Chaos Manor Mail July 12

I will try to clear up a lot of mail meaning that subject will be jumbled and replies brief.

I’m working on the CD chapter right now, and I decided to go find out what was involved in burning a CD under Linux. I found an authoritative source of information about it (http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO). It looks like loads of fun. After you somehow configure Linux to even see your CD-R drive, and download programs to do each function manually, you get to create the CD image manually, essentially file-by-file. Then, once you’ve created it, you can actually burn it with the following easy instructions:

If you are mentally prepared, dress up in a black robe, multiply the SCSI-id of the CD-writer with it’s SCSI-revision and light as many candles, speak two verses of the ASR-FAQ (newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery) and finally type:

I can certainly see why any right-thinking person would rather do this instead of the incredibly complicated Windows method: Choose Start - Programs - Adaptec Easy CD Creator - CD Copier Deluxe, and then click OK. Geez.

You sent this in Arial properly formatted. Front page 200 bless its brain damaged little heart reformatted it and put it into Times New Roman, another of Microsoft's little gifts to time wasting. So perhaps that needs to be balanced in with what you just said...

First, a note of appreciation for your writing - both your computer columns and your sci-fi. I maintained a subscription to Byte for years for your column alone.

Second, I would love to see you give an update on what you would suggest someone without web design experience use to create their own Web Site. I have read what you wrote last year, but so much has changed. Should someone start with FP2000, or simply use Word97? I just ordered Poor Richards Web Site based on your link.

Are you still updating your monthly columns? When I use the link to your columns, the most recent one listed is January, but the date at the top is June 30, 1999.

Columns since January are found at www.byte.com which pays me to do this stuff 9and sells ads, which I don't). Dates are the last time I looked at it, probably, or corrected a broken link. If I do a correction I make it clear unless it is trivial.

To create a small Web Site without much complexity in links, use Dreamweaver. If you have to navigate around in it much and you don't know what you are doing, Front Page is still best, but 98 rather than 2000, I think; the 2000 paste bug in which this program reformats to default font when I paste is DRIVING ME MAD and losing me a lot of time. But much of Front Page works when you learn how. Warning: the documentation is horrid. You can do it all with WORD if it's pretty simple. I like Front Page's automatic thumbnails and links, and the UNDO feature is neat although it does need memory to work properly.

I do NOT know if this is genuine: I just got it. One hears a lot of this stuff and it usually turns out to be a network legend.

LATER: and in fact it was a hoax rather than a legend. Originally a canard against the Canadian government, it was then transmogrified to involve the US Post Office. The interesting thing is that one isn't immediately sure it IS a legend.

From: xxx

Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 1:36 PM

To: xxx

Subject: Threat to E-Mail

-----Original Message-----

From: xxx

Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 2:28 PM

To: xxx

Subject: Threat to E-Mail

Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email:

The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation, the US Postal Service will attempt to bilk email users out of “alternate postage fees.”

Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on

every

email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The

consumer

would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Washington, DC lawyer Richard

Stepp

is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law.

The US Postal Service is claiming that lost revenue due to the

proliferation of

email is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have

noticed their recent ad campaign “There is nothing like a letter.”

Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per day in

1998,

the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents per

day, or

over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet

costs.

Note that this would be money paid directly to the US Postal Service for

service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is

democracy

and noninterference. If the federal government is permitted to tamper

with our

liberties by adding a surcharge to email, who knows where it will end.

You are

already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of

bureaucratic

efficiency.

It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from New

York

to Buffalo.

If the US Postal Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will

mark the end of the “free” Internet in the United States. One

congressman, Tony Schnell ® has even suggested a “twenty to

forty dollar per month surcharge on all Internet service” above

and beyond the government’s proposed email charges.

Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only

exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of email

surcharge “a useful concept whose time has come” (March 6^th

1999 Editorial. Don’t sit by and watch your freedoms erode away!

Send this e-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your

friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say

“No!” to Bill 602P. It will only take a few moments of your time,

and could very well be instrumental in killing a bill we don’t want.

Kate Turner

Assistant to Richard Stepp,

Berger, Stepp and Gorman Attorneys at Law

216 Concorde Street,

Vienna, Va.

Rob Wise

wiserobe@pilot.msu.edu

http://www.msu.edu/~wiserobe/

“...we can do nothing but await the action of time and common sense”

-W.E.B. DuBois

This sounds like a legend, but I wouldn't put it past the Post Awful to try something like this.

And indeed:

Dear Jerry,

This should reassure people about the email tax warning:

http://www.canoe.ca/TechNews9904/21_hoax.html

David Cefai

Cyberspace tax e-mail is nothing but a hoax

===

Jerry; think your suspicions were correct. A quick search revealed the following:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blemtax2.htm

regarding: archive of legends &; netlore:

U.S. Postal Tax on Email?

Posted: 05/22/99

“Here’s an item straight out of the hoax recycling bin. A “new” email forward claims that the U.S. Postal Service is attempting to levy a 5-cent surcharge on every email delivered within the United States. “

The author says there was a Canadian version a while back too <g>

Bruce

Bruce C. Denman

bdenman@ftc-i.net

http://web.infoave.net/~bdenman

So all is well. But you know, I wouldn't put the Post Office past trying this or the Congress passing it. After all they were collecting money from people who used Federal Express but couldn't prove they needed the urgency, and that was not all that long ago. I gather they gave that up, but you never know with bureacracies.

===

It looks like my prediction that the USAF was dying is starting to come to pass.

The Defense authorization committee in the House just cancelled F-22 production in favor of more F-15 and F-16 production.

It looks like the politicos have had it with USAF political maneuverings and are punishing them the only way they can -- by cutting their budget.

Did the Fighter-Jock Generals think that their doing in of the B-2 program in 1997 would go unremembered by the Republicans in favor of it?

Or did they forget that the F-15 (the production line for which was being shut down) was built in the House Minority Leader's district?

Trent

Well perhaps they won't eliminate the Air Force although I sometimes think they should: Army Air Forces, and Navy Air Forces, and eliminate the Department of Defense entirely. Go back to War and Navy. But that's not going to happen either.

===

Subject: F-22 11f

From: Jim Griebel (jgri@earthlink.net)

“It looks like the politicos have had it with USAF political maneuverings and are punishing them the only way they can -- by cutting their budget”

Or, looking at it another way, tiny, starving Boeing, which merely owns the entire American output of medium-to-heavy jet airliners and such odds and ends as the C-117 contract, gets to keep the F-15 line open while bloated, rich Lockheed-Martin gets a well-deserved kick in the teeth. I’m not sure it’s USAF political maneuvering, “fighter-jock generals” or not, that’s really at issue here.

===

I have been asked about the Yorktown incident discussions. You can find them here.

===

<snip>

# same as above, but shorter:

shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -data cd_image

Which is certainly true if you insist on using cdrecord from the command line.

Fortunately, for those of us who think that command lines are absolutely

wonderful for some things, but utterly useless for others, we have options. I

personally use xcdroast which provides a “good enough”™ interface to

cdrecord. It’s not quite as intuitive as the Adaptec program, but it does the

job, and with much less head scratching than cdrecord. The page

www.fh.muenchen.de/home/ze/rz/servives/projects/xcdroast/e_overview.html

will lead you to one option. The homepage for BurnIt

sunsite.auc.dk/BurnIT/

will provide a Java based option. There are others.

Tom Genereaux [entropy@lawrence.ks.us]

===

I managed to generate so much nasty e-mail from my final Byte Me e-column in early May, I thought I’d update it for a wider audience. Variations appear in the current issues of Inside Multimedia (U.K.) and in Seattle Weekly at...

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9926/tech-catalano.shtml

...complete with PC Data numbers and recent developments to back up my position, if you’re curious.

Hope you’re all doing well. For updates on what I’m up to, feel free to check out http://www.frankcatalano.com, or my company’s site, http://www.icopyright.com.

Frank Catalano

The Seattle Weekly on Apple's future is interesting, and guaranteed to get Catalono a LOT of hate mail. It's worth your time, though.

===

Jerry,

I read all your comments and opinions about space, NASA, and all the rest of it, but it made me think: I may be deepy unimaginative, but what is the _use_ of all this?

Can you or anyone explain how the sum of human happiness has ever been increased, or is ever likely to be increased, by expending such vast amounts of time, effort, and resource on space “exploration”?

If the answer is just “because it’s there” I think we may have our priorities a bit skewed.

No doubt I’m missing something.

Andrew Duffin

OK, serious question, deserves a serious answer and I don't have time. But let me put it simply: Arthur Clarke said "If the human race is to survive, then for all but a very brief moment in its history the word ship will mean space ship."

And I have pointed out that 90% of the resources easily available to humanity are not on or under the Earth.

Humanity without a frontier is humanity without a frontier. We have had some periods like that in history. We have also had periods when there wer wide open frontiers. Go read up a bit on those two sets of times, and come back and ask again.

====

HOME Current View VIEW Home MAIL Home BOOK Reviews © This week: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	CHAOS MANOR MAIL A SELECTION July 12 - 18 1999 CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE. Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit. IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature. PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. *TABS* in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all. I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too... I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail. If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better.. This week: Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday Current Mail HIGHLIGHTS: Thompson on Linux CD-RW problems: need a wizard robe An easier way? Calvin Dodge replies What to use to create a web page. Post Office Grab: net legend Why go to space? Spider Robinson's answer Question asked again Mike Juergens answers That Transport Error How Outlook deal with corrupt mail lists
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Monday This day was devoured by locusts.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Tuesday, July 13, 1999 Firday the 13th was on a Tuesday this month, as Pogo used to say. This day was devoured by Outlook 2000 which mucks up mailing lists something awful. Warning: WABMIG does NOT work the same on Outlook 2000 as it does on Outlook 98. Not nohow. And it can really foul up a mailing list to the point that the list can't be handled by mail servers. This day was devoured by Microsoft Office 2000 Outlook 2000. Thanks a whole blooming bunch, Microsoft. If you had some decent help files with the products so that the office assistant recognized the names of the different file formats that Outlook forced when it exports it sure would help. Feh.
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Wednesday July 14, 1999 I will try to clear up a lot of mail meaning that subject will be jumbled and replies brief. Subject: Why Linux won't make it as a client OS I’m working on the CD chapter right now, and I decided to go find out what was involved in burning a CD under Linux. I found an authoritative source of information about it (http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO). It looks like loads of fun. After you somehow configure Linux to even see your CD-R drive, and download programs to do each function manually, you get to create the CD image manually, essentially file-by-file. Then, once you’ve created it, you can actually burn it with the following easy instructions: If you are mentally prepared, dress up in a black robe, multiply the SCSI-id of the CD-writer with it’s SCSI-revision and light as many candles, speak two verses of the ASR-FAQ (newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery) and finally type: shell> SCSI_BUS=0 # taken from listing 1 “scsibus0:” shell> SCSI_ID=6 # taken from listing 1 “TOSHIBA XM-3401” shell> SCSI_LUN=0 shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=$SCSI_BUS,$SCSI_ID,$SCSI_LUN \ · data cd_image # same as above, but shorter: shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -data cd_image I can certainly see why any right-thinking person would rather do this instead of the incredibly complicated Windows method: Choose Start - Programs - Adaptec Easy CD Creator - CD Copier Deluxe, and then click OK. Geez. Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com You sent this in Arial properly formatted. Front page 200 bless its brain damaged little heart reformatted it and put it into Times New Roman, another of Microsoft's little gifts to time wasting. So perhaps that needs to be balanced in with what you just said... === Jerry, First, a note of appreciation for your writing - both your computer columns and your sci-fi. I maintained a subscription to Byte for years for your column alone. Second, I would love to see you give an update on what you would suggest someone without web design experience use to create their own Web Site. I have read what you wrote last year, but so much has changed. Should someone start with FP2000, or simply use Word97? I just ordered Poor Richards Web Site based on your link. Are you still updating your monthly columns? When I use the link to your columns, the most recent one listed is January, but the date at the top is June 30, 1999. Thanks again for years of reading pleasure. Herb Mueller Columns since January are found at www.byte.com which pays me to do this stuff 9and sells ads, which I don't). Dates are the last time I looked at it, probably, or corrected a broken link. If I do a correction I make it clear unless it is trivial. To create a small Web Site without much complexity in links, use Dreamweaver. If you have to navigate around in it much and you don't know what you are doing, Front Page is still best, but 98 rather than 2000, I think; the 2000 paste bug in which this program reformats to default font when I paste is DRIVING ME MAD and losing me a lot of time. But much of Front Page works when you learn how. Warning: the documentation is horrid. You can do it all with WORD if it's pretty simple. I like Front Page's automatic thumbnails and links, and the UNDO feature is neat although it does need memory to work properly. === I do NOT know if this is genuine: I just got it. One hears a lot of this stuff and it usually turns out to be a network legend. LATER: and in fact it was a hoax rather than a legend. Originally a canard against the Canadian government, it was then transmogrified to involve the US Post Office. The interesting thing is that one isn't immediately sure it IS a legend. -----Original Message----- From: xxx Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 1:36 PM To: xxx Subject: Threat to E-Mail -----Original Message----- From: xxx Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 2:28 PM To: xxx Subject: Threat to E-Mail Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation, the US Postal Service will attempt to bilk email users out of “alternate postage fees.” Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Washington, DC lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law. The US Postal Service is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email is costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign “There is nothing like a letter.” Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents per day, or over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this would be money paid directly to the US Postal Service for a service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy and noninterference. If the federal government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a surcharge to email, who knows where it will end. You are already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureaucratic efficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from New York to Buffalo. If the US Postal Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the “free” Internet in the United States. One congressman, Tony Schnell ® has even suggested a “twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on all Internet service” above and beyond the government’s proposed email charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of email surcharge “a useful concept whose time has come” (March 6^th 1999 Editorial. Don’t sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this e-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say “No!” to Bill 602P. It will only take a few moments of your time, and could very well be instrumental in killing a bill we don’t want. Kate Turner Assistant to Richard Stepp, Berger, Stepp and Gorman Attorneys at Law 216 Concorde Street, Vienna, Va. Rob Wise wiserobe@pilot.msu.edu http://www.msu.edu/~wiserobe/ “...we can do nothing but await the action of time and common sense” -W.E.B. DuBois This sounds like a legend, but I wouldn't put it past the Post Awful to try something like this. And indeed: Dear Jerry, This should reassure people about the email tax warning: http://www.canoe.ca/TechNews9904/21_hoax.html David Cefai Cyberspace tax e-mail is nothing but a hoax === Jerry; think your suspicions were correct. A quick search revealed the following: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blemtax2.htm regarding: archive of legends &; netlore: U.S. Postal Tax on Email? Posted: 05/22/99 “Here’s an item straight out of the hoax recycling bin. A “new” email forward claims that the U.S. Postal Service is attempting to levy a 5-cent surcharge on every email delivered within the United States. “ The author says there was a Canadian version a while back too <g> Bruce Bruce C. Denman bdenman@ftc-i.net http://web.infoave.net/~bdenman So all is well. But you know, I wouldn't put the Post Office past trying this or the Congress passing it. After all they were collecting money from people who used Federal Express but couldn't prove they needed the urgency, and that was not all that long ago. I gather they gave that up, but you never know with bureacracies. === It looks like my prediction that the USAF was dying is starting to come to pass. The Defense authorization committee in the House just cancelled F-22 production in favor of more F-15 and F-16 production. It looks like the politicos have had it with USAF political maneuverings and are punishing them the only way they can -- by cutting their budget. Did the Fighter-Jock Generals think that their doing in of the B-2 program in 1997 would go unremembered by the Republicans in favor of it? Or did they forget that the F-15 (the production line for which was being shut down) was built in the House Minority Leader's district? Trent Well perhaps they won't eliminate the Air Force although I sometimes think they should: Army Air Forces, and Navy Air Forces, and eliminate the Department of Defense entirely. Go back to War and Navy. But that's not going to happen either. === Subject: F-22 11f From: Jim Griebel (jgri@earthlink.net) “It looks like the politicos have had it with USAF political maneuverings and are punishing them the only way they can -- by cutting their budget” Or, looking at it another way, tiny, starving Boeing, which merely owns the entire American output of medium-to-heavy jet airliners and such odds and ends as the C-117 contract, gets to keep the F-15 line open while bloated, rich Lockheed-Martin gets a well-deserved kick in the teeth. I’m not sure it’s USAF political maneuvering, “fighter-jock generals” or not, that’s really at issue here. === I have been asked about the Yorktown incident discussions. You can find them here. === <snip> # same as above, but shorter: shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -data cd_image Which is certainly true if you insist on using cdrecord from the command line. Fortunately, for those of us who think that command lines are absolutely wonderful for some things, but utterly useless for others, we have options. I personally use xcdroast which provides a “good enough”™ interface to cdrecord. It’s not quite as intuitive as the Adaptec program, but it does the job, and with much less head scratching than cdrecord. The page www.fh.muenchen.de/home/ze/rz/servives/projects/xcdroast/e_overview.html will lead you to one option. The homepage for BurnIt sunsite.auc.dk/BurnIT/ will provide a Java based option. There are others. Tom Genereaux [entropy@lawrence.ks.us] === I managed to generate so much nasty e-mail from my final Byte Me e-column in early May, I thought I’d update it for a wider audience. Variations appear in the current issues of Inside Multimedia (U.K.) and in Seattle Weekly at... http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9926/tech-catalano.shtml ...complete with PC Data numbers and recent developments to back up my position, if you’re curious. Hope you’re all doing well. For updates on what I’m up to, feel free to check out http://www.frankcatalano.com, or my company’s site, http://www.icopyright.com. Frank Catalano The Seattle Weekly on Apple's future is interesting, and guaranteed to get Catalono a LOT of hate mail. It's worth your time, though. === Jerry, I read all your comments and opinions about space, NASA, and all the rest of it, but it made me think: I may be deepy unimaginative, but what is the _use_ of all this? Can you or anyone explain how the sum of human happiness has ever been increased, or is ever likely to be increased, by expending such vast amounts of time, effort, and resource on space “exploration”? If the answer is just “because it’s there” I think we may have our priorities a bit skewed. No doubt I’m missing something. Andrew Duffin OK, serious question, deserves a serious answer and I don't have time. But let me put it simply: Arthur Clarke said "If the human race is to survive, then for all but a very brief moment in its history the word ship will mean space ship." And I have pointed out that 90% of the resources easily available to humanity are not on or under the Earth. Humanity without a frontier is humanity without a frontier. We have had some periods like that in history. We have also had periods when there wer wide open frontiers. Go read up a bit on those two sets of times, and come back and ask again. ====
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Thursday July 15, 1999 Dear Jerry, I could NOT let Robert’s comments on Linux CD writing go by without comment. He _could_ have downloaded and installed “xcdroast” (it even comes in an easy-to-install RPM package for RedHatters like me), and pressed the “copy data CD” button. That is rather easier than using the command line (though I’ve done that, too, by following instructions which were readily available on the Internet). Sigh ... Sincerely, Calvin Dodge -- “... she was a calligraphy enthusiast, with a slight overbite, and hair the color of strained peaches. I’ll never forget the very first thing she said to me. She said, “Hey, you’ve got weasels on your face.” THAT’S when I knew it was true love!” One of these days I have to experience the joys of Linux installation again. === You wrote: OK, serious question, deserves a serious answer and I don't have time. But let me put it simply: Arthur Clarke said "If the human race is to survive, then for all but a very brief moment in its history the word ship will mean space ship." Those interested will find Spider Robinson's serious answer at: http://www.globetechnology.com/gam/TechInvest/19990715/TWSPID.html . Regards Tim Cunningham All this fancy formatting eats time I don't have, but thanks. I guess. Yes, you're right about frontiers and futures, but all those earlier frontiers were terrestrial ones - obviously, but it makes a difference. Once we'd crossed those frontiers and survived a while we could live without hugely expensive technological support systems (expensive in resource, treasure, the cost of getting there, the cost of getting the stuff there, and so on). It was only a matter of a different climate. Air was air, water was water, I don't need to labour the point. Space is qualitatively different. Unless you believe in reachable Earth-like planetary bodies (if you do, it would seem to require time-travel!) nothing can be taken for granted, everything - for at least a long time - has to come from "home". How much energy? How much fuel? What are we not going to do so that we can pay for all this? And again, why? As to your point about resources, "easily" reachable? How do we define "easily" in this context? Keep up the good work, Andrew Duffin Easily as compared to mining 5,000 feet down, or doing serious construction at the bottom of the sea. The only reason space access costs so much is NASA. But have it your way. It’s not worth it. The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us are going to the stars. And it is still the case: if the human race is to survive, then for all but a very brief period of man’s history, the word ship will mean space ship. Perhaps the survival of the race is a small thing. == FR: Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au) SJ: Expensive technological support systems Andrew Duffin wrote: "we … live without hugely expensive technological support systems". Pardon me, but I thought that about four days without "hugely expensive technological support systems" and most of California (and indeed most large urban cultures) would be getting very thirsty indeed. You wrote: "The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us are going to the stars". Well, unfortunately, I'm not going to the stars. Thirty years ago I had hope. Things are looking up again now, and I can hope on account of my (thus far, to the best of knowledge, unborn) grandchildren. However, it ought to have been ME! Or at least my contemporaries. By now, we ought to have had colonies, or at least beach-heads, in earth orbit, and on the moon, and on Mars, and in the asteroids; and at least have been looking at the Jovian moons. Instead, it may well take fifty years (to 2017) to get back to where we were in 1967. That's fifty years the human race lost, and we didn't have them to spare. In other words, I agree with you. And I'm VERY ticked off about that lost fifty. And I guess I'm not the only one. Best wishes, Don Armstrong Sydney, Australia You ought to be. NASA has had the equivalent of the Apollo budget for many years, and can't get us off the ground. Abolish it. == Just about to leave and got this: Jerry - I know you're gone for the weekend, and Happy Anniversary. 40 years, congratulations! I thought I would send this anyway, since the error message you are reporting with Outlook is one that I am intimately familiar with. The problem is not Earthlink, but Outlook 98 or 2000, either one. When you have Outlook configured in the "Internet Mail" only version, and you send an email to a list of people (or even a single address); AND one of those addresses is wrong (I'll define wrong in a minute), Outlook immediately returns the "No Transport Medium" error message. Things that will cause this error that I am sure of: 1. Not having a network connection. For instance, you can tell Outlook never to dial when you are sending mail. If you have it set this way, and there is not a network connection to your mail server present, you will get this error. Particularly if there WAS a connection previously and it was closed. 2. Incorrectly formatted SMTP addresses. Addresses with a space in them, such as roger @bayarea.net or roger@ bayarea.net; and addresses with strange characters such as #$%^&;*()-. 3. Corrupted Personal Address Book (PAB) files. Usually corrupted files on a disk drive, although one of my users managed to corrupt the address book by powering off his system while Outlook was active. There are Microsoft Knowledge Base articles on this error, but they are not particularly helpful and they don't really mention #1 or #2 above. Hope you have a lovely weekend. Roger Weeks Thanks! I can stop blaming Earthlink, then. And now I know... === SUBJECT: Why Space? (Reply to Andrew Duffin) As for the horrible burden of maintaining life in space, consider that we’re the species that lived in the arctic – an environment that in winter will kill unprotected humans practically instantly -- with stone-age technology. I think we’ll get along better off-planet than you imagine. As to why, well for one thing, as Spider points out, meeting technological challenges is profitable. Very. For another, the amount of resources off-planet dwarf those available here, and it follow that that population off planet will eventually dwarf that down here. An attractive prospect, if you like people. But really, rather than read this, I’d like you to pick a clear evening and get out of town. Drive about fifty miles out from the periphery of the megapolis you probably live in. Pick a spot off the interstate, maybe 5 or more miles from any local clusters of streetlights. Find a place to safely park your car. Get out of the vehicle. Look up. Let us know if you have any more questions. :-) Mike Juergens (mikejuer@netnitco.net) I am off to Avalon for my 40th Anniversary trip...
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Friday Vacation on Avalon
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Saturday Vacation on Avalon
© Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Top	Sunday Vacation on Avalon
© Chaos Manor home	Entire contents copyright 1999 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved. Comments and discussion welcome.

CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

HIGHLIGHTS:

Monday

Tuesday, July 13, 1999

Wednesday July 14, 1999

Thursday July 15, 1999

Friday

Saturday

Sunday