first and that would have to be first because the girl who helps me shower would not be here when I got back, and I left in a black mood.

But before I left, Eric pointed out that I have a perfectly good modern 64-bit machine upstairs and fast Ethernet in the back room, and we can simply bring Swan down to the back room and synchronize with this machine, and Peter pointed out that all I really need is a good chair and I can work back there after Roberta goes to bed at ten, and since I don’t need the wheel chair back there I can have a better chair to sit in and watch TV and socialize with Roberta, and the wheel chair is certainly not very comfortable so all I really need is a good comfortable office chair back there.

I pondered this as we got to Kaiser, where the physical therapist took my blood pressure and pronounced it dangerously low and sent me to urgent care. I refused to panic, but I must admit I wondered about it. We got there and I got a red flagged card which got me to see the nurse – who took my blood pressure and found it my normal 121/68 as it has been for years. Apparently the new instrument in Physical Therapy was improperly calibrated.

Got home to find the ThinkPad couldn’t update and failed to boot, would I like it to attempt to restore? Never did that before, but what the hell. Told it yes. Then got out of my chair and onto my knees and was able to put Alien Artifact’s front panel back on without problems.

Alien Artifact with his front cover back on properly. Was easy once I could get at it.

ThinkPad trundled a while and restored Windows 7 fine, and seems none the worse for wear; he is a little ancient and may need replacing but I’m hoping the Surface Pro 3 will do take his place. The Surface has larger keys and easier to type on, but the screen is smaller; and it’s been devoted to alpha versions of Windows 10; but that experiment is about over. Precious, the Surface Pro, seems stable now, and I’ll start to putting her to good use. Or try to.

The cramped quarters I now live in; they won’t let me work upstairs in the grand office. But we wrote Mote in God’s Eye here, on a Selectric typewriter, and Zeke lived here all his life

This weekend I hope to get Alex and Eric over to bring down Swan and get her set up in the back room and we’ll worry about synchronizing Outlook; my agent sent reasonable royalties for May, so I can afford a good office chair, probably a duplicate of the Henry Miller I’m in now, and keep it in the back room in place of the wheel chair which can go to someone who needs it; and the ThinkPad popped up with “Threat Warnings” but Norton said it could fix them; turns out I haven’t used it much and Windows Security Essentials wasn’t happy either, so I’m doing all the scanning anybody wants, smoothly and without problems.

And I typed all this, two fingers, but I got several whole sentences without errors – some of that is that I have trained autocorrect to find lots of words with numbers in them where I hit two keys at once, but also I’m not hitting two keys at once so much either. I got nit for not in that last sentence, and ion for in in this one, but fortunately I found those.

So, after many adventures, it has been a good day after all. When I get back from my LASFS meeting tonight I will have Precious in the back room and see if I can add anything to this, but any mail I’ll have to put in from here, where I won’t get until tomorrow. But for a day which looked like disaster, it turned out well.

The 97% consensus of climate scientists is only 47%.

<http://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/07/29/new-study-undercuts-ipcc-keynote-finding-87796/>

Also, note that the survey questions were biased – there wasn’t any option for disputing the statements, only ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Other’.

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Roland Dobbins

I remain of the opinion that we have insufficient data; but Bayesian analysis would indicate spending more on data than on amelioration of either coming warm or coming cold age. Reduction of uncertainties will save money; preparations before uncertainty reduction is expensive. Do we buy blankets or bathing suits?

And there are repeated stories like this:

Mind-Blowing Temperature Fraud At NOAA.

‘Almost half of all reported US temperature data is now fake. They fill in missing rural data with urban data to create the appearance of non-existent US warming.’

<https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/mind-blowing-temperature-fraud-at-noaa/>

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Roland Dobbins

Mostly the Iron Law at work. 

Quote from Madison

Jerry,

I think this quote from Madison is quite apropos for today:

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

— James Madison to W. T. Barry, Aug 4, 1822, James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, vol. 9 (Correspondence, 1819-1836) [1910] <http://oll.libertyfund.org/people/james-madison>

Some days I think we are now in the Farce and Tragedy.  But as you remind, despair is a sin.

Regards,

Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

The joys of ‘smart’ rifles.

<http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-can-disable-sniper-rifleor-change-target/>

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Roland Dobbins

: Massive Surveillance Crisis

I can’t find the words to describe this shocking development other than to say this is both disgusting and monumental:

<.>

CISA is an out and out surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill. It won’t stop hackers. Instead, it essentially legalizes all forms of government and corporate spying.

Here’s how it works. Companies would be given new authority to monitor their users — on their own systems as well as those of any other entity — and then, in order to get immunity from virtually all existing surveillance laws, they would be encouraged to share vaguely defined “cyber threat indicators” with the government. This could be anything from email content, to passwords, IP addresses, or personal information associated with an account. The language of the bill is written to encourage companies to share liberally and include as many personal details as possible.

That information could then be used to further exploit a loophole in surveillance laws that gives the government legal authority for their holy grail — “upstream” collection of domestic data directly from the cables and switches that make up the Internet.

Thanks to Edwards Snowden, we know that the NSA, FBI, and CIA have already been conducting this type of upstream surveillance on suspected hackers. CISA would give the government tons of new domestic cyber threat indicators to use for their upstream collection of information that passes over the Internet. This means they will be gathering not just data on the alleged threat, but also all of the sensitive data that may have been hacked as part of the threat. So if someone hacks all of Gmail, the hacker doesn’t just get those emails, so does the U.S. government.

The information they gather, including all the hacked data and any incidental information that happens to get swept up in the process, would be added to massive databases on people in the U.S. and all over the world that the FBI, CIA, and NSA are free to query at their leisure. This is how CISA would create a huge expansion of the “backdoor” search capabilities that the government uses to skirt the 4th Amendment and spy on Internet users without warrants and with virtually no oversight.

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http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/249521-cisa-the-dirty-deal-between-google-and-the-nsa-that-no-one-is

Once we start looking at counterintelligence programs, false flag operations, and so on, things get even more interesting….

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Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Krebs on Security has posted a new item.
Starting today, Microsoft is offering most Windows 7 and Windows 8 users a free
upgrade to the software giant’s latest operating system — Windows 10. But
there’s a very important security caveat that users should know about before
transitioning to the new OS: Unless you opt out, Windows 10 will by default
share your Wi-Fi network password with any contacts you may have listed in
Outlook and Skype — and, with an opt-in, your Facebook friends!
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/windows-10-shares-your-wi-fi-with-contacts/

I have numerous comments from informed sources; the consensus seems to be that all the default options are opt in; but you should be aware of them.

Windows 10 Shares Your Wi-Fi With Contacts

In spite of the hysteria, I believe it is already fully opt-in.

The only, only, only thing that defaults to “on” is that the service is enabled. Every time a user adds a new Wi-Fi network, the dialog box specifically asks whether to share it with contacts or not, and which contacts to share it with from the three available options (Outlook/Facebook/Skype). All four of those questions, at least on my machine with a clean install, defaulted to OFF.

If the service itself is turned off, none of those sharing questions will be asked.

Now, if someone has turned on the service and shared a network, maybe it defaults to enable sharing the next time; I didn’t test that.

I think this business Krebs raises (and the Register raised) about how a friend could share your Wi-Fi credentials without your permission is just nonsense. That still takes a deliberate effort. If you have a friend who would do that, you need new friends.

Rare outbreak of sanity

http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-windows-10s-wi-fi-sense-feature-is-not-a-security-risk/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61

Eric

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