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Monday, January 19, 2009

I see in today's Los Angeles Times:

Front page articles on the historic inauguration: a rock concert with huge crowds, snipers on the parapet of the Lincoln Memorial, and the President-elect in a glass box with his family. No hotel rooms in Washington, historic crowds despite stringent security measures.

Also on the front page: an article by Gosselin with the headline "Better in Four Years? Unlikely"

Better off in 4 years? Unlikely;
The U.S. economy is running on only one cylinder: government.

And on the front page of the business section: "Tighter emission rules seen".

If the auto industry thinks it has problems now, wait until Barack Obama takes the wheel.

Not long after assuming the presidency, Obama is expected to grant a waiver allowing California and more than a dozen other states to enforce their own greenhouse-gas emission standards on autos.

I am not sure that further comment is necessary.

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

Worm warning. It's old news but not everyone had heard of it or taken precautions. See the InfoWorld article for details and a free tool to remove it. This one can spread through USB devices such as thumb drives.

=========

A new Chaos Manor Reviews mailbag is now posted.

And Francis Hamit recommends a new self-publishing web site.

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

Commuted sentence for border patrol agents 

Dr. Pournelle,

It’s probably all over the news in Calif, but in case you hadn’t heard…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_pardons 

Pres Bush commuted the sentences of the two former Border Patrol agents who shot that Mexican drug dealer. I wish he’d gone for a full pardon and double-wish he’d done it months ago, but this is better than nothing I suppose. I guess it goes to show you that if you shoot someone, make damn sure they are dead dead dead. From a practical standpoint, that appears to be the primary lesson to be learned from this one.

Sean

Agreed on all counts. I just heard Dana Rohrabacher say much the same thing on the radio.

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

1815: Down from the Monk's cell. Two thousand words today. Hoo Hah! And stopped in mid scene.

 

 

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Tuesday,  January 20, 2009

Inauguration Day   

=========

This is not a breaking news web site, and I will reserve comments on the inauguration for another time. The event was historic in that it was the 43rd time of the peaceful transition of a chief of state. I know that the study of history is no longer fashionable, but that's still unusual. The one time the process failed in these United States cost us more casualties than any of our other wars.

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

Yesterday's link to the new Chaos Manor Reviews mailbag was in error, but that has been fixed.

And now it is time for our walk.

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

Clearly the President knows the Oath of Office better than the Chief Justice. The constitution mandates:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Apparently the Chief Justice gave this from memory rather than reading it as is usual (even priests are required to use a missal) and misplaced the word 'faithfully', which somewhat disconcerted President Obama. Fortunately this is 21at Century America, not the old Roman Republic where they took omens and augury very seriously. (For trivia hunters and those interested in small details of history, I can recommend this essay. Fair warning: I found it addicting, and it's quite long.)

In any event, we can all celebrate the peaceful transition of power; few nations in history can record doing that 43 times without civil war. And of course we no longer believe in augury and omens.

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

Of course we do believe in myths: http://businessandmedia.org/articles/
2009/20090114094613.aspx and we like some very odd shapes http://www.slate.com/id/
2208216/slideshow/2208554
/fs/0//entry/2208555/  but at least we can have free housing. http://www.denverpost.com/
business/ci_11475891

The above is a sort of experiment and I don't think it works.

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

 

 

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Wednesday,  January 21, 2009

I didn't get up in time for the inaugural yesterday, but I read Obama's inaugural address this morning. I'll have more to say another time, but I am astonished that no one else seems to have picked up on that I thought was a remarkable line:

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.

It appears that Obama has legitimized the Viet Nam War. Since nothing goes into an inaugural address by accident, putting Keh Sanh in the same list with Concord, Gettysburg, and Normandy can have no other purpose. He has my respect for that.

The rest of the speech was not particularly remarkable for these times; it does seem to portend a great reliance on government, but there is also tribute to individuals and their efforts.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

There's little to quarrel with in this paragraph, so long as one puts emphasis on the word "willing". Indeed I have been saying something of the sort for years: the nation must allow everyone an honorable way to contribute to the society and have some pride and dignity in that contribution. That is not the same as saying that everyone ought to be made to feel "entitled" to a share of someone else's work. Enslaving the productive to the entitled is not a route to any kind of good at all. One can hope that Obama understood this when composing that speech.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it. [Emphasis added.]

I am not at all sure what to make of this. One could write whole essays on this paragraph. Precisely how an American tsx collector is morally obligated to collect money from an American auto worker to be passed along to those who suffer in Haiti is not clear to me. One may have a religious obligation to be charitable; but we have explicitly rejected religions as motivation for national policy.  (Whether we ought to reject religious motivations is a subject for another discussion; but certainly the party now in power has done so.) Where, then, did we get an obligation to the suffering masses in Burma, Tibet, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Bangla Desh? If one wants to argue that this is a requirement for a realistic foreign policy, one needs to be careful: it's easy to make that sound like a policy of paying Danegeld. Investment in the Navy would I think protect us better than bribes. The Marshall Plan had a purpose, and it wasn't really charity towards the suffering victims of Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay.

And it's time for our morning walk. Happy New Year. And rejoice in this: for the 43rd time in our history we have had a transfer of power without civil war.

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

From Advisor and Chaos Manor Reviews Managing Editor Brian Bilbrey ; A WARNING

Regarding seagate firmware updates: DON'T.

See this link. Seagate firmware bricks drives - bricks ALL the attached drives that the firmware applies to in the system, at once. Yay, Seagate. Should be reflashable for repair, but wow...

http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/message?board.id=
ata_drives&thread.id=5625&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 

-- Brian Bilbrey
 "I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And, for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'." -- Bob Newhart

Take heed.

BUT SEE BELOW

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

Can Socialism Work?

Dr. Pournelle,

I am trying to fight my depression regarding the coming anointing of Barrack Obama. Since he carries a lot of our fate for the next 4 (8, 12??) years I have to wish him well, too. But, do you or the readers of your site know of areas where liberalism/socialism have actually worked? I would think that if the liberal agenda really worked well then there should not be a poor person in the Santa Clara Valley, or Boston/Cambridge, or for that matter in the area of Bellaire and Malibu. So, unless other areas are exporting their poor into these areas, I am wondering what track record Mr. Obama is running on? Please enlighten me.

Douglas

First, despair is a sin; one must never forget that.

As to places where socialism and liberalism work, one needs to define what it means for a regime to "work". Sweden is very liberal to the point of socialism, and it's quite a pleasant place to live. How long that will continue is not known to me, but one of my oldest friends is a retired medical colonel from the Swedish army. When I visited Sweden I had a very pleasant time and every single one of the people I met was polite, nearly all spoke English, and all without regard to their social class seemed happy. There was a water festival going on in Stockholm and everyone seemed to be having a great time. I saw few beggars. There were street musicians hoping for donations, but that's not the same thing. The police were polite.

Whether that can last, and how much of it is due to the nature of the Swedish people and the Swedish culture is a matter for lots of discussion, of course. I am told that as the older generation brought up under the Protestant Ethic and accustomed to working without complaining dies off things change and are changing, but I don't follow the news very closely. Denmark is said to have the happiest population on Earth. The Netherlands is the most densely populated nation in the world (or was back in the 80's when I wrote about such things), certainly has a decidedly liberal government, and seems pleasant enough although there are growing problems.

Whether this kind of liberalism is exportable can be debated, and whether or not this sort of government can thrive in a very large and diverse nation -- or federation of states, or however you want to describe the American polity -- is very much a subject of debate.

As to whether liberal democracy can eliminate all poverty and raise the entire population of the United States to middle class status, and do that by government action and government fiat, probably not. Most socialist states don't work, and end up with people competing for civil service positions as the only assured way to have a career. India used to be that way and seems to be dismantling some of its socialist tendencies.

As an aside: Sweden has universal manhood conscription; I was told that the main penalty for not serving one's time in the army was that you could never get a civil service position, and employers were allowed to discriminate against you in hiring practices. This is an interesting way to deal with bureaucracies.

The main argument against socialism (other than indignation over taking from the productive to subsidize the unproductive) is that it destroys the incentive to work and work hard, or to take entrepreneurial risks. Schumpeter discusses this in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and I urge all those interested in these matters to read his book.

Burke said that for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely. I think few disagree: the question is, how to bring that about. And of course what we mean by lovely. No one thinks Detroit is lovely just now.

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

One note: several commentators said yesterday that this is the 44th peaceful transfer of power in these United States (Obama being the 44th President).  Oddly enough, I didn't think that through, and when I remarked on the subject I said 43rd peaceful transfer; I don't count Lincoln's accession as peaceful, given that it triggered Secession and the the Civil War.

Bob Thompson reminds me that unless one counts the accession of George Washington and the beginning of the Constitution as itself a peaceful transfer of power, this the 43rd transfer, meaning the 42nd peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution. That's still quite a record, particularly since World War II, when the President of the United States became arguably the most powerful person on Earth.

And now it's time to go work on Mamelukes.

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

 

 

 

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Thursday,  January 22, 2009

.

G'day Jerry,

In his speech Obama mentioned that 44 Americans have now taken the oath of office. But wasn't Grover Cleveland both the 22nd and 24th president? I know, nitt picking, but I'm surprised no-one's picked up on it when they are crawling all over every other part of his speech.

Having the benefit of distance (Perth, Western Australia) and no real partisan bias I thought he did alright. I'm very glad we don't go in for all the razel associated with the crowning of an elected king. The swearing in ceremony of the Australian Prime Minister takes place in a small room in the Governor General's residence and has only about half a dozen witnesses, no-one else would fit in the room.

Regards, Chris Papalia.

You know, you're right. Cleveland was 22nd and 24th President, so all those counts are off.  And of course i have always known that. Samuel Johnson said that man seldom needed educating but they often need reminding...

Any further discussion of this subject will be in mail.

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

Important Notice on Seagate software (See above for context)

Here's the latest:

Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008. In some unique circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on.

While we believe that the vast majority of customers will not experience any disruption related to this issue, as part of our commitment to customer satisfaction, Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16. We regret any inconvenience that the firmware issues have caused our customers.

To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate Support web site at http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/news.jsp?DocId=207931 

In the unlikely event your drive is affected and you cannot access your data, the data still resides on the drive and there is no data loss associated with this issue. Seagate is working with customers to expedite a remedy.

For assistance, customers can send an email to Seagate: Americas: discsupport@seagate.com, disksupport@seagate.com  APAC: ssdc.apacsupport@seagate.com <mailto:ssdc.apacsupport@seagate.com>  EMEA: Euro.techsupport@seagate.com 

Support is also available through Seagate’s call center: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283)

Best, Mike

Mike Hall
Corporate Communications
Seagate Technology

My experiences with Seagate drives have been from very good to excellent, with the exception of the electronics in certain 500 MB external USB drives from several years ago; those drives are fine, but the electronics have failed drastically. That may be firmware but it hardly matters, given the current prices of larger USB drive units; as I said these are older units no longer offered for sale.

I have had an external terabyte Seagate Free Agent drive using ESATA interface running for about a year as backup and data transfer drive for my main communications system, and it works so well I haven't thought about it in months. I use ESATA rather than USB 2.0 because it's faster, but I confess I harbor suspicions about the reliability of USB for transfer of very large data files. My suspicions may be unfounded.

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

From Joe Hennessey

Obituary

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/02.05/99-huntington.html

 -Joe

Huntington was one of the great men of our time.

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

1246 We seem to have had a mild earthquake, one sharp shock, a moment ago. 

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

Not much of an earthquake.

Got 1,000 words done.

 

 

 

 

 

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Friday,  January 23, 2008

Lots to do. Getting ready for a short road trip.

I'm told that VMware 2.1 is a great improvement. If you're running Windows on a Mac, this is the program to do it with: again, this is a report from a reliable source, not personal data. I'm still building my Mac OS/ Virtual Windows capability. They just don't seem to be putting as many hours in the day as they used to.

We seem to be doomed. See mail.

And I am way behind for the day.

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday,  January 24, 2009

I'm mostly getting ready for my trip to Washington. I'll be gone for a few days.  I've been grinding on Mamelukes -- note that it is not Marmelukes -- for the past few days and it's coming along. It's taking longer than I like, but I managed to keep plugging and I'll get it finished pretty soon now.

Thanks to all those who have recently renewed their subscriptions, and to all the new subscribers. Particular thanks to the Platinum Subscribers who give me the choice to work on what I need to without having to scrabble around to keep the bills paid.

It took me about an hour to find out that when American Airlines asks for the "record location" when you try to confirm your reservation, what they want is a six letter code that is associated with the entire trip. I had the code, but nowhere did I find anything to indicate that this is what was meant by "record location". Of course the ticket agent whom I eventually got on the telephone knew what it was, but didn't care beans that I hadn't figured it out, so I doubt the American Airlines web site will change anything; but a simple statement on the web site that a record location is a six letter code would have ended my confusion. Oh well.

Now I have to pay the bills. I've sort of lost the knack of getting ready for trips. I used to have to travel all the time and I had a system, but now I've pretty well got to think about every item. And the TSA is just eager to catch me making a mistake. The purpose of the TSA is to convince Americans that they are subjects, not citizens, and it does that very well indeed.

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

I'll be flying tomorrow, so it's not likely I'll do much to update this place before late Sunday or Monday. I have put up a lot of good mail for today so you'll have something to read. Did you know that Archimedes invented calculus? Or nearly did?

There's mail on the Gatehouse case, dissent in the Jewish Army, and the Machiavellians. All good stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday,  January 25, 2009

It's Monday Morning in Tyson's corners. Niven and I had a good if a bit long flight, and arrived safely. I'll probably be busy most of tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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