| Wednesday,
March 14, 2000
Dear Dr. Pournelle, An article in todays Washington
post about the sacrifices that the families of soldiers make. http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A759-2001Mar13.html
And a column about springtime in the mountains. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/columns/mannjudy/A865-2001Mar13.html
When reading that column I got to thinking about your dog. Hope that he,
too, will soon be back on duty guarding the flowerbeds.
Kit Case kitcase@home.com
Thanks!
Dr. Jerry:
Re: hypnotic regression , recovered memory, etc.
You might be interested in _The Abduction Enigma_ by
Kevin Randle, Russ Estes, and Dr. Steven Cone. It goes into great detail
into hypnotic regression, recovered memories, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and
(of course) alien abductions. Their conclusion: Whatever the researcher
believes in, be it friendly aliens, mean aliens, SRA, or whatever, that
researcher will find. And there is no other evidence for abductions. What
makes this conclusion particularly interesting here is that one author
makes his living on UFO books (he does novels, too), another makes UFO
documentaries, and the third is a psycologist who believes he may have
been abducted!
Re: Heinlien and Scientology
He had some Scientologists in a scene in _Friday._
Re: Sasha
Hope she gets to feeling better. To paraphrase Mr.
Heinlein, We give our hearts to creatures we know we will outlive.
Regards,
Steven
Thanks. Sasha is a he: it's diminutive for
Alexander in Russian, and being that he's a Siberian Husky...
Just to fan the flames, here's
a website (http://www.ags.uci.edu/~dehill/witchhunt/cases.htm
) that has information on many cases of this type. May I recommend the
link for the "Little Rascals" daycare story. I was living near
that area during the original trials, and all I can say is
"railroaded".
Can you guess I tend to agree with those who say
this sort of thing is oversold?
Or another case in point, and far closer to home. My
wife owns a daycare center. Some years ago, she had a young (around 1
year) female child who had a documented medical history of bladder
infections. Now, as many will tell you, in a young female child, recurrent
bladder infections can be caused by sexual abuse. They can also be caused
by poor hygiene (the most usual cause) and by slightly malformed
"plumbing".
Being unable to talk, the usual way of noticing a
recurrence problem was a few drops of blood in a wet diaper. One of the
staff noticed this, and told her mother about the problem when she picked
the child up in the afternoon. Mom's basic response was "Oh, no. Not
another one!"
She took the child to the local pediatricians, and
by luck of the draw, got the newest one. He preceded to not read the
child's history, and got his daily exercise jumping to the conclusion that
the child had been abused. By law, in North Carolina, he must report these
suspicions, and did so.
Shortly thereafter, the social workers descended.
They had to have multiple interviews with the staff in that classroom, the
rest of the staff in the building and my wife. They even tried to question
the children in the class (I would pay to have video of this.)
The father and older brother were forced to move
from the family home, and then the child was placed with one set of
grandparents. (At least it wasn't foster care.) The mother could only have
supervised visits, the father and brother none at all.
The investigation dragged on for weeks. Eventually,
the truth won out, and the family was reunited. However, for some time
after that they were subjected to unannounced visits from the social
workers. My wife isn't sure if the pediatrician is still at that practice.
Another case in point, and more humorous. My
daughter, now 8, is convinced she had a "bunny tail" when she
was younger. It started out when she was 3 as a joke, but now she is
convinced that she had one, but it fell off when she got older. My son,
age 5, affectionately known as "Turkey Bird", is rapidly
becoming convinced he had feathers when "I was little". I assure
you, neither was the case.
The upshot is don't try to tell me that children
can't be convinced to remember things that never happened, and don't try
to tell me that all allegations of child abuse must be true. As Robin
Williams once said, "Not buying the bullsh*t..."
Bill Seward, who is neither reporter, daycare
provider, child psychologist nor social worker, but who does believe the
evidence of his own experience as a parent
When I was active in politics I got involved in a
couple of those overzealous protection cases, where social workers were
out to make a reputation finding abuse where the problems were medical. In
this land of the free.
May your walking companion recover quickly - for
everyone's sake.
Your correspondent says: "After having
prosecuted these cases for years, and defended them for a couple of years
as well, I can usually get to the bottom line with the children in a
matter of a few days of meetings" In my experience nobody can say
that honestly.
For my sins I have been involved in a few such cases
myself. In particular I remember one custody case where the Court
appointed expert said to me privately and unofficially that neither my
client nor the other parent was good for the child - I told her I would
donate my services if she wanted to foster the child, we left it at that.
Given a problem the remedy is yet not obvious. One of many good reasons
practicing law was a brief aberration in my life!
I think Mr. Heinlein was showing his age in books
like Glory Road where he has Oscar even contemplate law school. My
grandfather was practicing law in the area when Mr. Heinlein was growing
up and based on his experience the law at least had the possibility of
being a fine profession. Today, like Viet Nam, the law is unquestionably a
noble cause but perhaps equally a folly.
Talking to a very well indeed qualified national
expert in child psychology - (details on request but the best we had
access to even talk to, somebody I went to school with) he said he would
have to spend a week of mostly full days around one child before even
starting to address the issues of abuse let alone details and blame. For
myself I have no way of ever getting to a bottom line.
I remember one circumstance involving complex
relationships where I have some faith some truth came out as one abuser's
actions became much more flagrant over time and he both eventually sought
and accepted help but also entered what I think was as full a confession
as he could make in court - never the less I don't think any power in the
world could have extracted the full truth for all the parties in the
circumstances. I do know there was real abuse and yet or perhaps for that
very reason some terribly confused memories including even a great deal of
confusion in adults. What I think was absolute sincerity in falsehoods -
some alcohol abuse involved as well of course. Come to think of it I
remember more than one like that.
For another thing I would bet that just about every
woman who grew up in the same society I did has in fact been subject to
some sexual abuse or molestation in the course of growing up - though
perhaps by an older child and not rising to a level that would involve
criminal prosecution - not necessarily to involve penetration, perhaps
what some would call being taken advantage of but certainly to a point
that would constitute legal abuse.
Clark ClarkEMyers@msn.com
Some cases are obvious. A recent one here where
the husband of a day care center owner was pretty well caught in the act,
and other stories came out. But many are not at all clear cut. Then there
was MacMartin where one drop of sanity would have ended it all. Dead
horses, and priests and nuns in robes, and -- indeed. Indeed.
And from Eric:
I don't know if you've mentioned it, I'm remiss in
my recent reading of your site, but there is another important aspect of
the McMartin case that should serve as a lesson to all.
The mother who launched the case with her remarkable
accusations was taken at her word with complete credulity. She had
absolutely no supporting evidence to offer. This same individual was later
diagnosed as schizophrenic and no longer manages her own affairs. The
diagnosing psychiatrist thought it remarkable that her illness remained
unnoticed for so long.
Are professionals in law enforcement and medicine no
longer taught that extraordinary claims require extraordinary truth? When
after ransacking the preschool and finding nothing remarkable why did no
one in authority stop to consider this? "Think of the children!"
seems to excuse any irrationality.
Things really got out of control a few years back
when self-proclaimed experts began running seminars for police and medical
personnel which taught that they should on the lookout for things that
cannot be shown to have ever existed outside of horror novel, rather than
the plain old garden variety perverts that actually exist. In an article
for the Skeptical Enquirer a writer attended one of these seminars and
engaged some of the other attendees in conversation. A nurse or
psychologist (I forget which) commented that the existence of a vast
hidden network of baby sacrificing Satanist cults reaffirmed her faith in
God. I guess this is the theory that if there are black hats somewhere
there must also be white hats.
The state of Washington seems especially receptive.
In Olympia a highly regarded cop had his life destroyed after his daughter
was sent to a psychologist who convinced her that all of her problems were
rooted in her shrouded memory of molestation by her father. The girls
sister's were similarly convinced, and stunningly, the father himself
became convinced. Although he had no recollection of committing
unspeakable evil against his daughters he was convinced that he too had
blocked out the memory! Much damage was done before sanity prevailed. (I
consider it to your credit that you chose not to make Psychology your
lifelong career. I have little respect for the profession as I've seen it
practiced.)
The Wenatchee area was effectively held prisoner by
a single police detective on a literal witch hunt. Anybody who dared to
speak out immediately joined the list of suspects and their opinion lost
all value.
These cases had two things in common: religion. The
cop in Olympia was a high ranking figure in his church. My mother resided
in Wenatchee for a portion of the Eighties and reported that she had never
spent time in another place where almost all social activity seemed to
revolve around the church. It is my firmly held belief that a mentality
attached most deeply to the supernatural rather than philosophical
elements of a religion leaves communities vulnerable to these breakouts of
hysteria.
I would have to say that many hysterics are
attracted to religion, particularly evangelistic chiliastic religions, but
it is certainly not the case that all chiliastic evangelists are hysterics
or nuts: As in Wesley, Cardinal Newman, the Oxford Movement, etc. I
tend to the more intellectual sins myself; C S Lewis describes that, too.
Prager wrote this:
> Back in 1991, Microsoft was caught in undeniable >
intellectual-property theft, that is, a blatant violation > of Stac's
software copyright, when Stac's own copyright > notice for its
"Stacker" disk compression software was > found in the
DoubleSpace code of MS-DOS 6.
I would like some documentation to support this
astounding claim. I worked at Microsoft in 1991, and I think I would have
remembered this happening; it would have been huge news and I don't
believe I could have missed this.
I also find it hard to believe that, if someone at
Microsoft was willing to do this, he would do such a poor job as this.
Here is the way I understand the story. It is true
that I mostly know Microsoft's version, so keep that in mind.
Microsoft tried to make a deal with Stac. Both sides
wanted different things: Stac wanted royalties on each and every copy of
MS-DOS shipped, and Microsoft wanted to pay a single lump sum. If you were
Microsoft, and you shipped the vast number of copies of DOS they were
shipping, I think you would prefer a lump sum too; I know I would! My
understanding was that Microsoft was willing to pay a *large* lump sum,
not some trivial amount. Anyway, after the deal didn't work, Microsoft
engineers wrote compression code that did something similar. Stac claimed
it violated a patent. Microsoft engineers re-wrote the code to avoid the
patent. Stac claimed it still infringed. The court case could have gone on
for a while, but Microsoft settled out of court. Some will say Microsoft
settled because they knew they would lose, but that is far from clear.
Praeger thinks that including GPL code in a
Microsoft product would cause the Microsoft product to fall under the GPL.
I doubt this. What would happen is that Microsoft would re-write the
offending portion to remove the GPL code, and not give anything away, and
no court in the country would force Microsoft to do anything else. Now, if
Microsoft were to leave the code in and keep shipping, perhaps there would
be a test of the GPL in court and perhaps MS would lose. Who can say?
steveha@blarg.net
I don't know other than that the settlement
turned out to be more profitable for Stac than the company was worth. When
100 megs was a big disk, disk compression was a good idea and worth
something; but when disks got to multiple gigabytes, no one was much
interested in compression anyway. Certainly the Stac case seems to be the
most blatant case, but I am not aware of the details.
Subject: Moore's Third Law
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I read the Byte reports, and am becoming convinced
that the computer revolution is starting to fizzle out. We can expect much
smaller and faster machines, but the software will be much like what we
use today.
Computer hardware is getting smaller and faster, but
software is still written the old-fashioned way - by a burned-out schmuck
typing on a keyboard, then running and correcting the code until it stops
crashing. This takes time, and it seems to me that software development
time will be the limiting factor in computer development.
The situation is very reminiscent of the aerospace
industry. Anthony Fokker needed a few man-months to design an airplane.
Dutch Kindelburger needed man-decades. Modern designers need man-millenia.
And it shows. In 1917, new designs popped out in a few months. In 1942,
new designs popped out in a few years. Today, a new airplane represents a
decade of design work. Not because the engineers are less capable, but
because the product has grown so incredibly complex.
The same is true of software. Twenty years ago,
completely new programs could be cranked out in weeks. Ten years ago,
radically upgraded software took months to write. Today, minor
improvements take years. And we expect super-code for super-computers???
I suspect that this will be the trend for the future
- faster computers, with more storage capacity, but the same software. The
heyday of computer growth is ending.
Where do I think the future lies?
Genetics, to a degree. Although it seems to me that
the more we study it, the more those 30,000 genes look like a permutations
and combinations problem - have fun!! And patience!!
Nanomechanics. I suspect that this is a field at the
stage of electricity atound 1800 - the real uses haven't been discovered
yet. And, believe it or not, I have a hunch that physics may come back
into play. Given the federal surpluses, and the growing recognition that
importing oil is a serious national security problem, we might just be
able to break enough cash loose to get a serious fusion program going -
and THAT would crack aerospace wide open. Even NASA couldn't stop it then.
V/R:
Mike McDaniel
I think the software problem is largely a
languages problem. It may take a big team to build a new language that the
rest of us can use, but it can be done, and will be. After all the
machines are powerful enough now...
Re: Recommended USB CD-R / CD-RW
Jerry,
I vaguely recall your discussion of a Recommended
USB CD-R or CD-RW, having stated that the USB versions of these devices
are more reliable than with the other interfaces. Please reiterate this
for me briefly.
Also, any recommendation or statement on the CD-R
media? I’ve heard things about media reliability in terms of color:
blue, gold silver, etc.
Thanks in advance for your trusted advice.
David
David J. Pogoff DJPogoff@FrankConsulting.com
Director, Information Services
I had good results with the BACKPACK USB CD-RW,
using it right out of the box to burn CD's. As to media, we've used
Maxell 8x CDR at 16x without problems. I don't have any opinions on CD-RW
because I don't much use CD-RW.
Re: Tech support hell:
In which you said:
>>Spent some time on the phone with my wife's sister who was
foolish enough to sign up with Juno as ISP. They recently charged her $50
for "support" in the course of which they had her uninstall her
modem, and didn't tell her how to reinstall; in fact I think they caused
her to erase the drivers, since we could not find them in a telephone
conversation. And she PAID for this "service"! Juno is supposed
to be "free". If you believe that you will believe anything.
Fair warning. I have downloaded new drivers for her and I'll send them up.
But this is BAD.
>>My two bits are:
Tech support is all to often viewed as an expense by
many retailers, oems, etc. and so they short change it. For those in need
of a brief education in the industry there is a wonderful FAQ here:
http://www.philverghis.com/helpdesk.html
The basic problem is that many companies do not see
this as an image (and therefore a marketing thing) They simply look at the
economics of a ten or twenty dollar product combined with a one hour phone
call (tech salary plus expenses, etc) and see that the numbers do not add
up.
This is illustrated is a wonderful short article
here: http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~bruton/pages/hdcal01.htm entitled
"How much money is your Helpdesk making for your company?"
There is a fundamental dis-connect in the mind of
many managers between the expense of Tech Support (salaries, etc) and the
PR values of good service. Even big companies work to get the support
issue offloaded as an expense to the OEMs, etc.
I suppose we'll have to dig out the proverbial
clue-by-four, as the problem is sort of rampant in the industry.
And you are right. They should have know what they
were doing in the first place, on top of everything else.
I myself have handled the proverbial phone call of
"Hello, I bought my first computer yesterday, and I want to know how
to use your software...", and this sort of thing requires a certain
expertise and delicate touch that are widely missing.
mz
Precisely.
Jerry, the pollen count in Ohio must have had some
sort of seasonal oddity, or maybe there are too many dust mites in my
home, but I got something in my eye when reading Horatio. Obscured my
vision for a while. It is good to know that my tear ducts are washing away
those unwanted mites or pollens or whatever it was they were.
There's no question that intellectual property
should be respected. Thus (in my opinion) even if it does have beneficial
aspects such as being able to "preview" music, Napster is
clearly illegal. But revisions to copyright law extending copyright to,
what is it, 50 years, 90 years? after the holder's death are ridiculous.
Copyright for 30 years after publication seems reasonable. Sales of
classic SF novels like the Lensmen series seem to indicate even a renewal
period is legitimate. And questions of the rights of the heirs of an
estate are clearly grounds for not ending it at the death of the author.
But the current revised copyright law takes
copyright beyond intellectual property and into proprietory "keep
forever" status. Sigh.
William Harris
Horatius does that do you...
I was happy with the old 26 years renewable.
That's enough for me, let public domain have it after that. And I still
get Royalties for works that are that old, too, so it's not a moot point.
Life plus many years is silly.
Whoever thought we'd see Ted Nugent, Harlan Ellison,
and Jerry Pournelle on the same side of an argument? :)
After reading Harlan's essay on your site yesterday,
I was bemused to see the following in the Wall Street Journal this
morning. Thought you and other visitors to Chaos Manor might enjoy it too.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=85000700
Kevin Trainor "They say that these are not the
best of times But they're the only times I've ever known..." -Billy
Joel, "Summer, Highland Falls"
Hi Mr. Pournelle,
I read your last column on Celeron processours and
heatsinks. I'm wondering about the question: Are there possibilities to
have completely quiet computers? Without noisy fans, maybe with a
watercooling mechanism? Have you ever heard of this?
With kind regards
Josef Pfeiffer Germany
No, actually my machines are getting noisier.
Alas. There ought to be ways, but I don't use or know them.
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