| Friday, January
26, 2001
Begin with an amusement:
Jerry -
Had to share this with you...
Today I was looking for more information on my employer's health plan.
I went to the web site of my PPO provider. Attempting to get to the
appropriate page that contains their drug formulary, I was faced with
these two Javascript pop-up windows, jpeg copies are attached if you'd
like to put them up on your web page.
I can't believe either of these notifications are necessary. The only
possible reason for their existence is the involvent of lawyers in the web
design process.
I fear that more of this is in our future...
Roger Weeks
I don't think much comment is needed...
And now for as good a brief analysis of the
California problem as any I have seen. From
Jralls@bix.com:
Depending on which plan you're talking about, it's
not necessarily that bad. Hertzburg's plan is 10 year bonds to pay off the
debts that PG&;E and SoCal Edison have racked up in the last year. In
return, the utilities sign over around $5B of generating assets, mostly
hydro. (Diablo Canyon isn't on the list -- wonder why ;) ). The utilities
go off and sign up long term contracts and get a rate that keeps them
solvent based on those contracts.
There are basically four alternatives for restoring
financial balance:
1. Let them go bankrupt and some Superior Court
judge decides what to do, subject to his appelate court and the state
supremes deciding whether it's a good idea or not. (If they decide not, it
goes back to Superior Court to figure out a new solution). This is the
only sure way to stick the generating companies without their cooperation.
2. Lift the restrictions on what the utilities can
charge their customers, and let them charge a high enough rate so they can
pay down their debt. PG&;E proposed this in December and it went down
in flames. It would take *major* political fortitude to get something like
that to go.
3. Some sort of deal where the producers get a price
they can live with and agree to forgive most of what the utilities owe for
last year, then raise rates so that the utilities get their costs covered.
4. A major State bailout. This has to be debt based,
because between them PG&;E and SoCal Ed owe something on the order of
$25B, and Davis and friends don't want to take that out of the General
Fund all at once. Remember, they're expecting to spend at least $10B on
interim energy buying until this gets sorted out.
Hertzberg's plan is basicly #4; Davis is trying for
#3 with the price as close to $5.50/MWh as he can manage. #1 is the scary
scenario that keeps everybody talking to Davis and his friends (interesting
WSJ article today on that score). #2 is right up there with eliminating
Medicare as a political minefield.
Whatever happens, the result has to be a rules
change so that producers aren't rewarded for holding back capacity.
Interesting numbers noted in today's WSJ article (and apparent to anyone
with enough stack to remember the details from last spring): When we had
the rolling blackouts in June, the ISO was dealing with 45GW (45000 MW) of
supply. The problem was localized because there wasn't enough transmission
line capacity to feed the SFBA requirements. The rest of the state was at
Level 1. Since mid October, the ISO has been juggling 30GW of supply: A
33% reduction. Now some of that is because of legitimate maintenance, and
some more is because the hydro system has gotten pretty low. But there's a
lot of evidence that the generating companies have figured out how to game
the system and inflate prices artificially. The goofy rules need to be
made un-goofy so that doesn't happen anymore. That's the hard part.
Quite well said. And of course eventually the
previous debts have to be paid. Fortunately the left has made California
far more powerful than it should be, but then it didn't go for Bush so he
owes us nothing; I suspect all that will sort of cancel, and I won't be
stuck with too large a tax bill to pay for this state's odd notion that
water never reaches bottom as it runs downhill.
Dr. Pournelle:
Here's a pretty wild book you may enjoy:
_Saddam's Bombmaker_, Khidhir Hamza. New York:
Scribner's, 2000.
Dr. Hamza had the dubious privilege of being the
Iraqi "oppenheimer." Almost made it, too.
I have a list of book that I call "history that
reads like science fiction." This one would come under the heading,
"history that reads like Tom Clancy."
Cheers,
Steven
Roland sends this with the note "sure we
were all just paranoid..."
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/01/25/smithsonian.cold.war/index.html
--
Precisely.
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I was looking over your Hall of Shame page, and a
thought struck me: your average spammer cannot claim to be of rocket
science calibre, so consider replying them and sending along attachments
named "myOrder.exe", the program being a short executable that
wipes out C:\*.*, for example. Send out 20 of these and surely you'll have
cleaned out more than a few spammers' hard drives as some of these idiots
won't be able to resist executing the attachment.
Just a thought. This assumes some spam have valid
email addresses one can reply to, especially those with the "Reply to
remove yourself from our list" notices which are really tests to see
if your address was valid in the first place....
Cheers Francois Kupo Ottawa
Why -- what a narsty thing to do to an innocent
spammer....
From Ray Van De Walker
Nanotech just got a really big boost. Once you can touch and hold
things, building with them is much more possible.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/514233.asp?cp1=1
From John Ringo:
Iraq to the US:
"If you don't pull out of the Persian Gulf and
lift the sanctions immediately, we will nuke Paris."
Bush to Saddam:
"Can you hang on a couple of days while we
arrange a film festival???"
John
A Hymn Before Battle: http://www.johnringo.com/AHBB/AHBBCover.htm
UK universities are paranoid about faculty taking
consulting gigs and fight it ferociously. To me, it doesn't look like
there's a 'brain drain'--just inefficient utilization of valuable
resources. What it means in the end is that American researchers put in an
extra 1000 hours per year in consulting and UK researchers spend the same
time in non-economic activities. I think you can work out the consequences
of the difference in productivity.
Cheers,
-- --- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer in
Computing, University of Sunderland. Computational Neuroscientist
(modeling bat behavior) and Security Engineer. Webpage: <http://world.std.com/~herwin>
Now for an important if long
but involved announcement. Read carefully, because it's not clear at first
what this is about:
--- Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> wrote:
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:20:02 -0500
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
> To: politech@politechbot.com
> Subject: FC: Apparent spam scam using Paypal --
> watch out for mystery links
> Reply-to: declan@well.com
>
> I've left some of the message headers intact, so we
> can see that this
> apparent spam scam originates overseas; not much the
> FTC could do.
>
> Moral of this story: Be wary of mystery links, like
> paypaladmin.cjb.net
> you get via email. Don't give your account info
> unless you're sure it's
> legit.
>
> -Declan
>
> *********
>
> Received: from mimosa.singnet.com.sg
> (mimosa.singnet.com.sg [165.21.5.12]) by toad.com
> (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA09804 for
> <cypherpunks@toad.com>; Thu, 25 Jan 2001 09:12:57
> -0800 (PST)
> Received: by mimosa.singnet.com.sg id AA27525; Fri,
> 26 Jan 2001 01:15:23 +0800
> Message-Id:
> <200101251715.AA27525@mimosa.singnet.com.sg>
> Subject: Betty HilI has just sent you $200.00 with
> PayPal
> From: Betty Hill <BHill1234@aol.com>
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 09:17:12 +0800
>
> Betty Hill has just sent you money with PayPal.
>
> Amount: $200.00
>
>
> Simply click <a
>
href=http://paypaladmin.cjb.net>http://www.PayPal.com/links/uni</a>
> and complete the one-page registration form to claim
> your money. For a
> limited time, if you sign up and activate your
> account, you will
> receive a $5 New Account Bonus.
>
> You may withdraw your money at any time by
> requesting a check or
> making a direct deposit to your bank account. You
> can also send the
> money to your friends.
>
> PayPal lets users send money to anyone with an email
> address. Use
> PayPal.com to settle restaurant tabs with
> colleagues, pay friends for
> movie tickets, or buy a baseball card at an online
> auction. You can
> also send personalized money requests to your
> friends for a group
> event or party.
>
> X.com's backers include Nokia Ventures, Madison
> Dearborn Partners,
> Qualcomm, Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Bank, idealab
> Capital Partners and
> Goldman Sachs. Our state-of-the-art encryption
> provides the highest
> level of security.
>
> For more information about PayPal, check out <a
>
href=http://paypaladmin.cjb.net>http://www.PayPal.com/</a>.
>
> Welcome to PayPal!
>
>
> Note: If you already have a PayPal account, be sure
> to log in at <a
>
href=http://paypaladmin.cjb.net>http://www.PayPal.com/</a>
> and add
> this email address in the Profile subtab under My
> Account to collect
> your money.
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> Best of the Web
> - Forbes
>
> Using the service is actually safer than a check or
> money order.
> - Wall Street Journal
>
> "The beauty is that you can send money -- real
> money, not one of
> those gimmicky Internet currencies -- to anyone with
> an email address."
> - New York Times
>
> "PayPal can play a major role in your life. You can
> use it to pay
> for stuff at auction sites, settle dinner debts with
> friends or nudge
> your cousin to repay that $50 he borrowed at the
> family reunion."
> - Time
>
> "This is truly one of the easiest services to use.
> Setting up an
> e-mail account at Yahoo! takes longer!"
> - Internet.com
>
>
> *********
>
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 01:17:36 -0800
> To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
> From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
> Subject: Spam attempting Paypal scam
>
> The cypherpunks and coderpunks lists just received
> spam from
> "Betty Hill" saying you've just been sent $200.
>
> Simply click
> <a
>
href=http://paypalregistration.cjb.net/>http://www.PayPal.com/links/uni</a>
>
> and complete the one-page registration form to
> claim your money.
>
> CJB.net is a free URL redirection service - it would
> have pointed off
> to somewhere (presumably a moving target) to snarf
> up some Paypal
> account information and any other data it could.
> The anonymizer couldn't display it, either because
> it's closed down
> or just one of those things that the Anonymizer
> can't grok,
> but it is an interesting scam.
> Thanks!
> Bill
> Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
> PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE
> 4639
>
> ***********
>
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 00:53:23 -0800 (PST)
> From: "Alex B. Shepardsen" <abs@squig.org>
> X-Sender: abs@snuffy.whitetrash.org
> To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
> Subject: Re: CDR: Betty HilI has just sent you
> $200.00 with PayPal
>
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, Betty Hill wrote:
>
> > Simply click <a
> >
>
href=http://paypalregistration.cjb.net/>http://www.PayPal.com/links/uni</a>
>
> Interesting scam. I wonder how many people are
> falling for this.
>
> Alex
>
> ***********
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
The moral of the story is clear. Paypals is good
stuff, but you still have to watch out for what you are doing.
The following is, of course, a joke, and no one
would really think of doing this:
Tired of getting all those pre-approved letters in
the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd Mortgages, and junk like
that?
As you know, most, if not all of those letters come
with a postage "PREPAID" envelope. Why not get rid of some of
your other junk mail and put it in these cool little envelopes!
If you didn't get anything else that day, just send
them their application back! Just make sure your name isn't on anything
you send them. Heck, you can send it back empty if you want. Keep 'em
guessing that way.
Let's turn this into a chain letter! Eventually, the
banks will begin getting all their crap back. Let's let them know what
it's like to get junk mail, and best of all . . .THEY'RE paying for it . .
. . Twice!
WAIT!!!!! HERE'S THE BEST PART... You already know
that the USPS has increased postage rates again, starting the first week
of January 2001. Now if all of us start mailing back all the junk mail we
receive to other junk mailers in their 'postage paid' envelopes....we just
might delay the next rate hike from the USPS for years and years!!
 Jerry,
The list you had today with the four options was
interesting. I have no idea whats happening in other states, but up here
in Washington the Governor has notified the Bonneville Power
Administration (BPA) to not sell any power to the power companies in
California unless is its paid for. This is because WA, OR and ID are on
the hook to the BPA if the bills aren't paid.
I imagine letting the power companies go bankrupt
would result in large lawsuits against the state of California for those
amounts. WA legislators have gone on record that they are investigating
suing California for damages based on the rate increases we've incurred
because of California's alleged mismanagement of their power system.
So the external side effects could get pretty
expensive and drag on for years.
Paul
Very Interesting...
Then I got this:
I'm trying to find one copy, preferrably two of
Beyond Crysalis by Patricia Sereno. It was published in Calgary by Blue
Iris Press(which I cannot locate) in 1998 ISBN 0-963738-0-1. Do you have a
copy or two or can you give me any leads on how to locate the author or
get copies of the book. If you take requests would you please put me on
your list. Thanks for your time and help.
-- Regina Ternus 5-2, 1515 Blanshard Street Victoria
BC V8W 3C8 E-mail Regina.Ternus@moh.hnet.bc.ca
Telephone:
Including telephone numbers. What in the world
have I done NOW to make it look like I run a used book service?
Dr. Pournelle,
You may remember "black ice" in Gibson's
sci-fi novel "Neuromancer", the anti-intrusion software that
could kill. In anticipation of Super Bowl XXXV DirecTV used its satellites
to send a signal to destroy pirate hardware decoders! Here's a link to the
story:
http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/lat_direct010127.htm
Don McArthur http://www.mcarthurweb.com
Wow!
TOP
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