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Mail 111 July 24 - 30, 2000

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Monday  July 24, 2000

 From: Chris Morton cmorton@newsguy.com 

Subj: Small arms Follies

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

On the subject of dubious small arms purchases, if you think WE have problems, you should look at the Brits. The British army essentially has NO serviceable infantry rifles at this time, apart from the small quantities of M16 type weapons possessed by SAS and Pathfinders. EVERY single SA80 assault rifle in service has been condemned as unserviceable by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD). Current plans are to contract with the German arms manufacturer Heckler &; Koch (H&;K) to rebuild every one of these abortions at an estimated total cost of 80 MILLION Pounds. Rather than spend pages describing the SA80's every fault, suffice to say that squeezing the receiver too tightly during firing will cause the bolt to bind in the action, creating an immediate stoppage. General consensus is that it would be cheaper to entirely replace this junk with real firearms such as the M16A2 or H&;K G36. They'll probably rebuild the SA80s....

As far as questionable technology goes, the Germans inched up to the precipice a few years ago, then wisely backed away, rejecting the bizarre G11 rifle from H&;K. This prop from an "Aliens" movie fired caseless ammunition in which the bullet was glued to the powder charge, used a bolt which rotated like a Wankel rotary engine, and had seals like a car engine. It looked like the guts of a flush toilet contained in the shell of a large VHS camcorder. Between the insuperable reliability problems and the laughable 4.7mm "cartridge", the Germans gave it up as a bad job.

Sure, we have our share of pratfalls, but there are people out there doing even worse.

Chris Morton cmorton@newsguy.com Rocky River, Ohio

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I'm quite excited about developments in my alma mater branch, Infantry, even if the current techno-bureacracy is completely mishandling them. I want to "run out and shout at people", as you used to say in A Step Farther Out.

The "Queen of Battle", which infantry never really was during my career, is about to resume her reign. The 7.62mm (and HE fragment) proof infantryman with CPU is coming real soon. He's partly here already. The so-called Light Infantryman is joining the category of hard targets on the battlefield. Scan the Army and Air Force inventories for all the weapons, submunitions, tactics and strategic assumptions that man block obsolesces.

The Power Point briefing said L-W is intended to treat the infantryman as a weapons system and enhance "survivability, lethality, and C4I". So far so good virtually. But then the Army's Force Mod consensus made all the wrong choices. They chose to optimize the C4I at the expense of Survivability and Lethality.

Developmental LW is already partly armored against 7.62mm, but he's only equipped with 5.56mm based on Euguene Stoner's 1950s designs. It's as if Lord Admiral Jackie Fisher launched the Dreadnaught armed with smooth bore muzzle loaders. Weight was too great, too. Eighty-six pounds is a no-go. Fifty pounds is the max. They just have to go back to the CAD program and eliminate the features designed to allow Clinton to control infantry combat from the Oval Office and instead emphasize Lethality and Survivability.

Congress rightly deferred LAND WARRIOR buys in its present form, even if for the wrong reasons. Their objection was the disconnect between battery durability and all of Land Warrior's digital electronics designed to network him to the Oval Office. My objection is the emphasis on all the electronics designed to bring back 5 echelons of virtual Command/Control choppers orbiting the battlefield, this time from 100km away. We had enough problems in 'Nam with Precede Me leadership principles without reintroducing them into our force by conscious design. Picture the results with Hillary's Command Picks trying it from laptops.

People who want to understand how a properly designed Land Warrior force operates need to buy "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein.

My own view of Land Warrior is body kill zone armored against 7.62mm and otherwise armored against HE fragments and war gasses. He has two primary weapons . The first is a .50 caliber semiautomatic rifle with thermal TAADS firing caseless ammo in DU long rod penetrators and explosive bullets. With trained marksmen this will get at least 1000 meters pinpoint and 2,000 with squads and platoons firing on the "cone of fire principle". In the Korean War there was a sniper with a locally made rifle built up from a .50 caliber barrel. He got several hundred kills from 500-1,000 meters. Picture a platoon leader able to mass 36 of these guys.

So the Armored Light Infantryman's biggest remaining threat is the 14.7mm machinegun (and his opposite number). While that focuses on one fire team, the platoon leader will mass 2 1/12 other squads' same caliber aimed fires against that machinegun crew. It won't take more than 50-75 lessons to bring that experiment to an end.

The second weapon is a 4,000-6,000 meter infantry carried FOG-M that he hooks up to his HUD and CPU. This will go a long way to keeping attack helo chain gun fires off of him, as well as vehicle mounted 14.7s and 20-30 mm weapons. Just a small warhead, about 1.5 lbs of shaped charge.

Imagine a battalion of these guys turned loose in a Heavy Corps Rear Area via stealth gliders. They'll just gun down all the uniformed camp followers, destroy the C4I nodes with their FOG-Ms and torch the POL units and ammunition holding points.

I can hear the Red Legs now. "But the artillery, the artillery....!" Sorry guys. Your dumb shells were never much use against tanks, except to strip away their unprotected infantry. Tank companies typically ran 12-17 (I'm already talking past tense, I know) vehicles. Compare that to 150 such targets. You maximized A-P with scatterable submunitions. Fragments don't affect the armored infantryman. V-T electronic pre-detonators are already here. And what was that I heard about "shoot and scoot" because of counter-battery?

Densely massed submunitions against ALIs might work, at least until he opens a fiberglass umbrella designed to pre-detonate bomblets. His armor handles the fragments per normal.

Precision Guided Anti-Personnel Munitions. ALI doesn't present 5% of the signatures used to acquire and attack vehicles and aircraft. And you have to get this guy in the grass or behind trees and stonewalls. Talk to the engineers about this one. How do you plan to acquire this guy? Thermal? Works until ALI's own fire support scatters same calorie thermal heat sources all around him at a 50:1 ratio. Optical? Can you say camouflage and 'SMOKE'? Radar? Returned from what? This guy is 90% plastic, ceramics and flesh already. And how much does that unit cost for 5,000,000 copies?

And you have to HIT him. Close with a fragmentation explosion doesn't count anymore, unless you can generate HE fragments more penetrative than 7.62mm NATO ball. Laser guided? You can't afford a HELLFIRE level weapon for this many targets, so the missile and warhead is lots smaller. And he can break laser lock faster than anything yet.

It's the above emerging technologies that make Shinseki's 'Medium Brigades' useless except as police adjuncts to NGO's on Mary Poppins missions. The fallacious assumption is they will be superior to dismounted infantry in most environments. The M1 is still largely safe from ALI, if not particularly lethal.

But Shinseki's lightweight Armored Gun System and all IFV's are just dead meat to both the massed, aimed .50 caliber fires and the FOG-M's. "Third squad, FOG TARGET!" <image inside red square appears on 10 HUDS> "In volley, FIRE!".

Hey there, Aviator, whatcha gonna do? Hose'em down with chain guns? "PLATOON! FOG target..." At your $25 million price tag the biggest problem will be FOG-M fraticide from all the other platoons that couldn't resist taking a shot. You get the idea. And you got less armor than the tankers had, no reactive armor at all, and your shimmering whirly bird blades are easily picked out from ground clutter by a Pentium.....

So what if infantry FOG-M is only 30-35% first round kill probable? That's three top-down hits.

Yes, I know, SOCOM AC-130s. Did you read the papers recently about the THEL test at White Sands? Why do you think you're a harder target than a rocket?

Yours Truly,

Mark A. Gallmeier CPT (R), Queen of Battle

Dr. Pournelle:

Although the letter of 7/24 was indeed fascinating reading and this e-mail is *NOT* a criticism, I would like to make one small request: Would you be so kind as to mention in View and/or Mail that letters like 'Queen of Battles' would be very much more useful if the writer would define acronyms? There are some of us who just don't know whether FOG means Fine Old Gun, Fat Old Goat, or Foolish Obese Gnat.

I can usually, not always, pick out the meaning from context, but a defined acronym really helps.

Thanks.

Jerry,

My favorite Army development story comes from the mid 80s when I was a defense contractor working for the Army Development and Employment Agency at Ft. Lewis Washington, in conjunction with the 9ID (Motorized). ADEA was supposed to invent lots of neato keeno faster, lighter, cheaper applications of commercial technology that the 9ID(MTZ) soldiers could employ in field tests.

One of the programs there was called Lighten the Load. The idea was to cut the weight of all the stuff that the grunts had to hump. After much churn the program birthed its first product: a strengthening program for soldiers.

jim dodd jimdodd@tcubed.net

 

 

Dr. Pournelle, Mark A. Gallmeier CPT (R), Queen of Battle, has it wrong, at least partially, I firmly believe. First, as an Infantryman, I reject any notion that we were "Queen" of anything (maybe in the Army...). Warfare is a game of King of the Mountain, and it fell upon the infantry to climb up and be king. One of the most famous war photos is exactly such: the Marines, and Navy Corpsman, planting the flag on Mount Suribachi. Queen of the hill? I think not. (This is not to be taken as a knock on women. It is NOT.) On to my point. Technology is being pushed, but cannot yet be relied upon. We have trouble with the main battle rifle, the M16A2, though not as much as during Vietnam, and most of the bumps have been smoothed over. Hell, we even had trouble with our radios at times, the PRC 77, a left-over from Vietnam, like the M16. Seems as though we didn't learn any lessons. (Much has changed since I left the service, but not enough, I gather.) High-Tech isn't the answer. China has it half right: with enough soldiers, supplied cheaply, any battle and war can be won. I'd amend it to be enough superbly trained soldiers. Then see what your half-trained cyborgs are reduced to. Technology is a boon only if it can provide confidence to the infantryman, and a flaky HUD isn't confidence-inspiring.

George Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> ICQ 37042478/ 28885038 "Inconsistency is the key to flexibility." "If you cooperate, we'll reduce the charges from hit and run murder to littering." -Lord Barons

Jerry, Mark A. Gallmeier CPT (R), has some valid points regarding the "electronication" of the infantryman. However, he makes the same mistake that many make; old technology has limits. In particular I belive he has exceeded his 50lbs max with only two of his weapons. Barret makes a .50cal rifle, the bolt action version with 5 rounds is over 25 lbs, unless you want to have broken shoulders, it's got to weigh that much. Ever fired the ranging rifle on an old jeep mounted recoiless?

FOG-M, a weapon who's time has come. The 82nd is doing an extended evaluation of these right now. I used to be in TOW's and these will change the battlefield! But you can't change the laws of physics, unless you have created a new compsite motor matrix . Using the bare minimum to boost 6000 meters you have a weight class similar to the stinger, so before food,water, end electronic we are at about 58lbs. How about using these guys as targeteers, but this seems to be just another way to relive the Battle of Roarks Drift. " Load FOG-M, AIM,Front rank Fire!!,Load .50 cal SLAP AIM, second rank FIRE!!

"The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out."

B. H. Liddell Hart

JODY DORSETT farnham12@yahoo.com

Dr. Pournelle, I was intrigued by Mark Gallmeier's letter and his concept of the "Armored Light Infantryman". The problem I see with it is weight. We have a saying in the Army today - "100 lbs of light weight equipment still weighs 100 lbs". I just don't see how you can get all the equipment that he is talking about into a package that will weigh anything less than 100 lbs (and I think that I am being generous with that figure). I agree with the target weight that he gave of 50 lbs as the max you would want for an infantryman going into combat, but you have to understand that we are almost at that weight today with our present weapons load (and that is for a rifleman, not an automatic rifleman or grenadier). Our present body armor really only protects vital organs from 7.62MM and a slightly greater area against fragmentation. To make body armor that would allow an infantryman to brush aside HE frag munitions the way he describes would be heavy to the point where you would be almost immobile (not to mention his "umbella"). The weapons suite that he describes sounds good once again, but how much would it weigh? We in the infantry are already cringing at the thought of carrying something as heavy as the present OICW concept. The idea he is talking about sounds quite a bit heavier. To get an idea what a .50 CAL rifle weighs, go pick up a Barret .50 CAL sniper rifle. It's a great weapon for its intended purpose, but to give something like that to all the troops would not work. This also leaves the question of MOUT. The infantryman needs a weapon that can perform in close quarters as well as in the open. Such a huge weapon would not fulfill both rolls. As for the FOG-M concept, I am not sure what he means by this, but try carrying an AT-4 around (just 1) for a day. It's heavy, cumbersome, and awkward. You would not want to carry more than one into combat (unless in a static position). The last thing that Mr. Gallmeier's concept does not address is suppressive fires. None of his concept weapons appear to be able to put out a high volume of fire. While the best thing to do is always hit the enemy, every infantryman knows that, more often than not, you're going to have to suppress them somehow before you can get into a position to hit and kill them. An infantry platoon needs some form of high volume of fire weapon that can fulfill this purpose. The only way that I see such a concept working would be to go to a true "Starship Troopers" like infantryman with a powered exoskeleton that can support that kind of combat load and still allow the soldier to move. How far are we from having that kind of technology? I don't have the background or experience to answer that, but I do feel that that is the direction in which we eventually need to head. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who is familiar with this type of technology. Can it be done? Thank you for your time and for a great web page.

Matthew D. Kirchner CPT, IN matthewkirchner@hotmail.com

==

Dear Dr. Pournelle, Saw the letter from Cpt. Gallmeier and just had to respond.

Is all this wonder-gear as robust as the PRC-77 Field Radio? If it is not it is useless. As a former soldier I can assure you that if it is raining artillery I will be more concerned with saving myself and, if the wonder gear happens to get totalled when I dive for cover, well, better it than me. I was in commo and we joked about commo gear being "infantry proof." The PRC-77 and field phones being classic examples. Took lots of abuse without failing. Certainly there were (even in the mid-eighties) civilian radios that were easily adaptable to military freqs, much lighter weight, and much less expensive. Throw one of them into a deuce and a half and toss in a PRC-77 and see which one still works!

Another problem. This wonder-gear probably requires extensive training to use. Where do we get the soldiers who have the education and smarts to learn how to use it? The Army is already having trouble recruiting. Do we bring back the draft, but only take the well educated middle class men? Whose parents will probably all vote in the next election? The middle class, in my understanding, did not turn against the Vietnam war until their husbands,sons, and friends started getting sent over there. The middle class would certainly vote against any congressman who wanted to bring back the draft, and limit it to the men who were actually useful in the New Army. Or do we draft everybody and put the ones who don't have the education to work painting rocks?

Understand, I was a middle class boy who joined the Army, and it was one of the better decisions of my life. I feel that a few years in military service would have done many, if not all, of my friends a lot of good. There are too few middle class and rich people who are willing to serve these days. Don't know what to do about it, as I feel that the draft is immoral. I didn't register for the draft when I hit 18, but did join up.

The Army used to be an organization where people from all walks of life would be thrown together for a couple of years, much to the benefit of society, it was the ticket out of the ghetto and crushing rural poverty for many people that I knew. People I would not have met, much less associated with, otherwise. Many of them were excellent soldiers who could not enlist today due to the lack of a HS diploma. If the Army goes to all the aforementioned wonder gear, people will need an Associates Degree in IT just to fire their weapons.

Sorry to write so long, but had to get that off my chest.

Sincerely, Kit Case kitcase@starpower.net

 

 


These can stand for several I received:

Jerry-

After reading your most recent article, I wanted to throw my two cents in:

I have an older Plextor PlexWriter drive on my Windows 2000 system. It's a 4x writer, and does not handle "RW" disks, only "R" disks. I have used Adaptec Easy CD Creator, HotBurn, Nero, and CDRWin with this drive under Windows 98, NT4, and 2000. It has worked under all of these configuration.

I have heard a lot of reports of problems with Direct CD, since it was first released. The general concensus has been to stay far, far away from it. I realize that this makes a CD-RW drive somewhat less useful, but given that I have a CD-R, I have never missed the functionality. I can buy blanks for forty cents each, in a spindle of fifty.

Last, but not least, almost everyone I have ever talked with agrees: SCSI is the way to go for CD-R and CD-RW drives. For some reason, a lot of the drive letter problems you encountered simply never happen with SCSI drives.

Sincerely, Paul A. Howes pahowes@fair-ware.com

I have had no real problems with Direct CD in windows 98; it's 2000 that blows up. As to SCSI, agreed, and I put SCSI cards in most systems for that reason. And SCSI DVD-RAM works very well. I like DVD-RAM...


Hola, Que tal?

========== Next, you must install the Administrative Tools, which are never installed by default. Go to Start/Settings/Taskbar and Start Menu, find the Advanced Tab, and check "Display Administrative Tools." OK, big deal. That's done. ========== This isn't necesary, in the Control Panel there is an icon named "Administrative Tools". It's nearly does the same as the option "Expand the Control Panel" in the configuration of the Start Menu.

PD. I like very much your column.

Bye, Roberto. 

Roberto Bisi - Monte Grande - Pcia.Buenos Aires - Republica Argentina E-mail: robertobisi@ciudad.com.ar - ICQ: 1024554 - http://visitweb.com/habu

Thanks. It's sure there and I sure didn't see it...

Jerry,

Thanks, again, for an insightful article!

However, you got one minor detail wrong - Administrative Tools ARE there, I assume if you are logged in as a user with Administrative Privileges. It's just that they are *REALLY* hard to find - it took me a half hour the first time.

The "Administrative Tools" appear as a folder in the "Control Panel", again I assume this folder only appears when you are logged in as a local Admin. However, the adjustment to start menu properties you mentioned does make it easier to locate.

It also took me quite some time to locate the "Command Prompt" program, nestled snug and safe inside of Accessories! At first I thought they had actually removed it, but I'm glad it's still there. It's nowhere near as powerful as Unix, but it still has it's uses.

-= Scott =-

I prefer the method I described as easier to remember, but yes, they're there. Thanks. I sure didn't see them.

 

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Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Jerry,

Captain Gallmeier wrote:

"With trained marksmen this will get at least 1000 meters pinpoint and 2,000 with squads and platoons firing on the "cone of fire principle". <snip>

The first problem is getting those trained marksmen.The second is sustaining them over years of duty.

When I was shooting High Power Rifle competitively there were about 17,000 such shooters across all of the U.S., military and civilian. I don't expect the numbers have grown much 20 years later. The military is moving to area weapons because they either don't train or don't think they can train their troops to shoot the rifle effectively and efficiently.The Marines remain a service of riflemen, but they use a small caliber carbine in place of the battle rifle of yesterday.

All the services together remain crippled by too little training, the wrong equipment and no clear mission.

jim dodd jimdodd@tcubed.net

A lot of the money appropriated for training has been spent in unauthorized operations, including Haiti where we have managed to install a more ruthless dictator than the one we threw out. Surprise!


Jerry,

Just read today's Chaos Manor entry which mentions a Jef Raskins. The only Jef Raskins I know of who might be making public comments is the fellow who was part of the original Macintosh team at Apple.

In fact, many (including himself) credit Jef with the original concept for the Mac. It was only a bit later that Steve Jobs latched onto the project and turned it into what was eventually produced.

Does any of this qualify Jef to comment intelligently on defense issues? Not to the best of my knowledge.

(I wonder sometimes how your total word count, what with fiction, fact, Chaos Manor, Byte columns, Intellectual Capital, etc., compares with other authors? I had in mind specifically that giant of production, Isaac Asimov.)

Keep up the good work. -- Norman Ferguson Network Consultant/Thespian

Actually I knew that; apologies if my sarcasm layer was a bit too thick. But having been in the business of systems design since the 50's, I'd think that someone who hasn't might give a little thought to the fact that other people may not be as smart as he is, but they aren't entirely stupid. Most of the arguments people think are new have been around a long time and have been dealt with in their primitive form. Of course it's possible for there to be new twists, but I would have thought there is some responsibility to find out what the opposition has done with a view before presenting it again. But proof by repeated assertion seems to be rampant now.

I don't expect anyone will write as much as Isaac did. He is the only major writer I know who truly LIKED to write. Most writers hate writing (they love to have written, but that's not quite the same thing). Isaac just plain loved writing.


From: Edward Hume <ehume@pshrink.com

 Subj: the American dream? 

Joe Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock (made in China), for 6:00 A.M. While his coffee pot (made in China), is perking, he puts his blow dryer (made in Thailand) to work and shaves with his electric razor (made in Malaysia). He puts on a dress shirt (made in Mexico), his designer jeans (made in Singapore), and a pair of tennis shoes (made in Vietnam). After cooking up some breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in Philippines), he sits down to figure out on his calculator (made in Taiwan), how much he can spend today. After setting his watch (made in Switzerland), to the radio (made in Japan), he goes out, gets in his car (made in Germany), goes looking as he has been for months, for a good paying American job. After the end of another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decides to relax for a while. He puts on a pair of sandals (made in Brazil), pours himself a glass of wine (made in France), and turns on his TV (made in Japan), and ponders again why he can't find a good paying American job.

I think I have seen this elsewhere, and long ago even; there's a bit to think about in it. What is it worth to subsidize inefficiency? Is it our generation's task to level world income throughout the (somewhat) civilized world?  What about competing with slave labor? Etc. And I remain of mixed emotions.


Re: advances infantry weapons and equipment. Strangely enough, I posted the following on a military discussion group not too long ago:

Land Warrior looks good on the Discovery Channel, but as a former grunt, I see little utility in giving all of its capabilities to every soldier.

Why have GPS below squad level? Even at it's most accurate, a non-differential GPS fix is good enough to locate an entire squad at maximum dispersal, for accountability and supporting arms purposes.

Why have a radio with every soldier? Even using IP communications protocols, it would create a confusing multiplicity of networks, not to mention exponentially expanding the number of detectable emitters. Actually, with an IP type communications protocol, it would give higher headquarters an opportunity for dial-up micromanagement access to every man on the battlefield. Forget that.

Why give every soldier a weapon based thermal imaging system? Outside of the system complications this entails, troops become too dependent on these systems and develop tunnel vision, to the detriment of their situational awareness. We found out about that with the widespread issue of night vision in the Eighties. The higher the proportion of troops equipped with night vision, the less the team depends on their other senses. While such systems are important, they reach a point of diminishing returns on a scale of issue above one unit per fire team. (Before anyone mentions tanks, I think that the tankers here would agree that their target acquisition and engagement problems are very different from that of the grunt.)

Why give each soldier a computer hooked up to all of the above systems? Do we want every private to be a calling for a battalion TOT, plus a flight of Snake and Nape, every time he hears rounds coming down range? If not, how are we going to fight with the complicated set of protocols necessary to avoid this? Protocols emplaced simply because we gave our guys too much of a good thing?

Better I think would be to give each squad a portable battle management system, appropriate for that tactical level, equipped with GPS and radio communications, plus a backup system that is not normally in use. Likewise, give each fireteam one (maybe two, if you can train troops not to become too dependent on them) lightweight, shareable thermal imaging system, plus one extra in the squad. Develop tactics that can make the best use of this equipment set, and thoroughly train the troops in them.

That way we won't overcomplicate the individual soldier's life with too many decisions and too much weight with what, at the individual level, are basically contingency systems for most tactical problems. At the same time, we are not denying the soldier's team the use of performance enhancing technologies that can be used frequently to good affect at the team level.

Tony Evans

a

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday, July 26, 2000

My infantry experience is limited to gaming, but I must say that Tony Evans' approach made a lot of sense to me (have the exotic equipment, with spares, but at the squad level).

I've had pretty good success with Russian-style squads that have a 8 riflemen, a suppressive fire weapon and a sniper. The sniper is especially good for pinning an enemy squad. The 8-man rifle team can leapfrog or flank in groups of four, and still take caualties.

Splinter-resisting the whole squad seems like an awfully good idea. Lightweight Kevlar armor could still be vulnerable to sniper weapons, yet stop most submunition splinters and long-range bullets.

Adding 2 radios/CICs/GPSs and 2 night-vision sights to a squad makes a lot of sense. These can be lightweight and sturdy. Electronics is getting smaller all the time.

Fiber-optic-guided missiles should be glorious weapons, but they would be heavy, especially if they have a good guidance system back at the launcher. I think it makes more sense to mount them on HMMVs, but keep a couple of the vehicles close to each platoon.

Ray Van De Walker 

Games can suggest things, and have some chance at training people in the use of equipment.  I was marginally involved with the war games at Research Analysis Corporation in Virginia in the early 60's: I did some inputs on airpower effects. The RAC analysis led to the 11th Air Assault Division which evolved into the Air Cavalry concepts. There's a lot to be learned from games, but one has to be careful: board and computer games can't really simulate the friction of using real troops.

"In war everything is very simple, but the simplest things are very difficult," said Clausewitz, who went on to add that even the simplest operations generate what he called "incredible friction."  All correct, and unfortunately not easily input into games. Some of the actual operations games played out in Indio generate friction, and of course most of the players are already experienced troop commanders who know it's at least as hard to get a company of soldiers to arrive at Point B at the same time as it is to get one's family packed and actually in the car and on the road for the summer vacation....


Not to sound pushy but do you think you could spare a moment to update your "Work in Progress" section. I really want to know when MAMELUKES will be out.

Eric L. Hosmer ehosmer@kettering.edu NT System Administrator Kettering University 

"There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence". Dave Elrick

OK, I did it: there is now a revised page for this stuff.


So what is Infantry for, anyway?

Jerry,

Dupuy noticed something in his analyses back in the 70s and 80s--historically, the amount of proving ground firepower on the battlefield was much too high to be consistent with the reported casualty rates. Apparently, the bottleneck has almost always been target spotting. Now, if you examine ground combat operations during the 20th century, you discover that the primary function of infantry was always target acquisition--particularly in close terrain--and only secondarily target engagement. To do this well, the infantryman had to have: 1. good tactical mobility and unimpaired vision, 2. reliable communications to supporting weapons and echelons, and 3. direct access to high-firepower weapons to keep the heads of the opposing infantry down while friendly infantry moved around doing their jobs. 4. (secondary requirement) some sort of decent protection.

Requirement 1 implied a weight limit of about 50 pounds. That tended to conflict with requirements 2-4.

I think the infantry still has the same functions today. Requirement 1 has not gone away--somebody still needs to move up and look inside. Requirement 2 is getting easier and easier to meet, and I think it increases, rather than decreases the effectiveness of a force to have reliable communications. Requirement 3 implies some sort of man-portable high-firepower weapon with lightweight ammo at the individual, fireteam, or section level. Historically, one per fireteam was optimal. Requirement 4 is a good idea if it doesn't get in the way of the real work.

The proposal on the table appears to move in the wrong direction.

-- Harry Erwin, Ph.D. One-time chief engineer for a corps-level air and ground operations command and control system...

From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com

Subject: Infantry thoughts

Dear Jerry:

Very interesting letters. Some comments:

1) What's 'c4i'? C3I I've heard of (communications, command, control, intelligence) but what's the fourth c? And what's "thermal TAADS," "SOCOM AC-130s," "THEL ," and "MOUT"?

2) I agree with everyone about the folly of micro-managing infantry from the rear. The problem here seems to be an officer selection process that rewards the REMF yes-men. Till we get rid of that, we're fighting with self-inflicted wounds.

3) "With trained marksmen" Back in Gustavus Adolphus's day (and have you read 1632 yet? If not, you're missing a treat), the trained marksmen used the same techniques on the range and in hunting as they did in war. But for the vast majority of infantry, that has never been true. For instance, before W.W.I the British experimented with mediocre shots firing quickly at dummies, versus really good marksmen doing the same. The mediocre troops got more hits per minute. The good shots wasted too much time on that last measure of precision.

Similarly, back in the sixties, Jeff Cooper ran a "Mexican Defense" match where one had to engage six targets in a specified time with a pistol. He once saw an excellent marksman get two x-rings, and time expired on the other four targets. What we need to do is follow up Jeff Cooper's work with combat firearms competition to learn how and what to train for in war. Yes, it's certainly hard to build realism into them, including friction, but it CAN be done if the people running them work at it. Cooper did it for pistol courses, and is working on rifles now.

4) In defense of the artillery vs. tanks, field guns killed a good many tanks in WWII, sometimes with indirect fire. If you have observers calling in corrections, you can do a lot. With modern terminally guided shells, a few commandos with lasers can bring shells down on turrets. 'Should we buy A? B?' 'By all means, buy both.' I expect tanks will survive too.

5) Laiacona is right about training, economy and numbers, Gallmeier about technology. The trick is finding the right tradeoff between them.

6) One of the reasons weapons are so heavy is we insist on making them that way. .50 cal too heavy? Well, with a muzzle brake and a hydro-spring buttstock, both available in the 1970s, and skeletonizing, which is turn of the century stuff, I'd bet you could shave 5-10 lbs. off it. Still, we do need to resist the tendency to turn the grunt into Alice's White Knight.

7) Tony Evans is probably right about using things in the fireteams and squads, and not with each soldier (at least till we finally have powered armor).

8) Harry Erwin's letter is interesting. On firepower and casualties -- just as rifled artillery outran its fuses from about 1850 till 1917, so infantry weapon lethality has always outrun its sighting capability. Jac Weller tested smoothbore muskets and found they grouped into less than 4 ft at 100 meters, which translates to near 100% hits against 18th century infantry formations. But the muskets had no sights, and the stock shapes led the troops to fire high.

Then there's the fact that under stress, people tend to look AT the source of the threat, while marksmanship requires you to focus on the front sight. What the infantry need is some sort of optical sight that lets them look at the target, but indicates where the bullet will strike. There is a major problem here: THESE THINGS WILL LOOK AWFUL. I emphasize that because the M-14 was adopted because it looked like a rifle 'should', and abandoned because it was utterly unsuited for the job it was issued for, individual automatic fire at close range. That shouldn't have been a surprise, since it was designed to emphasize long range sniping capabilities. Meanwhile, the Japs designed a 30 caliber rifle that fired full auto under full control, without any tendency to rise -- but it wasn't suitable for sniping, and it looked funny.

If we could just force the brass to let the troops test them, then decide what to buy ...

Still, target acquisition is a big problem. A study done around 1950 said that at >300 meters, the average soldier had almost no chance of spotting an enemy infantryman. Even at 100 meters it wasn't guaranteed. That was the rationale for the 5.56mm cartridge -- who cares if you can't hit a target at ranges you can't see it anyway?

I think the solution to Erwin's requirements of "1. good tactical mobility and unimpaired vision, 2. reliable communications to supporting weapons and echelons, and 3. direct access to high-firepower weapons to keep the heads of the opposing infantry down while friendly infantry moved around doing their jobs. 4. (secondary requirement) some sort of decent protection," is:

a) Write up some fitness report that say "This officer is utterly incompetent and should not be in charge of anything more important than sorting underwear," names left blank. Create a team to design ALL the things an infantryman will carry. Show them the reports, and say "When you bring it in, we will weigh it. If it is fifty lbs or under, we will proceed with the tests. If it is 50 lbs., 1 oz. , we will throw it away and enter the above fitness report into the files of every officer on the project. Now, get cracking."

b) Emphasize the fire team, squad, and platoon level, with appropriate mixes of gear at each. Evans is right that there is "too much of a good thing" possible.

c) Test the hell out of this stuff, under field conditions.

Amazing how fast we're approaching STARSHIP TROOPERS as a reality, no?

Best, St. Onge

G'Day Jerry

I have been an Infantryman since 1977 (full and part time) and have read with interest the Infantry debate. Here in Australia we have had similar discussions for as long as I can remember. I am reminded of two quotes that express both sides I think. The argument for one side is by Petronius Arbiter and the other by Nicolo Machiaveli

We trained hard...…. but every time we began to form teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet new situations by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization." -- Petronius Arbiter ~ 60 AD

On Change “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones. The hesitation of the latter arises in part from the fear of their adversaries, who have the laws on their side, and in part from the general skepticism of mankind which does not really believe in an innovation until experience proves it’s value. So it happens that whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they can do so with the passion of partisans while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and party are alike vulnerable.” Nicolo Machiaveli "The Prince", 1513

Also re "the American Dream"

An intersting piece. As I sit here using my copy of the email program (American) on my copy of the op sys (American), reading about American problems on the internet (American), watching my kids chew chewing gum (American trait) watching sitcoms (American) laughing at the jokes (American) etc etc

I think we all around the world have similar laments and would like the rest of the world to buy Australian made :-)

I collect scifi paperbacks and i am looking forward to Mamelukes

Bart

G'day yourself...

 


Jerry,

You probably have already received many responses to your Byte article about trying to use Adaptec CD Writer &; DirectCD in Win2000 with your new Plextor 12/10/32A drive. I also recently bought one of these drives and tried to use it in my new Win2000 setup. I experienced the same drive designation problems you did and I ended up calling Plextor tech support. The second time I talked to them they admitted the problem and told me it was being cause by a bug in the ATAPI driver for Win2000. They said Microsoft, Adaptec and Plextor are all busy working on a solution. I keep checking those web sites periodically but have not seen any results yet.

David dolarson@utma.com

I fixed it with Nero -- Burning ROM as you will see in the column...


 

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Thursday, July 27, 2000

I have copied all the INFANTRY DISCUSSION to a new REPORT PAGE, and in future anything on that will be placed there. It's interesting enough to have a place of its own, and it was also long enough to distract people who have other interests.

This came up in a discussion elsewhere, and is published by permission. Carol Iannone is well known to readers of Commentary and other literary publications. Greg Cochran is an engineer you've seen here before:

Message text written by "Carol Iannone" 

> Let me second Scott's recommendation of the film "Est-Ouest." I saw it with a Romanian friend who grew up under Communism and whose family life was horribly damaged by the regime. She cried throughout the movie and kept nudging me and saying, It was like that, I remember, they were like that. This was in reference to such things as the awful brutality and trickery and perfidy attributed to the Communists. The funny thing is that the portrayal of the Communists might actually have been seen at one time to be unaesthetic--too extreme, too villainous, too one-sided, lacking "negative capability," but after Solzhenitsyn and all we've learned, it was possible for me too to say, yes, they were like that!

Does anyone understand the unbelievably unbalanced ratio of films, books, documentaries, etc. about the Nazis vs. the tiny number about the Communists? It's a mystery to me why there isn't a flood of films and documentaries like this one. Carol <

Cochran: What's not to understand? The talking classes, in general, think that sympathy and support for the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Castro's Cuba, etc was at the worst an easily excusable error. Any warm-blooded, person with the proper political instincts _should_ have sympathized with them, and anyone who too clearly saw the disadvantages of those totalitarian regimes was surely a bad 'un -- better to be wrong for the right reasons. To some extent, this is also because any other position would involve quite a bit of self-criticism, or at least criticism of those near and dear.

I don't think it has changed much, either. There's a lot of sympathy for Castro in the same circles today. I certainly heard a lot of people talking about how Elian Gonzalez, once back in Cuba, would be 'free' of all those evil forces like McDonald's and Pokemon and would be if anything better off than in Miami. Assuming that they mean what they say, those making such comments must think that left-wing despotism is a positive good, to be preferred to classical political and economic freedom, and even worth a dramatic cut in the standard of living. In theory - I don't think many of these people are sailing their yachts to Cuba.

I think it illustrates a really important point, that in the long struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States, it wasn't just the Soviet Union that was falling apart. It was a race to see what would fall apart first - the Soviet economy (very roughly speaking) or the American will to continue the struggle. It had certainly got to the point, by the 80's, that national defense itself was controversial. Les Aspin was so right-wing that he was almost kicked off the Armed Services committee, while Ron Dellums was just fine. Most university professors thought that any kind of defense work was just dirty. With the coming to full political power of those who had entered politics as part of the anti-war movement ( not my name for it), with the Clinton Administration, even close connections to such regimes were just fine. They almost appointed Johnetta Cole as secretary of Education, even though she was high-up in the American Communist Party and the Venceremos Brigade, until someone at the Forward objected pointing out that an actual member of the Communist Party might be insufficiently supportive of Israel. They sent Dellums as the unofficial envoy to North Korea - or it was he the unofficial envoy _from_ North Korea? I forget. Maybe that's why we keeps their tanks fueled today.

Certainly the establishment attitudes towards the Soviet Union had become comically stupid by the 1980s. Take the attitudes of the middle-of-the-road economists like Paul Samuelson ( and those days, he was close to the middle) - that is was a vulgar mistake to think that people in Eastern Europe were miserable. Or their understanding of East Bloc economics - they knew, the CIA knew, everybody at the New York Times or Time magazine knew that Russians weren't all that much poorer than Americans. .. The CIA's official estimate in 1985 had East German's per-capita income 20% higher than West Germany's. People who thought otherwise, or even doubted, were loons. Don't you remember? Murray Feshbach was some kind of loon. Remember 'convergence'?

Remember all the people who signed on to old-fashioned Front efforts like the 'nuclear freeze'? Like Madeleine Albright?

I remember when even the establishment types started noticing the ground shifting under their feet - very late, of course. In the summer of 1991, Leslie Gelb noted that people were starting to use the "R' word about the Soviet Union. Revolution. About time, I thought - I'd been placing bets on the order in which the SSR's would secede more than a year earlier But Gelb, of course, didn't want it to happen. Only the most reactionary, Neanderthal types would want to see the Communist Party overthrown - so he said - this, coupled with the skeletal evidence of a brain larger than ours, makes me against wonder if Nature missed a bet. And Gelb was a New York Times editor, now some honcho at the Council of Foreign Relations. Not just any old fool. He was an _official_ fool.

There are more ways to fall apart than economic decay. If we ever have another long national struggle, it's important to remember that the political sanity of our talking classes is about as fragile as a Prince Rupert's drop. Any adversary with resources comparable to the Soviet Union's and a less fragrantly shoot-your-own-dick-off domestic policy is likely to give far more trouble than Russia ever did. All it had to do is make symbolic gestures in the direction of the fashionable ideology of the day and useful idiots will spring up like dragon's teeth.

Gregory Cochran

Cochran speaks forcefully and directly, and I fear I have to agree. 

I recall at a HACKER'S CONFERENCE in about 1984 being nearly hooted out of the conference because I dared defend ballistic missile defenses: this from high tech people who didn't really believe it wouldn't work, but whose intellectual betters -- at least they acted as if they were their betters -- had told them it was all wrong, and Ronnie Raygun was a jerk, so they mindlessly acted on those premises. Some even apologized later: they had been intimidated by the general atmosphere; I wondered at the time how many knew better but wouldn't say anything because they didn't want to look like idiots to their peers. The odd part is that having hooted at me in the "Star Wars" discussion, there seemed to be no residual from it, and everything else I said on computing and its future was taken seriously.  But I never forgot that incident of herd mentality among some otherwise VERY bright people.

And Possony and I were regularly denounced by the State Department and CIA when we said that the USSR had to be spending at least 30% of GNP on weapons. CIA even sent economic "experts" to Aerospace Corp. to denounce us. And RAND Corp had an economic model of the USSR that was pure fantasy but was accepted by nearly everyone. My own daughter, in Army Intelligence, insisted that the East German standard of living was as high as West German -- and she had BEEN there.  But all her professors at Cornell and other academic departments of German Studies had convinced her that what she saw wasn't real and relevant. And understand, she's an intelligent lady.

Richard Pipes described the phenomenon in SURVIVAL IS NOT ENOUGH: academia never told the truth about the USSR because to do so was to deny yourself access to the place  -- the Soviets wouldn't give a visa to a scholar who told the truth about the place -- and thus to cut yourself off from being 'an expert' since how could you be expert if you never went there?  And that was an old story: the Ukranian intentionally induced famine went on under the eyes of western journalists, including people like George Bernard Shaw, and the only one who had much to say at the time was Peregrine Worthstone. 

James Burnham in SUICIDE OF THE WEST said "Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for western civilization as it commits suicide. It allows one to feel good while watching everything one believes in collapse and be destroyed."  One sometimes wonders if he didn't know more truth than we like to admit.

 

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Friday, July 28, 2000

was taken up mostly with fiction

 

 

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Saturday, July 29, 2000

Napster

While there is certainly a large (possibly the majority) percentage of Napster users who are rampant copyright infringers, I think there are definitely some other issues here. I'm not making judgments about the validity of any of these points - they just seem to be some of the big ones that keep coming up.

First, it's interesting that all this is happening after FTC accusations that the music industry was artificially keeping CD prices high, and a settlement that, though the industry admits no wrongdoing, will probably result in a $2-$5 reduction in the price of CDs. Perhaps if they had been cheaper, Napster and its like wouldn't have been quite as popular.

Second, there are many who would happily purchase their music online, in electronic form. They've waited, and waited, and waited for the music industry to come up with an easy system to do that, and finally got fed up and went their own way, even knowing (and probably feeling guilty) about the infringement. The industry is just starting to really get rolling on electronic music purchases - and the user experience is, from many accounts, just horrible. This is, of course, not unique to music - much of the online purchasing world is a pain to use and navigate, and adding in strict security requirements and extra bits of software to download and configure to try and keep you from copying the files doesn't help.

I've done a few experiments of grabbing MP3's, and comparing them to versions I've ripped from CD's I own - there's a wide variation in quality online. My personal feeling is that (most) people are honest enough that if low-quality versions of songs (for seeing if you liked it) were freely available, and high-quality, professionally created versions were easily available for a reasonable price, without copy protection, the music industry would do a booming business. I know the transition would be uncomfortable (who likes upheaval?), but I think it's instructive to note that despite more or less abandoning copy protection, and the widespread use of CD-R drives, the software industry is thriving, despite lots of piracy.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I think it's pretty much impossible to stop those who really want to from copying, so it's better not to alienate the majority with a conscience who are willing to pay.

There are a few industry executives who "get it" - see http://www.latimes.com/business/updates/lat_sider000717.htm 

Regards, Monty

We can hope you are right, of course. But the frantic downloading of more than anyone can listen to, just to assert the "right" seems to negate much of what you say.

I hope you are right. For other views see below.

 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Thanks for the recent "News from Chaos Manor" mailing. The picture of Bill Gates' house was interesting. I can only assume that as much as you were watching, you were likewise being watched by his security.

CURRENT VIEW: Your comments in today's "Current View" (7/29/00) reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a neighbor in his early-mid 20's several months ago. The subject was DSL access in our neighborhood. The bottom-line was the staunch belief my neighbor had that Internet and other similar access should be free. When I asked him to explain his position, he was unable to offer a defense of this idea other than to state that it should be so. I see a parallel between his perspective, that of "Napster" and attitudes I now see prevailing on the campus here in Atlanta. They are all similar in that they seem to take for granted their right to others' property or the fruit of their efforts. Unfortunately, it seems to me that such attitudes are becoming the norm, rather than an exception.

IMMIGRATION: Recent national news broadcasts suggest changing demographics in California, the American Southwest, and elsewhere. If true, they suggest the arrival of a poorly educated underclass representing a culture that although superficially similar in some respects, actually bears little resemblance to the core traditions that represented American culture up until only a few years ago. I'm speaking of the recent influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal from Mexico, Central, and South America. Of course they are coming for the jobs and the opportunity to make more money in one week than they could make in a year of effort in their home countries. At the surface, these immigrants seem to represent a hard working class of people with a strong family orientation. However, that orientation, better known as familism (see Thomas Sowell) is dissimilar to the values that arguably were responsible for establishment, development, and sustainment of this country. Regrettably, I currently see neither the awareness, will, nor methodologies in place to protect the national culture. Moreover, I believe the fall of previous republics, i.e., Rome, might well be traced to the dissolution of their cultures by others who did not share core common values. As such, the future of our Republic seems clear and similar to that of Rome.

MARSHAL PLAN: I also wonder if a Marshal Plan-type of initiative to build the economies of Mexico, Central and South America might offer a way to slow the influx of immigrants. Certainly the cost would be very high, but it might offer the possibility of preserving the Republic by slowing the ingress of world views too dissimilar to our own as we absorb those who have immigrated in the last 20 odd years. Certainly, the preservation of the Republic would be worth the cost.

MACINTOSH COMPUTER: I also noted your intent to pickup a new generation Mac. I just made a similar move myself and took advantage of Apple's current student discounts to purchase a top of the line PowerBook running at 500mHz. My quick and dirty (and very limited) comparison ran the PowerBook against a Dell 500mHz Pentium III (WinNT 4.0, SP6a), both with 128MB RAM, against similar Seti@home datasets. The results were very interesting. Typically the Pentium 500mHz takes about 27 hours to complete one set. The PowerBook took only a little over 6 hours. Certainly the comparison criteria are inherently flawed as many simple comparisons typically are, but at the macro-level it¹s certainly interesting. I look forward to your observations on things Macintosh now that I've returned to that OS.

I also reread "West of Honor" in a break from studying for comps last weekend. A great quick read. I look forward with similar interest to your forthcoming Mamelukes.

Keep up the good fight!

-- Cheers,

Art Russell

mailto:artrussell@mindspring.com http://education.gsu.edu/spehar 

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." - Goethe

Thanks. I don't worry as much about immigration as I do the ability to assimilate: the melting pot will melt only so many at a time, and if someone is trying to put out the fire, then melting don't happen. America is the only country I know in which you can study to become an American: we have, or had, a value system that was teachable. Alas, we no longer seem to be teaching it-- or much of anything else -- in our publicly paid compulsory schools. That and the degeneration of the values needed to BE a republic seem serious threats; much more so than mere immigration.

Subject: Koran Justice for Spammers?

http://belps.freewebsites.com/index2.htm 

Ken Hirsch

We've seen this one before, but it never hurts to be reminded...

Roland reminds me that he sent the Metallica interview URL before; it gives a very coherent picture of what one of the best known and most downloaded (on Napster) artist groups think about the situation:

http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/05/26/1251220.shtml 

Dear Dr. Pournelle, As has been pointed out elsewhere, if people can't use napster, they will use systems such as gnutella. Gnutella is the open source version that acts as a peer-to-peer system, thus having no single point of vulnerability as napster does. The RIAA could lose by winning.

I feel that we are seeing the opening shots of a big business vs the people war with DMCA and UCITA on one side vs the distributed nature of the internet on the other. DMCA and UCITA fundamentally change the concept of "fair use" and people are fighting this any way they can. Napster, et al, also provide a way for people to hear music they otherwise would not. On NPR today it was reported that only 4 companies own the majority of the pop music stations in the country and the number of record labels is similarly small (9?). Napster is a way for people to decide for themselves what they want to hear rather than letting a few executives decide for them. As Monty points out in his letter, we need a way to pay by the download. Some sort of "digital cash" system. The failure of the record companies to see the need for this could do serious damage to them. The movie studios are in the same boat. Don't know what to do about it, the artists need to be paid for their work, intellectual property needs to be protected, but the communications revolution (of which the computer revolution is a part) moves faster than the committees that run government and businesses can keep up.

Kit Case kitcase@starpower.net

You seem to have several arguments here. (1) The Korean shopkeepers can't stop the looters from taking everything, so therefore they ought not try, and perhaps ought to be prevented from trying to protect their property, which the people around them want so badly.  Oops. I mean, the copyright holders can't prevent piracy, so they shouldn't try, and the courts shouldn't help them.

(2) Most of this is owned by a few big companies, so it's all right: if fuel costs are high, just go take the gasoline you need, and decide for yourself what price to pay, which is usually zero.  Oops. What people want to listen to is far more important than ownership of the property.

Fair use, in other words, consists of what is easily done: once rapid printing machinery is widespread in schools, it will be fair use to make up printed copies of books and distribute them, because the students need them so much.

I know: I have cast what you said in the most extreme form. Moreover I am not insensitive to the problem of needs. But Napster, according to one program I heard today, is largely a big scheme for gathering demographics and a data base of addresses which can then be sold; that's the revenue model. They gather this information by facilitating the giving away of other people's property. 

At least Gnutella and some of the other swapping schemes are not part of a for-profit operation. Not that I am against profits, nor do I automatically excuse non-profit ripoffs.  Mostly I wonder about the effect of a philosophy that says "I want it therefore I am entitled to it, and the creator of it has no say in the matter."  Is this a good thing to encourage?

AND NOW THIS

Sir, 

In Current View, you wrote: "One wonders how long a Republic whose youth do not understand the concepts of property -- worse, demand a RIGHT to other people's works without permission -- worse, demand that the government protect their right to other people's property -- will remain a republic."

I agree with your statement, but do you? Perhaps you aren't aware that this is precisely what one would say while arguing *against* copyright? When the government protects an artist's "right" to the property of his fans, even after they have paid for the work, something is certainly wrong.

Randall.

In other words, once I sell you a single copy of something, you have the right to make as many copies as you want, and sell them to others.  But, you protest, you are not selling. You are giving them away.  And the others give them ones you have not bought.  But this is not a sale, wink wink, nudge nudge. This is merely exchange of gifts with a few tens of thousands of my closest friends.

What you have said is that there is no intellectual property: once something is created, and you have bought a copy, you may do with it as you like, but unlike a book, or a physical record, which you sell to another and thus no longer have, you assert the right to sell a copy and keep one.  Sell a dozen and keep one.  Swap for a thousand other works of others you have never paid for, and still keep one.  Take one of the newly acquired works, which you got as a "gift" from someone you never met but who took also as a "gift" a copy of another work you got as a gift, and trade that for yet another work you have not bought.

And if I object to this I undermine the notion of a republic of laws: a republic which gave the Congress the power to create intellectual properties in the body of the founding document.  I see.

 

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Sunday, July 30, 2000

This is very long and very wordy, but I don't have time to edit, and it does raise some questions. Most of the questions I would have thought to have obvious answers, but clearly not.

From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com

Subject: music and copyright

Dear Jerry:

Lots of pieces to this copyright thing.

1) Let's look at Love's math: the four band members made, in her reckoning, $87,500 before taxes, which she terms "might as well be working at 7-11." To make that at 7-11, working fulltime for a year, you'd need to be paid 42.06/hour. Whom we kidding here? And somehow she doesn't mention song writing royalties, which pay from the first record sold and are 100% non-recoupable.

In any case, if the record company make as much as she claims, and the bands make that little, then let some bands get together and form their own co-op record company. They'll get rich. The fact that she and others aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is suggests that the record company aren't making as much as she wants us to believe.

2) Courtney Love's point about the "works for hire" law is undoubtedly valid. It's pure theft. But the provision is arguably unconstitutional, as Congress never voted for it. For that matter, that law arguably took private property without just compensation, another unconstitutionality. Why isn't she suing to block enforcement? Or if she is, why didn't she mention it?

3) Her remark about Sen. Hatch having a "progressive" view of copyright speaks volumes, unintentionally. The "progressive" view of politics is that if you don't like the results, you change the rules retroactively to make things come out the way you think they should have. And that's EXACTLY what the guy the record didn't *nudge, nudge, wink, wink* bribe, just hired later as a lobbyist, did to her and others with that "work for hire" provision.

She says that isn't how she was taught govt. worked in civics class. Well, didn't they ever tell her about Alcoa being convicted on anti-trust charges, because they were too good at making aluminum? Their costs were so low, and they went after emerging markets so aggressively, that no one could get a foot in the door. That was illegal, supposedly. Bad for consumers to buy cheap aluminum from one company, instead of expensive aluminum from two or three companies. Or the Civil Rights Act, where Sen. Humphrey swore that there was absolutely nothing in the bill that could possibly be used to enforce the quotas that the Civil Rights Commission routinely enforces? Ya got what you wished for, Love and all you other lefties, now choke on it.

Similarly, she says "I feel this obscene gold rush greedgreedgreed vibe that bothers me a lot when I talk to dot-com people about all this." If Ambrose Beirce were defining 'greed' today for the DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, it would probably be something like "the emotion of wanting too much money for yourself, and not enough for ME.' Love just wants all the dot com people to create a whole new music distribution system out of the goodness of their hearts, and generously give the profits to her. Don't hold your breath, Courtney darlin'.

4) I agree with the person who said the industry mostly has itself to blame for napster. I recently bought three CDs by Mason Williams, one of my all time favorite musicians. I have several on worn old vinyl lps that I'd love to buy on CD, but they're not in print. If napster has them at really good quality, I might download them. Just whom will I be depriving of money there -- a used record shop? Speaking of which, publishers at one time tried to prevent the resale of used books. Not, note, the pirate printing of them, just the individual resales of used copies. If the record industry gives me a high quality site where I can download stuff for say $1.00/song, I'd gladly be paying them more than I can afford to spend.

In his interview, Jimmy Iovine points out "There are ways to steal cable, but most people choose not to. We have to give people music in a format that offers the same convenience as the one where they get it free," and

"Q: The business model of the industry has long been built on the album. But online users prefer downloading singles. A: I think albums will still exist for a long time. But who knows? Maybe we'll end up changing the way that albums are configured. Maybe we'll end like television with an advertising-based model. We'll probably go through 50 different experiments before we get it right, but so what? Why is everybody so locked into protecting one specific format? What is this, a religion? I swear the Catholic Church changes quicker than the record business."

Love made a good point when she mentioned that you buy an album full of songs you don't want to get the one you do. This all made sense when distributing a vinyl record or CD and holding it in inventory at the corner record shop was a major expense. It doesn't make sense now.

I just looked at the Metallica interview on slashdot you posted, and they say, "the future of getting music from Metallica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet. But the question is, on whose conditions, and obviously we want it to be on our conditions." But it isn't the future, it's the present. Wake up and set the conditions NOW guys, or someone will set them for you.

5) In your mail comments, you term one viewpoint "The Korean shopkeepers can't stop the looters from taking everything, so therefore they ought not try, and perhaps ought to be prevented from trying to protect their property, which the people around them want so badly." But the Korean shopkeepers WILL sell me their stuff. The record industry won't sell me 'out of print' items. Their attitude is more like "We can't be bothered, so you're stuck." Congress is authorized to grant copyrights to ENCOURAGE the creation of artistic works, not to prevent them from being distributed.

I subscribe to your site, though I could get it for free. I buy computer games, because I want to encourage the people who wrote them to create more. But if it's no longer for sale, I feel no guilt whatsoever in "stealing' a copy.

6) I can't help but remember the movie industry and VCRs. Years before Betamax, the technologies were there for home viewing of movies (the guy who invented the LP also invented a viewer where you could play a 16mm movie and 'project' it into your TV; it was never sold by the company that owned the rights. Another guy created consumer VCRs that were built into TVs and sold through Sears; it died of bad marketing, a large part of which was the movie companies attempt to make everyone renting tapes pay them royalties for every viewing. Rent a film for this machine and you couldn't rewind it and watch again without going back to the store and paying another rental fee!). After blowing their chances repeatedly, the movie companies sued to prevent the sales of Betamax and tapes, then tried to get Congress to put a tax on tapes to raise revenue that would go into the pockets of the studios. Didn't work, which is why you can record Buffy and Angel every week, to view at your convenience, and view again and again at your leisure. Bet you fast forward through the commercials that paid for the production of those shows. Sounds like theft on your part to me. Don't you feel guilty for ripping off the intellectual propertyholders this way? Of course, we all know the result of VCRs: a vast new market for movies, and the re-vitalization of the industry.

What all this smells like to me is the lazy monopolist syndrome. They try to freeze the system as it is, so they won't have to work.

I can understand letting works go out of print when the costs of production and distribution were high, but it's already possible to sell hardcover books at the rate of one copy per printrun, and CDs are even cheaper. You ask whether "once rapid printing machinery is widespread in schools, it will be fair use to make up printed copies of books and distribute them, because the students need them so much." No, not for free, but there ought to be some way the school can print copies of stuff and pay a standardized royalty to the publisher. We ought to working on forcing companies that want to keep a copyright in force make the works available, while making those whom want them pay for them. But that requires original thought and sweat, which is exactly what no one wants engage in.

Suggestions:

a) When a publisher or record company sells the rights to a book or an album, revenue MUST be applied to any recoupable costs the creator owes, and the royalty requirements continue with the new owner. That corrects the injustice of the 'work for hire' ripoff.

c) If it's not available for two years, at least as a custom mail order, copyright reverts to the creator. After two more years, if the creator doesn't make it available, copyright is voided.

What's your take on this as an author?

Best, St. Onge

First, you're saying that if Love doesn't like the deals the record companies offer, she should get a better agent, join a union, and probably go into the publishing business.  That latter is not as easy as it seems: publishing is a pretty full time job, and leaves little time for creative effort; as the founders of United Artists found out long ago. It can be done and often is, but the talents of artistic creation and those of business management are not the same and are rarely found in the same person.

Surely, though, it is not her fault that the People of the United States, in the person of one Congressional staffer who managed to stuff something into a bill, has robbed her? 

But it's all right, because she could sue, but she hasn't told you what she is doing, so she's at fault?  I have no great love for Love, whose politics I gather are pretty normal for her profession and venue, but I don't start with the contemptuous hostility you display: nor do I think citizens ought to have to pay tribute to lawyers in order to get redress from the Imperial City. Perhaps we must do that, but surely it's not something to be proud of?

Your point 3 is pure bile. I understand the impetus to stick it to the left and hoist them with their own petards, but that cannot be the proper attitude for rebuilding a republic. That is the proper attitude for participants in a civil war. It also smacks of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Those are BAD LAWS, and while I can take a bit of ironic pleasure from seeing them applied to those who advocated them, I would take a great deal more in seeing them fixed.

At point 4 we get at last to a substantive matter: if the industry doesn't do things the way you want, do you have the right to take matters into your own hands, and distribute others's property in ways you think proper?  I put that as strongly as I can because there is compulsion if not merit in the argument. I don't believe in absolute property rights: enjoyment of property means collective protection of rights in that property, and the collective protection may well justify restrictions on the use of that property. The California Coastal laws are a case in point: if you want protection for your property rights on the beach, you must concede some rights to the general public to have access to and use at least some of that beach. The public after all pays for the police and courts and your protection; surely you have some obligations?  How much obligation and which ones are certainly arguable matters.

But the beach is a natural phenomenon, a natural resource. Courtney Love's performances are not except in the theological sense that God gave her talents; but this is not a theocracy. In a republic she has the right to use her talents pretty well as she chooses (including hiding them under a bushel I presume, to the detriment of her fans), or so I would suppose. 

You say that because she, or the companies that have control of her works, have not yet made them available in a form and at a price that you like, you have the right to take them, either through confiscatory laws, or through direct action; and that only when they get with it, become modern, use the distribution means that you prefer, only then do you have any moral or ethical obligations to respect their property rights.  This seems to be what you are saying, and I say, beware, for you assert a lot, and under your philosophy of point 2, when this is visited on you, you may not complain, and we may all cheer. 

In the case of abandoned works not repudiated by their creator, we may agree: protecting rights in those is a poor allocation of public resources, and there seems to be little ethical problem in simply making copies for one's own use. I do point out, though, that the new technology makes it possible for creators to get their older and less popular works back in distribution or at least in availability, and while we may not care to use many resources protecting works available only in second hand stores, we don't want simply to appropriate their works either. As an example, Harlan Ellison routinely buys up all the remaindered copies of his works. He takes some of those with him when he speaks, and sells autographed copies at prices higher than the original cover price. I am told he does well out of this. Surely he has that right? And surely, simply because some of his early collections are out of print and available only from him, you have no right to not only make your own copies, but swap copies you have made for other copies others have made? Surely you do not assert your right to do that? Even if you feel deprived and "would buy a copy if I could"?

 

I am not sure why you accuse me of theft regarding taped episodes of television broadcasts; I presume simply to be able to call me names, because the argument makes no sense and you don't accept it yourself. 

As to the rest of your argument, it amounts to the notion that we are all wasting our time; devising proper laws is difficult and requires thought and sweat and no one will do that.  May I disagree? I am not fond of most Congresscritters, but I have spent much time among them, and sloth is not their vice. They do work hard, perhaps at the wrong things, but most in fact mean well by their own lights. The system allows them to be deceived by trusted staffers, and the corrupt attitudes that radiate from this White House have pervaded much of the Imperial City, but I would not have thought it all hopeless.

And finally at the end you assert what ought to be, but it appears to be pure assertion: it ought to be because you want it to be.  If you mean "there ought to be laws" then I point out that obedience to the laws that exist is one of the requirements for having a say in the making of laws: that is what self-government is. You assert that what ought to be is a right to schools to take what they like, and pay what they like, with no consultation to the writers, particularly so if the work is out of print.

Perhaps. Works out of print and not in circulation do present a vexation, and perhaps a wrong to be remedied. Protecting the creator's right to those works gives the creator little to nothing, and deprives the public of their use; this seems an odd allocation of the public resources needed to protect the rights. Clearly a matter for legal clarification. 

Some cases, though, are clear: authors make more money if they, their agents, and their publishers, agree to let a work stay unavailable for a time then reissue it. This is not so much a phenomenon of the public as it is of the distribution system, but in any event, it does work, and your scheme would destroy that stratagem.  Is this your intent? Is it your right?

On the other end of clear cases are abandoned works which no one ever intends to bring back in print, or in the case of software, back in distribution with support. There certainly ought to be mechanisms whereby such fall into public domain, there being no harm to anyone and much potential good.

In between are the details, and those do require a great deal of work and sweat and thought, and I have news for you: author associations such as the Authors Guild, and publisher associations, and agents, are all working quite hard on these issues in the hopes of coming to terms with new technologies: and I do not think that simply because we have not yet come up with a scheme that you like, you have to right not only to make copies and give them to friends, but also to barter copies of our work to strangers in return for copies of other works you have not paid for. Yet that seems to be what you assert. Why? I doubt you actually agree with that proposition as a general principle of life.

Yes: the ease of reproduction of artistic works: performances, paintings, books, movies, is changing everything, and the laws must adapt; but I say to you, getting people used to the notion that everything artistic is free, and you have the right to protest high prices not merely by not paying the price and not buying the product, but by stealing it and feeling justified for having done so, is not a healthy thing, and the attitudes taught undermine the fundamental values required to sustain a republic.

And I can't improve on this:

Dear sir

Isn't the want of goods and materials the reason we learn to work? I know students are very poor and cannot afford the dozens of recordings they want. Shouldn't that be an incentive to earn enough "evil" cash to purchase the items they want? Most people I know want to have a warm and dry place to sleep, some decent food , clothing and some fun stuff. Their novel solution? Work for it!

Best regards.

Elton Wallace


The subject of wrongs has been beaten, possibly to death, certainly to tedium. Perhaps it is time to turn to REMEDIES.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I am interested in your opinion as an author on Stephen King's on-line publishing experiment. He is publishing a story in several parts on line, with methods for paying $1.00 for each installment on the honor system. If more than 75% pay, he finishes the story. If not, he doesn't. (http://www.stephenking.com)

This is, of course, not the only online publishing for money (I picked up Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier" and other items from Pulpless.com), but since it is Stephen King it is a very high-profile attempt. I see no reason that music publishing companies couldn't do similar things.

I think the main thing blocking this entire field is the difficulty of paying small amounts ($1.00 or less) on line. Credit cards can be used, and there are other techniques, but I think that many people are uncomfortable with them. I myself have no problems using a credit card as long as I'm dealing with a reasonably large or well-known outfit. I particularly like the Amazon "one-click" system, although it can be dangerously addictive.

Once this problem is fixed, I think this type of purchase of books, music, movies, etc. will become more widespread, satisfying the Napster types who want cheap product, giving the authors and creators their due, and (perhaps most important) creating a route around the corporate publisher bottleneck if it becomes necessary.

Tom Brosz

Like every other author I follow King's experiments with keen interest. We all hope it works. 

This site is an example: I work at it, but not full time, yet this experiment has shown I could probably eke out a retirement existence on the subscription income if I lived frugally and worked at getting more subscribers. 

But I started it at a time when I had more hopes that DEC would develop Millicent. If there were a simple system for transferring a dime from your bank account to mine, I could charge a dime access to this site, and another for access to special areas. Dvorak and I would start the DISCONTINUITY site we did briefly, and we suspect there would be a decent revenue at a dime a shot from people who want to see and listen to us yell at each other.

It was, after all, thirty years ago that I said in A Step Farther Out that publishing would one day consist of placing works in an "information utility", you would then read the work, and a royalty would go from your  bank account to mine and "where's the need for that blood sucking publisher."  I suspect that Courtney Love would do well to band with others to launch a good web distribution system. Perhaps Metallica would help.

But I also think that the legal system out to provide a phased out protection, not merely abandon writers and artists.

Perhaps I am wrong, and there is no intellectual property, and thus nothing to protect; but I am not yet persuaded so. In any event, yes, I would very much like to see widespread a system for economical transfer of small sums over the Internet. But at the moment it costs me a dollars to collect any amount of money at all over the net...

I'm afraid that Mr St Onge's career would not last very long based on his lack of arithmetical abilities. Either that, or he thinks his work worth that of four ordinary men.

Like you, I have not to my knowledge heard Courtney Love, but was moved by her impassioned plea. There are very few who make even a subsistence living in the music industry.

Yesterday, I was visited by a friend who has written several world-famous songs and many others besides. He sells suits for a living; the income from songwriting is likely less than he spends on dogfood.

He is represented by an organisation called the Australian Performing Rights Association. Logging into his APRA account with his password reveals 17 pages of song titles to which he has royalty entitlement. His publisher's website reveals no trace of his existence. A Google search reveals one mention of a song of his performed at a Japanese concert several years ago.

Since the publisher hasn't sold any of his songs for over a decade, his wife asked the publisher how much buying the songs back would cost. The reply was: "Are you f*****g crazy! I'm worth a fortune when he's dead!"

While Courtney Love may not be accurate in detail, her assessment of the industry characterises it well.

Jonathan Sturm

I gather that music publishing contracts are ghastly. Book contracts aren't nearly that bad, and the best can negotiate reversion of rights after a term of years. Publishers only give that reluctantly, and it's still not standard. Mostly reversion is only when the work is out of print.

I get the distinct impression that the APRA isn't a very strong outfit...


To: All staff, Los Alamos National Laboratory From: Bill Richardson, Secretary of Energy

Dear staff members:

Due to an unfortunate overreaction by Congress to our minor difficulties in the security area, we're being forced to tighten up just a bit.

Effective Monday:

1. The brown paper bag in which we store the computer disk drives that contain the nation's nuclear secrets will no longer be left on the picnic table at the staff commissary during lunch hour. It will be stored in "the vault." I know this is an inconvenience to many of you, but it's a sad sign of the times.

2. The three-letter security code for accessing "the vault" will no longer be "B-O-B." To confuse would-be spies, that security code will be reversed. Please don't tell anybody.

3. Visiting scientists and graduate students from Libya, North Korea and mainland China will no longer be allowed to wander the hallways without proper identification. Beginning Monday, they will be required to wear a stick-on lapel tag that clearly states, "Hello, My Name Is . .. ." The stickers will be available at the front desk.

4. The computer network used for scientific calculations will no longer be hyper linked via the Internet to such Web sites as www.swedishbabes.com, or www.hackers-r-us.com. Links to all Disney sites will be maintained, however.

5. Researchers bearing a security clearance of Level 5 and higher will no longer be permitted to exchange updates on their work by posting advanced physics formulas on the men's room walls.

6. On "Bowling Night," please check your briefcases and laptop computers at the front counter of the Bowl-a-Drome instead of leaving them in the cloakroom. Mr. Badonov, the front-counter supervisor, has promised to "keep un eye on zem" for us.

7. Staff members will no longer be allowed to take home small amounts of plutonium, iridium or uranium for use in those "little weekend projects around the house." That includes you parents who are helping the kids with their science fair projects.

8. Thermonuclear devices may no longer be checked out for "recreational use." We've not yet decided if exceptions will be made for Halloween, the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve. We'll keep you posted.

9. Employees may no longer "borrow" the AA batteries from the burglar alarm system to power their Game Boys and compact-disc players during working hours.

10. And, finally, when reporting for work each day, all employees must enter through the front door. Raoul, the janitor, will no longer admit employees who tap three times on the side door to avoid clocking in late. I know this crackdown might seem punitive and oppressive to many of you, but it is our sworn duty to protect the valuable national secrets that have been entrusted to our care.

 

 

 

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