| Friday,
April 9, 1999 I will try to catch up today although there is still some
WinHec left. My system is running like glue has been poured in this morning. I am letting
GetRight do two big downloads of ZIP driver software, and apparently that is driving the
system nutso. Why it should be this slow is a bit of a mystery since I don't have that
many windows open. But then why you have to restart NT every now and then isn't clear to
me either, since not everyone has that problem. Usually I don't notice when things slow
down but they are really slow this morning. Ah. One of the Getright downloads has ended,
and perhaps things will speed up?
I am trying to deal with three days of mail, but it will probably take me a while, and
I do have to work on books today also. At least the weather is fine today. Last night at
Universal Studios it was periodic rain. I hadn't been to Universal for a while. I am sure
I was there sometime since Apple introduced the ill-fated luggable (well they called it
portable) Mac, the one that you had to remove the lead-acid batteries from to reset; that
was introduced at Universal. I must have been back there since, but I don't remember. I
used to go to movies at CityWalk but there has been just enough trouble with teen gangs
there that we don't go up there any more.
Both downloads have finished, and the glue is out of the system, so I guess GetRight
takes up more resources than I would have supposed when working at 44,000 bps to get a
file. Interesting: this dual Pentium NT system was slowed to a crawl while those downloads
were going on in background.
Roland Dobbins tells me I must have some bad settings since his NT systems run for
months without restart, and I believe him because I have an NT server that hasn't been
reset for a year or more. Of course I keep installing and uninstalling stuff here, and the
registry gets cluttered; I need to clean it up. And probably there are some bad processes
running left over from some long uninstalled application. Now if I can figure out how to
get rid of them. One of the things that irritates me about Windows and NT alike is that
there is no simple way to determine what starts up on startup, or what makes it do it. At
one time it was simple: you looked in the startup folder and there was an icon or at least
a listing of all the things that started. Then they added them to WIN.INI but at least you
could find them there. Now they hide stuff all over the place. AOL puts sneaky little
advertisements into the registry. Heaven alone knows what is running in background on this
system. I need to take a couple of hours and go through the logs on this NT system
and see just what is going on. With NT at least you can do that.
One of the announcements at WinHec will come as no great surprise: there will be a
Windows 98 Second edition (they are NOT calling it Windows 99) this year, and that will be
in addition to Windows 2000 which is the upgrade of NT. The divergence between NT and
Windows continues into the next millenium. Windows 98 Second Edition is in fact OSR1,
mostly bug fixes. I'll have to go over the notes to see what the real changes are if
any.
I gather it's mostly game support that has made them keep the dual system another year.
The commercial/home/consumer market gets increasingly important, bigger than
business/enterprise.
And I have a new set of ATI drivers that are supposed to fix the problem with font
smoothing and ATI Rage Pro. I'll get them in today and we'll see.
The ZIP situation: I downloaded the ZIP tools
from Iomega. My Celeron with internal IDE ZIP drive will format a ZIP to 98+ megabytes,
and only it can read the disk is has formatted; no other ZIP drive can. However, the
external SCSI on Parsifal the Pentium II system formats to 100+ megabytes and that disk is
readable by anything. (Same disk, of course.) I have yet to get an internal IDE drive
under Windows 98 to format a ZIP disk any other machine can read, but the internal IDE
under 95 does just fine. No other data. i am using the right click on the Zip drive and
iomega LONG format in all cases.
Talin's Travel Journal exists in a new
location.
FLASH:
The ATI Rage Pro awful text problem is fixed. Go to:
http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/fix/w82545en.html
and download both the drivers and the text file on how to install (although the
installation went very smoothly for me). Eventually the system will want to restart. Let
it. When it comes back up, you're done. Turn on font smoothing in the Display Properties.
That's it. You'll have good looking text. This makes the SYS Celeron 333 MHz. system
(http:// www.sys.com) with built-in ATI Rage Pro video board one of the best deals in
town. Good sound, good video, not of course the hottest games machine known to man, but
good enough. All told, good value for the money for both home and office, and a very
trouble-free system now that the "ugly text" problem is fixed.
I have always been told that putting a slow slave on an IDE string
slows down the Master. Bob Thompson says that hasn't
been true for a long time.
And no sooner do I mention startup problems than I get the answer. Wonderful little tool. And actually some of that is
built into Windows 98 (but not NT).
====
Here begins a long disquisition on Kossovo. It may be
pointless. To skip it, click here.
From the Washington Times:
"A Pentagon planner, who asked not to be named,
said: "The Air Force convinced the administration that the administration's
objections could be achieved without the use of ground forces. But even the Army
underestimated the speed by which Milosevic would sweep through Kosovo and depopulate it
of ethnic Albanians."
NATO's air attacks were optimum for killing Albanians, and anyone with any
strategic sense could have predicted the results. First, we said we would never send in
ground troops: this left Milosovec free to deploy his light infantry into Kossovo and work
his will on the population. It isn't hard to persuade Serbs to be beastly to Albanians
given the history of that region; whatever the sins of the present generation, memories
are long, and there are atrocities in plenty stretching back hundreds of years. Albania
and Kossovo were part of the Italian Empire in World War II, something everyone seems to
have forgotten.
So, assured that he would not need his ground forces to defend Belgrade against a
strike down the valley from Hungary -- that area from the border to Belgrade is good tank
country and would be ripe for an AirLand battle scenario if we had threatened that --
Milosovec could do as he wanted in Kossovo.
Then came the air strikes. They were directed against air defenses. Big deal: the Serbs
didn't turn on their radars, so we didn't hit much (it's very easy to hide an air defense
system if it isn't going to be used), and we united the Serbs behind Milosovec. Now all
his domestic opposition was ended. Every Serb in the land is a patriot, and Milosovec is
the leader against attacks by all of Europe.
The early air strikes did NOTHING to inhibit his capability to work his will in
Kossovo. How could it? We didn't hit bridges, fuel dumps, armored car parks, ammunition
centers; just a few symbolic targets plus attempts to root out the air defenses. This is a
bit like batting at the hornet's nest without doing anything about the hornets.
So, unable to reach any NATO target, Milosovec and the Serbs took out their frustration
on the people they see as the cause of their problems, the Albanian immigrants into
historic Serbian lands. Of course some of those immigrations were generations ago
(although some are more recent than we in the US suppose), but it was pretty easy to
persuade Serb troops that these "foreigners" had caused "their" allies
to attack. But the attacks did nothing to inhibit the Serbian ability to be beastly to the
Albanians.
Nothing was more predictable although apparently our Secretary of State did not predict
it. Nor did the President.
The principles of war have been hammered and refined for thousands of years, and the
most important one can be boiled down to Clausewitz's phrase: "In war everything is
very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult."
The implication of this is that if you think it will take a platoon to do a job, send a
company; if you think it will take a regiment, send a brigade. Or, never send one man to
do a man's job. Send several.
A second principle was framed by Macciavelli, "Never do your enemy a small
injury." This corresponds to the old maxim, never wound the king. The
corresponding principle of war is that when you end uncertainty by actually striking at
your enemy, go for the throat. Go for the center of gravity. Hit him where he lives; do
him as near a mortal blow as you can deliver, and do it early, and swiftly, while he is
still in a state of shock. The first wave of bombers and missiles should have taken out
every major bridge, every major fuel dump, every armored car park we could locate. In
particular, every police barracks in Kossovo should have vanished at dawn in the first
minutes of the bombardment. This isn't bloodthirstiness, it's merely sense: if the goal is
to protect the Kossovans, then one must strike at the people who can do them harm; not at
Milosovec's air defenses! His air defenses aren't doing any damage to refugees.
Then we slowly escalated the war, and still did nothing to inhibit his light infantry
in Kossovo; and continued to assure him that he didn't need any of his forces to defend
Belgrade against, say, a commando raid to take over his TV stations and the Presidential
Palace and install some NATO puppet (surely there are some Serbs in Europe who would play
the role of Vidkung Quisling; perhaps even some sprig of the old royal family?) as a
shadow government present in Belgrade and protected by the 101st Airborne, while armor
raced down the valley from Hungary to support the conquest of Belgrade. THAT would have
been decisive, and would have saved the Albanians. But we didn't do that.
What we did was guaranteed to bring about the destruction of the Albanian population;
the Serbian response was so predictable that one wonders if it wasn't INTENDED. I know,
never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Napoleon knew
that, and it's even more true today. But how stupid is stupid? How could anyone be stupid
enough not to know that we told Milosovec: "You are personally in no danger, nor is
your control of the country; you may deploy your troops as you wish for internal control
since there will be no external threat and no need to defend any border; and we are going
to bomb hell out of you, so that eventually you will be unable to expel the Albanians from
Kossovo. Do you understand this? Thank you." How could anyone not know that having
told him that, he would decide to expel the Albanians while he had the chance? It takes no
more than a room temperature IQ to understand that. Or so I would have thought.
So now what? What can we do, and what should we do? It is no longer what should we have
done. We can't get back to where we were: the Albanians in their homes, with a working
economy in Kossovo; UN observers and reporters on the ground ready to photograph
atrocities; the threat of massive bombing in the background but not out in the open; the
threat of more decisive measures like commandos in Belgrade; the Serbs still restrained by
some sense of decency and some desire to avoid international condemnation even if not
greatly restrained by them; and enough domestic opposition to Milosovec that he needed to
take care in his actions. That is the world we destroyed with bombs. We now have: no
economy in Kossovo at all; no crops planted, a damaged infrastructure that makes it
difficult to distribute food and supplies brought in from the outside; refugees
everywhere; homes burned; people terrorized so that many will refuse to go back unless
taken there at gunpoint (a new Operation Keelhaul for refugees?) Refugees without papers,
convicts and desperate criminals mixed in with middle class and peasants, families
disrupted; instability compounded. No CNN on the ground in Kossovo, no restraint whatever
on Serbian light infantry forces which now utterly control the area; no domestic
opposition to Milosovec whatever; and a depleted arsenal of missiles and smart weapons so
that all too soon we will have to resort to iron bombs with resulting collateral damage.
What can we do?
We can bomb Serbia into the Stone Age, and watch a couple of million Serbs starve to
death. The ones that starve will not be the military nor will they be the nomenklatura
that run the country. The New Class remains in power, and will remain so until the country
is occupied and a de-communistization program similar to the de-nazification of Germany
takes place under a proconsul (in Germany it was General Lucius Clay). The Albanians will
starve first under Operation Flintstone, but eventually Serbia will have to surrender. It
will not happen soon, and we will have to prevent well meant efforts to send in
"humanitarian aid" while we reduce their capability to survive. We are unlikely
to have the stomach for that, and half measures will result only in more misery for the
Kossovo Albanians.
We can assemble a full armored force in Hungary and strike for Belgrade. This won't be
a big surprise any longer: what could have been done by a brigade moving fast with AirLand
battle tactics will take a corps and will be a meatgrinder; but it can be done. We aren't
likely to do it, and if we do, given what I have seen happen so far, we'll do it badly, in
driblets. The chance for one bold decisive stroke is I fear gone. Pity.
We can send in troops to Kossovo, but it's not terrain much suited to our style of
warfare. It will take a big buildup and a lot of troops. Our tail to tooth ratios are very
large, and we'll have to call up the National Guard to have enough support troops; and
also Guard units just to have a garrison.
And we have today made automobile plants, which is to say any civilian economic
facility, a legitimate target of war. I do not suppose the Serbs will counter with a
satchel bomb attack on the Saturn plant in Tennessee, but I do not see why they don't.
They have plenty of sympathizers in the US. Of course we will label that
"terror" since a terrorist is someone without bombers and missiles.
And finally we can simply declare victory and leave, doing what we can for whatever
refugees make it across the Albanian and Macedonian borders. Understand, much of the
population of Albania tries to get to Italy every year. Imagine thinking of Southern Italy
as a land of opportunity and you get the economic picture of the country that now has to
accept half a million refugees. This is a formula for long term regional instability. The
pressure to immigrate into Apulia and Sicily will increase. Look for lots of rafts on the
Adriatic.
Or we can insist that Milosovec allow them all to go back to Kossove: where they will
find themselves in a wasteland. We can try to rebuild Kossovo and make it an autonomous
region, even a separate state: at which point the Palestinian Arabs ask why we did not do
as much for them, and the Kurds call on us to bomb Turkey into submission. Presumably we
will be able to resist those temptations.
I keep trying to think of other alternatives. All are expensive. None of them allow for
even a glimmer of a budget surplus in the US, or any way to salvage our domestic programs.
Empires need cannon, not butter. As Rome found out a long time ago. The price of Empire is
high. It is profitable only if you occupy the land you take, as we did with the West.
Colonial Empires may be prestigious, but they are profitable only if you go in as a wolf.
And there is precious little to exploit in Illyria…
So. What will we do? More bombing, more destruction of an already poor country, until
it all trails off and we turn to the American elections as a source of diversion. And
Baseball season has begun.
- 30 - (More below)
There is a new Moshe Bar's Opinion on Linux Scripting.
And now this:
Hi Jerry,
I just thought you might like to \see Microsofts latest shennigans
> http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,34736,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.d
which is the annoucement that Microsoft intends to charge $89 for Windows 98
Second Edition which is mostly bug fixes. Astonishing. That they did not tell us at
WinHec.
And indeed it turns out that this is wrong. This is the cost for a first time buyer of
Windows 98; registered Windows 98 users will get the upgrade at a substantially lower
price. Microsoft, having been castigated for not making the OSR2 edition of Windows 95
available at retail, will sell the 98 Second Edition; but they will also allow registered
Windows 98 users to get the upgrade CD at something much lower. Once again the evil empire
turns out to be not quite so evil...
Re: Kossovo, I am reminded that not everyone had the history classes I had;
particularly since I was in school before WW II. One thing we understood was that Russia
came to the aid of Serbia when Austria was trying to bully the Serbs. Today we hear that
the Russians are retargeting their ICBM's to aim at the USA again. We are told that it is
in the US interest to promote stability in that area. If having a few thousand nuclear
weapons aimed at us is an increase in stability we have achieved it. If not, then perhaps
we need to think again?
The Russians will happily provide the Serbs with intelligence, satellite photos, GPS
receivers, and Stinger missiles, much as we provided those to the Afghanistan rebels.
Payback time.
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