Mail 263 June 23 - 29, 2003

We have several letters on the subject of popups (see previous). The first one below raises larger issues. This will be a rather lengthy discussion of popups and what may be done about them, as well as editorial policy.

Turn off your Java and Javascript! Without these twin garbage magnets, surfing speeds up noticeably.

I find that Java-nazi sites (i.e. those that REQUIRE it for ANY access, you peon!), like cookie-nazi sites, are seldom worth the bother. For those (very) few that are, its easy enough to turn the garbage magnets on when entering and off when leaving. I've used this approach for five years now with no significant problems. Indeed I can tell precisely when I've forgotten to turn the garbage magnets back off, even with sites that don't use popups, since I notice that most web sites load significantly slower when using Java/Script.

Of course, as a paid computer industry technical writer (i.e. Whore) you can't advocate spurning the affections of one of the industry's most prestigious Johns. But the truth remains. The net without Java is like a fish without a bicycle.

Tech writers for all industries are Whores. Some are competent and/or honest. Most simply aren't, but that's irrelevant, of course. Their relevant attributes are to roll their eyes, hyperventilate and wax orgasmic at the product of any manufacturer who buys full-page ads in their periodical Brothel.

I often fantasize compiling a language dictionary translating Whore into English. "Proven Technology" = obsolete. "Cutting-edge" = overpriced. "Full-featured" = the manual bulks like the SanFran metro phone book. "Innovative" = Buggy as a beta-test. etc, etc. Practically writes itself, doesn't it?

And yes, if you must know, I once considered a sideline in technical writing. The firearms biz, if it makes a difference. But then I decided that seeing my nom de plume in publication wasn't worth the cost of knee-pads and mouthwash as a business expense.

My, my, my, but I DO digress, I do. I really MUST remember not to skip my Thorazine.

Anyhow, love your site. Read it about daily. (Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Y'know, if I were half as honorable as I seem to want to believe I am, I'd subscribe. Having realized that, I'll be looking into it.)

I stopped reading this the first time through, because I rather object to being called a whore, and I am not sure I much care about the opinions or advice of those who think of me that way.

I don't know who this chap refers to, but it's not me. I have for years done exactly the same column: I try things and report what I did and what the results were. I assume my readers understand the difference between "sweet spot" price/effective technology and quite expensive bleeding edge, and can choose appropriately. For most of my column career I wrote for McGraw Hill's BYTE, and most of those readers were bleeding edge fans, but I always took care to mention that there were generally cheaper ways to get "good enough."

McGraw Hill had and has a very effective wall of separation between sales and editorial. It was literally a firing offense for sales to suggest topics to editors and columnists, much less suggest any slant to take on a topic. Sometimes the sales people would ask if I could drop by a client party at a show. That was probably technically in violation of McGraw Hill policy, but my policy on the subject was that if I liked the company I'd do it, and if I didn't, I'd be just too busy.

And the only time McGraw Hill ever suggested a change in a column was once, a long time ago, when I denounced a company and its policies. I got a call from Legal telling me the company had a litigious reputation and they would sue. I asked if that were a problem with McGraw Hill.

"Not if you can prove it's true. But you will have to participate in the defense. Now if you change these words so it's clear this is your opinion based on..." So I did make that change, saying almost precisely the same thing, but in language that made it possible for Legal to get the suit dismissed without my involvement. And that's the ONLY time McGraw Hill ever suggested any changes. In nearly twenty years.

Now BYTE.COM is owned by CMP and I have never had any suggestions for changes, or what to write about, from them, either.

I write about what I use. Since I can get almost anything I want, I tend to use things I like because I like them. And I do a lot of silly things so you don't have to.

As to Java Scripts and the like: I have, as I have said many times, installed Popup Stopper and it works well; but many web pages still look up all the popup pages, one at a time, and try to put them up before they will put up the content. The result is that it can take a while for the page to come up. I hadn't realized that this wasn't due to my rather slow Internet connection and download times, it was a function of the servers sending the stuff; it is sometimes faster to let the popups happen.

Disabling Java is one way to go. There are costs associated with that shotgun approach. Among other things, some places I visit often require Java. One thing I like about Popup Stopper is that it's easy to turn on and off, and it lets you know if a page isn't loading because it can't do it with popups off.

I starting using Mozilla Firebird as it has a some improvements over MS IE that sounded interesting; mainly tabbed browsing. I quickly discovered that I really liked tabbed browsing, indeed I would have felt lost without it. But I wasn't really keen on the Mozilla Gecko engine, as many sites I use work best with MS IE.

So I started looking, and I ran across NetCaptor ( www.netcaptor.com ). This is basically a shell around IE that supports tabbed browsing, and can also be set up as your "default" browser so it gets links from email messages in Outlook when you click them. There is a free program called SlimBrowser that has somewhat similar capabilities, but didn't seem to be as good.

One really neat thing is that NetCaptor has pop-up and ad blocking. You can program it with wild-cards as to what sort of pop-ups to block and ads to delete. When it deletes an ad it just drops it out of the page, leaving an active link behind the "blankness" if there was one. It seems as if the graphic request is filtered out before the page is requested; this should be possible since it has a good grip on the page and should be able to delete them while processing the page.

Much of the graphics blocking does not come into play until you purchase a license and enter the registration codes. Since late last week NetCaptor has blocked over 1300 URLs on my system, as well as a handful of popups.

------------------------- This email was sent without any attachment and should have arrived without any. If there are attachments, DON'T OPEN THEM!

I find that for all its faults, IE works for me, and the price is right. I tried Mozilla and really really resented that it put its Mozilla Icon on darned near every picture file I have as well as on a lot of my desktop icons. That infuriated me, and when I uninstalled it I found it didn't change things back. The cleanup to get that ugly Godzilla thing off my screens took long enough that I have not had the courage to try it again.

And IE with Popup Stopper works most times. But there remain web sites that simply insist on going off and looking for every page call even though those will not be displayed. The result can be 30 or 40 seconds of waiting, compounded in many cases by the server being stressed -- as for instance pages having to do with game strategies. Many of these are maintained as labors of love, and the popup ads are one source of revenue and probably a pitifully small revenue at that.

Which brings us to the question of popups and banner ads. I don't use them because I find them annoying. In some cases, though, they are the only support of places I do care about and would hate to see vanish. Clearly one of those is www.byte.com .

In general, though, I subscribe to the sites I use often, whether or not I block their popups.

In order to prevent my machine being held up by dns requests for advertisements sites, I have quite a large hosts file which has many known advertising domains and points them to 127.0.0.1

On a seperate note, something I've found very useful in blocking ads and pop-ups before they're even requested is to block the DNS lookup itself. This can be done by adding lines to your "hosts" file.

The hosts file is a simple flat text file that is first consulted when an application (say a web browser) wants to translate a hostname (www.foo.com) into an IP address (10.11.12.13). The key is that this is done BEFORE your normal DNS lookup is done. If you add an entry mapping www.foo.com to 0.0.0.0, then when the app tries to look up that IP address, it gets 0.0.0.0, which is essentially invalid, so the connection fails. This blocks the vast majority of ad server, cookie servers, etc.

I add it to my Windows2k hosts file (WINNT/system32/drivers/etc) and it blocks all the servers. If I ever run across a server I DO want to connect to, I simply find it in the hosts and comment it out.

Note that I disabled my "DNS Client" service as when I updated the hosts file it would consume 100% CPU for a long time, re-reading that file (for whatever reason). This doesn't seem to affect performance at all.

As a recipient three years ago of a porcine aortic cardiac valve, I would be hard-pressed to dismiss leading edge transgenic technology out of hand. I am alive today because of it. And if I outlast my valve and it needs to be replaced in seven or so years, my interest is clearly more than academic.

In the current GMO debate, the landscape has been muddied by a seeming inability of either side to clearly separate a few critical issues.

In the last ten or so years, I've become allergic to eggs, to the extent that they simply don't stay down. I was refused a flu shot two years ago because it had an egg base and the nurses in the office agreed that it could endanger my life. This was their decision, not my whim. I thought it would be OK, but they refused me.

In addition, I'm walking around with a three-year-old piggy aortic valve doing yeoman duty in my chest. If I should accidentally ingest some unknown substance with a gene that with the best of intentions attempts to expunge all but human tissue from my system-- say, some new antibiotic that searched and destroys cancer cells, but has some unexpected side effects-- well, you get the picture.

An old girlfriend is allergic to hazelnuts to the extent that her throat was once swollen nearly shut and she had to go to an ER to be treated. Now that soybeans are being genetically altered with hazelnut genes to discourage certain agricultural pests, she NEEDS to know whether the soy milk and soy products she likes to use are safe. For persons with additional lactose intolerance, this can be ... troubling.

So far, agribusiness corporations have prevailed on congress and several administrations to NOT require labeling of transgenic foodstuffs on public market shelves. This is criminally irresponsible, and the sources of any deaths traced to this should be subject to prison and financial penalties. I think that's how the law is s'posed to work.

I don't lose sleep over this, but if the government refuses to mandate-- NOT to BAN, but simply to LABEL GMOs, it makes me-- not so much fearful as distrustful.

Agriculture depends on a large and, in certain critical phases, unrestricted playing field. This is especially true during pollination at which time winds, and insects such as bees, play a critical role in the production cycle. For germination to occur you have a kind of agricultural soup whose rules are more statistical than engineered.

Wind doesn't know anything about "adjoining fields." As in, "I ain't got to show you no steenking boundaries."

And yet in a recent case, Monsanto has sued a Canadian farmer for the "drift" of their own seed.

The farmer has countersued (imagine that!), but amazingly enough, lost the first round. The Canadian Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case in the beginning of 2004. It kinda reminds me of the Kenneth Patchen's poem, The Peaceful Lier, where he talks about

"....the big shtoonks Kicking the cans off The little shtoonks -- AND! Charging them for the service."

This is the tip of the iceberg. But now, new strains promoted by agribusiness chemists have a "" so that food from these seeds is sterile, and must be repurchased each year.

This is Soviet-style agriculture, mindlessly well-intentioned, but efficient only in the short run, if that.

So then our own government gets into the act by refusing foreign aid, and more specifically AIDS aid, unless various African countries roll over and allow these wonderfully engineered seeds into their food chain.

This is where the patent process has become irresponsible, and unless patents have a very restricted term, the consequences can be catastrophic.

Open source hacking of genetic structures is one of the few ways to safeguard the worldwide food chain. This means that if a suicide seed is found to have "drifted" onto adjoining land, the aggrieved party should have recourse to biotechnology that can nullify the suicide gene.

This should be a common law remedy. However much common law has been overturned in recent decades in the name of--what?--the new world economic order?

Perhaps one remedy should place all patents of an offending company into the public domain. That would get their attention.

Hard to find a real nexus of causation here. Merely attacking the WTO, World Bank or GMO conferences doesn't address the causes. Neither does badmouthing the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth.

To look for one cause is a failure of attention. It is the stuff of inquisition rather than inquiry.

Answers create factions. Questions create community. Answers that promote questions create civilization.

The intelligence of our questions will determine the solutions we get. And if we don't ask....

You raise a number of questions and state your case well. I'll try to reply later; meanwhile let's see what the readers think.

Title VI Hearings.

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

How not to study the Middle East, By Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes Jun. 25, 2003

The US Congress broke with a 45-year tradition last week: It permitted a dissident to critique federal funding for the study of foreign language and cultures. The topic may appear academic but it impinges on deep questions of how Americans see the outside world and themselves. It also has major implications for US policy.

Federal funding of international studies (known in governmentese as "Title VI fellowships") is relatively new, going back to 1959, when cold war tensions prompted a sense of American vulnerability. The goal was to supply knowledgeable specialists to government, business, industry, and education. (Full disclosure: I received a Title VI fellowship in the mid-1970s.)

The current $86.2 million annual spending on Title VI programs makes up just 0.0005 percent of the federal budget, but it funds 118 "national resource centers" and provides an endorsement of them that encourages other donors. Naturally, universities took to this program that subsidizes their graduate students and area studies centers, and quickly came to depend on it.

That's why the hearing of the House Subcommittee on Select Education last Thursday on "International Programs in Higher Education and Questions of Bias" was so potentially significant; it challenges that funding.

The event showcased Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, who explained the problems at Title VI centers. Himself an anthropologist of South Asia, since 9/11 he has developed a systematic critique of Middle East studies.

In his testimony Kurtz argues that this field is dominated by an approach called post-colonial theory. Developed primarily by Edward Said of Columbia University, it holds, in Kurtz's words, that "it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power."
The predominance of post-colonial theory had two major consequences:

An exclusion of pro-American voices. Kurtz offers several examples, such as the website of New York University's Middle East center ( http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/program/neareast/ ). Every one of its commentaries on 9/11 and the Iraq war that takes a political stand, he finds, "sharply criticizes American policy."

A "condemnation of scholars who cooperate with the American government."
For example, the Middle East Studies Association boycotted the National Security Education Program (NSEP), a Pentagon-funded effort to develop a cadre of professionals to help the US government "make sound decisions" on national security issues.

In other words, Title VI funding at times reduces the expertise available to the government.

TO COUNTER this pattern of bias and alienation Kurtz proposes three steps for Congress.

Create a supervisory board made up of executive branch representatives and other appointees to manage the Title VI spending, as is presently the case with other federally funded educational programs.

Amend the Higher Education Act to deny Title VI funding to any university or center that boycotts the NSEP.

Reduce allocations for Title VI to register displeasure with the bias of area studies. Start by rescinding the additional $20 million added to Title VI after 9/11 and direct it instead to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to train students intending careers in the defense and intelligence agencies.

Confronted by this powerful critique, the education establishment's lobbyist at the hearing, Terry Hartle, was reduced to posturing about the supposed patriotism of his constituents, dismissing Kurtz's case as anecdotal and stating that historians and political scientists "rarely find" post-colonial theory useful.

The fellow even pretended (and this falsehood must have rankled) that Edward Said's work "reached its apex of popularity more than a decade ago and has been waning ever since." Hardly!

A search engine of syllabi finds Said to be one of the very most taught authors. He is, as Martin Kramer points out, "one of only two academics today (the other is Noam Chomsky) who draws an overflow crowd on any campus he visits and who always gets a standing ovation."

Hartle is wrong and Kurtz is right. Indeed Kurtz understates the problem, for anti-Americanism among Middle East specialists has other sources besides post-colonial theory, such as fury at strong US-Israel relations or sympathy for the Iranian regime.

Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) chairs the House Subcommittee on Select Education; taxpayers have no better way to challenge the failure of Middle East studies than by writing him at: tellhoek@mail.house.gov

The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America.

     Douglas M. Colbary
     I & C
     The Electric Plant
     City of Painesville


    "You Can't See Where you stand,
       From Where You Sit"
       unknown

And while I don't always agree with everything Dr. Pipes says, I always take him seriously; and subsidizing our enemies is not smart, particularly if we do that to the exclusion of friends. Said is an interesting man and I read him; but I don't mistake his theories for deep truth.

Subject: Federal Air Marshals flying without having received their final security clearances

-- John E. Bartley, III john@503bartley.com 503-BAR-TLEY (503-227-8539) K7AAY This post quad-ROT13 encrypted; reading it violates the DMCA. We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

Note that PILOTS can't manage to be armed, but heck, why trust them with the safety of passengers when you can have real marshals? And so to empire.

CHAOS MANOR MAIL

Mail 263 June 23 - 29, 2003