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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 218 August 12 - 18, 2002

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Monday  August 12, 2002

Repeated from last Saturday:

We have another Internet Explorer vulnerability described over in mail. It is said to be serious in that it could be exploited to do serious things, although I don't know of any actual instance of its use. More as I learn more.

As I understand it, this is a potential danger in which someone can forge certificates. That is potentially terribly important, but so far no one has done so. It's probably not time to panic yet, but you may want to start looking into other web browsers, since this one apparently exploits the intimate relationship between IE and Windows.

Repeated from last Sunday:

I have been working with the new Tablet PC and letting Windows XP drive me mad: I don't seem to understand how to use XP and Windows 2000 server together to create accounts on the XP machine that can log on to the net. I'll figure it out, but it seems to take some doing. Oh well, if it were all easy no one would pay me to do these silly things and then talk about them.

I have got the Tablet on the network, but I have to log on to it, rather than to the Net through it as I have in the past. I don't quite understand what's going wrong here. Oh. Well. It's a matter of reading up on it, and I'll do that when I get some real work done.

Meanwhile, there's a LOT to like about this Acer implementation of the Microsoft TABLET PC concept, and I'll have more with a picture or two later today.

NOW, I am going to go up and work on Burning Tower. More later. When I get back I hope to take a bunch of the commentaries on the Middle East and add them to the war pages so as to keep all that stuff together.

But before I could do that, Roland finds even more things you ought to know about. IE SSL Flaws (Konqueror for Linux too):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26620.html 

but see Tuesday: it's fixed.

 

And the PGP threat mentioned in this morning's Wall Street Journal (it takes your cooperation to exploit it):

http://www.counterpane.com/pgp-attack.html 

 

Following is a story about George Gilder:

The Madness of King George

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/gilder_pr.html 

who wrote Infinite Bandwidth among other things.


7:30 PM PDT Monday 12 August 2002:

 

DO NOT SEND ME MAIL ABOUT THIS!!!

And now when I try to go to my web site I get

You are not authorized to view this page You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied. If you believe you should be able to view this directory or page, please try to contact the Web site by using any e-mail address or phone number that may be listed on the www.jerrypournelle.com home page. You can click Search to look for information on the Internet.

HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden Internet Explorer

 

 

Which makes no sense whatever.  It seems to be the case with all my computers, too, not just this one. WHAT NOW? I have work to do, why is this happening? I suppose I had better get a different browser going? Has Microsoft decided I need to be silenced? Can everyone but me read this page? Sigh.

YES: apparently everyone but me can read this page. Thompson can get to it. So it's local. So I will try things here.

First : shut down the satellite server and bring it up again.

That did  no good. I can ftp this in but I get the forbidden message when I try to view my own site.

Next: I will go shut down the satellite and see if I can get there by dialup. It's not cookies or IE history since I have the same problem on all the machines in the house.

OK. I am back and I can see my site. Through Dialup. It may have been the satellite. It may have been something else. I need to try the satellite again shortly but at least I am back again. I sure don't need a lot of this. The column is in, I don't need more to write about...


On the Hatfill front, I find this paragraph from the Washington Post rather interesting:

In June, still with no anthrax suspect in sight, scientist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg met with the staff of Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Rosenberg is a biological weapons expert from the Federation of American Scientists and had published two scathing letters attacking the FBI's lack of results. Rosenberg said she has been careful never to mention Hatfill's name, but several media reported that his name was raised in the meeting, which the FBI also attended.

If the FBI needs the Federation of American Scientists to help it investigate the anthrax attacks, we're in trouble. On their web site they state unequivocally that "it was an inside job" whatever that means; that the attacks couldn't possibly be what they seemed, terrorist attacks by some of the same people who organized 911. http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm 

This also comes from their site:

Rosenberg has become convinced that the FBI knows who sent out the anthrax letters, but isn't arresting him, because he has been involved in secret biological weapons research that the U.S. does not want revealed. "This guy knows too much, and knows things the U.S. isn't very anxious to publicize," Rosenberg said in an interview. "Therefore, they don't want to get too close."

Does any of this make sense?

 

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Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Due to the problems people have been having with Internet Explorer and security, I have posted an OPERA press release over on the page where we do that sort of thing.

For more on the SSL PGP, Roland found:

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-949506.html and reports that the Konqueror problem is already fixed http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26653.html 

 

 

I am about to go up and work on BURNING TOWER again. More another time.

 

HOLLYWOOD Bowl tonight: Also Strauss's Sprach Zarathrusta (all movements not just the 2001 opening) and Lilli Paasakivi and Thomas Quasthoff do songs from Das Knaben Wunderborn. I have seen Quasthoff on TV but never live before.

And indeed it was a magnificent event.

 

 

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Wednesday, August 14, 2002

The Bowl concert was terrific. Quasthoff has a commanding presence, and Paasakivi is one of the most passionate mezzo-sopranos I have ever seen. We all wished for a duet, but there aren't any in Knaben Wunderborn. Ah well.

Salonen did the Strauss perfectly as expected. I am not sure I have never heard the third movement before. Certainly I never heard it live before. Makes me want to look up Zarathrusta and the fire worshippers. My archeologist/anthropologist daughter says the Fire Worship of that region developed around natural gas vents that shoot fire from the earth into the skies...

Anyway the Bowl concert last night was worth the season. We found a number of our friends from the LA Opera there, drawn by Quasthoff. 

 

This morning I got a conference call from the TabletPC Product Manager, a network support tech from MSDN, and the extremely competent young lady Waggoner Edstrom assigned to work with me on the TabletPC (you probably won't get this level of technical support). After about an hour we were able to find the problems with getting the Tablet onto the network. They were bizarre, and I have good notes; it will go into the column.  You are unlikely ever to encounter this problem which has to do with the way this machine was used prior to my receiving it (it was bridged into an Apple network at one point, and that can do horrid things to your regular Microsoft Network if the bridging enabling is left on...)

The Tablet I have is made by ACER, and it's neat. I wish it had a telephone built into it: it sure will do all the other things I carry electronics for. I think I am going to like it a lot. And it knows my handwriting pretty well already, for reasons I have told before and I'll give again in the next column. Anyway I am now logged on to my domain through my account at the Tablet, and I am known to the tablet as a Power User. Everything is finally behaving as I expect. Later we will get this connected through the Cisco secure wireless system (it's now connected by Ethernet cable). All's well, birds are singing, the humming bird feeders are empty -- oops I have to go fill those. It's hot out there.

There's mail on a variety of subject.

And I will shortly go upstairs to write.

 

 

Made a fair amount of progress. Of course that turns my brain to mush.

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Thursday, August 15, 2002

The City of LA has decided that, given the budget shortage and other fiscal problems, plus the Valley's threat to secede, and given the potholes in the streets and the sidewalks heaved up by 40 years of tree roots without any city attention, they will replace the existing and working street lights with "matching" street lights. Meanwhile LA Unified has moved into its $150 million new administrative headquarters, and needs new revenues to meet current expenses.

Wonderful. At least it's OUR corruption and most of the money stays here rather than going to Washington, where it would still be wasted only it wouldn't be spent here.

There's a tonne of mail and I'll try to do short shrift.  I have several major essays I need to write but fiction comes first, and I'm about to go up for another session in the Monk's Cell.

And I have a spate of mail on space elevators which are getting into the news lately. I need to comment, but I'll wait a few days. There's no urgency...


I have been in some discussions on modern plagues and biological warfare. In general there's not a lot of reason for enemies of the US to develop and use biological agents because almost everyone else is more vulnerable to them than we are; but of course if they use them on each other, it will eventually get here. I don't have time for an essay on that although I hope to include several in High Tech Wars. 

However, I will give you a bit of advice from an expert on epidemics:

Meanwhile, here's my practical advice for what to do about sudden plagues either natural or man-made: 

React quickly to initial news reports and isolate yourself rapidly. Cancel meetings, do not send the kids to school, avoid going to places where lots of people congregate. Shop at all night markets late at night when hardly anyone is there and go infrequently. 

Don't fly home if you are on a trip. Better to rent a car and drive. Go to gas stations that allow paying outside with a card into a machine. Get a 50 pair box of surgical gloves at a drug store and use them for pumping gas and the like. Wrap up your face in cloth and wear long sleeve shirts and generally reduce physical area where bacterial and viral droplets from someone else's cough could make it into your body.

And don't panic. But the above is reasonable. Understand it was casual advice to friends, not a formal paper.

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Friday, August 16, 2002

Sue Ferrara says:

Couple arrested for having sex in the New York City Cathedral

And we wonder why the rest of the world finds Americans amoral and crass? Friday, August 16, 2002 By Philip Messing, Marianne Garvey and Hasani Gittens

Click on the URL below for the rest of this story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60557,00.html 

which is in fact an amazing story. Possony used to say that when the bizarre becomes common the social order is breaking down, and you may look for things to get worse until there is a complete political revolution. The classic pattern is more and more outrageous actions from the rulers and the aristocracy (such as the media and the bankers and the CEO's) and even though most of the Optimates are not part of this breakdown (riotous parties, Clodius sneaking into the sorority house disguised as a Vestal Virgin: think a Kennedy having wild sex parties on the lawn) there are enough to outrage the population.

If we are capable of outrage any longer, which is a pretty good question. 

And Roland finds one example of common sense returning http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-boy16.html 

 

Roland is connecting up the TabletPC to the Cisco Aironet. The problem is what Windows XP doesn't seem to have a secure wireless connection capability yet using the Orinoco cards; we will have to use the Cisco card for this. We know that works.

Once done the Tablet will be pretty good stuff


And Roland find this. The SSL problem isn't just in IE:

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics
/security/holes/story/0,10801,73507,00.html
 

Sue finds a story: a judge refuses to interfere with the Koran reading in North Carolina. Quite right. He's federal and this is a state matter. I don't quarrel that the state has the RIGHT to impose this (and its legislature has the right to cut off funding for doing it) but the wisdom of this action is dubious. Still this is a good case for the Feds to stay out of.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60544,00.html 

The judge didn't give a reason for staying out. But he did the right thing.

We also have

Sleeping with the enemy By Kim Zetter August 13 2002

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/10/1028158034389.html

which isn't about what you think it is. It has to do with hiring hackers...]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday, August 17, 2002

Roland is over setting up the Tablet PS to work securely with Cisco Aironet Wireless. I'm off to meet my colleagues at Writers of the Future dinner and Awards.

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Actually, all these were from Friday night's dinner. Niven looks pretty good, Roberta thinks up something mischievous with Tim and Serena Powers, the ladies do some siren thing with Powers, the Nivens and Powers with Yoji Kondo (Eric Kotana) behind Serena. 

Saturday was the formal dinner and awards.

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Hal Clement, Frank Kelly Freas and Laura Brodian Freas, and Samwise Gamgee.

Last year I said something to the management about having been with these things for 17 years and having to always be paired with Niven or some other guy while everyone else got a pretty girl. So this year it was different. Yeah

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Whereupon Hal Clement pointed out that this was the first one of these he'd been to and just look...

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Sunday, August 18, 2002

Gardening and cleanup today. I'll get mail up later.

 

 

 

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