| Friday, August
31, 2001
Begin with a matter of interest...
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
One of the contributors to Slashdot pointed out that
the Adobe encryption program that was broken was ROT13. This is even
sillier than you thought. If true, you can write the decryption key
yourself. Just put the first thirteen letters of the alphabet in one line,
then the second thirteen letters in a matching row in the second line. If
the encrypted letter is "A", the plaintext letter is
"N". If the encrypted letter is "T", then the
plaintext must be "G". If you have an old copy of Internet
Explorer laying around, it includes an encryption/decryption program for
ROT13 in the toolbar.
Your friends and mine that comment on Slashdot have
pointed out that their sigs are encrypted with double ROT13, and anyone
decrypting to read them is risking jail time. They are obviously angling
for civil service jobs.
regards,
William L. Jones wljones@dallas.net
Hilarious. That's the Picket Fence encryption,
used in the Civil War (and br0ken then, too). But I think that may have
been chosen by one of the Adobe customer publishers rather than Adobe
itself? Surely there were other options? But the entire matter is
absurd and I would have thought that any adult in the Department of
Justice would end it. Apparently not.
Roland recommends on Linux (including the
comments):
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/28/2058247&mode=thread
He also reports on his latest project:
Have you installed a P4 from scratch?! The boxed
1.4GHz processor kit from Intel (w/fan) comes with a -hypo- with 10ccs of
some sort of 'thermal protection material' which one smears atop the
processor (deliberately designed to make it possible for one to insert
incorrectly and thus bend the pins when lowering the lock-lever, it seems)
prior to clamping the huge CPU fan into place.
I got a DFI P4/i850 motherboard for $139; 1.4 GHz P4
boxed kit for $189; P4-ready case (yes, you need a P4-ready case to
accomodate the pretty much standardized P4 motherboard form-factor) w/300W
power supply for $99; 2 256MB sticks of the hated RDRAM for $99 each ($198
total for 512MB RAM); and a 30GB Seagate UDMA-100 hard drive for $94. As
events developed, I needed longer UDMA cables, which cost $5 each. I
re-used my current DVD drive, SoundBlaster Live!, 3Com 3C95x card, and
GeForce 2 video adaptor.
The DFI motherboard has on-board sound, which I
promptly disabled. The Intel board, for $50 more, has a built-in
EtherExpress Pro 100 Ethernet adaptor. The DFI board comes with a good,
well-illustrated manual, and a handy sticker with all jumper locations to
put on the inside of your case. The BIOS setup utility (Award) is
outstanding, with almost everything being set 'correctly' (i.e., the way I
like things tweaked) by default.
These are all Fry's prices; I'm sure I could've done
better if I'd shopped around, but this was an instant-gratification sort
of exercise.
The P4 is faster than my previous 800MHz PIII
w/384MB of RAM. Is it $650 faster? On balance, I'd say so. If I'd had to
purchase a new GeForce card and sound card, though, I probably would've
waited a bit.
I'm happy; it works. Kernel compilations are a
-great deal- faster. I guess I'll get around to putting some flavor of
Windows on a second drive so that I can play some games (sad that I have
to say that), and test it in the time-honored tradition.
------- Roland Dobbins
I blush to say my Pentium IV came to me from
Intel already built; I haven't assembled one yet. I should do so shortly.
Years ago a DFI dual processor system was the
fastest machine in the house. It was also the quietest. They have done
some good work.
Now this:
Subject: Here's a link that I was reminded of by reading the Sklyarov case...
It reminded me of this link, since both are about
what happens when you give beurocrats too much power.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/08/29/zero_tolerance/index.html
I read the referenced article expecting to agree
with it, and I sort of did, but then I got to thinking: the reason we have
zero tolerance, and three-strikes, and the rest of it is that we no longer
trust anyone with discretionary authority. We don't trust grown up
magistrates to act like magistrates and we don't trust teachers with the
authority to be teachers. Worse, if any of them try to make things work,
God help them if they make any kind of error in judgment: the legal system
will destroy the teacher or administrator.
Under those circumstances, they all hide behind
rules, and sad to say, I wonder if I would not be tempted to do so were I
in their shoes. Yes, it gets overly silly, with a girl thrown out of
school for having a kitchen knife in her car, and a mother arrested for
letting her daughter sit in her lap. When you see the silly consequences
you forget the alternatives.
The alternatives are what we used to have, with
classrooms a blackboard jungle indeed. The opposite of zero tolerance is
some tolerance, and the problem here is who tolerates what and from whom?
Allowing one student to disrupt the class is a tax imposed on all those
who want to learn. The teacher spends more time with the disruptive
student, and thus has less for everyone else.
In the old days the teacher would just throw the
disruptive one out. "I don't care where he goes. It won't be in my
classroom." And generally the authorities would make it stick if
there were evidence that teaching was impossible with the little monster
in the room. Now suppose the little monster is a minority, or handicapped,
or has any other possible claim to victim status: now what? You can't
"blame the victim". The result is that no one learns anything.
Thus zero tolerance: it leads to absurdities, it leads to heaving kids out
that no one wants to see thrown out, but it may also lead to some peace
and quiet and order.
Not I don't defend the practice of stupidity: but
if we live in an insanely litigious society, it may be we have no choice
but to try silly measures as the only way to adapt. Would that it were
otherwise...
Hi Jerry,
re: "Do you think this may be a good
time to travel abroad now that we have asserted that activities not
criminal the one's own country can be prosecuted as heavy duty felonies if
the US can lure you to within its borders? I can't think of a sillier
precedent to get on the books."
<wink> Maybe like using tax evasion to catch
hardened criminals like Al Capone et al, we could get copies of this
"illegal" software into the hands of, say, drug runners, gun
runners; heck even Mexicans crossing the borders... and finally Nail 'em??
Or maybe just wait till their XP or Office licenses expire and...
</wink>
best regards, tob
And
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Someone had better hope that the
Soviets........sorry, the Russians don't decided to pull a page out of the
Cold War book. Simply arrest an American student, accuse him of hacking,
have a quick "fair trial and pack him off to the Gulag. I'd be
willing to bet Sklaryov would be released pretty quickly. Of course, it
would help if the student was the son or daughter of someone important.
BTW, I just read one of your books here in Batam.
Best Regards,
Corey Putra Batam Komputer Pulau Batam, Indonesia
Yeah. It's come to this... Thanks, and glad you
could find my books there.
And Robert Racansky recommends:
An interesting, article on -- as the title says --
the failure of tech journalism:
http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/
YaBB.pl?board=005&action=display&num=998801687
(It's about 1/3 of the web page long, with the other
7+ pages being reader comments).
Fair warning: this uses "modern"
language, meaning that scatological and Anglo-Saxon reproductive activity
terms are sprinkled throughout (why I don't know; having been a soldier I
know something of barracks language, but I don't see any need to use it to
make my points here).
WARNING: I find that visiting this site seems
to subscribe you to hundreds of sex sites, and while it didn't pop up
anything to me, it did to others.
HERE IS A READER COMMENT
Jerry, I followed this link http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/
YaBB.pl?board=005&action=display&num=998801687
i
n mail for Friday August 31. when I closed the
explorer window up popped a page inviting me to visit a page with cumshots.
Closing that page led to another, then another ...
Perhaps your internet security settings are
different than mine and this didn't happen to you, but you should warn
readers about this.
Greg French
And indeed my settings are different from yours:
but on arriving in San Diego I find that my mailbox is full of garbage.
Apparently that site, purporting to be a criticism of network journalism,
is in fact a leadin to sex sites. My apologies.
Second, in one of the comments there is the
statement that I am clueless, which didn't entirely endear the piece to
me, and also the implication that BYTE is gone, which
simply isn't true. 
But he does have some points. Regarding my own
activities: yes, I get most (not all) of the equipment I use free; if I
didn't I could hardly afford to have things to write about, because unlike
most "reviews" I don't review things at all: I use them, and I
don't in general report on things I don't or won't use, and I don't in
general recommend something I have used long enough to have some
confidence in it. Most of the systems I build here are built on PC Power
and Cooling cases, and use Crucial or Kingston memory. I get most of those
free although when I am in a hurry I buy them. But I recommend them not
because I get them free but because I am willing to use them for my own
work. After all, I can get almost ANYTHING free. And since I can't sell it
(I'd have to declare the stuff as income if I did) and since I have more
computers than I need, and indeed approach having as many as I can endure
(I have long passed how many my wife will endure) I have no choice but to
take free equipment. On the other hand, since I can get almost anything I
want, it's hardly a bribe.
As to writing negative reviews, in general I
don't do that, because there's enough stuff out there that I can
recommend, and I have found over the years that readers -- my readers at
least -- don't WANT negative reviews. They want to learn about neat stuff
they can use.
But you can infer a lot from what I don't write
about...
As to recommending that Windows 2000 is Good
Enough, I think I said that quite a long time ago. And still do. I had ME
on a couple of systems; it's on one last one now but I took it off
everything else, and it would go off that one if I needed the machine for
anything important. If you get ME factory installed it is probably OK, but
if you're setting up a new system use Windows 2000, the only exception
being some older DOS games like Conquest of the New World that just plain
will not work with W 2000.
And so forth. I'm writing more about that piece
than I intended to because it is disturbing. But I think that, clueless or
not, I escape many of the criticisms he levels at most of the hi tech
journalists...
===
Jerry, I followed this link http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/
YaBB.pl?board=005&action=display&num=998801687
i
n mail for Friday August 31. when I closed the
explorer window up popped a page inviting me to visit a page with cumshots.
Closing that page led to another, then another ...
Perhaps your internet security settings are
different than mine and this didn't happen to you, but you should warn
readers about this.
Greg French
And indeed my settings are different from
yours: but on arriving in San Diego I find that my mailbox is full of
garbage. Apparently that site, purporting to be a criticism of network
journalism, is in fact a leadin to sex sites. My apologies. It subscribed
me to several, I find now that I am back on line.
Dear Dr Pournelle, Further to Roland's link on the
demise of VA Linux's hardware services, ZDnet has on-line a comment on the
dumping of one of the Samba project heads, perhaps showing the software
side is also not in best of health, at ( http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,5096404,00.html?chkpt=p1bn
)
"Aug 30, 2001 9:08 AM PT Open-source luminary
out of a job Jeremy Allison, leader of the Samba project that lets Linux
servers share files like a Windows server, is among those left jobless by
cuts at VA Linux Systems, Allison said Wednesday. The company shucked its
hardware business in July. VA also hired Samba's Andrew Tridgell.
Allison said he's considering working at SGI, a
former employer that's embarked on a variety of Linux and open-source
projects. In particular, Allison said he's interested in SGI's XFS file
system, which Allison said is faster than several alternatives. --Stephen
Shankland, Special to ZDNet News "
We looked at a pre-built VA Linux machine for one of
our servers a year and a half ago. The build quality was nice but the
price was four times that of a tweaked generic Intel box we eventually
built for ourselves.
This is a major point about open source which is
often missed. The distributions are mature enough now that it is possible
for someone not completely clueless to roll his own, and the traditional
overheads or cost overruns render a corporate minder unaffordable.
The paradoxical result is that outfits like VA Linux
are experiencing a sales squeeze while open-source based installations are
rising, so 'market share' becomes meaningless, or at least bent way out of
shape. Anybody out there care to coin a new phrase? How about 'non-market
share'?
Regards, TC
-- Terry Cole BA/BSc/BE/BA(hons) (tcole@maths.otago.ac.nz)
System Administrator, Dept. of Maths. & Stats., Otago Uni. PO Box 56,
Dunedin, NZ.
And on a previous subject:
There are always at least as many sides to a story
as there are people involved. For some interesting background on Vanessa
Leggett see
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2001-08-23/insider.html
Regards,
Paul Adams
I confess to knowing no more than the MSNBC
report told; but I was impressed by the various journalistic organizations
that have filed briefs in her behalf. And the horror is that we can
believe things may routinely happen that a decade ago would have been
literally incredible. Even in the paranoid periods we thought the
government played by rules. Now we are no longer sure. That's frightening.
Re: Magellan
I love Magellan, I still use it on my computer, I
run win 95. Will it run on win 98 or winme ? I would be lost without it. I
wish someone would make a new version. Years ago, I heard the original
writer wanted to get it from IBM and they refused. I don't know what I
would do without it. If MS had spent the time and money fixing what it had
instead of just adding to it, I would not need to use it. File management
with MS is for the pits. I use 8 different programs to do what the
operating system should be able to so.
ps. love your writings. Kenneth M. Potraker
I loved Magellan too. I haven't even tried it for
years; perhaps I ought to try to get my old copy out and see if it will
run. Or I will try to work with the Franklin people to get their OnePlace
working properly (it sure don't work for me)... Because I really need an
indexer. And I have several reader suggestions. We'll get there!
Dr. Pournelle,
Your brand of "I do these things so you don't
have to" Tech Journalism is the best thing going these days. I'm a
manager at small (err tiny) FORTRAN compiler company and the majority of
our customers are scientists and engineers who just want to get their jobs
done. Your trials and tribulations help to keep me focused on that fact.
I do miss the print version of Byte though. If only
because I could read it on my deck instead of in front of a computer
screen.
A question: do you ever get the desire to do
"bug fixes" on a book that you have released?
Best regards and stay up in the "Monk's
Cell". We want the next book,
Tony Goelz
Bug Fixes for books are mostly sequels. But I
wouldn't mind being able to do rewrites when events have passed me by...
Corporations are starting to realize just how much
money they are spending on M$ products and upgrades, and just how little
they are getting for it.
<http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1527
>
Pete Flugstad
Indeed. I have to say that I find Windows 2000
Good Enough for all but games. I would not take XP off a new system and
replace it; I might do that with Me; but I certainly know of no reason to
leave Windows 2000, and so far I find Office 2000 good enough for
everything I do. Perhaps I will see reasons for upgrades in future; so far
I have not.
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