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
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Family matters this weekend,
and it's time to finish the final scene of Burning Tower. For once there's
no big shot of mail over the weekend.
I will be doing an essay on NASA and
going back to the Moon shortly. NASA as presently constituted can't do it.
We could do it with prizes. We can also do it with DOD, preferably the Navy,
now that USAF is mucked up. Even the Army would do a better job. But USAF
better than NASA which as it stands can't manage anything at all without
first paying tribute to the standing army of bureaucrats who are not going
to get out of the way, won't go to a dinosaur farm and stay out of the way,
and who, if they are conscientious, are the worst threat of all since they
are incompetent but insist on "contributing." If they would take the money
and hide we would be better off.
Yes: there are good people at NASA. They are not in charge,
and the injelititus infected ones insist on exerting their seniority.
Injelititous terminal phase: that's NASA.
Dear Jerry,
"Injelititous", sounds nasty and chronic. I could not find a definition in
the on-line Webster's. Could you please provide a definition? Is there a
vaccine or perhaps a treatment that does not employ a Teller-Ulam device?
Best Regards, Charles Conrad, P.E.
Sorry: It's from C Northcote Parkinson, I believe from his
second book The Law and The Profits although it might be from Parkinson's
Laws. It is a combination of Jealousy and Incompetence; once infected
with it an organization is in terrible trouble, and if it is shot through
with it, the best thing to do is insure the place heavily and set it
afire... (according to Parkinson).
MacWatch: it turns out that the Mac defaults to sleeping
early and often even under mains power when you install the OS. When we
reinstalled we did not reset it to never sleep when under mains power; so it
forgets. It forgets a lot when it is asleep. Telling it never to sleep when
plugged to mains takes care of it not finding the USB hub.
Of course you have to let it sleep when it's on battery.
Peter says it doesn't always wake up properly -- at least his doesn't -- and
I am pretty sure that when asleep it forgets things like hubs and such like;
to get it to recognize the USB hub when it has been asleep and has awakened,
plug in the hub; pull the power cord to the hub; insert the power cord to
the hub; close the different windows saying that there were unpowered USB
devices; and all is well.
===========
Joint Doctrine
“One of the serious problems in planning against
American doctrine is that the Americans do not
read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations
to follow their doctrine” From a Russian document
“The reason that the American army does so well
in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American
army practices chaos on a daily basis.”
A German General Officer AFSC slide JP 880c D#29
For reasons I do not understand, FrontPage 2003 has decided to default to
Times New Roman rather than Georgia, and I don't seem to be able to do
anything about it. Aha. OK, Tools, Page Options, Default Font. Not Format,
and choose a font. They sure do put things in odd places. More to the point,
why did it change? I have been using Georgia as the default font for this
page for a long time.
I am at Niven's house and we are
finishing Burning Tower, which needs only one last scene. We have the last
line, and we have the next to the last scene, so this book should be done by
tonight.
I am working with the Compaq Tablet PC with external
keyboard and my flat screen 15" monitor that we used to take with us on
research trips. It has a nice box with carrying handle, and I have used
nylon strapping tape to make the box strong enough to endure being carried
around. We now use a little Kingston keyring "disk" to move files. I'm
connected to the web through Niven's network but I haven't bothered to log
in on his workgroup network. His wireless that I set up back when his leg
wasn't working is still in place, and the Tablet had no problems connecting
to it. Since I am about 2 feet from the Access Point and there are no other
networks around I am hardly astonished that I get "excellent" signal
strength...
"The Dock adds a whole new behavior: Object annihilation. Drag an object
off the dock and it disappears in a virtual puff of smoke. This is the
single scariest idea introduced to the Macintosh since the original bomb
icon. How would you feel if you spent eight hours working on your first
Macintosh document, only to have it disappear entirely when you try to move
it from the dock to the desktop? Pretty disorienting, no? This is a
completely unnecessary concept for the user to have to learn, particularly
in such a painful way. Makes for a "hot demo" though, doesn't it?"
And I will show you terror in a handful of dust. After reading this I am
afraid to do any serious work on the Mac. Surely this doesn't really happen?
I will have more to say about the president's space
plan reasonably soon, but here is a start.
First impressions: at least he has set a goal. If it's real, and there's
a presidential priority given to the mission, it will get done. The
last time that happened, though, they had to call in the military, who did
it the military way: divide the work into tasks and put someone in charge of
each task. This created a large standing army: but of civil servants at
NASA. You can disband an army after victory, or at least send lots of troops
back to civilian life.
Apollo created a standing army of 22,000, and Shuttle was devised as a
way to employ them. It worked: all 20,000 or so are needed to make Shuttle
work. How many Shuttles are there now? I actually forget, but it
doesn't matter. The fleet requires 20,000 and more NASA employees to operate
no matter how many Shuttles there are.
Airlines operate with about 110 employees per aircraft, and half of those
sell tickets. The Blackbird program, a very high tech system indeed, had
about 48 people per airplane when it was flying missions.
Shuttle has 20,000 divided by whatever number of Shuttles exist; or you
can divide 20,000 by the number of flights per year. The 20,000 won't
change, and wouldn't change if Shuttles didn't fly at all. No one is laid
off when the Shuttles are grounded. The standing army gets paid, and the
purpose of NASA is to pay that standing army of people.
Going back to the Moon is important. Developing the capability to go back
to the Moon is even more important. Most important, if we are to continue as
an imperial power (or even want capability to defend the republic in a
hostile world) is the ability to replace space assets fast. Imagine our
Special Forces riding about in Tajikistan on horseback without
communications and without GPS so they can't tell where they are and can't
call in any kind of fire support other than direct fire missions on line of
sight communications.
Without space assets that is where they'd be. Imagine fighting naval
battles in the Taiwan Straights without GPS and without communications other
than line of sight; and perhaps those are jammed. Signal lamps? Flags? If we
can't put space assets up in a hurry we can find ourselves in such
situations.
Going back to the Moon is important but developing capabilities is even
more so; and if we go back to the Moon by building another standing army to
absorb all our space resources?
Let me say it again: the best way to get some of those capabilities is to
define them, decide what they are worth, and give prizes to the first (or
first and second) American company to develop those capabilities and
demonstrate them. Five billion dollars to the first company that sends the
same ship to circular Low Earth Orbit 24 times in one year with a payload of
5,000 pounds. Twenty billion to the first company that puts 31 Americans on
the Moon and keeps them there alive and well for 3 years and a day. Ten
billion to the first American company that builds 10 space ships with a
payload of 10,000 pounds and uses those ships to deliver 100,000 pounds of
anything at all to LEO in a period of 2 months. I'm making up these numbers
as I write this, but surely the point is clear? Surely it would be worth
that much in each case? And since it costs nothing unless the goal is
achieved, why not post those prizes? What harm will it do?
Max Hunter used to say that the best way to do something was to get a
presidential priority, plenty of money, put a good man like Schriever in
charge, and get out of the way. If you can get a herd of American dinosaurs
running in the same direction, it is a sight to see. Wake the sleeping
giants. Unleash American industrial capability.
I'm sure he was right, but the problem now is that the dinosaurs are
nearly dead, and their brains are taken up by bean counters. Dutch
Kindelberger and Kelly Johnson aren't around any more. It may be possible to
revive them, but not with sweetheart contracts and government money. The
X-33 pretty well proved that: billions for absolutely nothing at all. Any
company directed by people afraid of their "fiduciary obligations" will not
take us to space.
Nor will NASA.
It's possible the services could. There remain USAF and Navy officers
able to direct big programs that get things done: but they have to be told
to do it or else, and be given the authority to get it done.
So: we can rejoice that the President thinks we ought to be a spacefaring
nation. For that we can cheer.
But the devil is in the details, and the details I have seen so far don't
make me want to cheer very much.
Adelphia is out this morning. It vanished
last night about 8 PM, and is still out now. A pleasantly competent and very
polite young man named Scott has made an appointment for next Tuesday for
technicians to come but when he did he found there was an area outage near
me, which may be my problem so this will go away.
For grins I tried the satellite system. It works. I thought I had
cancelled it so I had better go through my bills to be sure. But for the
moment we are connected by satellite: fast throughput, long latency. And
since last night over 400 messages had stacked up: most of them spam of
course. I do not know why people who find identifiable spammers do not tear
them limb from limb.
================
I have found out the new space strategy. Bisnaak. To find out what that
means, go to mail. Thanks to
Steven Dunn...
==============
There is more mail, but the satellite latency is driving me mad, and I
will wait a while to see if my cable modem comes back up.
Afternoon. The Adelphia Cable Modem is not working. It blinks at one
second intervals, mournfully.
The satellite system is working with its usual latency.
At this point I am tempted to see if I can set up a dialup system again.
That will mean getting a modem to attach to the Netwinder, which was last
set to use the IDSL telephone line. I have discontinued IDSL service, but
the telephone line has dial tone and will dial out, so I have a telephone
connection in the cable room. I will now have to find a dialup modem;
connect it to the Netwinder; and reconfigure the Netwinder use that rather
than the IDSL connection. I think I know how to do that.
This is complicated in that I don't have a telephone to test any of the
lines in the cable room itself. I used to keep a simple telephone to connect
to phone lines just to see if they worked, but somewhere along the line that
went away. It's also complicated by the fact that the entire network will be
off line while I am trying to condition the Netwinder because the direct
console connection to the Netwinder is raw Linux/UNIX, not the GUI I know
how to set things in; so I need to be able to get at the Netwinder with a
system and it's either connect one directly there, or connect it into the
Network; but since it has the same IP address as the machine that connects
me to the satellite, that one will have to come off line before I can
address the Netwinder. There's also the matter of looking up all the user
names and passwords from months ago. Time to start new logs...
Or I can just endure the latency of the satellite until they get the
Adelphia Cable Modem system fixed.
=============
Long ago I was required in high school to memorize a poem. Today I
heard from a classmate from back then, and it reminded me of it. The class
was reading "The Most Dangerous Game," in which appears a servant named
"Ivan". The pupil reading the story pronounced that in the Russian way,
EEvan, so some of us, not being much acquainted with such things, shouted
"Eye-van"; whereupon Brother Daniel pointed to those he had caught at
this, and said we would go and memorize a poem about Ivan Skavinsky Skivar,
and gave us no hint of where we might find that. This was well before the
Internet: the only computer I had was a thing that used marbles to do
minor binary arithmetic.
It took a couple of days in the city library to find this thing. I
suppose I learned something about doing research as well as to not to be
such a smart-alec in class.
So for some reason I have
transcribed this as I remember it. Odd the things memories will do to
you.
====================
Abdul Abulbul Ameer
Best I can tell (Internet crawl) the song (there's a
tune) was written in its original version by Percy French as a 23yr old
engineering student at Trinity College in 1877 for a school concert and he
subsequently recycled it for sale to a publisher who printed it unattributed.
There are 10's of variant lyric versions.
Ben Pedersen
I never heard an origin story before: it was in a book of barroom ballads
in the Memphis Public Library. And I am sure there are dozens of versions,
and I suspect that the one I recite isn't exactly as I found it in 1948 in
the library...
Adelphia Cable Modem is working again. It
wasn't when I went to bed, it was this morning. Thus I don't have to learn
how to set up the Netwinder to do dialup, which is just as well since I
don't really remember how I did it in the first place.
The moral of this story is not only to keep good logs -- I did that and
the information exists somewhere -- but INDEX the darned things so that you
can FIND the information again when you need to.
Anyway we are back with cable modem, which works very well. I sure got
tired of the latency of that satellite connection.
==============
Fry's has NEC flat panel 19" monitors at a good sale price, and I am
thinking of getting one; it would sure save space here. And text looks great
on them even though they are a bit slow with really fast games.
I took the smaller flat screen I've had for years to Niven's for blitzing
the book using the TabletPC with that screen and an external keyboard, and
that worked just fine, so I think a larger flat screen might work here.
==============================
I have been unable to get to Google for a couple of days. I assumed it
was a satellite quirk but it seems to be still operating. What is going on?
Seems to be a DNS problem. [This fixed itself Sunday night.]
BYTE seems to be dead also, and that one I don't know about at all. [It
was fine as of Sunday night, and working perfectly Monday. I don't know if
the problem was at the site, here, or on the Internet in general.]
===================
The Pickering Appointment
The Constitution has a number of checks and balances. The Senate has
rules allowing for unlimited debate; at one time, anyone could continue to
talk on an issue, thus preventing it from coming to a vote, for as long as
he wanted to, and a small group could block any legislation if they cared
to. This was done to prevent a vote on the Treaty of Versailles, and
eventually the rules was changed to allow an extraordinary majority of 2/3
to close debate. Then came the Civil Rights Act debates and over 1/3 of the
Senate didn't want those to come to a vote; and the rules were changed in
1975 to 3/5 majority, to impose "cloture" or a limit to debate in the
Senate.
Political parties have ingeniously used this as a means to prevent
judicial and cabinet appointments they don't like when they don't have the
votes to defeat them in an up or down vote. They simply prevent them from
coming to a vote by unlimited debate, so that confirmation of a judge or a
cabinet officer (or a military officer for that matter) now requires as a
practical matter a 60% majority in the Senate.
This is closer to John Caldwell Calhoun's theory of the concurrent
majority than to modern constitutional theory. Calhoun was defending
slavery, but he was also defending the notion of consent of the governed. It
may be no bad idea.
I would argue that with the passage of the Voting Rights Act we can
afford a certain degree of states' rights now, and the notion of local
authority in most matters is very much in keeping with the founding idea of
the US, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed. The smaller the jurisdiction the more power you can trust the
government to have: so long as you can get the hell out of Dodge, it isn't
so terribly important that Dodge has laws against spitting on the saloon
floor and requiring you to check your firearms at the saloon door. An
example I use often is the Blue Belly Baptists, who believe that on Sunday
afternoon you must not appear in public unless your belly is exposed and
pained blue, and have laws to that effect. Let them. Just let me know in
advance, so I either won't be there, or I can muddle my woad on Sunday
morning.
Leave that. The point is that the Democrats have said that without a 60%
majority in the Senate you will not appoint certain people as judges or
other constitutional officers. But of course they also supplied the remedy.
Clinton had a man, Bill Lan Lee, who couldn't get a majority vote in the
Senate for his appointment to the Civil Rights Commission even though the
Democrats held a Senate majority. He would have got few Republican votes,
and there were lots of Democrats who wouldn't vote for him either. So: his
name wasn't submitted to the Senate. He was given an interim appointment
while the Senate wasn't in session. This expired and was renewed. Clinton
defended this practice.
Bush hasn't gone that far: He has appointed Pickering in the usual way,
submitting his name to the Senate; the Senate is welcome to vote up or down
on him. But since the Senate refuses to vote (because 41 Senators will vote
against cloture and a few will talk until the cows come home), Pickering was
given an interim appointment, good for the life of this Congress. One
presumes that next Senate recess his appointment will be renewed. And again,
until the Senate votes one way or another.
This wasn't really the way the constitution was supposed to work, but
neither was holding appointments in abeyance without a vote the way it was
supposed to work.
I would guess that this is a trial balloon and we will soon see at every
recess more interim appointments of people whose names have been submitted
to the Senate but who can't get hearings or a vote. I would also guess that
Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would find this a perfectly acceptable practice.
==========================================
Hubble's Death Sentence
I see NASA will let Hubble die. At a billion dollars a shuttle launch
they can't service Hubble any longer. Hubble needs a manned mission: there
is no robot that can do that work. And there is no manned spacecraft but
Shuttle. And Shuttle requires 22,000 people to operate and launch, in
addition to another half billion per mission incremental cost above the cost
of the standing army.
The standing army will be paid whether there are any Shuttle launches at
all, but they can't come up with the other half billion to go rescue Hubble.
You may remember back in 1989 Max Hunter, Dan Graham, and I persuaded
then Chairman of the
National Space Council Dan Quayle to foster an experimental spacecraft,
SSX, a scale model of which was built and flown as DC/X. Most of that story
is here
on this web site. Had that development continued, we would now have a
ship capable of sending two people to the Hubble for a cost of a few tens of
millions per mission; but of course that wasn't continued because it was a
threat to the standing army of NASA which needs the Shuttle.
Welcome to the wide world of bureaucracy.
=============================
I am pleased to report that due to the generous
efforts of Mr. St. Onge, the book of the month page has been brought up to
December 2003. You may find it here.
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
