| Thursday,
October 16, 2003 I got this yesterday
but I was in poor spirits and didn't get it posted. Perhaps it is as well
since one of the patches seems to break some systems. More as I know more.
Microsoft today announced five (!) new security
flaws, which are described in Security Bulletins MS03-041, MS03-042,
MS03-043, MS03-044, and MS03-045.
The good news is that only one of the five Security
Bulletins describes an important security flaw. The bad news is that the
other four describe critical security flaws.
You can read the sorry details at:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/
security_bulletins/20031015_windows.asp
I've already submitted to Microsoft my suggestion
for a new corporate slogan: "What do you want to patch today?"
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com/thisweek.html
http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi
Let me caution you again: check before you apply
these. There seems to be some problem. More when I know more: watch this
space.
(SEE BELOW)
=======================
Feds Find He Wasn't a Hacker
http://www.msnbc.com/news/980675.asp
He didn't really need those 16 months of his life.
-- John Harlow, President BravePoint
A mind is like a parachute; it works best when fully
opened....
This was in the morning newspapers as well. The
implications are very large, bigger than I have the mental ability to deal
with until I recover from whatever has me in its grip.
He has an enormous law suit of course, including
not only against his former employers (who appear to be out of business)
but possibly against the United States itself; although that latter is not
likely to fly. The empire will consider it maiestas and deal
appropriately.
==================================
On Education
Dear Jerry:
Once, in one of my security columns I wrote,
"In California we have an interesting idea. Not only do we spend more
on prisons than we on schools, but we are now intent on turning our
schools into prisons." I am sure that a lot of high school students
do feel that way about their circumstances. Up here in the mountains where
I live the local school board , faced with budget cutbacks, wants to
concentrate on 'academics", which means that music, drama, and other
life-style enhancing "extracurricular activities" will be
abolished unless concerned citizens chip in and raise the money to fund
them. This is a periodic passion of those who are convinced that the only
road to success is through a four year degree program and ignore the
evidence that music courses have a favorable impact on mathematics
learning and that drama is a sneaky way to teach literature and a wide
range of skills you need to succeed in the adult world of work.
The hard truth is that most kids are automatically
deprived of their civil rights by mandatory attendance and child labor
laws, on the dubious premise that all real learning stops when you
graduate from high school. The atmosphere inside most high schools can be
very much like those in a prison, down to the gangs and the oppression of
the weak by the strong. Home schooling alternatives sound good but their
very existence represents a systematic failure of the educational system
to provide what tax dollars are paying for. Perhaps if we spent a little
more, we would have more people interested in getting a good education.
Right now being a teacher is a low wage , low status, high stress job that
simply does not attract enough quality people. Going up the scale,
community colleges here are now stuffing fifty people into a class, which
means that any pretense of quality instruction is a joke. There are not
enough hours in a day for one instructor to service that many students.
(Most instructors have three to five different classes to teach in a
semester).
A lot of high school students, even before they
graduate, sign up for community college classes, and so do some who are
already at four year schools in fields where the instruction is more
important than the degree.
And what does a degree represent these days anyway?
The ability to pass a certain number of pre-determined courses in a given
field does not magically confer competence in that field. There are some
things that can only be learned through direct experience, which is why an
MD is the start, not the finish, of a medical education.
In other instances, the degree has become the entry
level for the field. For instance, a Masters degree in almost any topic no
longer qualifies you for a college teaching job in that field. The bar has
been raised to PhD in a wide variety of fields, even when teaching at
community colleges. I assume that this change has come about to fulfill
the promises made to PhD candidates that they would get a college teaching
job.
What we have at all levels of this society is
creeping credentialism. The possession of a particular ticket is more
important than experience or innate ability. This is one of the phenomena
that makes us less competitive in the world economy.
There was a proposal a couple of years ago to
eliminate the last two years of high school for most students. Even now,
four out of five students do not go on to higher education and that last
two years is all "college prep". Nothing happened with this idea
of course. If they weren't in school those kids would be in the job market
competing with older adults. And the police like and enforce the truancy
laws. Doing so has a statistical impact on the burglary rate.
My own experience tells me that no one can be forced
to learn. There has to be some kind of incentive beyond simply making a
living to inspire someone to undertake a course of higher education. If we
have too many unemployed PhD's and not enough people, not just qualified
but willing to teach K-12 school, then our priorities need to be
re-examined.
Sincerely, Francis Hamit
One needs some reality checking here. First,
there is no correlation between money spent on education and any
measurable result. Certainly there is some minimum spending required, but
it is unlikely that any school district in the country spends below it;
while some of the highest bucks/pupil schools such as the District of
Columbia schools, are not arguably but demonstrably among the absolute
worst school systems in the world.
Until you allow local control of finances coupled
with real control over not only spending but the whole system, you will
not get results. Yes. That can result in arbitrary and capricious
governance of the schools, and injustices to teachers. Those things happen
in private schools now: but they are not wide spread, and the private
schools get better results than the public. The public schools are in the
hands of unions determined to protect incompetent, even willfully
incompetent, teachers.
Yes: local control will lead to some horrible
situations, very bad schools, money stolen, money squandered while
children don't learn -- sound familiar? The present system was supposed to
stop all this. Has it?
Yes: there are many good teachers in the system.
But the system doesn't exist to help them much: its main job is to prevent
any sane adult supervision over the school system. I could list tons of
examples, incompetent fools given administrative positions to get them out
of the classrooms because there is no chance of firing them being one of
the most heinous. And of course our "Civil Rights" movements
have made discipline in the classrooms nearly impossible, meaning that the
students who want to learn find themselves deprived of the opportunity,
and the teachers who love teaching find themselves in the role of jailors.
My remedies are simple. Get State and Federal
money out of the school business. Make local districts raise the money and
give local boards the control of that money. Abolish all forms of tenure
and union "protection" of teachers. Yes: that will bring us back
to the "Our Miss Brooks" days of teachers being worried about
what the school board thinks of them. So be it. It's not a good or fair
result, it's not desirable, but it's preferable to the madness we have
now.
In the District of Columbia, make Congress take
over the system. It can spend anything it likes: but it is to be
responsible for results, and until it is getting better results than the
rest of the country, Washington and its "experts" can keep their
silly mouths shut about how to teach kids in public schools, since clearly
they can't teach their own -- of course most Congresscritters and
Department of Education officials don't send their children to public
schools. Which ought to tell you a lot.
One way we can tell if they have done a good job
in DC is when the children of the mighty go to the public schools in the District.
Don't hold your breath.
And yes: if you try to tailor education to what
the kids can learn, you will have far more vocational schools and far
fewer of children will go to college. The instant that happens, you will
find that a disproportionate number of those who are in manual trades or
non-academic paths are racial minorities, and many of them will be from
poor families. That will end that particular experiment. Better to level
things into a pit than to have inequalities whatever the real cause of the
inequality.
The US school system isn't designed to educate
children. It is designed to look fair by leveling the playing field into a
deep pit into which money can be thrown. Those who can escape it,
including the children of the teachers in the system, do escape. And yes,
I know there are exceptions. I lived in one at one time: a gated community
with a public school in its midst. It was wonderful, the state paid for
our little enclave school. And of course that school was featured every
time the district wanted to show results.
There are other exceptions. Most, you will find,
have small districts with considerable local control.
And there are inner city school exceptions, where
an exceptional principal manages to get community support and enthusiasm
for discipline and learning. They seldom last. There will be law suits
over disciplinary measures, the principal will be transferred, or the
principal will finally give up in despair. It happens far too often.
Charlie Sheffield and I wrote most of it in
HIGHER EDUCATION. I have become less optimistic since we wrote that book.
More below
================================
On Iraq
Dear Jerry,
I have my doubts about the whole Iraq
thing (and yes, I was largely in favor of it six months ago), and many
of them have come from reading your cogent comments.
I'm curious what you make of this:
An unscientific poll, as noted in the
article. ON the other hand, the article itself is VERY
"scientific" in the artful way it portrays a non-random
"bitch session" poll (the "pollsters" grabbed
anybody in a unit who was sitting around not doing anything...does
that "sampling method" seem to you likely to pick up a
rather high proportion of "shit-birds" and "sad-sacks's",
eager to "piss and moan" at the drop of a har (or
questionaire, in this case)?)
I spent three years enlisted in the
Regular Army, and I know just what sort of "soldier" they got
their answers from. I spent way too much time picking up slack
from the type of whiner these people from "Stars and Stripes"
got their data from. Any organization has it's dead weight, and
it's never hard to find and portray as the "norm". It's
dishonest, but that never stopped anyone from pursuing their ideological
agenda, now, did it?
As for re-enlistment, in my own
unscientific experience the Army never got more than about 25%
of first-term enlisted troops to "re-up". The real
potential manpower "hit" the military might take from the
Iraq situation is in new enlistments. An article I read a
week or two back pointed out these were still at sufficient levels,
though somewhat down. An improving economy was seen as playing a
significant role in that lower rate for first-time enlistees, however.
Also note how the article refers to
"Experts in public opinion and the military
concurred that the poll was not necessarily representative",
but the only "expert" quoted is a university professor (and of
course he is impartial! LMAO!) whose only quote is to buttress the poll
as a useful indicator:
"The numbers are
consistent with what I suspect is going on there". or
in other words you could imagine the professor saying:
"Why yes, the numbers from my unscientific data exactly match my
preconceived opinion as to what is going on here!" (Where is
Professor Irwin Corey when you -REALLY- need him?!)
Extracts from the article:
Many Troops Dissatisfied, Iraq Poll
Finds
Though not obtained through scientific
methods, the survey results suggest that a combination of difficult
conditions, complex missions and prolonged tours in Iraq is wearing down
a significant portion of the U.S. force and threatening to provoke a
sizable exodus from military service.
Experts in public opinion and the military
concurred that the poll was not necessarily representative, but they
characterized it as a useful gauge of troop sentiment. "The numbers
are consistent with what I suspect is going on there," said David
Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland at College
Park. "I am getting a sense that there is a high and increasing
level of demoralization and a growing sense of being in something they
don't understand and aren't sure the American people understand."
Kim
I am not sure I am sane enough to comment here,
but your analysis seems reasonable. Most troops will grouse, and warriors
hate the kind of duty Iraq imposes.
I don't see the danger to the republic as coming
from within the army, in the sense of mass disaffection and mutiny. Those
things have happened in the past, but they don't happen often. The path
from republic to empire is a bit more complicated than that.
You can think of scenarios. A unit is besieged by
tens of thousands of chanting civilians. Those behind cry forward! Those
in front cry back! The situation is stalemated and someone in the crowd
begins firing. Troopers go down. A junior officer panics and orders his
men to fire. The crowd goes mad. The colonel sees his men in danger. The
terrible firepower of a US battalion in unleashed. Thousands are killed. A
mosque is destroyed. Clergy are killed.
And the reaction starts over here, and the
colonel is to be thrown to the wolves. A general states his support for
the colonel. The general is threatened. He appeals to his comrades...
That's what I can think up off the top of
my stopped up head. It's probably not plausible.
Another way is thousands of incidents, each
causing a certain degree of callousness, and alienating soldiers from
citizens little by tiny little...
Anyway thanks for sending that, and I'll try to
make better sense in a couple of days when I am recovered. And I am still
looking for an acceptable way out of Iraq. If they have told us what the
exit strategy is, I have not heard it. But:
Sir:
I've returned from duty in Iraq. I'd
like to be reinstated to you mailing list. I'm sure my
"subscription fee" has lapsed, I'll take care of that
directly. Visited your website today... I must say that we
disagree. The paradigm WILL change in the middle east (though we
can still lose there). Here are some links on articles done on my
Marines while we were in Iraq:
Couv
I eagerly await good news from that area. Thanks.
And I think everyone understands this much: if we send troops into harm's
way we are responsible for supporting them. Empire or republic, that never
changes. And we sent the troops to Iraq. It's the nation's problem now,
and I for one will be glad of any good outcome.
==========================
Subject: Bluetooth is dead?
I found an article on slashdot about Bluetooth being
"dead." Save time and go right to http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20031013S0040
to see the actual column about this.
Joe Zeff
================
I have heard of this document for years, but I
never before read a detailed account of its history:
I think Orwell once said that, in discussing the
Jews in relation to modern life, it is impossible to put a foot right. The
history of this document seems to bear this out.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(Redirected from Protocols of the Elders of Zion) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a
document supposedly produced by an international Jewish conspiracy,
describing their plans to achieve Jewish world domination. The
overwhelming majority of historians in the United States and Europe
strongly believe the Protocols to be a forgery (see false document),
produced by the Tsarist Russian secret police, the Okhrana.
It is widely considered to mark the beginning
of the tradition of conspiracy theory literature, such as "None Dare
Call it Conspiracy" and "Conspirators Hierarchy: the Committee
of 300". The Protocols, which draw on popular anti-Semitic notions
which have their roots in medieval Europe from the time of the Crusades,
are simultaneously the most notorious and most successful work of modern
anti-Semitism.
The conceptual inspiration for the Protocols
can be traced back to the time of the French Revolution at the end of the
18th century.
<snip>
While few people currently believe the Protocols to
be genuine, many people now have the opportunity to assuage their
curiosity about the Protocols due to the Internet. This raises issues of
whether the Internet as it stands is an unalloyed good. Previously, few
people were willing to risk getting on government lists by loaning the
book from the library, or ordering it through a book-shop through fear of
being labelled anti-Semitic.
That last paragraph is odd. But then the Internet
is a conspiracy..
===============================
Dr. Pournelle:
I applied the "October" patches last night
to my laptop system, desktop at home, and workstation at work. Other than
the time required to do the install, and the restart, I have noticed no
problems with the updates. My use is mainstream (MS-Office, Novell
network, GroupWise mail client, Internet Explorer, and Dreamweaver MX for
web pages, Fireworks MX for graphic images). I have also not had problems
applying previous patches.
I think that it is worth noticing (and usually
absent from news and other reports, such as Mr. Thompson) that this update
'batch' is the new "monthly release" from Microsoft. They are
scheduling them for release on the third Wednesday of each month, even
though several of them are 'critical'.
At the office here, we have the MS "Software
Update Server" (SUS) installed, which is basically a local version of
Windows Update. We have about 2500 computers, I think about a third of
them are using the SUS to get their updates. Most should have gotten them
this morning, and I haven't heard about any problems with this latest
batch of updates. I recommend the SUS for corporate users, small
business/home users should be using the Windows Update. (My home desktop
is set for automatic download and install of updates.)
Also, Wednesday is the usual release day for Network
Assoc/VirusScan updates. Those are also automatically installed here and
at home. At the office, workstations do an virus update check on login,
servers check hourly; at home, I do a nightly check.
Hope you feel better soon.
Rick Hellewell Network Security Dweeb security@digitalchoke.com
Thanks. And see below.
More on education
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I've been fortunate enough to send all my kids to
private school through 8th grade. Private high schools in my area are few
and not much better than public. We picked a private Christian school in
Texas that uses the ABEKA system. They start teaching reading/phonics in
pre-K four-year-olds. Texas is just getting it's finger out of it's butt
and beginning to teach phonics in kindergarten as a test program.
I'd recommend to all your readers to find similar
private schools even if they have to cut back some where else. It costs us
about $2,500 per kid per year. They let you pay in 10 installments.
Classrooms are about 10-13 students. Most of the teachers are kindly old
ladies with teaching degrees that are just fed up with the public school
system in Texas. I know my kids will be able to read, write and do math
before they hit high school, while many kids can barely pass the stupid
state high school qualification exam to graduate. Even when they get to
take it five times. Even when they "teach the test."
David A. Kickbusch
= And
see later
================
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