THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 217 August 5 - 11, 2002

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Highlights this week:

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• Edsger Dijkstra, RIP
• Another Internet Explorer vulnerability
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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so.

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Column time.

If you subscribe and did not get a mailing today, see badmail. I have removed a number of people whose mail has been returned more than once.

If you subscribe, didn't get a mailing, and are not on the badmail page (or if you are for that matter) send me mail telling when and how you subscribed, and what your current email address is, and if possible, what the email address under which you subscribed is.  Last warning: I'm culling that list of people who haven't renewed and whose mail is returned.

Otherwise nothing much going on here. Column is in the works. New Intel 2.8 GHz chip. What in the world will we DO with all that computing speed?

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It's column time, and I am hard at work on it. But a huge box arrived today: author's copies of The Prince, which is Falkenberg's Legion plus the three Prince novels, plus a couple of scene you have never seen before (truth in advertising: not a lot of new material, but there is one critical scene, crucial to Falkenberg anyway).

So it's available. And I am back to work.

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The column is done. It's also my birthday. Thanks to all those who sent congratulations. And The Lord of The Rings DVD is on sale at Fry's for less than I paid for two tickets to see it in a theater. I know there's a better DVD coming in November, but buy this one to tide you over. Wow what a movie!

You are going to hear a lot about this:

http://security.tombom.co.uk/shatter.html 

and I have a long piece in the column about it. The bottom line is still, don't let bad guys have physical access to your machines, and don't run evil programs, meaning don't open unexpected mail attachments. Now imagine I have told you that five times.

I am saddened to announce:

EdsGer Dijkstra, RIP.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/UTCS/notices/dijkstra/ewdobit.html 

First to be cited as using the terms 'vector' and 'stack' in a CS context; electronic 'reprint' of his seminal "Go To Considered Harmful" may be found here:

http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/ 

--- Roland Dobbins 

I met him when I was on the board of visitors of the University of Texas, and at conferences. He made large contributions to our field, and his concept of proving programs had much influence.

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I put this up over on the SFWA discussion site but it's appropriate here:

A long time ago, long enough that it was Astounding rather than Analog, there was a story about tau lag and interstellar colonization. I believe it was called "The Torchbearers" although I am not sure.

It included a poem that had the lines "They did not light the torch, they will not see the bonfire" about those who pass a torch of knowledge. I don't know if that poem is real in the sense that it is a literary effort quoted in the story, or something made up by the author of the novelette.

I'm supposed to do a contribution to a serious book on interstellar travel. Since I don't know of any real (as opposed to my fiction) way to travel faster than light, and or to get past the rocket equation, I have to conclude that interstellar travel will require generation ships. It seemed to me that poem might be suitable to include in anything I write about that, but I don't really recall the poem other than the lines about not seeing the bonfire.

A google search doesn't seem to have been helpful. Any help appreciated.

The Microsoft wallahs are supposed to be over this afternoon with a new Tablet PC for me to play with. And the column is in. Now to clean up.

Meanwhile it's hot here: I have to fill two one quart humming bird feeders at least every other day and at daily a couple of times. If they didn't spend half their time in futile efforts to chase the others away I wonder if they'd need so much to drink? Perhaps there is a lesson there..

And my new Venetian blinds to replace the window curtains in my office have arrived. I foolishly opted to put them up myself. I wish I'd let the blinds people do it.  Now it's up on a ladder for me, first remembering to turn off the ceiling fan.

--

I read all my mail, but I can't answer any large part of it. In particular I generally don't answer requests for help of the "my Fujinecdell just died can you help me fix it?"  If the problem presented looks to be generally interesting I may do something with it, but my problem is never finding enough to write about, it's always finding time to write up what I already find interesting. All this is by way of apology to those who have written such requests and got no answer. My parents, and then Mr. Heinlein, taught me always to answer my mail (although as Robert got older he had an increasingly larger box called "unopened mail") but in these email days it's just impossible.

Why is it no one ever says Wheee!!
The next round of unanswered letters is on me!

(Ogden Nash, I think)

NPR says West Nile Virus is among us, and will now be endemic in North America. But  "it can be avoided by avoiding mosquitoes." I am sure the EPA will have its objections. Can't let the mosquitoes starve...

The Tablet PC people from Microsoft were here, and I have one. Alas, and alack, after playing with it a while we went out to dinner. I came back to find it is "locked" and wants a password I don't have. I am sure the Microsoft people have it written down, so tomorrow I get to play with it again...

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My tablet PC is working again: they sent the password. It sees my Cisco secure wireless net, now it's a question of setting it up properly and getting Front Page onto the Tablet, after which I can do this stuff at the breakfast table. Sort of.

Shameless self promotion. Do realize this isn't out yet (although I have copies so it will not be long) and there are only a couple of new scenes: mostly it takes all the Falkenberg and Prince Lysander stories and weaves them into one enormous FIXUP.

I am told I ought to do more book promotion here. I suppose, but as long as I can keep on producing original work that takes time I don't have...

We have a new security alert. See MAIL. It affects many web browsers, not just IE. I sent a mailing of this to subscribers. If you did not get it and you think you subscribe, please tell me when and how you subscribed, your current email address, and if you have it the email address under which you subscribed.  I am culling returned the subscription list and delisting most of those returned. Many being returned are "over quota"; I am not deleting those, but really, that can be a problem. 

I AM TOLD that Macromedia has a fix posted. I'll let you know where when I get the URL.

I'm going to go write fiction. Later this weekend and next week I will get the Tablet PC -- I need a name for it, probably "Ace" since this one is made by ACER -- into the Chaos Manor domain, and then into the Cisco secure wireless net, after which I can do web stuff and email from the breakfast room. Roberta will kill me if I do it when she's there, but she often has errands in the morning. In fact I could do it now -- I have the Cisco secure system on my Compaq laptop -- but it usually works out that if Roberta isn't here she has that laptop with her.  One of these days I'll have to get her one of her own, but that is really wretched excess since if we both travel we won't carry but one machine, and if one of us goes somewhere without the other, that's the machine to carry.

Anyway, the Tablet works fine indeed. And they're aware of the need for secure wireless connections, and Cisco provides that. 

I think I am going to like this Tablet. It may yet take over my hard bound log book and ink.

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It's early. Saw SIGNS last night. To make the movie believable you have to believe in the entire premises of the picture; those aren't clear until the very end of the movie. It is after all a movie about SIGNS, as in "O God, give us a Sign that You exist."

My wife liked it a lot. I kept watching it as a science fiction movie rather than the something else it is, and that made for a problem.

I found Chris Anvil's "Torch"; indeed I reprinted it in one of my THERE WILL BE WAR anthologies (thanks to the reader who reminded me). It is of course not the story I had in mind of "The Torchbearers."

We have another Internet Explorer vulnerability described over in mail. It is said to be serious in that it could be exploited to do serious things, although I don't know of any actual instance of its use. More as I learn more.

As I understand it, this is a potential danger in which someone can forge certificates. That is potentially terribly important, but so far no one has done so. It's probably not time to panic yet, but you may want to start looking into other web browsers, since this one apparently exploits the intimate relationship between IE and Windows.

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Hot in Los Angeles. Took the day off, more less.

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