Monthly Archives: June 2015

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, June 30, 2015

There is a new build of Windows 10, and I had no trouble installing it. A cursory look failed to disclose the “improved” features replacing the old “Computer” and “Network” icons/commands which showed all the places you are connected to. I can use the Network command to see Precious from Alien Artifact (Windows 7, my main system now), but I can’t find any equivalent command in Windows 10. However, they have a lesson and I’ll go to that after lunch, and that may solve the mystery.

I think Microsoft has gone arrogantly mad. Having got used to networking with Windows 7, which just worked and came in just in time for me to decide to stay with Windows despite having been about to switch to Mac after the brutality of Vista – having done well with Windows 7, Microsoft decided to improve it to unusability. There were early signs that Windows 10 would keep the improvements of Windows 8 and bring back at least some of the comprehensibility of Windows 7, but those seem to be getting lost; but that may be my fault for not doing a systematic study of Windows 10. I can do almost everything with 7, so why spend any painful hours with 8 and after? But of course I do silly things so you don’t have to – one reason I bought the Surface Pro, and before the stroke set up a fast and powerful Windows 8 system – but I am perhaps less tolerant of the pain and frustration.

I recall a time when Microsoft had a unit of industrial psychologists who tested new Microsoft software using as test subjects junior and middle executives from Seattle businesses; but I guess the bean counters got that unit. It used to be that Bill Gates used this stuff and cared, but there seems to be no one of sufficient rank looking out for the interests of users now. Lots of Microsoft people use the Surface Pro, but they get so used to the improvements that they forget the old ways.

I suppose we’ll get through this, but I do wish they’d bring in a user or two when they go to improve something that we learned with some effort, but having learned it, it worked. Memory is cheap, CPU cycles are cheap, and few would notice if you left in some of the old stuff redundantly; and it would sure save wear and tear on older users.

Richard Hay’s Supersite for Windows, http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/windows-10-build-10158-fast-ring-insiders-introduces-microsoft-edge reports that the unusual thing about this build of Windows 10 is that there are no known issues: they probably have not found all the bugs, but they no longer know of any, and this in a pre-release build. Hurray.

It’s lunch time. I’ll do that lesson on the new build later this afternoon.

I have tried to get the Surface Pro to tell me of an easy way to get  “This Computer” and “Network”, but it always searches forever or sends me to odd places. Then Eric sent me this

Explorer should be in the task. Also WINKEY + E will create an Explorer window, as always.

Eric Pobirs

and Lo! It’s all true. WINKEY plus e produces a list. This Computer and Network are in it. When I choose Network,  Precious sees all the machines on the local net. They are on a different login and password, so I have a bit more work connecting to them, but it works. I can connect to them.  I suspect if I had known this simple, not obvious but not to be forgotten once known, command I wouldn’t have had all the frustrations I have had.  But I had the stroke just after installing the Surface Pro 3.

Of course Explorer is not on the Task Bar, or if it be there, I cannot recognize it. Also the stylus does not always count as a click when I tap the screen, and my finger control is not so good; the new Wireless Arc Mouse has solved that problem and I can cease to try to control Precious with the stylus, leaving it for actual writing.

Winkey – the key with the Windows symbol – plus E produces precisely what I need. So I will never have that problem again. Why that was never the answer to any of the dozens of inquiries I made about how to find the “Computer” or “This Computer” or “Network” commands is another story; perhaps a Microsoft programmer will read this. In any event I look forward to better relations with the Surface Pro 3 and Windows 10. Now if I could recover from my typing difficulties… But in fact that is slowly happening as I learn to type with two fingers. My biggest problem is that I often hit ALT at the same time as I hit the spacebar, and that produces an unwanted menu that threatens what I am doing and halts the flow of typing. I have to learn not to do that.  As a touch typist I never did. But I am learning.

Meanwhile there’s interesting news

Inflammation, Arthritis, and the vagus nerve

http://mosaicscience.com/story/hacking-nervous-system

There’s a single nerve that connects all of your vital organs — and it might just be the future of medicine

Lina Hayes/Flickr

When Maria Vrind, a former gymnast from Volendam in the Netherlands, found that the only way she could put her socks on in the morning was to lie on her back with her feet in the air, she had to accept that things had reached a crisis point.

“I had become so stiff I couldn’t stand up,” she says. “It was a great shock because I’m such an active person.”

It was 1993. Vrind was in her late 40s and working two jobs, athletics coach and a career for disabled people, but her condition now began taking over her life. “I had to stop my jobs and look for another one as I became increasingly disabled myself.” By the time she was diagnosed, seven years later, she was in severe pain and couldn’t walk any more. Her knees, ankles, wrists, elbows and shoulder joints were hot and inflamed. It was rheumatoid arthritis, a common but incurable autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks its own cells, in this case the lining of the joints, producing chronic inflammation and bone deformity. <snip>

Before I had brain cancer and x-ray treatment, I had terrible joint pains. It was assumed that it was degenerate arthritis, and that delayed the brain tumor diagnosis for at least a year; it was eventually found through blood work. Then came 50,000 rads of hard x-rays, which got the cancer – an inoperable lump the size of a ping pong ball in my head – and, alas got much of my balance. But I’m still here.

If they think you have arthritis, have them check for cancer as well. A brain tumor in the right place can cause back. Hip, and shoulder pains indistinguishable from arthritis.

This article shows more connections between brain activity and arthritic pain; it is well worth your reading.

MIT Invented a Way to Automatically Fix Software Bugs With Borrowed Code

http://gizmodo.com/mit-invented-a-way-to-fix-software-bugs-autonomously-wi-1714669000

A new system from MIT’s CSAIL, or Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, does something incredible to fix buggy software: It borrows healthy code from other applications–and then fixes the bug without ever accessing the original source code.

Think of it as an organ transplant. Except in this case, the sick patient is a buggy software app. And the “donor organ” is a piece of code from another application, even if it’s written in a whole different language. That’s a crude and imperfect metaphor, but it helps explain CodePhage, a system that was presented by MIT researchers at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Programming Language Design and Implementation conference this month, as MIT News explains today.

CodePhage’s creators explain it like this: A program with a bug is the “recipient.” When CodePhage identifies a bug, it searches for a fix from a slew of other programs and repositories. Once it finds a good piece of “donor” code, it patches it onto the recipient and tests whether it fits—without ever gaining access to the source code. It keeps doing this until it finds the ideal donor.

What’s really cool about this system is that it can fix bugs using solutions that might not even be written in the same language, creating a kind of patchwork of good ideas from a broad range of sources. You can find a full run-down of how CodePhage works in this presentation by one of its creators, Martin Rinard, but to MIT News Rinard explained how CodePhage is part of a broader effort to create a system that will reduce the need for new code completely:

“The longer-term vision is that you never have to write a piece of code that somebody else has written before,” Rinard says. “The system finds that piece of code and automatically puts it together with whatever pieces of code you need to make your program work.”

The intricacies of how the system checks and re-checks its fixes using a symbolic expression are complex, of course, but even from a layperson’s perspective it’s easy to see how a system like CodePhage could be a forerunner to systems that are constantly finding and patching bugs, drawing on the collective intelligence of multiple authors and sources to built better applications.

For more, check out MIT News’s writeup. http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/automatic-code-bug-repair-0629

Study Suggests That Google Has Its Thumb on Scale in Search    (nyt)

By DINO GRANDONIJUNE 29, 2015

Google entices people to search by promising links to the best that the web has to offer. But research released Monday, led by top academics but paid for by one of Google’s rivals, suggests that Google sometimes alters results to play up its own content despite people’s preferences.

I’m shocked, shocked…

This was in yesterday’s View but I don’t want you to miss it:

World Class University Education – Free!

http://investmentwatchblog.com/one-of-the-worlds-top-universities-is-offering-all-of-their-courses-online-to-anyone-for-free/

“Everything would be free, but program participants that want to receive a credential will be required to pay a small fee. The program is available to learners across the globe, all that is needed is internet access.”

The university – MIT.

Charles Brumbelow

Boston, Mass. – For learners who don’t want to invest in a full residential college ride, or who want to avoid the massive amounts of debt associated with university studies, a program called MITx could be a viable alternative.

With the advent of the internet came a revolution of information becoming available to the average person. MIT University took it one step further when they began a program called OpenCourseWare, which allowed anyone to download full course materials for virtually all classes for free.

But the new MITx interactive online learning platform will go further, giving students access to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student discussions.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/one-of-the-worlds-top-universities-is-offering-all-of-their-courses-online-to-anyone-for-free/#hH9zE2k5MBf1TiMi.99

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/researchers-use-femtosecond-lasers-to-display-touchable-images-in-the-air/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Researchers Use Femtosecond Lasers To Display Touchable Images In The Air

A Japanese company called Aerial Burton has been using lasers to ionize air molecules in midair for a few years now, thereby creating bright pixels that float in space. Using the original system, however, you were essentially creating floating plasma which could burn you if you touched it. Now, however, the company has reduced the power necessary to generate the images by using femtosecond lasers, a feat that lets you actually tap images to interact with them.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, June 29, 2015

Precious, the Surface Pro 3 that I hope to make into a principal machine here – I keep remembering the Compaq HP Tablet I used for so long – woke with her Wi-Fi and Bluetooth forgotten. I have no idea why. Eric came over just after dinner and fixed it, although he has no idea of how. The Surface Pro 3 has had weird problems with wireless, according to reports all over the web, and Microsoft keeps releasing drivers for the wireless device; we may or may not have installed an update; it’s hard to tell. But Precious reports that she’s up to date on everything, and all my local computers can see her, so it’s now possible to transfer files back and forth (or send them to the cloud), so all’s well, although until either there’s more experience of working properly, or we understand what happened, Precious certainly won’t be a primary system here.

But that’s mostly because we’re running a pre-alpha version of Windows 10, and I’m certainly not going to pronounce a pre-release OS reliable enough for work. If I had to do a lot of road work and needed a portable, I’d probably get a MacBook Air and a new ThinkPad; the Air for truly portable, and the ThinkPad for setting up in the hotel room and just leaving there. I’d also carry a small router to let the two talk to each other and shield them from direct connection to the Internet, Since I don’t get to so many computer shows, I probably won’t do all that.

And if I had good reason to believe that the Surface Pro 3 would behave as well as she is just now, I’d take her along – she’s a joy to use when she’s behaving. And if you do get one, invest in a Microsoft Arc Bluetooth Mouse; it really is the best portable mouse I’ve ever used. The Surface Pro 3 has the problem of needing thermal insulation when used as an actual laptop – it does get hot – but if it can sit on a table it does fine.

Meanwhile, the Kindles are working fine. A reader tried to make me a gift of an eBook, and that caused problems: I managed to get it onto my desktop machine where I don’t read books, after which I couldn’t get it onto a Kindle. Worse, I had never saved a local copy, and I couldn’t find it in the cloud again even for the desktop. Well, I could find it, but I’d have to pay for it. This was mildly infuriating. It has to do with the arcane way you must act to accept an eBook gift – well arcane to me — After several futile hours – I didn’t spend all that time working on this but I compulsively kept coming back to it – I eventually gave up and punched the help button on the Fire. Within a minute I get an American who spoke perfect English, who could see my screen but not me; I could see him but not his screen.

Amazon already knew a frightening lot about me. He was able to cause the book to appear in the cloud for downloading. Of course when I got it, it asked if I wanted to pay the extra couple of bucks for audio. The original gift was with audio. I tried to explain that top the Amazon chap, but giving me the audio version was apparently beyond his powers. The score was, I paid at least an hour of time – actually considerably more because I was on the “phone” at least half an hour – and Amazon got the two or three dollars for audio that it never delivered; on the other hand they lost the wages they had to pay for the technical support chap. There may be a lesson there.

But I have the book now, and all my Kindles as well as the Kindle App on my iPhone know it. I just downloaded it to the iPhone; took a bit of figuring out how to get to where to do it, but that’s because there’s no HOME icon on the Kindle app for the iPhone (go to Library, of course) and I kept looking for one. Anyway it works fine although even the Big iPhone 6 is a bit small for me. I like the Kindle Fire a lot, for reading. Just at the moment I’m enjoying Tim Powers’ Hide Me Among The Graves, about Christina Rossetti, her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, and other mid 18^th Century poets, with back story elements involving Byron and Shelley and vampires and ghosts and why Gabriel Rossetti buried workbooks of his poetry with his dead wife and why they dug them up again (a real event) – in other words a ripping Tim Powers story. It reads good on any Kindle, but the big Fire HDX is easiest to read.

So all is well at Chaos Manor, at least for now. The Kindles are working\, the Surface Pro 3 is working, the Microsoft Arc mouse is fun and portable, and there was a hilarious episode of Major Crimes on the TV tonight.

And I just got email from Eric, there’s a new build of Windows 10 that looks even better, so I’ll do that one tomorrow.

OH – and I have an Amazon Echo but haven’t set it up yet. Stay tuned.

World Class University Education – Free!

http://investmentwatchblog.com/one-of-the-worlds-top-universities-is-offering-all-of-their-courses-online-to-anyone-for-free/

“Everything would be free, but program participants that want to receive a credential will be required to pay a small fee. The program is available to learners across the globe, all that is needed is internet access.”

The university – MIT.

Charles Brumbelow

Boston, Mass. – For learners who don’t want to invest in a full residential college ride, or who want to avoid the massive amounts of debt associated with university studies, a program called MITx could be a viable alternative.

With the advent of the internet came a revolution of information becoming available to the average person. MIT University took it one step further when they began a program called OpenCourseWare, which allowed anyone to download full course materials for virtually all classes for free.

But the new MITx interactive online learning platform will go further, giving students access to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student discussions.

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/one-of-the-worlds-top-universities-is-offering-all-of-their-courses-online-to-anyone-for-free/#hH9zE2k5MBf1TiMi.99

Human driver ban and gay marriage decision

Jerry:

Now that the USSC has determined that a person who has a right in one state has that right in all states, I’m waiting for someone from Arizona (where honest citizens can carry guns without permission from the

bureaucracy) to demand that his or her right be recognized in California.

As far as a ban in human drivers in cars, your co-author Larry tossed that idea into a story in which a character watches a drag race and is astonished that the cars were under control of their occupants!

Glad that you continue to improve.

Keith

Doubt that will work, but on the logic of the last decisions it should.

F-35 vs. F-16.

<https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-can-t-dogfight-cdb9d11a875>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

‘What they’ll do as they reach, say, thirty-five years old is not the concern of an economy based on revolving cubicles, marginal salaries, and importing acquiescent labor.’

<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/frenzy-about-high-tech-talent/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Pronouncements like the following have become common currency: “The United States is falling behind in a global ‘race for talent’ that will determine the country’s future prosperity, power, and security.” In Falling Behind?, Michael Teitelbaum argues that alarms like this one, which he quotes, are not only overblown but are often sounded by people who do not disclose their motives. Teitelbaum vehemently denies that we are lagging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, now commonly abbreviated as STEM. Still, he writes that there are facts to be faced:

• In less than 15 years, China has moved from 14th place to second place in published research articles.

• General Electric has now located the majority of its R&D personnel outside the United States.

• Only four of the top ten companies receiving United States patents last year were United States companies.

• The United States ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering.

A-10 & the GAO

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/06/25/gao-rejects-air-force-arguments-to-retire-a10-warthog-fleet.html
In its report, the GAO found that “the Air Force has not fully assessed the cost savings associated with A-10 divestment or its alternatives.”
“For example, A-10 divestment could increase the operational tempo of remaining CAS-capable aircraft, which could increase costs related to extending the service lives of those remaining CAS-capable aircraft,” the GAO said. “To the extent that this occurs, it would reduce the actual savings from the A-10 divestiture below the estimated $4.2 billion.”
On the other hand, the GAO said that savings “could be greater than $4.2 billion because the Air Force estimate did not include the costs for things such as software upgrades or potential structural enhancements that it could incur if it were to keep the A-10.”
“Without a reliable cost estimate, the Air Force does not have a complete picture of the savings it would generate by divesting the A-10 and does not have a reliable basis from which to develop and consider alternatives to achieve budget targets,” the GAO said.
The report stopped short of making recommendations, pending a more detailed GAO assessment and report to Congress later this year on the issues surrounding the potential retirement of the A-10 fleet.
…
Last week, the Senate by a vote of 71-25 approved the National Defense Authorization Act including funding for the A-10 for another year. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill.
— Once again, the A-10 gets a reprieve. But, His Imperial Highness Obama I wants to veto the bill funding it. Take the ground support task away from the Air Farce and give it to the Army. Or, retire every Air Force officer above the rank of Lt. Colonel who had not flown an A-10 in combat or commanded an A-10 unit in combat. And, promote A-10 fliers/commanders accordingly!
Pete

Jerry, you’d better be sitting down when you read this one

Seriously.  Sit down.  Now.

My first reaction was “Dear God in Heaven.”  I think you know me well enough, over the years, to know it takes a LOT to get me to react like that.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/hackers-stole-secrets-of-u-s-government-workers-sex-lives.html

I don’t know whether the law even provides penalties appropriate for someone screwing up THIS badly.

I don’t believe it is even POSSIBLE to screw up this badly by accident.

And it sort of doesn’t matter whether it was by accident or on purpose, this is so bad.

–John

Hackers Stole Secrets of U.S. Government Workers’ Sex Lives

Infidelity. Sexual fetishes. Drug abuse. Crushing debt. They’re the most intimate secrets of U.S. government workers. And now they’re in the hands of foreign hackers.

It was already being described as the worst hack of the U.S. government in history. And it just got much worse.

It’s scary all right. And it’s all true.

I wonder if Senator Obama was in those files?

Elon Musk, First Martian? A Serious Conversation About the Future in Space – Bloomberg Business

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/elon-musk-first-martian-a-serious-conversation-about-the-future-in-space

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, June 28, 2015

My love/hate relationship with the Surface Pro 3 – named Precious again , as it was when I first got it – with Build 10130 of Windows 10 experimental has moved well into love again. Everything just seems to work. I am using it Wi-Fi only; I think some of the problems have been with the docking station, either hardware or more likely drivers as they develop the beta version of Windows 10. Perhaps not; but in any event Wi-Fi has been good enough now that we have the new Ruckus Wireless Wi-Fi Access Points (APs), which support each other. There are four of them, one upstairs, one in the back bedroom, one in the kitchen, and of course one in the downstairs office which is my main office now. We have one Wi-Fi SSID, and it all pretty well Just Works.

The Ruckus APs are not just repeaters, or standalone units. Repeaters receive a signal and rebroadcast it, which cuts into the throughput speed. Instead, each AP acts as a node on the network, under central control of the ZoneDirector, which hands off your device’s connection to the closest AP. This is far simpler than the manual “Which network is strongest?” game we were playing before.

Professional wireless also automatically balances the load across all radios, avoiding congestion from every device talking to a single AP. I’m told that’s harder with Apple devices, particularly iOS (iPhone and iPad) ones, which like to stay affiliated with one AP, even as you move around. I haven’t seen that, but of course this house is fairly small.

Gear of this class scans routinely for interference (Including between APs), changing channels as necessary. This is much more critical on the more-congested 2.4 GHz band, crowded with rogue devices (including your phone in hotspot mode), microwave ovens, baby monitors, and the like, than the less-crowded 5 GHz band.

Ruckus also does beamforming, aiming more of the radio signal at the receiving device, instead of an omnidirectional pattern directing it everywhere. This extends range while decreasing interference.

The good news is, the pro gear tracks all that so you don’t have to.

I also have a new Microsoft Arc Touch Bluetooth mouse for Precious. It is an optical mouse that turns off when you fold it flat, and turns on into a comfortable mouse when you bend it into an arc. Setting it up was simple, and It Just Works. It was not obvious – to me at least – from the pictures how it worked as a mouse, but it is a real mouse, and works on all the surfaces I’ve tried it on as well or better than the Microsoft Red Eye mice I normally use. Bending it into an arc wakes up Precious.

Grandmaster Larry Niven was over and we spent the afternoon being interviewed by a TV documentary maker who was more interested in art than stories, but it went well even so. Nothing may come of it, but you never know. At least they were well prepared. But it sure used up the day.

I have quite a lot of mail from gay marriage enthusiasts asking why I do not rejoice with them. I understand why they are happy; but I don’t rejoice when fundamental changes are made in the Constitutional powers by any process other than amendment regardless of the change. Read Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent for details.

Surface Pro as laptop

I bought a Surface Pro at the 2013 TechEd (for $400!). It’s a fine computer and a decent replacement for my laptop and old homebrew desktop. I added a docking station (Pluggable UD-3900) to connect my two 24” monitors. It’s not as convenient as the docking station for the Surface, but it was half the cost. The little Surface drives it all just fine.

It’s awkward as a laptop because it’s just not mechanically fit for the job. However, if you put it on a laptop cooling pad, it works great.

-Jay

Elon Musk: self-driving cars could lead to ban on human drivers | Technology | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/18/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-ban-human-drivers

I doubt Congress will ever decide that, but courts?

Obergefell, and black-letter text.

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

Here’s the Ninth Amendment, in full: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Here’s what Justice Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion in Obergefell: “The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”

This is exactly right. What the Ninth Amendment explicitly says is, as you learn that meaning of liberty over time, the Bill of Rights should not be construed as a comprehensive limiting list, denying and disparaging what you find in addition through the years.

In other words, the Bill of Rights sets a *minimum* to our freedoms and liberties as American citizens, not a maximum. One would think that someone who has made sacrifices to defend liberty would recognize this.

Here’s what Justice Scalia wrote in dissent: “(The majority) have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.”

Yup. And just for the literalists who querulously ask, “Where in the Bill of Rights does it mention the freedom of {x}…?” — Well, the Framers saw them coming. They wrote the Ninth Amendment to tell them that’s the black-letter text of how the process works. They in fact hesitated to pass a Bill of Rights at all, precisely because they didn’t want the literalist argument to have any credence or capacity to limit freedom, and it was only with Mr. Madison’s drafting of the Ninth they were persuaded the Bill of Rights would be a good thing.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Hoping this finds you well,

Hal O’Brien

Assume you are correct in every measure. This argues new powers for Congress and state legislatures; not more powers for the courts and bureaucracy. How do nine unelected individuals appointed for life determine when the moment has come? They decide that it has, but they have not the power to implement their decision.  Only a legislative body can make laws.

You and Middle-earth

Well let me say something about your books. I really love Footfall and its awesome use of Orion drive. I also know you and Larry Niven from Atomic Rockets website, where there are a lot of information about science fiction stuff.
Then I stumble upon this: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/macguffinite.php
When I read that page, I found an excerpt from you. Bind Your Sons to Exile.
I could spout all the statistics from memory. Moria: first inhabited asteroid. Mining colony. Average distance from the Sun, 2.39 AU, or 357 million kilometers. Irregular shape. Average radius, 7.5 kilometers, minimum 4, maximum 11 km. Mass, 1.78 trillion tons, or about one ten-billionth of Earth mass. Rotation period 8.2 hours. Period, 3.69 Earth years, or 1348.6 Earth days, or 3947 local days’. Surface gravity, 0.2 cm/sec2 , two ten- thousandths of an Earth gee, just enough to keep you from jumping off the place.
If you jumped as hard as you could you’d go up a couple of kilometers, and take hours for the round trip. It wouldn’t be a smart thing to do.
Composition, varied, with plenty of veins of metals. Moria was once part of a much bigger rock, one big enough to have had a molten core. Then it got battered to hell and gone, exposing what had been the interior. Now you can mine: magnesium, uranium, iron, aluminum, and nickel. There’s gold and silver. There’s also water and ammonia ices under the surface, which are a hell of a lot more important than the metals. Or are they? Without the metals we wouldn’t be out here. Without the ices we couldn’t stay.
Our supporters on Earth called us the cutting edge of technology. We were the first of a series of asteroid mine operations that would eventually liberate Earth forever from shortages of raw materials. The orbital space factories already demonstrated what space manufacturing could do; and with asteroid mines to supply raw materials, the day would come when everyone on Earth could enjoy the benefits of industry without the penalties of industrial pollution.
Bind Your Sons to Exile (1976)
Then I remember that Moria is also a dwarf mine in Lord of the Rings, and it also contain precious metals such as mithril.
But of course, as a science guy I need to separate between correlation and causation. Who knows that it is just coincidental?
So I’ve searched for your books, so I can get the bigger picture. Then I found this:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/39099?page=4&per_page=30&title=Jerry_Pournelle
The Battle of Sauron. And that is what drives me to ask you directly about this. Do you read Lord of the Rings? What is your opinion about that?

Ignatius Rivaldi

Well, yes – I have read the Lord of the Rings epic, and I much enjoyed it. Thank you for asking. When I wrote that, I was hoping that we would have asteroid mines by 2015. It appears I was a bit early in that prediction.

Video of the F9 first-stage anomaly and vehicle loss can be seen at https://youtu.be/ZeiBFtkrZEw?t=23m34s

space.access@mindspring.com

But we have a commercial space program, and Moore’s Law is inexorable (although not as first expressed).

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, June 26, 2015

There’s good news at home, and not very good news nationally. But perseverance fixed my computer problems, and that is what it will take to remedy the recent Supreme Court decisions. We need to keep a Senate Majority, get a sane President, and wait. This Liberal Court does not believe in the Constitution, nor, the evidence indicates, in black letter law. We’re back to emanations and penumbras and SCOTUS has asserted a supremacy that it does not have.

We’ve lived through Constitutional crises before, and Hamilton was right in the Federalist, the courts are the weakest branch of government. They have asserted legislative powers before, sometimes getting away with it and sometimes not; we have to see to it that they do not get away with it this time.

There’s a problem: While the Court assertion of legislative authority is dangerous, on some issues it is nearly irrelevant. Gay marriage is one of them: while it is unlikely that Congress would assert a right to gay marriage anytime soon, a lot of Members feel relief that they won’t be called upon to vote on the issue. The swings in public opinion are wide, and cases like the elderly bakers run out of business for refusing to bake a gay wedding cake will produce more swings, but the direction is clear. Very few – almost no one – would deny the legal rights associated with marriage to gay couples, and many places tried to substitute what amounted to marriage in all but name, preserving the word “marriage” to its ancient meaning, one man and one woman. That was not enough, and thus the Court found in the Constitution (as amended) a right to marriage that would have been abhorrent to the Framers, and to those who adopted the amendments. It is only recently that legislatures have been willing to legalize gay marriage, and not all of them have done so; yet it is clearly a legislative matter. It is also clearly a matter for the states. The Constitution gives Congress no power to define marriage nor the Federal Government no power to perform weddings.

As a practical matter it took that power to itself, and no one really objected. Perhaps they should have.

In any event, since (I believe) a vast majority now accepts the idea that gays are entitled to civil union indistinguishable from marriage, it leaves little to fight over; still, it ought to be left to Congress and the State legislatures. Courts are to interpret laws and apply laws; in some cases perhaps to discover laws (common law marriage as an example); but legislatures make law, and when you remove that distinction you put into danger the notion of the rule of law; a government of laws, not men; and that is extremely dangerous. Rule of law is essential to stable government.

The ancients, and some moderns, knew and know that good government is a blessing, and a rare one at that. These court decisions undermine the rules that have given these United States the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; we strike at that heritage to our peril. We sow the wind.

Meanwhile at Chaos Manor, we had many adventures with the Surface Pro 3 and its experimental Windows 10. It isn’t worth recounting the full story, but it consumed the day: I could not make it see Wi-Fi networks, and after a while it wouldn’t even turn Wi-Fi on.

Eventually I used the docking station to get it to connect to the Internet with an Ethernet connection, and as it fought me all the way, I tried to refresh, then update, the Surface Pro. It wouldn’t refresh but it finally decided to update. That took a long time, and was fitful, but eventually I had Build 10130 of the trial Windows 10. I took it out of the docking station (and thus off the Internet, no Ethernet) and restarted it, and Lo! It searched networks, found the new Wi-Fi, and once I typed in the password it worked fine, or seems to. I am about to take it into the breakfast room to play with as I eat lunch. More later, but it looks good.

Back after lunch.

1600:  The Surface 3 Pro works very well.  I need a mouse – I don’t manipulate a stylus well, and right-clicking is a real chore – but that’s me.  I make no doubt that most of you would make do nicely without.  Anyway I am looking at offers of wireless mouses for the Surface 3 Pro, and also for a good messenger bag carry case for it. I’m in no hurry.

In the breakfast room I was able to use it just fine for everything: looking at news, making notes, Word.  The keyboard is no harder to use than this comfort-curve, and actually might be better.The keys are larger. I had problems correcting mistakes because of my clumsiness in using the stylus for right clicks, but I may have made fewer errors, too.  OneNote and a good tablet make wonderful research tools, and this new build of Windows 10 works – all the infuriating problems of the Surface 3 Pro seem to be gone – works well so far.  I haven’t used it enough to be sure, but this moves far towards recommended status.

Microsoft is infuriating, but this is the third mark of this tablet/laptop and it begins to look as if they may be getting there. I want to experiment with using it as a tablet, without keyboard; and get more familiar with this way of doing things, but my first impression was favorable – after the frustrations of the last weeks – and I can hope we’re on the way to a beautiful friendship.

If I have to produce a lot on the road, and particularly if I am holding the machine in my lap, I think I would still prefer a MacBook Air (for ease of carrying) or a ThinkPad ( for usefulness) but I now am not sure that’s a permanent preference. The Surface Pro 3 – I haven’t given him a permanent name, but he’s earned one and it will come soon – with OneNote begins to look as if it could be what I’ve wanted all my life: something that just works.  Of course they may improve it and scuttle that opinion…

So: I’m looking for a carry case messenger bag, and for a good wireless mouse that will travel with the Surface Pro 3. Suggestions welcome. 

ISIS once more demonstrates why it cannot be allowed to exist.

Day of terror: Islamist attacks around world follow ISIS’ Ramadan message

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/06/26/man-beheaded-in-apparent-terror-attack-at-factory-in-france-local-media-say/

Terrorists gunned down dozens of tourists on a Tunisian beach, left a severed head atop a fence outside a French factory and blew up a Kuwaiti mosque Friday in a bloody wave of attacks that followed an ISIS leader’s call to make the month of Ramadan a time of “calamity for the infidels.”

I recommend this article on the nearly forgotten Druze:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-druse-minority-shows-unity-with-its-syrian-kin-1435244258

Israel’s Druse Minority Shows Unity With Its Syrian Kin

Minority presses prime minister to intervene as brethren in Syria clash with Islamists

ENLARGE

Members of the Druse community carry flags at they walk toward the border fence between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near the Druse village of Majdal Shams, to watch the fighting in Syria on June 16. Photo: baz ratner/Reuters

By

Joshua Mitnick

Updated June 25, 2015 7:23 p.m. ET

HURFEISH, Israel—The men of this Druse village in the Galilee mountains proudly don shirts from their days in elite Israeli combat units. But now they fear the same military is helping Islamist rebels in neighboring Syria who fight the pro-regime Druse minority.

Druse straddle both sides of the contentious border and many of them in Israel accuse the military of quietly allying with Islamist rebels to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while many Syrian Druse are fighting for the Assad regime.

The article gives some introductory background on the Druze.  Druze to not allow conversion, so they are not proselytizing; and those who live in Israel are not only citizens, but many are police and security officers. Only the elders know the full extent of Druze beliefs; some of the religion is secret, even from most of its members. The Druze position in the Lebanon settlement is Chief of Staff of the armed forces.

See  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact

The President of the Republic is always a Maronite Catholic.

The Prime Minister of the Republic is always a Sunni Muslim.

The Speaker of the Parliament is always a Shi’a Muslim.

The Deputy Speaker of the Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister are always Greek Orthodox Christian.

The Chief of the General Staff is always a Druze.

Parliament members are always in a ratio of 6:5 in favour of Christians to Muslims

Under this agreement Lebanon thrived, and Beirut became “The Paris of the Middle East.”

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Druze

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11154342288815824014704581070312593496554 

Editor’s note: Below are excerpts from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in the ObamaCare case King v. Burwell; on Thursday the court ruled 6-3 for the Obama administration. A related editorial appears nearby.

The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says “Exchange established by the State” it means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.” That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so. . . .

This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. . . .

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. . . .

The Court interprets §36B to award tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges. It accepts that the “most natural sense” of the phrase “Exchange established by the State” is an Exchange established by a State. (Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) Yet the opinion continues, with no semblance of shame, that “it is also possible that the phrase refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal.” (Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) The Court claims that “the context and structure of the Act compel [it] to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”

The entire dissent is worth reading,

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-john-roberts-1435272535

For the second time in three years, Chief Justice John Roberts has rewritten the Affordable Care Act in order to save it. Beyond its implications for health care, the Court’s 6-3 ruling in King v. Burwell is a landmark that betrays the Chief’s vow to be “an umpire,” not a legislator in robes. He stands revealed as a most political Justice.

The black-letter language of ObamaCare limits insurance subsidies to “an Exchange established by the State.” But the Democrats who wrote the bill in 2010 never imagined that 36 states would refuse to participate. So the White House through the IRS wrote a regulation that also opened the subsidy spigots to exchanges established by the federal government.

***

Chief Justice Roberts has now become a co-conspirator in this executive law-making. With the verve of a legislator, he has effectively amended the statute to read “established by the State—or by the way the Federal Government.” His opinion—joined by the four liberal Justices and Anthony Kennedy—is all the more startling because it goes beyond normal deference to regulators.

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Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.