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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 204 May 6 - 12, 2002

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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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read book now For an index of previous pages of view, see VIEWDEX.
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If you want to PAY FOR THIS there are problems, but I keep the latest HERE. I'm trying. MY THANKS to all of you who 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. I am preparing a special (electronic) mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
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Monday  May 6, 2002

Deadlines are upon me. Many new systems to write about. Lessons learned, and to be learned...

And I had reason to go back and look at my immediate reaction to the Penfield Jackson Microsoft Decision. It's at

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=200/byt19991108s0001/index.htm 

and I don't have a thing to regret about it.

Meanwhile, I've come down in the world. Instead of generals and their widows, I get

No. 300 Bol Ahmed Way, LAGOS - NIGERIA

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

ATTN: President/ C.E.O

 

I am the Chief Medical Doctor and close confidan of Mrs. Maryam Abacha, the former first lady and wife of the late Gen.Sani Abacha, the former head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. She (MRS. M. ABACHA),

medical doctors, and there's only $35 million involved. I think I need to hold out for a better offer...

 

Someone told me that this scam is now the third largest industry in Nigeria. I doubt it is true, but Sir Stafford Cripps would find it all very interesting...

Roland reminds me of Churchill's opinion of Sir Stafford Cripps

"A lunatic in a country of lunatics."

-- Winston Churchill, commenting on Stafford Cripps whilst the latter was the UK ambassador to the USSR.

But as C. Northcote Parkinson notes, he was well regarded in his time. And ended dead in a ditch.

 

 

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Tuesday, May 7, 2002

Column day. Overflow goes here but any brain cell activity I have goes into the column today...

I do want to thank the AMD enthusiasts for the gift that keeps on giving, such as signing me up for spam about Mother's Day. I don't have enough to do as it is, so it's fun to keep making rules to get rid of the spam. It sure makes me want to find AMD products and spend time working with them and writing about them. Truly rewarding. 

One wonders at the mentality of people who have nothing better to do. Such responsible behavior is likely to have some effects on the whole issue of web anonymity. True Names and all that... Incidentally, one of the chaps who signed me up has boasted to his friends about his accomplishment. My thanks to those who sent me copies of his brag. Now I have his True Name...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday,  May 8, 2002

The column is done. Joel has a warning about a virus that pretends to be a virus fix.

And it's time to nag you about subscribing. Expenses of this place are getting heavier.

If you are looking for a good way to waste time, Dungeon Siege will do that for you nicely. It's a neat combination of Baldur's Gate and Diablo. I got trapped into spending more time than I thought: ostensibly I was testing new boards, video, and sound drivers. I was, too... Anyway, the graphics are neat, the action is fast, and it's interesting.

The place is a mess, and it's time to clean up then get back to fiction.

And Eric Pobirs says this is a very useful site:

http://www.eventid.net 

Helps translate a lot of cryptic system messages into useful information.

Joel Rosenberg on the newest Star Office compatibility with Word: see mail. It is looking pretty good, he says.

And a reader is surprised at this. I am astonished that it hasn't happened daily or hourly:

Hi Jerry,

You just know this had to happen sooner or later.

http://www.channeloklahoma.com/okl/
news/stories/news-143634220020506-110529.html
 

of course, no one will be held accountable for the gross miscarriage of justice.

- Paul

And OF COURSE no one will ever be held accountable. "We were only following orders."

After all, action must be taken FAST, can't investigate first. It's for the kids.

 

 

 

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Thursday, May 9, 2002

Begin with another nag for new subscriptions and renewals of old, given the expenses of keeping this place going. Think of this like public radio. If you like being here, you can help keep it open...

We were scheduled to have lunch with the retired Bishop of Jerusalem, but he had a stroke. I had hoped for new insights into the situation over there.

If Arafat is in fact serious about ending suicide bombings, you will begin to see results: bodies of Hamas officials turning up in the streets. I don't really expect that to happen, but it may be.  I point out that the Turks, who were not loved by the Arabs and Palestinians, ruled that area for a long time, and few plotted violence against them because it was clear that an uprising, or an individual act of terror, would be rewarded with really horrendous reprisals. It caused a real attitude adjustment. Ask the Agha Khan, who leads among other things a pacifist sect that was once known as the Assassins. 

I have not changed my views: there needs to be a wall. The Israelis are reluctant to build that wall because that would give de facto control of the area outside the wall to the Palestinians, and there are significant political factions in Israel who want nothing short of the entire area from the sea to the Jordan: expelling that many Palestinians would be an act of ethnic cleansing that I think no nation could ignore, even if there were compensation paid.

Consequently the strategy is the salami slice, with settlements. This combines maximum irritation of the Palestinians with minimum security for the settlers, a very dangerous combination; but so far few Israeli politicians have the courage to say either "We will take all of the old Palestinian Mandate plus the Golan Heights, and we will expel most of those who used to live there," or "We will build our wall at a defensible place and all settlers outside that wall will have to come inside." The result is what you see, and it will continue.

Palestine needs to understand what can and cannot be accomplished, and live with that. Palestine could become another Hong Kong. It won't, though, so long as irredentism continues to govern the Palestinian policy machinery. Given rule of law and some security of property and government that is only normally corrupt and which discourages wasting talent and resources on impossible tasks like pushing the Jews into the sea, Palestine could become a viable and even wealthy nation. But if we had some ham we could have some ham and eggs if we had some eggs.


Niven will be over later, and we'll get to working on BURNING TOWER. And I am still cleaning up from the column. 

 

And I have posted part of the ROMAN TRIP. (The first has links to the next two.) 

When You Go By the Via Flaminia

The Knights of Malta

The Paths of Glory

 

These photo essays have been available to subscribers for about a week. There is another I am finishing that will go to subscribers first, then be available for the general readership later.

You are reminded that last year's PARIS trip reports are available. There are three, Paris 1, Paris 2, and Paris 3. They've been up for some time now.

These trip reports tend to be part photojournalism, part travelogue, and part essay on social criticism.

 

 

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Friday, May 10, 2002

I woke up convinced today was Saturday and even missed an appointment because of that. Odd. Maybe my mind is going. Doesn't feel that way, though.

Spent an hour on the phone with lawyers. Seems the Microsoft team wants me to talk about the mistakes IBM made with OS/2. I can do that. IBM never put the resources into OS/2 that it needed, particularly given the differences in philosophy: IBM didn't want to ship thing until they were READY, Microsoft got it out the door fast, used customers as a Quality Control and Defect Detection team, and waited for new hardware to bail them out of problems. Grab market share while you can. Probably a certain amount of FUD sowed here and there too, but mostly, stuff in the features, get it out the door, and go on from there. Moore's Law will take care of the rest.

 

 

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Saturday, May 11, 2002

I hate the Internet. It lets you do things you wouldn't attempt without it, but it will take you a long time and bore you to death while it is trying to do it. I can find a long out of print book on Amazon but I will spend half an hour getting page cannot be displayed errors and retrying and retrying. After a while I forget why I am there.

As it happens I got in an argument with Cochran about the Viet Nam war and how much materiel was employed in the NVA 1973 and 1975 offensives. I can't find the Harry Summers book that I relied on for that information. That happens here. Things Drift. And sometimes it is easier to buy a new copy of a book than to find the book itself. Only ordering that from Amazon takes about as long as finding the book would have been because I keep getting page cannot be displayed.

Pens, staplers, certain books: they disappear. The remedy is generally to buy another, particularly with staplers and Scotch tape dispensers: eventually there comes a kind of saturation point and then you can always find them in any logical place you might look. But if you don't do that, you will never find one anywhere at all. I should write an essay on this.

Anyway I have ordered the Summers book after what seems forever, and I can get on with my Falkenberg novel THE PRINCE which is a compilation of everything about Falkenberg plus some new scenes, out from Baen -- over 1000 pages of Falkenberg and Prince Lysander...

 

 

 

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Sunday, May 12, 2002

MOTHER'S DAY

So what am I doing here on Mother's Day when Roberta is down at the Beach House enjoying the weather -- we have a Santa Ana here -- and playing with The Grandchild?  Galley Slavery, that's what I am doing. The Prince runs to over a thousand pages, and contains just about everything ever done about Falkenberg and Lysander, plus some new scenes I am writing. It will be out from Baen Books this fall in hardbound and after all this work someone had better buy it...

Over in Mail I open with a new attempt to infect my machine. I believe we have mentioned this before: an email that purports to be a virus immunization  but in fact is the virus. In case you know anyone inexperienced enough to fall for this, you might want to warn them.

I am hard at work on The Prince. When I come up for air I do some housekeeping. With luck all will be over shortly and I can go back to normal 10 hour days...  I also got a lot of column material together on motherboards and the like. And I am rambling here because I don't really want to get back to galley slavery, but I had best do that...

I am pleased to say we have been getting a number of new subscriptions and renewals. This is pledge week at KUSC, the station my radio is nailed to, and they are nagging me about subscribing -- Jim Sveda's Record Shelf is on now and he can really lay on the guilt trips, so much so I am tempted to call in another pledge when I already have both an individual and a family subscription, renewed last fall in their fall drive. Of course that's the model I use for this place: like public radio, you can listen free but if you listen a lot you really ought to subscribe....

I have a long and fascinating letter on the First Dark Age. Those interested in that subject will be fascinated.

And now back to galley slavery.

 

 

Coming up for air at 0300. 300 pages and two new scenes to go.

 

 

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