| Sunday,
April 14, 2002 An Important Warning
from Bob Thompson:
As the old saw has it, I learn something new every
day. Today I learned that Dell has been using non-standard motherboards
and power supplies, apparently since September 1998. Although recent Dell
power supplies and motherboards use what looks like a standard ATX power
connector, the pinouts are different.
Replacing a Dell power supply with a standard ATX
power supply destroys the motherboard and/or power supply as soon as you
apply power to the system. Similarly, upgrading the motherboard in a Dell
system with a standard ATX motherboard while continuing to use the
standard Dell power supply destroys the motherboard and/or power supply as
soon as you apply power to the system.
This situation is particularly insidious because
Dell uses what appear to be standard components. For example, they buy
Intel motherboards by the million, and those "Dell-version"
motherboards resemble standard Intel motherboards in all respects *except*
that the power supply connector is wired differently.
Why has Dell done this? There is no technical reason
for doing so. The only reason I can think of is that Dell wants to force
people to buy upgrade and replacement components from Dell.
I recommend that you avoid buying Dell products. If
you have a recent Dell system, be very careful about upgrading it or
replacing the motherboard or power supply. If you need a replacement power
supply and are certain that your Dell system uses the hacked version of
the ATX power connector, you can buy a replacement Dell-specific power
supply from PC Power & Cooling. Rather than do that, though, I
recommend that you replace the power supply and motherboard together,
using industry-standard components.
I can't think why this problem hasn't been common
knowledge, except that these non-standard Dell systems are new enough that
few people will have upgraded or replaced the motherboards and/or power
supplies in them. Obviously, with the oldest of them now passing two years
in age, this will become a much more common problem.
Although I don't usually plug the competition, I
confess that Scott Mueller (Upgrading and Repairing PCs) caught this one
before I did. You can read his take on it at http://165.193.123.52/articles/upgrade3_01_01.asp
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com
http://www.ttgnet.com/rbt/thisweek.html
Which is tragically interesting. I cannot
understand why anyone would use non-standard pinouts. I haven't had a Dell
computer here for years, not for any serous reason but just because I
never got one after Dell himself caused one of his earliest machines to be
sent to me a very long time ago. I did "adopt" Gateway as a good
standard provider for some years, but I haven't seen any of their systems
for a while either. Mostly now I build my own. I do have some high end
COMPAQ dual professional workstations, and I can recommend them, as well
as the COMPAQ Legacy Free as a simple desktop for general tasks, but
mostly it's cheaper and simpler to build my own systems (often with advice
from Thompson but that's another story).
From Roland, The Return of CALEA
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/12/
2358206&mode=nocomment&tid=158
Roland also asks, "Who Needs
Terrorists?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/
la-041002plane_wr.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines
%2Dcalifornia%2Dmanual --
Dan Spisak finds us this one:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald
/living/columnists/dave_barry/2915556.htm
I thought you all would like to see this, sadly I
don't think it will surprise any of us however.
-Dan S.
Alas.
From John Bartley on the Nigerian Scam
>From the Phineas T. Barnum department:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20020411/0939207_F.shtml
And from Rod Montgomery
Subj: Switzerland: Ethnic Cleansing Continues
Inspired by your recent essay on the Middle East, I
tried to find out more about Swiss history.
A very interesting item is a scholarly paper from
McGill University in Canada, concerning what lessons (if any) Canada might
learn from the Swiss example:
http://ww2.mcgill.ca/alumni/news/s96/2.htm
Within that paper, one passage especially caught my
eye:
"Switzerland's youngest canton, Jura, was
created in 1978 to separate two linguistic groups. Both the Jura problem
and the manner of its resolution will sound familiar to Quebecers. After
decades of tension between the canton of Bern's germanophone majority and
a francophone minority in its Jura districts, the issue was decided by
referendum. In this case, however, there was not one referendum but half a
dozen spread over a decade: first, the Bernese voted on whether there
should be a referendum; then the Jurasians voted to create a new canton;
then the Jurasians voted again (several times) to establish the borders of
this canton; then the Swiss voted to confirm the entry of a new canton
into the Confederation. And we complain about referendum fatigue in
Quebec?"
There's also this passage, from the
recently-published biography, _Wilhelm_Roepke:_Swiss_Localist,_Global_Economist_,
by John Zmirak (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2001, ISBN
1-882926-67-6), p. 2, concerning the Swiss half-cantons of Appenzell
Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden:
"The one bitter source of conflict in
Appenzell's history has been religion ... . It did not shatter Appenzell;
after some serious quarrels over creed, the Protestant and Catholic halves
of the canton agreed simply to split. At some places where an agreement
could not be reached, the canton lines were drawn (and up to the
nineteenth century incessantly redrawn) according to the faith of each
family home. When a Catholic obtained a house that had once belonged to
Protestants, that little piece of Appenzell Innerrhoden was transferred to
Ausserrhoden, and contrariwise if a Protestant gained a formerly Catholic
home."
But I still have not figured out how the Swiss --
who apparently live in the Land of Perpetual Ethnic Cleansing -- decided
to stop killing each other over it, much less how to transplant their
model into other troubled areas of the world. It seems unlikely that any
outside power could _impose_ the Swiss model on an unwilling population.
I'm still looking for a good book on Swiss history,
especially their religious civil warfare and how it ended. Either the
Princeton University Library is curiously deficient in such, or I have not
yet figured out the proper chant to recite to their Catalog, to get it to
excrete the proper entries.
This is _not_ I say again _not_ to be construed as
an invitation to you, Dr. Pournelle, to serve as my research assistant.
But if any of your readers, perhaps, is Swiss, and could point me to a
good political history -- in German would be ok; in French would not work
for me -- it would be helpful.
Rod Montgomery == monty@sprintmail.com
It is my understanding that the "agreement
to split" was helped along considerably by the Confederation army;
but I also confess I got most of my meager knowledge about the division of
Appenzell from John McPhee's New Yorker articles that later appeared as a
book.
I had earlier forwarded information to you regarding
the error rates of medicine, and you did not have time to follow up with
it then. Here are two more tidbits for your file, against a slow news day
when you can explore this further.
http://www.salon.com/books/
feature/2002/04/09/gawande/print.html
http://www.iatrogenic.org/index.html
-- John Bartley, telcom admin, USBC/DO, Portland OR
- Views are mine. http://palmwireless.cjb.net Wireless FAQ for PalmOS(r)
http://celdata.cjb.net Handheld Cellular Data FAQ
It is arguable that until 1938 physicians did at
least as much harm as good, and sometimes a lot more. It's almost certain
they did more harm than good prior to Pasteur. They certainly killed Lord
Byron. Soldiers preferred the Salve of War to the ministrations of the
field hospitals. And of course Ignatz Semmelweiss is a well known
instance. On the other hand, see Doc Mellhorn and the Pearl Gates by
Stephen Vincent Benet. And after 1938 physicians began to acquire
the tools to do some real cures. Now they can do miracles. Some miracles,
anyway...
Many "mental illnesses" in the past
were iatrogenic. I am not certain that some of that doesn't remain,
particularly in the world of education disorders.
Dear Jerry
I do realize that tax and bill time reinforces the
necessity of doing work that pays. I am sure you have many projects from
which to choose that would generate revenue. Hence my writing to you with
the following request is rather guilt ridden.
There is nothing I would rather read than your
analysis of what we have learned from DC/X and "Venture Star".
I know that you make far more charitable donations
of your time for the betterment of humanity than most, more than I to be
sure. It's just that what you say reaches so many people, often people who
are in a position to do something other than just write letters and make
the occasional donation. You have a great deal of influence Jerry, I
suspect far more than you realize. The crux of your analysis will reach
the White House and the nether regions of the Pentagon where black
projects get funded. SDI cannot work with the shuttle and there are no
other viable options to deploy a system, the Air Force knows this well.
Tell us again what is possible Jerry. Maybe this
time...
Peter Cohen
pan@cam.org
Sigh. I am dancing as fast as I can. But I
suppose I had better do that. DC/X vs. Venture Star... Lessons Learned. I
think a Council Report on that might be useful.
And from Joel Rosenberg (this will be move to the
Reports page in a day or so):
A few more random thoughts just because, well, just
because...
Settlements:
Absolutely some of them -- how many is an
interesting question -- are for religious reasons only, and make little
strategic sense except in giving the Arabs an ongoing reason to believe
that making peace now (and surely any peace treaty would involve no future
settlements) is more in their interest than in continuing the war that
started more than fifty years ago. That hasn't worked, at least not yet,
and it may not. The Palestinians are clearly of the opinion that if they
continue the "armed struggle", the interim deal will only get
better, and surely the offers have gotten better, to the point of the
Clinton plan. The problem, of course, is that the Palestinian concensus is
that they're discussing an interim deal, and not a final settlement --
understandable, given that the best deal they could possibly get doesn't
address the underlying fundamentals.
(It gets complicated, of course -- some of the most
strategically important settlements are Gush Emunim. From a strategic POV,
it probably shouldn't matter much to secular Israelis who is populating
the chain along the Jordan, and it doesn't.)
And that said, while I think that you've got a point
about the resupply problem of the settlements deep in Palestinian
territory, the other side of that coin is that armed outposts on hilltops
have some definite strategic benefits, as well as the liabilities that you
point out.
It's hard to argue that the settlements are really
as much of a problem for the Arabs as they claim -- after all, the PLO was
formed as an alliance of terrorist groups several years before 1967, when
there were zero Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and
Palestinian Arabs were free to walk down Jerusalem roads paved with
headstones from the Jewish cemetary on the Mount of Olives. But it does
resonate well in the West, and that may have more to do with the
prominence that they're given than anything else.
Given the sufficient and necessary other conditions
for a viable Palestinian state, the isolated settlements are probably
disposable, from the Israeli POV (although not without a lot of internal
problems; the closing of the Sinai settlements was a very difficult
concession) -- but we're nowhere near that point, have no medium-term path
to that point, and "peace activists" wishing otherwise doesn't
make it so.
"Maybe the horse will learn how to sing"
is good fiction and honest desperation, but it's not the basis for sound
policy. The tale of the camel and the scorpion is more on point, I think.
The Art of the Deal:
As you've gathered, I'm much more in line with
Rumsfeld's thinking than Powell's. The US military is much better at
making changes on the ground than State is, and Powell, like most
Secretaries of State, is kind of a Donald Trump, in love with the art of
the deal, rather than looking at the results.
A fair-sounding deal -- like the one that Kissinger
won his Nobel Peace Prize for -- is meaningless unless it's enforced, as
the North Vietnamese demonstrated. (Regardless of what one thinks the US
*should* have done in Vietnam, what the "peace deal" did was
indistinguishable in practice from simply withdrawing US troops and
support, and everybody knew it at the time. I accept your analysis that
the South could well have repulsed the Northern invasion if they were
given the tools to do so, but that was, I believe, never on the table,
except on paper. The North had no more intention of keeping the Paris deal
than Arafat did of adhering to Oslo.)
I've got some quibbles with the SALT and the ABM
treaties, but, by and large (with some cheating, like Krasnoyarsk), they
were bargains that worked because each side saw that keeping the bargain
was in its own interest, rather than simply as the basis for further
concessions from the other side.
There won't be a viable deal until either:
a: enough death and destruction is visited upon the
Arabs, over a long enough period of time, to collectively persuade them
that the "armed struggle"/terrorism has been a strategic failure
(you point to several historical examples of that sort of thing
happening), and/or
b: a sufficiently powerful Palestinian dictator
emerges who can and will impose a non-terrorism policy on his own people,
albeit perhaps imperfectly.
(Neither addresses the underlying economic
fundamentals. Well, maybe the horse *will* learn how to sing). I think
it's hard to argue against the proposition that Arafat *must* go, and be
replaced by a brutal, efficient dictator who doesn't think himself
immortal or essential, and who will stomp on Hamas/PIJ -- and not try an
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade maskirovka -- for his own survival. For that, he
won't need mortars and Semtex and heavy machine guns; he'll need lots of
thugs with light weapons, the will to use them, and the understanding that
the payoff is for results, not words.
How much would a: take? I dunno. Your guess of some
tens of thousands is lower than mine, but not by an order of magnitude,
and we're more than an order of magnitude away from your guess of what's
sufficient right now.
The present operation, while it's done huge damage
to the terrorist infrastructure -- which is, to be blunt, the PA
infrastructure -- hasn't dealt with the major issue: Terrorism is believed
to work, because, in the long run, it does.
A couple of weeks of knocking down a buildings and
killing a few hundred combatants (as well as, unquestionably, some
innocent civilians caught in the crossfire) doesn't demonstrate otherwise,
and the new flood of "humanitarian aid" (some of which will, no
doubt, actually feed hungry people and build buildings and sewers, as well
as fatten Swiss bank accounts) will act as a counterweight to the
proposition that the "armed struggle" has been a failure.
On the other hand, ask the Afghanis how smart a move
it was to harbor terrorists who intend to attack the US -- despite the
influx of US and other aid. What's the difference? The totality of the
destruction of the Taliban state, I think, combined with the low US
casualties, which said, quite clearly, "we can hurt you as badly as
we feel we need to, and you can't hurt us while we're doing that."
(Digression: George Bush's dismemberment of the
Taliban, as long as it's only a start and goes on to Iraq, is a good start
in demonstrating that terrorism against the US doesn't work, and so far,
it's been successful, on a day-to-day basis, although I'm still waiting
for the next shoe to drop, now that Saddam thinks he's got a couple of
years, at least, before Iraq II [I think he's wrong, mind, but I think
that's what he thinks].
(In the long run, though, we're going to have to
deal with the Mecca of terrorism, which is, well, Mecca, and the Wahabbis
in control there. As Deep Throat used to say, "follow the
money.")
Random thoughts:
>From the late Faisel al-Husseini last March,
long credited in the West as a moderate:
"In the first Intifada [December '87] we
succeeded in breaking many Israeli taboos. Golda Meir said that there are
no Palestinian people, but we earned our recognition. In the past they
said 'no' to a Palestinian state, but we broke that taboo. In the past
they refused to recognize the PLO, but today they recognize it as the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In the current
Intifada as well, we have broken the Israeli taboos regarding Jerusalem
and the refugees."
Interestingly enough, all of the suicide bombers of
late have come from the Jenin area, and not Gaza -- I think it may have a
lot to do with the fence, and with the defensible border there, and with
the blockade of Gaza from Judea and Samaria. Gaza is full of shaheed
candidates, but as long as they can't get into the rest of the PA and from
their across the Green Line, they're not a factor.
But, just as when the Palestinians use ambulances as
APCs and bomb delivery vehicles and find that ambulances aren't given
their usual privileges, when they start using supposedly pregnant women as
suicide bombers, you can expect that there's going to be a lot of actually
pregnant Arab women forced to disrobe humiliatingly, increasing the
collective rage.
The present action is, of course, a short-term fix,
at best, but just judging on the numbers, it's worked pretty well as a
short-term fix. The number of suicide bombers has dropped, and a fair
number of the terrorist leadership folks are dead or in Israeli hands --
and save for those holed up with the priests in Bethlehem or with Arafat
in his compound, the rest are apparently too busy running for cover.
Medium term:
The Israelis are going to have to build a
wall/fence, probably roughly along the Allon Plus boundaries; consistently
use artillery/air strikes against military targets, of which there is no
lack; and either expel Arafat, or wait for him to die. The real problem
will be the Palestinian non-Israelis incorporated inside the Allon Plus
lines, as absent a final settlement, they can no more be given Israeli
citizenship than the Jerusalemite Palestinians can -- anybody who takes
the offer will be killed by their loving Palestinian brethren.
In the long term?
Talk of partition is premature, at best, not until
there's a complete victory. Arab writing on the matter -- I don't read
Arabic, but the folks at http://www.memri.org
do -- is awfully clear, when it's Palestinians speaking to their own
people.
One sample, from a speech by Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi
last September, broadcast on the PA state TV. (Just in passing, nothing
gets broadcast on the PA state TV unless it's acceptable to Arafat's
quasi-government.) "Our belief is that this war, between us and the
Jews, will continue to escalate until we vanquish the Jews and enter
Jerusalem as conquerors, [and] enter Jaffa as conquerors. We are not
merely expecting a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital; we are
heralding [the creation of] an Islamic caliphate with Jerusalem as its
capital."
Again, from the late Faisel al-Husseini: See http://memri.info/bin/articles.cgi?
Page=subjects&Area=conflict&ID=SP19701.
"... our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal, namely,
to Palestine from the river to the sea. Whatever we get now cannot make us
forget this supreme truth."
Two points. First, I used to say during the Cold
War that the USSR had to be taught that actions have consequences. My
solution to Viet Nam and the Accords was to announce that violation of
these agreements would begin a new war, in which the objective of the
United States would be the reunification of Viet Nam under government
acceptable to us. In other words, we threaten not merely an escalation of
means, but of objectives.
I think Israel should do that now. "The
deals offered under Clinton are off the table. At this point we intend to
incorporate Bethlehem and all territories between there and Jerusalem into
the new Israel. We will keep the Jordan Valley, possibly resettleing it
with our own people (no one lives there now, it's a mine field). We will
keep all of Jerusalem and we can discuss the management of the parts of
Temple Mount you desire.
"The next uprising will cause us to include
everything in a line from Settlement to Settlement into our territory. The
one after that will cause us to claim all of Judea and Samaria. We will
continue to deport people who hate us from our side of the border to
yours. Have a nice day."
My suspicion is that blunt statement of
objectives would do more good than the open-ended wars that are going on
now. Someone has to win this war, or it will not end. Realistically only
one side can win, and it can win only if it sets its objectives high
enough that the other really understands that they must surrender. Whether
that will happen I don't know.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem endured from 1099
to 1187 centered in Jerusalem, and a re-established Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem endured from Acre until 1291. If 90% of success is showing up,
9o% of conquest is sticking to your guns over a long enough period of
time...
Jerry,
I would like to recommend "The Lessons of
Terror" by Caleb Carr (Random House, 2002 ISBN 0-375-50843-0).
It's a clear, well-written review of the historical
practice of terrorism, concluding with some thoughts on the post-September
Attack situation and what our country should, and should not do.
Ralph Moss
Haven't seen that. As Joel says, it can be made
to work, and has done.
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