Mail 71 October 18 - 24, 1999

HOME Current View VIEW Home MAIL Home BOOK Reviews © This week: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	CHAOS MANOR MAIL A SELECTION MAIL October 18 - 24, 1999 REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN! CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE. Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit. IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature. If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better.. This week: Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday Current Mail HIGHLIGHTS: Global Warming and the Isle of the Dead: Has the sea risen? A response and a reply And more And once more, with long reply from me First, do no harm Echelon Day? Is Bill Gates like Gorbachev? Downloadables from paper copies? The answer Gibson and Zip The click of death Locking up Free PC's? Where to find VI
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Monday October 18, 1999 Beach
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Tuesday, Beach
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Wednesday October 20, 1999 I am back from the beach house, and again this will be short shrift to letters: tomorrow I ought to have some actual time. "At the end of the 19th century England began exporting much of its key industries to places like Germany and the United States. The decay in England's industrial base was blamed on a failure of the educational system. But if the tools and supplies that make up an industry are shipped overseas, how can education cause people sitting in an empty building produce something? All the blather about education today seems like a similar bit of misdirection to me..." Tim Gawne Not to disagree with the points made, but I suggest this statement is a little strong. Certainly England (in the broad sense) exported both human and financial capital freely but I am not sure what exporting industries means. I suggest England failed to compete with rising industries in the United States if this is what exporting industries means in the sense of exporting jobs. The precision industries arising in the Connecticut Valley from among other things the firearms industry (obsf Harry Harrison on how the United States defeated Great Britain when Prince Albert's death kept him from stopping English meddling in the Americas during the War Between the States he says "For those historical doubters--the book is as true as I could make it.") were in advance of English practice as shown by e.g. the reception of Colt's firearms in London and the common anecdote about the Yankee clock maker who shipped clocks with stamped gears (clearly inferior because the thin contact surface degraded quickly but much much cheaper) to England at a realistic declared valuation for customs. The English Revenue promptly bought all the clocks at the declared value to teach the upstart colonials a lesson in honesty and not trying to cheat customs. The next load was promptly shipped at the same declared value. The story goes the English stopped buying before the Yankees stopped shipping. In terms of tools and supplies, how common are Whitworth wrenches at any time in American history? And for supplies I am hard pressed to think of much in the way of raw materials or semi-finished goods that England ever exported. The American mill towns and the bison hide belting were domestic products. That is I don't think the English exported jobs in quite the same way that American companies have moved jobs across borders even while keeping them in-house. I can't think of any English brands outsourced to the quite new Germany or to the United States at the turn of the century. Carnegie's steel and many other products were fungible and direct competitors but competitors not exported English industry. As surely as water runs downhill work will seek the lowest bidder all internalized costs considered with a risk premium as noted. Consider that Microsoft (and others) have moved to stop the passing of software licenses around the world with the daylight as a sign of work moving around. The United States was essentially fully funded on the tariff for many years and grew mightily while arguing fiercely. The discussion is vastly complicated by the dual use of tariffs for revenue which might be relatively neutral and for the protection of infant industries and protected classes which inevitably burdens the economy (infant industries often stay infant forever). Similarly Coase's Theorem tells us for any inefficiency such as a tariff induces there is a coalition which might achieve the same result with a more efficient reallocation of resources but there are almost always barriers to the formation of and action by the coalition. I suggest the answer can be found in the Bullionist controversy - paper money need not be inflationary in theory but invariably is in practice - just as Gresham's Law always applies - or paper back trading bookstores accumulate romances while losing books by Jerry Pournelle - the human factor is the hardest to control in economics. So here the psychological factor as expressed in education weighs heavily. I suggest one human factor omitted so far from the discussion is the visibility of the factory in a factory town and the impact on goal setting in the community. Students may find it emotionally hard to prepare for invisible jobs. Clark E. Myers e-mail at: ClarkEMyers@msn.com I wouldn't Spam filter you! Dear Dr. Pournelle, Interesting bit from the ACLU on the perils of online advocacy. http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n101399b.html Also, slashdot.org has some interesting commentary on this (set your filter to '3' to cut out the idiots). Kit Case kitcase@netutah.com I'll have a look. I really do need to learn how to deal with the slashdot filtering system; my experiences over there have not been rewarding, but I understand some find useful information there. Dear Jerry, There's a beautifully messy situation about comms in Malta at present. 1. Maltacom, the island's telco, recently privatised, has a monopoly on wired comms. 2. Vodaphone have a monopoly on mobile phones 3. Melita Cable have a monopoly on cable TV services. Maltacom want to do mobile phones, Vodaphone is screaming. Melita Cable want to do Internet comms via their fiber optics. Maltacom is raising hell. The ISPs want access to Melita's fiber. After all they use Maltacoms ducts and poles from when Maltacom was state owned. Melita is claiming fouls all over the place. The lawyers are having a wonderful time! Regards David Cefai I've never been to Malta although I'd like to. I just got a package from there today, by coincidence: some Order of Lazarus pins from the Maltese Obedience, which was recently unified with the US order. I anticipate interesting developments for you...
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Thursday October 21, 1999 Jerry: Your comments in Wednesday's view on global warming made me think about a recent item I saw in Scientific American. In summary, a researcher was studying the medical effects on humans of 60hz electromagnetic fields, such as those found near power transmission lines. He was censured after it was determined that he threw out over 90% of his raw data that inconveniently didn't fit his pre-conceived hypothesis. Here's the link. http://www.sciam.com/1999/1099issue/1099scicit3.html How does this tie into global warming? I have a sense that the kind of junk-science-by-environmentalist-wackos-with-an-agenda demonstrated in the Scientific American article above is not uncommon. I think we are seeing it with the whole global warming brouhaha. If AlGore manages to attain the Presidency, I expect we'll see a whole lot of environmentalist junk science. I don't want to imply that I think that environmental research / protection isn't needed, just that doing it with a preconceived attitude to advance what is usually a liberal-statist agenda is totally unacceptable. Scientifically justified environmental protection is needed. Creating junk science to push an environmental "cause" is another thing altogether. We need fewer "causes" clamoring for governmental "fixes". Thanks, Jim Riticher jritiche@bellsouth.net Long ago I did an essay called The Voodoo Sciences. I need to bring it up to date and publish it again. It argues that novelists need only plausibility, and can make up their data; lawyers want proof and can select their data; scientists are supposed to take all the data and deal with it. When one does science without doing it that way one ceases to be a scientist. Gore and many of the environmentalist crowd long ago became lawyers, arguing for a particular view and ignoring data in contradiction; lately many have become novelists, making up their data. One needs to see which a person is before listening... And on that score: Jerry: If you REALLY want the scoop on "global warming", some really good stuff is to be found at: http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/ This is a Tasmanian web site, with what appears to be data... For another, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_467000/467007.stm which explains why the Tasmanian Isle of the Dead may be important to global warming. I have this mail but I am not sure what it means: Megan O'Neill wrote: > The gibberish at the bottom is explained in these two links- > > http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/22102.html > > http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net/ > > FBI CIA NSA IRS ATF BATF DOD WACO RUBY RIDGE OKC OKLAHOMA CITY MILITIA GUN > HANDGUN MILGOV ASSAULT RIFLE TERRORISM BOMB DRUG HORIUCHI KORESH DAVIDIAN > KAHL POSSE COMITATUS RANDY WEAVER VICKIE WEAVER SPECIAL FORCES LINDA > THOMPSON SPECIAL OPERATIONS GROUP SOG SOF DELTA FORCE CONSTITUTION BILL OF > RIGHTS WHITEWATER POM PARK ON METER ARKANSIDE IRAN CONTRAS OLIVER NORTH > VINCE FOSTER PROMIS MOSSAD NASA MI5 ONI CID AK47 M16 C4 MALCOLM X REVOLUTION > CHEROKEE HILLARY BILL CLINTON GORE GEORGE BUSH WACKENHUT TERRORIST TASK > FORCE 160 SPECIAL OPS 12TH GROUP 5TH GROUP SF > > ---------------------- > Ms. Megan O'Neill, BA > Department of Sociology > F32 Edward Wright > Dunbar Street > University of Aberdeen > Aberdeen, AB24 3QY > Scotland > Direct Line: +44-(0)1224-274353 > Main office: +44-(0)1224-272760 > Fax: +44-(0)1224-273442 > m.oneill@abdn.ac.uk > http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~soc104/ I mean, I suspect I can guess without going to those links. Clearly this is intended to be used in email to thwart some kind of watchdog software. Whether or not that kind of software exists is another story, of course... The fact that the story refers to Linda Thompson, about whom one may take decided views independent of the subjects she covers, is another thing to think on. For good or ill, Thompson's name raised red flags among Members of Congress otherwise more concerned with Libertarians causes than not. I don't know what's in their dossiers about Thompson, or whether or not it's true; I do know that one of the quickest ways I know to lose a Congressman's interest in a subject is to cite Linda Thompson. I read a few of her Waco reports and thought them plausible, until she began talking about mobilizing a vast number of armed people to come "bear arms" and "test constitutional rights" during the Waco siege. This didn't strike me as being very safe, or a very good idea at all. I have no idea whether "echelon" exists or not. After the Waco business there is little the US government could do that would astonish me. Jerry, I've been reading Victor Davis Hanson's latest work: "The Soul of Battle". In it, he examines the role of the military in democratic societies, using as his examples the Theban Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton. His main thesis is that democratic armies only reach their full potential in campaigns of liberation against the homelands of aggressive totalitarianism. You may or may not agree with him, but you can't help being aroused by his no-holds-barred prose. Neither reactionary nor revisionist, he refuses to flinch away from calling a spade a spade, without abandoning the scholarly underpinnings which make this such an intellectually engaging book. FWIW, Tony Evans Jerry - I am certainly not scientifically qualified probably to even be commenting on global warming, but I am going to offer my non-scientific opinion anyway. I recall reading back when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines that it had placed more particulates in the air than the entire world industry that year. My guess is that our carbon output is not having a huge effect on global temperatures. The cycle of temperatures in the past 20,000 years has been huge - take a look at the wooly mammoth they just unearthed in Siberia. It was living 20,000+ years ago and at the time, Siberia was warm and green. But 20,000 years ago, most of North America was covered with the fading glacial remnants of the Ice Age. Many geologists and other scientists maintain that within 10,000 years we will be back in the main grip of the Ice Age, since it is their hypothesis that the cold never left, but just receded temporarily. Of course, this flies directly in the face of global warming. Global cooling, perhaps? I am of the opinion that the real problem we are facing is not global warming, but the complete destruction of large ecosystems that even 50 years ago were untouched by human hands. Unfortunately, anyone who mentions preservation is immediately branded an environmentalist and dismissed as some sort of left-wing wacko. There are those of us who are genuinely concerned that what we are leaving for future generations may not be worth leaving at all. What seems to be missing in this country is any sense of moderation, tolerance for other people's views and the notion that the Constitution was not specifically written to support a monolithic 2-party system. Sorry to mix that all together but it's been one of those days. Cheers Roger Weeks Well, I have been arguing for Conservationist causes for about 50 years, but then no one seems to know what I am. The left makes me a rightist, but I think the right worries a bit about my leftist tendencies. Ah well. I would think preservationist activities not very controversial. What is controversial is who shall pay? That is, if you save all your life to buy property on a beach and wish then to build there, and they discover a California Chuckleheaded Gnatcatcher nests there and nowhere else, it seems right and proper to prevent your going ahead with your building -- but it also seems right and proper that we pay you what the property is worth and make a park out of it, not force you to keep it and pay taxes but forbid you to do anything with it. And if you clean up old junkyards by burying them with sand, perhaps it is not reasonable to jail you for desecrating a "wetland" that turns out to be damp about 5 days a year: or if we insist on preserving that "wetland" then the public ought to pay for it. Dear Dr. Pournelle: This morning, a co-worker showed me a story on the internet regarding Microsoft porting its applications software to Linux. He thought that this reflected a marvelous flexibility on the part of Bill Gates. I had a different take. It reminded me of the Gorbachev syndrome: "Gee, I have this huge balloon which is rapidly filling with water to the bursting point." "I'd better poke a hole in it with this pin to reduce the pressure." "Hey buddy, can you loan me some money for a mop... and a dry pair of pants?" The moral of the story is that it's one thing to recognize that you have a problem, quite another to understand the nature of the problem, to understand the nature of the solution, and to understand the ultimate results. Bill Gates I suspect, doesn't understand the open source concept any better than Gorbachev understood a market economy and open government. I suspect that his dabbling in the former will have results similar to Gorbachev's dabbling in the latter. Chris Morton Rocky River, Ohio Well, I hadn't heard they were planning on doing that with Microsoft applications, but one thing I do know is I do not generally bet against Bill Gates. Unlike Gorbachev, Gates has some understanding of the world. Odd: Gorbachev could have been elected President of the US but not of Russia, and I suspect Bush could have been elected President of Russia... I fear your analogy breaks apart on examination, but I've been wrong before. From: Michael Z. [mailto:michaelz@alphasoftware.com] Subject: storing digital info on paper regarding: >I have a question for someone who has been at Byte >for a long time. Do you still remember that there >was a time when the reader can download program from >the printed pages of Byte using some kind of code >printed in dot form on the last pages? I am working >on a project that require that. Can you please let >me know what it is? I am sure it is not bar code. Check out this link: http://www.simtel.net/simcgi-bin/win3find.cgi?paper There is in the result list a windows 3.1 version of a very very similar program. and just for extra brownie points: http://dcd.welchallyn.com/techover/techover.htm http://dcd.welchallyn.com/techover/2dsymbol.htm which includes excellent articles detailing some of the newer exotic "barcode" type technologies (good to keep for general referance) Michael "Z" If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would have destroyed civilization. --- In reply to your letter posted to JerryPournelle.com : I think you are talking about something called a "Cauzin Strip Reader" that for a short time looked like it would be a viable storage media. I also remember seeing it in Byte sometime in the mid-eighties. As I recall, for a short time,. or perhaps only once, program listings were reproduced in that format. It had an index line for calibration and appeared to be about a 2 inch wide strip of noise, and the length depended on the size of the file. I have tried to find the issue it was showcased in, but have not bee able to find it. good luck in the search. Charles Duell cduell@rmi.net Thanks!
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Friday October 22, 1999 The accepted definition of a "space drive" is a reactionless propulsion system, i.e., one that provides velocity without rockets or fuel. The following item from the 13 September 1999 issue of _Aviation Week &; Space Technology_ may be of interest: "NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts has awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant to a University of Washington team for continued research on Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion, intended to significantly increase spacecraft velocity. The concept involves creation of an electromagnetic field 10-12 mi. in radius around a spacecraft which would interact with, and be dragged by, the solar wind." Doesn't do anything for assured access to space, but once you do get there.... Steven Dunn NERVA and other such systems have the potential to get us around in interplanetary space once it's easy enough to get up there; and for that matter there are various electric drives with beamed power that are worth investigating. This project is worth pursuing, and half a million bucks is about the right amount, but what I really want to see is SSX: an experimental Single Stage reusable ship that lets us learn how to do SSTO. Then we have this: Jerry, I have written and rewritten this email several times to try and stick to the facts and not engage in the kind of ad hominem attacks that you and many others appear to rely on when discussing global warming. All I will say is that a scientist must continue to evaluate ALL the data, never sticking to a previously held conclusion if new information comes to light that undermines that hypothesis. I think it is fair to say that the hypothesis of global warming CAUSED BY human activity is not a scientifically proven fact. However, much of the research that is out there - unbiased, peer-reviewed research -- contradicts your easy assertions that all is well. First, check out the the National Geophysical Data Center's Paleoclimatology Program Web site on global warming at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/home.html There you will discover that while there were warm periods in the past, those earlier periods can be attributed to natural phenomenon that are not occurring at present. "The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms." See http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html Another excellent source for keeping up on scientific research in this and many other fields is www.explorezone.com. There, for example, you will discover that previous estimates about a warmer period 600 years ago may have been incorrect. "The 20th century was the warmest this century and the rate of warming (is) greater than at any time back to 1000 AD," Jones [Prof. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England] told explorezone.com. "Up to recently many people have believed that the medieval time (AD 900-1300) was warmer. The period wasn't warmer. This latter aspect takes away one of the arguments that greenhouse skeptics have used - that it was warmer (in the medieval period) than in recent history." http://www.explorezone.com/archives/99_05/13_globalwarm.htm Finally, I see that on the web site link you posted, the author is even trying to deny that warming has occurred at all, apart from the debate over whether it is human-induced warming. That is truly off the map in terms of current science. See http://www.scientificamerican.com/askexpert/environment/environment20/force. html or http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann_99.html for example. You may be right that politicians or others are oversimplifying or worse, but fighting ignorance with ignorance seems unlikely to clear things up... All the best, Aaron Pressman When I asked Mr. Pressman what he meant by "ad hominem" attacks he said that I shouldn't have accused Mr. Gore of acting like a lawyer by marshalling only the data that fit his theory. Since that is precisely what Gore does, I presume this means that any refutation of certain causes is "ad hominem"; which means there is no possible debate. As to the web sites he gives, I don't see data: I see theory. But that is precisely what the debate is about, is it not? The theory says that certain things ought to be happening. Most theoretical atmospheric scientists have this view. The data don't show this happening. Most observational scientists have a different view. Meanwhile, almost everyone down at bottom agrees that man-made causes aren't what's establishing the trends. To go on and say previous warming trends were "natural causes" and this one is different, is, I would have thought, to say something "unnatural" is doing it: which either means industry or divine or diabolic intervention. There is about as much evidence for any one of those three as the others; but we are to spend billions and billions, at least in the West, to halt this trend. Of course this either condemns the developing countries to eternal poverty, or they ignore our nostrums, which is the more likely event. If mankind is doing something to cause a terrible trend, then of course that ought to be stopped. If there is a terrible trend and we are not doing something to stop it, we ought to look at what to do. Clearly no sane person disputes either of those statements. The problem comes when one decides what to do, and marshals evidence for that, without looking at the other evidence; as I have been saying for about 30 years now. It is too early for advocacy of remedies because we don't know what is happening or why. This may be normal solar variance. This may be extraordinary solar variance. There may be warming trends of one kind or another caused by man-made activities, but we just haven't detected them yet. It may be that we need nuclear power and to stop burning fossil fuels (I have always said that oil is far too valuable a resource to set fire to; use it as feed stocks for better processes and get energy in less environmentally expensive ways, including ocean thermal systems and space solar power.) But the point is, we ought to be LOOKING FOR DATA, and spending money on acquiring more data, and putting up more sensors in space, and putting out more sensors around the globe; we ought to be spending money for increased understanding, not running about advocating treaties that will be far more expensive than good science, and which won't tell us what the hell is going on. Once we know what, if anything, is happening to climate -- and the data are far more ambiguous than Mr. Pressman seems to think -- then it is time to see what to do about it. The technical term for this kind of analysis is Bayesian Value of Information, and it's a pretty standard operations research technique: when you don't know what course of action to take, and the alternatives are mutually exclusive and expensive, you can determine what is the value of additional data on which to make a decision. Bayes showed us how a long time ago. The analysis has been done, and it is clear we ought to be spending a billion a year on better data. We are not doing that; but we are willing to spend far more than that on remedies when we don't know what we are remedying. This is either insanity, corruption, or the usual thing that happens when people think they are doing science but in fact have drifted off into being lawyers and advocates. Which is what I said earlier. Mr. Pressman seems to have confused me with some other people, because I have never said "all is well." I have said I don't know what is happening, but if I have to have a trend I'll take warming over cooling. I also want mightily to KNOW what is going on, and I for one would be willing to put a billion a year into finding out: not by handing the money to lawyers and politicians, but by doing real, honest to God SCIENCE, and collecting data, and getting people who will look at ALL the data and not just that which supports their cause. Excuse my rant, but Mr. Pressman touched a nerve. I am not guilty of the crimes he charges me with. I certainly do not advocate ignorance, and how the hell anyone would get the notion that I have puzzles me; especially from an essay that distinguishes between scientists, lawyers, and novelists. And Gore certainly is guilty of acting like a lawyer rather than a scientist. I've run across an interesting alternative viewpoint on the subject of global warming, based largely on ice and sediment core climate histories and current understanding ocean current heat transfers. An excellent article describing this viewpoint appeared in the Atlantic Monthly last year. The URL is: http://WilliamCalvin.com/1990s/1998AtlanticClimate.htm A quick summary is as follows: climate is nonlinear and modal; even if human activity is having an effect, it is not likely to be the gradual warming and sea level rise that is usually portrayed in the media; we're in a glacial epoch - the Earth has been much warmer than now through most of its history; human influence aside, we are (over?) due to return to full glacial conditions; the most likely human effect is short term warming triggering an early and more rapid return to glacial conditions. tblack@sensci.com (Tom Black) You wrote "I have no idea whether "echelon" exists or not." It's a pretty sure thing. The system has been mapped out fairly well. The best source I know of is the book "Secret Power: The International Spying Networks UKUSA and Echelon", by Nicky Hagar. To quote from the introduction: "What follows explains as precisely as possible - and for the first time in public - how the worldwide [spy] system works, just how immense and powerful it is and what it can and cannot do." To save you the reading, I'll summarize what I remember of the key facts: 1. Ground stations around the world eavesdrop on anything and everything that goes through satellites. Some stations, for instance, are located in New Zealand so that they can eavesdrop on geosynchronous satellites over Asia. 2. Some eavesdropping is also done on cables. For obvious reasons this is less complete; since all this is still secret, we do not know how complete it is. 3. Voice recognition software turns conversations into text. 4. There is a worldwide list known as the "Dictionary", to which any of the member nations may contribute, and which consists of keywords to look for (and presumably also more complicated rules). Conversations or messages which have sufficient numbers of keywords in them get sent to the nation which requested the search, which can do whatever it wants with them. 5. The participating nations are the US, the UK, New Zealand (where the book was published), and I think Canada and Australia. 6. In most of these nations (certainly in the US), there are laws prohibiting the government (or at least the espionage agency involved) from spying on domestic conversations. These laws are generally obeyed, but anything which goes beyond the bounds of the nation (e.g. a call from me to my father in Switzerland) is fair game. In any case, the worldwide "jam Echelon" day will not cause them any real problems; they just need to add rules saying, in database language, things like "AND NOT 'jam Echelon'". Rules that throw out messages with too many keywords in them also would likely be useful. -- Norman Yarvin yarvin@cs.yale.edu Thanks for the clear exposition. I've seen this before: but I still have no direct evidence that any of this exists. I also have a great deal of confidence that the computer community is collectively a lot smarter than any bureaucracy... I find your text-based web site is a refreshing change from the insidious graphics bloat which has been creeping onto the Web in recent years. Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to occur to Web masters that the average Joe isn't running on a T3 line. At home, I'm doing well to get 28.8K; at work, our whole installation gets to share a 256K line for routine browsing and downloads. I recently tried to connect to LucasFilms' new Indiana Jones web site and bailed out the moment I saw the "105 graphic items remaining" message on IE4's status bar. It took more than two seconds for the number to change to "104". This was close to midnight, Denver time. You can do the math. The reason I'm writing to you now is that yesterday I read your Byte.com column about a Windows Notepad replacement ("NoteTabs"?). As a UNIX programmer being dragged kicking and screaming into the wonderful world of Microsoft, I'm trying to find a decent text editor with regular expression search and replace tools. (vi for Windows NT?) Could NoteTabs be it? I couldn't remember the web site, so tried to get back onto Byte. No dice. Byte's server is mind-numbingly slow even at the best of times; it's utterly impossible today. My brain timed out before the browser did. All in all, I miss the days of print Byte. I used to subscribe to their quarterly CD-ROM, but the turkeys who gutted the operation have yet to send me their promised refund -- and that was probably six months ago. I don't think I'll be dealing with them again, on-line or otherwise. At any rate, if you can send me the Web address for that editor, I'd appreciate it. In the meantime, I'll see what AltaVista can dredge up. If I can get it to load. Thanks. Bob Shepard (A long-time fan of your columns.) Thanks for the kind words. I'll have to go look up that web site, but a search of this site should find it for you actually... Dr. Pournelle; The software that Mr. Si is looking for is for the old Byte "PaperByte" system. This was a bar code system that was to be an alternative to cassette and paper tape for mass distribution. Cheap floppy drives killed it (I Imagine.) I have several of the old Byte PaperByte books (Basex, SuperWumpus, K2FDOS etc, all from 1979.) I might also have, but it will require some time to look for, the original PaperByte Loader book. I remember seeing it but I can't remember if I saw it last month, last year or in the last decade. If I find it I will inform Mr. Si privately. In the meantime, he might try a library that has back issues of Byte. The time period that he should be interested in is 1978, 1979. Yes Jerry, I have been reading your column in Byte since it started and it was the main reason I continued to subscribe to it long after Byte became a manager's magazine. Rolf Grunsky -- ----------------------------------------------------------- rgrunsk@ibm.net Remember, what you see coming at you is coming from you. "Jungle" Jack Flanders ----------------------------------------------------------- Thanks! Jerry, Steve Gibson's TIP proved a valuable tool a while back when I was having mysterious ZIP drive problems. I have IDE ZIPs on the Compaq Deskpros and SCSI ZIPs on the Macs at home, and interchange disks among them all the time, mostly in Windows FAT format. I started noticing that the Performa 6400 with the internal SCSI ZIP was having trouble reading disks from the DeskPro 6000. Then all the machines started having problems, and failures started to snowball. Re-formatting disks produced uncertain results. I was starting to think all my drives were bad, or that a bad disk had damaged multiple drives, recalling a disastrous episode with Syquests at work a few years ago. TIP is slow, but it, SpinRite, and FWB Hard Disk Toolkit (the Mac equivalent of SpinRite) allowed me to track down the problem to the 6400's internal drive, which would damage a disk's format just by reading it. As you found, one of the IDE drives couldn't reformat the disks correctly. Since SCSI internal drives aren't made any more, I got an external and hooked it to that machine and all was well, except for the ugly hole in the front panel. The funny thing is, the bad drive works fine when it is removed from the computer. If I reinstall it, it goes bad again after a few days. I suspect some sort of frame flex and binding of the head carriage or something similar, though I can't confirm any problem on the bench. At the time, I was getting pretty leery of Iomega's products, but since that one problem was resolved, I haven't had any further errors. I regard Jaz disks as inherently risky, since they fly the heads on removable hard disk media. ZIPs ought to be more forgiving of the odd dust particle. The main problem with depending on them is that they are single sourced, and if Iomega has a bad batch or gets into financial trouble, you're stranded. Alas, we don't seem to have a good industry standard replacement for the floppy yet. Ethernet and servers aren't really substitutes for removable media. Regards, Henry Spragens I find that the Zip 100 Plus (the external SCSI/Parallel drive) is nearly indispensable as a combination sneakernet and archive. I agree you need removable media, but in my case I network to a CD/R or CD-R/W for most of that. But the Zip Plus is quick, and very convenient.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Saturday October 23, 1999 I read your comments on global warming and the need for research. Coincidentally, within the past couple of days I found a web site on the same that you and/or your readers may be interested in. It is a project on climatology using distributed processing and structured similarly to the seti@home project. Volunteers can use their computer's spare time to crunch climatology data. I've listed the site below. Thanks again for all the effort you make in maintaining your site - I greatly enjoy reading it! Ted Borreson http://www.climate-dynamics.rl.ac.uk/index.html PS: Hi, I forgot to say that the distributed processing experiment hasn't actually started yet. They are still assessing its viability. Oops! Let us know when it happens. One of the big problems in climate models is that the number crunching takes more computer power than is available at any one site. This may help. As I have noted, theory says there ought to be a number of effects from man-made activity. Those effects in general are not observed (and it doesn't help when someone comes forth and says "THIS TIME WE REALLY DO SEE IT" only to find that's not the case (Hensen comes to mind)). More refined models with better number crunching might make better predictions of more precise and more easily observed events. As I understand it, we don't even have good models of why El Nino happens or why El Nino events (and the opposite La Nina events) have the effect they do. Empirically we know that when you get La Nina it's going to be a dry fall with lots of fires in Los Angeles, but general climate models don't seem able to make this prediction. Perhaps more refined they would, Helmholtz said "the most practical thing in the world is a good theory" and he was right on target. We need some good theories in climatology. Dr Pournelle: I've seen this on several Win98 machines (original software and #2) where the system will lock up after it is idle for 30+ minutes or more. Most often is has been after power saving was enabled. Then, even after all power savings are turned off, the situation occurs. This hit my Win98 machine a couple of weeks ago. I've found that re-running the Win98 2nd edition UPGRADE (full re-install not needed) seems to clear it up. I think it is that--censored--power saving software. It gets whacked but not enough to be recognized by Win98's System File Checker. On another topic, don't you just love Congress. They're gonna save us from ourselves or kill us trying. It amazing how easy they can regulate those who elect them but when it comes to campaign finance reform ... David Yerka I'll try the reinstall before I just take it apart and have done with it. Thanks. My favorite campaign reform would require that all money be raised in the district you run in, or through state political parties with full disclosure of who gave what. My objection to "soft money" is that it doesn't build political responsibility. But that's a very long and very complex subject: the fact is nothing will prevent those whose interests are affected from trying to use whatever resources they have to influence political outcomes. And who can blame them? I agree about the need for more data. I also agree about the usefulness of Bayesian analysis. My take, however, is that the scientific method is foreign to most lawyers, politicians, decision-makers, and voters, so I suspect actions will be deferred long past the point at which they should be made on an economic analysis. There has been work by anthropologists on the collapse phenomenon in complex societies (c.f., Tainter), and the common pattern is that the response to an ecological problem is made much too late. And these collapses are historically very common. _That's_ what worries me. --- Harry Erwin, <mailto:herwin@gmu.edu>, <http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin>, Senior SW Analyst, PhD candidate (informatics and computational science) modeling how bats echolocate (defense November 5), and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science (data structures and advanced C++). You can't respond to an 'ecological problem' until you know what the problem is: are we cooling or warming or are we warming in order to move more water north so we can cool, and what are the feedback mechanisms? Spending billions to lower CO2 emissions may be the right thing to do but there's precious little evidence that it is: and that money would at the moment be better spent finding out more about what the problems are that face us. Hello Jerry, I have been an admirer of your work for many years and have enjoyed your BYTE columns almost as long. I haven't seen you comment on the Free PC scams (as I refer to them) so far. I wondered if you had considered doing so. When I look as this I am constantly reminded of Robert Heinlein's old phrase TANSTAAFL! Sincerely, Mike Dossett Actually, Heinlein got that phrase from my father, as he acknowledged in a latter a few years ago. But I haven't thought about "free PC's" much: most of my readers don't need advice on that, and those who do need such advice don't tend to read my column. They were performing it [using military people as test subjects] while I was still in service. Fortunately, I retired before the next series of mandatory shots began ( I think that series was for hepatitis C). Have to dig out my shot record and check. There were times, especially after Desert Storm, that we felt like guinea pigs. Seemed there was some sort of newly required immunization that popped up every six months or so. A man can get quite tired of being mistaken for a pincushion. Tim Bowser, MSgt, USAF (ret.)
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Sunday October 24, 1999 Regarding Parsifal lockups: Dear Jerry, Could this be the old Power Management problem rearing its ugly head again? If it's not too late why not try and ruthlessly remove all power management (CMOS, Control panel and in Control Panel/System/device manager/motherboard resources? This has always worked for me. I think the main culprit tends to be ACPI Power Management. Regards David Cefai I had already done that. I hate "power management." But as suggested by a couple of readers, sometimes crippling power management does odd things to Windows 98. In any event, I went to C:\windows\options\cabs\win98 where keep a full copy of the Windows installation disk, and ran setup /is to disable the silly scandisk (having manually done scandisk on the C drive; the reason is I have removable cartridge drives, and scandisk can't stand that when when readying for Windows 98 setup). It took a while, but it looks like things are working again, and so far no lockups. We'll see. From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com subject: global warming Mr. Pressman's letter on global warming is, uhm, interesting, though not in the way he necessarily intends. He says: >>"I have written and rewritten this email several times to try and stick to the facts and not engage in the kind of ad hominem attacks that you and many others appear to rely on when discussing global warming. All I will say is that a scientist must continue to evaluate ALL the data, never sticking to a previously held conclusion if new information comes to light that undermines that hypothesis. "I think it is fair to say that the hypothesis of global warming CAUSED BY human activity is not a scientifically proven fact. However, much of the research that is out there - unbiased, peer-reviewed research -- contradicts your easy assertions that all is well." I'd say that the first thing a scientist needs to do is present the data, which he doesn't do. For instance: "The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms." See http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html Well, I went there. There's not much more than the quote. Who wrote these studies, and where can they be found? Apparently, we don't need to know. The page does direct you to four other web pages. One says that the Cretaceous was definitely warmer than today, with no scientific consensus as to why. A second tells me that 125,000 years ago, some parts of the world's ocean surface's were warmer than today's, and some colder. There appears to be no clear pattern or overall trend. The last two pages refer to studies that are in press. Similarly, http://www.explorezone.com/archives/99_05/13_globalwarm.htm which he also recommends tells me about 'the latest study' without telling me where to find it (There's a mention near the end of "the May issue of Reviews of Geophysics," but a web search doesn't turn up any such journal.) The summarized information is also strange: "Annual global surface temperatures warmed by 1.03 degrees F from 1861 to 1997. From 1901 to 1997, the gain was 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit. ( I think what they're saying here is that from 1861 to 1901, average temperature fell .09 degrees Fahrenheit. Question: Is the data really good to one one-hundredth of a degree Fahrenheit? My old statistics teacher flatly stated it wasn't. Question: Assuming this to be true, why did the temperature fall?) Over both periods, the gain was greater in the southern than in the northern hemisphere. Most warming in the 20th century occurred in two distinct periods: 1925-1944 and 1978-1997. In both periods, warming was greatest over the northern continents and during the December-February and March-May seasons. (Note that this appears to contradict the previous paragraphs assertion that temperature rise was greatest in the southern hemisphere.) Mr. Pressman continues: "Finally, I see that on the web site link you posted" (again, we aren't told what link to what site), [he was referring to the Island of the Dead site I posted above; JEP] "the author is even trying to deny that warming has occurred at all, apart from the debate over whether it is human-induced warming. That is truly off the map in terms of current science. See http://www.scientificamerican.com/askexpert/environment/environment20/force. html or http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann_99.html for example." Well, the first link didn't work for me. The second gives me what seems to be an abstract of one of the in press papers mentioned above, which I can apparently download and read (by now I'm too tired; RSN). The graph suggests that the last decade or so is about a quarter of a degree C warmer than might be expected, if I'm reading it correctly. Other sources I've seen say that this last decade or so's warming flatly did not occur. The graph also suggests that most of the global warming, a half degree C, occurred in the first half of this century. Which brings up a point: I've asked everyone I know who is alarmed about alleged global warming why, if human activity is causing it, it seems to have mostly happened before we put the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I have never received any answer to this question. Not even evasions. It just gets ignored. I mentioned above that my statistics teacher maintained that the data on the last century-and-a-half's temperature data was just too poor to make any conclusions with. He claimed that the uncertainties in the data were greater than the alleged global warming, rendering the supposed trend statistically meaningless. I have heard from several sources that the data quality correlates negatively with the magnitude of global warming, that is, the better the data set, the less likely you are to see any global warming taking place using it. Also that much of the data contains systematic errors, e.g., it depends on temperature readings taken in urban areas that emit ever more waste heat, CO2 and H2O, automatically resulting in ever higher temperature readings. True? The people I've asked about global warming never answer those questions either. In the end, the sentence that is perhaps most relevant is the one about trying not to indulge in ad hominem. What's the problem in not using ad hominem? My observation leads me to conclude that most of those worried about global warming are in the grip of an obsession that does not permit them to question their basic premise. Perhaps I am wrong, but till I see answers to the ignored questions above, I expect I will maintain my present position. OK: let's summarize what everyone knows. First, in 1776 the Hudson froze solid enough for Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton to bring the cannon captured Ticonderoga to General Washington ion Haarlem Heights by dragging them across the frozen river. The Hudson has not frozen that solid in this century. Similarly, the brackish canals of Holland used to freeze solid enough for skating, and at the siege of Leyden skaters brought in supplies over the ice (Queen Elizabeth's time). Brackish water doesn't freeze that hard and hasn't for a hundred years in Holland. In Greenland there were farms, which can now be seen under ice; clearly in Lief Ericson's time the Earth was, at least in the Arctic areas, much warmer, and growing seasons were longer, than they are now. This can hardly be disputed. In Minnesota there are data on when the ice in certain lakes froze over in fall, and when they melted in spring running back to before the Civil War. Things were warming up from 1850 to 1880, dramatically, but after 1880 the warming trend slowed. There's still a warming trend, but there was a pretty sharp break in the trend line. In England some family has been keep track of when the first larks appeared in spring in some county where the larks fly south; I forget where, but the trend again shows warming from about 1700 to present (earlier dates for larks) but again the major trend was before the turn of this century. Since industrialization pretty well took place after the warming slowed down, we have to figure out why; what has been the effect of industrialization on global climate? And if there's an actual answer to that I don't know it. All the theories say there ought to be warming from CO2 and other "greenhouse gasses" (of which methane from the flatulence of cows turns out to be a major contributor); none of the data people can find it. The Lowell observatory has been keeping records of the brightness of Mars, Venus, and Saturn since the last century. Those indicate that the sun is a mildly variable star, and solar output pretty well dominates earth climate effects. It now looks as if solar output is responsible for nearly all the major climate trends, from the Warming during the Viking era when Greenland was inhabited, to the Little Ice Age that spawned the Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates stories, the relief of the siege of Leyden, and the relief of Gen. Washington at Haarlem Heights. The Little Ice Age is over. Whether we are headed back into a new Little Ice Age or a warming trend is not known. Clearly the remedies for the two events are not the same: if the seas are rising you do one thing, if they are falling you do another, and similarly for whether growing seasons are getting longer or shorter. Conclusion: we don't know what the trends are, and we aren't sure what causes them. The likelihood of a New Ice Age is not negligible. We'd better be finding out what in hell is going on. Instead, we are spending the money that might go for better data on remedies for warming. Is this a good idea? I say no. Oct. 24, 1999 Dear Jerry: I was born on the shores of Lake Michigan, and now live part of the year near Penobscot Bay in Maine. Both formations were created by glaciers, which means that at one time glaciers of ice perhaps a 1000 feet thick reached as far south as Chicago, Illinois, and Port Clyde, Maine. In high school I was taught that there were at least three known ice-ages; where were all the rabid global warming alarmists during those class sessions, asleep in the back? The Earth was profoundly colder than it is today at least three times before the hand of Man was felt upon the land, which means that at least three times a "global warming" of significant degree has occured with no input whatsoever by homo sapiens. What are these people thinking of? It's not just a bad idea to make environmental policy and enter into treaties before the science of this problem has been done, it is extremely dangerous. Take the Everglades as an example: a generation or more ago it was thought that the Glades were a stagnant body of shallow water, gradually filling in, which could only survive if major deep water channels, dams, and other hydro projects were created. It turns out, of course, that the water was not stagnant, but just moved very slowly and the thousands of acres of marsh and grass acted as a filter to clean and purify this slow runoff on its journey to the sea. Today projects are underway to undo what was done long ago, to make the remaining Glades function as much as Nature intended as possible. Current budget for these projects is seven BILLION plus dollars, last I looked, and does not count the perhaps significant toxic effect on the coastal reefs, especially in the Keys, of the nutrient rich waters which have entered Florida Bay for decades. "Environmentalists", no less than doctors, should adopt the creed of "First, do no harm." Or if that is beyond them, perhaps they could take to heart the old carpenter's adage: "Measure twice, cut once!" Let's hope so. Cordially, Tim Loeb Yes. First, do no harm. Pity it hasn't been more widely learned. But then there are now doctors who do not take the Oath: for thousands of years doctors required all those who would learn to take that Oath, and would not teach it to any who would not both take it and require it; but now we have doctors who never read it. Ah well. Ecologists, too. Dr. Pournelle, When the "ZIP Click of Death" first gained notice, I remember seeing several reports on the problem on the Mac-specific news websites. One thing that was determined to be a large factor in the problem was the nearly complete lack of magnetic shielding in the Zip drives. The older internal SCSI Zip drives used in Macs have almost no magnetic shielding. If they are situated inside the machine near the power supply, or where they will be close to the magnetic field of the monitor or speakers, the Click of Death can be induced. The stray magnetic field draws the Zip drive's head past its normal end of travel, causing it to lay down faulty tracking data, as I recall. The 100Mb external drives are similarly susceptible, as they have minimal RF shielding to keep the weight down and keep the device "portable." For that reason, placing the Zip drive next to a monitor or speakers is strongly discouraged. I almost never use my Zip drive anymore. For moving data within my house, I use my Ethernet network. To move it elsewhere, I use e-mail or FTP if it's practical, or a CD-R otherwise. Very few computers still lack a CD-ROM drive; if I use a Zip, chances are I'll have to take the drive with me. CD-R media is about as cheap as floppies now, anyway -- and certainly far more economical than Zip media. Plus, it inherently forces archival backups upon me, which is always a Good Thing. -- Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com Well, I still think it is worthwhile to have one of those external ZIP 100 Plus systems that do either SCSI or parallel; I have never had and problem with mine. It sits on top of the computer which sits next to the monitor, and perhaps I have just been lucky, but it has worked fine and serves as a major sneakernet. Internal IDE are a bit more of a problem, although I do have them in several machines. CD-R, particularly now that they are getting them for USB, may in fact become the new standard; as you say, the media is cheap, and archival. But I frequently copy off the latest of something to a networked ZIP, then take that ZIP with me on trips or to another location. I suppose I could do that with CD-R but it is not as convenient. CD-R/W might be better once that is perfected and convenient. I have a CD-R/W in a new machine that seems to be reliable, and is available all over the network. Once I am certain that all my CD drives can read that -- and I have some older ones that can't and will have to be replaced, and those tend to be on the more remote machines that are not networked, just the ones I need to sneakernet -- then I may abandon ZIP, but for the moment, I think it worth having at least one. Dr. Pournelle, In Friday's Mail, you published a letter from Bob Shepard, who was looking for a good text editor. It so happens that there is "Vi for Windows", which I use and like. He can find it at: http://www.snafu.de/~ramo/WinViEn.htm Keep it up. --Charles For those who care, there ARE VI programs available for NT. Obviously, VI is a matter of personal taste. You either like it, or hate it, and it isn't a word processor type program. However, I have found the free VIM and GVIM programs to work well, with higher capabilities than the original VI's that I've used. It can be found at www.vim.org for many different platforms and operating systems. Under Windows, I generally run the gui version, GVIM. Kevin Krieser [kkrieser@delphi.com] As you say, some love it, some hate it. Most have a view of vi...
© Chaos Manor home	Entire contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved. Comments and discussion welcome.