| Tuesday, February
8, 2000
Subject: China's
Strategy of Technology
The CIA's broadcast information service has
performed a preliminary translation of a new Chinese book about strategy.
The authors have deduced the strategy of technology, and have attempted to
devise effective counters. Interestingly, the authors are not aware of
yours and Possony's book. (I was tempted to titillate them by sending a
reference to your book, but since my sons might be fighting them in a land
war in Asia, I decided not to.)
Also, their doctrine contains some critical
strategic mistakes (I believe) because they think the U.S. executed the
strategy accidentally.
The parts discussing U.S. interservice rivalry read
like C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters", and the insights on
desert storm (they think the victory was by helicopter), both were alone
worth the price of admission for me.
It has already been translated to HTML at http://cryptome.org/cuw.htm
Ray Van De Walker
The real problem is that few in Washington are listening:
the Seventy Years War was won by a Strategy of Technology -- read by
following Possony's advice -- but few today have ever heard of Possony or
Schriever, or Kane, , and most of those who know who they are are getting
old. Alas. Thanks for the pointer.
Jerry,
As I dropped into Chaos Manor Mail web page http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/currentmail.html
to have my occasional look, I noticed my machine stalling just a bit and happened
to then notice "Applet Loading" message on the bottom left
corner of IE. Then a flash message of "Enliven is playing". I
thought that curious. I searched for "Enliven" on http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/currentmail.html
and found some interesting hits...
At http://www.narrative.com/technology/whatise.htm
, Eliven is described as an internet engine for online ads.
what's up? what applet are you running on us?
thanks, rms
I have no idea of what is going on here. I have not seen
this. It is possible that I pasted in a letter that has some kind of
linked applet in it. Anyone know better?
I have seen the
light; road to Damascus... Well, not really; I can't get religious about
the tools I use to get my work done, but...
I discovered this week the source of nearly all my
woes with Linux and I thought I'd share it. It appears that the CURRENT
directory is NOT in the path, which explains the frequent "app/file
not found" messages I have had. While I had seen ./filename in the
documentation, I had never seen this explained. Having found it in a post
on a mailing list, I went looking through all my *nix/Linux books (6 with
a search engine as they are HTML on CD) I still can't find a reference to
this fact that apparently every Linuxen knows, but doesn't bother telling
us poor DOS survivors.
Hallelujah! Hosanna etc. Am I angry that it took me
2+ years to make this discovery? No, ecstatic! I declare Phillip Deackes,
responsible for this eye-opener, Master (even if it does make him giggle).
Bless you Phillip Deakes! Now all I need are for some more apps on Linux.
Happy, happy, joy, joy!
Jonathan Sturm
Actually that's one of those UNIX
secrets you are not supposed to divulge lest the wizards lose their jobs...
(actually there is a reason. See Below.)
And this came and may be useful to
some of you:
Mon. 07 Feb. 2000
[NOTE - To addressees: Please feel free to publish,
or not to publish, any part(s) or all of WebWanderings, past, present or
future, unless otherwise very specifically noted at the time. Feel free to
edit or comment as you deem prudent. WebWanderings is NOT copyrighted. -
JHR]
Today's take has to do mostly with Linux, with a
note on online banking thrown in.
Linux: Up until a couple of weeks ago I had been
extremely skeptical of Linux for the average W98-type desktop user. Linux
seemed to me targeted toward the Suits &; Servers users. Man have I
changed my Attitude! Thanks to encouragement by the Daynotes Mob, and some
serendipituous finds in my web wandering, I now can hardly wait to get a
third HDD and start my own Linux adventure. What I found: An article in
Linux World , http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-02/lw-02-expo-newbie.html
was not too encouraging, but pointed me to http://www.linuxnewbie.org/
which is just what its URL implies: a handholding site for the rest of us,
composed in understandable English. No LinuxSpeak here. I bookmarked that
one. My next stop, at IDGs news site, pointed me to http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/
, an interactive demo of Mandrake that steps through the whole Mandrake
install, with thorough and understandable explanations at every step
before you're in the middle of the install and facing a thorough system
crash with one wrong keystroke. The demo is absolutely devoid of
Linuxspeak. Exactly what is needed to calm the would-be Linux installer's
nerves. Bookmarked that one.
But the best is yet to come. Another pointer at IDG
led me to http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,15145,00.html
, an interesting commentary on Open Source philosophy &; practice. Back
to IDG, and another pointer to LinuxworldParis, http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-02/lw-02-paris.html?IDG.net
There I found a mention of DemoLinux, a Linux-on-a-CD app that allows
running Linux totally from the CD, with no change to the rest of the
system! Just the thing for me: all Linux &; no risk! I tracked
DemoLinux down at http://demolinux.org/index.en.html
DL info: The ISO9660 image of the Demolinux CD takes up more than
600Mb (or 200 Mb compressed) and is located at ftp://www.demolinux.org/pub/demolinux/
(anonymous FTP server). And, of course, this can be burned onto a CD.
Free.
OnLine Banking Later, IDG pointed me to this PC
World article http://www.pcworld.com/ontheweb/article/0,1978,14816,00.html
on Online banking, a subject very dear to my heart. I abhor banks &;
insurance companies. I began investigating online banking in Dec. 97,
and began banking with SFNB.COM/ in Feb. 98. They are about as good
as banking can get. Free, open 7/24/365 (including their working support
staff), and NO charges except for overdrafts (naturally). And it would
take a really purposeful effort to overdraw. ATM fees? Not necessary. Get
cash from your grocer when you buy your groceries with your ATM card - no
fee. If I sound like an evangelist for online banking, I am. For the first
time in a long life I no longer have a nagging worry about paying bills on
time. As skeptical of banks as I am, I keep monitoring the online banking
offerings. None come close to SFNB. I even found one that has 29 (count'em
- 29) little Gotcha fees, fines, and charges that they can - and
will - hit you with if allowed. Accounting? I can slice &; dice reports
a dozen ways from the middle at my SFNB account site. No need for Quicken
or Money. The article has a comparison chart for many of the best of
online bank offerings. See SFNB's demo at http://www.sfnb.com/demos/bankdemos.html
Regards,
JHR --
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo] culam@neteze.com
I don't know if
you're aware of it, but Windows 98 (and I presume Windows 95 and Windows NT)
all include a utility called "tracert" that can at least tell how
fast packets are getting to a source and what stops it is making along the
way. The output looks something like this:
C:\WINDOWS>tracert www.jerrypournelle.com
Tracing route to jerrypournelle.com [216.92.90.50]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 162 ms 152 ms 149 ms
sdn-ar-002ohcinc002t.dialsprint.net [168.191.24.130] 2 146 ms 146 ms 159
ms sdn-hr-001ohcinc002t.dialsprint.net [168.191.24.1] 3 168 ms 177 ms 181
ms sdn-pnc1-dc-4-0-T1.dialsprint.net [207.143.26.125] 4 171 ms 163 ms 164
ms sdn-pnc1-dc-12-0.dialsprint.net [207.143.1.161] 5 191 ms 166 ms 164 ms
sl-bb12-rly-3-2.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.149] 6 164 ms 174 ms 164 ms
sl-bb12-rly-2-3.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.242] 7 180 ms 176 ms 184 ms
sl-pairnet-1-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.190.142] 8 181 ms 251 ms 172 ms
192.168.1.6 9 202 ms 180 ms 177 ms jerrypournelle.com [216.92.90.50]
Trace complete.
which tells me that at present the route from my
connection to your Web server is pretty clear. Yesterday, you might have
seen things like:
14 * * * Request timed out. 15 * * * Request timed
out.
or maybe something like
15 2034 ms 2600 ms 2400 ms 208.241.xxx.xxx
While not being exactly informative as to *why*
things were slow, it might have helped you tell where the problems
started.
William Harris williamharri@earthlink.net
Actually, I get the Request timed out
all the time, and I am not sure why. But that is in fact the tool to try...
Thanks.
Hi, Jerry,
FYI. Our President's Cunning Plan.
My reaction to this document is complicated, being
influenced by Vernor Vinge's themes in "A Deepness in the Sky"
and by the following news story:
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34164,00.html>.
Social systems are non-linear and produce unexpected
behavior under stress or load. (See HR Erwin, 1997, "The Dynamics of
Peer Polities", Chapter 3 of Time, Process, and Structured
Transformation in Archaeology, van der Leeuw and McGlade, ed., Routledge;
HR Erwin 1996, "Application of Topological Models to Social System
Dynamics" in Nonlinear Dynamics in Human Behavior,W Sulis and A
Combs, ed.,World Scientific, Studies of Nonlinear Phenomena in Life
Sciences; or HR Erwin, 1994, "The Evolution of Emergent
Structures" in Advances in Synergetics, Lasker, G. E. and Farre, G.
L., ed., International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research
and Cybernetics, for my arguments for that position.) I suspect this is
adaptive--i.e., for a social system to survive, it has to be able to come
up with creative responses to novel situations that put it under stress.
The only way for that to occur is for the behavior of the system to
increase in dimension--technically to bifurcate--to provide the necessary
innovative behavior. That implies that social systems under severe stress
or load also become (much) less controllable.
What is the response of your typical policy maker to
stress or load? Try to control the problem! That works as long as the
system responds linearly. Now suppose the stress or load is so high that
the system becomes uncontrollable---what happens? The policy maker holds
on still harder and tries to force the system to respond. Succinctly,
that's my explanation for why complex societies show an interesting
pattern of "controlled flight into terrain" when severely
stressed.
See Joseph Tainter, 1988, The Collapse of Complex
Societies, Cambridge University Press, for further discussion. The
collapse of the Soviet Union is a beautiful example.
Now look around you. Everywhere you see committees
and leaders holding on tight to their controls. The world seems to be
changing too fast for the average leader to understand, and they fall back
on ideas like "zero tolerance", getting rid of all wiggle-room.
Their linear models of how the world responds get more and more out of
synch with reality. The prisons fill up. Schools fail, and the Virginia
State Board of Education institutes high stakes testing with passing
grades so high that 93% of the schools can't meet the standards--ever. The
Supreme Court looks more and more out of touch with reality. Congress and
the Executive _are_ out of touch with reality. Wisdom, as usual, is in
very short supply. Shouldn't it worry you? It worries me...
Harry Erwin
I have always thought Zero Tolerance
an abomination, but sometimes you have no choice: if judges and
administrators will not apply remedies, then you end up with Three Strikes
and the like. It's not optimum, but it beats what we had before. What's
needed is sanity but that seems in shorter supply than I would have
thought.
The following may be instructive. Over
in VIEW I had given the link with the lower case "People". That
is since fixed.
Dr. Pournelle
I followed your link to the University of Washington
in the Currentview page regarding the Denial of Service problem and the UW
server returned a "URL Not Found" error for the page http://www.washington.edu/people/dad.
I did a quick search of the site and found the information at http://www.washington.edu/People/dad
. Wasn't the WWW supposed to be case insentive? What are this guys doing
to screw things up like that?
Regards
Francisco Garcia Maceda maceda@pobox.com
And I got this answer:
Jerry:
Just a note re: Francisco Garcia Maceda's comment on
the difference between
http://www.washington.edu/people/dad
and
http://www.washington.edu/People/dad
Machine names ARE case-insensitive (the part between
the double slash "//" and the first single slash "/" (ie.
ftp://www.someserver.net/). However, everything after that first single
slash is almost invariably a Unix-like path name, which IS case sensitive.
So, when connecting to any random machine with your browser, it doesn't
matter if you type
www.apple.com
or
WWW.APPLE.COM
or
WwW.aPpLe.CoM
you will get where you are going. But if the URL is
sending you deeper into the directories of the particular machine you
want, you are going to have to duplicate the case of the pathname exactly,
or get a "404 File Not Found" error.
The Internet--Not Quite Ready for Prime Time
Regards, etc.
Paul Fieber paulf@hyboria.net
Thanks. An instructive lesson.
The short and long forms about current paths...
The reason the current directory is not in the path
on any *NIX box is for security reasons. There are any number of exploits
which can benefit from compromising services running as root, and having
the current directory in the path is a great help to those trying said
exploits.
Roland Dobbins
The long form:
Most UNIX and Linux systems don't put the current
directory in the path by default. This is for security reasons.
If you are a cracker, there are many sneaky tricks
you can play if you can get a user to run a program for you. For example,
suppose you made a program called "ls" that actually acted like
the UNIX ls command, but in addition did something sneaky. Further suppose
that you could trick the super-user into running your "ls"
program. If you could do this, your sneaky program could do something like
create a security hole for you to use later.
If a system administrator wants to make a UNIX or
Linux system secure, he or she will usually set up seperate partitions for
the system and for users. Access permissions will be set so that users
cannot write to the system areas at all, and paths will be set to only
execute programs from the system areas.
If you have a single-user system, and you want the
convenience of putting the current directory in your path, go ahead and do
it; certainly nothing will stop you.
-- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
This was posted in a
discussion group I belong to; it is here by permission.
One of the group's participants made the valid point
that communists have participated in western European governments, and now
in Central Europe, without generating the sort of EU-led opposition that
followed the entry of Haider's Freedom Party into the Austrian government.
From an ethical point of view it is true that
communism is as evil as fascism (the communists killed more people than
the Nazis, though to be fair it may just be because there were more
Chinese and Russians than western Europeans; if a chap like Hitler had
ruled China and decided to wipe out some ethnic groups he could have
murdered 50 million, maybe 100 million or more people).
Put there is an important political and sociological
difference that justifies treating fascists (or those with roots in
fascist ideology) more harshly than communists. Communism opposes private
property, the nation, and the church. Therefore, it is impossible for
communists to take over rich western European societies because the vast
majority of the population owns private property and significant
minorities are attached to the nation or the church. Since the Soviet
military threat is gone there is thus no way for the reds to win in
Europe.
Right-wing xenophobic and racist parties are
different. Unlike the communists who target the majority of the population
(property owners) they only aim their hatred at minorities, mostly
non-white and Moslem residents. Therefore, it is far easier for them to
obtain the support, or at least the tacit acquiescence of the majority.
This makes them far more dangerous in contemporary Europe than the
communists because unlike Marxists they can get the majority of the
electorate behind their racist causes.
This does not mean that the EU governments behaved
intelligently regarding the Haider issue. By staying silent after the
fascists of Fini's AN joined the Italian cabinet they appear inconsistent.
Furthermore, their methods may actually help Haider win more support
within Austria.
Regards,
Robert Dujarric
My own observation is that if anything
can increase Haider's support inside Austria it is this concerted action of
Auslanders...
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