| Friday, March
1, 2002
I was surprised that you linked to the video of
(apparently) someone's head being cut off without a further discussion of
the grotesque subject matter. Your commentary on various topics - from
politics to history to warfare - are stimulating and insightful.
Therefore, I was puzzled to see simply a somewhat taunting notice above
the link indicating that I probably would not want to see this. I just
thought you might want to comment further on it.
David.
My dear Doctor Pournelle,
As you have reviewed many products and given your
honest opinion of them I was wondering if you have come across a
vomit-proof keyboard cover? This is in reference to the wonderful advice
below, which I should have followed:
"You probably do NOT want to go to See http://www.gouillou.com/assassinat.mpeg
(434 KB) "
It is obvious what the men are doing here (while the
"why" of it remains a mystery), what is less obvious is why a
web marketer would have this on his web page where he keeps his resume'.
Is this fellow showing how he markets product; "This is what happens
to people who don't shop at my client's site." or is this his
product; "I'm a Sagittarius mercenary who enjoys kittens, taking out
sentries, and black and white photography."
As always best regards, Rev. Christopher Boatright
Tualatin, OR
P.S. The clean-up job look terrific, if you come to
the next OryCon I'll put you up in my home if you clean my office (I could
even swing a stipend and include meals far surpassing the hospitality
suite's fare).
I assumed that between my warning and the title
of the file it would be pretty clear what that mpeg was, and that you
probably might not want to look at it: but I didn't think it should be
suppressed either.
I assume the readers here are intelligent and pay
attention, particularly to links.
There probably is not enough money to get me to
clean up anyone else's place. Bad enough having to do my own. Thanks...
Dear Dr Pournelle,
Better get used to this... http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
Regards, TC
-- Terry Cole tcole@maths.otago.ac.nz System
Administrator Dept. of Maths and Stats, Otago
"I will never go metric," Harry sang...
Jerry:
In your complaints about the foolishness of random
searches at the airports, you don't seem to believe the government is
sincere in their message that any American traveler could be a terrorist -
3yrs old or 80, we are all guilty until proven otherwise.
Trusted Flier Identification cards, if they are
implemented, should finally convince you that they mean it, and aren't
simply being politically correct. Their only use is to identify you as a
proven non-terrorist.
Blame it on OK City and anthrax, if you wish - but I
think the feds really are afraid of a domestic terror attack - whether a
copycat nut or a right wing terrorist. They are afraid of the damage to
their credibility in their war against terror.
Tom Craver Chandler, AZ
I think sincerity is over rated if the goal is
not well thought through. Shaw has Appolodorus the Sicilian say in Caesar
and Cleopatry, "Majesty, when a stupid man is doing something he
knows is wrong, he always says it is his duty."
It starts at the top. An excerpt from an article on
Front Page Magazine,
http://frontpagemag.com/columnists
/coulter/2002/ac02-28-02.htm :
In early December, "60 Minutes" host Steve
Kroft interviewed [Transportation Secretary] Mineta about his dogged
refusal to permit an extra check of people who look like the next and last
50 terrorists.
Kroft noted that of 22 people on the most-wanted
list right now: "[A]ll but one of them has complexion listed as
olive. They all have dark hair and brown eyes. And more than half of them
have the name Mohammed." (They are also all males in their 20s and
30s.) Thus, he asked Mineta if such people should be subjected to a little
extra scrutiny. "No," Mineta responded, "not just on that
basis alone."
Other more important factors, Mineta explained,
included asking "things like, 'Did you pay cash for this ticket or
charge it on a credit card? Do you have a one-way ticket or a
round-trip?'"
Inasmuch as this was Steve Kroft and not Diane
Sawyer conducting the interview, there was a relevant follow-up question:
"Did the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center have one-way
tickets?" No, Mineta admitted, the Sept. 11 hijackers all had
round-trip tickets they bought with credit cards.
Precisely.
Hi Jerry,
I installed a Netgear FR314 firewall router for my
cable connection to protect my kids and to protect my system from the
outside world. I like it very much but I discovered another use for it.
Pop up ads drive me nuts. So I started adding those ad sites to my list on
the firewall of banned sites. Now I still get a window popping up but I
don’t see the advertisement. Also ads from that site don’t appear on
normal web pages but it otherwise does not impact operation.
I have a friend of mine who is an expert on security
(he has written books on the subject) attack my system and he was not able
to penetrate the fire wall.
Andy
Interesting. Thanks!
After reading this, [Tale
of two submarines] I thought I should suggest you might look up the
story of the submarine that Vickers sold to Canada. They got the contract
out from under the French, so the French made sure the news got out when
they heard that Vickers had welded several segments on upside down.
Vickers had to make things good at their own expense. Ah well, I suppose
there is something to be said for gold plated standards of engineering
after all, at least on those real occasions when it is suitable for the
kind of work being done. PML.
-- GST+NPT=JOBS
I.e., a Goods and Services Tax (or almost any other
broad based production tax), with a Negative Payroll Tax, promotes
employment.
See http://users.netlink.com.au
/~peterl/publicns.html#AFRLET2 and the other items on that page
for some reasons why.
=====
Okay, I admit this may be a weak argument.
One can argue that in the decade between the
development of the DSRV and the VOL, technology advanced enough to allow
for a much cheaper design and deployment. The DSRV was a first of its
kind, right? And would have had substancial R&D expenses. The VOL,
coming later, would have (presumably) built on what the DSRV people
learned.
There *are* sometimes reasons for $600 toilets.
William Harris
The $600 toilet seat had to fit a particular
place. At the time the planes were made USAF was advised to buy some
spares, which would have cost $10 each before the production line was
taken down. They didn't and later needed twenty, I think it was. The
tooling cost to set up to make the first one was $12,000. The seats were
free.
Jerry:
I just got a 128MB USB keychain memory disk at work.
Works transparent through USB port, no drivers/special software for
Win2K/XP systems, comes with drivers for Win98/SP2 systems. Plug it into
your USB port (comes with a USB extension cable), and it is automatically
seen as a removable hard disk in Explorer ("My Computer"). Has
faster read/write than USB ZIP drives (4-7MB/sec), very acceptable for
moving files from computer to computer ... no network setup, just plug and
go.
You can find them on many web sites; they seem to be
a lot more expensive at retail stores. Here's a link to the place where I
got mine: http://www.meritline.com/usbflasdriv1.html
, there are sizes from 32MB to 512MB (although I have also seen a 1GB
product). Cost seems to be about $0.70-$1.10 per MB on the web. Comes with
USB software (if you need it) and a necklace cord (geek chic?).
I was going to get a USB ZIP drive for personal use,
but not now.
(Note: have no association with any of these
companies...just an end user.)
On another note, quite impressed with the new pix of
Chaos Manor....but am sure it will be just a short-term solution. Good pix
for posterity ("See, it used to be clean!")
Rick Hellewell
They are indeed neat. I wrote about them in one
of the show columns. I have one now. It needs glue to hold the plastic
case on -- that came apart in my pocket. But it's pretty neat.
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