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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 351 February 28 - March 6, 2005

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Monday February 28, 2005

There was a lot of activity over the weekend. I am now catching up. Column time this week.

There is an important announcement about phishing in mail.

We had some discussion of the Schiavo case over the weekend; I am putting all the mail on that in last week's mail including a new note from a Florida emergency room physician.

====

I have sent out a mailing (mailings, alas) to subscribers. I have updated the BADMAIL page,. If you did not get the mailing from me and you are a subscriber then (1) your mailbox is full, or (2) I have the wrong address down for you. For many, (1) is the case, and that I can do nothing about...

Check BADMAIL. if you are on there it will show what happened. If your mailbox isn't full, and you subscribe, then send me a note with your current subscription address, and when and how you subscribed.  Thanks.

 

======

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=535935 

Summers' Remarks Supported by Some Experts

Harvard President's Controversial Remarks About Science and the Sexes Backed by Some Experts

By MATT CRENSON

The Associated Press

*Feb. 27, 2005* - Harvard University president Lawrence Summers has suffered acrimonious condemnation, and may have jeopardized his job, for suggesting that the underrepresentation of women in engineering and some scientific fields may be due in part to inherent differences in the intellectual abilities of the sexes. But Summers could be right.

Some scholars who are in the know about the differences between mens' and womens' brains believe his remarks have merit.

"Among people who do the research, it's not so controversial. There are lots and lots of studies that show that mens' and womens' brains are different," says Richard J. Haier, a professor of psychology in the pediatrics department of the University of California Los Angeles medical school.

Academia has been bitterly divided in recent years by the nature vs. nurture debate, and the Harvard president's comments last month at a National Bureau of Economic Research symposium squarely address aspects of that dispute that are so controversial the opposing sides almost never discuss them.

On one side are those who believe the sexes are equal enough in their intellectual abilities that any biological difference between them is vastly outweighed by social pressures and discrimination that discourage girls and women from pursuing science and engineering. <snip>

One thing the Summers incident proved is that Harvard women biologists have no scientific training -- one rushed from the room in a classical female hysteria attack (shortness of breath, nausea) upon hearing an hypothesis with which she disagreed. Nor does the President of Harvard have any stamina: he caved and groveled to the hysterical female biologist, as a man might to a wife he wanted to get along with. Why is it worth all that money to send a child to Harvard where they seem guaranteed not to learn how to do science? Or behave rationally? Or have any intellectual courage?

 

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Tuesday, March 1, 2005   

  Today's LA TIMES has the Bill Gates education article, the first time I have seen it all. He calls for a restructuring of our high schools, which were designed 50 years ago; and concludes that every child should have a chance, and by chance he means some higher education, because, he says, to get a job supporting a family you need post-highschool education.

I intend to write on  this for the column.

I solicit the collective thoughts of this readership. Anything you say may be used without attribution. If I post your letters I post them with the signature you put on the letter (not what's in the "from" header).

If education needs reform, why? And toward what? 

I already have my own thoughts, but they aren't in concrete. I solicit yours.

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

http://www.techcentralstation.com/030105E.html

But we were born free.

======

Lipid Leggin'  http://www.techcentralstation.com/030105F.html

  ==========

 

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Wednesday,  March 2, 2005

Firefox and Mozilla users must see:  http://surl.se/fzi   (And pay close attention....) PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION AND THEN SEE BELOW

I have much to do, what with columns, paying bills, getting the dog over her close encounter of the worst kind with a skunk, and cleaning this mess up... And I have to get out to Fry's

===

Dr. Pournelle:

Regarding your post today (in view for 3/2/05) from your reader that claimed Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program detects FireFox as 'dangerous spyware'....

I used the MS Anti-Spyware program to do a full scan of my system, which has FireFox 1.01 ... and I found no such indication. There's a screenshot at my place, for those that are interested.

http://digitalchoke.com/daynotes/2005/2005-02-27.php#wednesday

Looks like a clever ruse....

I also note some media reports that FireFox, as it continues to be used by more people, is becoming a more attractive target for hackers.

Regards, Rick Hellewell

OF COURSE it's a ruse, as the net address ought to tell you; I thought that would be clear. Apologies.

(I am told that the Net address isn't the giveaway I thought it was. In any event common sense would tell you this couldn't possibly be real. Gates may be many things but he's not stupid. I new instantly it was a put-on, and I thought everyone else would, but apparently I was lucky. I have been taken in by a number of these things. Perhaps not this one because I have been watching paradoies of Micrsofot longer than most...)

 

 

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Thursday, March 5, 2005

I think Norton AV has to go. I am weary of having glue in my communications machine. Of course some of the problem is spam filters and rules, but Outlook 2003 has been getting slower and slower each week, to the point where when it is receiving messages now I can come here to FrontPage and type a sentence before the first half of the sentence appears on the screen.

I will look at Gri-Soft and other AV systems. My dilemma is this: Symantec does have some smart people keeping up with the virus scene. There is no one in this field as sharp as Alan Solomon was, but Symantec has some of the best. Webroot has some good people too. It only takes one infection to make you aware of the real problems. 

It may be that I merely need to update my Norton (I have been using older versions but they are ceasing to support those). In any event it's time to experiment again. Suggestions welcome. I would like to hang on to Outlook 2003. I've learned to live with it, and it does many things I want done. I'm used to its idiosyncrasies. The problem is that lately it has become a hog the way Outlook 2000 was: when mail is coming in, everything slows. Not quite as bad as with 2000 but then this is a faster machine.

Another problem with anti-virus software is that I have to have copies on many machines. More than most people use because of the nature of the business here.  And for all its faults, Norton does seem to work.

I also have extraordinary spam filtering problems.

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

I have always been an admirer of Robert Conquest and was very pleased to discover, on meeting him, that he was familiar with some of my works and liked them.

He has an article of good common sense in the current National Interest,

http://www.nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=
&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%
3AArticle&mid=1ABA92EFCD8348688A4EBEB3D
69D33EF&tier=4&id=235512C943E7401BA568C1A1CD5F24ED

which is worth your attention.  As Greg Cochran notes, the Clive James quote is worth the price of admission...

As is this excerpt:

"All the major troubles we have had in the last half century have been caused by people who have let politics become a mania. The politician should be a servant and should play a limited role. For what our political culture has stood for (as against the principles of total theorists and abstractionists) is the view of society as a developing and broadening of established liberties and responsibilities, and the belief, founded on experience, that in political and social matters, long-term predictions, however exciting and visionary, seldom work out."
 

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Friday, March 4, 2005

Martha Stewart is out of prison, although she gets to wear electronic chains and tug at the forelock to the Imperium for some months.

I suppose there are some people who think we are safer as a result of jailing Martha Stewart, but I have yet to hear their rational arguments. Everything I have heard sums up to "She wasn't nice, she wasn't humble enough, and she needed to be taught a lesson she wouldn't forget." I haven't heard many who think she ought to have been jailed talk about the "crime" she committed.

Lest we forget: She was jailed for making false statements, not under oath, to Federal Officers. One of those statements was to protest her innocence of a crime she had not been indicted for, much less convicted of. Even more interestingly, it turns out that what she denied doing was not a crime whether she did it or not. So: for denying, not under oath, doing something that was not a crime to begin with, she is sent to prison at great expense to her and considerable expense to the Republic. Are we all safer?

Or was this merely an exercise in converting us all from citizens of a Republic to subjects of an empire? You will say no one intended that result by this prosecution. I will ask, what might you to in aid of that result if you did intend it? Doesn't this accomplish the result while satisfying a number of people who just can't stand her success?

And again I ask: why is it a crime to lie to a federal investigator? Submitting a signed statement under penalty of perjury is one thing; to blow off an inquisitive investigator on a fishing trip is quite another, and should the the right of any citizen (as opposed to a subject).

My advice for all is in future, never talk to Federal Investigators even if they are clearly investigating heinous crimes. Cooperating with them is hazardous to your health. Yes, I know: in a Republic we are all expected to aid the government in its efforts to defend the laws. In an Empire, though, you must protect yourself for the government has no interest in your protection: its minions are out to achieve track records and rise in the imperial bureaucracy. Except for the minions who brought off this coup, just who in these United States benefitted from the jailing of Martha Stewart? Who even pretends to be better off as a result of this exercise in prosecution for Maiastas?

And see mail  see also the Berger Case

======

We interrupt this rant for an urgent message:

Subject: DNS cache poisoning for ebay.com, google.com, and weather.com - URGENT

http://isc.sans.org/diary.php 

Folks need to block access via ACLs or firewall rules to the following IPs right now in order to ensure they aren't redirected to the malware sites:

www.7sir7.com (217.160.169.87) 123xxl.com (217.160.169.87, 207.44.240.79, 216.127.88.131) abx4.com (217.160.169.87, 207.44.240.79, 216.127.88.131)

These IPs should be blocked immediately (via IP, not via domain-name).

Be sure and check http://isc.sans.org/diary.php  for updates.

--- Roland Dobbins

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

Subject: Conquest Article -

Jerry: There was a key line in the article that should generate considerable debate -- "More broadly, in the West it has been tradition that has been generally determinant of public policy. Habituation is more central to a viable constitution than any other factor."

The country is evolving into different sense of itself through another massive in-migration, I find it probable that the WASP path of the past is about to abruptly shift direction. The Latina population will not long reside as an undereducated, docile underclass that the current "ruling class" presumes. Nor will their rising expectations accept the poor performance of public education to the relative economic benefit of those who can afford private education.

Allan Smalley

Precisely, and note how this notion fits with the Stewart case. Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.

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

Is there a OneNote expert out there?  OneNote is a wonderful program so long as you don't try to share things with yourself of keep it running on more than one computer. When I do that, it insists on opening files I did not ask for, and refusing to delete junk I don't want, and generally behaving in an insane way. It is the lack of OneNote and other TabletPC support that keeps me from just going to the Mac and having done with it, but the OneNote designers were too clever by half and don't let you handle data files in a way that has anything to do with the way any other program on earth names, shares, and loads files.

If anyone knows how to get OneNote to open a data file created on another computer with a different instance of OneNote I would appreciate explicit directions. It keeps thwarting my every effort. I just want to be able to take notes on my laptop, come home, and open that note section on my desktop.  I don't see why that is unreasonable, but I certainly can't do it. It is as if it were designed to prevent me from doing this.

 

NOTE: I have solved this problem and I will be reporting on it in the column. Thanks to all including the Microsoft product managers who helped with this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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, 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.

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