| Friday, December
6, 2002
Sometimes things work out...
Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I seriously doubt you'll remember me, but you and
Mr. Niven handed me an award in 1999 at Writers of the Future. The reason
I'm writing is to share with you something I think you'll find amusing.
1999 was my last year at Michigan State, working on an M.A. During that
year, I met a professor from Yale, one Wai Chee Dimock, who was teaching
classes on Dante's Inferno. Having read yours and Larry's rewrite of this
piece, I recommended it to her, if she was interested in modern
perspectives on Dante.
Three years later, just a month ago, I get a mail
from her, out of the blue, thanking me for pointing her in the direction
of your novel, and telling me that she's teaching the book this semester!
So that's how Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle showed
up as a required text at Yale this year... I never knew academia worked
like that.
All the best,
Scott Huggins
-- Shakespeare's Philosophy: I write, therefore
iamb. G. Scott Huggins
"I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to
owls."
--Job 30:29
I love it. Thanks! They also teach our book in an
English Literature class in Florence, I am told.
Subject: Operations of empire.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/
asia_china/story.jsp?story=358926
---------- Roland Dobbins
Disturbing but not surprising. This kind of thing
we can deal with if allowed to.
And see below.
===
From Ed Hume:
South Korean Hackers
From http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/
default.asp?target=HTIW.HTM
December 5, 2002; There is considerable popular
unrest in South Korea over the recent acquittal of two American soldiers
who were involved in a traffic accident that left two Korean teenagers
dead. As a result of this, some South Korean hackers sought to attack the
White House web page. Per capita, South Korea has the highest use of high
speed Internet links. South Korean hackers are among the most skilled, and
numerous, in the world. A disproportionate amount of Internet hacking can
be traced back to South Korea because of this. But the attack on the White
House servers failed. The South Korean attackers noted that the While
House cyber defenses were quite advanced and effective. This will no doubt
spur other South Korean hackers to find a way to breach the White House
defenses. On the bright side, these attacks are being done openly, for
publicity purposes, by hackers who, if war came, would largely be on our
side. Think of it as a realistic training exercise with the attackers
being very skilled and motivated.
The proper take, I think...
And on absurdities:
RE: "I
read in the LA Times this morning that a gangster in Federal Prison
seems to have smuggled..."
More detailed article:
http://cbsnewyork.com/water/
watercooler_story_337170125.html
I suppose it's a classic case of someone wielding
whatever tools are available to them (conspiracy laws) to get the results
they want, regardless of the harm done to the child, the mother, and the
integrity of the relevant laws' supposed intent.
Chris Pierik CTP@Ballpeen.com
The more I read of this, the more it looks to be
petty tyranny, the kind of thing that only a small person -- a servant
when he is master -- could have thought up. Everyone in "law
enforcement" involved in this idiocy ought to be fired; why should we
be paying people to do this?
Then we have the Opera Wars, and another instance
of the bureaucratic mind.
A Fight at the Opera.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110002731
Roland Dobbins
Which, although resolved, causes me to rethink
the donations I let my wife persuade me to make to the Met. Why must
people be this way? Is it that the very existence of lawyers today poisons
all civility and common sense? I would hate to think so. But we seem now
to be more and more driven by law, and less by ordinary decency and
civility.
Score one for the good guys:
Dear Mr. Pournelle, You might find this article
amusing: http://www.freep.com/money/
tech/mwend6_20021206.htm
Seems that man who proclaims himself
"one of the world's largest bulk e-mailers" is a little less
happy when the tables are turned.
Steven Healey
I love it. We had his address here too. I hope he
enjoys our exercising our rights as he exercises his. Now a Sending Of
Cats would be illegal (Catherine de Camp used to tell of how a local
Scientology group became unhappy with her and took out ads in the
newspapers saying she represented a medical research group and wanted
cats, giving her address. I never got many details or what the police did
about that). But surely signing this chap up for research materials for
his business is different?
Of course the real remedy is to give some thought
to restricting spam, but the Direct Mail Association has powerful lobbies
to prevent that.
I am told that this
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322-2663
is a valid address. But I wouldn't know...
Oh the irony is so delicious I can taste it. If you
remember the story about the Spam King who had built his new $740,000
house off of the spam he sent
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122.htm
Well apparently a bunch of people on Slashdot
organized to send this guy a MAJOR amount of spam be it snail mail or
electronic kind. Apparently he doesn't like it as seen here:
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20021206.htm
If anything, the fact that this guy paid for a
$740,000 house just proves to me that spam laws are not taken seriously
and the only thing that is noticed is vigilantism by the masses.
-Dan S.
Yeah...
Then, does there seem to be a message in this
next one?
Subject: Instructive link, re terrorism detection
http://www.newscientist.com/news
/news.jsp?id=ns99993150 E-mail Disclaimer: Any personal
information in this e-mail must be handled in accordance with the
provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 [Cth]. The information contained in the
e-mail may be confidential and if the person receiving the e-mail is not
the intended recipient they should immediately advise ARCBS by e-mail
response to the ARCBS sender and then deal with the e-mail as directed by
ARCBS. The views expressed in the e-mail are those of the individual
sender unless otherwise stated to be the views of ARCBS. No warranties are
provided that the e-mail is computer virus or other defect free.
Or am I just not seeing things clearly? Of course
the story it points to is interesting too...
Subject: Reverse this, and you have a Klingon sonic
disruptor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2543085.stm
---------- Roland Dobbins
--
Subject: Refrigerator breaks the sound barrier
Scientists develop method for chilling food with non-polluting sound waves
(USA Today)
This was announced YEARS ago...and air pressure fed
cooling aperture tech has been around for decades...I guess the news
thawed... Rick
Home News
Refrigerator breaks the sound barrier
Scientists develop method for chilling food with non-polluting sound waves
By Dan Vergano USA TODAY
A fridge chilled by sound waves could be
headed for the ice cream parlor and your kitchen, researchers report.
Today's refrigerators use refrigerants linked
to ozone depletion and global warming, raising interest in ''green''
alternatives such as the ''thermoacoustic'' fridge. Unveiled Wednesday at
an acoustics meeting in Mexico, the sound-chilled prototype uses air as a
refrigerant.
Led by Penn State University's Steven
Garrett, the researchers see the technology leading to environmentally
benign refrigerators, air conditioners and home electricity generators
fueled by natural gas. Partly funded by ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's,
the team hopes to turn its prototype into a line of ice cream cabinets the
size of current ones, Garrett says.
Thermoacoustic refrigeration takes advantage
of the natural heating a gas undergoes when compressed and the cooling it
undergoes when it expands, like all refrigerators.
Within the 15-inch-tall, 9-inch-wide
prototype, pressurized air is blasted with a high-pitched 173-decibel
sound wave. (By comparison, the noise level standing 80 feet from a jet
taking off is 140 decibels.) The sound waves alternately squeeze and
expand the gas, removing heat from the refrigerator side of a heat
exchanger and dumping it into the hot side. No sound can be heard outside
the sealed heat exchanger, and temperatures on the cold side drop as low
as 8 degrees below zero.
''We're not at the finish line yet, but this
is exciting stuff,'' says acoustic scientist Greg Swift of the Los Alamos
(N.M.) National Laboratory. Advances in thermoacoustic devices to power
small-scale refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps have been
growing for the past two decades, he says.
In terms of energy efficiency, the technology
still lags behind conventional devices, but improvements have come in the
past two years.
The technology has limits. For example,
''cryogenic'' temperatures near absolute zero, about minus 459 degrees
Fahrenheit, are too difficult to achieve for this technology.
But it also offers unique advantages, Garrett
says. Simply upping the frequency of the thermoacoustic sound waves can
lead to smaller-sized refrigerators. And sound-driven air conditioners can
be made to turn their output up or down gradually, unlike conventional
ones that operate at maximum power for a time and then turn off until the
heat bumps up again.
------ Richard F. Doherty, Director The
Envisioneering Group
Love it.
Dr. Jerry;
I have been using Alpha software products for about
10 years now. I first got it when it first came out as a DOS program. It
was fairly easy to use then. No command line. Everything was done from
menu options and pick lists. I built several data bases that I still use
today. And I have upgraded to Alpha 5 for Windows, v 1.0.2. I have had to
reinstall it a couple of times due to having had disk crashes and
replacing hard drives, but it has always installed with the code they sent
me. If you ever get it installed and start to use it, you might like it.
It does have a pretty steep learning curve though.
Roger D. & Lorrie J. Shorney
That was sort of my suspicion: it is FoxBase file
compatible, and apparently does a lot of things I want done: but ye gods
the paranoia! Activations! Authorizations! Passwords! And I am not yet
sure if I can move it from one machine to another, without all that
activation stuff.
I will plug away, but you apparently have to be
determined to use this.
Dear Jerry, I think they would be far better off
giving you the $2.4 Bills-I'm sure you could ditch the non-recoverable
rocket:
"NASA announced a major change in direction
today for its human space flight program, saying it would delay
development of a replacement for the space shuttle and instead start work
on a new, smaller orbiting space plane — a sort of minishuttle — to
take people to and from the International Space Station....The agency
would spend $2.4 billion over the next five years to design the orbital
space plane, a vehicle that would be launched into space atop a
conventional, nonrecoverable rocket and return to Earth to land on a
conventional airport runway."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/
science/14NASA.html?ex=1038200400&en=
74c231b9b1ce3ac4&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE >
Where is an X-project when we need one? Cheers, Rod
Schaffter
-- "It is the soldier, not the reporter who has
given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who
has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus
organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who
salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped
by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." --Father
Dennis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, USMC
Well, I think they'd do better to let me have the
money for an X project too, but I doubt anyone will DO that...
Subject: Ecology of the Buffyverse
Ecological study of human vs. vampire populations in
Sunnydale, CA, home of The Slayer. http://www.stanford.edu/
~bthomas/vamp/vampecology.htm
Eric Pobirs
Wonderful! I mean, really wonderful!
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