| Monday December
8, 2003 Hi, Jerry.
In your current Chaos Manor article, I noticed your
frustration with entering WEP encryption keys. I agree that the Windows
interface is poorly implemented... I gave up trying to set up my
father-in-law's router recently.
Here's a quick tip on entering your WEP hex keys...
enter them first into Notepad, copy them to the clipboard, then paste them
in both of the boxes (enter / verify). Save the text file somewhere
accessible to all of your machines (at least temporarily). Open the file on
each machine and copy/paste to ensure the hex string is correctly entered.
Also, here's an easy way to get a valid hex string:
Open the windows Calculator, choose View -> Scientific from the menu, enter
a bunch of digits (fill the display), click the (o) Hex radio button, choose
Edit -> Copy, then click (o) Dec to return to Decimal format. Paste the
resulting hex string into Notepad. If you have fewer than 26 characters,
either repeat the process or copy a portion from the middle of the string
and paste it at either end.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Stewart, Database Administrator
Yeah. We must have been punch-drunk not to have
thought of that at the time.
==============
From Joanne Dow
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105086,00.html
{^_^}
==========
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/
international/middleeast/07TACT.html?th
Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns
The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in
early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for
American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The
response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency
campaign in the occupied territories.
So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in
diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at
the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win
over. Abu Hishma is quiet now, but it is angry, too. [...]
"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd
Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he
stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is
force — force, pride and saving face."
As for the soldiers:
A Million Miles From the Green Zone to the Front Lines
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
[...] An colonel in Baghdad (who will go nameless here
for obvious reasons) told me just after I arrived that senior Army officers
feel every order they receive is delivered with next November's election in
mind, so there is little doubt at and near the top about who is really being
used for what over here. The resentment in the ranks toward the civilian
leadership in Baghdad and back in Washington is palpable. Another officer
described the two camps, military and civilian, inhabiting the heavily
fortified, gold-leafed presidential palace inside the so-called Green Zone
in Baghdad, as "a divorced couple who won't leave the house."
and
No matter what you call this stage of the conflict in
Iraq — the soldiers call it a guerrilla war while politicians back home
often refer to it misleadingly and inaccurately as part of the amorphous
"war on terror" — it is without a doubt a nasty, deadly war. And the people
doing the fighting are soldiers, not the civilian employees of Kellogg,
Brown & Root, or the officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or
the visiting bigwigs from the Defense Department.
The troops in Bravo Company don't pay much attention
to the rear-guard political wars being waged back in Washington, but they
loved President Bush's quick visit to Baghdad on Thanksgiving. While it was
clearly a political stunt, they were quick to credit the risks he took. I
can confirm that flying in and out of Baghdad — even at night, when it's
safest — is not for the faint of heart. A C-130 on approach takes a nervous,
dodgy route, banking this way and that, gaining and losing altitude. Hanging
onto one of those web-seats by only a seat belt (no shoulder harnesses),
you're nearly upside down half the time — it would feel like the ultimate
roller-coaster ride, except it's very much for real.
ash ['Me.']
Indeed.
While we have our troops in harm's way
the obligation is to them. They didn't enlist to be police.
=========================
http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2003/000208.html
Economically, trade is no different than other
technologies. Economist David Friedman of Santa Clara University puts it
most succinctly: there are two ways to make a car -- you can either make it
in Detroit or grow it in Iowa. You already know how to make it in Detroit.
You get a bunch of iron ore, smelt it into steel, and have an assembly line
of robots and workers shape it into a finished vehicle.
To grow it in Iowa, you plant car seeds in the ground
(also known as "wheat"), wait until they sprout, and harvest them. Take the
harvest and put it into a big boat marked "to Japan" and let it sail off. A
few months later a brand new car comes back.
Moose Hunter
Sure. And not long after that the
people of Detroit are unemployed and you have problems. Then you have a
conflict with China and you want to build some tanks. You don't convert
General Motors to making tanks, you grow them. Got any tank seeds?
Depending 0n others for basic
industries works wonders so long as the world is working properly and
economics rules. When people begin to riot because they don't have jobs,
well, maybe we can jail them, or put them on plantations to grow cars.
===================================
Jerry, here's my take on the
Microsoft FAT tax:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp
The short of it is, M$ is going to start charging a
licensing fee for manufacturers who ship preformatted (FAT) solid state
memory, and for devices, mainly cameras and audio players, which use the FAT
filesystem for their storage.
So what. All this means is that memory makers will
quit preformatting their cards, and cameras and mp3 players will start using
a different filesystem for their memory cards. Install a driver, and Bob's
yer uncle.
There may be a bit of delay until the flash memory
consortium or the open source community or whomever develops a common
filesystem available royalty free for whoever wishes to use it, but it will
come.
But M$ isn't stupid. They have to know this will be
the result. They're not SCO. So why? And why now, after so many years?
They're not experiencing any cash flow crunch, and if they were, this
licensing scheme is hardly enough to matter.
One reason. Longhorn plus DRM. Flash memory is
predominately used for a/v content, either photos, or audio. Sure, a few
geeks use it for non a/v data, but let's face it, we're a minority.
Imposing the FAT tax guarantees that preformatted
flash media will vanish from the marketplace. In the meantime, they can
offer their new DRM enabled, flash memory optimized filesystem, called,
probably XMedia Filesystem, XMFS, royalty free. Manufacturers will love it,
because it allows them to ship a value add with their products (the
preformatting), and consumers will be able to stick it in their Windows PCs,
and use it without requiring any special drivers.
And they'll be the only preformatted memory cards in
the marketplace.
Bruce Dykes http://www.streettech.com
======
Hi Jerry,
The MS FAT Tax is an interesting attempt by Microsoft
to get people to send them even more money. I doubt they'll get many takers,
though. The patents referenced are all referring to the techniques that
Windows 95 used to make long file names coexist with the old 8.3 file names.
The web page discusses the main advantages of signing up for the program as
getting a license for the "specification" and standardizing implementations.
Now, as far as I can tell, FAT has already become a defacto standard and
implementations interoperate quite well. The target market seems to be
device manufacturers, however most devices such as cameras use 8.3 style
names and would have no need to license the long name related patents. So,
since there's several reference implementations of FAT available,
interoperability has already been solved and the patents are not applicable
I don't see why any device manufacturer would license this.
These patents could be used to force Linux or
Macintosh implementations of FAT to only support 8.3 names. I wonder if
these patents have been issued anywhere besides the United States.
Regards, Dave Smith
======
I believe the FAT Tax
is part of an assault on Linux and FreeBSD and Apple
OS/X and Thursby ADmitMac and Samba - all those open-source and commercial *NIXes
and *NIX services support FAT, and I believe Microsoft are going after a
media-maker or two first in order to get some sort of precedent set against
someone who makes tangible goods, then make a 90-degree turn and go after
these competing products which either obviate the need for Windows entirely
or facilitate the connection of non-Windows systems to Windows.
In short, I think it's the keystone of a plot aimed at
open-source and *NIX.
------------------------------------------------------------ Roland Dobbins
=================
Dear Jerry:
You wrote: "Shame on Apple: they put 2 256 meg SIMMS
in my PowerBook and both will be useless when I upgrade to 1 gig. Shame!"
You're absolutely right, but it's a little marketing
trick they've been using for years now: the idea is to get you to upgrade
memory when you buy, using Apple-provided product, which is far more costly
than that from Kingston or Crucial et al. (On iBooks and iMacs the first
stick is soldered in as a way of crippling the machines so they don't take
sales from the more expandable PowerBooks and PowerMacs).
I'm a huge Apple fan, but their commitment to an
aggressive price/performance ratio is not what it could, should, or needs to
be. Memory is cheap these days, and Apple's machines run much better with a
good supply: they should be stuffing them full, pricing aggressively, and
thereby adding value for the customer at no real loss to themselves. They
made NOTHING on your recent upgrade, but unfortunately most people still
won't risk 3rd-party parts and/or are wary of doing their own installation
so they either pay Apple's big-margin pricing or suffer with an
under-performing computer.
Best--
Tim Loeb
I would have expected this from a
discount house, perhaps, but I went to a full service full price Apple
store, and ended with two useless 256 meg SIMMS. Never again.
===============================
On DDT (See last week)
As I recall (my copy is currently in storage),
"Trashing the Planet", by Dixy Lee Ray and Lou Guzzo, has a chapter on DDT.
There were some 500 studies of DDT, *ALL* of them trying to replicate ANY of
the problems that Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich claimed. Ray and Guzzo give
the full citation for EVERY LAST BLAMED ONE OF THEM. That list INCLUDED
studies attempting to replicate the eggshell thinning effect.
NONE of the alleged deleterious effects were ever
replicated. NONE. NOT A SINGLE RESEARCHER ON PLANET EARTH was able to
substantiate *ANY* of the claims against DDT, be it killing birds, causing
cancer, thinning eggshells, even though it would have been worth a LOT of
good karma from the environmental movement if they had managed to replicate
ANY of it. Nor has there EVER been a SINGLE study published ANYWHERE that
actually demonstrates those effects. It appears that Carson and Ehrlich
simply made them up out of whole cloth.
--John R. Strohm
Dixy Lee Ray quotes Dr. Charles
Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, stating that
there are too many people. Banning DDT, he said, "is as good a way to get
rid of them as any." Of course the ones got rid of are Asian and African,
but Dr. Wurster didn't say that.
On pages 70-72 of Trashing the Planet
she discusses bird egg shells. The evidence is inconclusive and may be
species dependent; the direct experimental data in which birds were fed DDT
and shell thickness measured, doesn't support the conclusions about bird
eggs. Incidentally, Paul Ehrlich said that without banning DDT the runoff
would kill all the algae in the sea and deprive the Earth of 40% of its
oxygen. The amounts of DDT actually detected in sea water were tiny, and
being an organo-phosphate the stuff is degraded by sunlight.
I would not put things quite so
dramatically as you, but it is certainly clear that the 1972 ban on DDT was
based more on proof by repeated assertion than by any actual evidence.
I have since been sent a number of
references I don't have time to look at. I the several I did examine,
enormous doses of DDT were given. That sort of "test" seems to me to have
little value, since such dosages don't happen in the real world. The simple
rule is "the dose makes the poison."
DDT may or may not thin out bald eagle
populations. Lack of DDT certainly does condemn a number of people to
insect-borne diseases. Such tradeoffs need discussion, but there was no such
discussion in the regulatory "science" debates.
My correspondent says
Rather than attacking 3 decade old
popularizations that were intended to stir things up, a few minutes of
research would have revealed that the issues involved with organochlorines
are extremely complex and most certainly not susceptible to the sort of
"analysis" your readers and their sources appear to have applied.
William Colsher
Which may be true; I haven't seen any
actual science applied to this matter, then or now. Unfortunately, the long
list of references given are all in paper journals I don't have access to;
at least there are no URL's for them. Again, what I know about DDT is not a
lot; but I do know that when Paul Ehrlich tells me the planet is going to
die unless we ban DDT, and no one on his side of the matter leaps to say
that's nonsense, science and facts have gone out the window.
Cancer and DDT connections are pretty
well dependent on massive dosage studies, which used to be very much in
fashion.
As to persistence, I am long out of
date, but in the debates over the ban on DDT they were talking about parts
per trillion, meaning that "detection" was a function of the new found
analytical and detection tools. There was precious little about actual
quantities, and a lot of screaming about "ANY is too much", all reminding us
of the shouts and screams about radiation and total ignorance of actual
results of low level radiation doses.
I will admit that after a while I
stopped listening. If there's some real science out there, with comparisons
of risks -- there are plenty of natural carcinogens we are exposed to every
day, including celery -- I'd be happy to see it. So far what I have seen is
a long list of study titles. Someone with more time than I have can look
into this matter. Since 1972 in the US at least it has been a closed issue,
and it was closed on the flimsiest of data and a great deal of hysteria.
A simple PubMed search will produce a great deal of
real science. For example:
Increased risk of pancreatic cancer:
Garabrant, D.H., et al., DDT and related compounds and
risk of pancreatic cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst, 1992. 84(10): p. 764-71.
Aquatic effects (marked oocyte degeneration):
Binelli, A., et al., DDT contamination in Lake
Maggiore (N. Italy) and effects on zebra mussel spawning. Chemosphere, 2001.
45(4-5): p. 409-15.
Your statement that DDT is not persistent is simply
false (significant levels present 1997-1998 and see also Semenza below, also
states the current levels do not appear to effect Robin reproduction):
Gill, H., et al., An assessment of DDT and other
chlorinated compounds and the reproductive success of American robins (Turdus
migratonrius) breeding in fruit orchards. Ecotoxicology, 2003. 12(1-4): p.
113-23.
Reproduction Issues in birds:
Halldin, K., et al., Reproductive impairment in
Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) after in ovo exposure to o,p'-DDT. Arch
Toxicol, 2003. 77(2): p. 116-22.
Suggests that loss of specific food insects may be
responsible for shell abnormalities in robins:
Manosa, S., et al., Persistent organochlorine
contaminants in eggs of northern goshawk and Eurasian buzzard from
northeastern Spain: temporal trends related to changes in the diet. Environ
Pollut, 2003. 122(3): p. 351-9.
Shell thinning et al. In bald eagles:
Bowerman, W.W., et al., A review of factors affecting
productivity of bald eagles in the Great Lakes region: implications for
recovery. Environ Health Perspect, 1995. 103 Suppl 4: p. 51-9.
More bird disease:
Hario, M., et al., Organochlorine concentrations in
diseased vs. healthy gull chicks from the northern Baltic. Environ Pollut,
2004. 127(3): p. 411-23.
Bad news for 'gators:
Semenza, J.C., et al., Reproductive toxins and
alligator abnormalities at Lake Apopka, Florida. Environ Health Perspect,
1997. 105(10): p. 1030-2.
And Bunnies:
Lindenau, A., et al., Effects of persistent
chlorinated hydrocarbons on reproductive tissues in female rabbits. Hum
Reprod, 1994. 9(5): p. 772-80.
Human reproductive issues:
Gerhard, I. and B. Runnebaum, [The limits of hormone
substitution in pollutant exposure and fertility disorders]. Zentralbl
Gynakol, 1992. 114(12): p. 593-602.
Rather than attacking 3 decade old popularizations
that were intended to stir things up, a few minutes of research would have
revealed that the issues involved with organochlorines are extremely complex
and most certainly not susceptible to the sort of "analysis" your readers
and their sources appear to have applied.
Cheers,
-bc
In looking up the first of the
references, I find in its abstract this conclusion:
"CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to DDT was associated with pancreatic
cancer. The association was not explained by exposure to lifestyle factors
or other chemicals, and risk increased with both duration of exposure and
latency since first exposure. IMPLICATIONS: These results may indicate that
DDT can cause pancreatic cancer in humans under circumstances of heavy and
prolonged exposure. "
This is cautious language; it doesn't
sound similar to any of what I heard in the debates. Arthur Kantrowitz
campaigned for many years to get a Science Court established for settling
cases instead of the lawyer "impartial jury" crapshoot system we use now.
I find further that there isn't
certainty here in the science community:
Numerous occupations have been
investigated for their potential role in the development of pancreatic
cancer, but studies have not produced consistent results. Heavy exposure to
certain pesticides (including DDT and its derivatives) may increase the risk
of pancreatic cancer (ACS, 2000; Ji et al., 2000; Porta et al., 1999).
Exposure to certain dyes and certain chemicals related to gasoline, in
addition to asbestos and ionizing radiation, have also been associated with
the development of pancreatic cancer in some studies, however, other studies
have found no link between these agents and pancreatic cancer (ACS, 2000;
Anderson et al., 1996). (
http://www.state.ma.us/dph/beha/cau/
reports/rodney_metals/pancreatic_cancer.pdf )
If someone else wants to pursue these
matters, feel free. It looks to me as if DDT use is a classic case of
risk/benefits; but the decision made in 1972 wasn't based on anything like
that. It was based on proof by repeated assertion.
Or by sensation:
DDT found in blubber of sperm whales.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61508,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_10
Lloyd Arnold Winterville, North Carolina
I could put up a headline. CHILDREN
DEAD OF MALARIA FOUND IN BANGLA DESH AND SRI LANKA but it would not add much
to rational discourse.
The article in question is full of
"could" and "might" and not much for numbers, loke how much, and how many.
Ah well.
I get along fine without DDT although
in Southern California the stuff would be useful for ant and roach control.
And I don't often have to think about kids with malaria in Africa and Asia.
Let me add a tiny bit of data on that:
In Ethiopia’s Malaria War, Weapons Are the Issue
December 9, 2003 By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
With a major malaria outbreak sweeping Ethiopia, an
international doctors' group working there contends that outdated drugs are
being used to fight it and may even worsen the epidemic.
Unicef, the United Nations agency providing the drugs,
defended the choices it made in consultation with the Ethiopian government.
The older drugs are still effective, it said, and changing policy
midepidemic for a health system as battered as Ethiopia's can be disastrous.
But an internal World Health Organization memo from
Dec. 3, obtained by The New York Times, disagrees and "strongly recommends"
that a new but more expensive drug be used.
The struggle illustrates problems confronting the
makers of world health policy. Drug-resistant strains can evolve faster than
new drugs can be discovered, and new cures are inevitably more expensive,
forcing choices between costly drugs that work and cheap ones that may not.
The W.H.O. expects Ethiopia's epidemic to spread to 15
million of its 65 million population - triple the normal rate.
<snip>
So malaria is still a major problem.
Enough so to justify DDT? And do people have more rights that canvasback
ducks, or sperm whales? God told us to have dominion over the beasts, not to
exterminate and replace them. But surely a child is worth more than a
mosquito.
Bottom line: I don't know. Mark Brandt
points out
As for malaria; my opinion is somewhat
similar to yours -- DDT was banned for political reasons rather than as a
result of scientific study. However, indiscriminate widespread
administration of DDT was selecting for resistant strains of the Anopheles
mosquito; it is not clear how much longer DDT would have been useful for
malaria control had it not been banned.
Which is very likely true: by now, the
beneficial effects might well have dissipated, unless some intelligence had
been used in the application. On the other hand, we have no real knowledge
of how many people died as a result of the hysteria from Ehrlich and his
"environmentalist" allies.
I will leave it at that. As Edith
Efrom said long ago, "Regulatory" science isn't science; and as Arky
Kantrowitz
keeps telling us, we need a science court system to make intelligent
decisions in these matters.
And see below.
==================
On the Army
Dear Jerry:
Front page news in the L.A. Times; the Army is
deliberating reducing the combat readiness level of four major divisions so
that they can rest and refit next year. Six months of increased
vulnerability for the nation but no choice. The soldiers are very tired and
the equipment, what is left of it, is broken.
Steve Lopez did a column about what worried parents
are sending their kids in uniform in Iraq; armored combat protective vests!
Why, because the Army doesn't seem to have enough. Six months ago it was PX
items and rations.
I remember things being a lot better during Vietnam,
but then that Army was three times the size of this and Vietnam was
considered a noisy sideshow by the top rank. It looks like the lessons on
Force Protection and convoy movement are being relearned finally. But
parents are now flying into the war zone to try and check on their children,
with indifferent success. (Brings a whole new dimension to the term
"controlling parent" and I suspect that some of the soldiers were less than
glad to see their kin show up. My father did that to me when I was in Basic
and it was hugely embarrassing because I had to be pulled out of training to
see him. He was, after all, a Colonel and RHIP.
The whole thing that Joanne posted about those in
command in the war zone suspecting that every order was politically
motivated is also familiar. Sounds like 'Nam to me!
There is deep irony to be found here. We trained
ourselves to avoid conflict and trained our generals to think politically
and diplomatically (many have graduate degrees in International Relations,
paid for by the government) and restructured the entire military to make it
harder to wander accidentally into conflict --- and we get a civilian
leadership who wants and gets another war that will drain our resources for
years to come and disregards the advice of the very people who've spent
their lives doing the reading on this.
As for the contractor personnel, that's another flaw
in the Neocon scheme that needs to be corrected. I once was told by a very
decorated Marine pilot that he considered himself "A rifleman temporarily
assigned to flying an airplane." This is, as I have said before, one of the
hidden strengths of the US military. Everyone learns how to do the basic job
and, in a pinch, can step up. Not so contractor personnel. They don't even
show up to do what they are supposed to do. Might be dangerous. People are
shooting weapons.
We not only need a bigger army, we need one where
everyone, combat MOS or not, is a soldier. Nothing else makes sense. Not if
we are serious about our military prowess.
Sincerely, Francis Hamit
Well the alternative is to have a
Republic with an army capable of defending our land. Of course that includes
a larger Navy than we have.
Long ago I concluded that the Army
needs to be doing things like PX jobs and food distribution: they will have
to be doing it when the shooting starts and it is as well to know how rather
than learn under fire.
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