picture of me

Chaos Manor Home Page > View Home Page > Current Mail Page > Chaos Manor Reviews Home Page

THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 550 December 22 - 28, 2008

 

read book now

HOME

VIEW

MAIL

Columns

BOOK Reviews

Chaos Manor Reviews

Platinum Subscription:

  CHAOS MANOR REVIEWS

FOR BOOKS OF THE MONTH 1994-Present Click HERE

Last Week's View            Next Week's View

emailblimp.gif (23130 bytes)

For Current Mail click here.

Atom FEED from Chaos Manor

This site looks better if you set your default font to Georgia.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Highlights this week:

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

  For boiler plate, search engine, and notes on what in the world this place is, see below.

For CHAOS MANOR REVIEWS click here

For Previous Weeks of the View, SEE VIEW HOME PAGE

read book now

If you intend to send MAIL to me, see the INSTRUCTIONS.

 

 

 read book now

 

This is a Day Book. Pages are in chronological, not blogological order.

line6.gif (917 bytes)

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Monday, December 22, 2008

I thought I had a lunch appointment, but it seems to have been put off until tomorrow, so we got out morning walk. Sable was frantic, so it's just as well. It rained last night and it will rain again shortly, but we managed to get out in between showers. It will be a wet Christmas here.

I've been trying to get back into Eve online (not that I really have time for it) but I discover that (1) I have forgotten the basics, and (2) I can't take the tutorials any more. Most of what I knew about operations vanished under radiation therapy. I suppose that's a blessing in that it keeps me from spending much time at this, but I now have a well fitted battleship, lots of "training" in the game sense, and not the foggiest notion of where to go to get some easy experience at killing rats so I can learn to use what I have without getting killed. Oh. Well.

I'm trying to stay hopeful, and I am cheered by references to Space Solar Power Satellites, but it's pretty hard to do. SSPS will be a long time before there's any power beamed down. The quickest way to get that would be to put up a $10 billion prize for the first outfit to send down 10 megawatts continuously over a year (say 85% on line), another $5 billion for the second, and $5 billion for the first outfit to send down 100 megawatts 90% of the time for a year. I have made up those numbers but they're in the right ball park, and they'd do; the point is to provide a sure and certain return for building the infrastructure to put up SSPS and the ground receivers. Once that is done, there will be investment both public and private.

I also doubt that will happen, but we can hope.

Meanwhile everywhere I look its Green, which sounds good, but Costs Money. Lots of money. Expensive energy will not get us out of our economic downspiral. Cheap energy does, but there don't seem to be many in our government who act as if they know that.

So it's time to tell stories. Storytellers do reasonably well in a bad economy. Look at how the pulps thrived in the Depression. Let the escapist literature flow...

And be sure to see mail on the future of the piracy business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For platinum subscription:

Platinum subscribers enable me to work on what I think is important without worrying about economics. My thanks to all of you.

Patron Subscription:

Did you subscribe and never hear from me? Click here!.

 

 

 read book now

 

Monday   TOP   Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Tuesday, December 23, 2008   

Richard drove me down to Huntington Beach for lunch with Congressman Rohrabacher. We met Dana at his house, and went out to a local deli where I enjoyed a Reuben sandwich made as a Panini. I never had one of those before. Pretty good, but Art's in Studio City remains the best deli in California.

Dana and the triplets -- Christian, Annika, and Tristen --  wish you all a Merry Christmas, especially to the View readers who supported him in what turned out not to be as close an election as people thought it would be, but it was close enough.

My son Richard shows Dana a video of his ride in the XCOR rocket. We're at the Congressman's dining room table. Christian watches avidly. The girls are helping their mother in the kitchen. Lest that be taken as some kind of sexist setup, no one told the girls what to do; when we came in from lunch all three of the triplets were helping their aunt in the living room.

While we are doing pictures, here are a couple more:

                    

  The Thanksgiving activities of the Little Church, and Sable meets a distant cousin...

==============

favorites

Dear Dr. Pournelle, I sympathize with Alan Messer. It isn't just you and Alan. Most of the people I know (bright, energetic people) are convinced the world is going to hell. I have moments like this, too, but have concluded I'm more optimistic about mankind's future than most around me. Which is why I write, to tell you that my favorite of your regretful favorites is the one shown below. I've found that used in a logic series, it trumps most others and keeps you going. Thanks for that. Have a Merry Christmas, Paul

/Despair is a sin./

-- Paul Jones

Thanks! We all need reminding...

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Tuesday   TOP  Current Mail

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Wednesday,  December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas. God rest ye merry, gentlemen. And ladies...

My Mac (iMac 20)  is stuck. It shows on the screen saver clock 11:31 PM, and it's just sitting there. Nothing I can do will revive it so I will have to turn it off, there being no cursor to move with the mouse, and clicking does nothing. It's an odd affliction.

So it's the power button or nothing...

A five second power button did nothing. Fifteen seconds holding it turned it off. It's coming back up now...

And it works. All the network connections seem to be working. All is well.

Now I have to go off to the post office. Back in a bit.

======================

A Warning:

Scareware mongers hitch free ride on Microsoft.com and others

http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2008/12/23/open_redirect/ 

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2008/12/23/open_redirect/>  A Google search conducted by <http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2008/12/
more-than-1-million-ways-to-infect-your.html>  the folks at the CyberCrime & Doing Time blog showed that the web is littered with more than one million links pointing to a single rogue domain. While the links appear to point to trusted domains, people who click on them are taken to a malicious website that claims they need to install security software or offers to stream video.

The so-called open-redirect exploits are the result of webmasters at microsoft.com, nbcsandiego.com, cftc.gov, and hundreds of other sites who fail to follow best practices for their domains, which call for sites to employ blacklists - or better yet, whitelists - that control the sites that can be redirected from the host domain.

Michael

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Wednesday  TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Thursday,  December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas

We drove out to the desert through rains and then snow and ice. Over the desert and into the hills to granddaughter's house we go...

Roberta, Herrin, and Ruthie have a Merry Christmas. The show outside is pretty, but not much fun to drive through with 50 mph winds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Thursday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Friday,  December 26, 2008

It is cold in Los Angeles.

I will probably run this again Monday, but if you are looking for something to read,

Just in case you haven't seen it: The American Conservative -- Where Have All the Neocons Gone? 

Hmmmmm, think that maybe you're not as alone as you'd feared on this topic? (I'm happy to say...)

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/12/00006// 

Doug Hayden

There are often insightful articles in The American Conservative, but for me there's too much glee when liberals and neocons make disastrous errors. Russell Kirk taught us that we ought to approach defects in our nations as we would the wounds of a father. The neocons were useful allies during the Cold War, but the term "neo-conservative" always was a contradiction in terms. American Conservatives have some common interests with neocons, but we should not forget theit Trotskyite origins. It's a bit odd: some of the former Communists, like Whitaker Chambers, came to their senses and became actual conservatives; but they were almost all actual Communists, members of CPUSA and under Party Discipline. Most of the neo-cons were Trotskyites or came from Trotskyite families (many being too young to have any notion of what things were like back in the Glory Days of the Trotskyites) and when they left their affiliations they didn't give up the notion that the world could be remade by dedicated revolutionaries and social engineering; that if they got control of the government they could do something wonderful. Give me the sword of state and I will make a more beautiful world.

Real conservatives understand that control of government isn't the key to making a wonderful world. At best we can get rid of some obstacles and give people opportunities to improve their lives. One would think that a study of history would show that, but apparently a lot of smart people continue to believe that they can remake not just their city, or county, or state, or nation, but the whole world, and all they need is control of the army and the tax collectors. Actually they don't think that way: they think about the wonderful things they can do, and forget that to do them they need tax collectors, and to support the tax collectors they need police, and behind the police stands the Army, prison, and the hangman. (Of course we don't have hangmen any more. We're more humane now. Progress.)

Government can protect some people from bad guys. It doesn't always do that and never does it perfectly, but it can, sometimes, do that.  It can, sometimes, as Adam Smith notes, undertake projects that have great benefit to all with little benefit to any one person -- he had in mind roads and canals and fire departments, not the over-all direction of the economy. Alas, it doesn't take a lot of bad thinking to expand that list, and everyone does. After all, if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can give every child a world class university prep education, can't we? Not just in the United States, but everywhere. And guess what: all the university professors, both tenured and wannabe, agree completely, and rub their hands in anticipation -- since of course they won't be paid by those who will benefit from universal university education, but by the taxpayers who won't be asked what they think about having everyone go to university and get a degree if they want to become a manager at Jack In The Box. The largest joke is that even the taxpayers can't pony up enough, and everyone who goes to these overpaid institutions will get to pony up a grand a month for the rest of their lives; this in exchange for the pretended education they get in order to get the credentials that prove they are educated and worthy of having a job. Of course that credential can lead to one of the coveted positions among the governing class.

Now if we just had some means for certification of expertise that didn't require credentials, things might change. I don't look for that to happen soon. The purpose of government is to pay government workers and their allies; which means the real purpose of government is to collect the money to pay government workers and their allies. Just as the purpose of the school system is to pay members of the teachers unions.

I started this as a way to distinguish myself from The American Conservative magazine; I didn't intend it to be an essay in gloom. I'll cheer up sometime. Alas, the analysis  of foreign policy under the neoClintons has a scary logic that I haven't yet untangled, which means they may be correct. And that really is scary: Wilsonian policies during a Depression with China and India growing and growing.

Despair is a sin.

And Happy New Year.

==================

A warning:

(From another conference)

 XP Antivirus 2008/2009, the nastiest piece of spyware I've seen in a long time. I'm starting to get several infections of it a week at work -- and these include computers with up-to-date antivirus where people don't have admin rights.

If you hit an infected web page, it will warn you of having thousands of viruses and insist you download the software to scan for it. The software "scans" and tells you that you need to buy their cleaner. They then have your credit card number and you still have the virus. The New York Times estimated that they make about $5 million a year through these tactics.

I've seen these warnings on thin clients (which are so locked down no virus could be on them), and they wouldn't go away until you restarted. I've seen it turn off automatic updates and hide from antivirus software. I've seen it put icons on your desktop even if you don't actually download the software (click on them and you will). It puts rootkits on your computer.

Nasty stuff. The best cleaner is Malwarebytes from http://malwarebytes.org.  So far, that's always cleaned it up.

The obvious advice: If you hit a web site that warns you that you have viruses, don't download anything from there. Get out of there and scan your system with something you have reason to trust. I don't know anything about Malwarebytes.org

Note that if you try to get of the scam it will scream at you that you're about to ruin your computer. The safest way to get out of there is ctl-alt-delete and use taskmaster to close down the browser. Or pull the Ethernet plug. Or use the big red switch and turn off the machine; as Ed Hume says, viruses need electricity...

Several SFWA members seem to have been infected from the LOCUS web site. Be careful out there!

 

 

 

 read book now

Friday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Saturday,  December 27, 2008

I am starting the year end/New Year column. Nominations for Orchids and Onions are now in order. Please send a separate nomination for each item nominated, and put the word Orchid or Onion in the subject heading. Sign the nomination as you want your name to appear (meaning that if you leave off a signature no name will be published, but if you put up your name and email address both will be published: that is, if I publish the nomination I will copy the whole message, signature and all.) In some cases I publish the nomination with a comment. In others I merely announce the Orchid or Onion without reference to nominations.

I didn't experiment with as much this year as I usually do, so my own list is considerably shorter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday   TOP  Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Sunday,  December 28, 2008

Holy Innocents

Happy Birthday Phillip

 

Repeating from yesterday:

I am starting the year end/New Year column. Nominations for Orchids and Onions are now in order. Please send a separate nomination for each item nominated, and put the word Orchid or Onion in the subject heading. Sign the nomination as you want your name to appear (meaning that if you leave off a signature no name will be published, but if you put up your name and email address both will be published: that is, if I publish the nomination I will copy the whole message, signature and all.) In some cases I publish the nomination with a comment. In others I merely announce the Orchid or Onion without reference to nominations.

I didn't experiment with as much this year as I usually do, so my own list is considerably shorter.

There is some interesting mail including on global warming.

Samuel Huntington, RIP

Samuel Huntington, Political Scientist, Dies at 81

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/us/28huntington.html

 No mention of "Who Are We?" One of the great minds of the century is gone. RIP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 Sunday   TOP        Current View  

 Current Mail

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 weekly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 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. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

If you have no idea what you are doing here, see  the What is this place?, which tries to make order of chaos. 

Boiler Plate:

If you want to PAY FOR THIS, the site is run like public radio: you don't have to pay, but if no one does, it will go away. On how to pay, I keep the latest HERE.  MY THANKS to all of you who have sent money.  Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods.

If you subscribed:

atom.gif (1053 bytes) CLICK HERE for a Special Request.

If you didn't and haven't, why not?

If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

If you are not paying for this place, click here...

For information on COURSE materials, click here

 

Strategy of Technology in pdf format:

For platinum subscription:

For a PDF copy of A Step Farther Out:

 

 

For the BYTE story, click here.

 

Search: type in string and press return.

For Current Mail click here.

 The freefind search remains:

 

   Search this site or the web        powered by FreeFind
 
  Site search Web search

Here is where to order the nose pump I recommend:

 

 

Entire Site Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.

 

birdline.gif (1428 bytes)