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CHAOS MANOR MAIL

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Mail 113 August 7 - 13, 2000

 

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Monday  August 7, 2000

Me Birthday

It is column time. There's a lot of good mail but you will have to wait for it.

 

 

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Tuesday, August 8, 2000

Cleaning up from column and doing this on Regina, a new system; short shrift again.

You have met Greg Cochran before. He recently posted this in a discussion I'm part of and I got his permission to put it here. I am collecting his material and copying it to a separate page, but I have not got far along with doing that yet.

Subject: Applied Darwinism

I said, just a bit ago, that hardly anyone 'believes' in evolution, in the sense that electrical engineers believe in Maxwell's equations. Hardly anyone uses our existing theory, the neodarwinian synthesis, to predict things or solve problems. Most biologists don't believe in it. Sure, they'll say that they do, but since in the first place they don't _know_ any evolutionary biology, how could they believe in it? Many know nothing, others know things that aren't so - only a small fraction of biologists take it seriously, probably only a few percent . Let alone anyone else.

It doesn't help that the most prominent popularizer, S. J. Gould, doesn't believe in (or, apparently, know much about) it himself.

Consider medicine. To a good approximation, nobody in medicine knows anything about evolution, thus they feel perfectly free to look for one, or a few alleles that cause common diseases with major consequences. Funny that they never find them. 'Frequently occurring genotypes , or polymorphisms (frequency of 1 percent or more) are unlikely to have a high penetrance for diseases that reduce reproductive fitness: such genotypes would be selected against' says a smarter-than-the-average MD in a recent NEJM article questioning the current genetics-uber-alles enthusiasm. But he is definitely in the minority.

Dean Hamer, like most geneticists, doesn't believe in evolution When he published a report linking an allele on the X-chromosome to homosexuality, he didn't say a word about the problem of how such an allele is supposed to hang around at high frequency. He doesn't think that there _is_ a problem. He's not alone - you could say the same about the people looking for highly penetrant schizophrenia genes. They don't think that biological theories _need_ to make evolutionary sense. My favorite explanation involves a 'young Earth' theory - they must think that natural selection hasn't flushed genes for common conditions that greatly reduce fitness because the human race popped into existence quite recently - probably during the lifetimes of some people alive today. This is also known as the 'born yesterday' theory.

Steve Jones, or Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, must not really believe in evolution, else how could they say that races do not exist? By which, in a practical sense, they are claiming that there can not be socially significant, genetically based differences between people with widely varying geographic origins. But that's untrue; nothing in what we know about the genetics of human populations forbids this, and lots of evidence, like Freedman's work, strongly indicates that such differences exist. So they must not really understand it, right? And what does it mean to say you 'believe' in theories that you fundamentally misunderstand?

Paleontologists don't know much about evolution, and what they know they don't believe (1) .. Most of them hate, with an unyielding passion, Alvarez's theory about the impact extinction of the dinosaurs. Most of them still don't believe in it, despite all the findings of iridium, shocked quartz, sharp transitions in the fossil pollen and plankton record, the impact crater (!) , etc. But if you think about it, considering natural selection, every  mass extinction is likely to be caused by some very abrupt event, because of the ability of most species to adapt rapidly to changing conditions. Either the change must have been very large, too great for most species to adapt to, or it involved a smaller physical change that occured too _rapidly_ for sufficient adaptation. For example, if the Earth lost its atmosphere over a couple of million years - we'll call this a big change - I think we wouldn't see any birds around.. Smaller but significant changes spread over a million years, like the Pleistocene glaciation don't cause mass extinctions. But fast changes can cause mass extinctions - 'fast' meaning in less time than a few generations of your target species. Possibly in one day. People like Gould argue against the possibility of fast evolutionary change under strong selection - this despite the fact that we have _seen_ it, for God's sake, consider resistance to insecticides - because they worry that it might validate racism - or, perhaps, cause they's just stupid. So, whatever caused the Permo-Triassic, the mother of all mass extinctions, the one that wiped out whole orders of _insects_, probably happened in less than a few tens of insect generations. Say less than 40 years. The paleontologists were saying a few million, now maybe as little as few hundred thousand, or even less than 8,000 - but it was less than 100, for sure.

Gregory Cochran

(1) I think they don't 'believe in' Newtonian physics either; anyone who knows it realizes that gravitational perturbations are occasionally going to drive asteroids into the inner Solar system, and can calculate or simulate the collision cross-sections.


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

Dear Jerry:

I can see why you're annoyed at Mr. or Ms. (probably Mr., says I) Praeger's statement about you going easy on alleged Japanese WWII crimes because of the money you receive from the Japanese Byte, but pray consider that they (yeah, it's not grammatical, but it IS an English word of one syllable that sorta rhymes with 'he' and 'she', and 'you' moved from plural to singular or plural, so it's the gender neutral pronoun of choice for me, with 'them' for object; now, where was I -- oh yes, pray consider they) were trying to make a joke. Granted, they don't know you well enough to talk to you like that; granted, it ain't much of a joke. Still, they probably were trying to be funny, and considering that geeks have low social skills, you might want to cut them some slack on this one.

About storage, I just had an idea for a storage technology whose time MAY have passed, but perhaps not. Back around 1980 or so, just as the VCR came out, Polaroid announced an instant movie system. Shoot, do whatever it took, and pop it into the portable viewer and watch instant movies. It occurs to me that film is stable for decades, and there's no reason you can't store ones and zeros as little dots on each frame ... Might make a good equivalent to a tape backup drive, for stuff you know you'll want to keep a long time. Watcha think?

On the video revolution, you might want to read Joe Queenan's The Unkindest Cut: How a Hatchet-Man Critic Made His Own $7,000 Movie and Put It All on His Credit Card. It's hilarious, and it has a lot of insight into the problems of the amateur movie maker, including especially cost overruns. One warning: you might get hooked on his writing. Queenan's always very funny.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07aug_1m.htm  has pictures of the remains of comet LINEAR, taken with Hubble. Worth a look, imao.

Best, your friend who also manages to inadvertently annoy you from time to time,

St. Onge


From PSHRINK:

It's been muggy in Syracuse-unusual here, since summer is usually cool and not terribly humid. Today my computer began to flake when I sat down to work-hit the spacebar and watch the cursor travel across the page, halted only by hitting a left arrow key. Keyboard stuck? Well, what about the left and right arrows sticking? Hmmm. Shut down (use the "Start" button-Who's on first? . . .). Wait ten seconds. Push the power button. No boot. Uh oh. Not anything. Not even the BIOS came up.

All right. It's a Dell Dimension XPS D266, stone cold reliable (I'm spoiled)-but it is nearly three years old. I vacuumed it out a month ago. No problems since then. But maybe a loose board. So I popped the cover and re-seated the boards. Power on. No boot, no BIOS.

Turned on the air conditioning in the house (in upstate NY electricity is expensive and my wife hates conditioned air). Let the place cool down and dehumidify. Finally, it restarted. Ah.

Otherwise: buy another box (I did this when my younger daughter's 486 box went down; found a local vendor who built me a no-modem, no-keyboard, no-soundcard, no-OS box to nestle into the old box's peripherals). Wait for it to arrive. Pull the hard drive with my nearly-finished book and pop it into the new machine. In the interim, Yahoo mail allows one to pull mail from one's ISP mail account, so I could have accessed my-email using my wife's new iMac.

This has got me re-thinking my weekly backup policy. I have nearly a week of unbacked fiction on this machine that I don't want to lose. I'm not sure if a re-creation would be as good (I'm very new at this game). So I'm thinking that a daily backup would be in order, especially with an old machine.

Q-anything I can buy that will dehydrate the innards of a PC and not leave short-generating residue?

Ed

Unbacked? You may be a physician and a lawyer and a polymath but you're close to being an idiot. If nothing better, save on floppies!  But save copies! Me, I save everything in several places.

Oh, Jerry...

I ran into this in the Message Board section of http://www.friendsinbusiness.com  (a great anti-scam site) and knew you would thoroughly enjoy it...

Heh. A great supplemental income provider...

BEWARE: [addendum August 9, 2000] When I went to that site I saw a joke letter promoting a kidney harvesting scheme that I thought was funny. This turns out NOT to be an anti-spamming site, but probably a spam promotion outfit. MY APOLOGIES!!!

Just went through and clean out the old inbox, and I thought to myself that I wished there was an header in email that had an expiration date on it. Any bulk mailing list would have an expiration time on it. And to get rid of the ones that you thought you would have time to read, but never did, you would just give the command delete expired mail. It would sure make cleaning out the inbox easier.

It would also be great for those party and gathering notices from friends and colleagues. After the gathering, the email would basically send itself to the trash on it's own.

David Valentine

 

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday, August 9, 2000

Jerry,

I just looked at the friends in business site you linked to. They're very cagey, but I'm pretty sure the business they're saying is a can't miss is your personal favorite -- spam. Seriously, read between the lines of what she's selling there. As you would say, ungood.

--Dave Pierce

Mr. Pournelle:

"I ran into this in the Message Board section of http://www.friendsinbusiness.com (a great anti-scam site) and knew you would thoroughly enjoy it...

Heh. A great supplemental income provider... "

-----

Perhaps I'm looking too deeply into this, but what exactly is the "this" that is a great supplemental income provider? It seems like there should be a link to "something" on a specific message board that is missing. I went to the link and found a very aggravating site that spent a great deal of time telling me they are not a scam site, but left me with impression that they themselves were a scam site. Perhaps I'm missing something?

I realize you are very busy and have better things to do than respond to this kind of email. On the other hand, if I'm not daft, then perhaps I'm not the only reader scratching his head. I thought you'd like to know. (I'm resisting a strong urge to be cute and add a sentence referring to the gripping hand...)

Thank you for your courtesy,

Richard Micko rmicko@clipperinc.com

 

Yes.

See my apology in VIEW.  Thanks to you and others for telling me. Query: Clipper used to be a compiler for dBase II and was very good. I doubt that's what clipperinc does now...

AND

Jerry,

Thought you'd find this of interest. From a NY Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/biztech/articles/07pate.html

QUOTE A lot of people probably say that the best e-mail enhancement they can imagine is a way to eliminate junk e-mail altogether. A new patent awarded to a San Francisco inventor, Sunil Paul, aims to do that by screening out unsolicited mass promotions.

I sure hope that works out!


Sir,

You can easily move "Favourites" from one system to another. Use the Explorer program to drag and drop the desired links from the Favourites folder on one system to the Favourites folder on the other.

John N. Sloan john.sloan@home.com

Uh -- this is on two different computers.  Although Cut and Paste will work across computers if you do it right. 

Jerry,

Just thought I would drop a line saying I was doing the exact same thing as you with regards to moving favorites and cookies last night.

I find that the easiest way is to move the whole profile over to another machine, that way it retains cookies, favorites, even the passwords that you have on various sites, if like me you fire and forget your passwords.

I'm using Win2000 so I'm not sure how this would affect you with other versions, but here goes.

Right click on My Computer and go to the properties page.

Click on the User Profiles tag, and select the profile you wish to use.

Click on the "Copy To..." button, and in the new dialog box, select the place where you wish to copy the profile to. Use something like c:\temp\profilename as it doesn't create the profile name directory for you.

In the permitted to use part, the best thing to do is select Everyone, this makes it 10 times easier.

Once you have done that click on OK, wait for it to finish, then copy them to a spare directory on the target computer.

On that target computer, create the new user and profile, then log on as Administrator, now copy the files to the new profile directory and thats it.

You should have cookies, favorites, everything. Seems to work every time, and it's not too complicated.

Hope this helps you.

regards,

Martin Donnelly.

Thanks. I should have done that. I did it piecemeal. 

Happy Birthday Jerry, Many more.

in regards to moving your favorites folder ( I know you already received several good suggestions) you might want to check a new free for life ser= vice called FusionOne ( http://www.fusionone.com ). They offer an agent that g= oes on a Win or Apple PC or a number of Palm-type devices or a WAP cell phone= , and with a single click you can synch all or any desired parts of your Outloo= k files and other files you specify. It works quite reliably. I have no a= ccess to my home email from work and no access to work from home, so just the convenience of having the same mail on both machines is a boon. Likewise=

identical contacts, favorites, tasks etc. FusionOne also offers a web-based service ( https://www.edock.com ) which essentially give you an Outlook desktop on the Web.

Obviously their aim is synching machines in different locations but I cou= ldn't help thinking how useful it might be in your environment, rebuilding mach= ines, getting machines ready for trips etc. Worth a look.

Regards Dave

Thanks. Please don't put hard hyphenation in mail. I cleaned up some but I don't have time for it all. I'll look into this.

 

 


Dr. Pournelle, A relative directed me to this site. I though you might find it interesting, in light of the recent discussion of infantry. http://www.grunts.net/index.html 

George Laiacona III <george@eisainc.com> ICQ 37042478/ 28885038 " ... " -Nyarlathotep "Bbl bbl bbl bbl .... <drool> " -Unsuspecting spelunker right after discovering Nyarlathotep in his underworldly extradimensional lair.


I don't usually include press releases, but this one is of interest. It was actually included in a letter:

FYI - it looks like the revolution has started already... I think your paragraph about skills is on the money - you still need a good eye, etc. to produce quality work, but hardware is ceasing to be a barrier to entry. <<start quote from RCFOC>>

The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing

Aug. 7, 2000

Conquering Time and Distance ----------------------------

by Jeffrey R. Harrow Principal Member of Technical Staff Corporate Strategy Group, Compaq Computer Corporation jeff.harrow@compaq.com

Insight, analysis and commentary on the innovations and trends of contemporary computing, and on the technologies that drive them (not necessarily the views of Compaq Computer Corporation).

http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc  ISSN: 1520-8117

Copyright (c)2000, Compaq Computer Corporation

--- <<snip>> Changing The Movie Rules!

In Hollywood, "getting noticed" has always been "job one," and an incredibly difficult job it is for those trying to break in. It's been a common plot of stories, plays, and yes, even movies, to follow an aspiring actress, writer, composer, or director on the road to "being noticed. But the next such plot is now going to have to include the Web.

On June 5, Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt (video professionals who worked for a video production house during the day) finished a three-month home effort to create their own 3-minute, special-effects laden movie using the six PCs they had between them. (They used a $2,500 professional video software package called LightWave 3D, plus a few other utilities).

Thinking little about it, they released the movie, called "405," onto the Web, and told 60 of their "closest friends" about it. Well, those 60 friends told their friends, and the film took on a life of its own.

Four days later, 9,000 people had watched this home-grown movie. Two months later, over 700,000 people have watched it, according to the July 31 ABCnews.com http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/entertainment/DailyNews/webshorts_0 00731_405.html  ) . And just three weeks after the movie's Web debut, these guys found themselves represented by the Creative Artists Agency (of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise fame), negotiating with DreamWorks and Warner Brothers to become Hollywood directors. Which must set some kind of record. (They have now given up their day-jobs.)

Oh, what our "common" desktop PCs can now accomplish.

Of course there WERE incremental expenses to produce this movie -- $400 worth -- a large chunk of which went to pay for two $75 tickets they received for walking on a freeway...

Watching this film is a good use of three minutes - iFILM calls it,

"2 guys, 6 computers, (and 3 months of rendering). This film will hit you like a ton of bricks."

And they're right.

It's available at 

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/skeletons/film_detail/0,1263, 204155,00.html 

  . And a fascinating explanation of how this was accomplished (and there's much more to this than meets the eye), with nothing more than their PCs and a consumer DV (Digital Video) camcorder, is at http://www.405themovie.com/makingof.htm .

Imagine trying to accomplish THAT - the film and the four-weeks-to-Hollywood-insider status -- prior to PCs and the Internet...

<<snip>> ------------------------

About the "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing..."

The "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" is a weekly technology journal providing insight, analysis and commentary on contemporary computing and the technologies that drive them.

The RCFoC is written by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal Member of Technical Staff with the Technology &; Corporate Development organization of Compaq Computer Corporation.

The RCFoC is published as a service of, but not necessarily reflecting the opinions of, Compaq Computer Corporation. Copyright © 1996-2000, Compaq Computer Corporation. All rights reserved.

Where To Find the "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" Technology Journal

You can subscribe to this weekly journal which will help you keep up on the changes that are constantly occurring in our industry! AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC AT NO CHARGE

* Via the Web -- Read it via the World Wide Web, at http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc

<<end quote>>

___________________________

John Pittman

GE Industrial Systems - Meter Business

mailto:john.pittman@indsys.ge.com


Mr St Onge wrote:

"About storage, I just had an idea for a storage technology whose time MAY have passed, but perhaps not. Back around 1980 or so, just as the VCR came out, Polaroid announced an instant movie system. Shoot, do whatever it took, and pop it into the portable viewer and watch instant movies. It occurs to me that film is stable for decades, and there's no reason you can't store ones and zeros as little dots on each frame ... Might make a good equivalent to a tape backup drive, for stuff you know you'll want to keep a long time. Watcha think?"

I don't think this has much in the way of legs. I recently bought a 2700 dpi transparency scanner. A 35 mm frame produces a 28 MB file. The media cost of that 28 MB is at least 10 times that of CDR. And film is very vulnerable to dust and scratches.

Jonathan

I think I didn't have a chance to read that as carefully as I might if I didn't know the sender. I agree. My media of choice at the moment is DVD-RAM which over time can only get better and cheaper; for stuff I have to pay for, a spindle of CD-R is so cheap I don't notice the cost per disk, and with Nero (BURNING ROM) I have yet to make a coaster... 


Another one from pshrink:

This short quiz consists of four questions and tells whether you are qualified to be a "professional". Scroll down for each answer. The questions are not that difficult.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrong answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant and close the refrigerator. Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Correct answer: The elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. This tests your memory.

OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross. But it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Correct answer: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the animal meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

According to Andersen Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all the questions wrong.

But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four year old.

Send this out to frustrate all your friends.

 

 

 

 

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Thursday, August 10, 2000

Hi Dr. Pournelle,

You had some discussions the previous weeks related to Courtney Love's article in Salon. The specific law that made all artists recordings into "work-for-hire" objects and removed all copyright from the artists will be rescinded by congress (hopefully). It seems that the artists pressure groups did have an effect.

There is an article in Wired http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38129,00.html  if you want to have a look.

Cheers Francois van Niekerk

francois.vniekerk[nospam]@aspentech.com 

Thanks. It figured that Congress would fix it. AFTER the lawyers for both sides got paid a lot. I fear the interests of the legal profession and the rest of us are not the same, and it's pretty clear which one gets the most representation. But it's like Congress: we dislike the institutions of Congress and the lawyers, but we like our individual lawyers and clearly a majority of voters like their individual Congresscritters. And thus be it ever...


Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I read this

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40880-2000Aug5.html  

in the Sunday Washington Post Magazine. Writer Liza Mundy discussed her nephew who has difficulty in school because everything grabs his attention, but in a forest, this shifting aids him in hunting.

I wonder if ADD is nothing more than a collision of a normal survival trait with an abnormal situation that has become common. God knows I had trouble sitting still in school and I liked being there. Even now, at 40, I hate sitting in an office and long to be off and away.

Alas, there is no money in it.

Daniel Safford

I am told that a full 20% of male chidren are now diagnosed as "having" ADD and given drugs to control it. This seems like wretched excess...

 

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Friday, August 11, 2000

I got this some time ago:

Dr. Pournelle

I use Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows 98 Second Edition, to save your columns on my hard drive. Recently when I tried to burn a CD with NTI CD-MAKER PRO MM VERSION 3.1.730CW, I found that it did not want to copy these long named files to a CD. It gave me the following message:

"THE FILE NAME "................." exceeds the maximum file name length of 64 characters in Joliet Format. You cannot make Joliet Format if this file is added. Would you like to add this file?"

Any suggestions on how I can save this stuff to CD and Free up space??

Thanks!

Gene Roberts

To the best of my knowledge you can't do it. This is a problem for us as well. Most CD creation programs will offer to truncate the file name but beware, the truncation rules while generating a unique file name do not make it unique to anything other than this SESSION. I don't have a good solution to your problem.

You're one of my favorite scifi writers of all time and I didn't even know you had a website. I was trying to track down some info on how to change the fsb of an old plato mobo from 60 to 66 or even 100 when my search engine led me here. (You wouldn't happen to know, would you?} Any, I've flagged the site and will be visiting often.

Vernon D Shepherd

Welcome aboard. I don't know off hand since it will depend on the motherboard and I am not familiar with that one. Someone here will know. Just now I am on a break from working on Burning Tower as it is Niven's turn...

Since Microsoft has released a version of their Reader software for desktops, I thought I'd follow their link to their partner, Barnes&;Noble. Browsing through the available books, I ran across a sequel (Isaac Asimov's Inferno, by Roger McBride Allen) to a book I already have, for $9.60 USD ($14.43 Canadian at current exchange rates). Curious, I decided to compare the price to a paper copy from Chapters (the major book chain here in Canada)...and found I could get the paperback for just over twelve dollars Canadian, including shipping within 3 business days.

Now, why exactly would I buy the electronic version, even if I had a PocketPC? (I'm not likely to be reading novels on my main computer, though I might still download some of the freebies to try out the software). I have no objection to paying for it, but for more money than the print version? Granted they've had to work to put some infrastructure into place, shouldn't it still be cheaper, given that there's no printing costs, and distribution costs are almost zero? More importantly, how much of the increased profit margin is making it back to the author, if any?

I don't know what authors get for ebooks. I never read one, either, although I did read Butler's Way Of All Flesh on screen from a classics CD because I had never read it. Not an unenjoyable experience but I like books better. Does anyone know if I can put ebooks on my NEC TravelPro? I don't think the software is on it but presumably I could find that if it exists. AND then I got

There are two links here. The first gets you Microsoft's eBook reader, the seconds leads you to a Barnes &; Noble page where you can download 100 classics for free.

You can now download FREE software to read eBooks on your computer! http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/5139.asp 

http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/5139.asp  

Get a review of Microsoft Reader here and find out where you can download 100 eBooks free! http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/5135.asp  <  http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/5135.asp >

Tracy Walters, Networking Rocky Mountain Technology Group

From: Sean Long Subj: E-Books

Dr. Pournelle,

Regarding the question "why would someone buy an e-book for $whatever when you can get a real honest to goodness physical book for $whatever+notverymuchmore, I have 2 reasons. First, I have a few favorite books that I keep re-reading and browsing through. After a few good readings, the books tend to get rather worn. After a few dozen readings, some books disintegrate. I will likely get electronic format copies of those few books eventually, and they'll last forever. The second reason is that I sometimes go on TDY trips (Temporary Duty) for anywhere from a week to 6 months, and while away it's nice to have reading material. I take my palm pilot with me on all trips greater than 3 days, and my laptop with me on most trips greater than a week. Trying to stuff enough reading material into my baggage to last the whole trip gets rather problematic after the first book or two, so an e-book readable on my palm pilot or laptop becomes even more useful.

Those are two reasons I personally think e-books are a good idea. I just downloaded about 20 of the free 100 ebooks at the link in your current mail, and they'll reside on my laptop for whenever I need to burn a few hours reading while away from home.

Sean Long seanlong@micron.net http://netnow.micron.net/~seanlong


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

Subject: Evolutionary theory: content and belief

Dear Jerry:

Very glad to read  Cochran's insightful letter. As he says, evolutionary theory is little used in everyday science. Why? In part, because it's underdeveloped.

I mean this: Ask "What is Newtonian theory?", and the following general description occurs to me. Newtonian theory is:

The Three Laws of Motion

Law of Universal Gravitation

Hypothesis of Absolute, Infinitely Divisible Space and Time

The Calculus

That last must not be underestimated. Without the mathematical tools, you can't develop much of anything. With them, you can show that Kepler's laws are a necessary consequence of Newton's theory, and predict planetary motions for centuries in advance.

So, in general terms, just what is the current, neo-Darwinian theory of Evolution? Well, more complex than Newton's, because of the complexity of biological systems, but the following is my take. Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is:

Theory of Heredity

Theory of SUSTAINED Natural Selection

Assumption of Non-Saltationism &; Non-Lamarckianism

"Transformation of Quantity into Quality"

Molecular Biology

Statistical Population Genetics (Possibly more, but that's what I can think of.)

The population genetics is what Cochran is using for his work, and it's one of the few (only?) predictive mathematical tools available to neo-Darwinism.

Yes, paleontologists don't 'believe in,' i.e, use, the neo-Darwinian theory. They can't, as far as I can see. In Darwin's day, it was known that the fossil record was full of undiscovered species, but few if any of the intermediates Darwin projected must have been there. Today, many previously unknown species have been discovered, but I can't see how neo-Darwinism would have allowed the time of appearance, morphology, or geographic distribution to be predicted. As for the intermediates, they still mostly aren't there.

In sum, neo-Darwinism seems to lack needed tools. The resulting imprecision make it largely unusable in everyday science. Perhaps that's also why it generates so much controversy -- as scientific theories go, it's a Rohrshach blot that tells us about more about its expositor than about nature?

Best, Stephen


Dr. Pournelle,

I just bought a new Microsoft Optical Mouse, and I saw two labels next to each other on the box that at first seemed strangely ironic. Then I realized that it may very well have been done this way on purpose, to highlight the silliness of our laws.

The first label said: "Made in China". Immediately below that it said: "Not for Sale Outside of the United States and Canada".

Bizarre...

--Dave

 Dave Pierce dpierce@synteleos.com

 

 

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Sunday, August 13, 2000

Back from a long drive south and back up again.

Hi Jerry,

After spending more time than I can afford, you are my last hope with this problem.

I recently inherited an IBM printer without a manual or instructions of any sort. Thusfar I have not been able to make it work and it would be a shame to have to junk it. I have been unable to find information anywhere.

I am looking for advice, manuals - anything, but particularly drivers and an explanation of the two digit error codes that come up on the printers LCD screen.

It is a 4028-NS1 printer. I know it is a "network" printer as it connects only via a RJ-45 cable. There is some kind of adaptor on the back, that converts the connection to the RJ-45 from the coax. The adaptor itself is part of a larger box attached to the machine. I am told that it must be connected by use of a network. So I bought a hub, but I'm stuck without the proper driver and an explanation for the error code numbers that the printer sends. Maybe the error codes are (were) standard IBM error codes that are available elsewhere. I am stymied and I would really appreciate any help or advice.

Joel

Joel Lehman [joel.lehman@sympatico.ca]

And Alas:

Subject: IBM 4028-NS1 printer problem submitted by Joel Lehman

The information below concerning the 4028 printer was found at http://www.printers.ibm.com/R5PSC.NSF/Web/laserattach

In IBM terminology "host" means mainframe.

"The IBM 4028 printer is a host printer only. If PC or LAN printing is desired, IBM recommends replacing this printer. Please contact the Printer Selection Center at 1-800-358-6661, option 3, for replacement that will work best in your environment. If you prefer, you may visit our Printer Selection web page. No PC or LAN drivers are available for this printer."

Alan T. Blanke

 

 

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