Roland Dobbins [rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com]

I pulled out my 1979 paperback edition of _Janissaries_ today, and sat down to re-read it. This was one of the first science-fiction novels I’d read which wasn’t a juvenile work (I was 11 when my uncle bought it for me), and, although I wasn’t mature enough to understand it all, I remember the sheer enjoyment it gave me to read of Captain Galloway’s efforts to save a planet full of people from themselves, and from their nonhuman exploiters. You’ve done a great job with this series, and I eagerly anticipate the new volume currently in progress.

In my work, I deal with all four service branches plus DoD. I can tell you that in recent years, I have not met one junior officer who possesses the knowledge of military history and general history, not to mention mathematics, chemistry, etc. to do 1/10^th of what you had Galloway accomplishing in the novel. Not service academy graduates, and certainly not those who came in via ROTC.

And I know from personal experience that this hasn’t always been the case.

None of those I’ve met recently would’ve had the foresight to copy out a table of logarithms from his calculator before the batteries died, for example. And none of them would have any idea who Claudius was, much less Severus, or have retained even the slightest hint of the significance of Poitiers or Crecy.

Our military has become, in the main, a program for kids to get money to attend laughably (if only I could laugh about it) universities and to obtain VA medical benefits. Maybe I’m romanticizing the past, but I don’t think it’s always been so, at least to this degree.

I’m an autodidact; I dropped out of high school in my junior year, despite the best efforts of my parents to dissuade me, and consequently have struggled to educate myself as best I can, with only the public library and the bookstore as my classrooms. I’ve done pretty well for myself in spite of this self-imposed handicap (i.e., near-terminal shortsightedness), and at age 30, in a senior position with a Fortune 500 systems integration firm, wonder where I might be right now if I’d done the right thing and gone on to college.

My reason for including the previous paragraph is this: if I was able to become a reasonably well-rounded and moderately professionally successful (at least, I hope I did) person despite spending many years befuddled by drink and drugs, completely outside the realm of academe, there is absolutely NO reason why someone who has the opportunity to attend even one of our sadly-depleted universities - at public expense, no less - cannot do at least as well as I have in learning the basics of history, biology, chemistry, higher mathematics, physics, etc.

Null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane and empty of meaning for all time.

Jerry,

I was catching up on my reading at your web site and got to your Jan 9 column about pseudoscience. Serendipity. I wanted to rant at the world at large about something I found on Sunday. I went to the local (Lancaster, California) B. Dalton book store. I was hunting for a general reference text on geology, something for the interested layman.

Entering the store one is confronted by self-help books, glossy New Age

coffee table books, sale books (mostly "bestsellers" which no longer

are), calendars and games. "Where is your science section?" I asked. "In

reference." One shelf about 36" long was mostly filled with "Science of

the X-Files" and "The Face on Mars." The rest was how to pass various professional tests. Neither could I find any books such as "Guidebook to North American Birds." No juvenile science books were in stock, either, though plenty of books such as "My Two Dads" and Goosebumps. A few classics, though again in the _minority_.

Granted the Lancaster/Palmdale population is only about 200k, but the major employers are Boeing, Lockmart, NASA and Edwards AFB. Perhaps the only available science books are on base? Certainly the local retail chains are nearly useless unless you want to buy a book on how to dress for the prom (!), find your perfect mate through astrology or get an X-Files video game. Bah.

Dr. Pournelle,

And a quote you might enjoy:

What would she make of the following passage, for example, from the introduction of "Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France" (1997), a work broadly representative of the kind of "cultural history" that has come to prominence in the 1990s?

"Selves -- neither unitary nor fully self-knowing -- are thus made by completely constituted, often mutually contradictory, experiences, some of which are known and expressed linguistically, some musically, some visually, and some in no known discursive framework."

Jerry,

You may already have gotten some thoughts on this, but probably the file copy process used was flawed when working between (these particular) different file systems. I do some cross-platform transfers (different filesystems) from time to time and it can happen to me that I get e.g. invalid dates in Windows on the transferred files—I think because the binary stored format was different. (Additionally, as we know, Windows has its own ideas about "correct file size", especially in NT ntfs, that may or may not reflect the current partition’s "wasted cluster" space for the files as well, rather than the true file size.)

CDROMs these days come in many different file system formats, ISOxxxx, continually evolving, and I have noticed a trend that MS-CDs can have formats that other platforms (driver sofware) can no longer read, or e.g. read the root files just fine but can’t enter subdirectories. The reverse situation is also true, I have a few CDs intended for Atari that Windows fails to identify.

Even MS gets it wrong internally some times. Recall that there was a fix out for the problem with XXXX~1.XXX style DOS-names from vfat being on a 8.3 format CDROM and hanging a Windows system when it couldn’t find the long-filename list.

Jerry,

I’ve noticed quite a bit of moaning about Linux sound support from yourself and some of your correspondents. You may want to check out the following site:

While this is not an open-source solution, they do offer support for a pretty good assortment of sound cards. While not free, the cost is fairly reasonable if you need support for a card not handled by the normal Linux drivers. No kernel re-compilation is required either, and the driver can be loaded and unloaded at run-time.

By the way, it is NOT the case that a kernel re-compile is required for every hardware change. In fact, very few hardware changes require a new kernel since loadable driver modules appeared several revs back.

A couple of more—for the guy complaining that Photoshop doesn’t run on Linux, give the GIMP a try. It doesn’t fall too short. Also, when kernel 2.2 is released, look for Redhat 6.0 with Gnome. Should get us in the same ballpark as MS on the desktop. Finally, by end of year, expect WINE to release 1.0. May just be able to kiss MS goodbye.

Jerry -

Windows is already creating the 8.3 file names as part of the backward compatibility effort. The easiest way to create the table you want may be to capture the output of the MS-DOS 7.x "DIR" command and parse the lines. Fields 1 &; 2 are the 8.3 name, field 6 is the long file name. The rule for creating the 8.3 name is basically take the first 6 characters (ignoring spaces, etc.) of the long name, add a tilde and a number for the occurrence of that 6-character sequence in a file type(i.e. first "A mute can express herself wi. . . " would be "amutec~1.wav", second would be "amutec~2.wav", etc). There are also provisions for changing the number of (default) digits used, which I don’t remember at the moment. Probably a registry setting. The "lfnbk" utility (on the distribution CD-ROM but not automatically installed) can be used for saving the long file names prior to using e.g. PKZIP on the files, but it’d need to be used to restore them on the destination machine, too. WRK says it’s for experienced users.

Cavanaugh, Bill [Bill.Cavanaugh@fmr.com]

Dear Dr. Pournelle

You reader, AK, rightly points out that Linux offers modular kernel extensions, but a few things need to be clarified here, if you allow.

First, in order to use Linux Kernel Modules you need to have a Kernel that was compiled to be modular. By default it is not. So therefore, you have to re-compile your kernel with the option of modules enabled. Still today, for most users, this is not a trivial step.

Second, if the OpenSound extensions were drivers, as indicated by AK in his memo to you, than you could just install it on the system by defining the appropriate major node and install the driver in /dev . But, indeed, the extensions are more than just drivers, they are modules and need a modules-aware kernel.

Sound in the new 2.2 kernel series has made big improvements and should now become as ubiquitous as in Microsoft-denominated products. However, considering that - at least in my humble opinion -- Linux really excels at being a server, sound is really not that important.

Wine (=Wine is Not an Emulator) sports some fantastic technology and will probably pose -once it works- the real threat from within Linux for Microsoft. Once Outlook and Office run under Linux as well, or better, as they do under Windows, all this disgruntled MS users will have a real incentive to switch over. It is going to be an interesting year. Like all the ones before, too.

Best regards

Harry Erwin [herwin@gmu.edu]

Subject: Ain't It Awful--Modern Education

In the American educational process, there is a distinct tension between studies that lead to future employment and studies that make you a well-rounded citizen. Most students are so job-oriented that colleges have to establish breadth requirements to force them to take something outside their major. Unless you’re planning to go into law school to become a lawyer, history leads nowhere, not even to a usable teaching credential. (Ask my son, the tory genealogist, medieval historian, and royalist, about that.) History is not alone in this: foreign language studies lead to low-paying part-time jobs as translators; biology leads to low-paying jobs as laboratory technicians; psychology leads to low-paying jobs as social workers; etc.

Perhaps, you say, these breadth courses prepare you for a profession that requires generalists such as military officer. Not realistically. The military prefers specialists, and later trains them as generalists in command and general staff school. Generalists entering the army either become infantry officers, eventually retiring at major without much in usable skills, or get shunted into a dead-end career in intelligence. (Intelligence officers learn to think like general officers in the opposing forces, which definitely disqualifies them as a general officer in their own army. Is my cynicism showing?)

OK, then we have to make do with ‘breadth’ courses. But those are the hardest to teach well and really can’t cover anything in adequate depth. For example, natural science—as it is actually practiced by professionals—involves the construction of a dense meshwork of experimental results, linked together by theory. That way, we have some assurance that what we think might be true is actually true. You ->can’t teach<- those essential perspectives in a breadth course. I’ve taught a breadth course in computer science, and I couldn’t even get to basic programming without losing 70% of the students. They don’t have the background, the motivation, or (most importantly) the time. (When designing financial aid programs, most politicians seem to think students should also be working at least half-time for peanuts, but don’t get me going on that...)

But teaching for future employment can be overdone, too. One of the big complaints about computer science as we teach it is that we refuse to teach material that is likely to be obsolete by the time the students graduate. That irritates the local technology companies, because it means new hires aren’t immediately profitable, but we don’t think that’s necessarily bad.

Cheers,

Subject: Software Trade War?

Excuse me? First off, let me say that I personally use Opera 3.51 at home. I like it for its size, speed, and compatability with W3C standards. And I think that it was definitely worth the $35 I paid for it. But since Opera was unavailable until well after Netscape and MSIE were both free, what right does Opera have to complain? Opera is alleging that MS and Netscape/AOL are "dumping" their software in an unfair trade practice, which costs them money. But I fail to see where this is unfair to Opera, since by the time Opera entered the ring, both company were already giving away their software for free.

You answered Jim Griebel that when Windows was working well, you like it and you don’t see how anyone wouldn’t. Well, my answer to your statement comes from my background. I am left-handed, live somewhat out in the boonies, and cannot afford to update my software very often or even buy a new computer very often. I also provide a free computer consulting service for my family, friends and church and church members.

Windows is like a standard pair of scissors to a left-handed person. It works pretty well but it is hard to follow the line (because it is blocked by the upper blade), the cut material wads up on your arm and after using the scissors for a few hours, your hand is no longer useful for any other work.

Windows reflects how Bill Gates thinks and works, not how I think and work. I prefer my icons on the right side of the screen, but Windows, upon selecting Arrange Icons, insists on the left side of the screen. Windows 98 coughs on my Borland C++ 1.0 debugger. I cannot transfer files using the DOS Intersvr command from my old computer to my new computer.

As I read in a recent report, Microsoft appears to be behind a move to create a market by continually requiring better, more powerful computers to run their increasing larger programs. Microsoft is also enlarging a social rift between the rich and the poor. And you in a limited way appear to be adding to that social rift. While your focus has been on computers and business, your location has hidden a part of the business and home computing world, the poorer, seedier side of computer users, the poor computer user.

While I live only 45 miles from Denver CO., I live in one of the poorest counties in the state. We have no large businesses, no sightseeing attractions, no ski resorts. We are a county larger in area than Denver and Jefferson counties combined, but with a population of 14,000. And we are well off compared to Indian reservations our very small church supports up north. You can’t have cable modems if you don’t have cable. We don’t have cable modems, ISDN, ASDL, ATM or any other high rate systems. The US Government spends its school computer money where the votes are,hence Denver schools get more money per student for computers than we get. A lot more.

Many of the people in my area that have computers have them because someone gave them an old computer. I and my church just gave an 8088, 2 80286 and 2 80386 computers to an Indian Reservation. Something to give them a start. I helped a friend 2 months ago upgrade from an 80286 to an 80386 with 6 meg of RAM so she could run JUNO on Windows 3.1 as part of her home business she was getting started. The computers were all donated computers as she cannot afford even the $150 for a 486 computer. The funny thing about her is she was a computer programmer 15 years ago. She built up a bad allergy to many chemicals found in the corporate environment and has had to lead a life free of many common chemicals.

Sorry for the long winded story, but try to feel for the people that live outside the cities, the people who are threatened with phone rate hikes from $20 for basic service to $200 for basic service because the city folks don’t want to subsidize the poor country folks.

One more quick point. My parents live 33 miles from downtown Washington D.C., yet while they are completely surrounded by cable TV, the single hill they live on does not have cable and the cable company has deemed it not commercially viable to provide cable service because only 6 homes are located on the hill. I used to live 4 miles from the center of Ramona CA along Hwy 78, the main highway which runs from Ramona to Julian, yet we did not have cable available to us. From my standpoint, Cable is a joke. For anybody in a rural area, cable is a joke.

John Rice [coredump@enteract.com]

BYTE unfufilled subscriptions sold ?

Jerry,

Arrived home tonight and had a ‘surprise’ in my mailbox. I find that I’m now subscribed to a magazine I’d never heard of called "Business2.0". This is published by Imagine Media, Inc. in Brisbane California (with an area code of 415, this would put them in the San Francisco vicinity).

Appears to be nothing vaguely like BYTE at all. Not a technical article to be seen anywhere. It’s about as far away from what I ‘spent my money on’ as you can get and still be considered remotely connected to the computer industry.

Wonder if you, or anyone else in the Chaos Manor ‘family’ has ever heard of them. Do they have any ‘known’ connection with CMP? With the original BYTE? If not, then the CMP purchase of BYTE makes even less sense.

I’m not impressed....

John

Dr Pournelle,

Although I have nothing but the greatest respect for you as an author and an authority (with regard to too many subjects as to admit descrip-tion), I must candidly advise you that the organization of your web pages leaves much to be desired.

I am certain that there is an underlying structure, but as yet I have been unable to discover it.

If the intent is to convey chaos, you have outdone yourself.

Granted, the content ain’t great, but what do you want for a two-cent email.

I am certain that you have read Edward Tufte’s book, so I doubt that I can tell you anything about presentation that you don’t already know. My concern is that impressionable individuals may emulate your style, and thereby bring harm upon themselves and the ‘net com-munity.

Please, sir, I implore you, organize.

ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly, the Texas Elvis"------------------

Subject Remember Galileo?

E Gray [eqdztsg@usa.net]

The immediate answer to David Pearce’s problem with layout is right there in Windows – instead of "Arrange Icons", when you have the basic desktop layout you want, choose "Line Up Icons" (same menu, next option) and they’ll snap to the closest grid position using your default icon spacing setting! See! Billg was thinking about others!

I think that what he was getting at, however, is not that Windows is designed for right-handed people (I’m left-handed – and don’t find any problems with Windows related to that), but that it, like scissors, is designed for one way of working, which isn’t his way. As far as I can see, icon position on the desktop is strictly an esthetic issue. Mine are scattered all around the border of my wallpaper, with functional and priority groupings. "Line Up Icons" doesn’t mess them up at all.

Charlie Stross [charlie@antipope.org]

If you want a non-free, but fast, cheap and effective fix to your sound problem, I suggest you:

The guys at 4Front Technologies write sound drivers for Linux. (A cut-down version of their code is what goes into the Linux kernel, for people who’ve got the time and energy to figure out the appropriate settings and recompile a kernel with sound support.) They also sell supported modular sound drivers—the Open Sound System—for Linux and other UNIXen. Cost is about $20, email support is good, and their drivers support more hardware and have a more-or-less automatic installation system. You can download a demo version from the website and activate it later (given an activation key).

-- Charlie Stross

Out-of-print books 11f

From: Milton Pope[mpope@calcot.com]

Aaron Pohle [apohle@intellisys.net]

David Pierce's letter on poor computer users

I read this letter and it reminded me of many many discussions that I have had with people and many similar complaints that I have seen. Why is it that people seem to want to halt the progress of advances in computer because they cannot afford them? Why do they live in the country and remote areas and then complain that they don’t have the advantages that people in the city have?

A few years ago I was shocked to hear comments like this about computer games. I was working at a software retail store then and a customer was complaining about how awful it was that certain games would not run very fast on his computer which was "not that old". I explained to him that there were many settings in the games that could be adjusted to increase the speed of the game. He just looked at me and said, "Well sure, but then it doesn’t look as good." I though, what are you saying, you don’t want anything written to be capable of doing something that your computer cannot? He could still enjoy the game, but perhaps not as much as someone who had a newer system.

I have often wished that I had a better system. Living in a fairly remote area where newer technologies like IDSN, Cable Modems, and the like are not available, I too miss that. But that is life. I don’t want them to not have those technologies anywhere, just because I do not have them. In regard to his comments on cable, so what? Cable is not a very good system and many people who can get it, like me, are switching to the digital satellite. Though I am upset that the government will not allow me to get networks on a satellite dish because it would reduce the viewing audience of the local affiliate...never mind that even with an antenna I cannot receive the local stations. I agree with the question that you asked of him...what does he want? As you said, there are still older operating systems and program out there that will work perfectly fine, just as they did years ago. Microsoft has not forced anyone to buy new hardware or software. Have they tempted us to, sure, that is their job, and that is how technology advances.

Enrique Vaamonde [evaamo@ctp.com]

First Byte now Lantimes ?

Jerry,

I have been a Byte subscriber (I was, sorry) for a long time... and I enjoy your columns...it was always a nice reading and I loved the challenges you presented there monthly.

The purpose of this email is to speak out my opinion about something I consider alarming.

We all saw with deep regret the departure of Byte...I waited for months and months, I’ve sent a dozen emails, the last ones asking for a refund (no replies, no letter dated December 16^th in my mailbox no nothing) and today I went to check Lantimes.com just to find out CMP acquired them as well and closed the operations.

I know this is old news since the date of the close down seems to be October 98.

But my point is...CMP in less than a year has left us, IT professionals, users, managers whatever, without two great publications! this is very alarming from my point of view since there doesn’t seem to be a publication of that caliber (byte, lantimes) showing up anywhere. The advantage of these print magazines was to have it all gathered in one place...excellent columns (like yours) excellent tech reviews and previews etc. Now I find myself hunting them down in the web when if I had byte right next to me I’d have saved a lot of my time.

It worries me to see two great publications dead...it worries me about CMP next moves... it really makes me wonder what kind of company CMP is and if whether their goals are clear or no specifically when they bought both these publications. What was the idea? why did McGraw and Hill sell Lantimes to CMP knowing Byte’s ill fate?

Doesn’t McGraw and Hill care about it’s former loyal costumers? what about the former staff that used to work for these magazines?

It really speaks very bad for both CMP and M&;H...afterall, like always, the loosers are the costumers.

CMP to me doesn’t look like a serious company, many might have a different idea and that’s fine... but from my experience, for the things I’ve witnessed so far, they suck big time.

I’d like to hear from any of your readers, newsgroups webpage or any organization getting ready to let CMP know our opinions, because I know there must be people like myself out there, very sad and very angry at the way CMP has been handling us, former customers with irresponsible and unresponsive or inexistant customer service, and to let them know that one way or other they have really hurt, in my opinion, the IT, IS field with the withdrawal of these two publications.

Thank you in advance Jerry for placing this in your board,

kind regards from Venezuela

From: James McCaffrey, jmcc@rmilaw.com.mx

Subject: Rick Galloway and Junior Officers

Dear Jerry:

I disagree with Mr. Dobbins characterization of Rick Galloway as some sort of superman and of our junior military officers as inadequate.

I read Jannisaries when it came out. If it was 1979, then I would have been a 24 year old Marine Corps officer (tanks, and some infantry experience). I was very much the contemporary of the fictional Rick Galloway.

I didn’t find anything that Rick Galloway did unbelievable.

I recall cringing at some boneheaded moves (certainly I would have done better <grin>) and applauding some smart moves. All in all, it evened out, much like real life, and was quite believable.

As the series progressed, I seem to recall that Rick Galloway developed as a strategist but this took place over a period of fictional years and is also not surprising.

I suspect there is a bit of culture clash that may have led Mr. Dobbins to some of his conclusions.

As a young officer I remember being quite proud and looking down a bit on civilians. There is tendency for experts in any field to feel this way and it is natural, if unfortunate, human tendency.

I doubt that I or any of my then contemporaries would have been interested in carrying on a discussion of strategy and tactics with some barely older civilian working (apparently) in computers. Would Mark McGwire be interested in a fan’s criticism of his swing? How interested is a brain surgeon in your helpful comments?

So, I suspect there is not a meeting of minds between Mr. Dobbins and the junior officers that he knows. Also, I wonder if he is meeting line and combat arms officers? Most of those young officers are out in operational units, not in positions where they would be in contact with civilian workers.

If Mr. Dobbins is meeting supply officers or information specialists, he is going to get a much different impression than if he met an infantry platoon leader. There is a fair degree of self-selection in a MOS (Military Occupation Specialty), subject always to the proverbial "Practical Joke Department", and the guy whose job it is to count "beans, bullets, and Band-Aids" (my apologies to Supply officers) is typically less interested in tactics and strategy than someone in the combat arms.

The quip about service academy graduates and ROTC perpetuates a myth: That service academy graduates are somehow superior officers and ROTC graduates are not. However, this is the first time that I’ve heard it in an academic sense, normally it is propounded in terms of some unspecified superiority of character or motivation (and normally propounded by a service academy graduate).

Many of the ROTC programs in the U.S. are at top universities. In the LA area, USC and UCLA have (or had) such programs. Are we to believe that students there, or at similar schools, can not get an education? (That question, I guess, is for the education thread and I certainly support the idea of breadth of education, not job training).

It’s also unfair to impugn the motives of the midshipman and cadets attending the Service Academies or attending a civilian school on a ROTC scholarship. For the vast majority there are two motives (and in this order): to obtain a commission and obtain an education.

For smart, motivated middle class and working class kids, this is a great opportunity and one that the government does support financially. Everyone benefits: the Services get smart officers from diverse backgrounds and the midshipman/cadet gets an education that he probably couldn’t afford. This has been a bipartisan, consensus policy of the government for untold years.

However, my thanks to Mr. Dobbins for two things: first, I’m going to go back and re-read Janissaries and, second, for the great quote from Pope Innocent X ("Null, void, invalid…"). I hope I can find some place to use it someday.

Best wishes,

Subject: Education Discussion 11f

From: Robert Peters (rjpeters@iol15.com)

Dr. Pournelle,

In our discussion of education, I think we are really discussing the problem of renewal of institutions. I can’t think of an institution in Western Civilization (which I think would be a good idea) that does not face the problem of renewal with some trepidation. Every human institution continually has (among other things) people who come from no experience in what needs to be done, have to be taught to some standard (acculturated), be employed through some useful career, and hope to pass on (pay forward) what they have learned to the people who haven’t retired.

Part of the problem with renewal is the people in the institution have to want to be part of the institution i.e. the institution must be worthy of the people who are or want to be members. My roommate is an elementary school teacher and I am amazed at the bureaucracy he suffers. I, too, considered an elementary teaching as a second career. I don’t think I could take it in the public schools (which is exactly where the help is needed most). Go ahead, call me a coward. Furthermore on the subject of wanting to be part of the institution, I went to an interview in a USAF Colonel’s office where I was supposed to justify my being a Below-The-Zone candidate for Major. I sat there while the poor, pompous man talked all the way through what was supposed to be my interview. I decided in that interview if the USAF saw fit to make this blow-hard a full Colonel I didn’t want to be in the USAF anymore. Besides, I had achieved my goal for joining the USAF.

I had gone to Europe in the summer of ’89. There was a Soviet Union when I arrived. When I left Europe and the USAF one and one half years later, there wasn’t a Soviet Union. I am not allowed to talk about the causal relationship. If I told you, I’d have to kill myself (why should you suffer for my error?). In all seriousness, I also feel if there isn’t a Cold War, there is no need for Cold Warriors. But I digress…

If I don’t really believe in the institution, why will I extend myself to meet standards which my peers are not even trying to meet?

A most interesting approach to the problem of renewal was semi-revealed to me when I was conferring with representatives of a Scandinavian Air Force. Their problem was picking pilot candidates who wouldn’t die by using a several million kronor aircraft to make a smoking hole in otherwise innocent scenery. Their method required a confidential study of the pilots who successfully completed flying careers (maybe even made it into senior staff) and selecting the characteristics they had in common. These characteristics became the selection criteria for pilot candidates. As I was a visiting officer from a foreign power the criteria were not revealed to me (there is a good chance my contacts didn’t know them either), but from my own experience and prejudices I suspect the main criteria is unbending, unflinching honesty. After all, navigating in the air is a most unforgiving endeavor, especially of self-deception.

It almost goes without saying, any secret selection method would probably not be permitted in an open society.

When I was a junior officer I met no one who was Capt. Galloway’s equivalent, I wasn’t. Mr. Dobbins’ comments are as true now as I would have found them to be then (1982 - 1991). Might we be suffering from near-exponential growth of knowledge? There is much to learn and more everyday. Try learning the rudiments of Aerospace Engineering, satisfying one’s ROTC instructors one might be a good and efficient officer some day and taking the history classes one needs to satisfy the University’s (Virginia Tech) requirements for elective classes when it will not accept ROTC for those credits. Oh, by the way, be sure to graduate in four years before your scholarship runs out and your slot goes to some one else. As bad (or good) as I and my peers had it in 1982, I am sure it is worse now. Also, some unlucky persons had to decide what it takes to earn a BS in Aerospace Engineering, another group of unlucky persons had to do the same job for selecting what is needed to be worthy of an officer’s commission. These unlucky selectors probably were suffering from that ol’ devil exponential growth of knowledge with no guidance on how to handle it.

In addition to learning all the required knowledge and skills to be Capt. Galloway, if you don’t use the material who will retain it? I know the USAF didn’t require any of my knowledge of European Diplomatic History (though it gave considerable personal understanding to the end of the Seventy Years War). I suspect most of what it takes to "get by" is always going to be explicitly taught as response to the need to "pass the test." But teaching important things, like love of learning so we can become more like Capt. Galloway is too hard today if we can’t teach more of our children to read.

Re: Starswarm

Dr. Pournelle,

Like you, I grew up on Heinlein and loved his "Juveniles". They started a life long enjoyment of his flavor of Science Fiction. I just read Starswarm while recovering from heart bypass surgery. While I always enjoy your work, this was a real treat, taking me back 40 years. GOOD JOB! I am sure Robert is pleased with your effort, whichever of his universes he ended up in.

I wrote you a year or two ago, inquiring about the possibility of a conclusion to the Janissaries Series. You kindly responded and indicated that you were scheduled to start collaboration on just this book soon. I just wondered if you had been able to get to it and had any idea concerning when it would be published.

Thank you for your time.

Education 11f

Dear Jerry,

I feel obliged to comment on the discussion about education. Having suffered under the bureaucracy that passed for education here in British Columbia during the 70’s (experiments with class sizes and structure, labour strife), I fled in terror from Junior High (sophomore), swearing never to return. After that I basically schooled myself, taking some courses at night, but mostly by reading, reading, reading. Now that I’m older and have children of my own (4 &; 7, both boys) I find that the education system of the 70’s no longer seems as bad!

This is why my wife and I have decided to home educate. I consider myself quite lucky to live in a province that allows me to do this. The reasons are related to Christian Fundamentalists wanting an arena to teach Creationism, but I’ll

take advantage of this freedom. It certainly takes a considerable amount of commitment, both emotionally and financially.

As you have posted, you need patience. Patience and organization. My wife stays at home during the day and is responsible for the reading (phonics), writing (lots of paper) and arithmetic (lots more paper), I come home in the evenings and teach engineering (LEGO), physics (LEGO) and chemistry (ice cream floats and cooking). This suffices for the elementary subjects. Through interactive software, I can provide history, geometry, museums, more reading and writing, and the list goes on. I’ll just mention the internet. I am lucky enough to have two fast (266 &; 333) machines, ADSL and a LAN. We have sacrificed our home to setup two workstations for hands on work, as well as the two computers; they are in separate rooms, so as not to create diversions. There is no TV per se. We cancelled our Cable to afford the ADSL, and the only videos are ones we borrow from the library, and a handful of "Magic School Bus" videos (some of which are duplicated on CD-ROM).

Don’t worry about the socialization, either. We’ve thought about that as well. My wife does drop in after school care for both other home educators, and neighbourhood public school children. So the kids are really missing the classroom camaraderie, which only distracts the children from concentrating anyway. We also take part in Soccer, Little League Baseball (proud coach), skating, swimming, hiking as a family; crafts, dance, drama classes at the community centre for the kids. We also don’t shuffle our kids away from us when we have adult guests around (mostly!).

So far we have a 7-year-old who is an excellent reader (can read words he doesn’t understand), can do simple adding and subtracting, is an absolute nut about mazes, can follow long directions on the computer. Who is happy, constantly singing (he is very musical), loves to act out complex scenes, knows more about dinosaurs, sharks, big cats, snakes, spiders etc. than I did when I was 7, let alone now! His 4-year-old brother is catching up fast in reading skills (I too, am a second child and learned to read at age 5), and about the same in most other skills. I find he has the better attention span! The capacity of a little child to learn is both staggering, and humbling. The capability of one child to teach another child is magical. In comparison with the public schooled children, my two guys differ only in that they don’t have to put up their hands to go to the bathroom, and they have don’t know any rude taunts (well, other than boo-boo-head).

Both my wife and I look forward to many years teaching, and then learning along side of, our children.

Never weaken!

Your column is worth $10 "each month" to me as you always provide just the right information in a short amount of space.

I recently made the jump from an ancient 386/20 (running DOS) to a beautiful Micron 450 with 19" monitor, primarily to run PhotoShop. All my attempts to get Microsoft Explorer ( or Netscape for that matter ) to run failed. It stumped the ISP operator ( who is very bright ), it stumped Micron Tech support, it stumped pals of mine at IBM and at government agencies that aren’t supposed to exist. It took 5 weeks of constant attempts to find the answer. The answer was in the book "Windows 98 Annoyances" which I ordered from Amazon after reading your column. I am sorry now that I didn’t connect to it through your web site. I followed their script and it worked instantly!

Thanks again!

John Hanlon

re: choice of books for education

While there are certain sound principals in your advocating the use of old text books for the teaching of history I have to throw in a caution. When I was growing up in Virginia in the Sixties the state mandated use of official history texts for the fourth and seventh grades (same book so there are bound to still be many copies of this and similar texts floating around). I’ve never been able to remove from my mind one particular picture of slaves rolling hogsheads of tobacco along a dock. I can still see the picture and remember the caption reading something like "Happy darkies at work". Language like this was common then and still crops up now—witness the controversy over the lyrics to "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"—"that’s where this old darky’s heart am long to be".

Over the years I’ve made a hobby out of buying old history text books and encyclopedias and they came in handy while I was a grad student in English. The recent article in _Salon_ which someone pointed you to is pretty close to the way I experienced things except it neglects to point out how history has been completely overhauled, modified, distorted and fabricated by just about every temporarily victorious group along the political spectrum (except Moderates who could never muster the ambition to try and alter history).

Spencer, Jack, Mr., ADO [spencerj@ado.army.mil]

Jerry,

I know you are busy, but I am flailing. I am looking for a program to help me set up a RAM disk (on a scsi equipped PII400) to use DRAM to hold games primarily.

Can I do it in DOS? QEMM is still a win 95 program, with unknown upgrade dates.

Any ideas? I sure miss your articles. I miss byte too. Pity eh?

Jerry,

Offhand I don’t remember the syntax for VDISK in CONFIG.SYS, but DR-DOS has excellent online documentation. Type DOSBOOK at a command prompt. Alternatively, download the Caldera DR-WebSpyder demo disk and take a look at its CONFIG.SYS. It uses VDISK to decompress the image to a RAM disk and run it from there (a pretty slick way of cramming a Web browser onto a single floppy).

No one thinks about running RAM disks on modern Microsoft OSs anymore, but under DOS, it makes sense on these huge machines with 64 or 128 megs of memory. What else is DOS going to do with all of it? Sick thought: I imagine Windows 3.1 would zip along pretty nicely if it were residing in a 112K RAM disk...

Dave Farquhar [farquhar@lcms.org]

Microcomputer Analyst, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Roger G. Smith [rgsmith@c-gate.net]

Jerry,

Would have sent this sooner, but everything I touch is crashing left and right for the last week+, so haven’t been reading the site much.

Stay well...

Maybe it is not bad for people to have the advantage that Socrates had -- of not being preceded by Socrates.

I imagine people would come to history on their own if they were not prodded, if they were looking for thoughts they could not find in this world.

I once had a friend who told me of his idea about hypertext (this was when it was called Hypercard or something). He felt that one big problem was that everything was subdivided into these big subject names that don’t really mean anything. Like physics. Many different areas within it require different modes of thought. And the word ‘physics’ prejudices people about using things from other subjects, though it may be natural if these words didn’t exist.

His idea was to write a book where you can start anywhere, and if you don’t know something, it will explain where to find the things that precede it; and it would have links to places that branch from it or are interesting in light of it. It would be a personal work, but he would hope that others could help him write it. Kind of like linux.

Back to the subject, I believe that dumbing-down isn’t the complete reason for the shift away from history. I believe it’s a good thing; we’re back to a ruder society where we learn things that are relevant to what we’re interested in. That may make us seem dumb to the cultured Europeans, but it makes us think. And keep in mind that ‘history’ necessarily is somehow changed because of our new media.

Luckily our country can hold both kinds of people. We have no disadvantage that all people share.

I hope you speed read through these things. And thanks for reminding me of something.

Republicans and the Department of Education:

I believe, Dr. Pournelle, that you pointed out some years ago the at there is an inverse relationship between federal education funding and literacy.

What does the Department of Education do with all that cash? If the entire Department of Education budget were tossed, willy-nilly, at local schools, the results might astonish the education bureaucracy.

One of my relatives worked in the Superintendent's office. She was complimented for her efficiency in keeping the school office up-to- date with state Department of Education requirements. Her method? She simply tossed the missives from the state into a pending file. Two weeks or so later, a corrected final draft would arrive. Thus, rather than do, undo, and re-do, she maintained her efficiency by NOT doing too quickly.

If a state department, supposedly devoted to learning, cannot do better than the above illustration, how hopelessly snarled is the federal department?

For those who want some perspective on this issue, go read Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. The book is both an excellent novel and a brilliant condemnation of much of modern education. This book was written in the fifties. Upon re-reading this book, I am still amazed at how accurate was Mr. Heinlein's vision.

Also, see The Number of the Beast and the last two essays in Expanded Universe.

Of course, also see Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield's Higher Education.

The Republican party wasn't wrong in trying to abolish the Department of Education; they went about it the wrong way. Sometimes a frontal assault doesn't work, and the best strategy is to march around the walls, then sound a trumpet.