| Thursday,
January 31, 2002 Another from Tracy
Walters:
This is incredible. A security hole that Microsoft
didn’t develop.
Oh, wait…the Anti-Microsoft crowd has the answer.
Microsoft hacked Netscape and installed the security flaw.
Yeah … that’s the ticket.
J
But wait, if they hacked Netscape, then it must have
a security flaw, but no, it can’t…it’s not Microsoft.
Oh … I’m so confused..
Netscape Flaw Leaves Cookies Unsecure
A security flaw in recent versions of
Netscape's Navigator Web browser and earlier versions of the open-source
browser Mozilla could allow information stored in a user's cookies to be
stolen.
http://computerworld.com/nlt/1%2C3590%
2CNAV65-663_STO67803_NLTSEC%2C00.html
On Windows XP and Activation:
Avoiding reinstallation of Windows XP - a tip from
Lockergnome.com http://www.lockergnome.com/issues/techspecialist/20020129.html
Doing so might mean that you have to re-activate the
operating system, right? Nope. Not if you backup the license file first.
Believe it or not, the entire hoopla about Windows
Product Activation comes down to one little file. For whatever reason, one
of my PCs just suddenly decided to freak out, and since it had been
upgraded from Windows 2000 anyway, I figured it was time to start from
scratch, but didn't want to have to place that call to Microsoft. No
sweat. Just backup the c:\windows\system32\wpa.dbl file, install Windows
XP as you normally would, restart in Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
Replace the wpa.dbl file with your backed up
version, and you should be back in business. Mind you, the information in
that file will be specific to the product ID entered during installation
as well as being tied to the hardware in that machine only. If you try
moving this file to another computer, it won't work, even if it's the same
model, right down to the amount of RAM.
This is because of unique information obtained from
the network card, processor, hard drive, etc., so when it doesn't match
up, it will gripe.
===== -- John E. Bartley, III - telcom admin,
Portland OR, USA - Views are mine. http://palmwireless.cjb.net Wireless
FAQ for PalmOS(R) http://celdata.cjb.net Handheld Cellular Data FAQ
http://www.viewreviews.com/vp.php?id=6 Review of SPH-i300 You are
granted to store this informationTM in your brain for private, not
commercial use. Commercial use of this information whether in your brain
or other bodily parts requires the express written consent of its license
holders and property owners.
Interesting. I will have to try that.
"But those who are likely to blow up a plane
with their shoes aren't likely to look like you or me."
I think it's false comfort to believe that we can be
safe if airport security officials focus on people who are suspicious
because of their apparent ethnicity. Does Ahmed Alnami look remotely
suspicious in this photo?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/photogallery/terrorism/gallery_07/pho
to19.html -- Rogers Cadenhead, rogers@cadenhead.org on 1/31/2002 http://www.cadenhead.org
Why stop there? Let's make everyone strip, and
fly naked, in chains, with hoods, chained to their seats. That might make
everyone safe.
Perhaps we can require every citizen to submit to
random searches, and have their houses searched, lest they be harboring
bombs and dangerous devices.
My point is simple enough: while there may be a
few people willing to blow themselves up to knock off an airplane, there
aren't many. Most of those look like the kind of people who would do that.
And that isn't the danger in the first place.
We kill more than 100 people a day on the
highways. We aren't about to stop automobile traffic to "save
lives". The 55 mph Federal restrictions turned out to cost, not save,
lives, but they were intended to "cut down on the highway
slaughter". They were immensely unpopular.
Life is not without risk. The big risk was using
a hijacked airplane as a cruise missile. That we can stop. If someone
wants to blow up an airplane and is determined to do it, you aren't going
to stop him: I can pack enough explosives into a computer battery to make
a pretty good mess of things, and seal it well enough that no dog is going
to smell it after the various cleansing agents have got done with it.
Detonation is simple enough.
And when I finish with all that, I will have
killed a couple of day's worth of highway accident victims. That doesn't
shut down a country.
My point is that turning a bunch of MacDonalds
rejects into Agents Of The Imperium, and shutting down airports and
harassing people all over the US because one of those sharp pencils didn't
notice that someone's shoes had "traces" of some kind of
explosive, is not a sane way to run a transportation system; nor is
searching 83 year old retired Marines because we don't want to be accused
of "profiling". If you are going to pull people out of line and
search them, your search victim selection process ought to reflect the
probability that the person you search will be a bad guy. That means
non-zero on elderly white haired gentlemen, but it sure as hell does NOT
mean that the probability of the elderly gentleman being searched ought to
be the same as the probability of a wild-eyed foreigner with an accent.
Sorry, but there it is. We know something of the table of probabilities
here. Use it.
Sir:
In the never-ending story of how the bureaucrats
will all make us safer after 9/11 comes this episode that happened to a
friend of mine in the last couple of days.
He and his wife are going to Hawaii within the next
few weeks in order to escape, for a while, the depths of winter here in
the Great White North. To simplify things at the border he suggested that
his wife get a passport (he already has one). She is a born Canadian
citizen so this is not a problem. After filling in the applications,
submitting the forms and delivering the appropriate paper work they were
told there would be a 10-day delay. The person at the desk apologized as
usually this is 5 days but since 9/11 the time has been extended. Assuming
this was for extra background checks and the like, my friends agreed
cheerfully.
The 10-day waiting period was actually up yesterday.
However, my friend and his wife were in town the day before that (after 9
days of waiting) and on the off chance that the passport might be ready,
dropped into the Passport and Immigration office. It was late in the
afternoon (about 1645, the office closes at 1700) and the passport was
there. However, the clerk would not release the passport because the
waiting period had not expired.
My friend's response was something along the lines
of "you're kidding me!"
However, the clerk added that if they wanted to pay
a $30 early pick up fee they could take the passport now. In fact, as it
turns out, if they paid the extra $30 they could have picked up the
passport after 5 days (the same waiting period as before 9/11!).
My friend's response is not printable here.
So what is the purpose of the extra 5-day wait?
Obviously there is no extra information being solicited, no security
enhancements; it seems as just a way for the government to grab an extra
$30 out of already harried travelers. I would like to assume that the
extra money is being spent on real security enhancements but somehow I
think not.
Sincerely Art
Why am I not surprised? The purpose of government
is to hire and pay government employees. Sometimes this is to serve a
pressing need. When that need is over, it then becomes necessary to find
things for them to do. The new activities may actually exacerbate the
problems they were hired to solve in the first place, but this is of no
matter compared to being certain they are paid.
It's the same the whole world over,
it's the workers who get the blame
it's the Raj what gets the gravy,
Now ain't it a blooming shame...
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I was interested to read the study you posted.
Sadly, the only thing I see happening is that instead of designing paper
spaceships, now NASA is making Power Point spaceships. And I have had
enough of the Power Point Army to last a lifetime....
NASA is still dying, poisoned by its own waste and
bloat. I have supported your Space Prize legislation since I first read
about it in DESTINIES. Numerous letters to many congressmen and several
presidents have yielded not even a "Thank you for your letter"
response. It is fine for Newt Gingrich to be in favor of such prizes Now.
Where was he on the issue when he was Speaker?
My nine year old daughter wants to be the first
person on Mars. She wants to build the first city there. I encourage her,
but I do NOT tell her that when I was her age I had the same dream. I do
not see anyway to avoid having her encourage Her daughter to be the first
person on Mars. Sigh...
Dejectedly yours, Frank Luxem
I have no comments. In 1986 we said in
"America, A Space-faring Nation Again," (Report of the Citizens'
Advisory Council on National Space Policy, J. E. Pournelle, PhD, Chairman)
"Build more spaceships. Fly more spaceships." We need X
projects. We needed them then. We need them now.
I don't usually post press releases, but I have
no quarrel with this one:
Jerry,
Don't let people tell you that video editing and
post production -- analog or digital -- is tough. It's not!
Millions of real people do it every day to punch up
their personal and family videos, to show people construction/design
projects, to show people their products and services, to help kids and
adults excell at sports and simply save their personal and professional
memories.
Imagine -- Shoot some video, do as much editing as
you want and then copying the finished work to tape, CD, DVD or even send
it across the Internet. The video may not qualify for the Sundance
Festival but it will give parents and grandparents a lump in their throat.
It can help an architect, designer or realtor sell a project better than
hundreds of still pictures. It will help golfers, runners, swimmers and
skiers analyze how to improve their performance. It can help small
businesses sell more by showing products and services in action. It can
help HR people train their people.
All without costing an arm and a leg.
Pinnacle's new Studio Deluxe is making it even
easier for people who have tons of videotapes or got a new camcorder. In a
couple of hours they can load their video on their Windows PC and do all
those neat titling, authoring and special effects things they've seen the
pros do. They can easily copy and share their new video on tape, CD or
even DVD.
They are real people...just like your readers. For
example, a grandfather in Portugal...a new father in Oregon...a young man
documenting his family's heritage...a British volunteer youth leader
promoting a range of outdoor activities for kids...a first-time
entreprenuer who is promoting his business...a dad who captures a year's
worth of band and cheerleading activity and makes copies for parents...and
more.
And at only $299 using Studio Deluxe is not only not
brain surgery...it is very affordable. Best of all, people tell us that
even though they can barely turn on a computer and do a word document,
they can knock out a video people really enjoy watching.
Bad video gets hidden away. Good video gets
shown...again and again.
Want to help your readers produce good videos? Let
us know. We'll get you a copy of Studio Deluxe and give you information on
everyday people who actually enjoy editing, authoring and producing great
videos.
Andy
Andy Marken Marken Communications
And here's another side to the BBC Story
Dr. Pournelle, I think the Reg. had better comments
on the BBC story. Very good take on where security breaches really are
within organizations,etc.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23882.html
Historically, PDAs have overwhelmingly been owned by individual staff,
rather than issued by the employer, and as connectivity has got better the
staff have more and more started to sync their PDA files with those on
their desktop machines. And they're also starting to copy sensitive
company files to them so they can work at home and on the move, so the
corporate crown jewels are walking out the door in people's pockets, and
the devices aren't even adequately passworded.
Or at least that's what MIS, its paranoia fuelled by
'anytime, anywhere' propaganda, thinks. The reality of course is that
maybe 1 per cent of relentlessly anal-retentive corporate PDA users
regularly sync substantial quantities of data between their PDA and their
company desktop. Mostly, people keep a few phone numbers, diary, some
notes, maybe pick up some email remotely (clue here about how sensitive
data gets out of building without legs or pockets being involved at all),
and if they've got company documents they want to work on, they print them
out, shove them on a disk, email to themselves and work on a portable
and/or home PC.
What is it anyway, you may ask, that people have
access to on the corporate network that is both sensitive and likely to be
receptive to fitting onto and working on via a PDA? There really is not a
lot that staff would innocently transfer then accidentally leak or lose,
and if they deliberately want to steal and leak company data, they'll get
it out of the building without the assistance of a blacklisted PDA anyway.
Peter Lawrence
And on Linux Documenatation
Joel Rosenberg wrote:
> the main problem with Linux being
adopted on many ordinary users' desktops > (for many values of
"ordinary users") is the lack of good, solid, > frequently
updated user-level documentation, > ... > Let me take one example,
just before moving on -- where do binary files, > installed by the
systems administrator, go on the / structure? > That influences some
other decisions -- like, say, the path structure > for a new user --
and there's no technical reason that I'm aware of to > prefer one over
the other. /opt, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin all seem to > be used by a
fair number of folks, and all of those work just fine.
Actually, there are reasons certain files are put in
certain places, usually having to do with system recovery and single-user
mode (think safe-mode in Windows). Roland can probably explain them better
than I can. The problem is that most people don't know or understand what
those reasons are, so the just dump things willy-nilly.
The Linux Standards Base is working on addressing
issues of file, library and application locations:
http://www.linuxbase.org/
so that application developers know where to expect
things, what to expect, and where to put their stuff.
The LSB just came out with version 1.1 of the Spec,
for the IA-32 (Intel) platform. Most Linux distros follow it as much as
they can (they're certainly moving towards it if they aren't there
already). Obviously application developers need to do the same.
Pete Flugstad
I suspect Linux will fragment as prima donnas get
into the act, but we will see. I am setting up my new Linux systems now.
More on this:
Joel Rosenberg has a point, but efforts in this area
are, I think, a lot further along than he realizes. Most of the vendors
ship pretty decent documentation with their retail sets; I wasn't terribly
impressed by the 320-page Mandrake manual, but it was a passable
user-level introduction. I hear SuSE's documentation is far more
extensive, and my own Debian system currently has a bit over six megabytes
of compressed text documentation installed.
User guides and technical documentation are
different, of course, and I look mostly at the latter, which by and large
is in good shape.
Standardization is also key, as he mentions, to
documentation, and this is being addressed:
http://www.linuxbase.org
For example, the answer specified there (as I
understand it from a quick scan) to his binary installation issue is that
/opt is mostly for compatibility with older package standards used in
other unixes; /usr/bin is for user-executable, non-critical binaries that
can be shared among multiple hosts (eg, via network mounts), and /usr/local/bin
is for user-executable, non-critical binaries that may not be shared by
other hosts. The various distributions, with some grumbling, appear
committed to supporting these standards with all due speed...
- Mike Earl
Thanks
You've written about school funding in the past, so
I thought you might be interested in an editorial that goes into
specifics: http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/1556068p-1632476c.html
To summarize:
36% kindergarten through 12th-grade classroom: on teacher salaries, books,
supplies.
18% services for students with special needs (special programs for the
gifted, the disabled and potential dropouts).
14% administration
32% operating costs: everything from heating, air conditioning and
lighting to maintenance, buses and cafeterias, and the cost of managing
those functions. Also included in that chunk was the cost of adult
education and preschool, plus libraries, nurses and counselors.
Jim Lund jiml@stanford.edu
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1984:
The prize was awarded jointly to:
JERNE, NIELS K., Denmark, Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel,
Switzerland, b. 1911, d. 1994;
KÖHLER, GEORGES J.F., Federal Republic of Germany, Basel Institute for
Immunology, Basel, Switzerland, b. 1946, d. 1995; and
MILSTEIN, CÉSAR, Great Britain and Argentina, MRC Laboratory of Molecular
Biology, Cambridge, b. 1927 (in Bahia Blanca, Argentina):
"for theories concerning the specificity
in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the
principle for production of monoclonal antibodies"
Interesting. My view is mostly that those in
charge of any given school must be in charge and be held accountable for
getting results. Set things up that way, and you will get results. Nothing
else will. What we have now is a system that insures that NO school will
be set up that way.
Hi Jerry; You wrote in response to a recent email:
There aren't any methanol wells either, but
almost anything can be made to yield alcohols. Obviously at those initial
costs there aren't going to be huge sales, but it's an interesting
development.
I still believe that solar power satellites
to generate electricity plus rechargeable fuel cells will be the way to go
in the next century, but I admit I have not done the analysis in any
depth.
--------
Well, one could consider Iowa a methanol well. They
certainly have the capacity to produce a lot there, and do. I know, I was
born there and lived there for quite some time. Methanol can be produced
most every farm with inexpensive technology. Transport and distribution
are of course another story.
About initial costs, the article noted that these
were investment costs, not retail costs. I still have been able to find no
solid word on the retail costs; but I suspect from what I've read they
will be in the neighborhood of what laptop batteries started at (ie, about
$200/batt) but should scale up to production easier, as they require lower
costs materials to some extent.
The problem with solar power satellites and
receivers, as I see it, is that they will require investments that only
very large corporations and governments can afford. Not to mention low
cost / pound to orbit; and I don't see either of those happening soon. Not
with the current political climate anyway, which is Very Sad. It'd be a
nice thing for a lot more than just this application.
We also need better rechargeable battery technology;
but that's a different subject.
Educate, Don't Legislate.
--Andy
Prizes would get us to orbit.
"The Congress directs the Treasurer of the
United States to pay the sum of $3 billion (Three Billion US Dollars) to
the first US owned firm that shall build three spacecraft each of which
shall launch from the Continental Unites States, go to orbit around Earth,
remain there for 3 orbits, return to the launch site, and within a period
of three days after landing do so again; and shall do this six times
during a period of three months.
"This payment shall not be subject to
Federal taxation. No sums shall be paid until the results above have been
achieved."
Now I don't know if any company can do that, but
I bet several will try: and it costs the taxpayers nothing unless one of
them succeeds, and that would be cheap at the price.
And from JoAnne:
Regarding a man's rights after divorce: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,44183,00.html
This is a good article pointing out how hopeless
many men feel and how this leads to their suicides. The courts are
incredibly biased against men in divorce courts. This is not a good thing.
It merely completes the breakup of a broken family.
I am (pleasantly) quite surprised a
"feminist" reporter has brought this issue to light. But these
days, perhaps it requires a feminist reporter, because the male reporters
are never accorded any right to speak out on such issues these days.
{^_^}
And boy do I agree with this next one:
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
One of the cures for unemployment during the
"Great Depression" was the Civilian Conservation Corps. It took
young men off the streets, gave them jobs, and sent a good part of their
wages to their families to help with living expenses. I am aware that many
CCC projects were a waste of time, but the national parks and state parks
still show the benefits of CCC labor. The young men went on to become the
good soldiers and citizens of WWII and later. Now we are apparently
fighting recession by having the unemployable guard us from terrorism at
airports. They produce nothing and gain a lousy attitude. Vacant terminals
and a ruined airline industry is not much of a legacy, and a nation run by
subsidized bullies has already been tried several times. It always
collapses, usually far later than it should.
regards, William L. Jones wljones@dallas.net
Keepers of the Judgment, Suffer not the king!
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